by Gerald Elias
‘So, two new questions,’ Jacobus said. ‘First: Why so many people would take valuable instruments to a repairman with such a modest reputation, even though they might have bought them from him.’
‘I had the same question,’ Nathaniel said. ‘You don’t necessarily want to have your vintage Mercedes serviced by the used car dealer you bought it from. So I called the owners. They weren’t any happier to hear from me the second time than the first. But I did get the impression they were pleased with Borlotti’s work and that he charged much less than it would have cost to have the repairs done in New York.’
‘That makes sense,’ Jacobus said. ‘Second question: If that guy Weimaraner—’
‘You mean Westerhauser?’
‘Whatever. If Weimaraner said that Borlotti only bought the bottom of the barrel from his estate sales, what was he doing transacting big instruments?’
‘Good question. And Borlotti trolling in Shopper’s Guide. Same.’
And still Jacobus’s inner Corelli was troubled. ‘And what about Ubriaco? Did you ask about the school instruments?’
‘Northeast corroborated what Ubriaco told us. His claim is absolutely in order. They just won’t do anything about it until they hear from Borlotti’s insurance company, Concordia. So I think our friend Jimmy is cleared on that one, though he may be out of a job.’
‘My heart breaks for him. One more question. Did any of the owners say their valuable instruments were in Borlotti’s shop when it burned down?’
‘Yes, about a half dozen of them.’
‘Were they alarmed that they might have gone up in smoke?’
‘You’d think. Surprisingly, some weren’t.’
‘Did you inform them at as far as we can tell the shop had mysteriously been cleared of violins?’
‘No. I didn’t. Seemed premature.’
‘Wait a minute!’ What was bothering Jacobus about Nathaniel’s report suddenly bubbled to the surface. ‘Something isn’t kosher. How can they say he charged so little when the claims they filed were high?’
‘Jake, why did you have to say that?’ Nathaniel wailed.
‘Why not?’
‘Because now I’m going to have to call all of them back again.’
Jacobus heard a car drive up. It wasn’t the engine of Yumi’s car, though. He would have heard that a mile away.
‘Hang in there,’ he told Nathaniel, and hung up.
Sigurd Benson was at the door.
‘What do you have for me, Sigurd?’ Jacobus asked.
‘How do you know I have anything for you?’
‘By gracing my humble abode in person instead of calling,’ Jacobus said. ‘And I’m pretty sure you don’t want me to make you lunch.’
‘You’re right. I have something to give you. And something to tell you.’
Benson remained hesitantly in the doorway.
‘Well, come on in and spit it out, Sigurd!’ Jacobus said.
Jacobus offered him a cup of Folgers instant. Benson politely declined.
Benson made his way to the easy chair in the living room. Jacobus returned to the couch.
‘We found two-hundred-thirty-thousand dollars in a strong box in Borlotti’s basement,’ Benson said.
‘Two-hundred-thirty!’ Jacobus said. ‘Now, that’s interesting! What could poor, old Amadeo be doing with that amount of change stashed away? What took you so long to find it?’
‘We had to jackhammer through the collapsed floor to get to the basement. There was a safe under a lot of rubble. Based upon the layering, it had been upstairs in his shop. With its weight, it no doubt contributed to the floor collapsing.’
‘Yet more questions! If Borlotti committed arson, why did he leave the money? If someone else torched the place but didn’t take the money, what would be the motive?’
‘To steal the violins?’
‘Then why burn the place?’ Jacobus was getting dizzy going around in circles. ‘Any other major discoveries?’
‘I don’t know if I’d call it major,’ Benson said, ‘but we tracked down Borlotti’s savings and checking accounts. Lee Bank. Nothing unusual. He had enough coming in to cover his mortgage and the usual living expenses. No splurging. No big trips. The checks he wrote were the boring ones everyone else writes. We called his credit card companies. The usual monthly checks. Occasional lapsed balances but nothing to sound any alarms. We even called the IRS and his returns were as routine as we would want ours to be.’
‘All of which makes the two-hundred grand in the safe even more interesting.’
