Playing with Fire

by Gerald Elias

  ‘Have you tried giving him his money back?’

  ‘It wouldn’t help. He thinks I betrayed his trust. Humiliated him. The money’s not as important as that. There’s no going back.’

  Jacobus put that one in his back pocket, also. It was running out of space.

  He said, ‘No matter. It won’t be too hard for Mr Williams to find out who insured a two-and-a-half-million-dollar Strad, even if it’s a fake one.’

  ‘Yes, it will.’

  ‘And why is that? He’s very good at what he does.’

  ‘Because it’s uninsured.’

  Unlike almost all reasonable musicians, Jacobus had never insured his violin, primarily because it rarely left his house. Though its value was only a fraction of a Strad, it was worth well into the six figures. But a Strad was a different order of magnitude entirely, and for someone to fork out two-and-a-half million dollars, to an insurance agent yet, and then not insure the violin was beyond credulity. Before Jake could express disbelief, she continued.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. That I’m making up fairytales. But it’s the truth. It wasn’t that he was being reckless. And he wouldn’t blink at paying the fifty-thousand-dollar annual premium. It’s just that he’s very private. He collects very valuable art from very private sources, so for him his privacy is worth more than the violin. As an insurance professional of course I tried to persuade him to insure it, but, you know some people are very quirky like that.’

  ‘Yes, they are,’ Jacobus said. Forsythe had a pat answer to all of his questions, as if she had rehearsed every possibility beforehand. As she said, a true insurance professional. He sensed that he would get nothing more from her.

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

  ‘I can’t give it to you,’ she said. ‘But I’ll be in touch if I find out anything.’

  Jacobus shrugged.

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  He heard Forsythe rise from her chair and begin to walk away. Then she stopped.

  ‘You never did explain how you knew the violin sold for two-and-a-half million.’

  ‘It’s inconsequential. The police found two-hundred-thirty-thousand dollars in Borlotti’s cookie jar. To me, two-hundred-thirty-thousand is a strange number of cookies. I figured some of them had been munched on, so I rounded it up to an even quarter-million. I’m thinking if we’re talking ‘a lot of money’ for a Strad, and ten percent as a standard payoff for Borlotti’s certificate, then the asking price for the Strad must have been two-and-a-half million. Just an educated guess. The kind of actuarial assumptions you insurance people work with all the time.’

  Jacobus escorted Forsythe to the door.

  ‘Drive carefully,’ he said.

  He listened to her pull out of the driveway and head south. Then he immediately dialed Roy Miller’s number.

  ‘Yes, I know it’s the middle of the night,’ Jacobus said. ‘There’s a car heading down Route 41. No, I don’t know what kind, but at this time of night how many are there going to be? You can catch up to her before she gets to Great Barrington. Just get the license plate number for now. Call me.’

  Fifteen minutes later the phone rang.

  ‘Got it,’ Miller said. ‘Plus the make and model. I’m pretty sure it’s a rental, but that’ll make it even easier to get whatever information we need to keep tabs on her. I’m tailing her now, and I called Benson. He wasn’t too happy about having his eight hours interrupted, but he’ll take over once she’s south of Barrington.’

  Jacobus went upstairs and lay in his cold bed, pulling a heavy wool blanket over him. He could understand Forsythe sneaking to his house for fear of being followed. That much made some sense. But once here, why not knock on the door if she wanted to talk to me? Why the cat burglar act? Unless she was hoping to find something. Had she been aware that Nathaniel and Yumi were gone? And Trotsky, too, who would at least have raised an alarm and at worst bitten an intruder’s leg off? Maybe, since all the lights had been out, she thought I was out of the house, too.

  And why had she said that knowledge of the violin buyer’s identity would put both of them in danger? Tired as he was, Jacobus didn’t get much sleep.

  NINETEEN

  Monday, January 2

  Miller, whose business was closed on Mondays, dropped Trotsky off first thing in the morning. Jacobus, hearing the high-pitched whimper even before Miller opened the front door, gathered the strength to brace himself. Trotsky was on top of him, slathering his face with ecstatic slobber.

