Ukulele of Death, page 13
‘Smuggling rare and possibly stolen stringed instruments for collectors who might be wealthy and not all that concerned about the supply chain?’ Ken said. Once in a while he manages to say something intelligent. You have to wait, but it’s often worth it. ‘It’s possible. In fact …’ He was back in tech genius mode and started clacking away at his keyboard. I thought the laptop might start to emit smoke and then got hung up on the fact that the port that charged the computer was similar to the one that charged me and I got distracted. Or did I say that already?
‘What?’ I said. ‘In fact, what?’
Ken’s voice took on the dreamy quality it has when he’s talking to you but thinking about something else. ‘We never really did check into that ukulele sale in London,’ he said.
‘Sure I did,’ I said. I get defensive in a hurry, or did you not notice that already? ‘But the buyer was anonymous and trust me, I’ve tried but you can’t get Sotheby’s to give that information up even if you threaten to blow up their building.’ Which, I feel obligated to point out, I have never done.
‘Yeah, you checked about the buyer and of course you couldn’t get a name,’ Ken said, still clacking with some serious vigor. ‘But you didn’t check to see about the agent who handled the bid.’
I looked over his shoulder again. ‘Was it Evelyn Bannister?’ I asked. I saw a website that appeared to have records of every auction sale in the world since someone invented auctions. It was, dare I say it, a lot of sales. But Ken was scrolling through them at warp speed and I couldn’t make out any names, even from just a few feet away.
‘Maybe, but she wasn’t using that name. That’s why it didn’t set off any alarms for us when we checked on it before. Hang on.’ He scrolled some more until he got to a page that looked to my eye exactly like every other page he’d looked at before. But clearly to Ken this was the White Whale he’d been searching for. ‘Here. A sale of one Gibson Poinsettia ukulele, circa 1926. Original finish, unscratched. Painted poinsettia on front. With “The Gibson” on the headstock instead of “Gibson” to document its age and rarity. This sounds like our uke, all right.’
OK. I gave up the ruse; that was Evelyn’s ukulele and it had sold for a literally ridiculous amount of money. I’d just have to live with it. ‘Who brokered the sale?’ I asked because he kept moving his head and I wasn’t about to climb on the bed behind him.
‘It went for $1.2 million and that still doesn’t make any sense,’ Ken said. ‘Even a site that called it “The Holy Grail of Ukuleles” priced it at eleven thousand.’
‘Who brokered the sale?’ I repeated. Yes, the extremely inflated price was important, but the identity of the person making the deal was a little more urgent.
‘Whoever bought it did so through a broker and on the phone,’ he went on. As if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Didn’t even bother to come look at the thing for themselves. Why?’
‘I’m sure the obvious answer is they were not in London and couldn’t show up in person for the auction. It happens all the time.’ I stood up taller because my neck was starting to ache and besides Ken wasn’t showing me anything in the least bit interesting anymore. ‘Why does it matter?’
My neck was achy. Maybe I needed a charge soon. It’s one of the signs.
‘It matters because the item being sold here is a rare instrument and there are only so many people on the planet who can authenticate something like that,’ my brother answered. ‘Somebody spent a million two on a thing that should have topped out at eleven grand. It would be interesting to know exactly who they consulted to prove it was worth the money, and whether that person was getting a cut of the take.’
He was making good points. But when a Van Gogh is sold for umpteen millions of dollars, it’s a rare object that’s authenticated by an expert. I asked Ken why this was different.
‘Everybody agrees a Van Gogh is worth ridiculous amounts of money,’ he said. ‘In this case, everybody agrees a ukulele isn’t worth anywhere near this much. So you have to cast some suspicion on one or both of two people: The agent who brokered the deal, and the expert who said the lot in question – the ukulele – merited overpaying by a factor of more than a hundred times.’
‘I was told there would be no math,’ I said.
