The Lost Chord: Installment 18

...continued from the previous installment of “The Lost Chord,” my parallel parody of Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" - there's been an explosion beneath the Metropolitan Opera House, rattling the singers on stage gearing up for the first finale in Rossini's Barber of Seville. Dr. Dick & LauraLynn Sullivan have finally found each other and the villain, making his escape, reflects on his life as Zoose.

(If you are new to “The Lost Chord,” the adventure begins here...)

*** ***** ******** ***** *** CHAPTER VIII *** ***** ******** ***** ***

Lacking anything as luxuriant as an interrogation room in the temporary Lincoln Center Security Trailer, ICA's Director of Security Yoda Leahy-Hu, needing to discuss the current situation with Buzz Blogster, decided to commandeer another facility: the men's room.

Sitting rather uncomfortably on the toilet, Buzz found it difficult to concentrate on what Leahy-Hu, who'd propped herself up against the wash-stand, was saying as she enumerated all the problems she had had so far in this investigation, advising him not to continue following in the same obstructionist path that Dr. Dick had apparently decided upon.

Yet he was still unable to help her with most of her questions. What the significance was of the “artifacts” – that was how she described the things they'd discovered in the sub-pod-level room – he had nothing even approximating a clue.

And the clues themselves didn't make a lot of sense to him. Dr. Dick wasn't too swift at figuring them out – a man who dislikes puzzles and curls up like Kafka's Cockroach when faced with a mere crossword – but implementing them was totally beyond his own skill and experience.

“Hand me your phone, young man.” Leahy-Hu held out her hand across the short distance that separated them.

Just then, someone tried the door to the men's room and found it locked.

“I'm sorry,” she called out in her husky, smoke-ravaged voice, “but I'm conducting an interrogation in here.”

“Okay, sorry – whatever you want to call it, sir.”

Her eyes glared to the point Buzz swore he could see smoke rising up off the inside of the door.

“Now, where were we? Oh yes – hand me your phone.” Again she reached toward him, a little more emphatically.

He pretended to look around for it, first in the usual pockets and then in some others. He shrugged his shoulders in the meantime.

“You don't have it? But I saw you with it at the fountain. You had taken pictures of the ear and checked some information on Google, did you not?”

“I did,” he said, squirming as he tried to reach around into his back pockets, “but I don't seem to have it at the moment.”

“Did you give it to the Professor?” She smiled.

This is a trap. I know this is a trap.

“Yes, I think I may have – when we were downstairs.” He sighed and sat back, his shoulders hunched as he worried about the safety of his phone. It was expensive, too. I hope he doesn't accidentally destroy it.

Leahy-Hu cocked her head to the left and smiled at him in an expression she had assumed might be found comforting but which Buzz took as just the opposite.

Creepy...

She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear and asked him for his phone number.

“Oh, I doubt Dr. Dick would be able to answer the phone. They're totally foreign to him.” That's why I'm the one who's always the Keeper of the Phone.

“I don't expect him to answer it,” she smiled, showing some large, crooked teeth yellowed by years of smoking. “I'm waiting...”

He gave her the number and she walked out into the hallway. “Wait here, will you?” She shut the door behind her.

And where am I likely to go? There's no window, just a ventilation grate and I'm hardly that desperate to flush myself down the toilet. Then, thinking about how she smiled at him, he added, or am I?

In a moment she came back in. “Thank you, that will prove most helpful. Now, as I was saying, you have no idea what the significance of” – she looked cautiously at her notes – “Recte et retro is?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Or why Dr. Sullivan would have that engraved on a ring he would wear in his ear?”

“No, ma'am, I'd been wondering the same thing.”

“Do you know what the contents are of the Professor's tote-bag? He seems to be very concerned for its safety.”

“Well, I know he had his notes in there and he's usually very concerned about losing them. His memory's not what it used to be...”

“Enough to not want anyone else to carry them for him?”

“They're not very heavy, if that's what you mean.”

“It is not. But can you tell me about anything the two of you discussed on your drive into New York this afternoon?”

“No, not really. He's pretty quiet, usually just likes to watch the scenery go by.”

“You spoke of nothing?”

“Well, there for a while, we talked about the World Series...”

“And...? Did he seem like he was rooting for anybody in particular?”

“He's not a big sports fan, no, so he was just listening to me to be polite, I guess.”

She nodded, “I understand.” Probably a Phillies fan, then.

“Oh, and for a while, we listened to some piece of music on the radio – we played a game of 'What Makes It Bad?' but then after it was over, he went back to thinking about his talk, I guess.”

