Death Is the Cool Night, page 7
“La-de-dah. La-de-dah. You teach him nothing but la-de-dah. Wait till he is older. I will teach him. He will be a real man. He will work at the factory with me. La-de-dah then, young man. La-de-dah will be over for you then.”
Why could I remember that so clearly, and yet the night of Ivan’s death is as blurry as this evening’s sky?
La-de-dah.
***
“Aren’t you cold out here?” Laura Reed’s voice came from a thousand years away.
I turned to see her silhouetted against the lights of the club, her hair a soft halo, the white dress a smear of brightness in the gloom.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I came out to see you!” She was breathless from excitement and the walk outside. “I didn’t realize you were playing.”
“I play every week.”
“I don’t come to the Brentwood often.” She crossed her hands over her chest in the cold evening air. “Haven’t been in a long time.”
Seeing her shiver, I set my glass on the ground, took off my jacket, and placed it around her shoulders. I was proving that I was a gentleman, as good as that la-de-dah man she’d danced with.
“Next time, bring a coat out with you,” I said, letting my hands linger on her shoulders. How could they not linger? I wanted to do more than rest my hands on her shoulders. But the vodka was mixing with my fatigue by then, a potion that gave me courage.
“Gregory, is something wrong?” she sounded uneasy.
“Why’d you send in a request—so I’d see you were here with another fellow?”
Even in the shadows, I could see her shoulders slump and hear her sigh.
“My mother wanted to hear it,” she said.
She came to me and folded her arms around my waist, leaning her head on my chest, just as she’d done in the practice room earlier today. It felt so comfortable. Had we embraced like this before today? I kissed her head, as if to test our relationship. She didn’t pull away. She seemed to feel, as I did, that we needed each other now.
“Why are you being so cruel to me, Gregory?”
“I’m not.”
“Don’t be like Ivan. Please.”
Always his name.
“Laura.”
“Yes, my love?”
“Do you remember the night Ivan died—did you come to my practice studio? I mean, really, truthfully? Did we talk?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters a great deal.”
“If you want me to say I did, I will. I told the policeman we were there together.”
“I remember.” I stroked her hair. “But were we?”
She looked up at me as if trying to determine what I wanted her to say, her eyes glistening in the light from the club.
“We were in the building together.”
Maybe she didn’t want to know, or didn’t want me to know. All right, maybe I shouldn’t want to know either.
“We were in the building together,” I repeated, lifting her chin so that I could kiss her fully on the mouth.
She was very beautiful, maybe even more beautiful in the ash-gray light of evening when shadows carved her perfect features into bold relief—the slim nose, the even wide eyes, the bud-like mouth. And the hair, a mass of softness even my rough hands could feel.
Ivan Roustakoff must have exulted to have such a beautiful woman, and now I had her.
“Who is that boy you’re with?” I asked her, pulling away before my longing got the best of me.
“He’s a friend of the family,” she said. “He doesn’t mean anything to me, Gregory. My friend, Carol, has been trying to get us together. She arranged it with my mother.” Her voice trembled. I felt a surge of power. She was beautiful, and she didn’t want to upset me.
“I’ll go back now and tell him I want to go home.” She turned to go, but I pulled her to me again and kissed her in the twilight.
Lah-de-dah, I thought. Lah-de-dah.
*****
TO: Chief of Police
FROM: Sean Reilly, detective, Third Precinct
RE: Ivan Roostakof death
My notes on the investigation of Ivan Rustakof’s death are enclosed, just as requested. We don’t have enough to bring in anybody. I am not sure the man was even killed. I will continue to interview suspects.
Chapter Seven
The next day I went to Mass as usual. I lit four candles—one each for my brother and mother and father’s souls, and one for myself. I knelt at the altar and hoped God could snatch the prayers from my soul, because I articulated nothing but a general sense of longing.
At that point, I wanted only a few things, but they were all big—I wanted Laura, most of all. And I wanted innocence.
I didn’t know if I had the right to ask for them.
In the afternoon, I held a rehearsal with the leads. Laura was there, to turn pages for the accompanist, but her eyes were on me now.
Hans sang poorly, his voice cracking on the high notes, and his spirit missing from the opera’s signature aria, Nessun Dorma. How could anyone sing that aria without feeling it?
When I told the singers to take a break, Renata explained Hans’s mood as he walked outside for “fresh air.”
“The poliziotto speaks to him. Twice, maybe more times.” She shrugged, throwing a fur over her shoulders in the drafty room.
“Why are they after him?” I asked this question almost hopefully. Hans as culprit would exonerate me. And Laura.
“Hans speak to Ivan that night. They had the fight.”
The fight—the discussion I’d overheard was hardly a fight, more like a disagreement. So Reilly had used the information I’d provided to gain more from Hans. Hans must have told him they’d argued.
“About the Kliegman,” I said, prompting her to tell me more.
Her face came up, and she straightened.
“Si. The silly boy thinks Ivan wanted him to sing it. I, of course, will sing it.” She pulled her fur tighter.
