Where was the bottle? Still on my kitchen sink. Why had I kept it when it had tortured me so? What a fool I was! I’d not used it in years, but hadn’t thrown it away, figuring one day, the pain might be bad enough. Its presence burned a hole in the ceiling, the floor below, the air.

  Dammit. It had been in my dream. I’d grabbed Ivan by the throat and forced open his mouth. I’d poured a whole bottle down and laughed.

  God, deliver me from my dreams.

  “I don’t take anything for it except the occasional shot of whiskey.” No more laudanum. Not after I’d discovered how it strangled my senses and made me lose track of time, even more than the alcohol.

  Too quickly, I changed the subject. “What makes you think Ivan was murdered? Maybe he killed himself.”

  Reilly looked amused. He shook his head. “Not likely. He’d set up some meetings and stuff for that week. He had a lot to live for.” He locked his gaze on me. “Unless you know something got him worked up?”

  The conversation in the stairwell returned. Hans in love with Renata, Ivan breaking up the romance by bribing her with the solo in his Kliegman.

  “His fiancé,” I began, wondering how much to say, whether I’d look suspicious for not revealing this earlier. “I overheard Ivan talking to Hans—Hank—about his fiancé. There might have been something going on.”

  Reilly nodded—he knew about Renata and Hans—and jotted a note.

  I told him in the barest detail about the conversation I’d heard that night, feeling guilty for making compatriots sound guilty.

  “You didn’t say nothing about this when I saw you the first time.”

  “I didn’t see any significance in it.”

  “You think Mr. Roustakoff was broken up about his girl betraying him?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “The girl don’t think he cared.”

  “Renata is full of bluster.”

  “She said he pretty much gave her his blessing.”

  “All I can say is what I heard that night. And it sounded to me like Ivan was upset with Hans for stealing his girl.”

  Reilly said nothing, as if evaluating whether this was true. Eventually, he stood.

  “You mind if I look around?” He glanced toward the French doors that separated the living room from my bedroom. The bed was rumpled, like me, and clothes draped over a chair.

  “Actually, I do. I have to get going. A gig,” I lied, standing also.

  His eyes crinkled, his mouth lifted. He knew evasion.

  “All right. Another time then.”

  He left, and I leaned against the door for a full minute, catching my breath and my thoughts.

  The Kliegman, like the opera, was mine. I’d wanted them both. But I wouldn’t kill for them. I hadn’t even known of the Kliegman rule. No, surely I had known. I’d read all the papers when I’d entered my piece. I’d just forgotten.

  Oh Jesus.

  I ran my fingers through my hair. I paced. I thought of my dream. Ivan. The laudanum. Was it laudanum in my dream? No, some unmarked poison. What color had the bottle been? Oh Jesus. Why couldn’t I remember?

  I raced downstairs to the kitchen. I grabbed the bottle on the sink, uncapped it, looked inside. Held it up to the light. A tiny bit left.

  Christ—how much had been in there before? Surely, if I’d been using it to do evil, I’d have used it all.

  I threw it away.

  ***

  “Sallie, you there?” I tapped on the window abutting the pavement, then paced in the sunshine, my hands shoved into my pockets. I’d thrown on clothes as soon as the detective had left, and raced to my friend’s house.

  A few seconds later, the front door creaked open. Salvatore Sabataso appeared, rubbing his unshaven jaw, still hung over from the night before when we’d sat in his living room and I’d impressed his sisters with my piano playing and singing. Yes, I’d sung. I think I had.

  “What? This is my only day to sleep in, you shit.” Sal worked in his mother’s market and at his insistence she gave him off one Saturday morning a month. There was no Mr. Sabataso. I was never quite sure what happened to him—if he’d not come to America with the mother, or if he was dead, or he’d run away. The Sabatasos seemed happy enough.

  Another face appeared behind him, that of dark-haired voluptuous Brigitta, the sister who batted her eyelashes at me and liked to sit on my lap. She smiled.

