by Gerald Elias
Jacobus followed Victoria’s footsteps. She did not slow down for him. He preferred it that way.
She led the way off the stage, down the corridor, up the stairs, left turn, down the corridor, past the Green Rooms to her office. He didn’t mind that she didn’t say a word the whole way. It gave him time to concentrate on not walking into anything and on what he was going to say.
As soon as he crossed the threshold behind her, she slammed the door, startling him.
“You know, Daniel, I wouldn’t be surprised if you stole that violin. I really wouldn’t. You’ve always hated the Grimsley Competition. You’ve always hated my students, and you’ve hated me since I walked out on you.”
“You are so full of shit,” said Jacobus. That’s what I was going to say? he thought. I could have done a little better than that.
“Am I?” said Victoria. “Then you tell me. Who had a better motive to steal the Piccolino? And who could pull the whole thing off, in a dark room, better than a blind man who knows every inch of this building? I saw you there. No one would have been surprised to see the great pedagogue Daniel Jacobus at Carnegie Hall.”
Jacobus had heard this same song from Lilburn, Vander, Grimsley, Strella; MAP’s orchestrated plan, setting him up as the thief, encouraging him to incriminate himself. To his ear, like Victoria’s students, all their performances sounded rehearsed, artificial. That’s the line they’ve all been tossing to take the heat off themselves while they rip off the system, he thought.
He started laughing. Well, I can’t say I didn’t help them along, he thought.
“What are you snickering about?” Jablonski asked.
“Well, I guess you’ve got it all figured out, Victoria. Oh, yes! You have figured it out. Perfectly. Sure I stole the Piccolino.” But before he could say, “and you’re the Virgin Mary,” there was a knock at the door.
It was Harry Pizzi. “Miss J,” he said through the door, “there’s a Detective Malachi downstairs. Says he wants to talk to Daniel Jacobus.”
Jablonski responded, “Thank you, Harry. Tell him Mr. Jacobus will be there momentarily.”
As Pizzi went to do Jablonski’s bidding, her voice echoed in the hallway. “Well, Daniel, I guess the party’s over. It has been lovely seeing you again. I’m sure you can make your own way out.” A more subdued, “Good-bye, Victoria,” followed from Jacobus.
Halfway down the corridor to the elevator, Jacobus inhaled Victoria’s familiar scent. Talon perfume. It must have infected either his clothes or his psyche.
A French word, “talon.” “Claw.” What the French call the frog, the ebony attachment at the base of the violin bow that holds the hair in place and where the bow is gripped by the right hand. Talon, claw, doubly appropriate for Victoria, Jacobus thought.
Jacobus met Nathaniel by the box office, as planned. Malachi was there also.
“Mr. Jacobus?” he asked.
He ignored the policeman. “Where’s Yumi?” Jacobus asked Nathaniel.
“I don’t know,” Nathaniel said. “I thought she was with you.”
“Mr. Jacobus,” Malachi repeated.
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Detective Al Malachi, NYPD. We’ve met once before, and I’m here to tell you that I would like nothing better than to arrest you for the theft of the Piccolino Strad and hope to do so as soon as possible.”
“If there’s nothing better you’d like to do than that,” said Jacobus, “I feel sorry for your wife.”
“Jake,” said Nathaniel, pulling him aside, “tone it down, man. Tone it down. This business is difficult enough without the police breathing down our necks.”
“Let go of me,” said Jacobus. “After taking crap all day from the MAP bastards I don’t need any more from this schmuck.”
“Also,” continued Malachi, “I have received reports from various members of MAP of harassment and intimidation—and I can see now that they were justified—so I am warning you to stay away from anyone associated with MAP or I will arrest you for stalking.”
Nathaniel exploded. “Jake! How could you? I asked you nicely to lay off your personal agenda. I know you’re a crusty old fart with everyone else, but I thought between the two of us . . .” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence but threw up his hands in disgust.
