Marly Z and the Bloodstained Violin

Outside the stately apartment building on West End Avenue where he worked, Nicholas Justice struggled as he hauled two huge pieces of matching luggage toward a waiting taxicab. His fists gripped their handles, and he wheezed and grunted as if each bag held cinderblocks. His uniform hat teeter-tottered above his red face.

As he hoisted the bags into the taxi’s trunk, he seemed to be getting a lecture from a young, radish-shaped man in a pink Izod shirt. The man pointed toward downtown, snap-jabbing his finger.

The doorman adjusted the luggage until it fit snug in the trunk, then flexed his crumpled fingers as he stood upright. Radish man continued to hassle him.

A too-thin woman who appeared to be the man’s wife tapped her wristwatch impatiently as she waited at the taxi’s backseat.

“I bet it’s nothing more than the taxi is facing the wrong way,” Wendell whispered.

Marley thought, So what? Just make a U-turn. Looking at the man in the pink shirt, she said, “What a creep.”

The woman slipped inside the taxi, her silk slacks slithering across the broad seat, and Mr. Justice closed the back door. As the taxi pulled away—and made a U-turn—Mr. Justice removed his burgundy hat and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. Walking toward the shadows under the building’s awning, he looked up and spotted his nephew and his friend.

Marley expected he’d be embarrassed—the man in the pink shirt had clearly bullied Mr. Justice because he knew the doorman couldn’t really argue in return. If he did, he might lose his job.

But Mr. Justice suddenly brightened, and the tension vanished from his face as they approached.

“Wendell, is this your good friend Marley Zimmerman?” he asked with a broad grin. “Marley Zimmerman? Daughter of the famous 3Z. And of Althea Fontenot Zimmerman, senior vice president at—?”

She really didn’t want to shake it—she knew he was playing her, acting like a grown-up version of the 3Z scruffs who’d hang outside her family’s brownstone—but she did.

“Sorry I didn’t recognize you, Marley,” he said, as he adjusted his burgundy jacket. “It’s been one heckuva day. Say, you go to Beacon, don’t you?”

“Your friend Marisol, she’s in some kind of trouble, isn’t she?”

“Uncle Nick,” Wendell said as he steadied the laundry cart. “She didn’t do it.”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” he replied. “Seems like a fine young lady—”

“You tell your parents Nicholas Justice said hi,” Wendell’s uncle exclaimed. “Would you do that?”

Marley was still miffed at Mr. Justice’s insincerity when she arrived at the busy 20th Precinct. A harried cop at the desk told her Sgt. Sampson was out. Marley thanked her, left her cell phone number and marched out, putting the sergeant’s card back in her pocket when she returned to 82nd Street.

Standing amid the white-and-blue NYPD patrol cars parked like check marks at the curb, she looked east, then west, all the while considering what she’d do next. It was too late to take the subway downtown to have a mellow date with her mom.

She double-checked her cell. No, she didn’t have Marisol’s home phone number.

Maybe she’d walk over to the building where her father was one of the supers. No, his shift had ended. He had either just gotten to sleep or was out with his family.

Go to the boutique where Mrs. Poveda’s employed? It wasn’t far from here. No. No sense in upsetting her—working among all those colorful clothes, great fragrances, and inquisitive customers probably gave her a chance to think about something other than what had happened.

“Teddy, I know you’re with your sister and cousin, but give me a call. Bye.”

She needed to figure out who pretended to be Marisol’s father when he called Mr. Gabor.

Turned her into a zombie who didn’t remember she’d missed her lesson.

Marley’s father was absolutely drenched in sweat. Which is what happens when you jog five miles around the Central Park Reservoir in sneakers, cut-off denim shorts, and a sleeveless flannel shirt. With Skeeter up front in a stroller.

Skeeter in her little canvas hammock, bouncing, jiggling, laughing. In her Time Traveler bucket hat, Hawkgirl T-shirt and diaper.

She was on a stool at the kitchen island, blowing on her spoon, sipping the stracciatella Mr. Otto had given her and she’d reheated when she returned home from the Two-Oh.

Poor Skeeter. Resting in his sweaty, bony arms. Not that she minded. She tossed off her hat and kept giggling.

“Almost as dumb as jogging at noon when it’s 142 degrees,” Marley replied.

"I’m sorry,” she said quickly. "My mind is, like, really, really throbbing.”

“Liars and thieves and somebody who would trap a sweet kid like Marisol.”

He walked gingerly around the island and placed Skeeter in her playpen. “Okay if I shower first?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if you can help, Dad. It’s a big mess, and I’m nowhere.”

He ventured back toward the sink to wash his hands. Over the rush of water, he said, “I’m really sorry, Marley.”

Carrying a damp facecloth, he returned to Skeeter, who had already started organizing her blocks.

“You’ve done a lot, Marley,” he said. “The police believe you, and your vice principal does too. I’m sure Marisol would be in a lot more trouble if it wasn’t for you.”

Skeeter scrunched, squinted and smiled as her dad wiped her hands and cheeks.

Through the steam rising from the bowl, Marley looked over at her father as he tended to her baby sister. His hair was a wild curly mop, all knotty and chaotic as usual. Despite the air-conditioning, he still dripped sweat.

