Playing with Fire

by Gerald Elias

  Yumi put her hand on his cheek.

  ‘You’re just being your usual, sweet, pessimistic self. It’ll all work out.’

  While Yumi made a trip to the ladies’ room, the waitress came to the table to give them their bill.

  ‘What’s your name, honey?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘It’s on my name tag.’

  ‘As you can plainly see, young lady, I can’t.’

  ‘Not my problem, is it?’

  ‘Well, I suppose it is. I want to know the name of the person who I’m thinking of giving a big tip to, that’s all.’

  ‘In that case, it’s Dahlia.’

  Jacobus heard the quiet clatter of cheap ceramic as she cleared their dishes and stacked them in her arms. He made a quick intake of breath.

  ‘My little flower child,’ he said.

  Jacobus had no difficulty hearing the dishes crash to the floor.

  THIRTEEN

  Jacobus provided Dahlia with sufficient financial incentive to pay for the broken dishes and persuade her to talk further. The luncheonette closed at three o’clock. She agreed to meet them elsewhere after work.

  ‘There’s a bar two-and-a-half blocks from here on the left,’ she said. ‘Nasty Brews. Wait for me there.’

  An hour later Jacobus was about to conclude she had given him and Yumi the slip when he heard the front door of the bar open. Since there had been few afternoon customers in the place that reeked of piss, beer, and cigarettes, he guessed it was Dahlia, and he was right.

  ‘Got a cigarette?’ she asked, sitting down at their table in the corner.

  ‘Sorry. Doctor’s orders,’ Jacobus said.

  ‘Your loss. Enough chitchat. That bastard promised not to tell anyone where to find me. It was supposed to be “our little secret,”’ she said.

  ‘He didn’t. We found you all by ourselves. We were hoping you could tell us where he is.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Her voice was fast and clipped.

  ‘Borlotti’s been missing since Saturday and his house was burned down.’

  ‘Missing! He’s missing? I need a drink. Or your doctor make you give that up, too?’

  ‘I switched doctors for that.’

  ‘I’ll get you something,’ Yumi said, and went to the bar.

  ‘We’re a little in the dark here,’ Jacobus said. ‘You and he have a relationship. That much we figured out. Give us the backstory.’

  Yumi returned with a Canadian Club and water and gave it to Dahlia. Jacobus heard her drain it then put the glass down heavily on the table.

  ‘Why should I?’ Her defensiveness was as thick as her voice.

  ‘We’re trying to find him. Clearly he means something to you and his disappearance is a surprise. I’m assuming you’d like to see him found, too.’

  ‘Why are you after him?’

  Jacobus gave Dahlia enough background to justify their presence, but intuitively avoided mention of working with the police. Instead, he talked about his common interest in violins with Borlotti. It was enough to convince her.

  ‘I met him at the track, maybe six, seven years ago. I don’t know. I was waiting tables at the Club Terrace. I did the breakfast buffet shift for the diehards who came at dawn to get their rocks off watching the horses work out. He came all the time. He always sat in the same place in the dining room, off to the side by himself. He never talked to anyone.’

  ‘Except you.’

  ‘Except me. Yeah, except me. At first, he would only say stuff like, “nice eggs” or “may I have another cup of coffee, please?” He always says “may I” and “please” and “thank you.” At first I never said anything back because he was such a loser. Made me feel guilty, so one day I said, “So, you win a lot of money on the horses?” It’s what you say to everyone there, like “How are you?” And he said, no, he never bet on races. He just thought it was beautiful to watch them run in the morning.

  ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

  ‘No. Just like last time.’

  ‘I thought, what a jerk, but at least he wasn’t the sleaze or those richies who grab your ass and think they’re entitled. He kept coming to the track for breakfast and he started getting more comfortable talking. He was a nice man. He was harmless.

  ‘One day I bring him an extra grape jelly for his toast, and he tells me he’s got something for me. It was a watch. I say, “What the hell’s this for?” and he tells me he noticed I didn’t have one. He thought I’d like it. He was sweating like a pig, so I had to laugh and that kind of broke the ice. After that we began to meet for lunch or we’d take a walk between my morning shift and night job.’