So, even though Hans had insisted to me he was happy with Renata singing it, he still yearned to have his voice showcased. I couldn’t blame him. The piece was more for his timbre than Renata’s. But I couldn’t imagine him killing for that. Nor for Renata’s hand, either.
But this explained why Hans and Renata no longer seemed close. She hadn’t walked in with him for the practice. In fact, she’d been accompanied by another man, a short, balding fellow who was vaguely familiar. She introduced him as a member of Peabody’s board. So she had a new “sponsor.” Hans was being pushed to the background.
“My piece is in the running now, you know,” I told her, amused to watch her expression change, first to fear, then to anger, then to confidence.
“Yes, I have heard that the second place can be played. But you and I know they will use Ivan’s piece, si? Of course they will.” She smiled. “And if the orchestra, they play your piece and not Ivan’s, think how guilty that makes you look, Maestro!”
She sauntered away, grabbing her new sponsor by the arm and leading him from the hall just as Hans returned, watching her, pining for her. He sat in a chair and studied his score.
Laura, meanwhile, came over to me.
“She’s a temptress,” she said simply and softly, placing her beautiful hand on my scarred one.
I smiled at her. “You’re jealous!”
She looked down. “I think the police should look at her,” she said with unusual vehemence. “She had a lot to gain from Ivan’s death.”
“But more from his life, don’t you think?”
When she didn’t respond, I continued. “Renata lived luxuriously with Ivan. He was placing her in his operas. She is singing his composition with the Philharmonic—”
“Hans was supposed to sing it!” Laura interrupted, speaking so loudly that Hans’s face came up. She looked at him.
“You were supposed to sing the Kliegman piece, Ivan’s composition, weren’t you?”
His face reddened.
“I do not care to sing it.”
“But it suits your voice. I heard you sing it,” she persisted.
Had Hans been singing it so often that she’d overheard it at the practice studios, too?
“You sing it beautifully,” she added.
“Danke.” He looked down. “It is beautiful. I do my best.”
But not today. Today he’d sung poorly.
Why was he pretending not to want to sing it now, when Renata clearly believed he did want it?
“Hans,” I said, “Renata seems to have the silly idea that you were trying to steal the solo from her.”
His color deepened and he shook his head vigorously. “Nein. She is wrong. I do not care if I sing it. I only care that the piece is performed! That is all I try to do—to make sure the piece is played. It is too good not to be played. It is the winner!”
As if realizing that would mean bumping my composition from the program, he softened his tone, looking straight at me. “I am sure you have written a very fine composition, Herr Silensky. But Ivan’s piece was the winner, and he could not, is not to be blamed for, for …”
“Dying,” Laura said.
“Ja,” Hans agreed. “His piece should be on the program. Maybe,” he said, looking at me again, “they will play your piece, too.”
I smiled. “Perhaps if you persuade them—since you seem to be persuading them otherwise.”
He frowned. “We should practice,” he said, looking at his watch.
Renata’s laugh carried into the room. He looked over his shoulder, his eyes wrinkling with hurt. She strolled back in, on the arm of the board member, who was clearly as smitten as Hans.
Hans stood, placing his hands on his hips.
“Renata, you make us late. Do not do such things, or you make us angry, ja?” he snapped at her.
Both Laura and I exchanged glances, surprised by this uncharacteristic outburst, which I fully expected to be rebuffed by the fiery Renata.
Instead, she took her arm from the board member and walked meekly to the music stands, taking her place and opening her score.
When Hans stood by her side, she finally glared at him. “You make me unhappy, Hans. You do not like to see me unhappy.”
“Nein, meine liebchen,” he murmured. “I would do anything to keep you happy, as you know.”
She stretched, the fur dropping to the floor. He retrieved it, placing it around her shoulders with a provocative possessiveness.
“Your back, it hurts you, meine liebchen?”
Her face flamed, and she stood rock still, not looking at him, staring at the score.
“No,” she said on a whisper. “I am fine.”
Hans smiled at me, as if he’d achieved some victory.
“Renata, she had an accident many years ago. A horse threw her.” He looked at her, but she still didn’t look up. “Isn’t that right?”
“Si. But let’s not talk about it. Let’s practice. You are so eager to sing. Let’s sing!”
***
At the end of another hour, my hands ached, and the singers were incapable of producing anything worthwhile. Why should my hands hurt when I wasn’t using them at the keyboard? This was an unforeseen betrayal. This angered me. I rubbed them together, Laura quick to come to my side, placing her own warm hands over them.
Hans had sung better for the last hour, but both of them were less than their best, Renata’s warm tones devolving into near-screeches on the high notes. When I’d told her to soften them, to stop “screaming,” Hans had come to her defense, telling me she was tired and he thought her voice was beautiful. Perhaps I, as a mere conductor, did not appreciate it. He grew in boldness throughout the rehearsal because Renata’s paramour had to leave, clearing the field for him.
Hans had his comeuppance, though.
Just as we were leaving the hall, the dark shadow of Detective Reilly spilled into the doorway.
My first reaction was to push Laura behind me, to hide her from his gaze. My second was to belligerently ask what he wanted now.