‘You were lied to. This is all about the math. What inflates the price of an old Hawaiian mini-guitar to the point that a member of the one percent needs to buy it? What makes this ukulele that valuable when literally no other instrument like that on the planet is worth anywhere near as much?’
I sat down on a chair Ken keeps at a desk next to his bed that he never uses. That wouldn’t normally bother me, but his desk is better than the one in my bedroom. ‘The whole thing hinges on those two people,’ I said. ‘Do you have a name for the agent or the ukulele expert?’
Ken was so deep into his screen that he didn’t answer for close to a full minute. Luckily, I had Words With Friends on my phone and beat Shelly Kroft in a game using the word suq, which to my knowledge isn’t a word but the game will accept it. Finally Ken took a semi-deep breath and turned away from his laptop, which I wouldn’t have thought was possible only seconds before.
‘I have a line on both the agent and the ukulele expert,’ he said. ‘It’s actually pretty public so it didn’t take a lot to get those names.’
‘Is either one of the names Evelyn Bannister?’ I asked.
‘No, but is that surprising? She had more names than the directory of the American Dental Association.’
That was an odd choice but I let it go. ‘Was either one a woman?’ I said. ‘I’d bet my last dollar Evelyn was a woman.’
Ken pointed a finger at me like the barrel of a pistol. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The broker who arranged the purchase was a woman named Patrice Lancaster. It’ll take some digging to find out whether she might also have occasionally been Evelyn Bannister.’
‘I take it our uke maven was not female,’ I said.
‘You are correct again and thanks for playing our game.’ My brother thinks he’s amusing. ‘Authenticating the, you know, authenticity of the Gibson Poinsettia was a Mr Langley Comstock, Ph.D., of McLean, Virginia. He appears to be legit from what I can tell.’
‘With a name like that? Practically screaming he’s from the CIA?’ Seriously, Langley of McLean, Virginia?
‘I know. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, but he seems to have never even met anybody in the CIA. Just a weird name, I guess.’
‘Can we be sure? How can we feel safe?’
Ken swung his legs off the bed and they pretty much already touched the floor. ‘Two very good questions. But if you don’t mind I promised Igavda that I would come by and help her with her citizenship test. She’s taking it next week.’ He stood up.
‘Whoa!’ I barked at him and Ken stopped to look at me. ‘You’re leaving in the middle of this?’
‘I did what I do. Now you do what you do. Find out whether the woman who died on the Upper East Side sometimes called herself Patrice Lancaster. You know how to find me.’ He turned again to leave.
‘Ken,’ I said. I stood up to look him in the eye.
He did a why me shoulder shrug and looked at me. ‘What?’ The question was practically an accusation, although I wasn’t sure of what.
I walked over and blocked his path to the door. Then I put a hand on his forearm. ‘You know that I got mad at you yesterday just because I worry about you, right? I mean, you are truly the only person in the world who understands what it’s like to be me and when I think I might lose you I get really upset. You’re my brother and I love you.’
Ken’s eyes softened and he put both his hands on my upper arms ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Now if you don’t mind I have to go help a very hot immigrant become a citizen.’ He lifted me up off the floor, moved me out of his way and placed me back down without so much as a grunt. ‘I’ll see you later.’ Then he was gone.
That is to say, he left. We don’t have the power of vanishing or anything. We’re just big and strong and we plug into the wall every now and again. Other than that, just like you. With a few improvements.
I fumed a little bit because I felt like I’d just opened up emotionally to Ken and he had treated it like a joke. But that’s Ken and there isn’t much you can do about it. Or at least there isn’t much I can do. I imagined there were things Igavda could do but it was better not to think about that.
After a short while I gave up on the fuming because it wasn’t doing me any good and would continue not to do me any good. Besides, I had major decisions to make.
But first there was a text from Shelly Kroft, as reliable as a sunrise. Gibson Poinsettia stolen from private home in Portland, ME. Has not been recovered.