“And what made it bad, this piece of music? Did he explain?”

“He pointed out things that the composer did that were not as well done as someone else might have done? Missed opportunities, mostly, over-done clichés and the like. There really wasn't anything worthwhile in the piece but yet at the end, the audience cheered.”

“Why was that, do you think?”

“Because it was showy and ended fast and loud, probably. It was like the fast-food equivalent of empty calories that will get you going but doesn't really do anything good for your body.” This thought reminded him how hungry he was.

“And this is important to the Professor?” She seemed genuinely curious.

“Well, he's a composer and he thinks like a composer, so, yeah – I'd say it's important to him.”

“But not necessarily to you?”

“I kind of liked it – parts of it. Yeah, I mean, some of the faster bits were kind of exciting. And the musicians did a good job playing it.”

“But it wasn't a great piece of music, by your estimation?”

“Not really. I mean, the guy was no Beethoven, even on a bad day...” He tried to laugh.

Someone knocked on the door. “We got a signal.”

“Thank you,” she answered back to the door without turning her eyes from Buzz.

“Crap.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, I have to take a crap – would you mind?” Buzz pretended he was trying to be polite.

“Certainly – I'll wait outside. Let me know when the paperwork's done.” She tucked a few more wisps of hair behind her ear as she turned and left.

Buzz still closed the stall door, just in case. Sitting there, patiently waiting, he recalled how Dr. Dick had once told his class that his college composition teacher had once said “Shit is the only thing that man truly creates himself,” but added that even that is not entirely true. The ancient idea was that there were two kinds of 'creativity' – the Divine Creation where God made something from nothing, and Man's making something like a table, a fine meal or a work of art out of something else, out of raw materials like wood, meat and vegetables or a lump of marble.

At the moment, there were not enough raw materials inside Buzz Blogster's gastric system to create even the slightest amount of anything, he thought, beyond whatever information he was loading up on Director Leahy-Hu. Realizing how they had eaten nothing since their stop along the highway outside Allentown around 3:00, Buzz knew, more than six hours later, he was more in need of finding someplace to eat rather than sitting in a bathroom stall.

He considered other ways he could manage to stall things, but like everything else so far this evening, he was coming up empty.

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

LauraLynn's brain was a swirl of conflicting thoughts each screaming for attention. Her brother has been kidnapped and his ear cut off: was he still alive? Could they be able to rescue him in time? Or was he already dead? Her lab and all those years of research were all just destroyed, minutes ago. She'd been running around the darkened pod trying to escape from a maniac who was intent on killing her, a man who claimed to have killed Aunt Katie's grandson and then, in that horrific break-in, Aunt Katie herself. And Haley – what had happened to her assistant, Haley?

Only a few feet into the tunnel, she felt a scream beginning to well up from deep in the soles of her feet which she knew by the time it reached her throat would probably rip the roof right off the Met.

As he entered the tunnel, lying there on the conveyor belt, D'Arcy closed his eyes but couldn't get the image out of his mind from that day Robertson Sullivan sat in his office talking to Anthony. The boy had just turned 18 a few weeks after his father died. Since neither Robertson nor LauraLynn had had any children of their own despite their unpleasant marriages, he stood to inherit a lot more money some day. Too bad he'd been such a spoiled little rich kid: remembering when he'd first met the boy, D'Arcy just wanted to punch him a good one up-side the head.

Rob had told him how Bernie's son Anthony was a mess, becoming even more withdrawn and belligerent after the funeral. When Rob offered to be “like a father to him” if he ever needed one, that he would be there for him, Anthony just laughed in his face.

Robertson had been asked to serve as Bernie's executor, so he knew how much Anthony stood to gain. He saw how lax his brother-in-law had been in bringing up his young son without the guiding hand of a woman and though Aunt Katie tried, she could find no way to get through to the boy. Whenever anybody tried to convince him to do something, he would just blurt back at them, “I don't have to listen to you. I'm rich – in fact, I'm loaded. I don't have to listen to anyfrickenbody!”

When Anthony had begun showing some interest in music – even though it was rock music – his dad had asked Rob if he would try to help him with some training. But like many young musicians who'd picked up a guitar and listened to recordings, he felt he didn't need any training. “Training spoils talent” was his mantra: it was almost as if he'd plugged his fingers in his ears when anyone tried to reason with him. And besides, what did Uncle Robertson know about Metallica or Judas Priest, much less Michael Jackson or Madonna? Look how rich they were compared to any university-bound composer of string quartets who maybe got a few performances a year, if they were lucky?

