Cemetery of the Nameless

by Rick Blechta

  Elen quickly shut and locked the door behind us. I listened with tremendous sadness. The music coming from behind a closed door at the end of a short hallway across the room truly did sound awful. I had dismissed that part of the story Elen had told me back at the hotel as a gross exaggeration until I actually heard it with my own ears. Frankly, I’ve listened to better six-year-olds. Of all that had happened since Tory’s disappearance, this was easily the most astonishing event yet.

  I approached the door, took a deep breath and pushed it silently open, my heart pounding as it hadn’t since my first trumpet recital in the basement of St. Dominick’s back in Brooklyn twenty years earlier.

  Tory stood with her back to me in the centre of the room, her fiddle still under her chin, the bow poised above the strings where she’d just lifted it. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of how changed she was. I don’t think I would have known her if she’d passed me on the street.

  The height looked right, but little else did. She was wearing a T -shirt, making it easy to see her spine sticking out the complete length of her back. The jeans she had on simply hung from her hips. The largest shock, though, was her appearance from the neck up. Gone was that wild shock of red hair that had been Tory’s most memorable physical feature. It had been replaced by something an indistinct shade of brown, short and uneven, which looked as if had been hacked at by a knife—and a not-very-sharp one at that. (I found out later that was exactly what she had done.) She looked like one of those street punks you see bumming for coins and cigarettes.

  “Tory?”

  The light of my life spun around as if stung, her face contorted into an expression I cannot describe: wide-eyed shock, fear, anger, embarrassment all rolled into one emotional mess.

  Tory wobbled, and I leapt forward to catch her.

  “I always feel most at peace with a violin in my hand. I can’t imagine life without playing. It also seems that the only times I get myself in trouble are when I’m not holding a violin”. (She laughs uproariously.) “Well, that is usually the case!”

  —Victoria Morgan, from an interview in Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine

  Chapter 19

  ROCKY

  It wasn’t like in the movies where, with the grace of Fred Astaire, the hero catches the damsel. Tory wasn’t up to Ginger, either, and came down on me like a bag of wet cement. I wound up cushioning her fall simply by managing to be underneath her. The carpet didn’t save me from seeing stars—or maybe it was the back of Tory’s head hitting me right between the eyes.

  Elen appeared in the doorway and rushed forward when she saw what had happened. I handed her Tory’s Strad, which I’d managed to grab by the fingerboard a moment before it would have had an unfortunate date with destiny.

  “She must have fainted,” I said needlessly, struggling to get myself untangled from under my wife.

  Tory seemed to weigh no more than a good-sized child as I carried her to the bed. Elen tossed a thick comforter over her, since Tory’s lips were blue, and she was all-over goosebumps.

  I sat on the bed and looked down at this familiar stranger. “It was like she didn’t recognize me when I first walked into the room, and when she did, she seemed angry and terrified at the same time. Then her eyes rolled up into her head, and she collapsed.”

  “She’s done this a few times,” Elen told me. “Just keeled over. It’s happened twice since she found that damned maid’s body.”

  “Did you say she found the body?” I almost shouted with relief. “Dear God, you can’t imagine what I’ve been thinking.”

  Tory’s friend looked at me steadily. “She told me she went into the apartment and discovered this Thekla woman with a knife sticking out of her chest. It must have been gruesome.”

  “It was. I’ll instantly know the smell of blood until I draw my dying breath.”

  Tory let out a soft moan, and I looked up at Elen. “Maybe you could bring a damp cloth? It sounds as if she’s coming out of it.”

  Elen was barely out of the room when Tory’s eyes fluttered open. “Rocky? Is it really you?”

  I bent down and kissed her gently. “Yes, love, it’s really me.”

  “But how did you find me?”

  “Elen came to my hotel to ask for help. She’s worried about you. We all are.”

  “Is Roddy here, too?”

  “No, he’s off with a friend. I didn’t know how to reach him.”

