Playing with Fire

by Gerald Elias

  ‘Was?’

  ‘That plan might be moot. We’ve finally caught a break, Mr Jacobus. Frankie Falcone called us.’

  ‘He got you an extra queen bed?’

  ‘Falcone wants to turn state’s evidence. He’s afraid that his employer is going to kill him.’

  ‘Primo?’

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Falcone’s holed up somewhere. We don’t know where. Apparently his employer doesn’t either. Falcone believes he’s somewhere where no one will find him. He went into hiding when he heard on the news we were on his tail. But his wound is worse than he thought. He said when he unwrapped the bandage the wound “was dripping stuff and he almost puked.” He called his employer to come get him out of a jam because he was running out of food and water, but his employer was standoffish.’

  ‘Gee, no honor among thieves?’ Jacobus remarked. ‘What’s the world coming to?’

  ‘Falcone made the mistake of asking his employer why he had been worried about “a small-time hick punk like Borlotti.” Clearly, that was not the right question to ask. His employer responded that if word got out that he got swindled by a small-time hick punk and got away with it, he’d be a dead man. I tend to agree with that assessment, knowing the world those types dwell in.

  ‘Falcone’s employer then allegedly threatened him. He said, according to Falcone, “That’s why I hired you. To get rid of the problem so nobody would even know it was a problem. And now the whole fucking world knows it.” He also lambasted Falcone about screwing up with “that blind prick” – not my words, Mr Jacobus. And not coming through on the other part of his original assignment, which involved a woman cheating him out of millions.’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘Could be Forsythe. Could also be Maggette. Could be someone we don’t know.’

  ‘Falcone doesn’t sound like the kind to spook easily,’ Jacobus said. ‘And what you’ve told me so far doesn’t sound like much of a threat.’

  ‘Falcone didn’t think so either. Until his employer inquired a little too matter-of-factly where he was hiding out. That’s when Falcone started to have some misgivings.’

  ‘And you tend to agree with that assessment also?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Does Falcone’s sudden change of heart amount to a confession?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Not quite. But if we can get our hands on him, offer him protection, I think we’ll get it.’

  ‘You mean we have to keep the crud who burned my house down alive?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Brooks said. ‘Long enough to put him in prison, anyway.’

  Jacobus was hardly assuaged.

  ‘So is his boss this guy Primo or not?’ Jacobus asked. ‘And where is Falcone?’

  ‘Those are his bargaining chips and he won’t tell us either of those things until we grant him immunity. Of course we won’t do that, but we’re negotiating.’

  Brooks once again told Jacobus how much his assistance meant to him.

  ‘OK, Brooks,’ Jacobus replied. ‘Knock off the bullshit. What do you want me to do now?’

  Brooks asked Jacobus to make a trip to Berkshire Bliss Holiday Cottages and see if there was any sign of Forsythe there.

  ‘Later,’ Jacobus said. ‘Right now I’m ready to plotz.’

  Yumi and Jacobus returned to Miller’s house, where Martha’s special family recipe meatloaf for dinner awaited them. Two bites were as much as Jacobus could stomach. Putting his head under the cold tap did more to resuscitate him.

  ‘You must be exhausted,’ Miller said to Jacobus.

  ‘You ever play Schubert’s Ninth Symphony?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because that’s exhaustion.’

  Miller took a turn being Jacobus’s chauffeur on the drive to Berkshire Bliss. There was no response when they knocked on the door of the room Minerva Forsythe had rented. They roused the on-duty manager, half-asleep watching Bowling for Dollars, and had him unlock the room. The only trace that Minerva Forsythe had ever been there were vestiges of perfume and pipe tobacco in the air.

  ‘Might as well head back home,’ Miller said. ‘I could use a Jack Daniels about now.’

  Though Jacobus was frustrated, he could not disagree. It was the first time since his house had burned down that he was even tempted by alcohol. He considered that a positive development.

  As they drove north on Route 23, light snow started to fall. A car slipped in behind them. Miller made a quick decision to detour on to Route 41. The other car stayed behind them, remaining three car lengths behind.

