Twisted: The Collected Stories (29 page)

“
Loss?
You make it sound like my MasterCard was stolen.”

“—but there wasn’t anything more Officer Vincenzo could do.”

“That kid was going to kill me, and he”—Pitkin nodded toward Tony—“let him get away. With my violin. There is no other instrument like that in the world.”

Not exactly true, thought Tony, a man raised by a father who loved to dish out musical trivia at the dinner table while his mother dished out tortellini. He remembered the man solemnly telling his wife and
children there were about six hundred Antonio Stradivari violins in existence—about half the number the Italian craftsman had made. Tony decided not to share this tidbit with the violinist at the moment.

“Everything went by the book,” Weber continued, not much interested in the uniqueness of the stolen merch.

“Well, the book ought to be changed,” Pitkin snapped.

“I didn’t have a clear target,” Tony said, angry that he felt he had to defend himself to a civilian. “You can’t go shooting suspects in the back.”

“He was a criminal,” Pitkin said. “And, my God, it wasn’t as if . . . I mean, he was black.”

Weber’s face grew still. He glanced at the lead detective, a round man in his forties, who rolled his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Pitkin said quickly. “It’s just that it’s terrifying, having someone push a gun in your ribs.”

“Hey,” a reporter shouted from the crowd. “How ’bout a statement?”

Tony was about to say something but the detective said, “No statements at this time. The chief’s going to give a press conference in a half hour.”

Another detective walked up to Pitkin. “What can you tell us about the assailant?”

Pitkin thought for a moment. “I guess he was about six feet—”

“Six-two,” Tony corrected. “He was taller than you.” At five-seven, Tony Vincenzo was a good observer of height.

Pitkin continued, “He was heavyset.” A glance at
Weber. “He was
African American.
He wore a black ski mask and black sweat clothes.”

“And red-and-black Nike Air pumps,” Tony said.

“And an expensive watch. A Rolex. Wonder who he killed to get that?” Now Tony got a glance. “Wonder who he’s
going
to kill next? Now that he got away.”

“Anything else?” the detective asked matter-of-factly.

“Wait. I do remember something. He had powder on his hands. White powder.”

The detectives looked at each other. One said, “Drugs. Coke. Heroin maybe. Probably needed a fix and you happened to be at the wrong time and the wrong place. Okay, sir, that’s helpful. It’ll give us something to start with. We’ll get on it.”

They hurried off to their black Ford and sped away.

A young woman in a red dress walked up to Weber, Tony and the violinist. “Mr. Pitkin, I’m from the mayor’s office,” she announced. “His Honor’s asked me to convey his deepest apologies on behalf of the people of New York. We’re not going to stop until we get that violin back and put your attacker behind bars.”

But Pitkin hadn’t calmed one bit. He spat out, “This is what I get for coming to places like this. . . .” He nodded toward the concert hall, though he might have meant the whole city. “From now on I’m only doing studio work. What good is it to perform anyway? The audience sits there like logs, they cough and sneeze, they don’t dress up anymore. Do you know what it’s like playing Brahms for people wearing
blue jeans and T-shirts? . . . And then to have
this
happen!”

“We’ll do everything we can, sir,” she said. “I promise you.”

The violinist hadn’t heard her. “That violin. It cost more than my town house.”

“Well—” she began.

“It was made in 1722. Paganini played it. Vivaldi owned it for five years. It was in the pit at the first performance of
La Bohème.
It accompanied Caruso and Maria Callas, and when Domingo asked me to play with him at the Albert Hall,
that
was the instrument I played. . . .” His eyes swung to Weber and he asked with genuine curiosity, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Not really, sir,” the sergeant said cheerfully. Then he turned to Tony. “Come over here, I wanna talk to you.”

“You know music. Who the hell is this guy?” Weber asked him, as they stood together under the fire escape. There was still no rain though the mist had coalesced into dense, cold fog.

“Pitkin? He’s a conductor and composer. You know. Like Bernstein.”

“Who?”

“Leonard Bernstein.
West Side Story.
”

“Oh. You mean he’s famous.”

“Think of him as the Mick Jagger of the classical circuit.”

“Fuck. Eyes of the world on us, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Tell me true. No way you could’ve capped the perp?”

“Nope,” Tony said. “When he was facing me I didn’t have a clear target and the backdrop wasn’t clean. Slug could’ve gone anywhere. After that all I had was his back.”

Weber sighed and his face grew even more disgruntled than it usually was. “Well, we’ll just have to take the heat.” He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. “Your tour’s over. Write up the report and get home.”

Tony held up a hand. “I gotta favor.”

“What?”

“My eleven-eighteen.”

The application form for Detective Division. Presently sitting with about three thousand other applications. Or, more likely,
under
three thousand other applications.

The wily old sergeant caught on. He grinned. One thing that could get your app shuffled to the top of the deck was collaring a showcase perp—a serial killer or a shooter who’d killed a cop or a nun, say.

Or the guy who’d stolen a half million bucks’ worth of fiddle and embarrassed the mayor.

“You want a piece of the case,” Weber said.

“No,” Tony answered, not smiling, “I want the whole thing.”

