by Jim Fusilli
After the fifth false start, Marisol suggested she play the song through with Wendell tapping out a reggae rhythm.
In her talented hands, the music was lovely, like a beautiful butterfly fluttering around the dank basement.
Marley told her so. Teddy did too.
Smiling, Bassekou said, “Marisol, that was so very sweet. You have a gift. . . .”
He stopped when he realized the Kingston Cowboys were looking past him. When he turned, he saw a man in a burgundy suit jacket with gold braiding, a white shirt and a gray clip-on tie. The man’s gray slacks had a black stripe down the side. He carried a burgundy hat with a black plastic visor, and Bassekou saw that the hat had the apartment building’s address printed in gold on its front.
He also saw that the thin, pale man seemed to be glaring at Marley, Teddy and Marisol.
“Wendell,” the man said. He crooked his finger angrily.
Wendell hurried around the drums, a worried expression on his face.
Marley and Teddy exchanged a quick glance. They both noticed how Wendell’s uncle looked at them. It was as if they didn’t meet his approval.
Wendell returned three minutes later. Sheepishly, he said, staring at the concrete floor, “We have to go.”
“Wendell . . . ?” Marisol said gently. She had cradled her violin under her arm.
“I’m sorry,” he replied, refusing to meet her eyes. “But we have to go.”
Marley and Teddy headed for their instruments’ cases.
“Have we offended your uncle?” Bassekou asked.
Wendell didn’t reply. He went inside the shed and began to put away his cymbal and drum.
chapter 5
Marley Z!” Antonio Otto said with a beaming smile.
Everyone in the narrow restaurant turned to see the commotion.
Miss Otto’s father cupped Marley’s cheeks, a gesture that instantly swept aside thoughts of the annoying Tabakovic jumping out of the Natural History bushes at her moments earlier.
“How are you? Molto felice, I hope.”
Mr. Otto seemed to do everything at the restaurant: greet his customers, bring them to one of his eight tables, deliver fresh bread and herb olive oil, take their orders, and then cook and serve all the food. As if to symbolize his many roles, Mr. Otto wore a chef’s top—with his name Antonio in script on the breast—and flawless suit pants and shiny Italian loafers that were suitable for the owner of a popular and successful business.
To enter, Teddy sidestepped through the crowd waiting to be seated.
“Ah. Mr. Teddy.”
Mr. Otto made a theatrical wave of his hand and bowed at the waist.
The air in Antonio’s was scented with a trace of fresh-cooked seafood. On the blackboard near the open kitchen was tonight’s menu featuring Risotto ai Frutti di Mare—Seafood Risotto. Teddy thought of Mr. Otto’s tender clams, shrimp and squid nestled amid buttery rice. He almost groaned with pleasure.
If Marley’s father could cook like Mr. Otto . . .
“Is your daughter here, Mr. Otto?” Marley said.
“Vivi?” he replied.
Marley knew he only had one daughter. “Yes.”
She didn’t mind being part of Mr. Otto’s show. Though people in the neighborhood knew him as a tough business-man, to Marley he was always gentle and kind. The bright-eyed man with olive skin and gray razor-cut hair once said her smile made him smile.
“In the office,” he said. “You go. Teddy, you too.”
He patted Teddy on the head.
Teddy gritted his teeth. He hated to be patted on the head.
At least this time Mr. Otto hadn’t scrunched his chubby cheeks.
What?” Miss Otto said.
“Do you think Mr. Noonan would steal a violin?” Marley repeated.
Miss Otto spun the swivel chair to face her. An old-style calculator with a hand crank sat on her father’s desk in the crowded office and storage space. A new MacBook was next to the creaky machine.
“Absolutely not,” she replied. “What are you saying, Marley?”
“How can you be so sure?”
Miss Otto paused.
Teddy, who stood by the door, watched as her expression turned from anger to curiosity.
“Marley,” she said pensively, “you’ve learned something. . . .”
Marley handed her the DVD. “Watch the third hour,” she said. “You can start at three-twenty or so.”
“Mr. Noonan is on it?” Miss Otto asked. She slipped the white envelope into her book bag at the side of the desk.