  ‘I think someone’s following us,’ he said.

  ‘Who is it?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Can’t tell.’

  Jacobus, impatient after the long day, asked, ‘Why the hell not?’

  ‘Well, Jake,’ Miller responded, no less tired, ‘it could be because it’s night-time. It could be because it’s snowing. It could be because he’s got his brights shining in my rearview mirror, and it could even be because he’s staying too far back. Take your pick. Any more questions?’

  ‘Sorry. I’ve forgotten about those things.’

  Jacobus thought about who might be following them and, considering the worst of the possibilities, thought it advisable to stop only where they wouldn’t be alone.

  ‘What’s playing at the Mahaiwe tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘Some folk music, I think,’ Miller said.

  ‘Folk music, huh? I don’t know.’

  ‘That’s where we’re going.’

  Miller, who had repaired leaks and installed toilets in every nook and cranny of the Berkshires, knew all the back roads by heart and wended his way up to Great Barrington. The car, which continued to follow them until they parked in a brightly lit spot in front of the Mahaiwe Theater, maintained its ominous distance.

  Jacobus and Miller bought tickets and hurried into the old restored theater and found a seat in the middle of the audience. The show was a retrospective of the life of Woody Guthrie presented by his almost-as-illustrious son, Arlo, whose spiritual retreat was just a few miles away on Van Deusenville Road.

  While Arlo whipped the crowd into a joyful anti-establishment frenzy, Jacobus kept his ears open for anything incongruous.

  The audience watched film clips of Woody singing ‘Dust Bowl Refugee’ and the unfamiliar ‘I Ain’t Got No Home.’

  ‘I ain’t got no home. I’m just a-roamin’ ‘round, Just a wandrin’ worker, I go from town to town. And the police make it hard wherever I may go, And I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.’

  Jacobus didn’t think it was a subject worth singing about.

  The audience joined Woody on the screen with ‘Red River Valley’ and was just starting to clap rhythmically along with the big finale, ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ when Jacobus felt a tap on his shoulder. He inhaled the perfume and exhaled with relief. It wasn’t someone out to kill him. At least he didn’t think so.

  ‘How’s your lip?’ Jacobus asked.

  ‘Where can we go?’ Minerva Forsythe replied.

  ‘What’s wrong? You don’t like folk music?’ Jacobus replied.

  ‘We need to talk. I want to help.’

  A voice from behind them asked them to pipe down.

  ‘Follow us,’ Jacobus said. ‘It’s not far.’

  They got back in their car. Jacobus told Miller where to go. Forsythe followed them as they backtracked south on Route 23. The snow started to come down more heavily and Miller drove slowly.

  They arrived at their destination. The smell of wet ashes, now almost imperceptible, hung in the air. That was all that remained of Borlotti’s home. Getting out of Miller’s truck, Jacobus asked him to wait there and with his cane followed the now-familiar icy path to the ruins. Cottony flakes of snow melted on his face. They felt good and he didn’t wipe them off.

  ‘I thought you’d want to see for yourself, honey,’ Jacobus said as Forsythe’s footsteps approa
ched. ‘I don’t imagine there’s much left. But you get the picture.’

  ‘Why did you bring us here?’ Forsythe asked. ‘It’s cold out.’

  ‘Context. For what you’re about to tell me.’

  ‘As I said, I want to help.’

  ‘You mean, now that you’ve gathered that Borlotti’s potentially incriminating letters have gone up in smoke, you want to be of service in exchange for protection.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve been giving me a song and dance about being an innocent victim of Borlotti writing a certificate for a violin, falsely claiming it was a Stradivari.’

  ‘That’s exactly what he did.’

  ‘Not exactly, Ms Forsythe. Not exactly. He did indeed write that certificate, but it wasn’t so he could get an easy quarter million. It was because you were blackmailing him.’

  ‘That’s absurd.’

  ‘I’ll bet at first Borlotti absolutely refused to write that certificate, and that’s when you told him you knew exactly what he had been up to for all these years, with the fraudulent insurance claims and the forged documents and phony instruments. You threatened to expose him. He knew he’d have no choice. If Borlotti didn’t write the certificate, not only would he lose his reputation, he would be locked up for a very long time. He wouldn’t be the first violin dealer who ended up like that. You forced him to write that certificate and then you gave him enough of a piece of the action to shut him up.’