“And you know something, Uncle Rob? I'm already rich – just imagine how much richer I'll be when my songs are up there on the Billboard Charts along with Michael Jackson's! If you didn't have the Sullivan Family Fortune behind you, you'd just be another poor middle-class university professor trying to scrape together enough money to live on while you scribbled away in your hole-in-the-wall study.”

D'Arcy often wondered how he would've responded if the kid said that to him. He probably would've done more than slapped him up-side the head.

The only problem was, the songs Anthony tried to write were pretty lame. He never figured out what made the music tick: he just slapped chords together and thought as long as it was loud and rhythmic, what difference did it make? But even his band couldn't stand it after a while and they eventually all left: maybe, he thought, his real talent lie in a solo career?

But the last thing Anthony needed was some old codger like Robertson Sullivan taking pity on him and offering to teach him the basics of composition. It made him laugh. “Who needs your old Ancient Mysteries anyway? All that music they wrote and they're still dead!”

Robertson had figured it was a mistake showing him the metronome and the bobble-head doll. They'd been handed down from his teacher to him just as his teacher had been given charge of them by his teacher before him. Clearly Anthony was too young and inexperienced to be trusted with such knowledge at this time. It was a responsibility he was not prepared for: he didn't even understand why it should be entrusted to him. He couldn't sell it, he couldn't smoke it and he didn't believe Rob when he told him the knowledge they could give him would give him great fame and satisfaction, even, he'd said half jokingly, the greatest composer in the world, thinking some reference to super-power characters and computer games would help impress him.

Instead, Anthony had just laughed and walked out of the room. D'Arcy could still hear the dejected sigh and the silence that followed when Robertson had finished telling him about that day.

Vivaldi, meanwhile, was on Dr. Dick's mind as he tried to lull himself into a state of relaxation, something a doctor had told him to concentrate on when he was going in for an MRI scan. The only classical music CD they had in the room was a collection of Vivaldi violin concertos which, if they could skip over the too familiar Four Seasons might prove helpful. If he could shut down his brain and just listen to them, it might have been okay but he was too often tuned in to sorting out this ritornello from that ripieno and... well, before long, he had gotten so involved in the technical aspect of the music, his blood pressure began to spike.

Stretched out in the darkness, his feet slowly moving forward on the conveyor belt, he managed to turn the music off. Really, people use music too much just to avoid silence. This time, his eyes closed, he decided to enjoy the silence – no interior concert, no working out details on the latest composition he was working on. But then, he started thinking of himself as something lying on a conveyor belt in a factory, headed toward – what? Being packed into a box to be sold? Something that could be... eaten? He half expected, when they reached the end of the belt, he would see looming over him the gigantic figures of Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance, set to grab him and wrap him in tissue or stuff him into their mouths or maybe their blouses. In reality, he realized he was only one single piece of chocolate in a box full of other, similar pieces of chocolate, a simile he did not find comforting. In the corner, Forrest Gump sat smiling.

So when he heard LauraLynn tell him to open his eyes, he was afraid to. But she sounded cheerful: they had reached the end of the line, so to speak. He needed to stand up now or be whisked back to the scene shop on the return belt.

D'Arcy got off the belt behind him and shut off the motor. Stretching hesitantly, Dr. Dick held on tightly to his tote-bag as he tried discreetly to adjust himself, relieved to find he was, in fact, totally dry.

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

She would rather have been hanging around the lounge watching the game on TV. It was still 4-to-1 in the 4th inning, getting less and less likely the Phillies would be able to suck the victory right out of the Yankees grasp. This was the first time a Series had gone to a sixth game since 2003 and wouldn't you know it, she complained to herself, she had to work the night shift that night. Of all the eff-ing luck.

Even though it was still basically a full-moon night – whackos would never realize it was officially two days ago – the 911 dispatcher still decided to alert the Doolittle and DeLay Security Company that had the account for the property on W. 69th Street. And Suzy Waltman was the next agent on duty to be sent out. At least she could listen to WCBS's coverage on her truck's radio and hopefully get back to the lounge before anyone else scored.

It all seemed pretty routine, no sign of anything weird going on. The house was dark out front, no one answered the bell. She worked her way around to the back only to see nothing particularly bothersome there, either. She called her dispatcher with the A-OK but was wondering, given the call that had come in, if they hadn't been given the wrong address. This place looked just too normal.

