Fiddle Game (13 page)

We seemed to be going north, which was as good as anything else I could think of. I didn’t know where I was going, but I damn sure knew what I was going from. Evans was a complicated character, I thought, and his actions up to now could be interpreted in a lot of ways. But there was only one way to interpret the bullets by the railroad tracks: He wanted to kill me.

Why? That wouldn’t get him a violin or a wad of money, or even a big fat promotion with the cops. It was simply irrational. I thought back to what my Uncle Fred had said about murder by motor vehicle being a crime of rage. Was Evans full of rage? And if so, how in hell did it get directed towards me? I didn’t think the answers were anywhere ahead of me on the tracks, but I didn’t know where else to go at the moment.

I faced forward and amused myself by waving at people in tenement yards and reading the black and white signs that occasionally passed by, written in railroad gibberish. I had almost stopped trying to make sense of them when I passed the one that said SKOKIE.

I mentally took back all the sarcastic things I had thought about the Proph and his ideas. This absolutely had to be karma. The train was going faster now, but there were patches of tall grass along the tracks that looked fairly soft. I picked one and jumped. It may have been soft, but my body didn’t think so. It promised to remind me of this silly stunt for a good long time. But I didn’t break or seriously wrench anything, so I got up to look for something that might be the center of town.

***

I found a C-store not far from the tracks, and I bought a throwaway shaving kit, some moist towelettes, cigarettes, a cup of coffee, and a couple of stale doughnuts.

“Restroom’s back in that corner,” said the clerk, a dumpling-shaped, frizzy redhead who looked as if she probably drove a Harley to work.

“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t ask how she knew I needed one.

“You don’t look like a regular ‘bo,” she said. I think she may have been trying to give me a come-hither look, but it was hard to tell on her.

“Thanks again, I think.”

“Yeah, you do that,” she said. “You think.”

I beat a hasty retreat to the room she had pointed to, where I shaved, cleaned my clothes up a bit, and generally tried to make myself look like a candidate for humanity. I tried some coffee, which wasn’t bad, and a doughnut, which was awful. I would have thrown it in the toilet, but I didn’t want to plug the poor thing up. On the way out, I asked the clerk if there was a good restaurant anywhere close.

“Them doughnuts ain’t much, are they?” she said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” They were much, all right.

“I make a lot better ones myself, but they don’t let me sell ‘em here. The company says we gotta sell the ones off the big truck, which ain’t here on time, mostly.”

“Well, that’s a big company for you. No respect for individual talent.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” I think she batted an eyelash at me. When I appeared to be immune to it, she gave me directions to a 24-hour pancake house. “Comb your hair,” she said.

Then I showed her the paper with the address that Joe the Gypsy had given me. “Where would that be?” I said.

Her expression couldn’t have changed faster if I’d tried to rifle the cash drawer. “Aw, shit,” she said. “You one of them?”

“Not exactly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I just bet. Get out of here and tell it to somebody else.”

I didn’t wait for her to add an “or else.” Fifteen minutes later, I found the pancake house. It was pushing nine o’clock by then. Instead of showing the waitress the address in my pocket, I asked her where I could find a city map, which turned out to be a much better strategy. She gave me more coffee than I asked for, heated up my apple pie, and let me look at a map in the front of a phone book, though she didn’t let me tear it out. Then she told me about the local city bus schedule and where to catch one. So much for not looking like a regular ‘bo.

A little after ten, I was getting off a bus and walking up to a heavily curtained storefront. The sign said “Spiritual Consultations,” and in smaller print, “Madam Vadoma, Seeress.” There was also a picture of a hand with a lot of numbers and lines and an eyeball in the middle of the palm. If that was a sign I should have recognized, I flunked out. I might as well have been playing Scrabble in a foreign language. But in the time-honored phrase, it was the only game in town. A bell just like the one at Rosie’s café announced my arrival, and I stepped into a world of dark drapes and dim candlelight.

“
Droboy tume Romale
,” said a voice in the shadows.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Of course, you do not. You are
Gadje
, then.”

