The Man in the Blizzard, page 19
“Don’t blame it on the poetry, Sabbatini; you fucked up.”
THE GHOST IN THE MANOLOS
Back in my car, I realized that I’d left my phone off for hours. Among my messages were two from the violinist. The first one, left nearly three hours earlier, was spoken in an amused if weary voice: “I’m sorry that I left Blossom’s like that. I was a little jumpy and couldn’t sleep. I wandered around Lowertown for a while. I must have been quite the sight—a hobo with a violin and a rolling leather suitcase. Eventually, I took a cab home. I’m sitting outside at Joe’s Garage now. Should I not be sitting outside, Augie? I just can’t stand to be cooped up, worrying. Please call me on my cell.”
A second message was brief and desperate. “Augie, now I’m really scared. There’s somebody across the street watching me and I just got a call from my uncle, who wants to know your whereabouts.”
After I called both of the violinist’s numbers and got no answer, I bombed back over to my office and walked next door to Joe’s Garage. The violinist was no longer sitting outside. I peeked in, hoping against hope that she might be tucked away at a corner table, but there was no sign of her. I approached a shaved-headed meatball, who doubled as busboy and host. I’d seen him before at Joe’s.
“Have you been here all afternoon?” I asked, holding out a ten-dollar bill. “I’m looking for somebody who was here earlier.”
The guy, who couldn’t have been thirty, nodded his bald crown and looked at the ten spot as if it should be more. He took the bill and led me to a quiet corner near the take-out counter.
“I’ve been here since we opened,” the guy said, “and I’m not gone until we’re closed.”
“So, you’re getting rich today.”
“Yeah, really rich. What can I do you for?”
“You remember seeing a tall blond woman this afternoon? Rather attractive. Often wears these long pointed shoes. I don’t know what they are—Ferragamos?”
The guy shrugged. “The lady I’m thinking of wears Manolos.”
“Those are Manolos?”
“I don’t know if they’re Manolos, but I think of her as ‘the lady in the Manolos.’”
The ghost in the Manolos, I thought.
“She lives around here, doesn’t she?” the meathead asked.
“Did you see her today?” I asked.
“Yeah, she was here. Landed at an outside table for a while.”
“What time did she leave?”
The dude gave me a weary look. “Hey, I didn’t pay attention to when she came or when she left. She’s a nice-looking lady, but we were busy, man.” The guy closed his eyes as if he were trying to remember something more. When he opened them, he smiled at me. A smile that turned quickly to a smirk. “She ordered a chicken caesar that she didn’t eat. That’s all I can tell you. Except that you’re not the only person looking for her.”
“Who else?”
The guy shrugged.
I pulled out my wallet. The smallest bill I had left was a twenty. I handed it over.
“Tall guy in a suit. Was here looking for her before she came.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Like I said, tall guy. Kind of old-school.”
“Did he stand really straight as if he’d gone to college to study posture?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Did you tell her somebody was looking for her?”
“Hey, man, I’m not working for anybody here. Customers deserve their privacy.”
“Did you see her leave?” I asked, anxious, wanting to grab the punk by the collar. “Did she leave by herself?”
The guy shrugged. “Hey, I must have been inside when she left. I took a peek out and she was gone. Tell you the truth, I was disappointed. Woman’s kind of a babe.” He took a close look at me. “You work around here? I’ve seen you around here.”
I nodded.
“Hey,” he said, “when you see the lady with the Manolos, send her my regards.”
With that, the guy dismissed me and walked quickly to the back of the restaurant.
I dashed up the three flights to my office. There was no indication that anybody had been there. Both deadbolts were still locked. No notes on the door or underneath. No messages that mattered. I called both of the violinist’s numbers again. No dice. By leaving my cell phone off I’d screwed up just as badly as Sabbatini.