  ‘What job was that?’ Yumi asked.

  ‘There’s a spa in town called Back Stretch. The usual: massage, hair, manicure, make-up. For people who could afford it, you know? I did cosmetics. It was a good job.’

  ‘You don’t have it anymore?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Her tone of voice strongly suggested that conversation was a nonstarter.

  ‘So did you and Borlotti begin a relationship?’ Yumi asked.

  ‘Hell, no!’

  ‘What else would you call it?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘It depends on who you ask. He’d say it was, but he never really asked me what I thought.’

  ‘He gave you the watch. When you accepted it don’t you think he had good reason to conclude that?’

  ‘He can think whatever he wants. Who am I to stop him?’

  ‘Is the watch the only present he’s given you?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘He gives me a present every time he comes. He sends me money. What am I supposed to do, give it back?’

  ‘How much money? Overall?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘I need another drink.’

  ‘First tell us.’

  ‘I don’t really keep track. Maybe a hundred thousand. Maybe more. Maybe less. I don’t know. A lot.’

  ‘And gifts? What kind of gifts?’

  There was silence.

  ‘I asked, what about the gifts?’

  ‘She shrugged, Jake,’ Yumi said.

  ‘Sorry, darlin’, I can’t hear shrugs.’

  ‘Lots of gifts. Jewelry. A purse. Flowers. Those kinds of things.’

  ‘Are you sleeping with him?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Are you sleeping with Tokyo Rose here?’ Dahlia shouted. Even with a near empty bar, it was suddenly quieter.

  ‘No, he is not!’ Yumi whispered. Jacobus laughed.

  ‘I only ask,’ Jacobus continued, ‘because you nearly had cardiac arrest when I first mentioned Borlotti’s name and almost passed out when I told you he was missing. I think that was a fair question.’

  She laughed a laugh that was bitter and tinged with embarrassment.

  ‘If you want to know the truth, I offered. Yeah, I offered. I figured what the hell, I owed him one. Guess what? He turned me down.’

  ‘Really? Is he homosexual?’

  ‘Worse. Old-fashioned. He won’t sleep with me until I marry him. He won’t even let me come to his house. He says it’s not “proper.”’

  ‘Has he gotten down on one knee and proposed?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘You’re a sarcastic bastard, you know that? But since you asked, yes, that’s exactly what he did. A month ago.’

  ‘And you said no. Is that right?’

  ‘I said I’d think about it. And then he sent me another letter, putting his proposal in writing, along with some money. A lot of money. He said I could keep it even if my answer was no.’

  ‘Twenty thousand dollars?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘No. Ten thousand. Why?’

  ‘Long story. And how did you respond to his little pre-nup Christmas present?’

  ‘I wrote him back. It wasn’t the first time, either. I told him yes, I cared for him, but no, I wasn’t the marrying type. And I kept the money, in case you were wondering.’

  Before Jacobus could ask the next question he heard Dahlia make a strange, choking noise. It took him
a moment to understand she was making an effort not to cry.

  Yumi said, ‘It’s OK. We’ll find him.’

  ‘You’ve just answered my next question,’ he said. ‘Since you wrote that letter turning him down, you haven’t heard from him and thought he’d finally given up on you. That you’d lost him for good and you’d never hear his name again. That’s why it threw you when I mentioned his name.’

  ‘Except now he’s really lost. Son of a bitch. I need another drink.’

  ‘Soon,’ Jacobus said.

  ‘You mentioned that he sent you “another letter,”’ Yumi said. ‘Was there a previous one? Does he write you often?’

  ‘Almost everyday. That’s why when I didn’t hear from him after that last letter, I thought that was it. He likes to write poetry in his letters. He writes poems. Stupid love poems. With little kid rhymes, or the first letter of each line would spell out ‘I love you.’ Dumb stuff like that.’

  ‘Do you think we could borrow them?’ Yumi asked.

  ‘Why?’ Alarm in her voice.

  ‘Maybe they could help us figure out where he is, Dahlia. Sometimes those poems are like little puzzles, and no one’s better than Jake solving puzzles. He’ll tell you that himself. If you’d like, I’ll read them privately first. If they get too personal I won’t read them to Jake.’