  “Can you get your car?” I asked Sal. With seven kids, all of them now earning money in one way or another, the Sabatasos had been able to afford an old Ford.

  “I dunno.”

  Brigitta pushed him aside. “The car is available. I could drive you somewhere, Greggie.”

  “Holy Moses, Brigitta, you cannot drive that thing.” Sal glared at her and she flounced away. He turned back toward me. “Sure, I can get it.”

  “Right away. I gotta be someplace.”

  ***

  In a half hour, I was sitting with Sal in front of Laura Reed’s house. I could have called her, using the Sabataso telephone—another luxury I could not afford in my own household—but I needed to see her in person. On the drive in, I’d explained what I could to Sal, all except my dream and the deep fear that went with it—that I wasn’t remembering everything that went on that night, and what I didn’t remember was bad. Sympathetic, he’d offered to talk to a second cousin, who was starting as a beat cop this month, to see what he knew about Reilly and the case.

  Why was this going on, when so many other things in my life were going right? It was as if I couldn’t hold onto anything good without something nasty coming along to smack me down.

  “I’ll wait here. Go on,” Sal said to me.

  But I hesitated. I looked around, wishing I knew what kind of car Sean Reilly drove. Was he here, too? How would it look if I came up to the Reed house on a Saturday morning just after the detective had questioned me?

  I reassured myself by a quick glance at the automobiles within view. They were good-looking machines. Reilly would probably own something more like the Sabatasos’ dusty Ford.

  After sprinting across the street, I knocked with a confidence I didn’t feel on the front door.

  The Negro maid answered, and when I asked for Laura, she disappeared, leaving me standing on the porch by the half-open door.

  A few moments later, Laura appeared. She wore a long pink chenille robe that cinched her waist, and her hair looked like spun gold in the sunlight. Her face, devoid of powder or lipstick, was pale as parchment. As she blinked at me, she rubbed her arms.

  “Did Detective Reilly come to see you?” I blurted.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. My mother wouldn’t let him come in. I was still in bed.”

  I blessed Mrs. Reed’s protectiveness.

  “He came to see me this morning.”

  She tilted her head, confused.

  “I told him what you’d told him, Laura. That we were in the practice studio together.”

  She exhaled and nodded.

  “I told him we practiced Schubert.”

  “Yes, we did,” she said, remembering the afternoon in her home. How easily she merged these memories, just as I had. Jittery, I shifted from one foot to the next, my hands balled in fists at my side, my muscles tense.

  I had to know. Dammit, I had to know…I’d come here wanting the answer to one question. I had to ask it, no matter how awful it sounded.

  “Laura,” I said, looking into her eyes. “Did you do it?”

  Hard, yes. But I was beyond reason or civility by then, worried that my dream had been real, that my hands had done the ugly deed. I wanted to hear she’d done it. I would place no judgment on her if she had. I’d have protected her with all my being—I didn’t care about her guilt—but I needed to know that I …that I …

  “What?” She stepped back. Her eyes widened, shimmering with unshed tears. “How could you think that?”

  “No one would blame you. After what Ivan did.” Here I was assuming, but her reaction confirmed my worst imaginings.

  She slumped against the door jamb. I thought she’d faint again, but she just shook her head. She chewed on her lower lip.

  She placed her hands over her face and cried.

  After awhile, we both heard voices behind her in the house. I saw Mrs. Reed’s shadow. It disappeared into the kitchen.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” she whispered to me, her hands dropping by her sides as she stepped farther out onto the porch. “I took care of it all alone. All by myself. It was horrible.”

  She shook. More sobs engulfed her. If she didn’t control herself soon, her parents would come out and find out this terrible secret.

  I put my arm around her, and she crumpled into my embrace, hysterical with grief … over unvoiced sorrow. I stroked her hair. I kissed her sweet head. Poor, poor girl. What had Ivan done to her? Poor darling.

  At last, she composed herself and stepped back, her face now mottled and streaked. I handed her a handkerchief.

  “We should get our stories straight,” I said.