Yes, Marley thought as she nodded. Boring old Mr. Noonan.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Miss Otto said. “Ira Noonan collects violins. American violins.”
“Mr. Noonan?”
Marley couldn’t imagine him doing anything but pacing slowly in front of the green board, moan-droning on and on about variables and equations, chalk dust on his jacket and slacks.
“The violin that was stolen was made in America, wasn’t it?” Miss Otto asked.
“The Habishaw. Yes, in Massachusetts,” Marley said. “In 1873.”
Miss Otto smiled at the flash of certainty her father so admired in young Marley Zimmerman.
“You still don’t believe Marisol took it, do you?” Miss Otto asked.
“I know she took it,” Marley replied. “But something—or someone—made her.”
Teddy listened as Marley explained what she’d seen on the security video.
When she was finished, she said, “Can you ask Mr. Noonan if he can help us?”
“Marley, tomorrow you can—”
“Can you call him now?”
“Now? I suppose. . . .”
“I’ll meet him early,” she said.
Miss Otto reached for the old black phone on the desk.
“Thank you,” Marley said.
As she waited for Mr. Noonan to answer, Miss Otto asked, “How’s Collegiate, Teddy?”
“Good,” Teddy nodded. “Fine.”
“I’m glad,” she smiled. “But we’re sorry you’re not with us.”
Beacon was one of the best public high schools in the city, if not the whole country. But a private school like Collegiate meant something to Teddy’s parents. Founded in 1628, it not only offered a great education. To Mr. and Mrs. So, it seemed to symbolize America and its brightest hopes and values.
Miss Otto turned. “Ira?” she said into the black handset. “This is Vivianna Otto. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I have a request”—she looked at Marley—“and it seems urgent.”
Marley rocked on her heels and smiled.
The following morning, Marley leafed through the New York Times as she waited for Mr. Noonan on Amsterdam Avenue across from the back of Damrosch Park. Still no mention of the theft of the Habishaw violin, and nothing more about the tiny fire that had disrupted Juilliard. The news on WNYC, the public radio station her father loved, hadn’t talked about the Habishaw either, nor did she find anything about it on the Web, except for something in a gossipy blog written by a classical music fan on the Upper West Side. The blogger speculated that the Habishaw was in storage until the Lincoln Center experts assessed the smoke damage.
Maybe the police didn’t want to say anything about their search for the missing violin. Marley remembered how Sgt. Sampson pushed Marisol to reveal where she had taken it. Finding that violin was his priority, and the pressure of publicity might force whoever had it to do something desperate. That might explain the silence.
Mr. Noonan came through the park, the morning sun over his shoulder, walking no faster than he did at the front of his classroom. Marley was surprised to see him smiling.
“Shall we?” he said as he drew next to her. His green corduroy jacket was wrinkled, and the plaid tie against his yellow shirt was way off center.
Marley tucked the newspaper under her arm and, hoisting the handle of the rolling luggage she used for a book bag, followed Mr. Noonan west on 61st Street.
He led her up the steps and to the school library.
As Marley nestled in a seat, her back to the tall stacks of books, Mr. Noonan reached into his leather satchel and pulled out a Polaroid photo.
“That’s it. The Habishaw violin,” he said, as he sat across from her. “The woodworking is thoroughly characteristic of the Boston School. See the purfling and the flame? The tapering of the tailpiece . . . ? Also, that’s not the original Habishaw chin rest, which was replaced in the 1920s.”
Marley mentioned that display case was different from the one she’d seen in the security video.
“I took that photo at the Fiske Museum in California. At Claremont College,” he said. “Do you know it? What a wonderful museum. An amazing collection of rare instruments, surely one of the most impressive in the United States.”
Marley looked at her teacher. She couldn’t believe it: He glowed with excitement and enthusiasm.
“As for American instruments, they have a John Sellers piano made in the late Eighteenth Century; a Boston Musical Instrument Manufactory from . . . ah . . . 1871, I think it is; a David Hall circular cornet; a saxello, a Conn-O-Sax . . .”
He paused.
“But you were asking about stringed instruments.”
