“DID YOU SEE THIS, BRUCE?”

Luddie Chametsky, my partner, was standing at my desk, waving a newspaper clipping.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Shirley Scott got a rave last night.” He looked at me sympathetically. “You were really too sick to make it?”

I nodded, feeling awful. “I couldn’t have made it to Avery Fisher last night if Toscanini had come back to lead the Philharmonic.”

Luddie shook his head nervously. My health status confused and upset him. We had started this school together, and I suspected he had doubts about this ability to carry on alone. It was a subject we avoided – all but one aspect of it. I had informed him he would inherit my share.

“Well, she sang like an angel. Strauss should have been alive to hear it. Anne and I were both in tears.”

I sat back, looking at Luddie. He was a hairy man. The hair swirled upward from his throat, arms, wrists, though he was going bald on top. A hair symphony. Maybe his wife loved him for that pelt – too much testosterone – but I couldn’t help wondering how she felt about it in hot weather. Luddie had been Shirley’s first teacher here, and still followed her career passionately.

“Was David there?” I asked. A rhetorical question. David wouldn’t have missed Shirley doing the Four Last Songs with the Philharmonic for anything.

“As a matter of fact, he wasn’t.”

“He wasn’t?”

“I figured he was touring. I don’t keep up with him these days.”

“No, he’s …” I choked off the sentence. No use going into all that. I hadn’t talked to David for a week, not since our conversation the morning after Clay’s dinner party. My demand that he notify the police of Clay’s visit to Miles’s apartment had obviously alienated him. And now he’d missed Shirley’s debut with the Philharmonic. “Did Shirley say anything?”

Luddie chewed his lower lip. “We went to the Russian Tea Room afterward but nobody mentioned David. It was Shirley’s night.”

I looked down at my desk, covered with a pile of checks to be co-signed. I hadn’t been here for a few days. “Well, he’ll probably see the review and call her.”

“If he misses it, there it is. Feast your eyes.”

He dropped the Times review and walked off. From the rear Luddie was impressive in a different way. He had important buttocks – square and massive. It was hard to contradict a man with a rear like that, which his students discovered sooner or later.

I read the review, then turned my thoughts to David again. What had kept him from the concert?

Erica, dressed in a white, Grecian-type sheath, appeared in the doorway. “There’s a Miss Osterkamp on the line.”

I sensed a connection closing. Maybe Rita would know something about David. I nodded. Erica turned, leaving a vapor trail of Obsession behind her. It was Friday; I figured she had a date right after work.

Rita’s warm voice caressed my ear. After inquiring about my health, she asked if we might have lunch. She’d be at her printer’s on Varick in a few hours, reading the proof for their new catalog. Would I by any chance …?

I was still a little shaky but I agreed. It might give me a boost. We arranged to meet at Tommaso’s, one of the last joints in Little Italy where you could still get veal marsala for a decent price.

I was saved from further rumination by the appearance of Fiona McCleary. “Dr. Pittman.”

I stood up. I always stood in her presence – some atavistic reaction, respect for the goddess.

“I am sorry to complain but circumstances force me.”

She was wearing a cape today. Her grey hair was done up in sausage rolls. “I am not pleased with the tuning of the pianos in 307 and 309. But that is not my chief complaint. I feel that my advanced students are under-represented in next week’s concert.”

I observed Fiona’s large face go through the contortions of blame, self-pity, outrage. It was a shame she was such a good teacher. Word-of-mouth about Miss McCleary had brought us dozens of students and kept them. She was indispensable and knew it.

“I must insist that at least three students be added to the recital list.”

“I can add just one.” I held up a finger. “I’d suggest Jane Sung.”

“I’m sorry, that won’t do at all.”

As we bickered, both of us performing like veterans, I thought about David’s first verdict on Fiona. “Too big,” he’d said and refused to elaborate. Later I had discovered that she reminded him of a seventh-grade teacher who had humiliated him regularly.

At last we had it settled. Jane Sung and Diana Smalley would each play something brief. “I must say,” she turned and bent her cloudy grey eyes on me, “I have missed you recently. No one else will really …” she cast around for the word, “… engage me.”

