by Gerald Elias
“I think you’ve got us all wrong. What we’re doing, or at least trying to do, with the Competition, with MAP, is create opportunity. Yes! Create opportunity! Give the kids a chance. A chance for a career! Isn’t that good?”
“Mr. Grimsley, let me ask you a question.” Jacobus waited, intentionally exacerbating Grimsley’s anxiety. “How many Grimsley Competition winners have had lifelong, fulfilling careers?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, I’ll tell you, because that’s one of the things my associate, Mr. Williams, has been researching. It turns out that since the Grimsley began in 1905 none of the winners were able to sustain their careers at a high level to the age of thirty. One made it to twenty-seven. Do you want to know why, Trevs?”
“That’s none of my business, now, is it?”
“Do you want to know why?”
“Oh, I suppose you’ll tell me whether I want to or not.”
“Hey, that’s one thing you’re right about. Without naming names, we have left-hand paralysis, severe depression, drug use, suicide, and, can you believe this, ‘I just don’t care about music anymore.’ Quite a track record your Competition has.”
“But that’s not the fault of the Competition. It’s the system. It’s the system that comes afterward.”
This guy’s a born victim, thought Jacobus.
“Mr. Grimsley, do you know what spiccato is?”
“No, I don’t know what spacado is. I’ve never heard of spacado. What has that got to do with anything?”
“Spiccato is a kind of bow stroke in which the bow bounces, or appears to bounce, off the string.”
“So what?”
“To play spiccato, the violinist needs to grip the bow so lightly that it almost feels as if it’s falling out of his hand and at the same time keep his wrist as loose as possible. It appears as if the violinist is causing the bow to bounce. But that’s not really the case. It’s really that the violinist is allowing the bow to bounce on its own. Dr. Krovney, whom I studied with as a youngster, used to call this an optical illusion. ‘You don’t get what you see!’ he used to say. I think it’s more accurate to say that it’s a misperception of cause and effect.”
“Just why are you telling me this, Mr. Jacobus?”
“Because you are under a misperception of cause and effect. You’re under the impression that your beloved Competition was created out of some kind of need of the musical world to find talented musicians. It’s an artificial need. In fact, if anything, your Competition casts a shadow on any potentially great musician who doesn’t win or chooses not even to enter. What you’ve done is perpetrate a false cult of child worship that ultimately has nothing whatsoever to do with music.”
“Are you finished with your . . . your spiel, Mr. Jacobus?”
“Yes, except to repeat my offer to drop any further investigation of your involvement with the theft if you agree to terminate the Grimsley.”
“Then I think our meeting is finished. You’ll please see yourselves out.”
“One more thing Trevs,” Jacobus said, standing up.
“Yes?”
“Never try to lie to a blind man.”
“What are you talking about now?”
“The scotch. You said it was sixteen years old. What you gave me was only eight. Just between you and me.”
Back in a taxi, Yumi asked Jacobus, “Do you really think Mr. Grimsley was involved in stealing the Piccolino?”
“Grimsley? That dufus?” Jacobus said. “Who knows? You wouldn’t think he has the brains or the balls. So you’re wondering, why did I threaten him with public embarrassment if I’m not sure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, two reasons. One was the outside chance that he’d fall for it.”
“And the other?”
Jacobus snarled, “It feels good to make him sweat.”
As soon as Jacobus left, Grimsley picked up the phone to call Lilburn. He wanted Lilburn to call the police and have Jacobus arrested for harassment. But there was no answer at Lilburn’s so he next called Rachel Lewison, asking her to find someone to call the police.
“What do you mean, ‘someone’?” Rachel responded.
“Anyone. Anthony, Victoria, Martin. Anyone!”
“I’m not your servant,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you call the police yourself? I’ve got enough to do.”
“But I’m not good with words,” said Grimsley. “And calling the police! I’d . . . I’d just get the jitters. They might end up arresting me!”
“Well, that’s not my problem, is it?” said Rachel. “I’m not going to bug Anthony or Victoria about this. I take orders from them. I don’t give them.”