In fact, Marley hadn’t asked a question. “Someone stole the Habishaw violin,” she said.
“Yes, our Marisol,” Mr. Noonan replied. “Or so I’m told.”
“But she was someone’s agent,” she said, holding up her hand. “An unwitting agent. I’m sure of it!”
Marley sat back. She wore an old navy-blue service station uniform top with a flying red horse insignia. Her father found it at an antique-clothes shop in Pittsburgh. It was way too big, but it was also too great just to hang in the closet.
“‘Unwitting.’ Meaning ‘involuntary’ or ‘unsuspecting,’” Mr. Noonan said thoughtfully.
“I know,” Marley said. “My father uses that expression all the time in the Time Traveler. She was an unwitting agent.”
“Marisol Poveda doesn’t strike me as a thief,” Mr. Noonan mused. “But I’ve been fooled before. . . .”
“You’re not being fooled this time,” Marley insisted. “Somebody made her do it.”
Mr. Noonan edged forward in his seat. “A threat?”
Marley said no. “She didn’t seem nervous or anything. She wasn’t looking over her shoulder.”
They sat in silence for a moment, as if they were trying to think of how Marisol could have been tricked into stealing a valuable instrument.
“At any rate,” Mr. Noonan said, tapping his finger on the Polaroid. “The Habishaw, or the ‘bloodstained violin’ as it’s known, must be returned.”
And so,” Marley said over her steamy bowl of lemony Greek soup, “Mr. Noonan confirmed what we learned online. The bloodstained violin was built by Nehemiah Habishaw, who was born in Poland, but he came to America when he was a kid.”
Teddy and Wendell listened attentively, water tears sliding along their tall glasses of iced coffee.
Marisol’s seat in the booth was empty, just as her desk had been at Beacon.
“He was associated with what they called the Boston School of violin makers,” she continued, hand resting on her spoon. “Lots of great violins were made in America—in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia. The people who made them were tremendous craftsmen. You see all sorts of detail in the woodwork. Really beautiful.”
She took a sip of the hot soup.
“What makes the Habishaw so valuable is . . . Well, there are a few things. One is it’s the only one he made that’s left. Nobody used to pay too much attention to American-made violins, so I guess people didn’t really take care of them, or collect them. Or they played them until they wore out. Almost every household in America used to have a violin.”
“Did people think the European ones were better?” Teddy asked.
Marley nodded. “The ones made by Stradivari or Guarneri. They studied under Amati, who started in, like, 1650. There are a few made by Stradivari still around,” she continued. “From 1664 or so. But, yeah, only one Habishaw.”
“The other reasons . . . ?” Teddy asked.
“The bloodstain,” she replied.
“Real blood?” asked Wendell.
“No, no,” Marley said. “But there’s a red blemish in the maple under one of the F-holes that sort of looks like a blood drop. It’s kind of hard to see at first, but it’s there: a red blood drop.”
“In the wood, not the varnish?” Teddy asked.
“Right in the wood,” Marley nodded. “But the most important thing about the Habishaw is the way it sounds. Apparently, it’s, like, so beautiful. Mr. Noonan said it sounded like the voice of a special angel who descends from heaven only when someone plays it. Something about the wood or the way it was cared for and repaired or how it aged. It had some sort of blessed life.”
Teddy frowned. “So someone who loves the sound of a violin and loves to play—”
“Mr. Noonan said there’s no way a violinist worthy of the Habishaw took it. The kind of people who could play it well enough to create that beautiful sound don’t go around stealing instruments.”
Not quite convinced, Teddy said, “All right . . .”
“A better way to think of it is to imagine that five hundred thousand dollars was sitting under that display case,” Marley said.
“So the thief needs to find someone who’ll buy it for a lot of money,” Teddy said. “Maybe not the full five hundred thousand, but a lot.”
“Bang,” Marley replied, pointing at him with her spoon.
“So it’s a collector who would buy stolen goods,” Wendell said. He dropped another cube of brown sugar into his drink. He didn’t exactly enjoy iced coffee unless it was super sweet.
“I’d bet that’s who the police are looking for,” Teddy added. “They’re probably following Marisol and her mother and father. . . .”
