Maestro: 4 (The Herbie Kruger Novels)

by John Gardner

  “He also had links with the Manhattan Symphony …”

  Passau ignored that, riding over Herbie’s comment, as if it was not appropriate yet. “You see, Herb, I had been very careful. Moved the money around a good deal: split it up, opened several accounts, spread it thinly.”

  During the week before his meeting with Spinebrucker, Passau had closed most of his accounts, softened up a banker who was on the Friends of the Manhattan Symphony board, and presented to him a picture of great wealth.

  “I didn’t say any of it was Capone money, naturally.” Passau bounced on his chair, having fun. “Nor did I let anyone know any of it had come from Rita. The papers in Hollywood had been muzzled about Rita’s will, and her wealth.” He shook his head. “You know, her father thought it was not really gentlemanly to have money. An odd throwback. Anyway, as far as the bank was concerned, it was a personal fortune: a family fortune.” He gave a toothy grin that spoke of dental work costing thousands of dollars. “Confidentiality,” he laughed aloud. “Confidentiality means nothing. I imagine by the time I walked into Martin’s office he knew what was in the bank—down to the last cent. I left the lawyers’ office that day as a valued—very valued—customer.”

  Passau put everything in Spinebrucker’s hands. By the evening he was certain that practically the entire upper echelon of the Friends of the Manhattan Symphony knew he was a multimillionaire. Better still, that his money was old money, which made him respectable. He went straight back to the Lexington Avenue apartment and called Androv. He wanted a meeting with his boss. That very day. As quickly as possible.

  “You would have been beside yourself, Herb. He must’ve already got the news that I was not the struggling movie composer he imagined me to be. He was full of that nauseating camaraderie you get from people who think they’re on to a good thing. I had an envelope containing forty big glossy pictures of him with the little girls. I took it with me, of course. Went round to his place like the speed of light.”

  Androv greeted him like a long-lost friend: an old and valued intimate. There was even champagne on ice. The tubby little man, with his too-perfect head of curly hair, assumed Passau wanted to talk about the winter season of concerts. He even began ticking off details, saying they would share the podium. Fifty-fifty. He also mentioned that the Markus-Cohens had been in touch that morning. They were holding a private dance the following week, in honor of their daughter Harriet’s twenty-fourth birthday, and they wanted to be sure that Androv brought the nice Mr. Passau with him.

  Louis sat there, among the antiques and paintings which were Androv’s pride. When the Maestro began to run out of words Louis calmly opened his briefcase, took out the envelope and began to place the photographs, one at a time face upwards on the floor.

  To begin with, Androv did not take in what he was seeing. His brain refused to process the information, and his eyes just did not believe what they saw. He looked down at the photographs, looked away, gave a nervous laugh, looked down for a second time.

  He became very still. The silence grew, like a great thunderhead of wrath which would blow the room to fragments.

  When Androv spoke, it was an anticlimax. “Where did you … ? Why … ?” Then the full realization, “How much do you want, you shit … ! You snake … ! You … ! How much?” His head was thrown back, and what he lacked in height was made up for by the pose of total arrogance.

  “How much?” Passau asked smoothly. “How much, Boris? I don’t want money.”

  It took a few seconds for it to sink in. Then the full force of his situation exploded in his head. First, he began to shout—“Damned if I’ll let you … ! Do what you like with the damned pictures … ! Nobody’s going to believe you … ! Do what you like … !”

  Passau slowly began to pick the photographs from the floor. “Okay, Boris. If you want a really hard time …”

  Androv had turned, striding across the room, his shoulders set square. He seemed to be taking paces unnaturally long for his short legs.

  For a moment, Passau thought his bluff had been called. That Androv was mad enough to risk exposure. His eyes were still on the photographs when Androv launched himself back across the room. This time there was a long knife in his right hand, the blade flashing as he raised his arm over his head.

  Louis moved, motivated by the fear that Boris had gone crazy. He managed to block the sweeping arm with his own forearm. He twisted aside, rolling out of the enraged conductor’s reach, hearing the knife thud onto the floor.