‘Yes, it does. We also found Ubriaco’s instruments, by the way. Or what was left of them. In the basement. They were two dimensional, but just like he said, we counted nine violins, one viola, two cellos, and four basses.’
Jacobus heard something in Benson’s voice.
‘You’re leaving something out.’
‘Well, I’m not sure if I am and I’m not sure if I’m not. But it was just something curious.’
‘Come on, Sigurd. Let’s have it. You’re doing such a great job unburdening yourself.’
‘We also counted the remains of nine violin cases, one viola case, and two cello cases, but only three bass cases. It’s possible one bass case is missing, though it’s also very possible that it had been upstairs and got incinerated. Or we just missed it in the wreckage.’
‘I suppose,’ Jacobus said, though he wasn’t convinced.
‘One of the bass cases still had its wheels intact. I measured the distance between them and it was about the same as my recollection of the tracks in the snow. The ones that went from Borlotti’s house to the truck.’
‘So you think he was sending that special someone an empty string bass case?’
‘Possible,’ Benson said.
‘At ten o’clock on Christmas Eve?’
‘Less possible.’
‘Any fine tuners?’ Jacobus asked.
‘Just the ones by Ubriaco’s instruments.’
‘All right. Keep me up-to-date. Good work, Benson. You’ve restored my faith in human nature.’
‘Seriously?’
‘No, but good work anyway.’
‘Just one more thing, Mr Jacobus. We’ve heard back from our colleagues in Saratoga. They did find a mucker at the track who recognized Borlotti’s description and confirmed that he had come from time to time to watch the horses run. And, you were right, there was indeed a racehorse named Flower Child.’
Pay dirt!
‘He ran one race, finished eighth in a nine-horse field, and then was put out to stud. That was in 1968. One of the co-owners was Sonny Bono. That must have been how the horse got its name. Frankly, I thought your idea was very creative, but I don’t think it’s going to get us anywhere. Hope I haven’t burst your bubble.’
Jacobus recalled the Abbott and Costello routine where the street-smart Abbott tried to explain the intricacies of the track to Costello. Much to the naïve Costello’s horror and chagrin, Abbott insisted that ‘the mudder ate the fodder.’ Now Jacobus had something to eat, too. Crow.
‘I guess I’ve been kicking a dead horse,’ he said.
‘Not at all,’ Benson replied. ‘It was a long shot. But we’re still waiting to hear about other possible connections Borlotti might have had with the track. I’ve brought you a bunch of copies of the latest photo of Amadeo Borlotti we could find. That’s mainly why I drove over here. I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind going to Saratoga and spreading it around. It’s from a four-year-old Berkshire Eagle. Borlotti was honored for subsidizing the Egremont Falls high school orchestra’s trip to a national orchestra convention in Atlanta.
‘Ubriaco go with them?’
‘Seems so. The article says, “Though the orchestra did not win a prize, orchestra leader James Ubriaco was upbeat. ‘We’re just so proud of them. It was an experience our youngsters will never forget.’”’
Jacobus imagined hundreds of small town, hormone-driven teenagers at liberty in Atlanta for a week, a
nd thought, damn straight they’ll never forget it.
As Benson was leaving, Yumi returned with three new pairs of shoes for herself and leather gloves for Jacobus for when he went outside to collect firewood. While trying them on, Jacobus told her about his conversations with Nathaniel and Benson.
‘Isn’t flower child what hippies called each other back in the 1960s?’ Yumi asked.
‘Back in the 1960s? You make it sound like the Dark Ages. Why?’
‘Just that maybe flower child is a person.’
‘You really think a codger like Borlotti is regaling a teenage honey with love beads?’
‘Maybe when they were both teenagers. Maybe she was a lost love and he just found her and they ran off together.’
‘And you think a fairytale like that is more likely than him gambling away his money at the track?’
‘I just think it’s sweet.’
