Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery (2 page)

“One could call it a great success, yes.” He wet his lips as if to say more, then sighed once again and shook his head.

“How come you’re shaking your head, Mr. Stern?”

Stern looked at me evenly. His right eyelid began to pulse. He rubbed it.

“Do many … odd people come here, Mr. LeVine?”

“‘Many’? Well, I would say that all depends on your definition of ‘odd.’ More than enough, I’d say.”

“And these people”—Stern leaned forward, gripping his fedora—“what makes them odd, in your opinion? Would it be their requests or their behavior? I would like to know this.”

“Hard to say, Mr. Stern. Sometimes the most peculiar-looking people will make the most conventional requests. Then an ordinary Joe—nicely dressed, fresh haircut—he’ll ask you to do something absolutely grotesque. You get a fair number of delusional types in this business.”

Stern drew a blank. “And this means what?”

“Guys who think their wives are sleeping with Eddie Cantor or the vegetable man, people certain they’re being followed by dead relatives; I’ve had more than one ex-GI tell me he was afraid to walk his dog at dinnertime because he was certain that his lieutenant was hiding in the shrubbery, poised with a gun or a knife.”

“And you do what?”

“I do what. I humor them, sometimes I try to guide them to professional help; I know a couple of sympathetic headshrinkers. If I’m seriously broke, I might take their cases. I once had a client named Thaler, a furrier who was convinced that his wife was having a torrid affair with Cab Calloway. I followed Frau Thaler for three weeks and, not surprisingly, came up empty. I told the furrier he was wasting his dough, but he was adamant and paid me to keep working the case. Two days later, I see the wife and Calloway checking into the Hotel Taft, where they spent most of the afternoon. I sat in the lobby until she left, alone; she was smiling and her hat was on backwards. One never do know, is the moral.”

Stern had listened intently. Now he leaned forward.

“All right, so now I ask you, Mr. LeVine: Do I appear to be of these crazy ones? I would like an honest answer.”

“How honest?”

“This is not a joke, I assure you. Do I appear to you to be a person given to delusions?” Stern’s forehead had turned slick with sweat.

“You’ve said nothing to indicate that you are, Mr. Stern. That’s an honest answer. My first impression of you, if you care …”

“Very much.” He leaned even farther forward now, his hands knitted together.

“My first impression of you is that you are an intelligent, somewhat highly strung—no pun intended—individual of obvious breeding. How’s that for openers?”

Stern seemed pleased with the description.

“Highly strung but not crazy, is what you are saying.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” I put my Florsheims up on the desk. “So now you’re going to tell me you saw Hitler driving a Yellow Cab on Park Avenue.”

Stern did not respond to this at all. What he did was reach into his jacket and pull out a newspaper clipping. He placed it on the desk before me.

“I would appreciate it very much if you would read this news clipping,” he said. “Then we can talk.”

I took the clipping and studied it. It was from the
New York Times,
datelined Washington, D.C., May 25, 1950, and it was written by a music critic named Howard Taubman. Two paragraphs had been bordered with red pencil marks.

“You want me to read the part in red?

“Exactly.” Stern put on a pair of half glasses, as if I needed help reading. “Read the whole, of course, if you wish, but the section in red I consider of the utmost importance.”

I read the section in red.

Mr. Truman, Mrs. Truman, and their party arrived at the hall at 8:28 and were greeted at the entrance by General David Sarnoff. They were led into a reception room backstairs. Then Walter Toscanini called his father.

The Maestro was nervous. It was said that he had been worrying about this meeting with the President for a week. In the course of the conversation with Mr. Truman, he showed his nervousness. When the President asked him what the program was, Mr. Toscanini could hardly remember.

I looked up.

“This is it?”

Stern removed his glasses. “It does not strike you as in any way remarkable?”

“Frankly no, Mr. Stern, unless I’m missing something. Toscanini meets the President of the United States and he’s nervous. So what?”

Stern arose from his seat and walked around the office, his hands clasped behind his back. He gazed at the moosehead.

“You are a hunter, Mr. LeVine?”

“I don’t know a moose from a goose. My ex-brother-in-law bought that for me shortly after I opened for business. He thought it added what he called a ‘raffish charm.’ He’s that kind of guy, the kind who still says ‘raffish.’”

Stern looked from the moose to me.

“You are no longer married?”

“That’s correct. Divorced for nine years, to be precise. I’m currently living with Betty Grable.”

Stern returned to the chair and sat down.

“Enjoy the walk?” I asked.

Stern merely blinked.

“May I have the clipping back, please?”

I slid the clipping back across the desk. Stern took it, folded it neatly, returned it to his jacket. He looked at me. I looked at him.

“So?” I said.

He cocked his head, as if overhearing a conversation in another room. I was getting aggravated.

“Mr. Stern, you hand me a clipping about Toscanini having the shakes when he meets the President. I read it and find it thoroughly unremarkable, but you find it compelling and obviously you have a reason for thinking it so. Now, I don’t claim to be the busiest shamus on the block, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to spend the rest of the morning trying to read your mind. You want a detective, I’m a detective. The question before the house, however, remains
why
do you want a detective. Shall we proceed?

Stern smiled. You wouldn’t have confused him with Louis Armstrong, but it was a smile nonetheless.

“Very well put. So I will now open my mind to you.” He cleared his throat. “The article by Taubman is not, as you say, Mr. LeVine, remarkable. Except for one detail which strikes me as unique because I have worked with this man—this genius, I should say—for the past ten years. What I am getting to is that it is absolutely inconceivable to me that Toscanini should be unable to remember the evening’s program.” He shook his head for emphasis. “Absolutely inconceivable.”