  ‘Wait here,’ she said.

  ‘We can come with you,’ Yumi offered.

  ‘No!’

  She stood up abruptly, almost knocking her chair over. Jacobus heard the door of the bar close loudly.

  As soon as she was gone, Yumi put her hand on Jacobus’s arm and asked, ‘Jake, is Dahlia the woman who called you and hung up?’

  ‘Not unless she’s had a tracheotomy since then. No, it was someone else.’

  ‘Do you want a drink while we wait?’ Yumi asked.

  ‘I better have some coffee at this point.’

  Yumi returned with one for each of them. It tasted even worse than his coffee at home.

  ‘How did you know about the ten thousand dollars?’ Yumi asked.

  ‘Just a hunch. There were two-hundred-thirty-thousand in Borlotti’s strongbox. A strange number, so I figured it started as a quarter million with twenty-thousand spent. But if I’m right and she only got ten, where’s the other ten?’

  ‘Do you think he had another flower child?’ Yumi asked.

  ‘An Iris, Rose, Daisy, Camellia, or Lily?’ Jacobus said. ‘Maybe he had a whole garden for all I know, but it sounds like he was too smitten with Dahlia to pollinate anyone else.’

  ‘I think she’s a drug addict,’ Yumi said.

  ‘I was thinking about that, too. Hyper. Fidgety. What else?’

  ‘Her sleeves were rolled all the way down.’

  ‘It is winter, after all.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s also skinny as a rail. Almost emaciated. She can’t be much older than me but she looks haggard, and has too much make-up on. Her hands never stopped moving. She just has that look. I see it all the time in the city.’

  ‘That’s a pretty blanket statement.’

  ‘When I have time, I volunteer at a drug treatment center. It’s surprising how many addicts don’t look any different than anyone else. But when they do have that look, it’s hard to imagine they don’t have a problem.’

  ‘Was Dahlia wearing the watch Borlotti gave her?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘No!’ Yumi said. ‘She wasn’t! Maybe she’s pawned that and all the other presents, too.’

  ‘Maybe that’s another reason she was peeved he hasn’t written back. Her cash cow’s teat has run dry. You think she loves him?’

  ‘Not sure. He at least loves her. He’s no matinee idol.’

  ‘You’ve got his mug shot. Tell me what he looks like.’

  ‘Short, chubby. Gray hair. Not much of that and combed straight back. Looks like he needs to shave twice a day. He’s trying to smile but he’s got two sad eyes and one sad eyebrow. And he must be at least twenty-five, thirty years older than she is. She’d be pretty if she were healthy.’

  ‘Benson needs to find out why she left her job at Back Stretch.’

  ‘And if she still works at the Club Terrace in the summer, or whether she might have left that also.’

  Dahlia returned twenty minutes later, just as they were again about to conclude she wouldn’t.

  ‘Here,’ she said. ‘These are all of them. I’ve gotta go.’

  ‘What’s your phone number?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘I don’t have one.’

  ‘Then what’s your address?’

  ‘I don’t have one of those, either.’

  ‘Then how do we contact you?’

  ‘You know where to find me, right? I’ve gotta go.’

  After she left, Yumi said, ‘And we didn’t even get her last name.’

  ‘And I thought I had a brilliant student!’ Jacobus said. ‘Where did I go wrong?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Try looking on one of the envelopes.’

  ‘Of course. I was just about to,’ Yumi said, covering up. ‘Her name is Dahlia Maggette.’

  ‘Maggot?’

  Yumi spelled it for him and pronounced it more carefully.

  ‘And is there not an address under Ms. Maggette’s name?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Holmes. And it’s written in a beautiful, flowing hand in blue ink with an old-fashioned fountain pen.’

  ‘And what does the address say, Dr. Watsonette?’

  ‘It says, “Care of Sloppy Joe’s”.’

  FOURTEEN

  Thursday, December 29

  Jacobus fidgeted for two hours and three cups of coffee before calling Benson at eight o’clock in the morning.

  ‘So now we know where Borlotti’s money went,’ he said in conclusion.

