In the previous installment, Dr. Kerr is having trouble concentrating on the book he's reading (you may be experiencing the same thing) but a passage about "accessories" reminds him of those little turquoise stones he'd given his friends in the past, and how a little turquoise stone had been found with this body that might be but most likely isn't Trazmo's. Lying there in his boring motel room next to the one Trazmo had stayed in, Kerr then has one of those epiphanies about the overhead light fixture.
CHAPTER 10
The sun shone in when I woke up. Apparently, Cameron left the blinds partly open after he'd finished his morning exercises. I slowly cleared my way to the surface: sunlight, window, motel room... time?
“When did you get to sleep?” he asked, toweling himself down. “You were still reading when I turned out my light.”
I struggled to focus my eyes on the clock. “It's awfully early out.”
“In Iowa, you get up with the chickens.”
“Iowa...” I knew I was doomed, not getting back to sleep anytime soon.
It was 6:45 which meant it was 7:45 in Maine but I couldn't rationalize calling Tom yet, depending on his insomnia: some days he'd rather be getting up with chickens who worked second shift. One of the things we'd both enjoyed about retirement was the freedom to sleep in, something Cameron thought was not healthy.
“I don't remember when I dropped off – after midnight, I imagine. Oh, did you hear anything from next door last night?”
“Not that I recall. Which room? We're surrounded by three of them, here.”
“It was coming from that one, there,” I said, pointing, “Trazmo's old room.”
“Echoes from the past? Isn't it empty, now?”
“That's what I'd thought.” We couldn't get the room because Dr. Piltdown had taken it, but Diddon wanted her to be moved since it was now, with her re-opening the case, a crime scene.
After Cameron got his shower, I said I'd meet him shortly to experience another scintillating meal down at the Dining Car. I took a quick shower of my own, dressed quickly, and walked quicker. A sporty black car drove past me and slowed down. I couldn't see who was in it – tinted windshields (in Orient?).
Hank, the diner's manager, was again behind the counter and took our order. He was a little less unfriendly than before, perhaps surprised we'd lasted this long, putting our eggs down without a word.
When I asked him about Dr. Piltdown, Hank mumbled she'd checked out Monday. I knew she'd fussed about “making other arrangements,” but if she'd left, the room's empty, right? Nobody'd be cleaning that late.
As we walked back, Cameron asked, “So, if Piltdown already checked out, who was in the room last night?”
“And why?”
Before we made plans on what to do next beyond waiting to hear from the coroner about any remaining test results – DNA, he said, could take weeks – I decided it's safe to call Tom. I could rationalize giving him an up-date, especially if Dr. Femorsen's convinced the remains belong to a man in his mid-40s. There's really nothing conclusive since we have no idea who John Doe is or how he ended up wearing Hawthorne's boots. They're even dubious about calling him “The Victim,” since there's no apparent COD. If that made Tom feel he's OTH (wouldn't that obviously stand for “off-the-hook”?), would asking him about a missing lump of turquoise look like I'm trying to drag him back in if it's his? But how could it it tie him to the... remains if he'd reported the stone's disappearance before he'd left the colony?
If the only connection to the Trazmo Case was the discovery of a corpse wearing Trazmo's boots – I mean, how could that not be crucial evidence? – am I still, officially, involved with the investigation? I'm not sure what the IMP Guidelines were, so I considered maybe I should call Capt. Ritard just to make sure. By now, looking at my watch before realizing, these days, we check our phones for the time, Ritard should be at his desk, happily starting his day – but maybe I should call Tom first.
With an additional lap around the motel and diner after a brisk walk around the block before returning to our room, I'd kept an eye out for a fancy black car of some sort. Cameron would immediately know brand and model but the best I could do was “big, black, fancy, too fancy for Orient.” There wasn't a lot of activity around the other rooms, only one additional parked car out back I hadn't noticed before. The motel reminded me of a carbuncle infecting the far end of town.
I don't think a coat of paint would've helped the impression much, either, and I wondered if the rest of the town, which struck me as nice enough, viewed the place as an eyesore. None of the rooms had their blinds open, everything looking like the place was deserted despite Buck Harris' assertions Monday night.
The door to Room #12, the only single-occupancy room, perhaps analogous to the “VIP Suite,” had a piece of tape over the keyhole, like that was security enough against breaking into a crime scene. One of many modernized amenities that apparently had passed by the Orient Motel, it seemed, was modernized locks with key-fob access.
