Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  Crystabelle Challis monopolized the conversation during dinner and everyone, with the possible exception of Ailsa, seemed to be charmed by her. Certainly, Passau thought that the elegant Rita Crest paled beside this slightly vulgar but animated blonde.

  “Stefan loved to cook,” Passau said, in the present. “If I recall, we had an incredible meal that night. Exceptional, but then dinner with Stefan was always something to remember.

  “Rita hardly said a dozen words to me, though I was seated next to her. She thanked me for saving her performance by getting the five old musicians to play properly, but I got the impression that Stefan had reminded her to do this. She seemed faraway. Wrapped up in some other thought. I know I suspected that she had a lover who had been left at home.

  “Anyway—and this is strange—when dinner was over, Stefan suggested that we should go out on the terrace for coffee. She lagged behind—Rita, I mean. Everyone else got up and the men were being polite and ushering Ailsa and Crystabelle from the room. Rita just sat there.”

  “Shall we join the others?” Passau asked her.

  She moved very slowly, as though she really had to think hard about what she should be doing. Then, as she rose, she turned and spoke very quietly, “In about ten minutes I am going to plead faintness and ask you to drive me home. Is that all right? You have got a car, haven’t you? Stefan said you had.” She smiled, and for the first time that evening she seemed to light up. Mischief played around her smile and in her eyes.

  “Sure I have a car. You really want me to drive you home?”

  She nodded. “We have to give him the excuse to break it up and say he will drive Crys home. You know about Stefan and Crys, of course?”

  “Herb, what could I say? I said, of course. I had no idea about Stefan and Crys. But I had to go along with it. I tell you that thing between Stefan and Crys was a big secret in Hollywood for years. Eventually it got blown, and part of that was my fault, but, Herbie, my goodness, I remember I really had the hots for Crys that night. Rita, lovely as she was, seemed somehow out of reach. I didn’t even think of making a pass. You know she had bad skin? It doesn’t show in her movies, and I hadn’t noticed it when she was doing the scene below my cabin, but she had actor’s skin. It’s the makeup. Or, rather, it used to be the makeup. They do it better now, but in those days they didn’t really know how to feed the skin.”

  On the terrace, Max was now holding forth. Crys had silenced him throughout dinner. Now he was determined to have his say. Passau could only vaguely remember what the studio head talked about—“He was very good at manipulation, and running the studio, but, my God, Herb, he was a bore.”

  Crys Challis was making little muttered asides as Max spoke—

  “What I am really looking for now,” he droned, “is a first-rate story about the War Between the States. Something which will appeal to patriots …”

  “Which patriots?” murmured Crys. “You’ll have to make two movies, one for the South and one for the North. The South doesn’t realize it’s over yet. They still keep Confederate flags in their attics.”

  “I see us shooting the battle scenes on the actual sites,” Max continued.

  “And we’ll start another fucking war,” from Crys.

  “I want look-alikes for Lee, Grant, Jackson.”

  “Would that be Hyme Lee, Israel Grant and Moysha Jackson?”

  “Shhhh.” Greif patted her hand, and Passau felt a little twinge of jealousy.

  “Would you look for the right story, Stefan? I see this as a perfect picture for you.”

  “We’ve already had Birth of a Nation, Max. It’s too soon to play with that theme.”

  “Birth of a Nation had no voices and effects. I want to hear the great speeches and smell the powder, get my eardrums pounded by the guns.”

  “I’ll pound your eardrums for nothing,” chirped Crys. “Yesterday I met a man who claimed he had a leading role in Birth of a Nation. Said he was the little boy who ran for the doctor.”

  “Oh, Lord,” from Rita who had hardly spoken all evening.

  Passau looked at her and she had gone very pale. Her eyes were glazed. She looked really ill.

  “You okay, Rita?” Stefan was on his feet and feeling her forehead. “You’re hot.”

  “A little faint. I think I have a migraine coming on.”

  There were expressions of sympathy.

  “A cotton sack with an ounce of cumin,” Ailsa said. “You should hang it around your neck always next to your skin. My mother swore by that remedy.”

