by Jim Fusilli
“It looks like he was planning on stealing the Habishaw,” Sgt. Sampson said when he joined the Zimmermans and Teddy at the Two-Oh. “Involving Marisol gave him some cover—a degree of separation from the actual theft.”
“Do you think he always planned to hypnotize someone to do it?” Marley asked.
“Probably. But then Marisol told him she played the violin. That made her a more plausible suspect.”
“Did he have a buyer lined up?”
The policeman shrugged. “Not that we know of. He might’ve been waiting until the heat died down. But we got him, Marley. Thanks to you . . .”
By now, the September sun had begun to set behind the Jersey Palisades, and Marley felt the lift of an autumn-like breeze as it drifted across town.
“I don’t mean to pry,” Teddy began, “but Wendell’s uncle said something about a reward.”
“The insurance company,” she nodded. Moments ago, after the Povedas headed uptown on their way home, their gratitude as abundant as their tears, Marley mentioned the reward to her parents. There was instant, and silent, agreement on the matter.
“Marisol found it,” Marley told Teddy as they approached 72nd Street where Amsterdam and Broadway met—about the most chaotic intersection on the Upper West Side. “She found it and took care of it.”
They waited for Hand to go to Man. Marley hoisted Skeeter, securing her hold on her baby sister, who was clutching her bucket hat with two fists, as if she remembered 72nd could be one of the windiest cross-streets in Manhattan. And soon it would be, as summer surrendered to the latter part of the year.
“Without her, Justice would’ve done something terrible to the Habishaw,” she said.
“You think?”
“He couldn’t appreciate beauty like that. Marisol does.”
Her parents drew up behind them.
Marley turned and smiled when she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder.
They knew Wendell wouldn’t come to the coffee shop on Monday—after all, he had avoided Teddy all day. He’d found a new route to school, leaving Teddy standing amid the hustling crowd on Columbus. Nor did he even glance at him in class or in the hallway. Of course, all text messages and phone calls went unreturned.
Teddy said Wendell looked terribly sad.
On Tuesday, he had no choice but to visit his new friends. Teddy and Bassekou were waiting for him outside Collegiate. They threatened to carry him by the armpits if he didn’t agree to come along.
Said Bassekou, his bearing as imposing as his manner was thoughtful, “You do not want to make a scene.”
Wendell protested. “I—”
“We’re friends,” Teddy explained.
Marley and Marisol were at their table.
Pale and fidgety, Wendell couldn’t look at them as Bassekou nudged him into the booth.
“There’s no trapdoor, Wendell,” Marley said. “You can’t escape. ”
Finally, he raised his head.
Marisol said, “What about the Kingston Cowboys?”
Sliding in alongside Wendell, Teddy said, “I have a proposal. ”
“Okay,” Marley said. “What is it?”
“Well.” He cleared his throat. “As a quartet, we are not good.”
Bassekou shrugged and nodded at the same time.
Wendell had yet to turn to look at Marley.
Teddy said, “But as a duo, Marisol and Wendell could be quite interesting. So . . .”
“You and I practice until we catch up,” Marley said.
Bassekou thought, Oh, this means either Wendell and Marisol do not play with their friends for several years, or Marley and Teddy enter a very intense period of study.
“Wendell?” Marisol asked.
He puffed his cheeks. Though the temperature had dropped into the mid-sixties following Sunday’s downpour, he had sweat beads on his forehead and upper lip.
“I want to explain about my uncle,” he began, as he clutched the table.
“Not necessary,” Marley said. “That’s not on you.”
“But it is,” he replied. “He did it for me.”
Teddy was incredulous. “He stole the Habishaw for you?”
“For the money I’ll need,” he explained. “For Collegiate, college, graduate school . . .”
Marley leaned in.
“After my father died, my mother was worried that I’d fall in with the wrong crowd and get in trouble and stuff. The public high school wasn’t too great where we used to live,” he said. “That’s why we moved here—for Collegiate.”
Marley couldn’t see Wendell as a troublemaker. But she kept listening.
“My uncle told me that, before he died, my father often said he wanted me to be something better than he was,” Wendell added, his face growing red from embarrassment. “And my uncle said he didn’t want me to grow up to be a doorman.”
“A doorman is a respected profession,” Teddy said firmly.
“This city couldn’t exist without them,” Marley added.
“You know what I mean,” Wendell replied. “He said I should go to Collegiate, then an Ivy League school and one day I would live in the kind of building where he worked.”
“There is nothing wrong with that,” Bassekou said. “Though his method . . .”
“He said he was going to sell the bloodstained violin to a collector who’d take care of it, and then we’d have the money for my education.”
Marley tilted her head. She wasn’t buying it. Nicholas Justice didn’t use Marisol to steal the Habishaw so he could help Wendell. He was a plain old thief and he ripped off Juilliard last month just like he ripped off Lincoln Center four years ago when he pocketed money from jazz heads. He was a liar and a—
“Your uncle is an idiot,” Teddy said suddenly. “But you’re not. Marisol, can we put this behind us?”
She nodded. She saw that Wendell was as nervous as she had been in Miss Otto’s office a week ago. And much like her, he had done nothing wrong.
She said, “Let’s talk about Teddy’s proposal for the Kingston Cowboys. . . .”
As Marisol began discussing a strategy for the little group, Marley held out a fist.
She said, “We’re cool, Wendell.”
He tapped Marley’s fist with his.
“. . . the important thing is to keep working on the right sound for our band,” Marisol continued. She looked at Bassekou. “Marley was saying she thinks a kora might be intriguing with a violin and Western percussion. . . .”
“A kora?” Wendell asked. “You mean the harp from West Africa? I love that sound. . . .”
Soon, the group fell into a long discussion about music. Wendell rattled off names of musicians from Mali, and Bassekou mentioned his favorite American musicians. When Marisol asked how the kora was tuned, Bassekou quickly rattled off his reply, momentarily confusing Teddy. But then Marisol said, “Diatonic scales in F. You know, the major is ‘do, re, mi . . .’ Ted, the Chinese used Bassekou’s tuning about twenty-five hundred years ago.”
“That’s way before anybody from the West visited Asia,” he replied.
“Or West Africa,” Bassekou nodded.
“Or New Jersey.” That was Wendell. Everyone at the table laughed.
Happiness restored, Marley looked around for Ruthie, their waitress. She was thinking now was a great time for a bowl of Greek egg-drop soup.
about the author
JIM FUSILLI is the author of five novels set in New York City, including Marley Z and the Bloodstained Violin, his first for young readers. His short fiction appears in many anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories. He’s also written a nonfiction book about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ album Pet Sounds. Since 1983, he has written about rock and pop music for The Wall Street Journal. A musician and songwriter, Jim and his wife have a daughter in college.
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