The Lost Chord: Installment 15

... continued from the previous installment of "The Lost Chord," Dick Strawser's music appreciation thriller and parallel parody of Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol." (If you are new to "The Lost Chord", you can begin at the beginning, here.) 

Previously, Dr. Dick connected with LauraLynn Sullivan and warned her she was in imminent danger; then he and V.C. D'Arcy, hanging out in a scene storage shop underneath the Met, had a frank discussion that ended with a rather unsettling realization.

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The smell of mothballs was more faint now but she could still hear the rustling of clothing not far away. Though she hadn't had a chance to secure it – would it do it on its own, she wondered? – closing the lab door at least made it almost impossible for this maniac to find her in the darkness but it also made it impossible for her, now disoriented from her mad dash to escape him, to find the exit.

She knew if she used her cell-phone, he would hear her, so she cautiously texted the guard at the 62nd Street gate.

“911! 911!” She sent it and then quickly sent another:

“Intruder Pod-N - Rapist - Attacking me HELP!”

Let's hope he's not so engrossed in watching the game he'd fail to notice my message!

But then she sensed the smell of mothballs rushing toward her. She barely escaped from his pounce and, hearing the growl behind her, dashed off sprinting in the opposite direction through what could have been the center of the empty storage room, a vast cavernous space like a hangar. The sound of her shoes pounding across the concrete floor was deafening. He would be able to locate her even if he couldn't see her brilliantly white lab coat.

If she stood still, she thought, perhaps he'd just give up and go away. But if she could smell his mothballs, he could smell her perfume – a mixture of Bulgarian roses, bergamot and patchouli with subtle undertones of oolong tea and dark chocolate, it was called Cannabis Rose and she had fallen in love with it from the time Robertson had given it to her two Christmases ago – and while this maniac could strip out of his exotic disguise no doubt stolen from one of the old costume shops, there was no way she could escape from the scent of her body.

The maniac seemed immense whether he was the Incredible Hulk or not – she laughed at the thought of finding herself trapped in an old 1970s TV show though she always thought Bill Bixby was hot – and the idea of trying to groin him didn't seem a reasonable possibility. Whoever this was, he didn't seem normal, perhaps not even mortal.

For what seemed an eternity, she heard nothing, smelled nothing. She looked around, her eyes unable to adjust to the total blackness. “No one can hear you scream... in the night...” Then she heard some pounding behind her, far away.

“Dr. Sullivan? You OK? I can't get in!” She could barely make out the voice but why couldn't he get in?

But now she knew where she was. If that was coming from the entryway to Pod-Niebelheim, she knew each of the large pods, including this one, had been designed with a garage bay in the middle of the opposite wall where fork-lifts could haul in boxes and set-pieces for storage. If she could only find it and open it in time. It should be somewhere near the far wall of her lab – over there, to her right, she calculated. She scrambled over.

She could hear the footfalls of someone racing from behind to catch up to her. But she could smell mothballs not far from her, just ahead. She veered to the left.

Her hand found the wall and, scuttling crab-like – well, sideways, like a real crab – she managed to find the latch. She heard a thump and a deep moan, figuring the intruder had not stopped in time before finding the wall. But he wasn't far away from her. He would hear her opening the latch.

It creaked, splitting through the air like the scream of a pterodactyl as it opened so slightly. Where it would come out, she had no idea and what good would it do for her to run out into a hallway and have this creature follow her, now fully capable of seeing her? At least it would be better lit and she could see where she was going: perhaps she could outrun him and still find the security guard. Or at least escape outside where there were infinitely more places she could hide. Let's hope the nearest exit isn't closed by construction...

The bay gratingly slid sideways, opening just wide enough for her to slip through. But before she was entirely free, something grabbed her arm, something with terrible strength. She screamed.

She looked back and saw, in the dim light from the corridor, a bald, nearly naked beast with glowing dark skin and tattoos all over the place, wearing diaphanous pink harem pants. She had an image of the Incredible Hulk crossed with I Dream of Jeannie. She screamed again: too many '70s flashbacks were beginning to unnerve her.

“I should've killed you before,” the creature snarled, glowering at her with bloodshot eyes that she found faintly familiar. He began pulling her back into the pod as she continued struggling, trying to squeeze forward.