  “I can meet you at the conservatory.”

  We set a time, and I left, having Sal drop me at the music school on his way back home.

  *****

  Three months earlier

  Dear Laura,

  As promised, here is the name and number of the doctor I mentioned. He is a bit of a Bolshevik, so be prepared for a treatise on Marxism. He is safe and reasonable. He knows to send me the bill …

  Yours,

  Ivan R.

  Chapter Five

  Ivan had not just ruined her. He’d impregnated her. And sent her to an abortionist.

  This was what she’d meant when she’d said she’d taken care of it “all alone.”

  As she told me this tearful story in a practice room two hours later, I’d frozen, unable to think, only to fear. She’d not meant to give me the impression she’d killed Ivan. I wasn’t in the clear.

  But what an agony she’d suffered! Physical pain, she told me, as well as spiritual anguish.

  My own anxiety over an unknown deed faded in the recitation of this very real act—her pleas with Ivan, his assurance that he loved her, but that he was expecting his fiancé any day, and Laura needed to take care of this problem on her own.

  At that moment I wished it was true that I had killed Ivan. I wished I could do it as Renata had claimed she would have—staring him in the eye as I sank the dagger into his heart.

  Worse still, Laura had figured out from Ivan’s note that his trade with this “doctor” was regular. How many other poor souls had suffered this fate?

  “There, there,” I cooed, not knowing what else to say as she leaned into my chest gulping for air as she sobbed. We sat side by side on the piano bench, the Schubert open before us, but untouched, merely a prop in this second alibi, the reason for our meeting.

  “I was gla-a-a-d,” she hiccupped. “Glad he was dead.”

  Yes, glad just as I had been. I shivered. Again, I thought of the detective’s questioning, the laudanum, my dream, my worries.

  No, not that. I couldn’t think—

  I couldn’t—

  No, I didn’t—

  Too cowardly.

  She felt soft and comfortable in my arms. Although she must have dressed in haste, she looked wonderful. A white silk blouse and a green plaid pleated skirt fit her as if she’d donned them for a fashion magazine. Her arms trembled in my embrace. She still smelled of roses. The scent intoxicated me. I kissed her hair and then her forehead.

  “Thank you,” she said, at last. “For not thinking me a monster.”

  “We’re both monsters—I lost no sleep over his death.”

  She smiled.

  I pushed a stray hair from her face and peered into her stormy eyes. “Who do you think did it?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “He could have done it himself. It would be the cruelest kind of trick, don’t you think? Everyone being blamed for his death—he has a lot of enemies.”

  A lot of former lovers, she meant.

  “The detective said he had everything to live for,” I said, uneasy.

  “Maybe it was the German. Everyone says he loves Ivan’s fiancé. She stays with him now, you know.”

  Yes, I did know. But if Hans loved Renata, it wasn’t clear to me that she returned the affection to the same degree. In rehearsals the past week, she’d pulled away from Hans and looked sour and out-of-sorts when they arrived and left together. If anything, Renata had been more loving toward me. I now held the power to help her, and it would only be amplified when she learned my composition would be played instead of Ivan’s by the Philharmonic.

  Her reference to Hans made me remember the conversation I’d overheard. I gave her a quick summary of that incident, telling her that if Detective Reilly should ask about it, she could tell him she’d not heard it so clearly because she’d been studying her music.

  At this, she laughed. “You mean just looking at the music?”

  “Yes, you could say you were memorizing it, preparing to sing it.”

  “All right.” She relaxed into my arms again. So quickly we’d become comfortable with each other, and I didn’t doubt for a second that I deserved it. She’d been with Ivan, a malevolent creature, and now was me. I was a step up.

  “Do you want to sing?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’d like that.” She sat up. “I looked at the Debussy you showed me.”

  And so we spent a glorious hour as she let me hear Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, and Purcell speak across the centuries through her unblemished voice. My hands didn’t ache when I played for her. They felt whole again.

  Is it any wonder that I fell so quickly in love?