“Please, Rachel. What about Martin? Martin can be so persuasive.”
“So?” said Rachel.
“He’d be much better convincing the police to put a stop to Jacobus, don’t you think?” Grimsley said.
Rachel thought for a moment. Putting a stop to Jacobus. “All right. You’ve persuaded me he’s more persuasive.” She said she would try to contact Lilburn and hung up.
She called Lilburn’s New York Times office number and the answering service told her that he was planning on attending a Guarneri Quartet concert that evening. She tried his apartment, but apparently he had already left. She was about to leave a message on his machine, but hung up.
Instead, she called the police department herself and was connected to that rookie detective, Al Malachi.
Malachi had the distinction of being the only graduate of Yeshiva University in the New York Police Department, a distinction of which he was personally proud but one that brought great dismay to his parents, who had dreamed of their only son becoming a rabbi, or at worst, a violinist. He was also the only one in his precinct who cared for classical music; his listening to WNCN at his desk was met with derision and an occasional spitball. Perhaps due to his musical tastes, he had just been assigned to handle the Piccolino investigation when it was determined by his superior to be too cold a case to bother with himself. A depressingly thin file had been dropped on his desk accompanied by a snide chuckle. “Here you go, sport,” the lieutenant had said. “Right up your alley.”
“Malachi,” Malachi said, answering the phone.
“This is Rachel Lewison. From the Musical Arts Project.” Rachel told Malachi that she wanted to report Jacobus’s recent behavior.
“No need,” said Malachi.
“Why not?” asked Rachel
“Because I got a call from your compatriot, what’s his name, hold on a minute, here it is, Martin Lilburn, last night, suggesting that Jacobus might have been involved in the theft of that kid’s violin.”
“This is different,” said Rachel. “This isn’t about the theft. I want a restraining order issued on Jacobus.”
“A restraining order?” asked Malachi. “For what?”
“The man has been a pit bull in his behavior toward members of the Musical Arts Project. He has intimidated, threatened, and tried to extort them. He is vindictive, irrational, and has the potential to commit violence,” said Rachel.
“Forgive me if I sound a little incredulous,” said Malachi. “But are you saying that you guys are afraid of a blind geriatric? Also, not to get too nitpicky, but restraining orders come from the judge, not from the police.”
“I’m not concerned with the process,” said Rachel. “I just want him to leave us alone. And if you don’t cooperate, maybe you should connect me with your superior.”
“Look, lady,” said Malachi, “threats aren’t going to get you anywhere either. If you insist, I’ll talk to the guy and explain to him, nicely, your concerns. But other than that, there’s nothing I can do, or frankly, want to do.”
“Fine,” said Rachel. “Please come to Carnegie Hall tomorrow at six o’clock. Jacobus will have finished his interviews with Mr. Strella, Ms. Jablonski, and myself, and I assure you that by that time you’ll have ample grounds to warn him off.”
Rachel
hung up, organized her work for the next day, and cleared her desk. She was almost out the door when she returned to make one more call. This one was to Victoria Jablonski. Rachel told her about the calls she had just made and suggested that Victoria might help move their plan along by provoking Jacobus into rash behavior.
“I’ll run it by Anthony,” said Jablonski, still smarting from being admonished by Strella for her rash decision to intimidate Jacobus.
“No,” said Rachel.
“Why not?” asked Jablonski.
After a brief pause, Rachel said, “All right, tell Anthony.”
Another pause. “Never mind,” said Jablonski. “Consider it done.”
NINETEEN
“What is chicken soup with kreplach?” asked Yumi, perusing the Carnegie Deli menu.
“Jewish gyoza,” Jacobus answered tersely. Yumi had been invigorated by the Faust performance at Carnegie Hall from which she and Goldbloom had just arrived, but Jacobus was not in the mood for conversation. He was on a low simmer from the meeting with Grimsley and from being chastised earlier by Nathaniel, plus he was still gnawing on scattered and seemingly inconclusive information.