“I’ll let you boys have some alone time now,” said Malachi as he left, “but if I get any more complaints I’ll take you both in.”
Jacobus tried to defend himself by relating how Jablonski had tried to humiliate him, had slapped Yumi in the face, and had, like the other MAP associates, accused him of stealing the Piccolino. The only thing he did, Jacobus said, was to “put her in her place.”
Nathaniel was hardly assuaged.
“Jake, you’ve interviewed the last of the MAP people. I won’t need you anymore for the investigation. You’ve done enough damage, especially with Jablonski. I suggest I drive you back home and we call it a day.”
Jacobus was devastated. He knew this might happen but had taken the chance. He had lost. He tried to grab on to one last thread, not that it mattered anymore. He asked Nathaniel if he had brought the dossier on all the runners-up of the Grimsley Competition he had requested.
“It was one pain in the you know what, but I got it,” said Nathaniel.
At that point Yumi arrived, carrying their violin cases.
“I’m sorry to take so long,” Yumi said, slightly out of breath. “I had to wash my face.”
“Forget about it, let’s get out of here,” said Jacobus.
The long drive back to Jacobus’s home—they got stuck in a snarled mess of rush-hour traffic as they left the city—was notable only in that it had been fewer than forty-eight hours since they first arrived in New York. They were distraught and exhausted, so there was little conversation. Even the vintage jazz on a nightly FM program brought little relief.
Jacobus said almost nothing. He spent some time thinking about the MAP situation, and along with mounds of expectedly extraneous information, Kate Padgett’s scant résumé. It was almost blank. Alive? Dead? Who knows? Nathaniel couldn’t find out for sure. No photos. No reviews. A few tidbits. A yellowed New York Times clipping of the 1931 Grimsley and a wordy but less than informative feature from the Piddletown Herald from the same year. A taped copy of an old 78 recording. One intriguing tidbit was the passport of a Mrs. Kate Desmond and a steamer booking to Japan in 1945 in the company of a Mr. Simon Desmond—could she be one and the same person as Yumi’s grandmother? There was only that single tenuous connection between the name Kate and Japan, but Jacobus was banking on it. He had little else to go on.
Mainly, though, Jacobus was preoccupied with what he would say to Yumi when they got to his house.
He was not totally sure he had succeeded in prodding Yumi to return to Japan. He felt he had almost gotten there by the time they had left Rachel’s office, but then Victoria! If he had stuck to his plan, he should have sided with Victoria after she slapped Yumi, but he just couldn’t be that much of an ass. When the cop was there, he should have had Victoria arrested for hitting Yumi. Nathaniel had wanted to take her to a doctor, but Yumi said no and hadn’t uttered a word of complaint since.
He wondered whether he should change his strategy. Should he tell Yumi what he knew? Should he explain to her that even though he sympathized with what she and the others had done, the violin still had to be returned? Could she be coaxed into cooperating without Granny’s prior approval? What would be the right words to say to get her to tell him where the violin was? Certainly not his usual words. He would have to think of something face-saving for her. If he could accomplish that first, he would then figure out a way to return the violin without anyone else knowing—including Nathaniel—and without anyone ever being caught, or even suspected.
Jacobus woke with a start as he felt Nathaniel cautiously navigating the Rabbit around the graveled curve of his driveway. He had no idea how long he had slept.
“Jake, don’t tell me you didn
’t lock the doors of your house.”
“I never do,” said Jacobus, rubbing his face in an effort to regain consciousness. “You know that. Why?”
“I think you’ve got trouble. There’s a police car parked by the front door with the lights flashing.”
“Shit. No one’s ever broken in before.”
“Someone’s sitting on the doorstep, wearing a pair of old jeans and a stained work shirt.”
“As big as you? Taller?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Roy Miller, the town’s entire police force. Part-time cop, full-time plumber.”
Jacobus was fully awake now. Vandals? Or MAP? What could MAP want of his? Had they been planning to mug him here too? Mugging was only for cities, he thought.