At the moment I had two major concerns (beside my usual cases, which were getting my attention but which I’m not detailing here because my clients are entitled to anonymity): I could look into Evelyn Bannister’s (or Patrice Lancaster’s) ukulele, her phony missing birth father and, just as an aside, her murder or I could concentrate on Dr Mansoor, his possible murder – although I was fairly sure Dr Kendall was way off base on that one – and more to the point, his connection to my parents.
Paying (or having already paid) customers first. It was Evelyn’s murder that came up first. Because at least I had an idea of where to go about that, and I needed to get out of the apartment. You do enough research online in your pajamas and eventually you really feel the need to be outdoors, even in Manhattan, where the sky is often obscured by all the other people looking for the sky in even taller buildings.
I’d go talk to Gus the super, I decided. I’d bring bagels from a place I had spotted close to Evelyn’s apartment building. Because even carb addicts don’t get offended when you bring them bagels.
It was a hot-ish day with some cloud cover and I was way past looking up for the sky because what am I, a tourist? But it did feel good to be out among humans and even the subway gave me a little sense of familiarity that I needed today.
Eve Kendall’s visit had shaken me more than I wanted to admit. There were people out there, and I had no idea how many, who had known my parents under the names Brad and Livvie or others I didn’t know. And if Kendall was to be believed, there was someone out there who had killed Dr Mansoor right at the time he was trying to contact me with some answers.
I know. I just said I didn’t believe Dr Mansoor was murdered. And I didn’t. But that’s how my mind works sometimes: Consider the worst-case scenario and how you’d handle it, and then you can work your way down to what’s more probable.
Having pondered this for some time I almost missed my stop but the Q train has a way of reminding you when you’re getting where you’re going. It stops. That woke me up enough to get out and retrace the steps I’d taken with Ken on the day we found Evelyn’s body in her bedroom.
I was approaching the building and noting the car parked right near the front door in an illegal spot when a call came in from Mank. I had sufficiently forgiven him for whatever it was I’d decided he did that deserved forgiving that I picked up.
He didn’t even say hello. ‘Somebody’s following you,’ he said.
That seemed like an odd game to play and I was just about to say, ‘What?’ but I never got the chance.
Instead I felt someone put a hand over my mouth and pushed me hard to the left. Normally that wouldn’t have even set me off-stride but I wasn’t expecting it and I fell toward the street. I dropped my phone, but hands I suddenly couldn’t see caught me and after a quick moment of wondering why I was blind I felt the black cloth bag over my face, I was sitting down and heard a car door slam. And I felt a little pinprick in my right hip.
I don’t remember a whole lot after that for some time.
TWENTY
It would be such a cliché to say I woke up and asked, ‘Where am I?’ And I didn’t say that, I promise.
Of course, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to know where I was; it was more in the area of there was no one in the room with me and asking myself wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
What appeared obvious and equally ominous was that I was in an operating room. The equipment I saw stacked around me in the surprisingly small area was consistent with what I’d seen on television shows about doctors, but theirs were always a lot roomier and more upscale. The TV people had the finest in medical equipment and I could just as easily have been in one of the better auto body shops in Queens. I didn’t have anything else to use for a comparison. I’d never been to a doctor before but I had seen more than one car repaired.
Most worrisome was that I was on a gurney and strapped down so efficiently that even I couldn’t break the bonds. On the plus side I was relieved to see there was no IV line running into my hand.
There was also a security camera positioned directly down at me from the ceiling. Whoever was watching me wasn’t particularly worried that I’d find out. I couldn’t blame them. I was, after all, strapped to a gurney. It was unlikely I’d be doing anything particularly natural or unguarded right now.
After testing my bonds a number of times and realizing they were more up to the task than I was, I decided on the direct approach. ‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘I’m awake! Let’s get this show on the road! I have a date tonight!’ I had no date because I was playing hard to get with Mankiewicz (and what was that about how someone was following me?), but they didn’t know that. I hoped.