I also noticed, as Cameron unlocked the door to #10, there was no clear view of the door to #12, just around the corner, facing west. Most of the parking was behind the motel.
As I pondered this for a few seconds, Cameron looked back at me, then looked over toward where I was pondering.
“Anything significant popping into the Little Gray Cells?”
“Hmm? No, I doubt it.”
It wasn't that it was necessarily a significant observation, but an observation nonetheless, something to help me put things in context.
I took one last scan over the immediate horizon for any suspicious-looking fancy black car with tinted windows – that's right, I'd forgotten the tinted windows – but saw nothing and shut the door behind me.
Once Cameron revved up the laptop and checked my e-mail account – “Nothing,” he said with a shrug, “just the usual spam” – I pulled up Tom's number and hit the call icon. It began ringing.
“Hello, Tom?” I said, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. “Is this a good time?”
“Well, I answered the phone...”
I began by asking him about that stone he'd told me about the other day, the one he'd kept by his desk when he was composing, not to give too much information away initially.
“Sure, the turquoise one that vanished – you'd given me that at Faber, right? Why, what makes you ask about that, Terry?”
Rather than answer the question, I continued prodding for some memory of it, maybe the last time he remembered seeing it, careful about suggestions I might plant in his mind to influence subconscious memories.
He specifically recalled the discovery packing things the day before he'd left White Hill, ahead of this big storm they'd predicted. “I was putting my stuff away, clearing the desk – papers in the briefcase along with my pens and pencils, the ruler and... and the stone, too. No, I usually carried that in my pocket.”
He paused and then I heard him mutter, “Oh, wow – yeah, that's right.”
“What, Tom,” I said, waiting. He said nothing.
“I'd forgotten, Trazmo waltzed into my room, without knocking, of course. We were scheduled to leave Saturday, but in case the commuter plane couldn't take off, they'd scheduled a bus ready to leave tomorrow.
“I didn't pay any attention to him, just told him I was busy. It was right before going down for dinner. And I glanced up at him – he's holding that stone, looking at it.”
“And then...?” I waited. “What next; anything else?”
“I remember shaking my head – I put the briefcase over on the bed. I'd pack the suitcase later, when we heard the dinner bell – and left.”
“You said it 'went missing.' When...?”
“Look, Terry, why all this interest?”
“Just humor me. When did you notice it's missing?”
“The next morning. I looked over my desk, saw it was empty but didn't recall putting the stone in my pocket. I checked, then checked the briefcase: it wasn't there – or on the floor.
“At breakfast, Toscanello asked if anybody else noticed things missing from their rooms, little things. Perry and I both said yes. Trazmo mentioned his old manuscript pen, but he figured he'd just misplaced it. But Trazmo was fiddling with his pen at the diner that night in Orient. You think Trazmo maybe stole my turquoise?”
“What did you do then: you said you'd reported it,” I continued. “When?”
“The bus was to leave before lunch, but Perry, Florian and I spoke with the manager – I forget his name, Wheelock? He was annoyed we'd think someone on the staff stole things from our rooms but he said he'd look into it.
“Oh, and Nathan too – Noksimov. He'd realized his 'lucky paper weight' was missing. They were all things we considered 'good luck' items – your stone was very soothing to me whenever I had trouble thinking.”
Florian Toscanello stayed on another week, but Tom, Perry, and Nathan, along with Trazmo, were all scheduled to take the bus. “And it was just composers – none of the writers had reported anything missing?”
The assistant manager, promising to check everything, drove them to the airport – “it was already snowing” – where they boarded the bus.
“Tom, is there anything specific you recall about your turquoise stone,” I asked, “how big it was, roughly, whether it was dark colored or light or had recognizable markings; anything peculiar about its shape?”
“Why, have you found it? In Orient? After they searched Trazmo's room, I heard a lot of stuff was left behind.”
“His room at the colony?”
“No, at the motel, after he'd disappeared. Like Florian's paper weight and Perry and Nathan's things. They were stuffed into a suitcase full of clothes – but not my stone.”
It's a good thing I'd put Tom “on speaker” so Cameron could take notes for me, tapping away on his laptop. He was good at it, too, succinct and thorough, better than I'd be. It allowed me time to concentrate on the questions I wanted to ask and to follow his conversation without being distracted.
This shouldn't sound like an interrogation so at the risk of derailing his own concentration, I told him Cameron and I were staying in his old room, doubting not much had changed since then.