NEITHER SIDESHOW NOR CATHARSIS
What followed was a crooked trail. After picking up a couple of bottles of zinfandel at Surdyk’s for the evening ahead with Erica, I checked my left pocket for the tin of joints I’d rolled in the morning and shook it back and forth. Comforted, I drove across the river and parked near Mill Ruins Park and the Guthrie Theater and plugged a meter full of quarters. I found a bench beside the Stone Arch Bridge and fired up a joint. What did it mean, I wondered, that I’d have preferred a solitary evening with a fatty and my iPod to a night with Erica?
I took several deep tokes of the Pootie—what I liked to think of as defining tokes—then walked up the hill to the new Guthrie and wondered how long I’d think of it as new. Although I appreciated the giant faces—Shaw, Strindberg, O’Neill, Williams, and Tyrone Guthrie himself—looming on the ground floor of the exterior, I didn’t care for the massive edifice. I found the deep blue monolith forbidding. The building projected a cool arrogance and lacked the grace and wit of the Frank Gehry museum across the river. After a number of visits, however, I began to dig the interior. The ghoulishness of it. The fractured views of the river. The chimera of past performances growing out of the walls from new-age daguerreotypes.
It was Saturday night and there were Arthur Miller productions in each of the three theaters. Patrons could decide whether they wanted to spend the evening with Miller in Vichy, in Salem, or on the Brooklyn docks. More than an hour before curtain, the space was bustling with the dinner crowd. I climbed a hundred feet on the magnificent escalator and strolled past the proscenium theater and the raw bar, thinking it would be nice to dawdle over a dozen oysters and a pint of Anchor Steam. But I was living on borrowed time.
The air was lovely on the “endless bridge,” the open-air, cantilevered jobby that shot out spectacularly from the rear of the complex toward the river. After the 35W bridge went down, I walked to the end of the “endless” a number of times. From that vantage, you could see a bit of the wreckage, but I was more interested in watching the other people, who seemed greedy for a view of the tragedy. Were they interested in a catharsis that they couldn’t find at a Guthrie performance? No, their interest was more sideshow than catharsis.
Now, I took a peek at the new bridge, just beginning to assert itself, and found a fine, tucked-away perch so that I could see everybody in front of me while gazing at the river and at the city’s east bank. I sat there for a while, forgetting my responsibilities and enjoying the pure buzz of the Pootie. I was like a dude in a cool blue cape. Superman’s deadbeat cousin, devoid of ambition, interested in neither sideshow nor catharsis.
Of course, perfect moments don’t last for long—my phone rang, and it was Erica. I thought not to answer, but hit the green button just to shut up the ringing.
“Where are you, Augie?”
“Caught in traffic. There’s been a crash on 94.”
“I hear people around you.”
“Traffic’s come to a standstill; folks have their windows open.”
“Damn you, Augie. Where are you?”
“I’m on my way,” I said, gazing down at the river. “On my way.”
CHINESE TORTURE
For the first hour I was at Erica’s duplex on Blaisdell, she gave me the freeze treatment. I rather liked it. Erica answered direct questions with little more than a grunt or a monosyllable, so I stopped asking. The situation hadn’t prevented me from ingesting more than my share of sushi and swilling two lush glasses of ancient vine zinfandel. I preferred Erica like this—simmering, but quiet. I found her sexy. The young attorney didn’t know how lovely she was when she stopped talking. But after catching up with me in the wine department, she showed signs of returning to her voluble self. Pity.
“I don’t know if I’m going to forgive you, Augie.”
I really didn’t think she should.
“I made such an effort to get Ritchie out of here early, so we’d even have a little of the afternoon. I went out and got all the food together. I mean, I’m not complaining about that. I’m happy to do that. But when you don’t come and you don’t come, I begin to feel like you don’t want to come. I’m not exactly unattractive am I, Augie? I’m not a fright, am I?”
I held my silence. It seemed as if there might be hope for the evening if at least one of us refrained from speaking. Erica might not mind the arrangement, now that she’d found her voice. I uncorked the second bottle of zinfandel and poured us each another glass.
“I’ve been getting to the gym five days a week. I want to look good for you, honey.”