  Elen came back into the room and handed me a cloth, which I placed on Tory’s forehead.

  “You’re a lying bitch,” Tory told her, but she was smiling. “I knew I shouldn’t trust you!” Then she looked up at me again. “Well, now that you’ve seen I’m all right, you can go. Far away. Fast.”

  “And why is that?” I asked evenly.

  “Because I’m bad news. I get people killed. It isn’t safe to be around me.”

  “It’s never been safe to be around you, my dear,” I said lightly, but then added with more seriousness, “Look, I know you’re upset, Tory. I was at that apartment where the baron’s maid was murdered. It was pretty ghastly.”

  “You were? When?”

  “Right after you. In fact, I think you almost ran me over as you were leaving.”

  “That was you on the stairs? Jesus! I thought it was the cops—or the murderer coming back to get me.” She stopped for a moment with an odd expression on her face. “What the heck were you doing there anyway?”

  I told Tory and Elen the whole grim story, and I guess more of my anger and frustration at the lost opportunity spilled out than I realized, because Tory reached up and touched my cheek.

  “You still care, don’t you?”

  “Of course, I still care! What a stupid thing to say! How could I not care?”

  “Because of all the undeserved grief I’ve caused you—especially now. That man was not only in my bed, but he was naked, and I promised you that would never happen again.” Tory shook her head sadly. “Rocky, you don’t deserve what’s happened, and I don’t want you dragged into this. And Elen, you’ve done enough.”

  “Don’t you realize you need our help more than ever?” Elen interjected.

  “Neither of you need the grief, Elen. I had decided on leaving as soon as you went to sleep tonight. Now I suppose I’ll have to hit you both over the head and run away while you’re out cold.”

  “Tory,” I said, “this is absolutely nuts! You can’t stay away from the police forever. Surely you see that. I have a lawyer, a very good lawyer, and he’ll—”

  “No,” Tory said firmly. “No lawyer, no cops, no jail cells. I can’t face it. I’d rather die than be locked up.”

  “But you don’t remember anything clearly except waking up next to that bloody body! Maybe you didn’t kill him.”

  “Oh, come off it!” Tory said angrily. “The news reports say they found my fingerprints all over the knife. The cops certainly think I did it, and that’s all that counts, isn’t it?” Tory rolled onto her side, with her back to me. “Now just get out! I’m tired of you always meddling in what I do and making me feel stupid with your accusations. Go away! I don’t ever want to see you again!”

  “But that’s ridiculous, Tory! You would never...”

  “Go, Rocky! Just get out!”

  The room was silent for several seconds before I said, “I’ll be right back,” and signalling for Elen to follow, she and I left the room. Tory didn’t move.

  In the living room, I paced up and down agitatedly for several minutes, thinking. Elen sat on the sofa with her legs tucked underneath her, saying nothing.

  “Is this the way she’s been behaving?” I asked finally.

  She thought for a moment. “Yes, but she’s been getting worse since I brought her back here last night.”

  I walked into the bedroom again, shutting the door behind me.

  Tory lay in the same position I’d left her, except that her shoulders were shaking. Sitting down on the bed, I propped up a pillow and leaned against the h
eadboard.

  She snuffled, then asked without turning to look at me, “You’re still here?”

  “For the duration,” I answered softly.

  She rolled over suddenly, and wrapping her arms tightly around me, pressed her face against my side. I stroked what was left of Tory’s hair until her sobbing slowed and eventually stopped.

  She turned her head and gazed up at me. The black smudges under her eyes, the hollow, haunted look pierced my heart. “I’ve lost my ability to play, Rocky. My gift is gone.”

  “Elen told me. That’s understandable, with all—”

  “No! You don’t understand. My violin might as well be a two by four in my hands for all the good I can do with it! There’s no music singing in my head. It just...stopped. You of all people should be able to imagine what that’s like!”

  “I’m sure it’s temporary. You’ve been through an awful lot.”

  “But what if it isn’t? What if I’ll never be able to play again? I cannot face that.”