  ‘Yes, but we still don’t know where he got it,’ Benson replied, ‘or where he is, or why his house was torched.’

  ‘Burning questions,’ Jacobus said. ‘But I’d bet Borlotti was in the dark that his money, wherever he got it from, was supporting his sweetie’s drug habit. From what she said, she never let him anywhere near where she lived, wherever that is, and it sounds like if he had known she was an addict, he would have been too old-fashioned to have tolerated it.’

  ‘We’ll do a background check,’ said Benson. ‘I wouldn’t put it past someone like that to be extorting him somehow. Maybe he really was homosexual but didn’t want anyone to know.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. Yumi read the letters Borlotti wrote to her. Six years’ worth. He was clearly smitten, and in his flowery, old-world way made it quite clear he was ready to tie the knot.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see. Drug addicts are devious people, capable of fooling anyone in their quest for a fix.’

  ‘Thanks for the seminar,’ Jacobus said, prepared to terminate the call.

  ‘I’ve got some information for you, Jacobus. Number one: Ubriaco has a shaky alibi for Christmas Eve. He was at an annual Knights of Columbus holiday party. There were about fifty knights that can vouch for him being there. But the festivities might have ended before Borlotti’s house was torched.

  ‘Another thing is, Westerhauser has an airtight alibi. Not that he was ever a suspect. He was at a big fundraising gala at MASS MoCA in North Adams.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Maybe. We traced the address of that wood from Italy.’

  ‘What was the name again? Castle something?’

  ‘Cassalbuttano. It’s a suburb of a city called Cremona. Ever hear of it?’

  Jacobus almost dropped the phone. Cremona, Jacobus informed Benson, just happened to be to violins what Jerusalem was to religion. It was the home of Stradivari, and the Amati and Guarneri families, and of an untold number of violinmakers since. Today alone there were currently well over a hundred professional makers in Cremona.

  ‘If Borlotti had a Cremona connection,’ Jacobus said, ‘there’s something going on other than patching up school instruments.’


  Jacobus heard Yumi shuffle into the kitchen.

  He was stumped what to do next, he told Benson, but would give it some thought. Maybe contacting someone in Italy. But he didn’t know anyone in Italy. And what would he ask them to do? He said he would get back.

  ‘Uch, the weather’s awful today,’ Yumi said. ‘It’s like sleet. Jake, I think I’m starting to get cabin fever.’

  ‘Back to the Last Supper puzzle?’

  ‘I think the Last Supper is giving me heartburn. Would you mind if I went back to the city?’

  Jacobus heard her pour herself a cup of coffee.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’ve got some friends in Soho who are having a New Year’s party this weekend.’

  ‘It’s only the twenty-ninth,’ Jacobus said.

  ‘They like to celebrate.’

  If Yumi left, Jacobus would only have Trotsky to converse with for the foreseeable future. With that depressing prospect in mind, he told Yumi about Benson’s discovery regarding the parcel of violin wood.

  ‘Jake, let’s go to Cremona!’ Yumi said.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Money, for one. Two, neither of us speaks Italian. What are we going to do, walk around the piazza, point to Borlotti’s mug shot and say: ‘Wood. Wood’?’

  ‘Very funny. It just so happens I have a very nice violin made by a Cremonese maker. It’s only ten years old. Have you heard of Marcello Bertoldo?’

  Jacobus shook his head. ‘Olive oil?’

  Yumi ignored him.

  ‘He’s won some big international prizes,’ she continued. ‘I’ve never met someone who’s made one of my violins.’

  ‘That’s because not too many violinmakers live to be over two hundred years old.’

  ‘It would be so exciting!’ she said, ignoring his jest. ‘We could meet him and he’ll translate for us. Who better to ask about violin wood than a violinmaker?’

  ‘How do you know he speaks English?’ Jacobus argued.

  ‘I’ll call him and we’ll find out. If he starts singing Funiculi Funicula I’ll hang up. And don’t worry about the money. I’ve got plenty of miles on my credit card.’

  Jacobus objected strenuously. Not only was he a skinflint, the idea of Yumi paying his way was humiliating.