“Did they ever get the overhead light fixed? It wasn't working that night.”
“Funny you'd mention that: the bulb burnt out soon as we walked in. The sheriff came and replaced it! Funny story...”
“Not Sheriff Hardman...?”
I imagined his campaign slogan, A Hardman Is Good to Find. “No, but his nephew's the deputy, now.”
Back on track, now that I'd successfully stimulated Tom's memory, I wondered if Trazmo was the kind of guy who used to collect towels or soap from hotels. “Did they find anything like that?”
“I never entered Trazmo's room, but Perry had and talked to the sheriff. He mentioned Trazmo's clothes were there, several books...”
That would be easy to check the files, if Sheriff Hardman had itemized everything before he returned them to the family. But Hardman wouldn't have Tom's insights into what was left versus what wasn't.
“You said Perry was a mystery fan. Did he ever speculate why Trazmo may have lifted other composer's good luck charms?”
“You mean like he'd want to ruin other guys' luck, undermine their confidence?”
A bit farfetched, but every artistic mind, genius or not, thinks differently than another and rationalizes itself in its own way.
“Were there any manuscripts, things he might've been working on or recently finished?”
“No, none – I'd asked.”
Probably why conspiracy theorists suspected another composer stole them, intent on passing them off as his own.
“Now that you ask me, Terry – about the turquoise stone: I remember the shape of it fitting perfectly between my thumb and index finger, as if I'd pressed it like clay when I'd relax.”
“Ah, good,” I said, “that's something to check.”
“It was always so soothing to hold it, especially when I was worrying.”
I didn't say anything more about it and he didn't ask again, either, so I figured he figured they'd found it. More importantly, I wanted to pursue other memories while the path was open.
“Do you recall any interactions between Hawthorne – Trazmo – and other residents back then?”
“I've already talked to the police about that.”
“What I'd be interested in is anything new you might remember, even with those who weren't on the bus – like Toscanello.”
“What could they have had to do with it? They weren't even there.”
I tried to explain it wasn't that they were involved with his disappearance, but maybe there's something that could've triggered it.
“You mean, like prompting him to run away?”
“What are our options: he was murdered; he was kidnapped; he ran away.”
I could imagine Tom settling back. “Okay, you're the detective – detect away. Shoot.”
“Did you ever tell Trazmo that stone was a 'lucky talisman' for you?”
“No, but there was a conversation one night after dinner, when we were all sitting around talking about stuff like that. Not Trazmo – he usually avoided us when we'd hang out in the parlor.”
That'd be interesting to pursue, but I passed.
“Do you think he could've overheard you? Was he in the room, somewhere else, maybe in a corner by himself, reading?”
“I hadn't thought about it. D'you think he targeted us as a joke?”
They were all, he explained, a little uncomfortable with Trazmo's ease of composing, which seemed to come to him so effortlessly. Trazmo bragged how he'd receive this “celestial radio broadcast” he just had to tune into, then take it down in dictation. His tone of voice always made it sound like “work is for losers.”
“One night at dinner, one of the composers – who was it? Rosalind Arden – complained about Writer's Block and Trazmo started laughing. 'Watch it, boy,' she snapped back, 'or you'll become a 30-something washed-up has-been.'”
Of course, arrogant as ever, Trazmo shot back without missing a beat, “What, instead of a 50-something, over-the-hill has-been like you?”
Andrea Goldberg, another composer, had picked up her plate and left the room.
“The next night, nobody spoke except Trazmo who wouldn't shut up. Then we all started taking dinner back to our rooms.”
They all ignored him when they could or spoke curtly if they couldn't. Eventually, he toned down, but always wore this tiresome smirk like he knew he was annoying them just by being there.
“On my last night, Florian told Perry about this over-confident composer who dreamed of teaching at Juilliard, becoming famous and wealthy. At that point, Trazmo got up and stormed out in a proverbial huff. 'Instead,' Florian continued, 'he's now teaching at some community college, barely scraping together enough for alimony' – so this wasn't about Trazmo.
“I'd wondered if Trazmo assumed Toscanello was 'prophesying' about him, like maybe thinking Rosalind Arden had laid a curse on him. Who knew if he was superstitious like that or prone to paranoid conspiracies?
“I don't know if I'd mentioned this before, but now that I think about that night, I went back to my room after sitting up late, talking with Florian and Rosalind in the parlor. When I turned down the hall, I'd seen someone coming out of Florian's room at the other end of the hall.