  I stroked her cheek and kissed the top of her head. “Nonsense. You’ve been through more than I can imagine, but I know your spirit. This is just a very bad time, but you’ll bounce back. You’ll see!”

  Tory turned her head, staring up at the ceiling for several minutes before speaking again. “You know—and I don’t want you to be hurt by what I’m going to tell you—when I first met you, I only intended you to be a fun stop along the way. Nothing more.

  “Don’t look at me like that! You must have known or at least guessed. I wasn’t very serious about anything when I was at Curtis—except playing the violin. I certainly wasn’t serious about any person. Guys were just a way for me to relieve...the itch I had, a great way to pass a few entertaining hours, nothing more. There wasn’t room in my life for anything more.

  “Then I heard the passion in your trumpet solo in that Pines of Rome performance we gave. That kind of alerted me to your presence. When I gave you a close look at that Christmas party, those sexy eyes and that dark, Magyar complexion—I even thought that nose you always say is too large was horribly attractive—I said to myself, ‘Here’s a guy who might be really hot in the sack.’ So I made an easy decision and took you back to my apartment for a some fun.” Tory laughed ruefully. “Little did I know.

  “When I got you alone, you were nothing more than really nice. You actually wanted to talk about music and the things that mattered to me. No come-ons, no cheap moves. I knew what my reputation was, and I began to wonder if you were too good to be true. You didn’t seem to be saying things I wanted to hear simply to make it easier to get me into bed, although, heaven knows, that’s exactly what I wanted you to do. Do you remember?”

  I smiled pensively at the awkward memory. “Yes, Tory, I remember.”

  “After that, I kept expecting one day I would wake up and it would be over, that I would be ready to move on. What I didn’t realize was that you’d been quietly putting down roots in my heart.

  “In those first years, even when I couldn’t help myself and took someone else to bed to...to help ‘scratch my itch’, you never completely gave up on me. I know I pushed you perilously close several times, but you never went over that edge. Why is that? Why have you always stayed loyal, even though I didn’t deserve it?”

  There could be only one answer. “Because I love you,” I said simply.

  Tory smiled sadly, then tightly hugged my middle. “You’ve always been my Rock. Can I rely on you to do one more thing for me?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “Get Elen to take me somewhere and drop me off, then drive away without looking back. I may not be able to face the possibility of being locked up, but the possibility of you and Elen being locked up because of me is even more unbearable.”

  Again the answer was a simple one. “No. I refuse—as I’m sure Elen will. We have the best criminal lawyer in Austria willing to take on your case. All we have to do is pick up the phone, and he’ll arrange everything.”

  “But you’ll all get sucked into my troubles!” Tory protested.

  “I must admit that the cops would love to catch me with ‘the enemy’—meaning you, my dear, but if Schultz—that’s our lawyer— ushers you into police headquarters, everything will be okay.”

  “What about my parents?” Concern showed on Tory’s face. “How are they taking this? I couldn’t bring myself to call them.”

  “They’re doing about as well as can be expected.”

  “Lots of yelling from Dad?”

  “You bet. Your mom is worried but seems reasonably calm. Don’t even ask about my family.” I sat up a bit to get more comfortable. “Now, how about letting me get in touch with Schultz?”

  “No... I don’t want you—”

  “Tory, I’m not leaving, and you’re not big enough to throw me out.”

  “Rocky, I’ve been trying to face up to this for six days now, and I can’t do it. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of this high cliff, and you’re asking me to jump off.”

  I actually laughed, feeling as if a huge load had lifted. “Then we’ll hold hands and jump off together. Schultz will take care of everything. It’ll be easy. You’ll see.”

  ***

  It turned out that Schultz was not sitting by his phone waiting for my call, as I’d promised Tory. He was sitting at the Vienna State Opera watching a performance of Don Giovanni (how appropriate). I asked his maid to have him call as soon as he stuck his nose in the door. Looking at my watch, I figured that would be sometime around eleven, unless he stopped for coffee and pastry at the Hotel Sacher, located just behind the opera house. His ample girth suggested he might.