“I’ll try it,” Yumi said to Sylvia, who had been standing by.
Nathaniel ordered the blintzes—one blueberry, one cheese—smothered with sour cream. Goldbloom ordered a liverwurst on pumpernickel.
Jacobus wanted something to calm himself down.
“I’ll have the cold borscht,” he said.
“You want the hot,” said Sylvia.
“No, I want the cold.”
“I’ll get you the hot. You want that,” Sylvia snapped.
He heard her shuffle off. Jesus Christ, he thought.
As they waited for the food to arrive, the four speculated randomly on possible motives for the theft of the violin. Were Rachel and Strella having an affair, as Goldbloom gathered from his contact with them at the Carnegie reception? What about Dedubian and Victoria, as Jacobus sensed from Dedubian’s reaction to her phone call? Considering that the Piccolino Strad was on public view only briefly every thirteen years, was this the last opportunity for one of the older MAP clients to carry out a long-simmering plan? Would Rachel, a onetime precocious violinist and current MAP underling, harbor resentment against the Competition or Grimsley strong enough to want to steal the violin? After the day’s events Jacobus was less convinced that Yumi was involved with the Piccolino theft. Was there any tie-in whatsoever with a Grimsley second-place finisher? The question was, what to do next?
Sylvia arrived noisily, slamming the silverware and plates of food down on the table. She must have sensed the tension that Jacobus was disinclined to dispel.
Jacobus took a sip of the borscht.
“Goddamit!” he hollered. “I said I wanted cold—I almost burned my fucking tongue off!”
“I told you that’s what you were getting,” Sylvia hollered back. “And why is it you always gotta come here after midnight on my shift?”
“Because it’s the only time we thought we’d get decent service at this place.”
“Oh! May I take that as a compliment, kind sir?”
“You may take it however you want, though it was intended more as an indictment.”
“You know what, Jake? You remind me of that big old horse that goes into the bar.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, this big ugly old horse goes up to the bar. And you know what the bartender says?”
“No. What does the bartender say?”
“He says, ‘So why the long face?’ ” Sylvia waddled away.
Yumi burst out laughing. When Jacobus asked, “What’s so funny?” her guffaw became even more raucous.
Jacobus was not amused, but he did note that Yumi’s laugh—halfway between a chortle and a whoop—was most un-Japanese.
“Maybe we should change the subject,” said Nathaniel, “while I can still keep my own lips zipped.”
“Jake,” said Goldbloom, jumping into the void, “tell me about your meeting with the Vanders. You think the kid’s as good as all the hype she’s been getting for winning the Grimsley? I’m thinking the person who stole the Piccolino maybe had it in for the kid. Maybe it was personal.”
“Let’s put it this way,” said Jacobus. “First, I think little Miss Vanderblick was just an innocent bystander. Second, she’s about the most talented nine-year-old I’ve heard.”
That comment not only reflected his true opinion, it was a retaliatory low blow aimed at Yumi for having laughed at his expense.
“And if you feel bad about that, Yumi, well, don’t,” he added. He acutely recalled his own feelings of humiliation when he had been eliminated from contention in the 1931 Grimsley Competition—the same year that the intense boy Kolkowski had won. His conviction that the world scorned him for supposing he had talent had never totally died, nor did his certainty that he had disappointed his parents. And then too there had been Malinkovsky.
“The Infanta may have some hard times coming,” Jacobus continued.
“How can that be? She’s so far ahead of everyone else,” Yumi said.
Jacobus was convinced that, like other gifted children, Kamryn had been pushed hard by MAP, the agents, record companies, even her own mother. Too hard. That MAP’s grandly advertised plans for her to record the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius concertos, two of the most taxing works in the violin literature, at age nine, was insane. With so many other recordings of the same pieces, he also questioned the need for yet another.
Goldbloom shared his opinion that a talented child should be playing music—sonatas, Baroque music, short concert pieces, smaller concertos—that would help her grow gradually as an artist. “Chamber music—God forbid—so she can learn how to be a musician and not a trained monkey.”