  Crys, sotto voce, replied that most witches prescribed an ounce of cumin next to the skin. Especially for migraine.

  “Lie down and drink some cold herbal tea, Rita. That’s what my mother always did.” Max, the ever tactful.

  “I think I shall have to go home. No, I don’t want to break up the party, Crys. Could … ?”

  “I’ll drive her home,” Passau heard himself saying. “Just tell me where she lives. I’ll drive her.”

  “Herb, I must have been convincing. She muttered something about Laurel Canyon. Next thing I knew we were out in the car.”

  Passau drove out onto the road. Rita lolled next to him in the front seat, then, quite suddenly she sat upright and laughed. “How was I?”

  “Jesus!” He braked violently. “You really okay?”

  “Of course. I asked how was I?”

  “I believed you. I thought you had really become sick.”

  “That’s acting, Lou. I may call you Lou?”

  “Sure. Sure, why not.”

  “Good. I’ll give you directions. I want you to stay for a while. I have a nice piano and some of the Liszt transcriptions for four hands. We could play a little.”

  “Herbie, I was thunderstruck. She stopped there and then being a mouse. Totally in command. And her house was lovely. She also had taste and, my God, she could play. We played all the Liszt transcriptions of Wagner. She knew music, and we played. How we played.”

  “You not feel strange, Lou?” Herbie spoke very softly, as though he was not really addressing the Maestro.

  “Strange?”

  “You’d spent so much time on your own, in that cabin. Now you were out in the big wild world and talking to people,”

  “No. No, not strange. I tell you though, Herb, I felt different. I felt fully grown. An adult, as though I was now truly a sophisticated adult.”

  Herbie gave a little nod of understanding.

  “She really was a very good pianist. We played the Paganini improvisations also.”

  “Liszt didn’t write any variations for four hands, Lou.”

  “No, but there are many arrangements of his transcriptions. Arrangements for duets. Ask anyone. That’s what we played. Then we talked and she gave me a drink.”

  “And you enjoyed that?”

  “The drink?”

  “No, talking to the lovely Rita Crest.”

  “I tell you what I enjoyed most, Herb.”

  “What?”

  “I enjoyed most when she took hold of me and rammed her tongue down my throat. That was the best part on the night we met.”

  Silence, then Lou humming softly to himself. Herbie recognized the tune. Lou Passau was humming Liszt’s Liebesträume No. 3. The most famous one, known by every piano teacher and pupil in the world. The Dream of Love.

  “I HEARD THE LAST few minutes of your afternoon session.” Pucky was peeling potatoes. She planned to use the frozen cod she had bought. “Cod, fries and beans,” she said. “Fish and chips.”

  Herbie nodded. He was not a great fish-lover, but that did not mean he was a hero. Already he had learned that you had to be a great hero if you disagreed with Pucky, particularly if she had made up her mind about something.

  “So, you heard of the little frivol going on between Stefan Greif and the Challis actress?”

  “Mmm-hu.”

  “I see her once. Challis, I mean. She was very old lady. Retired to London, you know. This would be early fifti
es, I suppose. In a restaurant. After I saw her I watched all her movies, late night on the television. She was quite funny.”

  “Dated.”

  “Aren’t we all, Pucky? Aren’t we all?”

  “Not you, Herb. You’ll never date.” She turned towards him. “You know what I liked best in the latest chapter of the Confessions of St. Lou Passau, Musician and Lecher?”

  “What?”

  “This bit.” She stepped towards him, snaked an arm around his neck, pulled him to her so that he thought he would come out the other side, and kissed him, long on the mouth, her tongue penetrating his lips and moving in and out like a piston. He was so stunned he did not even kiss her back.

  “Now,” she said. “Go talk to the Maestro again.”

  Slowly, he walked, slightly stooping, from the kitchen, his brain in a whirl and his neglected body humming more than the Liebesträume.