TWELVE
By noon the temperature had risen a few degrees, which should have been cause for optimism, but the thick blanket of ground fog it spawned only made the scene more depressing. Jacobus felt the chill, dismal gray in his bones. It matched his mood and frustration over his failure to discover anything of value for the investigation. The reasons for Borlotti’s disappearance and his house being burned down were still a total mystery, and Jacobus felt as if he were being teased with new pieces tossed into the jigsaw puzzle box while his back was turned. Pieces that might not even fit. But once he had a bit in his mouth Jacobus was determined not to give it up, and there was still time in the day to pursue the racetrack connection.
Traffic was light on I-90 as he and Yumi drove northward past Albany, but visibility and road conditions were miserable. Yumi, who found the new adventure exhilarating, had to rein in her speed.
‘I’m fine going to the racetrack with you,’ she said to Jacobus. ‘I’ve never been to one before and I’m really excited, but those letters don’t have anything to do with horses.’
‘Why not?’ Jacobus asked. ‘Borlotti seems to have lost a lot of money and won a lot of money. With Saratoga postmarks, what more likely way than at the racetrack?’
‘Jake,’ Yumi replied. ‘Do you remember when I was studying the Brahms concerto with you and you scolded me during a lesson for overlooking the obvious?’
Jacobus remembered as if it were yesterday, but said, ‘How the hell do you expect me to remember every lesson?’
‘Well, let me remind you. I was trying to be a real virtuoso, to discover something in the music that no one else had ever seen. To find the true Brahms! So I was pushing and pulling the tempos and overdoing everything and just twisting the whole thing into one big pretzel. You said, “Yumi, do me a favor. You’d make life much more pleasant for me if you just play what Brahms actually wrote instead of trying to guess what he had for dinner.”’
‘Your point is?’
‘Jake, what kind of letters does a man put next to his bed? Not betting forms. Not IOUs. They had to be love letters.’
‘You think “my flower child” is his girlfriend?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘How the hell am I going to find her, then?’
‘I don’t know. But you will. You always do.’
They started out at the track, anyway. Abandoned in winter, the bleakness of the Saratoga racetrack was palpable. During the racing season, the massive, antique grandstand and the grounds around it swarmed with highlife and lowlife alike; eating, drinking, schmoozing, and of course, betting. Now, all the vitality, all the hubbub, all the color, all the horses, their jockeys, their entourages, and the rest of the human support system that exists for the sole purpose of making money off the animals had long since departed for the winter racing season at Hialeah and Santa Anita, taking the sun with them. The forlorn, wooden grandstand, overlooking the silent track and sculpted garden infield, now all snow-covered, was almost lifeless. The only personnel to be found milling about were an electrician performing off-season maintenance, a trucker delivering hoses, and a skeleton crew of security people who, with little hesitation, escorted Jacobus and Yumi off the premises. Before the gate was unceremoniously clanked shut behind them, Yumi did manage to ask whether anyone knew Borlotti and to pass out copies of his photo, but no one gave the slightest indication of knowing or caring who he was.
Yumi, enjoying the change of pace the adventure provided and not yet discouraged, drove the two of them into town to ask around whether anyone had ever heard of Amadeo Borlotti. Their first stop was at Lemansky’s Music Company, whose window display boasted the store to be the ‘top seller of musical instruments to schools in the greater capital region since 1954.’ Jacobus’s pipe dream was to find Borlotti there at the store, repairing violins with old Italian wood while his adoring hippie girlfriend looked on, and then go home.
But it was not to be. Ray Lemansky, store manager and son of its founder, Walter Lemansky, had heard of Borlotti but was certain they had never done any business with him. He borrowed a photo from Yumi and passed it around to the employees in case Borlotti might have come to the store without purchasing anything, but no one recognized him. When Yumi mentioned that Borlotti worked in Egremont Falls, Lemansky said, ‘That’s Jimmy Ubriaco’s turf, isn’t it?’
‘How do you know that?’ Jacobus asked.
‘We sold instruments, music, stands, cases – you name it – for his school orchestra and band years ago. Those instruments have got to be pretty beaten up by now. I expect Jimmy will be back sometime soon.’
‘Don’t bet on it,’ said Jacobus.