  Androv was fighting for his life. Passau reached out and grabbed for both of the man’s wrists, but his hands were shrugged aside. He twisted away and was half onto his feet when his adversary came in close, grappling with him on the floor.

  This time he managed to grasp the right wrist. Androv had the knife again, struggling to free his hand and bring the blade down into Passau’s throat. As he fought, Louis began to cringe away, the point of the knife only inches from his windpipe as they rolled, locked together, across the carpet.

  Finally, panting and straining, Passau threw Androv’s body from him, brought his knee into the man’s groin and wrenched the wrist so that the knife fell from his hand. He slammed his knee up again, catching Androv below the jaw. This time, the conductor stayed down, winded, groaning and whimpering.

  “The photographs …” Passau towered above him, the pictures in one hand and the knife in the other. He was also gasping for breath. It had been a short confrontation, but he was trembling from head to foot. His limbs seemed somehow to be divorced from the rest of his body. In many ways none of it was real to him. “The photographs go to the newspapers, together with a report, at noon tomorrow,” he said between gulps for air. “At the same time, copies will be delivered to each and every member of the FMS.” Another gasp. “Boris, this is about the fitness to be in charge. You are a pervert and not fit to clean streets, let alone head the wonderful organization which you have built. Well, you built it, now you’ve destroyed it. Name me as your successor and nothing will happen. The photographs and negatives will be returned to you. You have until noon tomorrow.” He walked slowly from the room, half expecting Androv to jump him again.

  “You know the rest, Herbie. Need I say more?”

  “For the record, Lou. Just for the record.”

  Boris Androv called a press conference that same night. He pleaded ill health and his doctor’s advice. The whole thing hit the papers the next morning. The man who had built the undisputedly best symphony orchestra in the United States had resigned his directorship and handed over all rights to his Associate Director, Louis Passau.

  “I never saw him again, Herb. Never.”

  “He died, Lou. One month later according to the biographies.”

  “Sure.” Like swatting a fly. “There was irony. He actually was sick. Fatally sick. Cancer.” Passau gave a little smile. “If I had waited, what then? Certainly little Boris Androv would never have allowed me to take over. If I had waited … ?”

  “But you didn’t wait, Lou. It all happened. You had control of the Manhattan. Then there was the great row.”

  “Row?”

  “In the books it was a row.”

  “What row?”

  “Firing over thirty members of the orchestra. Firing them, changing the orchestra’s name, and starting work on the rebuilding of what became the Passau Center.”

  “That was no row, Herb. It was a small disagreement. The people I fired were all Androv’s musicians. Men and women I’d had trouble with already. Their contracts had run out, so I didn’t renew them. I simply hired new people, better people. My people.”

  He also went to the zoning and building authorities, with plans to restructure the old theater which was the Manhattan’s headquarters. By 1938 it was completed: a great four-tiered edifice; very modern, looking like the superstructure of an ocean liner, with rehearsal facilities, concert hall, an opera house and offices. It was the most modern concert complex in New York. Possibly in the world.
People still went to just look around it. The views from the huge long curving windows were incredibly beautiful. If you stood in one of the sweeping, half-moon shaped spaces outside the concert hall or the opera house, you had the impression of being on some majestic airship, or futuristic aircraft, for you seemed to be floating over the city. It was a trompe l’oeil conceived by Passau himself, and, naturally, the building was renamed The Passau Center for the Performance of Musical Arts. At the time, people wrote that this was an ugly, tautologous name for such an amazing building. Most called it simply the Passau Center.

  While the building was being erected and refurbished, the orchestra toured the United States and Europe. Within a year, it had a new name—The Passau Symphony Orchestra of America. Louis Passau had arrived, and was hailed from that moment as America’s greatest asset in serious music.

  He was invited to the White House on several occasions. The orchestra gave a charity concert in Washington, D.C., and the President and Mrs. Roosevelt were the Maestro’s greatest fans. In London, there was a Royal Command performance: Louis was presented to the king and queen; he traveled to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. He met every living composer and symphonic conductor of note. He was invited, though not asked to perform, by the rising Nazi regime in Germany, and did not cross into Russia, though he was invited—by Stalin, no less.