They pulled up to the house. Jacobus got out of the Rabbit.
“Hey, Jake,” said Miller. “These folks friends of yours?”
Jacobus quickly introduced them.
“What’s the bad news, Roy? They take the fiddles?”
“Worse.”
“Everything?”
“Worse, Jake.”
Jacobus had played enough games with Victoria.
“Come on, Roy. Let’s have it.”
“Jake, I’ve gotta take you in for questioning.”
“Questioning? For what?”
“For the theft of the Piccolino Strad.”
“Roy, come on!”
Those MAP bastards are poison, Jacobus thought.
“That’s not all, Jake.”
Jacobus was silent.
“And for the murder of Victoria Jablonski.”
DEVELOPMENT
TWENTY-FIVE
The Bullet Train hummed along Japan’s southern coastline in the darkness, its rhythm quietly deceptive as it powered its way at 230 kilometers per hour. Nathaniel and Yumi slept. Jacobus was still deep in thought, reviewing the past, planning the future, the ashtray in the arm of his seat overflowing. When their plane had arrived at Nagoya airport, Nathaniel had bought a copy of the International Herald Tribune. Until he read Jacobus Lilburn’s story that was carried from the New York Times, the two men had spoken very little to each other since leaving Jacobus’s house.
Renowned Violin Teacher Brutally Slain
in Carnegie Hall Studio
By Martin Lilburn
NEW YORK: Victoria Jablonski, the most influential violin teacher in America and founding member of the powerful Musical Arts Project Group, was found brutally slain last evening in her Carnegie Hall studio, where she had taught for the past de cade.
It is not known whether the killing was related to the recent disappearance of the so-called Piccolino Stradivarius violin. New York Police Department Detective Alan Malachi, who is in charge of the investigation, had no comment when asked if Mr. Daniel Jacobus, a rival violin teacher who had once been her teacher and with whom he once reportedly had an amorous relationship, was a suspect in both the theft and the killing. However, a confidential source has reported that the Berkshire County, Massachusetts, sheriff’s office has taken Mr. Jacobus into custody.
Mr. Jacobus had recently raised concerns that MAP was engaged in financial improprieties. According to a reliable source, evidence corroborating this claim is being brought to the attention of the fraud division of the Internal Revenue Service.
Members of MAP have expressed shock and horror over Ms. Jablonski’s death and are planning a memorial service, details of which are still being determined. However, they had no comment in regard to the financial allegations. Anthony Strella, executive director of MAP, has requested that contributions be made in Ms. Jablonski’s memory to MAP, a nonprofit corporation, in lieu of flowers.
The only thing that surprised Jacobus in the story was that it sounded like an investigation of MAP was being initiated. Why would Lilburn have written that if he could have avoided it? The rest of the story he could have written himself, though the one factual error was that he had been taken into custody. Clearly Lilburn wrote the story before learning that he had escaped.
It was still less than a week since the Piccolino Strad had been stolen. At the house about thirty hours ago—was it thirty? who could remember?—Roy Miller had remained the calmest.
Yumi had reacted even faster than he had, Jacobus recalled, when Miller had announced that Jacobus was wanted for questioning for murder. She had uttered something in Japanese and then thrown up. Jacobus quickly told Nathaniel to escort her inside the house and take care of her there.
“Give her a glass of water and have her lie down,” Jacobus said. “I need to talk to Roy. Alone.”
Roy had said, “Now, Jake, I know you didn’t do either of those things, but this guy, this Detective Malachi, called me up from New York, all hot and bothered, and insisted I stay here until you arrived. He said you were a desperate man and that I should take you in for questioning.”
“Roy, how was Victoria killed?” asked Jacobus.
“Well, I’m not really at liberty to tell you, but you and me, we’ve known each other a long time now, so I suppose it’d be okay.