She sailed out. I tried not to feel flattered. May you be blessed with worthy adversaries. Was that an old Chinese proverb or had I just made it up?

 

§  §  §

 

Rita was at the bar, sipping a Cinzano. She was even taller now, thanks to heels. We moved to a table, where I ordered a Perrier. We looked at each other with something like affection and I marveled for the hundredth time at the chemistry between certain strangers. Could it be another result of reincarnation, like musical giftedness? Had Rita and I been close friends in a previous life? I decided to keep the question to myself. No use alarming her.

“How’s Clay?” I asked after we had ordered.

“Clay is very busy. We all are. We’re having a big do at the Harvard Club next week. Maybe you’d like to come.”

It seems Lightning Books was starting a new line of romance novels – not the kind you read, the kind you watch. They were launching a set of video-novels under the overall title, Shadows of Desire.

“Oh my God,” I said, closing my eyes

“Now don’t condemn us in advance. We’ve got some of the best writers in the field – Kathleen Drake and Glinda Collins and Rosemary Renfrew. We’ve had a top-notch production house doing the casting and shooting. Frankly, we expect to make a bundle.”

“Was this Clay’s idea?”

She nodded. “He got us into audio – novels on tape – and now this. We’ve gone way over our heads to finance it.” She gave a nervous smile. “Anyway, maybe you’d like to come next week. It’s a press reception. It might be fun. I’ve got an extra invitation right here.”

The evening at Clay’s didn’t come up until we were well into our entrées.

I debated how much to say about David’s connection to Clay – though Rita certainly knew about their relationship, she might not enjoy discussing it. But she saved me the trouble. “I’m glad Clay has teamed up with David,” she said, no uneasiness in her voice. “It’s made a big difference. I doubt he would have risked this new video line unless things were … well, stable at home.”

I pretended to a knowledge I didn’t have. “Yes, I think they’re getting along really well.”

“It was that trip to St. Louis, don’t you think? It cemented things.”

I put down my knife and fork. “What trip to St. Louis?”

“Oh dear.” She put her hand to her cheek. “I assumed you knew.”

“I had no idea.”

A pause inserted itself. “I can ask David about it,” I said, to get her off the hook. “Generally, we don’t have any secrets.”

“He thinks the world of you.”

I held my tongue for a few moments, then it got away from me. “What happened in St. Louis, Rita?”

“Oh, Bruce.” I could see her tact struggling with her loyalty. “I’m amazed David didn’t tell you.” More struggle and then, finally, “He got in some trouble and Clay went out to … to help.”

I could feel my heart thumping around. “Trouble with the police?”

She nodded. “I don’t know the details. I think he had been indiscreet in some way. I’m sure it was due to stress, being away from home, playing in public …”

“And Clay fixed it?”

“I’m not sure what he did. Found a lawyer or paid someone off. Anyway, they’ve been much closer since then.”

I started to eat again. So that was it. David had gotten himself into a jam and Clay had gotten him out.

Rita relieved herself by changing the subject. She got onto the American novel. Apparently it had reached a peak of influence in 1926 and gone downhill ever since. But I hardly listened. Something else was stirring around in my gut.

Had David refused to tell the New York cops about Clay’s presence in Miles’s apartment because he owed him one? Because it was his way of paying Clay back for the rescue in St. Louis?

A sudden despair swept through me. I had been David Donnenfeld’s confidant for almost ten years. I had heard all his griefs, his insecurities, his hopes and fantasies. It had been a form of love. And now I was on the outside looking in.

I felt Rita’s dark eyes on me. She had stopped talking and was waiting for me to come around. At last she said, “There’s a favor I want to ask you, Bruce. This lunch wasn’t entirely social and altruistic.” She gave her nervous laugh.

I was still put off, struggling with my hurt, but I managed to say something.

“My daughter would like to take music lessons. She’s rather a special child.”

The story came out slowly. I was able to focus in bits and pieces, and then wholly. Leslie Osterkamp was eighteen with a difficult childhood behind her. Joe Osterkamp had left them when Leslie was eleven, a particularly difficult age. “I never really understood why he left us,” Rita said with a wan smile, “but my parents weren’t surprised. I’d taken him down to Miami to meet them and they didn’t like him at all. I thought it was the cultural difference, of course – I told my papi that if Joe loved me one-tenth as much as he did, I’d be fine – but they were right. Cubans have an instinct about these things. Later, my mother said she knew he was a cabrón from the very beginning.”