She noticed a bald spot brewing at the back of his head, and she knew his ankles hurt when he ran.

He stood. “I know.” He tapped the center of his chest and then pointed at her with the same long finger.

He drop-plopped the cold cloth onto Skeeter’s head. “Cucumber cool, Skeets.”

Marley watched her sister wrestle it down and resume cleaning her own face.

“Egg-drop soup, huh? You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking of trying my hand at making that. I got a recipe from Papua New Guinea. . . .”

As he pounded upstairs, Marley decided she’d bathe Skeeter in the sink when her father’s shower ended. That always lifted her spirits. Skeeter’s too.

“By the way,” he yelled from above, “the four of us are having dinner tonight. Together!”

I am never going to be able to concentrate completely on Marisol and her make-believe father and Mr. Gabor and the Habishaw until I wipe that insincere man off my mind. Nicholas Justice.

And with that thought, Marley marched up to her room. Her cell phone at her elbow, the computer speakers blasting Beck’s Guero —a good cross-generational compromise choice in the Zimmerman household—she googled Nicholas Justice.

Lots of Nicholas Justices: Sixty-two hits, in fact, and just one had to do with Wendell’s uncle.

According to the New York Times’ website, four years ago a man named Nicholas Justice was accused of involvement in a scandal at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall. Mr. Justice and another security officer would sneak people through a side entrance into jazz concerts—for a fee they kept for themselves. The Times said the two men were fired from their jobs.

Justice wasn’t just a judgmental phony. He was a thief. He didn’t just quit to get a better job as a doorman. Lincoln Center told him to go away.

She couldn’t find any other articles on that scandal, and a search under “N. Justice” returned more than 37,000 hits.

I’m getting farther from it, she thought, as Beck’s chinga-chinga guitar played off the beats.

What else do I know about him that makes him different from all the other Nicholas Justices?

"Okay,” she said, "let’s make it ’Justice’and ’carnival barker.’ ”

First on the long list was a site dedicated to Jedediah Justice’s Traveling Amusements.

Which was managed by the Jedediah Justice’s Traveling Amusements Historical Society.

The largest, grandest, funnest—funnest?—traveling amusement park and midway in the whole U.S. of A.

Featuring a roller coaster, Ferris wheel, carousel, mechanical bull and Kiddoland.

And our special attraction—Mesmero, America’s Legendary Master of the Ancient Art of Mesmerization!

Then she clicked on the name Mesmero and was sent to a special page dedicated to him.

Wow, Mesmero looked like Dracula, only in white tie and tails. His arms at shoulders level, fingers outstretched as if he were shooting invisible rays at someone.

Nothing on Mesmero, but soon she had made her way to a site about somebody named Franz Mesmer.

" ’The evolution of Mesmer’s ideas and practices led James Braid to develop hypnosis in 1842.’ ”

“Bang,” Marley said as she read carefully, thoroughly. She bounced in her seat, hopping to fold a leg under her. “Bang!”

Braid led her to the American Psychological Association’s definition of hypnosis.

She read aloud. “ ‘When using hypnosis, one person is guided by another to respond to suggestions for changes in subjective experience, alterations in perception, sensation, emotion, thought or behavior.’ ”

“Like making a good, honest person steal something,” she said, as if talking to the computer monitor. “That sure is a change in behavior.”

No reference to Nicholas Justice or his brother, who was Wendell’s late father.

She imagined a couple of kids running around a big ol’ carnival. In a huge field in the middle of somewhere. Or in a stadium parking lot outside a big city.

A gigantic party every day from noon until the fireworks blasted off at midnight. Loads and loads of people celebrating, little kids giddy—it’s like Disneyland had come to their neighborhood!

They had to toil sweaty-hard to set up the carnival and then harder to keep it going for a steamy week or two. Hustling for hours and hours and hours every single day for five long months.

(When Marley concentrated real, real hard, she could smell what she saw and hear real actual sounds. Now she saw and heard sledgehammers driving posts in the dry, dusty earth to tie huge colorful tents to, and she smelled the grease on the tracks of the rollercoaster and under the Tilt-a-Whirl cars.)

Then those carnival workers had to pack up a bunch of trucks and cars, go traveling in the dead of night and move to a new city and another state, doing everything all over again.

And maybe Mesmero taught them how to hypnotize people, just for the heck of it. To amuse them, and himself.

And maybe Nicholas Justice remembered how to do it all these years later.

Marley opened her eyes and stared at the computer screen. Her screen saver was up.

She was on a bench in Central Park. Teddy on her left, Marisol on her right. Big smiles. Cheese!

Excited—maybe more excited than she’d ever been in her life—she ran to her door, flung it open, and screamed, “Dad!”

Startled, Mr. Zimmerman, who was downstairs in his office, shouted, “Marley. Are you okay?”

Even before her father reached the top step, jumping two at a time, Skeeter on his hip, Marley was shouting into her phone.

With her father peering over her shoulder, Marley read everything she could find on mesmerization and hypnosis. By the time she finished, she was certain she was right.