“Victoria Jablonski, or her body, I should say, was found in her studio at Carnegie Hall. She was sitting at her desk chair with a violin Gstring wrapped real tight around her neck. Her neck was all scratched and bloody, probably from her trying to untie the string, because there was some blood under her fingernails. Her face was kind of blue and puffy with her tongue and eyes sticking out. It wasn’t a pretty sight, as you may imagine.”
Victoria would never approve of a blue face with her green dress, Jacobus thought. Shit, let it go.
“Signs of a struggle?” asked Jacobus.
“Nope. No cuts, no bruises—other than around her neck—no sexual assault. And nothing stolen. That’s why they think whoever killed her was probably someone she knew, though the attack was so violent her carotid artery was collapsed internally and her windpipe crushed. Someone out there really didn’t like her.”
“And why does Malachi think I did it, Roy?”
“There you go again, Jake, asking questions I’m not supposed to answer. But if you don’t mind, why don’t we sit back down on your steps here so I can talk to you without my legs getting all achy. I had to install some baseboard heating today at this trophy home up on Pixley Road and it really takes it out on the old knees.”
They sat in the dark of the muggy summer night. The only sound Jacobus heard was the distant rumble of thunder. Even the cicadas and crickets were oppressed into silence by the air’s heavy torpor. He pulled from his memory the image of an approaching storm, the flashes of sheet lightning that provided fleeting illumination of random patches of ominous sky, of coalescing storm clouds you knew were there but could see only for an instant. Jacobus was deeply troubled at the direction his thoughts were leading, thoughts that were not about the weather. Thoughts about Yumi alone in Carnegie Hall, washing her face.
“That’s better,” Roy said as they sat down.
“Mind if I smoke?” asked Jacobus, who already had the pack out of his pocket.
“Go right ahead and dig your own grave if you want to,” said Roy.
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
“So, anyway, as I was saying, her body was discovered by this security guard named Pizzi. Said he had knocked on her door about fifteen minutes before to announce that our Detective Malachi was in the lobby and wanted to see you. Pizzi said that when he knocked the first time, you and the lady were having an argument, and he says he heard you bragging in a very loud voice something like, ‘Yeah, I stole the Piccolino.’ This Mr. Pizzi returned to her studio, as I said about fifteen minutes later, to tell her that Detective Malachi wanted to talk to her, and that’s when he found her. So they have a pretty accurate time of death, somewhere between six and six fifteen.”
Jacobus flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the night.
Miller continued. “There weren’t many people in the building at that time and there wasn’t any concert going on, as you pro
bably know, so it wasn’t hard for the police to interview everyone there. You were the only one who was seen going in or out of her studio during that time, which doesn’t mean that someone else couldn’t have, of course.
“My confreres in the NYPD eventually got around to the box office folks, where one of the young women who works there admitted to hearing you say, I guess it was to your friends here, ‘Well, I guess I took care of her,’ or something to that effect.”
“More like, ‘I’ve put her in her place,’ ” Jacobus corrected.
“Yeah, well, whatever. Anyway, that got this Malachi fellow interested in your whereabouts, as you can imagine. He called me about seven thirty and gave me instructions to wait here in case you should turn up. It’s okay. I haven’t been here too long and it’s a nice night for sitting outside anyway. I always like watching lightning like this. Looks like we might finally get some rain and cool things off. We need it.”
Jacobus lit another Camel and blew smoke into the air.
“While they were interviewing the box office people, a few of Jablonski’s students and her secretary, Rachel something or other, showed up, so they questioned them too. The students said you and Jablonski really went at it during her class, and this Rachel admitted to having a fairly unpleasant conversation with you not long before. She also had a list of names supplied to her by your friend Mr. Williams, here, of people you had interviewed during the day regarding the missing violin. Malachi really got his boys off their butts because they called all those people . . . you know who I’m talking about, don’t you, Jake? Most of them were saying you weren’t the friendliest person they’d ever met, if you know what I mean, even to the point of you having suggested on a number of occasions that it wasn’t such a bad idea that the violin was stolen.”