“A cabrón?”

“A man who never stops … playing around.” She paused, collecting herself. “Anyway, I raised Leslie by myself. Whatever I did was wrong, of course. Too permissive or too restrictive. Too much love or not enough. Never the right amount at the right time.”

She gave a deep sigh. “She changed schools a great many times. But last fall, after a lot of trouble, we got her into Bennington.”

But it hadn’t worked. Leslie had suffered a kind of collapse in the spring. Now she was home again, refusing to go back to college, sitting around the house.

“However,” Rita went on, “there’s a silver lining to all this. She’s always written poetry and now she’s started writing songs. Settings for her poems. She plays the guitar. She says this is her real career. I thought, well, it might be a way to get her moving again.”

Years of experience came to my aid. “I’ve got just the teacher for her. Luddie Chametsky, my partner. He’s wonderful with talented, disturbed kids. Half our students are slightly batty anyway. I’ll talk to him. He can go over her stuff, then lead her into theory, ear training, arranging, whatever interests her.”

Rita’s face lit up. “That would be wonderful. I just know it’s the right thing for her.”

“Have her call me. I’ll set it up with Luddie.”

She shook her head. “I can’t thank you enough.”

I reached over and put my hand on hers. “We’re always looking for new students. How do you think we pay our bills?”

But after putting her in a taxi on Spring Street, my demons began to rage again. Trouble in St. Louis, a flying rescue, home again to a tighter relationship. And now that David was in real trouble – not for screwing around in public but involving a homicide – some kind of misplaced loyalty was at work. David wouldn’t defend himself even though not doing so put his career at risk.

 

§  §  §

 

I arrived at the 20th Precinct at four o’clock the same afternoon, which was stretching my day. They were uptown, on West 82nd Street, near the apartment where Miles had lived. I noticed a plaque in the vestibule commemorating a number of patrolmen killed in the line of duty.

A burly sergeant sat behind the raised bench to the left. In an alcove a clerk was scribbling; in another, a man sat with earphones. The sergeant, whose name on the plaque was, appropriately, Traficante, examined me. “What do you want?”

None of the niceties of sales clerks here. “I want to talk to Detective Kerrison.”

“What about?”

I hesitated. I didn’t want my private business aired. An elderly couple had just entered behind me. “About the Miles Halloran case. Detective Kerrison asked me to keep him posted on new developments.”

Officer Traficante stared at my clothes, then into my eyes. Apparently I passed muster, because he motioned to a bench, first taking my name and address and phone. Then he stared at the elderly couple. They had just been mugged in Central Park, by the lake at 77th Street. They were still giving the details in outraged tones when I was called inside.

I stumbled a couple of times walking back, steadying myself against the tiled wall. Zinsser had warned me against stress. I couldn’t imagine anything more stressful than this. I was about to betray a friend.

Kerrison was standing at the back of a windowless little office. On his desk was a Compaq Deskpro 386, the monitor blank. We shook hands and he motioned me to a chair. My eye strayed to the computer. Had it been employed in Miles’s case? Patterns of violence? M.O.’s? Fingerprints? Somehow I doubted it.

“You told me to contact you if I had any new information.”

He sat down. “Shoot.”

Now that the moment was here I wasn’t really ready. “Miles had an apartment in Puerto Rico. On the beach. Fairly expensive.”

Kerrison shuttered down his eyes. “We know that.”

“Before that he lived in a much less expensive place. Kind of ratty, in fact.” I paused. “I got a call from one of his friends down there. Miles was mixed up with some shady characters. He thinks you should check it out.”

A sigh, denoting weariness.

“I brought his name and phone for you.” I pushed the slip of paper forward. It had Sonny Barowski’s name and address. “He said he’d be glad to help in any way. I think he knows something …” I trailed off.

“This crime took place in New York City.”

“There are flights to Puerto Rico every few hours.” I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

He didn’t react. “We liaise with the police down there. I’ll see if they want to follow up.”

