Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902) (15 page)

“I never had any heart for this adventure. Only for you.”

“Not an ‘adventure,' Basillio. Bad choice of word. I'm too old for adventures.”

“Well, then ‘hubris.' ”

“Whose hubris?”

“Yours, Swede. You can't stand to lose. I mean, you can't stand to lose your superiority in things criminal.”

“That's nonsense.”

“It isn't. No one's going to get the bone away from you. The more you're thwarted and insulted, the more obstinate you become, the more you worry the bone. And that's why directors hate to work with you, too.”

“Is that the reason?”

“
Exactly
the reason. You're so busy with the bone that you lose sight of the real goal. You stop thinking, and all kinds of fantasies take over. And you do nothing to quash them.”

“So you think this enterprise is a fantasy, do you?”

“I hope it isn't. But it is a fantasy that the Riverside String Quartet is an evil entity.”

“Did I ever say that?”

“You didn't say it, but you believe it. Otherwise we wouldn't be sitting here freezing in the middle of the night on this godforsaken farm.”

“It's not a
farm
, Tony! It's an artists' colony.” I knew that wasn't much of a comeback, but I thought it best to stop the argument there.

I turned away from him and stared out of the car window. The night seemed sordid and threatening. It didn't feel like being in the country.

Well, no matter what Tony thought, I knew it wasn't just “hubris” that was driving me on. They
had
thwarted and insulted me, though, and I wouldn't forget it soon.

We got back to the hotel at four in the morning and fell asleep immediately, thankful at least for the warmth.

The next night we were better prepared. We brought blankets and several thermoses, one with soup, and a lot more snacks, plus a deck of cards. The first couple of hours on the stakeout, as they say, were oddly pleasant. Until we started to play casino.

We had to rig up a flashlight so that it illuminated the cards between us on the seat, but not the car. We managed it with a blanket finally, but it made sitting there very uncomfortable. It had been more than fifteen years since I'd played a game of casino, and I had to have my memory refreshed as to the rules. Tony was little help, however, because he remembered even less than I. We got into a fight over the method of scoring. I knew there were eleven points in a game. And I knew the ten of diamonds counted for two and the two of spades was a point, and each ace was one. So that meant “cards” and “spades” had to total four points, but we couldn't agree on the breakdown.

When we finally did come to an agreement, we commenced an intense game there in the car, in the freezing night, virtually under a tent, waiting for a killer.

I was winning handily. Then I decided to build fours. There was one on the table, so to speak, and I had two more in my hand. So I laid one of the fours from my hand on top of the one on the table and announced my intention to build.

Tony grinned, placed the two of spades on top of my four, and said he was building sixes.

I explained that he couldn't do that—it was against the rules.

He said he could.

Tempers flared, I picked up the two of spades and threw it at him. He grabbed my hand. I had just raised my other hand when he suddenly put his finger to his lips, cautioning silence.

I had heard it, too. The sound of a motor—coming closer.

“I think a car's turning up the drive,” Basillio said urgently.

I stiffened in my seat. We could see nothing. The house obscured our view just as efficiently as it hid us from sight.

“At least I think it was a car,” Tony whispered, “I saw bright lights coming up the main road, and then they vanished. So it either stopped and turned out its lights or it turned out its lights and made a right turn onto this property.”

I rolled down the window, in spite of the cold. “We'll know for sure in a few minutes,” I said. “We should be able to see any lights on the ground floor.” I strained toward the hulking structure of the house, but I heard nothing.

“There!” Tony said.

“Where?”

“It's gone now, but I saw something.”

Then I could see it too: a beam of light inside the house on the ground floor, sweeping.

“He's in! He's in!” I said, and opened the car door. The two of us slipped out quietly.

“What do we do now?” Tony asked.

“Wait for him to leave, and grab him. He'll go up to Will's room and tear it apart. He'll find nothing. And then he'll leave. We'll be there.”

We walked around to the entrance to the house, hunched against the cold. I took my place on one side of the door and motioned Tony to the other side. We were like freezing, frightened bookends. It was so dark that I couldn't even see the outline of the intruder's car.