  He paused, expecting Forsythe to protest. She didn’t. In the silence he was struck by peacefulness of the night.

  ‘Between a rock and a hard place,’ Jacobus continued, ‘Borlotti caved in and accepted your hush money. He wrote the certificate that would ultimately become his own death warrant. And you know what galled him the most, Ms Forsythe?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘The story you told me was that the violin you purchased, and that you said Borlotti insisted was a Strad, had previously been attributed to an unknown maker. Well, it may have been an unknown maker to the world. It might even have been an unknown maker to you. At first. But Borlotti knew who made that violin. Because it was Borlotti, himself, who had made it! Wasn’t it?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Because Concordia had been insuring it when it was stolen. You told me that. Yes, Borlotti made that violin with his own crafty little hands and his precious old Italian wood. So it must have twisted him in knots to write that phony certificate. Meanwhile, you disappeared into the ether, or at least that’s what your plan was.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Greed, honey. Two-million dollars worth.’

  ‘I had no reason to believe Borlotti wasn’t an honest, reputable workman,’ Forsythe said.

  ‘That, in two words, madam, is B.S.’

  ‘That’s offensive. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Really! Well, I’ll spell it out for you, then. You, Ms Self-Proclaimed Insurance Expert, knew very well what was going on with Borlotti. How could you not have? You were his agent for all those years. Who better than Minerva Forsythe, who filled the coffers of Concordia Insurance better than anyone else in the firm, to keep a wary eye on the company’s fortunes? You kept tabs for years on the larceny Borlotti was up to, and you bided your time, waiting for the right moment when he was in too deep to get himself out. You knew and you let it happen. It had been going on for about six years. Right?’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because that’s when he fell head over heels with his sweetheart, Dahlia Maggette, and started providing her with a lifestyle to which she tragically became all too accustomed. Why didn’t you ever tell your employers that Borlotti was defrauding the company?’ Jacobus asked. ‘Isn’t there some kind of ethical obligation to be honest? Or is that not part of the job description.’

  Forsythe laughed.

  ‘You’ve heard of the glass ceiling?’ she said. ‘Concordia’s was made out of lead. I worked for those pompous asses for seventeen years. I delivered them the most lucrative accounts, the highest premiums, the fewest claim payouts. And while every pimply Wharton and Amherst do-nothing moved up the ladder to respectability, what did I get in return? A thousand-dollar Christmas bonus, a pinch on the ass and a grab on my boob. How nice. Yes, I saw what was going on with Borlotti. They didn’t. But that doesn’t mean I blackmailed him.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t you who set up the system,’ Jacobus said, ‘but you used it. When you bought that violin from Concordia, you saw a chance to strike it rich. You went to Borlotti and threatened to expose his misdeeds unless he forged a Stradivarius certificate for the violin. He knew he would go to jail for a long time for what he had done. But that wasn’t the worst of it for him. If he went to jail, he wouldn’t be able to care for his sweetheart. He couldn’t bear the thought of that, and when you offered him the quarter million in hush money, that tipped the balance. He got out his fountain pen and ink and old paper and wrote away. Were you standing over his shoulder, drooling over every word?’

  ‘I never saw him write any certificate.’

  ‘But he knew, as you should have also, that it’s one thing to write false documents for run-of-the-mill violins. It’s another thing to write one claiming a violin is a Strad. But greed blinded you. You sold the violin, convincing the buyer – let’s call him Mr Chump – that he was getting a great deal. Showed him some appraisals for other Strads that cost three and four million. But Borlotti knew that Mr Chump would eventually find out. And when Mr Chump did find out he got very angry, because two-and-a-half million dollars is a lot to fork over when it’s based on misplaced trust. He must have felt humiliated and downright vengeful.