“It could happen. He’s excited, he’s an old man—”

The violinist held up his long, slender hand.

“Let me continue this, Mr. LeVine, and then we can talk.”

“Fine with me.” I picked a pack of Luckies up off my desk.

“And I would appreciate it if you did not smoke. My lungs are not the best.”

“Then you better get to the point. I won’t last much longer without a butt.”

Stern smiled. “That is unfortunate. I will reach my point quite soon.”

I regretfully put the Luckies down and the fiddler continued his story.

“The Maestro, as you say, is an old man. Eighty-three, in point of fact. But his memory is absolutely unbelievable. He does not merely know by heart every note of every piece we play. There are other conductors quite capable of that. But he knows every note of works he has not conducted for a half century; he knows every note of pieces he has never conducted and in fact detests! It is a memory that cannot be fathomed by ordinary human beings. By which I include myself as well as you.”

“Speak for yourself,” I told Stern. “Ask me who’s leading the American League in runs scored. Go ahead.”

But Stern was on a roll now. There was no time to accommodate my lowbrow banter. “Thus I find Maestro’s forgetting the program not comprehensible,” he continued, “unless one realizes something. And that realization, Mr. LeVine, is one which has caused many weeks of sleepless nights not only for me, but for other members of the orchestra who feel as I do.” Stern’s eyes were bright.

“Who feel what?”

“Mr. LeVine, I believe that the man in the room with President Truman was not Toscanini. I believe that Maestro has been missing since sometime in May.” Stern sat back in the chair. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow.

I took my feet off my desk and sat up. “And you say that other members of the orchestra feel as you do?”

“That is correct.”

“That’s over three months ago.”

“Yes. Last week we are to begin rehearsals again and they are canceled. We hear that Maestro is ailing. Some of us just look at each other.”

I ran my hand over my cool clean scalp.

“But you obviously don’t feel that he’s missing just on the basis of this clipping.”

“Obviously, Mr. LeVine. I feel it because the relationship between orchestral players and a conductor, though formal, is quite intimate. We know each other’s quirks and mannerisms so very, very well. About halfway through the tour, I began to feel that Maestro was not himself. It was hard to explain. His step was lively, like always, he looked the same … but he did not conduct the same way. Something was different. Rehearsals became shorter and shorter; Maestro hardly spoke a word. I assumed at first that because the programs were pretty much the same from city to city, Maestro did not feel the need to rehearse. That is not unusual. On a tour of this length, in fact, it is common. We gather in the morning, test the sound of the hall, then leave. Live a tourist’s life, one could say. But something began to bother me, something told me this was not Toscanini. Something in the beat, in the way he moved, in the way he turned his head….” He threw up his hands. “This was not Toscanini. I have no doubt.”

“Physically …”

“Physically, no difference. Not on the surface—the white hair, the beautiful skin. But other things. I will give for you an example: The Maestro’s eyes are very weak. Terrible.”

“He doesn’t wear glasses, does he?”

“Never in public, because he has great vanity. But one day this … this other Toscanini, he makes a joke about the first clarinet’s necktie. We all thought this was strange because Maestro normally could not even see the clarinetist, much less his tie.” He shook his head. “It sounds like ravings, I am sure, but believe me, Mr. LeVine, I am not one who imagines things.

“I’m sure you’re not.”

“One other thing, perhaps a pedantic one, but it is not minor. On the tour we played the Beethoven Seventh. You know it?”

“Hum me a few bars.”

“There is a second movement, very famous, but always played very slow.
Da
da-da,
da
-da …”

“I’ll be goddamned. I do know it.”

“For years that movement was played so slowly, as would befit a funeral movement, like in the Beethoven Third. But is not a funeral movement. Maestro looked at the score and saw that it was marked
allegretto.
”

“Which ain’t slow.”

“Which isn’t slow at all. Maestro conducted the movement as Beethoven had intended, in a kind of, let’s say, ‘flowing’ manner.”

“And on the tour?”

“On the tour, the alleged Toscanini just dragged it out. Da … da … da …
dahhh
… da. We all just looked at each other.”

“It could be his age.”

Stern shook his head very definitely.

“Impossible. The whole manner of conducting was different. The gestures were totally like Maestro, but the spirit was completely different.”

“So you think it was some guy who rehearsed in front of a mirror?”

“I do not know what he did. All I know is that Maestro is missing and we were conducted by an impostor. I am as sure of that as I am of my wife’s fidelity.”

I didn’t say a word. Stern allowed himself a small smile.

“Maybe surer.”

“And the other men in the orchestra, Mr. Stern? They feel this also?”

Stern looked at the ceiling, at me, at his hat.

“Some do,” he said to the hat.

“How many?”

“Enough. At least a dozen.” Stern looked up. “This is not the sort of thing one discusses so openly, Mr. LeVine. Only to one’s closest associates in the orchestra.”

“You mean only the second fiddles believe this story?”

“No, it is a representative grouping from all sections of the orchestra: brass, woodwinds, strings…. Several have stated, in a very confused and concerned fashion, ‘This can’t be Maestro. This is a fraud.’”

Stern stared at me, waiting for a reply. I didn’t have any.

“You think I am crazy,” he said finally.

I turned and took a peek out my window, across the air shaft to the insurance company on the other side of the building. The agents and their assistants were marching back and forth to their file cabinets, busy as can be. The wall clock in their office said that it was half past eleven. When I turned back to the violinist he was staring at me intently.

“Say it. You think I am mad.”