I'm not sure how long we were waiting for the intruder to finish his search and give up. But it was long enough for me to realize I'd left the flashlight in the car. I wanted to run back for it, but didn't dare. It was long enough for me to develop an intensely painful cramp in my leg. The pain was so bad I must have groaned involuntarily.

“What's the matter?” Basillio hissed from his post.

There was no time to explain. The front door opened then, and a figure walked out.

“Stop him, Tony!”

He grabbed the figure, but it shook free and ran, Tony in pursuit.

Suddenly the area was flooded with light. Dazzling, diamond-white light. Tony froze in his tracks. The intruder stopped too, for a second, but then swung an object at Tony. It landed. Tony grunted.

“Don't move!” an authoritative voice boomed.

Now I could see the source of the light: the headlights of Ford Donaldson's vehicle. The lieutenant himself was standing by the driver's window, his weapon trained on the intruder. No one moved, except me. I walked over to Tony to see if he was okay. He had been hit by a leather pocketbook which now lay on the ground, its contents strewn about.

Ford walked closer, keeping his gun straight out. He looked over briefly at me. “I was just bringing you some coffee, Alice.”

I was breathing too heavily to thank him properly. I turned toward the intruder, now down on one knee.

“Stand up,” Donaldson ordered, “and keep your hands over your head.”

Slowly, the figure stood.

I took a good look. At first my brain registered nothing. The figure seemed familiar in a vague sort of way, but nothing actually clicked. Then Ford pulled the cap from the figure's head.

It was Mrs. Wallace . . . My God, it was the cook, Mrs. Wallace!

She had cut her hair quite short and was wearing makeup and unisexual dark clothing. But there was no mistake about who it was.

I thought with dumb wonder:
But I didn't send her a postcard
.

Ford lowered the gun and walked past Mrs. Wallace, bending to examine the contents of her bag on the ground. After a few seconds, I heard him whistle long and low. When he straightened, he had a small object in his hand. He showed it to me. “This is one of the pieces of jewelry taken from Gryder's person. They said he won it at a piano competition in Belgium when he was just a kid. He came in third place.”

We all looked at the cook, who was staring hypnotically at the small ring. Her face seemed to be decomposing right before our eyes. Finally she burst into pitiful tears. “I couldn't . . . I couldn't destroy it,” she wailed. “I got rid of everything else, but I just . . . couldn't. It was all that was left . . . it was so sad.”

I put an arm around the trembling woman. “We know why you're here, Mrs. Wallace. You're in a lot of trouble. But you didn't murder Will Gryder . . . did you? But you know who did. You have to tell us everything, Mrs. Wallace. You have to think of yourself now.”

She nodded through the tears.

Ford went to his car to bring the coffee he'd purchased for me.

We helped Mrs. Wallace back in through the doors of the old house and sat her in the chilly dining room, where she choked down the coffee and then began her story. She spoke in a racing, low voice, as if the words were fast unwinding from a spool.

“It was the 1970s, and all those girls wanted their careers. They wanted the money to finance the group bad—and they decided to do whatever they had to do to get it. They were all turning tricks, every one of them. But not like the whores on the street. Oh, no. Their Johns were wealthy, and their fees were stiff. After all, these were beautiful young girls, educated, cultured—the stuff of fantasies for a lot of older men.

“The prostitution was Hazan's idea. But he didn't know where to begin. All he knew was how to book and manage small-time acts. He couldn't set up something like that by himself. So he looked for help.

“He called an old friend from the army—a man who was then a Broadway ticket-broker with some shady connections. Few people knew that this ticket-broker had a background as a pimp.

“The fifteen thousand in seed money was raised quickly enough. And the whoring stopped. But that's not something a woman forgets easily, even under the best circumstances. Most of the girls pulled through it all and started to put it behind them. But my poor little Rozalind had a harder time forgetting. She was . . . hurt . . . hurt badly . . . by a very sick man, a customer. She was lucky he didn't kill her, lucky not to lose her mind. But even she got over it, learned to forget, except for the fact that she couldn't ever have children, thanks to that sick man.