As far as Jacobus was concerned, the slower a student went, the faster the student progressed.
“If the Infanta doesn’t watch out, she may end up the same way a lot of other prodigies do—forgotten,” he concluded
“But why do you think that, Mr. Jacobus?” asked Yumi. “The reviews of her recital were so wonderful.”
“Let me tell you something, Yumi. I went to the recital, okay? First of all, the Times review was written by Martin Lilburn, who happens to be a MAP stooge, so you can forget about objectivity.
“Second, I was there, sitting in the back of the Hall, listening. All the people there wanted that kid to be the next Heifetz mainly because they want to be part of history. They want to be able to say, ‘I was at Vander’s Grimsley recital,’ with an emphasis on the ‘I.’ That’s why it’s difficult to criticize, especially for me. They’ll say, ‘Oh, it’s just poor old blind Jacobus. He’s just jealous.’ Assholes.
“On the other hand, she’s been pushed far too hard for someone her age. Trying to play too loud, too fast, too big, and far too schmaltzy for anyone’s good taste.”
“Schmaltzy?” asked Yumi.
“Yiddish, honey,” said Goldbloom. “Means ‘chicken fat’ in real life. In music, it means ‘heavily expressive.’ At the Carnegie Deli it means ‘health food.’ ”
As a result, Jacobus explained, fundamental mechanics were being sacrificed just to enable her to play louder. “Her fingers were spread too far apart on the bow so she could press down harder with her first finger. Her right elbow was much too high in order to squeeze down on the bow with all her might to play loud enough, rather than using her arm weight to build the sound naturally. She pressed far too hard with her left hand, squeezing the neck of the violin with her left thumb, and vibrating only with her arm with an inflexible wrist. All that to compensate for small size and undeveloped strength.
“What do you expect a little kid to—”
“Now hold on a second, Jake,” interrupted Nathaniel, “but if I’m not mistaken, by last account you were a blind man. You might’ve been there, but you didn’t actually see it.”
“Did Beethoven hear his music?” asked Jacobus, his voice rising
.
“Oh, please, Jake. Now you’re bein’ Beethoven?” said Nathaniel.
“Hey,” shouted Sylvia. “Keep the shoutin’ down. I told you yesterday, you’re gonna disturb the customers.”
Why does she keep talking about customers? thought Jacobus. He didn’t hear any other customers. All he heard were fluorescent lights.
Fluorescent lights! He knew what fluorescent lights sounded like, but what the light itself looked like had almost completely faded from memory.
“Sorry, Sylvia,” said Jacobus quietly. “We wouldn’t want to do that.”
“So, Ludwig, you were sayin’?”
“I was saying, Immortal Beloved,” said Jacobus, his voice returning to gravelly normalcy, “that I didn’t need to see, because I heard. The rest of the audience saw but obviously heard very little. Kamryn Vander’s playing was loud, bright, and ostentatious, but she sacrificed tone quality, which was metallic; color, which was uniformly bright and glossy; and any kind of refined phrasing because of her jerking the bow changes in an effort to play loud.
“You wouldn’t want to pay a hundred bucks to hear that kind of singer at the Met, Nathaniel. Or Ella.” He smirked. “And without a violin like the Piccolino Strad, it would’ve sounded entirely too rough and coarse. In fact, even the Piccolino didn’t help all that much, which surprised me. The only way to play what I heard was in the way I just described. Period. End of discussion.”
Sometimes self-righteous indignation does wonders for the soul, thought Jacobus, if not for peace of mind.
“What would make a violin worth stealing, Sol?” he asked. “Let’s say I stole the fiddle. You know me better than I know myself. Why would I have done it? What would’ve motivated me?”
“Obviously, the violin would have to be very important to you for some reason.”
“I’m sorry I asked,” said Jacobus. “Is that all?”
“Of course.”
“Sol, I used to think I understood you. Maybe it’s been too long.”
“Think about it for a second, Jake.”
Jacobus felt Goldbloom’s hands pulling on the collar of his shirt, talking intimately.