“I couldn't see clearly who it was. The next night at the motel, I'd seen the same silhouette walking ahead of me, then disappear around the corner and the door to #12 slammed shut. During the night, I woke up hearing an argument next door.”
“Two voices...?”
“Well, yeah – could one person have an argument?”
We finished up when I realized Tom's “memory window” had started to close. In case this might jog other memories to the surface, I told him to write anything else down and call me.
“That was good,” Cameron said, smiling, as he saved the document and slid the laptop toward me. “Lots of information, here.”
“I've had good training,” I said. Certain courses of his may have come in handy more for me than for Cameron and several times we'd discussed things like unlocking memories or digging into dreams.
I quickly read through his notes and filled in details before I'd forget them, adding comments to think about more deeply. “Good,” I added, “almost as good as a recording taking down a statement. I couldn't imagine trying to jot all this down and keep the interview going.” Whatever Tom thought, that was an interrogation.
It was an intriguing question and one I wanted to pursue more, not knowing anything about this guy they called Trazmo. Over these past few minutes, I can't say he'd made a good impression. Sure, I've met other creative people who've made worse, but could one person – this guy, to be specific – have an argument?
First, however, I needed to verify Tom reported his turquoise stone missing to the colony's manager before he left White Hill. If he did it later, its presence here, if it's his, looked suspicious.
Assistant Detective-Consultant Cameron Pierce handed me a name and number he'd located for the White Hill Artists Colony, unceremoniously dubbed WHAC according to the website, situated on the particularly hill-less banks of Lake Okoboji. Director Sue Milford answered on the second ring, sounding pleasant enough until I said I was looking for information from 1983.
“Are you associated with 'Great American Cold Cases'?” her tone icy. “I've already...”
“No,” I quickly interjected. “I'm Detective-Consultant Kerr with the International Music Police but, yes, I am interested in the same case.”
“As I told them, no one here today worked here then, and the director then, Beau Wheelock, died several years ago. Our support staff turns over fairly often – nobody else here's worked that long.”
“Thank you, Ms. Milford, but I was hoping to check an old report of some missing property filed in March, 1983?”
After a few seconds' silence, she wondered if she could even find something like that in files reaching that far back.
Regardless, I continued. “It was reported by four residents: Harcourt, Noksimov, Purdue, Toscanello. These were all small, personal items, nothing valuable beyond the sentimental, but valued.”
She sighed. “Is this important?”
“It could be...”
“I was also wondering about records of any staff members who might've left your employ around that same time, late-March 1983?”
“I'll have my secretary troll through the old files. I can reach you...?”
I gave her my number. “You've been very helpful – oh wait, one more thing. Would you have any contact information for whoever the assistant director was in March, 1983 – if he's still with us?”
“I do,” she said. “He retired four years ago – currently in Macedonia.”
“Ah, that's very far away. What's the time-difference, there?”
Ms. Milford explained this Macedonia's a small town outside Omaha where he's living with his sister, then gave me his number.
Alexander Constantine, a rather patrician name. But as the assistant director, everybody called him “Stan,” she needlessly explained, the only syllable from his surname suitable for a nickname, like calling somebody named Sanderson “Sandy.”
“He became the Director of the foundation that operates the colony in 1990, retiring in 2012. I'd been his assistant for ten years, then took over when he retired,” she added even more needlessly.
Cameron, speaking of assistants – maybe I should nickname him “Ron”? – after doing some on-line searching, found a laudatory farewell article on the White Hill website with several photographs taken at Director Constantine's farewell dinner. Scrolling through them, I could imagine Director Milford sitting at her desk now, thanked her, and immediately called Alexander of Macedonia.
And got a busy signal.
Cameron forged ahead searching the internet, though I wondered what he could find about an incident from so many years ago.
I dialed the Constantines' number again, without luck.
When the keyboard tapping stopped, I looked over to see Cameron was leaning forward, deeply engrossed in something he'd started scrolling through, the light off the screen reflecting eerily on his face.
“Find something?”
“Not yet.” He kept scrolling. “The link took me to this site but I can't figure out why. Oh, wait – here...”
I moved in closer, taking my usual stance peering over his shoulder, trying to adjust my glasses to figure out if I could even read what was on the screen in the first place. It was like the old days in the library, dredging through miles of microfilm, but without leaving the discomforts of home.
Cameron explained he'd typed in “Trazmo 'White Hill' Iowa 1983” then added “McRaker” which took him to this poorly laid-out website for the long-defunct Des Moines Plains Tattler where Mickey McRaker worked until 1998.