“So the years are moving on, and the quartet has become successful even beyond their own dreams. Then, at a social event, some charity thing for Carnegie Hall, the anonymous pimp, who'd gone on to make something of himself and is now a wealthy and respected businessman, meets the women for the first time. They know nothing about him. But he knows all about them, doesn't he? Anyway, he takes one look at that angel—Roz—and he's head-over-heels, hopelessly and forever in love. And soon they marry.”

I touched the cook on the arm then, interrupting her narrative. “Are you saying the pimp was Benjamin Polikoff?!”

“Yes. Ben. He adored Roz. He became the most wonderful husband any woman could ever want. And a wonderful friend to the entire quartet. He made life great for her, and I know she loved him, too.

“But the love story doesn't end there, like in a fairy tale. Roz may have loved him dearly, but she was bored with him. She began to have affairs, most of them trifling. But then, there was Gryder. The affair with him was serious enough that she almost left Ben. But that one ended, too. Or so we thought. It wasn't really over, as Ben found out. Roz and Gryder went on seeing each other off and on for years—it never ended for them.

“You know all about the reason they came tip here to rest. That trip to Europe was terrible for everybody. They were supposed to lay low here and play music. Then the visitors started arriving. And then one day Gryder himself shows up.

“Roz hurt Gryder terribly when she went back to her husband. After all, that piano player was an egomaniac. He thought he was the best pianist in the world. And the best lover. And the best writer—or whatever. But as much as I detested him, I know he loved Roz, too. He was obsessed with getting her back full-time, so he decided to write a book about the quartet and use it as a kind of blackmail on Ben.

“He began to hint to Roz that he'd found out a lot of strange things about everyone connected to the quartet. She reported it to Ben. Ben got more and more worried, afraid Gryder knew that he, Ben, had been a procurer. Ben knew that if Roz ever found out about his past, she'd leave him immediately. Can you imagine being married to the man who had orchestrated your own degradation, placed you in that kind of horror? No, of course not.

“Finally, Gryder came out and told Ben he was going to write this terrible book that told everything. Ben tried to talk him out of it. He tried everything—offering money, bankrolling tours and recordings for Will, anything. But Gryder refused. He wanted Roz or nothing.

“And finally that terrible night came when Ben stopped begging, stopped trying. And killed him. I saw him—afterward. He told me what had happened, and said he tried the best he could to make it look like a robbery gone sour. He gave me all Gryder's possessions to destroy. And I did—except for that ring.”

“Did Ben arrange that car accident?” I asked.

“Yes. He told me he paid a kid from town to rig something up with a rope and a stuffed animal—I don't know who. He wanted to make it look as if the person who killed Gryder was out to get him, too. He was desperate. He even cooked up a story about me seeing Will beat up on him. He thought that if worse came to worse and he was charged with the killing, that might show that Will had been violent with him. It might point to self-defense.”

Mrs. Wallace dropped the empty coffee container to the floor and stared down at it. “But he couldn't find the manuscript for the book,” she muttered. “He searched and searched but he couldn't find it. And neither could I—not then, and not tonight.”

“Roz has been in Seattle for days now playing with a group there. I was there looking after Ben in the apartment when the mail arrived the other day. We figured someone else was going to blackmail him. The card seemed to say that the manuscript was still here in the house. So we decided I should be the one to come up and look.”

Donaldson spoke for the first time since we'd come inside: “Why does this man Polikoff have such a hold on you? Why did you go on helping him?”

She began to cry again, but soon she caught herself and wiped back the tears with her cap. “I've told you what Ben was once—a pimp. But I didn't tell you that I was once also in the life. Yes, I was a whore. I was no longer young and I wanted out. Ben had a sick father at the time. He hired me to take care of the old man. He gave me a place to live, money, food, sent me to school, everything. And when the old man wanted to marry me, Ben gave us his blessings. No, it wasn't much of a marriage—his father was old and frail. But he actually loved me. Ben Polikoff gave me the chance to know what that can be like—to have someone truly love you. I'd do anything for him. And why not? He's paid his dues for the things he did when he was younger. Now he does nothing but look out for everyone else.”