If I’d been speaking, I’d tell her that she’d be better off with someone who truly appreciated her efforts, someone who kept himself in shape for her.
“You know what you mean to me.”
It was like a form of Chinese torture, in which the torturer and the tortured continually changed places. Every other straight man in America would go mad for a woman like Erica, and she deserved one of them. How had she ever managed to find me?
“You make me feel good about myself.”
I only wished that were true.
“The thing I need to get from you, Augie, is a real commitment.”
The thing I knew she’d never get from me was a real commitment. I had always known that it was coming to this. I’d tried to tell her. She just didn’t want to hear it.
“Everybody says I’ve been very patient with you.”
And everybody was right.
“Believe me, I’ve had friends and colleagues who’ve advised me that you’d end up being nothing but trouble. I was outraged that anybody could say that without even meeting you. I wouldn’t listen to them. The age difference, they said, was one thing, but worse than that was the fact that you’re still married. They said you were just using me to bide time. Certain women, they said, fall for married men because the situation’s doomed, and I told them, ‘Well, I’m not one of those women.’”
But you are, poor thing; at least in this case.
“Augie,” she said plaintively, wanting something from me, anything.
But I was thinking about all the years with Nina, how I’d shut her out for no real reason. I didn’t want to be bothered. My behavior wasn’t the result of any repressed trauma, as the therapists and the twelve-step gurus might have it. I wasn’t an incest survivor; nobody had abused me. I just wanted to smoke my weed and disappear. All the noise, all the chatter—there comes a time when the whole world seems like a leaky faucet and I just wanted to turn it off.
Erica’s head was tilted, her mouth open, expectant. “Say something, goddamn it, say something!”
I took a long sip of zinfandel but had nothing to say.
Erica looked up at me with a fierceness I’d only seen when we’d made love, but this time she turned it on me. “Get out of here, you bastard,” she shouted. “Get out.”
THE END OF SOMMERFEST
Once I got to the car, I drove a few blocks without any idea of where I was going. I pulled over and talked myself out of firing up a roach—such discipline—and hit both of Elizabeth Odegard’s numbers, to no avail. I called Blossom, whom I’d been avoiding since Sabbatini fessed up at Frost’s, but there was no answer. She’d probably gone out with Bobby.
I started the car up and was going to drive home when I remembered that there was a symphony concert that night—I’d seen an ad in the Star Tribune. It was the last Sommerfest concert of the year. I’d practically forgotten that the violinist was a member of the symphony.
At the point I slipped into my seat in the balcony, the orchestra had just launched into the second movement, the Moderato, of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto no. 1. The movement began with such glorious restraint—a sweet horn solo, a pliant oboe weaving around the cello—that I almost forgot that doom was close by. I scanned the first violin section for a sight of Elizabeth Odegard but, given my distance from the stage, I couldn’t make her out. I saw a couple of violinists who might have been her, but neither seemed quite right.
After making myself bleary-eyed trying to spot the violinist from the balcony, I noticed that the third box, stage right, was empty. Once I’d hoofed down the stairway and was comfortably ensconced in the box, I pulled my chair up to the rail and studied both of the violin sections. Elizabeth Odegard wasn’t there. I tried to sit back a moment and gather myself, but the agitation of the Allegro con Moto was making me frantic. I did a quick breathing exercise and, in my fresh clarity, it occurred to me that Elizabeth Odegard might not be playing the Sommerfest season. I flipped through the program until I came to the page that listed orchestra members. Her name was not on it.
At intermission, I went backstage. I’d spent a lot of time there while investigating the disappearance of Pieter Haus’s violin. Now I nodded to several musicians I recognized and, finally, Pieter Haus appeared, cradling his precious Goffriller.
“Augie,” Pieter said, hurrying over to give me a one-armed hug. “You never come around anymore.”
“You guys are too careful with your instruments, so there’s no business for me.”