  ***

  Late that afternoon, I lounged at Sal’s house, my thoughts on Laura and Ivan. When we’d parted, Laura had invited me for dinner at her house some time soon. I’d accepted. Could I wait that long? I was on fire for her now. Did I want her because Ivan had had her? Did I want her because I knew she’d longed to see him dead—did that soften my own guilt? Oh God, I didn’t know, I didn’t know.

  “His sister’s kicking up a big fuss,” Sal said, filling me in on what his cousin had told him about the investigation of Ivan’s death. My friend had not wasted any time. He’d contacted his cousin as soon as he’d dropped me at the conservatory that morning. “Calls the station every day, has the Attorney General on the horn, thinks they should be working no case but this one. Everybody’s supposed to be on the look-out.”

  “Look-out for what?”

  “Whoever did him in.”

  Brigitta came into the room with two brown bottles of National Bohemian. She gave one to her brother and shyly offered the other to me.

  “Mama wants to know if you’ll play something for her while she cooks,” Brigitta said, smiling at me. “She says to tell you it’s payment for her good meal.” The girl blushed.

  “I can’t stay for any meal. I’m playing at the club tonight.”

  “You still doin’ that?” Sal asked. “I thought you had this opera job now.”

  I stood and walked to the upright in their bright dining room, letting the cold bottle of beer chill any pains from my hands.

  “I’ll play something for you, Mrs. Sabataso,” I called out. “But I can’t stay for dinner!”

  Sal just shook his head as Brigitta scurried back to the kitchen. He took a long gulp of his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Better watch out or my sister will be dragging you down the aisle before you know what’s good for you.”

  “I thought you said I should take her out,” I said softly.

  “Yeah, well, I’d been drinking.”

  I chuckled, doodling at the keyboard, drifting into the familiar chords of popular songs.

  Sal’s house was closer to the harbor than mine, and with the windows open to the fall breeze, I could smell the salt-tainted air of sea water. Here in this friend’s house, the memory of Laura in my arms, our alibis secure, I felt lighthearted. I quickly pounded out a medley of tunes—Me and My Gal. I’ll Take You Home Again, Irene. Let Me Call You Sweetheart.

  Until finally, Mrs. Sabataso came out of the kitchen, clucking her tongue and waving a spoon at me.

  “Why you play that, Greggie? Why you not play the good songs?”

  And without missing a beat, beaming a huge grin at her standing in the doorway, I changed the last chord of Take Me Out to the Ball Game into the first chord of the drinking song from La Traviata, and enjoyed watching her face contort as she wondered whether to be pleased or offended.

  “You are too good for your own good!” she said after a few bars. But then she laughed and puttered off to the kitchen.

  I looked over at Sal who was lighting a cigarette and picking up the evening paper in the living room.

  “You want me to stop so you can listen to the radio?” I asked, knowing the Sabatasos had just bought a new floor model displayed proudly in the corner of the living room.

  “Nope,” Sal said. “The girls listen to that Stella Dallas thing. It’s not on now, thank God. Only thing I really like is the Shadow.”

  Brigitta came into the dining room, setting plates on the table, “We’ll listen to The Shadow if you want to come over one night.”

  Sal laughed. “What I tell you, Greggie?”

  Brigitta scowled at her brother and left the room.

  The Sabataso household was warm and hospitable, and I was spending too much time playing there. But I liked making Mrs. Sabataso smile, and I often fooled her by hiding a popular melody in an inner voice of an old Italian classic, slowly peeling away each outer line until nothing but the pop song was left. As I did that now, slowly revealing the graceful tune of a Verdi aria, I talked to Sal.

  “You were telling me about Roustakoff,” I said, letting my left hand take over the melody while my right grasped the beer bottle so I could drink.

  “Yeah, well. Like I said, the guy’s sister is making a stink about it. She should let sleeping dogs lie. The guy was no saint. Reilly’s got a list he found in some opera score of broads the guy had.”

  “Don Giovanni.”

 

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