  “Hitler’s people,” Passau spat at Herbie. “They gave me permission to come in, but barred me from conducting. My orchestra could give a concert, but I could not be on the podium. So I didn’t even go home. Didn’t even see what was left of my family.”

  After Europe, there were other concerts in the United States: special benefits, dedications to charities. The dazzling, never-ending firework that was Louis Passau began to throw splashes of color into the air. A legend had been born and had also come of age in a few short years.

  “You also married Veronica Howells-Duncan, Lou.”

  “Sure. Yes. We married. I made an honest woman of her. She was very happy. Doted on me, Herb.”

  “You weren’t happy?”

  “I was like a pig in shit, Herb. I had Veronica, a new apartment on Fifth Avenue, and the refurbished place on Lexington. I used to see Harriet Markus-Cohen there every Thursday afternoon when I was in New York. But we traveled a lot in those first years. Veronica stuck to me like a leech. Couldn’t get rid of her.” He beamed across at Herbie. “Until I bought Woodstoke Hall. That was a masterstroke. Kept her busy for a long time.”

  That was also in 1938, Herbie recalled. The same year as the Passau Center was opened with a gala concert. Woodstoke Hall was a ten-acre estate near Rhinebeck, looking out onto the Hudson Valley. A wonderful house that some tycoon had brought from England in 1901: transporting it brick by brick, stone by stone, and timber by timber, each numbered and marked so that it could be rebuilt in a spectacular location. It was a fifteenth-century manor house. Even the windows were original, though the tycoon had improved the heating system and put in electricity before he was wiped out in the Wall Street crash.

  Passau gave his young wife a free hand and she made it into the ultimate showplace. Louis talked about it now, on Captiva Island, with a certain fondness, though Veronica had kept it in the divorce settlement.

  Then he seemed to dry up, looking moodily out to sea until Herbie asked, “What then, Lou?”

  “I don’t want to talk no more, Herb. Let’s listen to some music and have lunch.”

  It was barely noon. Passau was either being lazy or stalling. Herb plumped for the latter for the Maestro had a brooding look, the kind he now recognized as the prelude to a moment of truth.

  “We go on a little longer, Lou. Hardly been at it for two hours. So you were a busy man, a famous man with a wife and a mistress. …”

  “Several mistresses. You think I just played around with Harriet?”

  “Okay, several mistresses. You were king of the castle, Lou, so what next?”

  “Not much. I was launched. I became a different person. You change when it all happens, you know. That’s what they mean by the secret of success. The secret is that you change. Worked hard, played hard. It’s in the two books. You read it, you know it.”

  Kruger suddenly pounced with a question from the past, and scored a goal, hit the bull’s-eye, won more than a Kewpie doll. What was it, Passau had said? “I didn’t even go home. Didn’t even see what was left of my family.”

  “You haven’t mentioned your cousins lately, Lou. Your long-lost cousins. Remember? David, Rebecca and Rachel. You think about them, get in touch with them again?”

  There was an extraordinarily long pause.

  “You a fucking mind reader?” Passau did not even glance in his direction.

  “What next, Lou? What about your beloved cousins?”

  “I wrote when I had time.” He seemed to have recovered his equilibrium. “David wrote now and again. I pleaded with them to let me bring them over. We like it here, they wrote back. Everything is fine. Sure it’s fine, I wrote them. With Hitler in power it must be great. Laugh every minute.”

  “So you were concerned about your cousins?”

  “Concerned? What’s concerned, Herbie? Went out of my mind with worry. I threatened, tried to seduce. Everything to get them out. I even wrote to people I knew had pull in Germany. Why did I even bother?” He still would not meet Kruger’s eye.

  “And, Lou?”

  “Okay.” A long, shuddering sigh.

  Here we go, Herbie thought. Jackpot.