“Yes.”

“Shut the door.” The voice was soft and feminine and a touch breathless, but it carried authority. It also carried some kind of eastern European accent, but I couldn’t identify it any more exactly than that. I stepped the rest of the way into the tiny shop and closed the door behind me. This time, it didn’t jingle.

“Sit.” Again, the velvet-covered command. I sat.

The woman who sat behind the small table was neither young nor old. She had high cheeks, a hawk-like nose, and eyes too wild for the rest of her manner and too big for the rest of her face. She also had silky black hair that seemed to flow everywhere. And while I wouldn’t have said she was either sexy or beautiful, she had a definite
presence
. If I were the sort of person who goes to a spiritual consultant, I would have said she had a strong aura. Of course, that could have been the lighting. With the sunlight streaming in through the open door, the place had been merely a tired old office, with threadbare carpet, a lot of dark drapery on the walls, and a round table covered with dark red felt. With the door shut, it was a place of mystery, even possible magic. Exotic incense hung in the air, the corners disappeared, and the woman’s dramatic features were highlighted by candlelight and carefully placed pin spots. And the crystal ball.

I have to admit, I was impressed by the crystal ball. I had always thought they were a mere cartoon cliché, and I never expected to actually see one. This one was maybe six inches across, lit from within or below with a blue-white glow, and it seemed to have tiny wisps of smoke slowly curling around inside it. The woman cupped her hands over the ball without touching the glass, then opened them, slowly, sinuously, like an exotic flower unfolding dark petals. She may have been as phony as a politician’s promises, but she definitely had style. In spite of myself, I decided I was going to like this game. She looked up.

“The crystal is clouded,” she said. “You see?”

“It’s not always like that?”

“It reacts to your troubles.”

“Oh. Well it would, wouldn’t it?”

“You mock me? That would be a great mistake. I have the gift of the evil eye. I can make you wish for the rest of your life that you had never walked into this place.”

I didn’t know which eye was evil, but I looked at both of them, and I believed her. “I’m not mocking you,” I said.

“Then you are wise, to that extent. Now you make a gesture of good faith.”

I didn’t have to be told what that might be. Fifty seemed to be the minimal unit of trade here in greater Chi-town, and I laid my last one on the table. She didn’t lay either eye on me, so I guessed I picked the right amount. She passed her hand over the table without touching it, and the bill vanished. A simple enough trick for a practiced conjurer, but still impressive. Then she asked for my hand.

She held my hand in hers, palm up, and studied it. Her touch felt hot and slightly electric.

“I see you have much strength of character.”

“How nice for me.”

“Not always. You are a man with a troubled past.”

Well, who the hell wasn’t?

“You acquire fine things, then you lose them.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”
The keys to my safe deposit box? My life back in Detroit? My wife? Or merely the Amati?

“Yes,” she said. “All of those.” Cute. I began to see how the fortune-telling game worked.

“But there is one object, in particular, that troubles you. A recent one. You must get it and bring it to me.”

“It troubles me less than the people who died over it.”

She looked up abruptly. Her eyes got even bigger, and her mouth made a round “o”. Then she peered intently at my hand again. “Death?” she said. “I see no blood here.”

“No. Not on my hands.”

“Then it is the object that is the evil. To be free of it, you must get it and…”

“Understand something very clearly, Madam Vadoma: I can bear to part with the violin, maybe even be cheated out of it, but not without finding out who did the killing. If you can’t help me with that, then I’ve come a long way for nothing.”

“It is a violin, then?” she said.

“Of course, it’s a violin. Weren’t you told?”

“I was only told that a
Gadje
would come, a man in a great deal of trouble, who…”

I was thinking that she must use the same prompt book as the Proph, when she was interrupted by another voice, a deep bass belonging to a man who had come up behind her without either of us noticing.

“I will talk to this gentleman now.”

“But I was…”

“It is all right, Vadoma. Go and bring us some coffee.”