The good news was, if she could wriggle her way out of this one and he couldn't open the door any wider, he was too vast a creature to wedge himself through the opening.

The bad news was, he was too strong. It didn't seem likely she was going to get away from him. Would the guard come around to the garage bay in time or was he still pounding against the main door like some impotent fool?

“You should all have died that night – not just your Aunt Katie!” His filthy paws scrambled up her arm to her neck. She could feel his stale breath against the side of her face.

Suddenly, another flashback kicked in: that lonely Thanksgiving night, years ago, when the intruder's shot killed her aunt. Of course: that was what she found too late, now, back in the recesses of her mind, something that had vaguely been warning her about Dr. Dhabbohdhú – he was the Dr. Hyde to the Jekyll responsible for killing her nephew as well as her Aunt Katie. And now he was clearly intent on killing her. And where was Robertson?

“Oh my God,” she screamed, “liar, liar, pants on fire!!” She smashed her heel down squarely onto the toes of his right foot, causing him to reel back momentarily to check his harem pants for any sign of combustion only to briefly loosen his grip on her arm.

With a superhuman plunge, she twisted herself through the slender opening, worming out of her lab coat, leaving it behind in the monster's hand. For the moment, she was free, but not before she could guarantee he'd be unable to follow her.

There, beside her, were two buttons, standard like any elevator. She slammed her hand down on the red CLOSE button and the garage bay slowly ground itself shut, the gap diminishing to almost nothing, part of her lab coat left hanging limply out in the hallway. Too bad it hadn't caught his fingers.

But there was no time to feel relieved: he could just as easily, in all his hideous genius, figure out how to open the door from the inside. If nothing else, it bought her some time - very little, but perhaps enough to get away.

She turned and saw another door right across the corridor. The adjacent pod, she was pretty sure, was the Scene Shop. She inserted her ID-badge, quickly punching in her code. Hopefully, she didn't need specific permission to enter anything other than Pod-Niebelheim. The key-pad lit up and the door clicked, unlocking itself, a simple noise she never thought would sound so welcome.

She figured it would be easy to hide in there: if he got out, the creature would assume she'd run down the hallway to make good on her escape, finding the guard and safety. In fact, as she slowly closed the scene shop door behind her, she began to wonder why in fact she wasn't doing just that.

But something told her this was the better option. In all her studies about creativity, she learned that the power of hunches can be very real. On the other hand, it hadn't kept her from trusting Dr. Dhabbohdhú. She may have to go back and read that chapter again.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***

Leahy-Hu complained vigorously to Chief Harmon about being gassed by a roach bomb and having a valuable component of her investigation taken out from under her very nose, complete with apparently not one but two important clues.

And Buzz tried to remain as invisible as possible. Yeah, and he's got my cell-phone, too.

Harmon was rubbing the back of his head as he silently watched the video surveillance tapes Officer Martineau had alerted them to, hoping the Security Director from the ICA would just shut up about the roach bomb, already.

Martineau had finally gotten through to his phone when they reached the top of the stairs leading back to the main Concourse Level. There was something he needed to see, she said, and so, grumbling and coughing and dusting themselves off along the way, the three of them hurried back to the security trailer. He'd sent Mobile off after the profnapper, suggesting she call in Officers Arabesk and Sordino for back-up.

And there it was. A well-dressed man who must have been a good six and a half feet tall or more, meeting that woman Martineau identified as LauraLynn Sullivan's assistant. It irritated him she had that lab back there in the corner of Pod-Niebelheim, whatever she was doing there: it didn't matter it was taking up only a small percentage of the space, it was her and her research he figured that could become an additional liability to his security team. A few grainy slides later, there they were, the well-dressed man and the assistant, going into one of the small storage rooms in the central pod.

“Now, wait. It gets more interesting,” Martineau said, fast-forwarding through the slides, her voice rising in the standard interrogatory inflection so common among the younger generation. A few dozen slides later, representing perhaps a lapse of five minutes, someone was coming out of the room, almost too dark to be seen clearly, but apparently wearing a towering Marie Antoinette wig, a waist-coat with tails and harem pants that disappeared into the shadows. Clicking ahead, Martineau cued in the camera at the entrance to Pod-Niebelheim to show this person, whoever it was, using an ID-badge to open the door.