Tom mentioned a second investigation carried on by this investigative reporter named McRaker.
“Remember how Tom told us about that first series of articles which came out following the release of the film Amadeus? Well, I've found a second series, if they've posted the complete articles. Also, here's some other information you might find interesting. The paper folded in 1999 – but from what I gather McRaker died in a car crash the paper made look suspicious. And I quote, 'the police reports were woefully inconclusive, the one witness unreliable.' The tone of whoever'd reported this was determined to plant reasonable doubt in any reader's mind this was not an accident.”
“Please tell me the paper's not out to pin this on Tom Purdue...?”
“No, but look here. 'McRaker was most recently investigating some shady business tycoon referred to as Mr. Schmurg, an apparent foreigner'...”
“Look, there,” I said, pointing at the screen. The articles weren't posted in chronological order because the next one was entitled, its letters large enough to be easily read, “Iowa's Own Amadeus? Part 3.”
After a brief summary, McRaker wrote: “The young prodigy” – (well, that's tautological) – “wrote a letter two days before leaving White Hill.”
When I asked him to bookmark the site and print out the pertinent articles, Cameron, mentioning the laptop didn't have a printer, said he'd save their content to a file on the back-up thumb-drive.
“He'd be returning home soon for his meeting with the Metropolitan Opera about their commission” – can we check if that's true? – “and that he was tired of the constant conspiracies 'permeating the Colony's atmosphere.'
“'There's one attack spear-headed by a particularly dried-up, unimaginative old cow' led to his being unable to compose anything 'for hours!'
“The young man, called 'Trazmo' by his friends and fans – a name he'd made up himself – was often driven to despair. His father sent me a photocopy of his son's last letter” – it was not included – “wanting to unmask his rivals' cruelty. 'That's how Pip' (Hawthorne's family nickname) 'realized they saw him as their rival.'
“The reader could check any Music Appreciation textbook to understand rivalries between composers were nothing new, even between the greatest names, even if all you've seen is Milos Forman's recent film about Mozart, 'Amadeus.'
“When I contacted some composers who'd been in residence at White Hill with young Hawthorne, one dismissed this as 'childish rubbish.' Rosalind Arden, clearly the senior composer in attendance at the time, laughed outright.
“'Classical Music is no place for lily-livered pansies who can't cut the mustard. You need thick skin to deal with criticism.'
“'As much as we like to think ourselves one happy family all in the same boat,' composer Florian Toscanello told me, 'it's a family full of sibling rivalries all looking out for parental approval.'
“'There's only so much money available for commissioning grants or to underwrite performances.' Andrea Goldberg spent more time and effort raising money for her recently premiered Great Plains Overture than she did composing it.
“'And,' she pointed out, 'here's a newcomer who's never written an opera getting a commission to write one from the Met?'
“When I asked Nathan Noksimov how that must sit with an established composer like Florian Toscanello who's already written several operas, he said, 'well, it sure as hell annoyed the crap out of me. I mean, why would they even pay attention to this young pip-squeak? He has no experience for something like The Met!'
“In all my interviews, nobody seemed particularly fond of Mr. Hawthorne, but everyone agreed his music was 'very good,' even 'brilliant.'
“Of those composers at the colony, Perry Harcourt and Thomas Purdue declined interviews.
“There is one last statement to point out as young Hawthorne concluded, 'the worst and most spirited attacks were led by another has-been – none of them will ever be as famous as I'll be – that loser I'd mentioned before, Little Tommy Tuneless.'
“And which composer among those at White Hill that week was named 'Thomas'?”
Speaking of “paranoid fantasies,” stuff like this would be dismissed today as the rationalizations of a narcissist, a fragile ego, the spoiled child who's always flailing back at anyone he's perceived as attacking him. It's also a letter written to elicit sympathy from Daddy: would it stand up as proof in a court of law?
Was it evidence Tom (or anyone) sought to eliminate him from the competition?
“Which reminds me, Cameron, can you copy that article about McRaker and 'Mr. Schmurg,' so I can send it to Ritard?”
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
The secretary, unfortunately tired and spinsterish, puttered about the office as she watered fresh flowers – one of the things she enjoyed about being back in a spring climate after years on a tropical island – and straightened up the tea things getting everything ready for the next appointment, which, hopefully, should go better than the last. Dean Ringman's nerves were always set on edge after a meeting with Holly Grayle, the perpetually argumentative Chancellor of the conservatory, who typically persisted in pointing out the most negative things she called “realities.”