  ‘Get off me, you damn mutt!’ he shouted. ‘He’s crushing me to death!’

  Miller hauled the gargantuan bulldog off of Jacobus, but not before it managed to urinate in unrestrained joy on Jacobus’s leg.

  ‘Get thee to the glue factory!’ Jacobus hollered.

  ‘Nothing like the love between a man and his dog,’ Miller said.

  ‘Yeah, nothing worse.’

  Jacobus went into the kitchen to boil a pot of coffee for Miller and himself when Benson called.

  ‘Late night, eh, Sigurd?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘No thanks to you, Mr Jacobus. But I thought you’d want to know. After your meeting with Minerva Forsythe we tailed her to Berkshire Bliss Holiday Cottages, near Hillsdale. She’s there under an assumed name.’

  ‘Can you get someone into the next cottage to keep tabs on her? Her story doesn’t add up.’

  ‘If I had the personnel and the budget, I would. With Borlotti’s body showing up in Italy inside Ubriaco’s bass case, our friend Jimmy is currently my priority, and on top of that I have to work with the Italians. I also have to liaise with Saratoga police on that woman, Maggette. We’ve also been experimenting with Bunsen burners to see whether they can knock over paint cans.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’ve tried them at different levels, different sized cans, filled to different levels—’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And sometimes they can. Sometimes they can’t.’

  ‘Uncanny.’

  ‘All I’m saying is the best we can do is keep an eye on Forsythe’s comings and goings. We know the motel manager. He’ll let us know if she does anything suspicious.’

  ‘Make sure he does. She may be our canary in the coal mine.’

  ‘Yes, but in the meantime, could you help me with my juggling act and pay another visit to Ubriaco?’

  ‘You want me to end up in a bass case, too?’

  ‘When you make jokes like “uncanny,” Mr Jacobus, it’s a tempting proposition.’

  Miller was free to drive Jacobus to Jimmy Ubriaco’s house in Egremont Falls, and Jacobus was happy to have the big man with him. As Benson had noted, Ubriaco’s string bass case made him a prime suspect, and all the bonhomie in the world couldn’t disguise it.

  ‘Jake,’ Miller said as they arrived at Ubriaco’s address, ‘he’s got a For Sale sign out in front of his house.’

  ‘He’s moving fast, isn’t he? See if he’s inside.’

  Unlike their previous visit, the driveway and sidewalks weren’t shoveled. Miller rang the doorbell. There was no answer.

  ‘Look in the window.’

  ‘Spotless,’ Miller said. ‘And it’s also almost empty.’

  They drove to The Last Drop at the end of Main Street, where Ubriaco had told them he and Borlotti met daily, but he wasn’t there either. Try the high school, the woman behind the counter said. It was back-to-school day after the Christmas break.

  ‘Where’s the school?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘School Street.’

  Jacobus and Miller inquired at the main office.

  ‘You should find Mr Jim in the band room. You’re just in time. He’s gathering his things.’

  ‘And where’s the band room. Band Street?’

  ‘No, it’s right behind you.’

  Miller shouldered the swinging doors, but halfway open they were blocked by Ubriaco, who, arms filled with cartons, was on his way out.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t the clowns w
ho lost me my job!’ Ubriaco said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Jesus! What did you think happens to an orchestra conductor when the orchestra has no instruments? And then our school board reads in the Eagle that a bass case belonging to Egremont Falls High School, in the possession of its orchestra and band director, James Ubriaco, had been recovered in Italy bearing the mutilated remains of local violinmaker and philanthropist, Amadeo Borlotti? I got hauled down to the office this morning and got the old heave-ho. They were nice enough to give me an hour to pack my bags.’

  ‘You think their concern is unreasonable, Jimmy?’ Jacobus asked. ‘Your case, your friend. Friend’s house burned down with everything but your case. Friend’s body is packed in your case and is shipped off. I think an explanation is in order. Don’t you?’