  ‘And, that’s why Borlotti called me on Christmas Eve. He knew his deception had been discovered and he was in danger. How he found out, we may never know. Could have been he got a phone call. Could have been he saw Falcone cruising his neighborhood. But he knew he was in trouble. And I could have helped him. I could have helped him, but didn’t.’

  Jacobus drew circles on the ice with the point of his cane. Not that he was going anywhere. With a pencil he wouldn’t be able to know if he’d completed a turn, but with the etching in the ice he could feel when he came full circle. That pleased him. He thought about Borlotti – his ruined house and ruined life. And his own.

  ‘When you heard about the arson and Borlotti’s disappearance, you figured you might be next, even though you’d try to pin the blame on Borlotti. But then a chilling thought entered your analytic head. Maybe before they killed Borlotti they got him to confess to everything.

  ‘Then I made the unfortunate slip of mentioning to you his letters to Dahlia Maggette. You worried he might have unburdened himself to her and that they’d incriminate you. You were probably getting pretty paranoid at this point, and I can’t say I blame you. Hell, that explains why you broke into my house. To try to find out if we had anything that would tie you to Borlotti. So you tried to get those letters back. Once you realized they’d gone up in smoke, here you are Miss Innocent again. “I want to help.” Yes, Borlotti was going to confess everything to me and try to make a clean break of it. He really was a good man who had taken a wrong turn – lots of wrong turns – but he was not an evil person.

  ‘You, on the other hand? Where were you? Nowhere to be found. After you paid off Borlotti, you thought you were free and clear. But then something happened. Borlotti’s house burned to the ground.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with that!’ Forsythe said.

  ‘That’s the only thing you had nothing to do with. After all, why pay Borlotti off and then kill him and leave the money? No. Doesn’t make sense. But why would Mr Chump go after Borlotti first? Borlotti, who was otherwise unknown to him, and, as far as Mr Chump knew, had no association with the violin other than having written the certificate? Maybe because someone told Mr Chump the violin was really made by bogus Amadeo and didn’t take kindly to the fact that he’d been swindled.
I think it was you who sold out Borlotti in order to save your own skin. But Mr Chump is still not happy because he’s still out two-and-a-half million, and I don’t think he will be happy until he gets it back. Do you? No, you didn’t burn Borlotti’s house down. But you went into hiding, letting Borlotti take the fall. You might as well have killed him yourself.’

  ‘Why do you persist in thinking I had anything to do with this?’

  Jacobus was tiring of the cat-and-mouse game, and he assumed Miller was running out of patience waiting in the car.

  ‘In life, as in music, timing is everything. The first time you called me, after the arson, you were scared. The second time, after Borlotti’s murder, you were more scared. Now, just after the presumed perpetrator of the first two crimes is exposed in the news, what do you know? Here we are again. You know who Falcone is working for, and you know that you’re next on the list. So who is it, Ms Forsythe? This is your last, best chance to redeem yourself.’

  ‘This is all fantasy!’ Forsythe said.

  ‘Fantasy! Well, I’m freezing my ass off. I’m going to bed.’

  Jacobus, poking his cane into the new snow, made his way back to Miller’s car. He recalled the lyrics to one of the Guthrie songs he had heard at the Mahaiwe, from a song called the ‘Massacre of 1913,’ if he remembered correctly. It wasn’t Schubert, but it fit the occasion: ‘The piano played a slow funeral tune, And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon. The parents they cried and the miners they moaned, ‘See what your greed for money has done.’

  Nathaniel’s excitement was so infectious when Jacobus and Miller returned that Trotsky was spinning in circles like a pup.

  ‘Jake, I think I’ve found out something interesting,’ he said.

  ‘Mind if I thaw out first?’

  ‘How many years’ll that take?’

  ‘Too many, I hope.’

  Jacobus removed his coat and sweaters, found the easy chair, which had become his seat of choice in Miller’s house, and collapsed into it.

  ‘So, what’s your news? Someone going to kill us?’

  ‘Probably. But that’s not the news. I was thinking, when you ship something valuable, like an instrument, you can’t be too careful insuring it, like Dedubian said. But when you go to the post office, or FedEx, or UPS, or any shipper, they ask if you want to insure it. Right?’