He and Yumi left the store and skidded along the sidewalk in the damp cold, arm in arm, from one business to the next, inquiring and handing out Borlotti’s photo with great persistence but little hope. Jacobus began to feel like someone whose cat was missing. Maybe, he half jested, they should pin flyers with the photo on telephone poles with a note saying, ‘Cute and affectionate. Sometimes responds to Amadeo. Reward. No questions asked.’ And attach little phone number tags at the bottom. The cold hastened their decision to take a hiatus from their search, and after striking out yet again at a new computer software store called Giddy App, decided to seek refuge from the elements, their disappointment, and the penchant of local businesses to capitalize on the horseracing theme.
‘There are a few cafés and bakeries across the street,’ Yumi said. ‘Want to try Thorough Bread?’
‘Nix.’
‘Tea Biscuit? Change of Pacers?’
‘Double nix.
‘There’s a luncheonette on the corner. Sloppy Joe’s.’
‘Yix!’
‘You sure? It looks like a real dive.’
‘What’s a little heartburn between friends?’
They entered the luncheonette and sat at a corner table. Jacobus, as was his custom in a new setting, explored it with his hands to gain his bearings. There was a lot he could ascertain – the type of table covering, napkins, silverware, plates, salt and pepper shakers, and condiments. The shape of a ketchup container could speak volumes. Even the absence of those things gave him a good idea of what the establishment held in store.
On this occasion his hands stuck to the plastic tablecloth. So far so good – just the kind of place he liked. Expanding his range, he felt some coins with his right hand and began to shunt them to the side of the table.
‘Hey! Get your slimy hands off my tip!’ said a low, raspy voice. Jacobus’s instantaneous impression: a bitter young lady who clawed for every cent; who, like him, had self-destructive tendencies, ruining her chances for the very tips that seemed to mean so much to her. Her voice, an octave too low, bore the same wear and tear of smoking too much as his. Indications of a tough life. Well, life wasn’t fair, was it?
‘Don’t worry, honey,’ Jacobus said. ‘I left my tin cup at home. Just give us the menu.’ This she did, slapping it down on to the table, grabbing her change, and departing.
‘Nice,’ said Jacobus. ‘I like her.’
‘This is interesting,�
� said Yumi, changing the subject. ‘The Sloppy Joe story. It’s on the back of the menu. Did you know that Sloppy Joe was one of the most famous horses here in Saratoga? On August 7, 1963, he beat Red Herring in a stakes match for the biggest purse ever up to that time. Did you know that?’
‘Nah, I must’ve been playing polo that day.’
‘Red Herring was favored but Sloppy Joe won by a nose.’
‘Of course,’ Jacobus said.
‘What do you mean, “of course”?’
‘Herrings don’t have noses.’
The waitress returned to take their orders.
‘What kind of meat do you put in your sloppy joes?’ Jacobus asked. ‘Sloppy Joe?’
‘Only for special customers.’
‘And who might they be?’
‘The ones that don’t make that same stupid joke every day.’
‘In that case, I’ll have a sloppy joe.’
‘You want the sloppy joe special?’ she recited as if for the thousandth time, which it might have been. ‘Sloppy joe and cuppa joe. Same price.’
‘How can I refuse such an enticing offer,’ Jacobus said.
When she left, Yumi asked, ‘Why do you have to taunt everyone, Jake?’
‘What do you mean? I like her!’
‘And how’s a blind man going to eat a sloppy joe?’ Yumi asked.
‘Just watch me,’ said Jacobus.
‘I’d rather not. You only brought two sleeves.’
While they ate, Jacobus and Yumi agreed not to dwell upon their non-starting investigation. They talked about what an awful winter it had been, which led to them discussing how accurately Vivaldi’s ‘Winter’ portrayed it, even though it had been composed almost three hundred years earlier and thousands of miles away.
‘Let’s hope it’s not a metaphor,’ Jacobus said.
‘Meaning?’
‘Vivaldi’s sonnet. “We tread the icy path with greatest care for fear of slipping and sliding. With a reckless turn we fall crashing to the ground and, rising, hasten across the ice lest it should crack.” We’ve been slipping and sliding. I’m not looking forward to crashing to the ground.’
