Windy City Blues

“Yeah, but not too successfully. The evidence against her is very sketchy-it’s hard for me to believe they’ll get a conviction. If the weapon turns up…” I let the sentence trail away. If the weapon turned up, it might provide the final caisson to shore up the state’s platform. I was trying hard to work for Penelope, but I kept having disloyal thoughts.

“You yourself are hunting for the weapon? Do you know what it is?”

I shook my head. “The state’s attorney gave me photos of the wound. I had enlargements made and I took them to a pathologist I know to see if he could come up with any ideas. Some kind of pipe or stick with spikes or something on it-like a caveman’s club-I’m so out of ideas I even went to the Field Museum to see if they could suggest something, or were missing some old-fashioned lethal weapon.”

Chaim had turned green. I felt contrite-he had such an active imagination I should have watched my tongue. Now he’d have nightmares for weeks and would wait even longer to get his music back. I changed the subject and persuaded him to let me cook some lunch from the meager supplies in the kitchen. He didn’t eat much, but he was looking less feverish when I left.

V

Chaim’s cleaning woman found him close to death the morning Penelope’s trial started. Lotty, Max, and I had spent the day in court with Lotty’s brother Hugo and his wife. We didn’t get any of Greta’s frantic messages until Lotty checked in at the clinic before di

Chaim had gone to an Aeolus rehearsal the night before, his first appearance at the group in some weeks. He had bought a new clarinet, thinking perhaps the problem lay with the old one. Wind instruments aren’t like violins-they deteriorate over time, and an active clarinetist has to buy a new one every ten years or so. Despite the new instrument, a Buffet he had flown to Toronto to buy, the rehearsal had gone badly.

He left early, going home to turn on the gas in the kitchen stove. He left a note which simply said: “I have destroyed my music.” The cleaning woman knew enough about their life to call Greta at Rudolph’s apartment. Since Greta had been at the rehearsal-waiting for the oboist-she knew how badly Chaim had played.

“I’m not surprised,” she told Lotty over the phone. “His music was all he had after I left him. With both of us gone from his life he must have felt he had no reason to live. Thank God I learned so much from Paul about why we aren’t responsible for our actions, or I would feel terribly guilty now.”

Lotty called the attending physician at the University of Chicago Hospital and came away with the news that Chaim would live, but he’d ruined his lungs-he could hardly talk and would probably never be able to play again.

She reported her conversation with Greta with a blazing rage while we waited for di

Marcella Herschel gave a grimace of distaste-she didn’t deal well with Lotty at the best of times and could barely tolerate her when she was angry. Penelope, pale and drawn from the day’s ordeal, summoned a smile and patted Lotty’s shoulder soothingly while Max tried to persuade her to drink a little wine.

Freeman Carter stopped by after di

The trial lasted four days. Freeman did a brilliant job with the state’s sketchy evidence; the jury was out for only two hours before returning a “not guilty” verdict. Penelope left for Montreal with Hugo and Marcella the next morning. Lotty, much shaken by the winter’s events, found a locum for her clinic and took off with Max for two weeks in Portugal.

I went to Michigan for a long weekend with the dog, but didn’t have time or money for more vacation than that. Monday night, when I got home, I found Hugo Wolf’s Spanisches Liederbuch still open on the piano from January’s di

I called Mr. Fortieri the next morning to see if he could come by to look at it. He was an old man who repaired instruments for groups like the Aeolus Quintet and their ilk; he also tuned pianos for them. He only helped me because he’d known my mother and admired her singing.

He arranged to come the next afternoon. I was surprised-usually you had to wait four to six weeks for time on his schedule-but quickly reshuffled my own Tuesday appointments to accommodate him. When he arrived, I realized that he had come so soon because Chaim’s suicide attempt had shaken him. I didn’t have much stomach for rehashing it, but I could see the old man was troubled and needed someone to talk to.

“What bothers me, Victoria, is what I should do with his clarinet. I’ve been able to repair it, but they tell me he’ll never play again-surely it would be too cruel to return it to him, even if I didn’t submit a bill.”

“His clarinet?” I asked blankly. “When did he give it to you?”

“After that disastrous West Coast tour. He said he had dropped it in some mud-I still don’t understand how that happened, why he was carrying it outside without the case. But he said it was clogged with mud and he’d tried cleaning it, only he’d bent the keys and it didn’t play properly. It was a wonderful instrument, only a few years old, and costing perhaps six thousand dollars, so I agreed to work on it. He’d had to use his old one in California and I always thought that was why the tour went so badly. That and Paul’s death weighing on him, of course.”

“So you repaired it and got it thoroughly clean,” I said foolishly.

“Oh, yes. Of course, the sound will never be as good as it was originally, but it would still be a fine instrument for informal use. Only-I hate having to give him a clarinet he can no longer play.”

“Leave it with me,” I said gently. “I’ll take care of it.”

Mr. Fortieri seemed relieved to pass the responsibility on to me. He went to work on the piano and tuned it back to perfection without any of his usual criticisms on my failure to keep to my mother’s high musical standard.

As soon as he’d gone, I drove down to the University of Chicago Hospital. Chaim was being kept in the psychiatric wing for observation, but he was allowed visitors. I found him sitting in the lounge, staring into space while People’s Court blared meaninglessly on the screen overhead.

He gave his sad sweet smile when he saw me and croaked out my name in the hoarse parody of a voice.

“Can we go to your room, Chaim? I want to talk to you privately.”

He flicked a glance at the vacant faces around us but got up obediently and led me down the hall to a Spartan room with bars on the window.

“Mr. Fortieri was by this afternoon to tune my piano. He told me about your clarinet.”

Chaim said nothing, but he seemed to relax a little.

“How did you do it, Chaim? I mean, you left for California Monday morning. What did you do-come back on the red-eye?”

“Red-eye?” he croaked hoarsely.

Even in the small space I had to lean forward to hear him. “The night flight.”

“Oh. The red-eye. Yes. Yes, I got to O’Hare at six, came to Paul’s office on the el, and was back at the airport in time for the ten o’clock flight. No one even knew I’d left L.A. -we had a rehearsal at two and I was there easily.”

His voice was so strained it made my throat ache to listen to him.

“I thought I hated Paul. You know, all those remarks of his about responsibility. I thought he’d encouraged Greta to leave me.” He stopped to catch his breath. After a few gasping minutes he went on.