I recalled something Barowski had said just before ringing off. “He said not to talk to the local cops, they’re hopelessly corrupt.”

Kerrison didn’t like that. He stared at me. “This type of murder is pretty common, Dr. Pittman.”

“What type is that?”

“Well … the lifestyle-type murder.”

“You mean gay?”

“That’s what I mean.”

He didn’t look at me, sparing me the embarrassment, no doubt. “We tend to enjoy the company of people who are like us,” I said, “that doesn’t mean Miles consorted with murderers.”

“There were no signs of forced entry. He let the perpetrator in the house.”

That was my cue. It was time to tell Kerrison that Clay Lemaitre was the third party they were seeking. But I still wasn’t quite ready. “I think you should call Sonny Barowski. Or, if you trust them, fax the details of the case to the investigators down there.”

He nodded. Again the words I had come to speak rose to my tongue. Kerrison was fidgeting, leaning forward. He was bored, disinterested. And then it hit me – he didn’t care about Miles’s death. It wasn’t high on his list of priorities. Justice, like good medical care, went to those with clout or money. The Halloran case was the equivalent, in Kerrison’s lexicon, of a drug dealer getting offed in a drive-by shooting. No big deal. Why should I give him a break? Why should I compromise Clay, and by extension, David?

“Anything else you care to pass on?”

I stood up. “No, nothing at all.”

He walked me down the hall, almost to the front door. When I hit the street, I saw that my Puerto Rico tip would be filed and forgotten. Too far away, too inconvenient. My errand had been a total failure.

In the taxi going home I was chilled. All the windows were closed, but I still felt icy. I hobbled into my building. An early winter wind was whipping up from the river. As I put my key in the front lock, it occurred to me that the elderlies were blowing tonight – gusts bringing age and depletion.

Ten minutes after I got inside, the phone rang. It was David.

“What the hell happened to you? I haven’t heard from you for a week.”

‘‘I’m sorry, Bruce. Some funny things have been going on.”

I could feel a brief surge of energy. Or was it merely curiosity? “What kind of things?”

“Well …” his voice became cautious. “Yesterday afternoon, late, I got a call from Kings’ Hospital in Brooklyn. They said my sister Esther was going into emergency surgery. They said she’d been sideswiped by a car crossing Eastern Parkway, near the Brooklyn Museum.”

He cleared his throat. “I dropped everything and hit the subway. I was due at the Philharmonic to hear Shirley, but I figured I had time. But when I got to the hospital, they had no record of Esther Bergmann – that’s her married name – being admitted. I went racing around for hours. I looked in the emergencies and the ICUs and the wards and clinics till 8 o’clock. I figured they had checked her in, but there’d been a clerical slip-up. That hospital is the pits.”

I knew that Kings’ Hospital was often lethal.

“Finally, I didn’t know what to do so I called Esther’s house. I should have done it first thing. You won’t believe this, Bruce, she answered the phone. The whole thing was a hoax.”

I tensed, full of premonitions.

”By the time I got back to Manhattan it was ten o’clock, and I’d missed Shirley’s performance. I really felt crummy. I saw the review this morning, but I haven’t been able to reach her.”

I exhaled in relief. Nothing disastrous.

“When I was going out of the house late this morning, the super told me there’d been a break-in on my floor. While I was at the hospital. I’m in 6-A. Somebody broke into 6-E. I don’t know them, they moved in a few weeks ago.” He sputtered nervously. “I don’t know whether that was a coincidence or what.”

“Of course it’s a coincidence. Was anything taken?”

“Yeah, some electronic gear,” he said.

“Then there’s no connection between your trip to the hospital and the break-in. It was just a standard New York burglary.” I paused. “You still didn’t tell the police about Clay being on the premises.” I tried not to sound accusatory.

“No. Not yet.”

“You said you would.”

“I know, Bruce …” I could almost see his body twisting away from the phone. “I will, just give me a little time.”

“Time.” I echoed the word sarcastically. “I just hope we have all of it we need.”

Our goodbyes were a little cool. Somewhere, in the distance, I could hear the bonds of our contract, the one we had forged a decade ago, snapping. But we promised to keep in touch.