“When I checked the key-entry, it registered as Haley Gedankgesang, Dr. Sullivan's assistant? That clearly wasn't her? I didn't see her come out of the storage room?”

“You'd better dispatch somebody down there, then. That doesn't look good.” Knowing there were more important things to deal with tonight, he also knew that favor to Director Sullivan was going to create a problem some day. I told you so.

“I already did, when I couldn't raise you on the phone? But look at this?”

She then showed him another camera, this one from the North Corridor of the Met-Pod: there was a big, tall, dark well-dressed man coming out of the side-door from North-Central Pod followed by a short, dowdy gray-haired guy of no particular distinction.

“That's him, the bastard!” Leahy-Hu squeaked. “Who's that in front of him.”

“That,” Chief Harmon intoned, “is one of the architects who's been working on the renovations with Diller and Scofidio, our security liaison. His name is V.C. D'Arcy.”

“And I suppose you're going to tell me that other guy is his brother?” They did vaguely resemble each other, but the first one was clearly on steroids or something.

“Wait,” Martineau cautioned, “it gets more interesting?”

Just then, coming into the camera's field of vision, was one of the security guards.

“That turns out to be Tex, though you can't see him clearly just yet?”

“What's he doing, the tall guy?” Leahy-Hu had an immediate suspicion of tall people.

At that point, it looked like D'Arcy was just moving pylons and cases out of the way of the door, but then he proceeded to unlock it, giving Tex a key and then taking Dr. Dick with him before shutting the door behind them. Tex then locked the door, turned and left.

“Where does that door lead?” Leahy-Hu asked at the same time Harmon wanted to know if Officer Texeiras (he butchered the pronunciation, Buzz noted) had called in to report what had happened there.

“No, sir, he had not. He returned to his booth at the 62nd Street entrance when I saw the guy headed into Pod-Niebelheim?” Her voice continued that odd upward scooping that so annoyed Harmon. “So I immediately paged him to go look after it? It was after that that I'd noticed the other incident, here?” Looking back at the North Met Corridor camera, the scene was now completely empty. Her voice dropped precipitously. “Perhaps I didn't give him a chance to say anything about it?”

“Is it difficult for you to hear me from down here? As I asked twenty seconds ago,” Leahy-Hu interjected testily, “where does that door lead?”

“Uh, sorry, Director Hu,” Martineau added with a touch of embarrassed condescension, “that goes into the set storage room in the Met-Central Pod?”

Leahy-Hu got on the phone and barked in several quick orders, mostly asking for three of her best agents to meet her at the Security Trailer just outside Lincoln Center's 62nd Street entrance, immediately.

“Forget it, Harmon, I'm taking over from here: you can send your guys down after that character in Pod-Niebelwhattzit, but I'm going after the professor and Mr. D'Arcy. They're mine.” Turning to Buzz, she said “And you, boy, are staying with me!” as she tucked back a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

Turning back to the crest-fallen Harmon, she hissed, “And I want you to find out why your security guard, there, failed to report what was clearly a breach of security. Got it? Good!”

“Yes sir, ma'am.” Harmon decided to go back to Pod-Niebelheim himself. First, he called Mobile and redirected her and Arabesk to Pod-Niebelheim, then took Officer Ben Rubato along with him. Chasing after maniacs dressed in weird costumes sounded better than hanging out with Director Leahy-Hu in the security trailer.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***

“So you're telling me, basically, this guy's looking for 'ancient wisdom' that will unleash his creativity and make him a great composer?” Aren't we all?!? I was smiling so much, I was ready to LOL myself right off my chair!

D'Arcy sat there looking at me, mystified, as if I hadn't figured that out already.

When I realized he was serious, I stopped trying not to keep it bottled up and just burst out in squawks of laughter that could probably be heard upstairs on the Met stage. “You've got to be kidding, right? I mean, any composition student dreams of that, but it's not like we're going to be handed that kind of... knowledge... on a silver platter.”

He looked at me very sternly. He was, as far as I could tell, entirely serious.

“Okay, so next to the Fountain of Youth – something else I've been hunting for, lately – there's going to be a concession stand with Creativity Pills: take one and you'll become the Next Beethoven. Caution: some side effects may occur...”