  Passau enjoyed his fish and chips, particularly when Pucky gave him the malt vinegar with which he covered his plate, so that the food floated in a quarter of an inch of the stuff.

  “You’ll do for him. The man’ll get ulcers with all the vinegar,” Herbie chided in the kitchen as they washed up and he gave her the final instructions for tomorrow—getting the Macintosh computer, the software and her wigs and things in Richmond.

  Since she had kissed him, Herbie could not look her in the face. As she was turning to go to bed, he coughed. Then—

  “Why you do it, Pucky?”

  “Do what?”

  “Stick your tongue down my throat and make me lose my mind?”

  “Because you’re exactly who you are. Hang around: there’s more where that came from.”

  Herbie returned to setting the alarms, muttering, “My mistress with a monster is in love.”

  (3)

  BIG HERBIE DID NOT sleep well. Part of his mind strayed first to Pucky Curtiss, while the remainder did some serious thinking about Lou Passau’s story. The facts, following his arrival in Hollywood, were already well recorded in the two Passau biographies, with some odd paragraphs and footnotes in Stefan Greif’s autobiography, and in the well-researched book on the actress, Rita Crest, Crest of the Wave. In the event, none of these books provided the unvarnished truth—mainly, it was suggested, in fear of litigation by Louis Passau.* Herbie did not have to be told that the descriptions had been well sanitized. There had always been some kind of mystery surrounding the couple, though the books all agreed that it was one of the famous love affairs of the Hollywood thirties and, like all truly heartrending love stories, it had the makings of tragedy. His mind toppled back towards Pucky Curtiss. He saw that delicious bottom encased in jeans; then her little pink tongue. After that it was not much of a leap to the tongue probing his mouth and, from there, Herbie dropped into the realms of fantasy.

  Pucky seemed terribly young to Herbie. Young, and in a way fragile. This did not stop his thoughts conjuring up pictures of Ms. Curtiss in various states of undress, and in a good many situations which kept sleep at bay for a considerable time.

  Finally he dropped into a shallow sleep and dreamed. He dreamed that he was in the house in Berlin, with the Dürer Avenging Angel, and the red glasses. Lou was there with Rita Crest, and he was with Pucky. It became a ménage quatre and the four of them seemed constantly on the brink of performing some highly dangerous acrobatics. Then Rita walked through a door, and her face had turned into a skull, and finally into another face he recognized only too easily. Herbie woke, sweating, hearing the steady rhythm of a bolero which he quickly realized was his heart. Thankfully he fell back into a dreamless sleep.

  While he slept, things were happening in England which would have a profound effect on Kruger’s future—and not just Kruger’s, but Pucky’s and, not least, the world of Maestro Louis Passau.

  In London, the CSIS had been off on a goodwill tour, meeting his opposite numbers from several European countries. He went with a full retinue, including Young Worboys, so, for all reasonable purposes, Art Railton had been left minding the store. When the balloon had gone up, forty-eight hours before—and twenty-four in advance of Pucky Curtiss’ telephone calls—Art had worked on the hoof. But the day before that? Well, it was unexpected and required a lot of digging, for what happened was in some ways a fall into darkness, back to the bleakest days of the Cold War.

  They got Art Railton out of bed at four thirty, London time. There was little he could do but wait for the Chief to return, and warn Pucky, when she called, that on no account were they to let Sunray, a.k.a. Louis Passau, anywhere near the lads from Langley.

  On the Chief’s return, Art Railton was closeted with him and Young Worboys for half a day. The encapsulated gist of the business was that the British Embassy in Bonn had received a walk-in. Years before, walk-in defectors were not uncommon, though they were always treated with wary suspicion and kid gloves. Since the recent official demise of communism they had expected a few, but nobody was hanging by their fingernails. Defectors, as everyone was told, were unlikely until the situation in Moscow became more clear.

  This particular walk-in was described as a lady in her late forties who claimed to have worked for many years with the KGB units operating out of the Karlshorst headquarters in the old East Berlin. More, she claimed that she knew where some bodies were buried—for “bodies” read deep dark secrets which, even now, would make interesting analysis.