“You can’t
have
the whole thing. What you can have is four hours. Half tour. But no overtime. And you work with the detectives.” The sergeant looked into the young cop’s eyes. “You’re not going to work with the detectives, are you?”

“No.”

Weber debated. “Okay. But listen—for this to work, Vincenzo, we need the perp. Not just the damn violin.” He nodded toward the woman from the mayor’s office. “They need somebody to crucify.”

“Understood.”

“Get going. The clock’s running.”

Tony started east, toward the precinct house. But he stopped and returned to Pitkin and the mayor’s aide. He looked up at the musician. “Gotta question. You mentioned Paganini?”

A blink. “I did, yes. What about it?”

“Well, I got a Paganini story. See, one time his friends decided to rag him a little. . . . And what they did was they wrote a piece of violin music that was so complicated it couldn’t be played. Like, human hands just wouldn’t work that way. They left it on a music stand and invited him over. Paganini walks into the room and glances at the music then goes into the corner and picks up this violin and tunes it. Then, get this, he looks at his friends and he smiles. And he plays the whole thing perfectly. From memory. Blew them away. Is that a great story, or what?”

Pitkin stared at Tony coldly for a moment. “You should’ve shot that man, Officer.” He turned away and climbed into his limousine. “The Sherry-Netherland,” he said. The door slammed shut.

Tony called Jean Marie from the precinct and told her not to wait up. He was on special assignment.

“It’s not dangerous, is it, honey?”

“Naw, they just want me to help out on a case with this music bigwig.”

“Really? That’s great.”

“Get some sleep. Love you.”

“Love you too, Tony.”

Then he changed into street clothes and drove uptown in his own car. The jeans and sneakers were only for comfort; there was no way he could work undercover where he was going—the Johnny B pool hall on 125th Street—since Tony’s was the only white face in the place. And nobody had
cop
written on him as clearly as Tony Vincenzo. But that didn’t matter. He wasn’t here to fool anybody. He’d worked the street long enough to know there was only one way to get information out of people who weren’t otherwise inclined to give it to you: buying and selling. Of course, he didn’t have any snitch money, being just a patrol officer, but he thought he had some negotiable tender to shop with.

“Hey, Sam,” he called, walking up to the bar.

“Yo, Tony. Whatchu doing here?” the white-haired old bartender asked in a raspy voice. “Looking for a game?”

“No, I’m looking for an asshole.”

“Heh. Got plenty of them round here.”

“Naw, my boy’s gone to ground. ’Jacked something tonight and got away from me.”

“Personal, huh?”

Tony didn’t answer. “So how’s your brother?”

“Billy? Whatta you think? How’d
you
like it you spent four years in a ten-by-ten cell and was looking at four more?”

“I wouldn’t like it one bit. But I also wouldn’t like being the teller he threatened to shoot.”

“Yeah, well. He
didn’t
shoot her, did he?”

“Tell me, how’d Billy boy like to be looking at maybe
three
to go ’stead of four?”

Sam poured a beer for Tony. He drank down half of it.

“I dunno,” Sam said. “Bet he’d like to be looking at
one
year ’stead of four.”

Tony thought for a minute. “How’s eighteen months sound?”

“You a beat cop. You can do that?”

Tony decided that he’d have the mayor’s support on this one. Cultural New York was at stake. “Yeah, I can do it.”

“But listen up. I ain’t getting my ass capped for snitching on bad boys.”

“I saw him in action. Don’t worry. No backup. No gang colors. He also picked on the wrong guy and’s going away for a long, long time. He’ll be old and gray ’fore he get out of Ossining.”

“Okay. You got a name?”

“No name.”

“What’s he look like?” Sam asked.

Tony asked, “I look like I can see through ski masks?”

“Oh.”

“He’s six-two, give or take. Heavy. Was wearing black sweats and black-and-red Nike Air pumps. Oh, and a fake Rolex.”

Because no crook was dumb enough to wear a three-thousand-dollar watch on a job—too easy to get messed up or lost.

“And he’s a pool player.”

“You know that?”

“I know that.”

Because whatever the detectives from downtown thought, Tony knew it’d been cue chalk dust that Pitkin had seen on his hands. No drug dealer or junkie’d be so careless with coke or smack that he’d get visible residue on his hands. And if he did, he’d lick them clean in a second. That’s why Tony was here—he knew the perp had to be a serious pool player if he’d got chalk on his hands before a job like this. And while there were a lot of pool parlors in New York City, there weren’t many that catered to serious players and there were fewer still that catered to serious black players.

But, after thinking for a long moment, the bartender shook his head, sad. “Man, I wish I could say I seen him. But you know Uptown Billiards?”

“On Lex?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “They had a tournament tonight. Five hunnerd bucks. Know a lotta players was there. Check it out. Talk to Izz. Little dude hangs in the back. Tell him you know me and it’s cool.”

“Okay, it pans out, I’ll talk to D of C. Get your brother knocked down.”

“Thanks, man. Hey, you want another beer?”

“You still got Smokey Robinson on the box?” He nodded to the jukebox.

Sam frowned indignantly. “Course I do.”

“Good. I’ll take a rain check.”