Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery (4 page)

“Listen, friend—” Friend.

“Jack LeVine.”

“Listen, Jack LeVine, if you wish to see me, speak with Miss Hamilton and make an appointment. I don’t have meetings in hallways and I don’t have meetings in elevators.”

“It concerns the orchestra.”

“Tickets have to be ordered by mail.”

“That a fact,” I said, lighting up a Lucky. “Maybe I’ll order up a few. Make nice Chanukah presents. Thing is, actually, I need to speak with you concerning a problem you’ve got in that orchestra, and it’s something you better address pronto.”

Now Aaron turned all the way around. It was the first time his body had actually faced my body.

“What are you talking about?” His voice had dropped a full octave.

I took out my wallet, flashed my license.

“I’m a private investigator.”

“Lobby,” said the jockey. “Enjoy your lunch, Mr. Aaron.”

The doors opened. Aaron and I walked out into the lunchtime melee.

“Gorgeous girls in this lobby,” I brayed.

“If you don’t get away from me right now,” Aaron muttered, “I’m going to call security.”

“That’s your right, Mr. Aaron, and in fact I don’t blame you. I’ll admit I’ve been more than a little pushy—”

“Good afternoon.”

Aaron started walking away from me. I took my hat off and inspected the sweat band. Not surprisingly, it was stained with sweat. “The thing is,” I called out, “some people in the orchestra are convinced that Toscanini is missing.”

Aaron stopped walking. He turned around and wiped his mouth, as if he had just ingested a large meal. Then he took one large step forward.

“What did you say?” His voice had dropped to a hush.

“Toscanini. Some of the musicians think that he’s a missing person.”

Aaron looked around the lobby.

“I think the security cops are by the desk.”

Now the NBC honcho walked back to me.

“Who told you this?”

“A member of the orchestra.”

“Who?” Aaron stepped closer. I could smell his breath, warm and sour, with a distant hint of colon problems.

“Sorry. That’s a professional confidence.”

Aaron stared at me.

“Be in my office at six-thirty sharp.”

Aaron turned and walked away. He moved quickly, favoring his left leg, as if he had suddenly willed himself a limp.

“This is a hell of a view.”

Sidney Aaron’s office faced east; standing at the window, you could take a large bite out of New York, all the way from St. Patrick’s, where rich and poor alike knelt and prayed for the end of communism, across the dark and briny East River, to the matchbox vistas of my beloved Queens.

“Not bad for a poor kid from Brooklyn.” Aaron walked toward me holding two tumblers of scotch. “Flatbush, to be precise.” He smiled. The guy was a real democrat; he had sent Miss Hamilton home prior to our meeting and was playing the host.

“Flatbush,” I said. “Dodger fan, huh?”

“You bet, Jack. Tried and true. I think we’ll go all the way this year.”

“I’m not so sure. The pitching’s only been so-so.”

Aaron laughed heartily. If this guy was a baseball fan, I was a Hottentot. Nobody laughs when you say the pitching’s so-so.

“Here we are.” Aaron handed me my drink in a cut-crystal tumbler. “Cheers.”

We clinked our glasses. Aaron sat down in a leather chair and gestured for me to sit in a facing leather couch. I sat down and kept on going; the couch was deep enough to hold a rhino. Aaron’s desk was parked at the other end of the room, on a raised platform; behind the desk was a wall covered from top to bottom with various awards of a civic and humanitarian nature—B’nai B’rith, Catholic Charities—as well as photographs of Aaron, frequently in black tie, posed with everyone from Cardinal Spellman to Vladimir Horowitz. His capital-
c
Credentials, just in case you might forget you were in the presence of a Great Man.

Aaron had closed his eyes and was resting his ice-filled glass against his forehead. “I’ve been working too goddamn hard, Jack. You have to excuse me if I was a little curt with you this afternoon.”

I spread my hands in an ecumenical gesture.

“Not to worry. I’m sure I could have been a little more diplomatic in my approach.”

“This job, special programming—every culture vulture in town gloms on to you.”

“Sure.…”

Aaron sat up and loosened his tie. I observed a mole on the back of his right hand. “Every hustler and phony-baloney, every bozo with a one-act play in his closet or under his bed. Sometimes real crazies, Jack—dispossessed, embittered, rejected artists of all stripes who might just lunge at you or cut your throat.”

“You’re not just speaking metaphorically?” I asked.

Aaron blinked. He clearly hadn’t expected me to utter any word that contained more than two syllables. “Metaphorically” was a word I liked to roll out of the garage every couple of weeks, like an old lady’s Ford Coupe.

“You’d be surprised,” Aaron said. “Bruce Howard, an associate of mine, got his nose broken by a Negro actor who claimed that Canada Lee was systematically stealing all his parts.”

“Why didn’t he break Canada Lee’s nose?”

“That’s my point, Jack. The irrationality …”

“Mr. Aaron—”

“Call me Sidney. Everybody does.” Fat chance.

“Sidney—”

Aaron abruptly got up and walked toward his desk. “Now, who on earth told you that Maestro is missing?”

“I really can’t tell you that.”

“I believe you said it was a member of the orchestra?” He shuffled through some papers on his desk. What a busy guy.

“That’s right.”

“One member?”