There was dust on the credenza, cobwebs filled the corners above the windows, and some of the flowers were already wilting but these weren't the realities bothering Ms. Grayle who talked mostly about money. What was the point of dreaming of new buildings and more renovations when you couldn't even find a decent cleaning staff?
After barely escaping their tropical paradise, if you wanted to call it that, during a terrible earthquake, this wasn't so bad, an old mansion, a large, fairly remote estate on the edge of town. Things, speaking of “realities,” could be – have been – a lot worse, she knew, but it's nice not being quite so isolated.
The last thing she straightened up was Dean Ringman himself, sitting grumpy and rumpled in his wheelchair, unused to daily work.
“You'll get your swing back, Mr. Steele,” she said. “I'm sorry – Dean Ringman...”
It was quite a surprise when Steele opened that letter from some Kansas City law firm addressed to his internet technician, Bill Cable, informing him, as a descendant of the original owners through his mother's side of the family, he would be inheriting the 1857 Greenleaf Mansion in Independence, MO, once belonging to the Ripleys. Steele didn't know whether to believe it or not, frankly, hiding the letter rather than informing Cable of his good fortune. Instead, he asked him a few questions about his family back in Philadelphia.
It didn't take long before Cable was telling him the adventures of his Uncle Jack, the younger brother of his mother, a bit of an adventurer who disappeared in a plane crash over Brazil. After escaping the earthquake, Steele informed the lawyers of Cable's tragic death, presenting himself as the long lost uncle, John Ringman.
Not that anyone would notice John Ringman looked amazingly like N. Ron Steele with shorter hair and a trim full beard beyond the normal aging one might expect and the addition of several pounds. But nobody in Kansas City would know what John Ringman should look like much less know who N. Ron Steele was. His secretary, Bertha Holliston, looked amazingly like Steele's loyal secretary of long standing, despite her own aging and unfortunate weight gain. She'd become even frumpier recently, and Steele found Holly Burton's modest transformation disappointing.
The fact he was largely wheelchair-bound, no doubt the result of surviving that harrowing plane crash in the dense Brazilian jungles – it was actually the result of being shot by the IMP years ago – merely added to his authenticity, since there were no other surviving family members or old photographs that could otherwise contradict him.
Either Schuyster, Hoedwinck & Grintch were that gullible or merely eager to dispense with the tiresome problem of the Ripley Inheritance, they'd quickly realized the will in favor of Goneril Ringman's only surviving descendant. She'd been an unpleasant, 90-something matriarch, and few were sorry she had died. Their substantial commission was enough to overlook inconsistencies.
Ringman, they gathered, was a wealthy entrepreneur who chose to remain in hiding to build his corporate empire of computer gadgets while evading American tax laws, making him, in other words, “one of them.”
It may be a come-down from those heady days in his New York office, now occupied by the usurper, Lucifer Darke, when he had been the world's most powerful and wealthiest of music executives, especially once everything had fallen apart after those numbskulls with the International Music Police shot him, dogging his trail ever since. They'd gotten it in their mediocre minds they had a right to destroy the career he'd worked so hard to perfect. So what if it took a few bodies to get where he got?
The earthquake on Paradise Island (he called it that ironically, compared to its original unpronounceable Polynesian name), his isolated hell-hole hideaway, was a wake-up call that, wherever he landed, now signaled his inevitable come-back. And here he was, with his very own mansion in the American Heartland and another business empire underway, the Allegro Conservatory.
With his experience and expert cunning, not to mention the assistance of numerous loyal followers from his glory days at SHMRG, he created a new foundation from his off-shore accounts called the Proteus Foundation. Years spent undetected in the South Pacific, until that traitor Cable gave him away, would give rise to a new phoenix. Thanks to Cable's inheritance – what else had Cable hidden from him, he wondered? – Steele said good-bye to the whining Rex Fisher and stepped into his latest reincarnation, John Ringman, entrepreneur, back from the dead.
The mansion was a bit dilapidated but better than the Little Grass Shack with its sandy beach and never-changing ocean vistas. It might never be the Golden Lair of his Manhattan penthouse – also usurped by the pestiferous Lucifer Darke – but he would soon be back and Darke would be homeless, a bum, or, better, dead.
It all depended how quickly he could parlay his music school into a successful chain across the country, around the world. The Greenleaf Mansion was the first of many for those seeking fast-track degrees.