  ‘To you? No. To them? No. They didn’t even have the balls to say I was fired. Discontinued the music program until further notice. Indefinite administrative leave, they said. Sounds so much less painful that way, almost like they’re doing you a favor. How do they say it in England? “Made redundant? Sorry old chap, no more instruments, no more orchestra, no more orchestra director. Redundant, you know.”

  ‘So my house is on the market and I’m selling everything. Off to start a new life. Go West, young man! Just like my folks did a hundred years ago when they left Italy. America, the land of opportunity! Well, I’ve never been to California but I can fantasize, right?’

  ‘My heart bleeds for you,’ Jacobus remarked loudly.

  ‘Jake,’ Miller intervened, ‘you’re attracting the attention of some of the students. Maybe we should go inside the band room.’

  ‘Like hell I will!’ Ubriaco said, amping up the volume. ‘You want to keep hounding me? Hound away! Borlotti was my friend. I’d never hurt him, I didn’t burn down his house, and I don’t know how the hell that bass case ended up in Italy!’

  ‘If not you, then who, Mr Jim?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘How the hell do I know? Find out who shipped it! You ever try to ship a bass case? It’s not like putting a postcard in the mail. You figure it out. Now, I’m outta here. My real estate agent said my house’ll go in a trice and I might even get my asking price, so get outta my way, you two geniuses, before I run you over with a tuba.’

  On the way back to his house, Jacobus and Miller stopped at Benson’s office in the old schoolhouse and reported their meeting with Ubriaco.

  ‘Another headache to add to the list,’ Benson responded. ‘Maybe I’m getting too old for this. Well, we’ll do the best we can to keep an eye on him, too. But some good news for a change. The Carabinieri have been very cooperative. They’ve analyzed the bullet. Thirty-eight caliber from a Smith and Wesson Model Ten revolver. One shot to the center of the forehead. Classic gangland.’

  ‘Gangland!’ Jacobus said. What would Borlotti, or Ubriaco, have to do with gangs?

  ‘But the mutilation,’ he asked Benson, ‘That can’t be Mafia standard practice.’

  ‘It does seem inconsistent, at least for now,’ Benson replied. ‘It was the bullet that killed Borlotti. Carving him up was window dressing. The Carabinieri also sent a tissue sample from Borlotti to the state forensic lab. DNA forensics is a new science and it’s going to take time to analyze, but we’re hoping for a match with the blood on the knife by Borlotti’s doorway. If it does match that would not only confirm that the murder occurred at his house but would also make theory of an accidental fire even less plausible.’

  ‘But that’s not really hard evidence of arson, is it?’ Jacobus argued. ‘You’re putting two and two together and just hoping it comes out to four.’

  ‘You’re basically right, though at this point it’s hard to imagine that there would be an accidental fire on one hand and a cold-blooded murder on the other. The other thread we’re working on is that whoever sent the bass case with Borlotti’s corpse to Italy must have known who the Vassaris were. We’re asking, very discreetly to be sure, who might have been privy to that information.’

  ‘Ubriaco, for instance?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Very possibly. We’ll check it out for sure. But as you say, we have little evidence of arson that’s tangible. Which made me kind of curious about one thing. Last year there was a spate of fires in the Boston area. Dilapidated buildings that developers wanted to buy, tear down, and build upper end condos and shopping malls. There was one entire block in Somerville of two-family houses that went up in smoke. All of the investigations said the fires were of suspicious origin, but none of them were able to conclude arson.’

  ‘What are the chances of them all being accidents?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Like turning up a royal flush on ten consecutive hands.’

  ‘Maybe the very absence of evidence is in itself a fingerprint,’ Jacobus suggested.

  ‘An interesting thought, but how do you convict someone on nothing?‘

  ‘Ask Sacco and Venzetti.’

  ‘You have a point. Anyway, all of the investigations were coming up with blanks, so the governor empowered law enforcement in several counties in the Boston area to form a joint task force to coordinate their police work. I think I’ll find out who heads it and see if there might be something we can learn from them. If our case has any connection with theirs, we could potentially be on to something we can’t handle all alone. I recognize that I’m almost out of my depth here already.’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself, Sigurd,’ Jacobus said. ‘Life might be a bitch, but death’s a lot worse.’