She looked as if she were suppressing a passionate desire to either punch him out or stomp on his instep, but she gathered herself up in a flurry of skirts and hair and rushed out, taking her crystal ball with her. I was surprised to see that there was not a hole in the table with a light coming through it. The crystal must have had its own illumination. But then, I was supposed to think that, wasn’t I?

“I am Stefan Yonkos,” he said. “I am the
Rom Baro
. And you are Howard Jacobson.”

Good thing he told me. I wasn’t sure I could remember the name Rosie had used for me in the strip joint.

When he came farther into the light, I could see why he would be accustomed to moving around in the dark without bumping into anything. His eyes had no pupils at all, just rolled up whites, making him look like a fugitive from a zombie movie. And though he had to be as blind as a mob lawyer, I felt as though he were staring at me, right into my soul.

Unlike the other Gypsies I had met up to then, he was square and solid, with features that looked as if they were carved out of ancient oak with a chain saw, then left unfinished. He had thick, wavy hair and a Stalin moustache, both of them salt-and-pepper now gone almost entirely to white. And though his neck had shrunk a bit and his jowls sagged, they, too, looked solid. Only his posture looked like that of a younger man. He carried himself like ex-military, and when he sat at the table, there was no doubt that he took charge of it. If the seeress had a strong aura, his was thermonuclear.

“I apologize for the woman,” he said, spreading his hands.

“Why? I thought she was very good.”

“She rushed you. That cannot be allowed, ever. The game has a rhythm that must be respected. But she has not so much experience yet. She will learn.”

“And if I didn’t come here to play a game?”

“No? Why then, you would be a fool. And an easy mark. But I do not think you are a fool. I do not think a fool would have a priceless violin, for one thing.”

“Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. No offense.”

He chuckled at that, and pointed at me in a gesture that said I had scored the first point in our strange game. But not the last. “Very good, Mr. Jacobson. You talk like me. We shall have a fine time lying to each other. No offense. Vadoma! Where is that coffee?”

The woman came back in as if she had been waiting for her cue, just offstage. She put a tray on the table, took a cup from it for Stefan, and poured steaming liquid from an ornate, antique pot. As she was reaching for a second cup, he said, “Make sure you take a good cup for Mr. Jacobson. We would not want to offend him.”

And just like that, I was in. An audience with the big kahuna, an unchipped cup, and everything. Or I was the biggest pigeon on the north side of Chicago, neatly set up by a bartender who chose his words just as carefully as the man in front of me. And the only way to find out was to play out the hand. I waited until the woman left, then took a sip of coffee and made appreciative noises.

“You know about the violin?” I said.

“I am told you have the Wolf Amati.”

“Possibly, maybe not.”
What the hell is the “Wolf” part, anyway?

“Explain this to me.”

“I wish I could,” I said. “A woman calling herself Amy Cox gave me an old violin as security on a bond for her brother. Then she was killed in front of my place of business. Now the brother has been killed, too, and another man calling himself Cox wants me to give him the violin, for a lot of money. I have reason to think they are, or were, all Gypsies. I came here hoping to find out enough about them to help me figure it all out, but all anybody wants to talk about is the damn fiddle. If the thing you call the Wolf Amati has something to do with a family called Cox, and if the family is one of yours, then maybe we can help each other. If not, we may both be wasting our time.”

“You come straight to the point, don’t you? Very artless, but it moves me to believe you, I must say.”

“Well, we’re here to move each other, aren’t we?”

“So we are,” he said, nodding solemnly. “But I am supposed to be better at it than you.”

“Then I’ll do my best to let you think you are.”

He laughed heartily this time, slapping the table and making it bounce. Something about the laugh seemed hollow, though, a stage laugh for an audience of one.

“By God, I like you more and more!” he said. “Will you take some brandy in your coffee?”

“Will you?”

“Alas, I cannot. A stomach condition.” He patted his midsection, which looked about as fragile as a boiler plate.

“What a coincidence. Me, too.”

He smiled out of one side of his mouth. “Perhaps it is something contagious.”

“Quite possibly.”

“What about some pastry, then?”