She was getting ready to leave when she noticed something through a basement window. Going over to investigate, she heard something behind her, turning just in time to see an intruder in the back yard, a huge one – well, the intruder was; the yard was pretty small – and before she could reach for her gun, the bald, almost naked muscular man (if that's what it was) reached over and shot her in the neck with a stun gun. The last thing she saw was the harem pants. Her head hit the ground even before she could think, “well, so much for normal.”

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

We stood somewhere in the actual basement of the backstage area of the Metropolitan Opera House, one of the most famous arts venues in the world. Though everything was dark and appropriately cavernous, it was still very impressive. Just beyond the pool of pale light were the elevators that would take us up to the backstage area and one step closer to our eventual escape. D'Arcy hit the “up” button and we waited cautiously, wondering how long it would take the ICA agents to realize how we'd escaped the scene shop.

Laura backed into something and screamed, almost jumping into my arms as if I'd be able to protect her.

As the elevator door slowly and very quietly opened, the light from inside – almost blindingly bright after all the underground darkness – highlighted a large granite bust on a massive marble base. The simple carved inscription read

ROBERT MOSES
(1888 – 1981)
Father of Lincoln Center

Looking at the rather unpretentious bust, I said, “From his public reputation as a racist who had no interest in New York's poorer neighborhoods, I would've expected it to have horns!”

D'Arcy chuckled, remembering Michelangelo's famous statue of the biblical Moses with its equally famous and rather mysterious horns.

Half apologetically, he added, “He certainly left this a different city than he found it, whatever you may think of how he accomplished it: all the bridges and parks, the buildings and of course he was also responsible for turning Lincoln Center into a reality.”

As we hurried into the elevator, I mentioned that Baron Haussmann had had the same problems in Paris – and a trained musician, to boot: he attended the conservatoire before he got involved in urban planning. “But he'd turned a medieval city into a modern city during the 1860s, building broad boulevards and beautiful parks – even the opera house.”

“And just like Moses, he became too powerful and too controversial. Napoleon III laid him off hoping to boost his own popularity, just like Nelson Rockefeller tried to do with Robert Moses in the early-1970s. Still, New York City would be very different today if it weren't for Mr. Moses, there.”

Laura wondered why it was down here, of all places. “Kind of an odd place to keep a public memorial, don't you think?”

“Maybe it was brought down here while we're doing some of the renovations outside. I don't know where it was located, originally.”

“So,” I suggested hesitantly, after several seconds of wondering when the 500 pound gorilla in the elevator was going to chime in, “what do we do about this code I'm supposed to crack for this Dhabbohdhú dude?

“We'll try to find a remote dressing room we can lose ourselves in and work on it without being disturbed.”

“Dhabbohdhú – or whatever his name is – said he was convinced what Robertson had told him about really does exist in the City. You have a map, right?” she said, turning to me, “can't you just give him the map? Then maybe he'll free my brother...”

“I think it's more complicated than just that,” D'Arcy said, trying to sound consoling without necessarily being condescending. Robertson was her brother and a close friend of both D'Arcy's and mine – it wasn't likely we'd just leave him hanging, not that Laura found that the most comforting thing she'd heard this very strange night.

The elevator stopped but it was the roof that slid open, not the door. Looking up, I saw a flood of bright light and the music was now very clear. They were well into the First Act finale. They had just started the spare, almost hypnotic ensemble, “Freddo ed immobile,” where Bartolo and Rosina are frozen like statues in disbelief.

Meanwhile, the floor of the elevator continued to rise. D'Arcy and I were looking around trying to figure out what was happening.

“We must be very near the stage,” I whispered. The music sounded so close. “I wish we'd have a chance to watch some of it from back here. I love this scene.”

“Uhm, guys...” Laura sounded unsure how to break this to us. “But I think we're actually on the stage...?”

Slowly, we turned.

Despite the bright lights, I could clearly see the backs of a line of soldiers on the right along with the stunned Dr. Bartolo and Rosina, dead center, standing with their backs to us and singing in short, staccato phrases. Almaviva and Figaro moved about, singing laughing scale-like lines, all accompanied by soft guitar-like chords in the plucked strings. What a delicate, magical moment!

Likewise suspended in momentary disbelief, though, was Count Almaviva as he turned and saw us at the very moment I saw him. Figaro, wondering what the distraction was, also glanced over toward us, just as I realized, beyond them, I could see the dimly lit faces of the audience, frozen like open-mouthed statues themselves.

Now what...?

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

= = = = = = =
The Lost Chord, a Music Appreciation Thriller, is a serial novel 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 the next segment on Monday, August 23rd.
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