He glowered at me, took a drag on a cigarette, and stubbed it out on the conservatory’s polished oak floor.
“I need to talk to the German,” he said.
Renata, her eyes wide with worry, looked at Hans. He squeezed her lightly on the arm.
“You go home, Renata. I will take care of this. Do not worry.”
***
“Let’s go see him now.” I paced Sal’s living room an hour later, while Mrs. Sabataso cooked and Brigitta loitered in the doorway, watching me.
“See who?” she asked, wiping a platter clean.
“Larry,” Sallie told her. When she looked confused, he added, “the one who’s the cop.”
She disappeared into the kitchen to help her mother, as I continued to pester Sal.
“I thought things had died down, and then Reilly shows up at practice this afternoon!”
After Reilly had cornered Hans, I’d stepped back into the rehearsal hall as if I’d forgotten something. But it was really to escort Laura down the stairwell beyond the room’s far corner, so that she’d not have to brush past the detective, drawing his gaze. Instinctively, I’d wanted to protect her. And yes, maybe protect myself as well. Let him go after Hans and leave us alone.
“And what about that list—did they get hold of all the girls on it?”
Sal patted his pockets looking for a cigarette.
“I don’t talk to Larry every day.” He pulled out a smoke and lit it. “He ain’t my favorite cousin.”
“Well, can we go see him?”
“That’s not a good idea, you know. Larry wants to move up. He’d grill you for information to pass along to Reilly.”
I sank into a chair, lighting my own cigarette. “When you asked him about it before, did you mention me?” I glanced around. “You got anything to drink around here?”
He went into the dining room and poured me some wine from an open carafe. “I said I’d read about it in the papers.” He handed me the glass.
“Then just check up on it—you haven’t heard or seen nothing and you want to know.” I stared at him.
He looked at his watch.
“Where you going?” I asked.
“To Larry’s. Dinner’s in an hour and it’s good to have an excuse to get away from him. He’s a gabber.” He grabbed a jacket off a nearby chair. “You stay here and talk to Brigitta.”
***
He was back just in time for dinner, so he had no chance then to give me what he knew. Brigitta, who’d been more than happy to entertain me while her brother took a walk, laughed a little too loud, obviously trying to keep my attention. But my mind was on one thing—finishing dinner so I could hear what Sal’s cousin had had to say. I endured pasta, meat, salad, and dessert and coffee before we were able to push away from the table.
“You go help Ma clean up, Briggie,” Sal said to his sister. “Greg and I have man talk.” He motioned to the front door. We both lit cigarettes as we shrugged into jackets against the evening chill and stepped outside. The wine had not been strong enough to soothe my hands, but I had whiskey at home that I’d break into later.
“Larry says it’s still the sister driving this thing,” he said as we walked around the block, smoking. “He says Reilly and all of them think the fellow was just a doper who messed up and accidently done himself in. If it was anybody else, they’d have closed the books on it. In fact, they pretty much had closed the books on it. But the sister raised a stink.”
Laura had pegged this one. She’d said Ivan had a sister, someone from her mother’s set. She must know how those people operate, making sure they are treated with “respect.”
“Is that why Reilly was out seeing Hans today, because of the sister wanting something to happen?”
“Maybe. I don’t like to ask too many questions. I let Larry tell the story.” Sal blew out a plume of smoke. “He said they like the German because he’s got a lot to gain from Ivan’s death.”
“The fiancé, the big solo.”
“He just mentioned the girl.”
“She’s not interested in him anymore, though.”
“Don’t matter. If he thought offing her lover was the way to her heart, it don’t matter what she’s interested in.” Sal steered me past the church and around another block.
“I guess not.” Poor Hans. If he had killed Ivan, it was all for naught.
“What about the list of girls?”
“That was tricky, my friend. I had to pretend it just came to me—remembering him mentioning that. And I had to kind of casual-like bring it up, like I was real curious.”
“I’m sure you gave a stunning performance.”
He laughed. “It was good enough. He said the list was hard because the girls’ names weren’t their real names. The victim gave them opera names, and he wrote some descriptions. So they had to kind of piece together who was who.”
“But they found some.”
“Yeah. And they stopped when they figured he was a doper gone bad.”
That meant they could continue down the list, getting to Laura eventually—what name had Ivan used for her? As far as I knew, Reilly had yet to talk to her again about the night in the practice building. The first time he spoke with her, he probably hadn’t known she was on the list. He was questioning her like me, someone who was there the night it happened. I would have to warn her about the list, something I’d yet to do.
“What’s it gonna take to get them to stop investigating?” I asked Sal.
“Short of a photograph of the guy poisoning himself, I don’t know. Larry seems to think Reilly’s just waiting for the sister to calm down and is just fitting in this investigation around real ones he’s got going. If it leads to something, it’s a good grade for him. If not, he’s got other things moving.”
Maybe it would all be over soon.
That’s what I told myself later that night, a half bottle of whiskey gone, my hands not throbbing any longer.
*****
TO: Detective Sean Reilly
FROM: Office of Chief of Police, Baltimore City