His CFO, Holly Grayle – “Art,” she'd believed, “is a four-letter word” – cared nothing about the music, just the money. Now she's warning him they'll be bankrupt in months! Is that what she considers “loyalty”?
He'll call Kathy Wampus, the foundation's chief bookkeeper, and Colleen Wesson in Development: they'll tell him what he wants to hear.
Holly – or rather, Bertha – went to her office and returned shortly with a tall, skinny woman with a nose like the beak of a hawk and close-set eyes energized by the presence of carrion. Her son, a prospective student at Allegro, was short, pudgy, and surly, supposedly 12 but looking more like an insecure 16-year-old.
“This is Mrs. Harris and her very talented son, Tommy, a budding composer. This,” she said, indicating the man in the wheelchair staring at them, “is Dean Ringman, the Director of the Allegro Conservatory.”
What a teenager would do with a conservatory degree at his age was beyond Steele's – or rather, Ringman's – concern as long as the parents were willing to pay the school's substantial fee for it. Whatever their financial standing was (apparently admissions hasn't looked into that, yet), the real money was hooking them on student loans.
“May I get you some coffee, Mrs. Harris? Would you like soda, Tommy?”
“I'm not a budding composer – I write things,” the boy snarled, screwing up his beady little eyes. “I am a composer.”
“Oh, he's written lots of stuff, haven't you, Tommy? He's quite the prodigy,” Mrs. Harris added. “We're very proud of him.”
Steele was sure whatever the composition department decided, Little Tommy's acceptance would rest with whatever Admissions found in their bank account.
“Yes, he's been composing now for – what is it, dear? – three months, now!”
Dean Ringman cleared his throat and said, “I've invited the head of the Composition Department to meet you: Dr. Florian Toscarelli. He's an internationally famous composer and has a reputation for working with prodigies.”
“That sounds nice, doesn't it, Tommy,” Mrs. Harris said. “Why, in a couple of years, you could be a doctor, too!”
“Then will the Metropolitan Opera play my symphony?”
“Tommy, the Met doesn't play symphonies: you mean the New York Philharmonic.”
“Whatever...”
“That's what we like, Tommy,” Ringman said, “confidence! Without it, you're a loser.”
Ringman knew all about confidence, he thought, smiling to himself, having been a confidence man for decades! “Here's Dr. Toscarelli, now.”
A pear-shaped man with a balding head and impressive frame entered the room.
Tommy looked at him like he hadn't expected the man to be so old. “Wow,” he said, “did you know Mozart?”
Toscanello peered down at the arrogant maggot before him, already annoyed Ringman never could get his name right. Then he smiled. “No, he was before my time. But I did study with Samuel Barber.”
“Never heard of him.” He accepted the glass of Coke Bertha handed him, then scowled at her. “You got any Pepsi?”
Very much impressed, Mrs. Harris stood and shook hands with Toscanello. “Tommy's piano teacher, Mrs. Gamp, said he's a natural-born talent. And she ought to know: she studied with Estella Haversham at Magwich College!”
Toscanello could barely control the expression of distaste that spread across his face at this news, wondering what he'd done to deserve such a fall from grace after the envious academic career he'd enjoyed.
“Please let me take you on a personalized tour of our conservatory,” he said with a bow to mask his assessment.
He led the way into the vestibule and explained they already had a number of prodigies applying for the fall term. By then, they'll have a new classroom wing and dormitory ready to go. Suffering through weekly lessons with this cretinous pimple brought to mind his favorite operatic character, the Witch from Hansel and Gretel.
The cacophony from a hall of practice rooms, converted from the servants quarters, was deafening. Tommy peered through the small windows.
“It's like monkeys in a zoo,” Toscanello thought, “but not nearly as gifted.”
Holly bustled about, the man sitting behind the desk noted with increasing sadness, certainly less bustling and efficient than he remembered. She was, as far as most secretaries went, organized and expeditious, not adjectives she'd prefer to see on her performance review, just as she'd not care to realize he considered her unimaginative and declassé. While he'd shed one identity after another, this was the first time she had ever created something new for herself, but couldn't she have done better than going from Holly Burton to Bertha Holliston?
Straightening up the papers on his desk and removing the folder with some letters he'd already signed, Ms. Holliston reminded him he'd meet with the Harrises after their tour if they had further questions.
“You mean they're not back yet,” he said with an ironic smirk. “Where's the report from Admissions? I'll need that report!”