“I thought you got rich enough off me to retire,” said Pieter, a dashing young man with a family fortune. I used to wonder what it’d be like to be Pieter. Young, rich, talented, good-looking. But it was hard not to like the man, with his curly blond hair and dimpled grin. He winked at me. “So, what’s new?”
“Well, actually, I was looking for Elizabeth Odegard, thinking she played Sommerfest.”
“Who’s Elizabeth Odegard?”
Pieter was a sweet guy, but I was in no mood for joking. “Come on, the violinist.”
Pieter pushed out his lips and shrugged.
I felt a panicked energy rise. “Maybe she goes by her maiden name in the orchestra—Elizabeth Kunz.”
“Betsy Kunz?! God, I haven’t heard that name in a long time.”
“What are you talking about, Pieter?”
“You used to hear a lot of speculation about her. She’s in Minnesota?”
“Are we talking about the same woman, Pieter? A tall blonde. Rather attractive.”
“I never really knew her, Augie. You heard about her. She was a few years younger than me. I set eyes on her a time or two before she left Oberlin, maybe fifteen years ago.”
“Yes,” I said, “she went to Oberlin! What did you hear about her?”
Pieter, a little surprised by my intensity, took a step back in a comic gesture. “Geez, Augie, what do you have going on with this woman?”
“Tell me what you’ve heard,” I said, grabbing Pieter’s right arm, the one holding his bow.
“Yeah, sure, Augie.” Pieter scanned his colleagues for someone to rescue him.
I let go of the violinist’s arm, but looked at him hopefully.
“She was quite the prodigy. She’d soloed with several major orchestras by the time she was sixteen. I believe her uncle was her manager. She went to Oberlin for a bit of finishing, but didn’t last a semester. Lots of stories about what might have happened. She got pregnant; she had a baby. You heard about her auditioning for orchestras around the country, playing in the pit at Broadway shows, busking with an open fiddle case on Michigan Avenue. But you never knew if any of it was true. The gossip among musicians can be pretty brutal. Why are you asking about her?”
“She’s married to a violin dealer named Odegard. Perry Odegard.”
Pieter exploded with a surprised laugh. “That’s the best one I’ve heard yet, Augie. Outstanding. Betsy Kunz married to that gypsy.”
“You know him?”
“I avoid him. We all avoid him. Well, most of us.”
I pulled out a photo of the violinist I’d snatched the first time I went by her apartment. “Is this the woman?” I heard the desperation in my own voice.
Pieter took hold of the photo and peered at it. “My, she’s grown up, Augie.”
“And you’re telling me that she doesn’t play in the orchestra.”
“Never has, Augie. At least not in my time here.”
“I’ve been hoodwinked,” I said, bowing my head toward Pieter.
“Happens to the best of us, Augie.”
YOUR DAUGHTER’S A STAR
I woke up late on Sunday morning and was disappointed to discover that Rose was already out of the house. I brewed a small pot of French press coffee and hoped to sit quietly for a few moments without thinking about anything. But I couldn’t keep Elizabeth Odegard, the violinist without an orchestra, out of my head or my nervous system. There had been no sign of her since her phone messages the day before. I worried about her as if she were a child. And I was pissed at myself. A fucking moron. I should have checked her orchestra connection as soon as I took her business. God knows why she hired me. I still had no idea if she was working with her uncle or trying to get away from him.
From the start, I sensed that something about her didn’t add up. I’d figured she was a heavily medicated maze of personalities. Maybe one of those poor depressives surviving on a not-quite-adequate cocktail of medications. Add the creep husband and the Nazi uncle who abused her and you had one big mess of a woman. But where the hell had she gone? I tried her numbers again, but nothing.
At eleven, Bobby Sabbatini called. “You still talking to me, Augie?”
“Sure, Bobby, I got no choice.”
“You’re still angry at me.”
“I don’t hold grudges, Bobby.”
“Good man. Listen, Synge got the search warrant this morning. He wants us to meet out in Woodbury at noon.”
“Great. Hope it’s not too late.”