  I told Tory all this when I returned to the room and sat down on the bed.

  She looked at me and smiled sadly. “I’ve been nothing but trouble: selfish, self-absorbed, not there when you needed me, and I won’t even go into the other stuff! Now I’ve done something far worse than anything that’s come before. I don’t deserve your trust and I don’t deserve your love.”

  I shushed her. “Elen told me a bit about what happened when she came to see me at the hotel. I cannot begin to imagine what it’s been like for you—but you watch. In a short time, we’ll start getting this mess straightened out, and soon everything will be back to normal.”

  “Nothing about me is normal any more!”

  Feeling Tory’s pulse start to race, I kissed her forehead and made shushing noises, trying to comfort her. Gradually, she relaxed but clung to me like a frightened child.

  “Tory, with what you’ve been through, you have to expect there to be emotional repercussions. You know as well as I do that your musical ability couldn’t have vanished. With some medical help, you’ll soon be—”

  My little pep talk didn’t get any farther because of a commotion that sounded as if it were coming from the hallway outside Elen’s apartment. The voices I heard were German, angry German, but one voice stood out from the others, and it belonged to Oberstleutnant Müller.

  ***

  The worldwide tabloid industry got some swell pics that night, courtesy of a paparazzo who had the good fortune to be listening in on one of the police bands at the right time. A news crew also happened to be in the area on their way to a traffic pile-up, and they got some terrific footage. Three-quarters of the earth’s population has supposedly seen it by now. My mother swears she’ll never be able to hold her head up on Flatbush Avenue again.

  The thing was a disaster from the outset. At one end of the apartment we had a rabid cop and his henchmen arguing, and at the other, one of the world’s top violinists, a suspected double murderer on the verge of a complete breakdown. Elen and I were stuck in between trying to make some sense of the mess.

  I hurriedly explained to Tory about the man whose voice I had identified.

  She put her head in her hands and moaned, “What have I done? I should have kept running last night. It was so stupid to come back here!”

  “You had no choice, Tory. It seems like you’
ve never had any choices in this. They’re going to be barging through that door any moment, you know,” I added, understating the obvious. “It looks as if we’re just going to have to take our lumps and make the best of it.”

  Tory looked back at me with palpable fear in her eyes.

  “Right, then,” I said with my hand on the bedroom door, “wish me luck. And lock this behind me, okay?”

  Müller turned and glared the moment I appeared.

  I tried the casual approach. “So, Oberstleutnant, we meet again.”

  Wrong idea. The Austrian police official jumped down my throat with both feet. “Where is your wife?” he shouted.

  “Don’t worry. She’s here,” I said soothingly. “We were just trying to arrange the mechanics of her turning herself in when you arrived.”

  Müller ignored what I had said, barked out something in rapidfire German to three cops behind him, then made a move in the direction of the room I’d just left. Elen slid in next to me and we stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the hallway, barring the gate against the Österreichische Horde.

  “Just a minute!” I shouted. “I told you my wife is willing to give herself up! Can’t we discuss this in a civilized—”

  That’s as far as I got. One of the cops tried to push me out of the way, so I pushed back. Then two of them plastered me against the wall, and I got a good “softening up” elbow in the gut which knocked the wind out of me. Elen grabbed at the biggest cop who simply swept her out of the way with one meaty arm, clearing the way for his boss. I couldn’t do a thing about it.

  At the end of the hall, Müller banged hard on the door three times. “Open up! This is the police, and we know that you are in there, Victoria Morgan!”

  And I’ll bet that he’s been waiting all his life to say that, I thought as I struggled to regain my breath.

  Nothing happened. Müller stepped back and one of the younger officers stepped forward to apply a little shoulder action to the stubborn portal. This distracted the cop watching me, so I also headed down the hall just as the young cop, despite the protestations of Elen, took a run at the door with his shoulder.