Nobody appeared immediately, which frankly got me a little insulted. Here someone went to all the trouble to abduct and confine me and now they weren’t interested enough to come in and explain themselves? What was I, chopped liver? (Shelly Kroft taught me that one.)
Don’t get me wrong: I was also absolutely terrified. I wasn’t accustomed to feeling helpless. A person like me – and there are only two – is generally able to deal with pretty much any situation that requires physical strength. The fact that this gurney had restraints with steel cuffs and solder instead of bolts indicated that it had been built specifically with me in mind. That was not a comforting thought.
But one thing I have discovered over the years is that showing fear is almost always the wrong strategy. I’m not often afraid but when I am, my immediate instinct is to go straight to snark. And it has rarely failed me.
‘Yo, fellas!’ I got a little louder this time. ‘I’m gonna need to pee soon and you definitely don’t want to be here for that!’
You’d think the thought would have brought in my captors, or someone carrying a bucket, but no.
I had to focus. Look around the room. See what my possibilities, however limited, were. The place was tightly packed with electronics and what I could only assume was diagnostic equipment. It looked like where they’d sent everything when all the Radio Shacks closed. There was a flat-screen monitor affixed to the wall up above the door. It was turned off at the moment. There was also a very suspicious-looking mirror to my right that probably showed whoever was in the next room what I was doing. I was doing remarkably little but you never know what some people find entertaining.
It was a relief that there were no surgical instruments in sight but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t appear at any moment. If someone was into vivisection here they weren’t tipping their hand. That wasn’t stopping me from worrying.
Don’t ask me what was behind me because that simply wasn’t an option from my perspective. There was no mirror on my side of the room.
‘Seriously, I drank a whole large bottle of water with lunch!’ I yelled. ‘You really want me off this table fast!’
Nothing. These people had no common courtesy and no sense of hygiene. Clearly they were fiends.
And that, finally, just pissed me off (so to speak). ‘Get your asses in here now!’ I screamed. ‘The last thing you want is me for an enemy! And I have friends who are bigger and stronger than I am!’ OK, not so much a friend as a brother but that wouldn’t have sounded as ominous: Just wait until my big brother finds out. Not quite the same panache.
It did leave me to wonder if Ken had any idea I was missing yet. I had no clue how long I’d been in transit or how many minutes/hours/days I’d been on this table. That’s the thing about anesthesia: It’s not like a nap. You have no idea that anything at all happened to you except you were in one place and now you’re somewhere else.
The rage I was feeling was real and it inspired me to try pulling on the restraints one more time. They didn’t come loose, but my right arm, the dominant one, definitely felt a very slight give. If I were here for another three days I might be able to pull that one free.
Just as that thought occurred to me the door swung open slowly and in walked … a person. It was hard to tell what kind of person this was, as he/she/they was dressed in very loose surgical scrubs, a surgical mask and cap, and a plastic shield over the face that reflected light. It was like being stopped by a state trooper wearing mirror sunglasses all over his face.
‘It’s about damn time,’ I said before the anonymous figure could speak. ‘Now let me up so I can use the bathroom.’ I’d been telling that lie for so long I was starting to believe it myself.
The person didn’t speak, but turned on a monitor to my left which showed my heart rate and oxygen level courtesy of a clip mechanism my captor attached to my left index finger. They (the heart rate and oxygen level) were fine for me. A little slow (heart) and rich (oxygen) for a regular person, but nothing a doctor would be likely to find alarming.
‘Hey! RoboDoc!’ If you annoy people enough they tend to react. At least that has been my experience. ‘You gonna tell me who you are and why I’m here? Because when my friends from the police department get here I want to be able to give them accurate answers.’
Mank knew I was being followed, he’d said. Did he have eyes on me? Was he on his way? There was no evidence I knew of that anybody had even noticed I was missing yet. Maybe I wasn’t missing. Maybe I was dreaming right now. I mean, it seemed real enough, however weird, and I didn’t tend to dream but there’s a first time for everything.