No reaction. I stopped laughing. Okay, Dr. Dick, pull yourself together.

I took a deep breath and sighed. “And he thinks somehow information that would lead him to that knowledge is hidden in this headless bobble-head doll and he also thinks I know what you're talking about and can decipher that for him? And for Director Leahy-Hu, if I'm not careful? Or for you, for that matter?”

“Your skepticism does not surprise me, professor.”

Skepticism doesn't even begin to describe it, architect...

“Perhaps you have not understood the Mysteries because you have not been properly prepared: you haven't witnessed them first hand.”

This was beginning to sound more like the old Juilliard-Against-the-Rest-of-the-Conservatories crap. Maybe my training at Eastman wasn't as glorious as his was, but I also know that just because I wasn't there when Beethoven conceived his 9th Symphony, I'm pretty sure he didn't get the idea for that last movement by taking a pill.

“So what's that supposed to mean: I'm never going to be a good composer because I didn't study with as famous a teacher as you did? That sounds pretty patronizing.”

“Not at all,” D'Arcy said perfectly calmly. “And it's not that you're not a good composer – actually, I've never seen anything by you, so I have no way of judging.”

Interesting: he said “seen,” not “heard” as most people would've said. That means leaving out the Middle Man, the performer, whose interpretation can so change a composer's intentions and affect a listener's conclusions. He's going by what I'd written, not by what someone else played. Very interesting, indeed.

But the implication was just as condescendingly clear: not having heard my music means how good could I be if he hasn't? 'Unknown' implies 'not-worth-knowing,' though I was about to say there was a time in history nobody really heard the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, either, and never thought a thing about him.

“But think who Robertson studied with.”

“John Corigliano, fairly early in his career, before he'd become famous. And before Robertson went to Juilliard, for that matter.”

Ignoring most of what I said, he went on, pressing whatever point he was hoping to make. “And Corigliano studied with...?”

“I'm not really sure: Otto Leuning, if I remember right.”

“Right,” D'Arcy added with a smile. “Not the greatest composer around today, by most people's estimation, but a very fine teacher. And who did he study with?”

“Ferruccio Busoni – and your point is...?” I felt like I was back in my doctoral examination and not enjoying it nearly as much.

“Well, Robertson said you knew your stuff,” D'Arcy chuckled, not sensing my rising indignation, or not caring a damn about it. “Then who did Busoni study with?”

“He was considered largely self-taught except for his parents, but I think he studied with some guy when he was very young... Czech, I think, but with a German name and who went by a French pseudonym. Sorry – both names escape me.”

“Not surprising, but points for getting that close. His name was Wilhelm Mayer or, as you point out, publishing under the name of W.A. Rémy – and my guess is the W. A. stood for 'Wolfgang Amadeus.' If nothing else, it's an anagram for W. Mayer. Not very much thought of by his contemporaries but Busoni found him a very inspiring teacher.” He actually smiled.

“The point is, I suspect,” sitting back to hide my annoyance, “not who somebody studied with but what somebody got out of it. I don't recall at the time Robertson saying anything thunderously enlightening about what he learned from Corigliano when he was at Lehman College except that he was a thought-provoking teacher. It wasn't until later that everything fell into place – even after he left Juilliard. That's often the case with what a teacher does, sowing seeds that ripen later.”

“Bravo. Indeed!” He sat forward as if he were going to challenge me again. “It's like a fine piece of well-oiled machinery, two separate units,” holding out his left hand in front of him, then adding his right hand about a foot away from it, “that somehow click where others fail.” With that, he brought the two hands together with a thump, then threw his hands over, palms up, little fingers overlapping. “It doesn't happen every time or with every student – sometimes, I imagine, it would be years before...”

“What was that? I heard something!”

There had been a click, over on the other side of the shop. He heard it, too.

D'Arcy quickly shut up and clicked the light off. He motioned for me to put the metronome and the doll back in my tote bag. We got up quietly and hunkered stealthily past the various workstations along the wall. He motioned for me to stay close. No problem, there...

- - - - - - -
to be continued...

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The Lost Chord, a Music Appreciation Thriller, is written by Dick Strawser and is a musical parody of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. It is being serialized on this blog: watch for another segment on Thursday, August 12th.
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