  One thing had hit Arthur Railton straight between the eyes. The lady claimed that, up until last year—even after the infamous Berlin Wall fell—she had been responsible for assisting in debriefs of a Russian penetration known to Moscow as Kingfisher. She also did more than hint at a CIA knowledge and involvement in some of the aforesaid Kingfisher’s dealings—an involvement the relatively new hierarchy at Langley would be happier without.

  Only after he had ordered Bonn to get the lady into the UK quietly and with haste, did Art Railton check the highest classified category database and type in her name—

  Ursula Zunder.

  It was like hitting a mother lode. The computer asked for his name, twice, then his clearance code. Once these had been typed in, the screen filled with the equivalent of thirty or forty pages of amber typescript.

  Ursula Zunder, one-time asset under network Schnitzer. Crypto: Electra. Then came the horrors, and Art recalled hearing the story—during some briefing—about Ursula Zunder and Herbie Kruger, who had, among other things, run the Schnitzer Group.

  Scales fell from Art’s eyes. This was the Ursula Zunder. The love of Big Herbie’s life. The love and his undoing. Ursula had been Kruger’s Judas, the cause of that incident they had all tried to forget—the time when Big Herbie had been in KGB custody for longer than anyone liked to admit.

  “So, here she is again, eh?” from the Chief who sounded bored, as though the vast changes in the former U.S.S.R. had taken some of the urgency out of living. Nothing, of course, could have been further from the truth.

  “She was taken down to Warminster last night, sir. Yes.” Art gave Worboys a sideways glance which said that Ms. Zunder was probably going to become a lot of trouble.

  “You’ve seen her, Arthur?”

  “Very briefly, sir.”

  “And what did she say to you?”

  “She asked where Herbie was—asked after him. She suggested that, should he still be in the field, he would be a marked man.”

  “Really? Now isn’t that interesting? And Ms. Curtiss gave you a friendly call, I see.”

  Art told him what advice had been given to Pucky, and that cheered him up. “You want to deal with the Zunder woman, or go off to the colonies and see what can be done for our large friend and his elderly subject?”

  “Really I’d like to do both, sir. But I don’t see how …”

  It was like talking to a plaster effigy. The Chief was faraway, his mind taking a short vacation on its own.

  Nobody, of course, at that moment knew of Herbie’s recurring dream. How, indeed, would they know that, years bef
ore, Ursula Zunder’s apartment in old East Berlin had contained the ruby glasses and the Dürer? Herbie had thought her dead from the early 1980s. Was she here now to perform some kind of penance? To atone for the chaos she had caused all those years ago?

  “SO, MAESTRO, you had a jolly night with the movie star. Then what did you do, move into her nice house?”

  They were at it again. Pucky had left for Richmond to do her shopping and Herbie was alone with Passau, sitting opposite him in the large library at the top of the house.

  Passau looked at him. Quizzical was the word that sprang into Herbie’s mind.

  “She was very straight about it,” Passau said.

  “About what? The sex?”

  “No, me moving in with her. She said no.”

  “That surprise you?”

  “Not really. In any case, she was some lady, and I felt … well, I felt I should really try and make the money to keep her. What did I know? The house was pretty nice. Luxurious even, but I thought … Anyway, when I left that morning she said she loved me.”

  “I’m frightened,” she said, standing in the large hallway. She wore a sheer silk robe with nothing under it. Louis Passau knew, because he had seen her put it on. It was four thirty in the morning. Chilly, and no sign of dawn. “It’s never happened to me quite like this,” she continued.

  “What?” Louis did not really understand what she was saying. His mind had strayed on to his surroundings. The house was very impressive, so he was torn between taking in the decor and feasting his eyes and mind on Rita.

  “Louis. Look …”she began. “I don’t know how to say this, it’s crazy …” Her right hand clasped at his left upper arm as though she did not want him to leave. Yet she had said he would have to go. “I must be at the studio by six thirty,” she whispered to him after the last time. Neither of them had enjoyed much sleep.