  “It was a Thursday.” Long pause. For a moment Herbie thought he would not continue. Then—

  “I remember it was a Thursday. …”

  “The day you used to meet Harriet in the Lexington Avenue apartment. Thursday afternoon.”

  “That’s right. I remember also, I was working on the schedules for the winter concerts. It was late September. Thirty-nine. Hitler had invaded Poland. Britain and France had declared war. In Europe the balloon was going up. …”

  “And?”

  “My God, I’d completely forgotten Sylvia. …”

  “Sylvia,” Herbie repeated. “Who is Sylvia, what is she, Lou?”

  “I had this secretary called Sylvia. Redhead. Spectacular legs …”

  “Lou! Don’t digress.”

  “Who’s digressing. I’m reminiscing. Sylvia Lebwitz. Oh, Herb, Sylvia was something else. … We’d do it in my office, door locked and I’d bend her back over the desk. Oh, she nearly cut me in half that Sylvia. …”

  “Lou! Get on with it.”

  More silence. “Thursday morning. Late September. Sylvia comes in. Says two guys’ve come in to see me. No appointment. Want to talk about some charity concert. I even remember their names. Mr. Bukholtz and Mr. Haaven. Just two ordinary guys. You couldn’t tell, Herb. They didn’t even look sinister, like in the movies. Open-faced. Bukholtz was running a bit to fat maybe. Haaven was fit, younger than Bukholtz.”

  “What can I do for you, gentlemen?” Passau stood behind his desk, arms open, welcoming them in, gesturing to chairs.

  They sat, unsmiling, but looking somehow expectant. Sylvia, her of the legs and sexual squeeze, closed the door.

  “You didn’t return to your home country, Mr. Passau,” Bukholtz said.

  “When you were in Europe, you didn’t come to Passau, Mr. Passau, or should I call you Mr. Packensteiner?” from Haaven.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  Both men smiled: open and frank smiles, but smiles which sent a spike of ice into Passau’s neck.

  “You still have relatives in Passau?” Bukholtz again.

  “These relatives.” Haaven came towards the desk and, like a magician with a deck of cards, flipped three photographs onto the blotter. The pictures were of David, Rachel and Rebecca.

  “Things are not so rosy for your relatives in Passau these days.” Just a bare, freezing statement.

  “No, I …”

  “Things can be made a little easier, if you decide to
cooperate, Herr Packensteiner. Things can become rosy again.”

  He stopped speaking, a gout of emotion welling to his face and eyes. For a moment he looked all of his ninety years: old, defeated, sick.

  “Come on, Lou. It’s hard, I think, but come on. Tell me. What next?”

  “They wanted me to serve the Führer and the Fatherland. If I did as they asked, things would be made easier for my cousins.”

  Outside it had started to rain again.

  (11)

  “JUST LIKE THAT? AS EASY as that?” Herbie sat to one side so he could see Passau’s face, and keep an eye on the windows at the same time. Not that he could see anything now, for the rain was monsoonlike.

  “Yes, just like that. …” Passau began. “No! No, of course not just like that. What d’you think I am? No, before the pictures came out there was a lot of talk.”

  Bukholtz and Haaven did an entire double act before going into the main spiel. “I put it in a capsule for you, Herb. Made it easy.”

  “Well, take it out of the capsule. Tell me what you remember.”

  When they first came in they actually announced that they were “from the old country.” They talked about times past and times present. There was nothing sinister.

  “That was what threw me, Herb. Looking back on it, people got stereotypes fixed in their minds. Nazis, the SS, Gestapo, whatever, were presented as unyielding, tough guys. Mostly sadists. Unpleasant characters. These two were nice, quiet fellows, like they lived in the suburbs, in neat little houses with neat little wives: one dinner party a month, and fuck the wife Friday nights, regular as clockwork. They seemed ineffectual.”

  It was the key to all operations like this. Herbie knew because he had a great deal of experience. You come on as the mark’s friend—understanding, on the same wavelength. Or, in Kruger’s case, a bit muddled: a dumb ox who was jolly and harmless. Worked like a charm. Rarely failed.