She put away “the tea things,” even though she'd served their guest coffee, including an untouched glass of Coke refused by the woman's odious spawn who didn't want to attend Allegro anyway, not really. He was the type who, told he was talented, felt entitled to no less than Juilliard or, barring that, maybe Curtis.
But Steele knew, hiding a sneer, like all of these students flocking to Allegro for their “fast-track” degrees, this kid, Tommy Harris, was a loser – and one thing Steele was not was a loser.
N. Ron Steele, in a few short decades, single-handedly managed to build Steele, Haight, Mayme, Rook & Griedman from just another Manhattan law firm into the most powerful music licensing house on the planet. From the heady days of Ronald Reagan, he eventually turned SHMRG into one of the most feared acronyms on Wall Street.
Then, almost overnight, that meddlesome composer Robertson Sullivan and his even more meddlesome cousin, LauraLynn Harty, turned some insignificant secretary's death into a plot for an opera he couldn't block from reaching the stage.
Not to mention his own agent, the inept Garth Widor, who bungled everything in the aftermath cleaning up Sullivan's inadvertent murder – not part of the plan: too outrageously public! – which brought down the IMP.
Wounded in the gunfight that killed Widor, Steele went into hiding, and Lucifer Darke got sucked in to fill the vacuum.
Finally fighting his way back, his successful cornerstone will be the Proteus Foundation. As every business tycoon knows, charitable foundations are crucial elements if you're going to transfer contributions into your various overseas accounts. With a number of well-tested recipes on how to cook books, his lawyers knew how best to protect his secret ingredients.
Holly quickly returned and placed a freshly received fax on his desk. “It's from Admissions, Mr. St...-Ringman. Everything seems in order.”
“Excellent,” he said. “His grades are terrible. The finances are... – fortuitous! He's accepted.”
Ringman looked over at the old-fashioned oak table with its miniature scale models of several prospective buildings for the school's future campus, well aware the plan all along was they would never be built. Their purpose, these models, was solely to impress potential students and prospective donors, but he's convinced they've not been entirely successful.
The head of his I.T. Department – so important in the scope of the school's on-line component, what he called “Remote Learning” – the long-loyal Montague Banks had his nephew create them out of photo-shopped on-line images and assemble them from a 3-D printer, thus creating a fake architectural rendering of their bold vision and unrealistic plans. Unfortunately, Monty's nephew lacked the necessary imagination to find building styles that matched (one looked suspiciously like the Sydney Opera House), but then he was 16, willing to spend a few afternoons for $610.
For a man who spent so much of his life believing in pleasure for pleasure's sake, Steele felt disappointed how life had turned out for him recently, since his run-in began with the IMP. As Holly brought in fresh coffee, what, he wondered, had gone so horribly wrong that gave him away, Robertson's opera aside? He'd figured Bill Cable (a double agent?) had let slip their location on his tropical island, but what if he wasn't? Ironic, no?, how their latest digs were all courtesy of Cable's posthumous inheritance.
“To Bill Cable,” Steele said, raising his cup in a mock toast, “without whom he wouldn't be where he is today!” He looked around in a grand sweep, careful to ignore the genteel dilapidation he saw around the fireplace, in the corners along the ceiling, in furniture that was more worn than it should be.
Holly poured herself a cup and raised it in return, remembering the pleasant young man, so handsome and charming, with whom she shared some of her most pleasant moments in that little grass shack. She also knew he didn't lose his grip and accidentally fall out of the helicopter during their evacuation, lost at sea. She'd noticed Steele's leg had twitched somehow seconds before hearing Cable scream; so, his paralysis was not complete, perhaps even faked? How many deaths, she kept wondering, would that make him responsible for, now?
Steele knew the school's premature failure would be a setback to all of his future plans if he didn't reach that all-important goal of several million in contributions before he could safely declare bankruptcy. If he's forced to declare it earlier than planned, it'll involve more years of privation and scheming before rebuilding his fortunes. He needed to establish a model here to convince investors to back a whole chain of such schools around the country. Then it won't matter they're never built once he's raised the necessary capital.
He also knew one day Holly Burton may prove a liability: loyalty, he knew, can only go so far. He knew she knew about all the bodies – and she knew he knew she knew.
Ms. Holliston's efficient voice on the intercom interrupted him: “The Harrises have returned.”
“Wonderful,” Dean Ringman said. “Please – send them in.”
= = = = = = =
©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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