  TWENTY

  Tuesday, January 3

  ‘Come with me to Boston,’ Benson said when he called in the morning.’

  ‘Why?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘I’ve just arranged a meeting with a Lieutenant Russell Brooks, the commander of the Greater Boston Arson Taskforce, or G-BAT as it’s called.’

  ‘When?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Now.’

  If Nathaniel or Yumi had been there, Jacobus would have said no, but with nothing better to do he allowed himself to have his arm twisted, primarily because Benson cajoled him with a promise of lunch at the Daily Catch. It was Jacobus’s favorite seafood restaurant in Boston’s North End, a unique neighborhood that combined Little Italy with Boston’s seafront with colonial architecture and history.

  ‘OK. Just don’t expect me to drive, too,’ Jacobus said.

  While waiting for Benson to pick him up, Jacobus put a few logs in the woodstove for the day and set the thermostat to sixty degrees, so that even if the fire went out, the house wouldn’t freeze in his absence. A simple task for someone with sight, Jacobus had needed to devise a creative method for adjusting a thermostat. He knew that the dial of his circular thermostat went down to a minimum of forty-five degrees, so he had Nathaniel insert pushpins into the wall for every five degrees above that. It became an easy task, starting at forty-five and feeling each pushpin, to turn the knob to the fourth one to reach sixty. With that done, he let Trotsky out for a final gallivant, so that when he returned from Boston in the evening there wouldn’t be an unwelcome present waiting for him on the living- room floor.

  The drive from the Berkshires, on the western border of Massachusetts, to Boston, on the shore, was a straight two-hour shot from Exit One on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Benson’s company made the drive seem more like three.

  ‘G-BAT was assembled to investigate all those fires I was telling you about,’ Benson explained. ‘Lieutenant Brooks has been on the Boston police force for over twenty years and is known as a straight shooter. Not that it makes a difference, but when they signed him on to head G-BAT it made him the highest-ranking African American law enforcement officer in the state. My feeling is if anyone can help us, he can. At least that’s what I concluded after talking to him this morning. For some reason, he said he thinks we can help him.’

  ‘By comparing notes on the absence of evidence?’ Jacobus asked.

  Benson laughed, pretending he wasn’t offended. />
  ‘One other piece of non-evidence is the alarm system you were curious about, Mr Jacobus. Borlotti did indeed have one, both for security and fire. The company is StrataSystems up in Pittsfield.’

  ‘Why didn’t they respond?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Because they never got the alarm.’

  ‘Someone turned it off?’

  ‘You would hope so. That would at least confirm that someone was up to no good. But, you see, the way these things work is when something goes wrong in the house, the alarm automatically gets sent to the security office through the homeowner’s phone line.’

  Jacobus finished the thought.

  ‘And since the phone lines were down because of the snowstorm, the message couldn’t be transmitted.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Could someone have intentionally pulled down the lines that connected to Borlotti’s house?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘It’s possible, but lines were down in several locations. I don’t think we’ll ever know.

  ‘We did get one tidbit of good news that I shared with Brooks. The forensic lab got a positive match between the blood on the knife in Borlotti’s house with the sample that the Carabinieri sent from his body. So now we can be reasonably sure Borlotti’s murder occurred at his house on the night it was burned down. Even though it was the gun and not the knife that killed him, and even though we haven’t found the gun, if we can determine who was holding the knife, we’ll most likely know that person was the murderer. Assuming they were one and the same.’

  This time it was Jacobus who laughed.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Benson asked.

  ‘It’s the first time in my life that blood on a weapon was considered good news.’

  As they approached downtown, they became mired in traffic, one of the constants of life in Boston. The Big Dig construction converting the central artery, which had split the North End from the rest of the city, into an underground freeway had been going on at a snail’s pace for two decades and was costing the taxpayers billions. When finished it promised to improve the traffic flow, but for now it only made matters worse. It didn’t bother Jacobus, who couldn’t see it and didn’t live there, but he sympathized with the commuters who had gotten stuck with both the traffic and the bill.