“One member, who told me he represented about a dozen musicians, all kinds—strings, horns, kazoos—who felt that by the end of the cross-country tour last spring—”

Aaron whirled around. “The most extraordinary public relations triumph in the history of classical music, Jack.” Aaron walked forward swiftly, his right hand extended, spilling some scotch on the carpet. “People heard this orchestra in the boondocks, people who had never heard good music in their lives—rednecks, apple-knockers, yahoos, and hayseeds of all descriptions. Suddenly Beethoven and Brahms and Wagner entered their miserable lives. Wagner in Atlanta, Jack. Can you imagine?”

“The mind boggles.”

“The mind boggles. No shit.” He sat down. “And now some demented musician tells you that Maestro is missing.”

“Apparently some of the guys feel the real Toscanini vanished before the end of the tour.”

Aaron leaned as far forward as he could without landing on the floor. “So who conducted this orchestra, Jack? Mortimer Snerd? Kay Kyser?”

“A stand-in. A double. That’s what they think.”

“‘They.’ How many?”

“A dozen.”

“You met with a dozen?”

“No. I met with one.”

“So how do you know he represents a dozen musicians?”

“I don’t. But I’ve been in this business long enough to recognize a bullshit artist. I don’t think this guy is a bullshit artist.”

“Who is he?”

I shook my head. “Can’t.”

Aaron got up again. This was not a relaxed man.

“We’ve had labor problems recently. I’ll bet this is the start of some negotiating move. Jesus.”

“I doubt that.”

“You doubt that?” He stopped in his tracks. “What the hell do you know about it, a private dick? This is labor trouble; I can smell it.” He tapped his well-developed nose.

“So you don’t think—”

“That Toscanini is missing? What are you, joking? I spoke to Maestro this morning. He’s up in Riverdale, like always, preparing for the new season. How can you even think he’s missing?”

“I don’t think anything. I was hired to look into this.”

“Well, you looked into it. Tell this
meshugenah
musician that Tos-canini’s up at Villa Pauline and he’s fine. He should find something else to get hysterical about, and maybe he should seek out some professional help.”

“So as far as you’re concerned, there’s no merit in his claim.”

Aaron stared at me as if I had just peed on his oriental carpet.

“No.”

“Then let me ask you something.”

He started to pick his nose, but thought better of it. “What?”

“If you’re so positive this claim is bullshit, why did you want to see me?”

Aaron swirled the ice cubes around in his scotch, soothing himself with that tinkling boozy sound.

“Curiosity. And that curiosity has now been satisfied. I have nothing else to say, except that if there really are a dozen musicians who think Maestro has disappeared, I suggest they come up here and discuss it with me. I’d be more than happy to meet with them and answer any questions they might have, or deal with any doubts circulating among them. There’s no reason for them to have any uncertainty on this score.”

“My impression is they felt there might be reprisals.”

Aaron’s brown eyes got very hard.

“Reprisals? In 1946 I was the B’nai B’rith Man of the Year. It’s a humanitarian award. They don’t give it to dictators. That’s my answer to that. Good evening, Mr. LeVine.”

I was all alone on the elevator going down, just me and a Cuban elevator jockey. He was lost in his tropical thoughts, as I was lost in my detective thoughts.

I didn’t have a doubt in the world that Arturo Toscanini had disappeared.

THREE

The sun was streaming
through my bedroom window the next morning and, although it was September, at seven o’clock the street had the hazy, slow-motion look of a summer day. Two garbagemen were playing catch with the metal cans outside my building, making sure that the last sleeping citizens in Sunnyside would capitulate and tumble cursing from their beds. I brewed up some strong coffee and fried a couple of eggs and when the clock hit eight-thirty, I got on the phone and dialed Fritz Stern. He picked up on the first ring and sounded less than enthusiastic when I told him I wanted to take a drive over to Toscanini’s house.

“Maestro’s house,” he said. “Maestro’s house.”

“It’s in Riverdale, right?”

“Yes. Independence Avenue. They call it Villa Pauline.”

“You know how to get there?”

“Maestro’s house,” he said.

“Am I getting an echo here?”

“It’s Riverdale, yes.” Stern sounded panicky, as if he had just heard the bootsteps of the Gestapo clacking down his corridor. “But Mr. LeVine, I don’t think, really …” I could hear him breathing.

“You don’t think what?” I was still in my boxer shorts, holding a mug full of Chase and Sanborn. I didn’t look anything like a private detective.

“Maestro’s house.”

“Am I speaking to you or your parrot, Mr. Stern? I think it’s an obvious move, going over there. All I want are the directions, although it’d be extremely helpful if you came with me.”

“To Maestro’s house.”

“Well, you’ve added a ‘to.’ We’re making genuine progress.”

“You wish to go to Maestro’s house with me.”

“Now, that’s a complete sentence. Yes I do.”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“
Gott in Himmel
.”

“I live in Sunnyside, in darkest Queens. I can pick you up in about forty minutes. Just take the Harlem River Drive, right?”

“Maestro’s house.”

“Mr. Stern, with all due respect, we’re not going to see Heinrich Himmler, for crissakes. The guy’s a conductor.”

There was a long beat. I heard more breathing.

“Hello?”

“I’m at 540 Fort Washington Avenue. The apartment is 1-C. Ground floor.”

“Great. If you’re hyperventilating, Mr. Stern, I recommend holding a paper bag over your mouth. Works for me sometimes.”

Fritz Stern’s suntan seemed to have faded overnight. He stood in the foyer of his apartment, already wearing a khaki windbreaker and a cap; my guess was he had put them on right after hanging up the phone. Germans like to get ready early. Standing behind him was an agitated woman in a housedress who studied me as if I were for sale.