In her mind, Marley finished Teddy’s comment: to see if the Povedas would take the Habishaw out of hiding and turn it over to a crooked dealer or collector.
Calling on her cell, Marley spoke to Marisol four times today, promising to e-mail her the homework assignments and drop off her books, if necessary. But, mostly, she called to be a friend: Sgt. Sampson interviewed Marisol again, this time with her parents and their attorney at the 20th Precinct. It was awful, Marisol reported the first time Marley called. Humiliating. Terrifying.
“But the person I need to find isn’t just a crooked dealer or collector who would accept a stolen violin,” Marley said to Teddy and Wendell. “The police are on to that, I’m sure. I need to find the person who could get Marisol to be his agent. His unwitting agent.”
“Is there a collector who could do that?” Wendell asked.
“A facilitator,” Teddy proposed. “A go-between.”
“Maybe,” Marley said. “I need to talk to someone who knows all kinds of collectors and dealers.”
They sat in silence as Marley finished her soup.
As always, when Teddy reached the bottom of his glass, his straw made a ghastly slurping sound and, as always, he laughed like a happy child.
“Hey, Marley,” Wendell ventured. “Your Mr. Noonan was pretty helpful, wasn’t he?”
She nodded. “I’m kind of sorry I told you guys he was so boring,” she replied. “Turns out there’s more to him than I recognized. ”
“Well, that happens,” he replied agreeably.
Teddy said, “Sometimes there’s less than you recognize too.”
“With people, you never know,” Marley said.
As he waited patiently in the Monday morning shadows on the corner of 84th and Columbus, Teddy’s thoughts were still troubled by the abrupt end to band practice on Friday.
For the moment, though, his mind wandered. Leaving his luggage book bag in the shade, his Collegiate jacket hanging on its handle, he took a few steps into the sun and, arching his back, looked straight up past the building’s tarred corn
ice to study the sky. It’ll be a hot day, he told himself; hot and sticky. The kind that’s superfantastic in August when you can hang out with your friends in Riverside Park, coconutty lotion on your nose and cheeks, the breeze wafting off the Hudson. Or jumping in the pool at the Chelsea Rec Center. Teddy knew he sort of slapped at the water, laughing as he tried to keep up with Marley, chlorine turning his eyes pink. As for Marisol, she said she learned to swim in the Pacific Ocean. She zipped through the turquoise water like a dolphin. . . .
Lost in blissful memories not yet a month old, Teddy, at least for a moment, forgot his concerns and why he was waiting on the busy avenue when he should be on his way to school. Then he saw his friend.
“Wendell!” he shouted.
Wearing his new blue backpack, lunch sack in hand, Wendell Justice walked along the sunny west side of the avenue. His jacket was neat, his shirt pressed, his tie tight to the collar.
He looked up, saw Teddy, but then kept going.
Between them, taxis zoomed by as if they were in a NASCAR race.
Teddy waited for the traffic light to change—from “Hand to Man,” as Marley would’ve said. Then, his book bag bouncing and bumping behind him, Teddy jogged across the soon-to-be soupy asphalt.
“Wendell,” he said as he lugged his bag over the curb, “what’s going on?”
“Hi, Teddy,” he replied dourly, his cheeks turning red.
“We didn’t see you this weekend.”
Wendell hadn’t stopped moving. He seemed in a rush to get to Collegiate, which was a few blocks away on 78th Street, not too far from the Natural History Museum.
“Yeah . . . I got caught up in a few things,” replied Wendell, as he looked into the distance.
“I called, I texted . . .”
“I know.”
The rushing crowd around them headed toward the office towers up ahead at Columbus Circle and beyond.
Teddy decided to be bold. Looking up at Wendell, he said, “Nobody minds. It was nice of you to try to get us a place to rehearse. If your uncle—”
“Listen, Ted,” Wendell said abruptly. “I’ve got to—I’ve got to go.”
With that, he started to rush as fast as he could, moving quickly away from Teddy.
Flabbergasted, Teddy wanted to shout to his friend. Instead, he just stood there, fists on his hips, people charging by, cars and delivery vans too.
