The Lost Chord: Installment 24

...continued from the previous installment of "The Lost Chord," (my parody of Dan Brown's “The Lost Symbol") in which Tr'iTone's latest composition is officially underway; the ICA agents discover that Dr. Dick has escaped from the Met, unaware that he and LauraLynn have run into Buzz Blogster and taken a cab only to find the cab-driver has heard the NYPD all-points bulletin about them.

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

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The room was brightly lit and sounded very dead. One wall looked like pleated draperies but stiff enough it could've been made out of redwood. Heavy black drapes hung over another wall, behind a hulking black Steinway grand piano. In front of him, tall boom mics hung precipitously over a flotsam of black chairs and music stands. V.C. D'Arcy was handcuffed to one of the chairs. The rest of the room he was unable to see but he didn't need his architectural or musical training to tell him he was in a recording studio, probably one in the Juilliard School of Music.

He also needed none of his previous training to realize that, next to him, Director of Security Leahy-Hu was lighting a cigarette not far from his face.

There was the squeak of a door opening and he recognized the voice of Peter Moonbeam, the usually jolly Native-American security chief for Juilliard and Alice Tully Hall.

“Uh, Chief, there's no smoking allowed in here? It's a recording studio...”

And with that, she indignantly stamped out the cigarette, leaving it to smolder on one of the music stands.

Great, the architect thought, all three minority characters in this story are contained in this one room at this one moment.

“Let's try this again, shall we? Take two, Mr. Moonbeam. Now then, Mr. D'Arcy, architect. When you arrived this evening, you found out from Officer Sordino – whom you bribed into confidence with a gift of coffee – that something amiss had happened involving a friend of yours and that I, the Director of Security for the International Composers Alliance, was already on the premises, being led by Lincoln Center Security Chief Harmon on a song and dance with some effete academic known only as Dr. Dick through the bowels of the Metropolitan Opera House at which point we discovered a few arcane objects in a remote storage room when you, at no great risk to yourself, attacked us and escaped with said effete academic and the objects we had just then discovered, after which the two of you fled through the basement scene-shop of the Met, leading three of my best agents on a chase that took you across the Met stage – in the middle of a performance, I might add – now joined by a third party at some point along the way, before getting ambushed despite the best efforts of your allies, a civilian militia, and captured but, alas, not before the dratted Dr. Dick managed to escape in, presumably, the opposite direction.”

She took a deep breath. “Would that, in 200 words or less,” she continued, “be a fairly accurate description of your involvement this evening so far, in direct opposition to me and the entire membership of the International Composers Alliance?”

D'Arcy took a deep breath of his own and thought for a moment.

“Yes, I guess you could put it that way.”

“Are you going to tell me why? Are you going to tell me where is Dr. Dick?”

“Where is Robertson Sullivan?”

“Now, that's hardly something I would know about...”

“You seem to have a lot of insider knowledge about this: information about Dr. Dick being here, showing up just as Robertson's ear was discovered, tracking down the objects in the shrine...”

Ooops. I shouldn't have referred to it as a shrine... He tried not to flinch.

Shrine? You call that filthy little hidey-hole a shrine, do you? She tried not to flinch.

She strolled around behind him, then appeared suddenly, just inches from his chin, her beady eyes glaring up at him. Again, he tried not to flinch.

“Seriously, Mr. D'Arcy. I'm in the middle of investigating a very serious international art crisis and you have been most unhelpful in my reaching any kind of solution. Do you think I'm after your paltry little metronome and cheap bobble-head doll for my own aggrandizements? Do you think I give a rat's ass about your little secrets when I have enough within my own responsibility to look after? Do you honestly think that I am the villain, here?”

She was practically shrieking, at this point.

“It had occurred to me, yes.”

She blew a puff of ice-cold laughter toward him as she walked away.

“It is obvious you have not a clue – not even an iota of clue – what is going on here, tonight, Mr. D'Arcy. The man who has kidnapped your friend Robertson Sullivan possesses a power beyond anything you can even remotely imagine, Mr. D'Arcy. And it is imperative you help us stop him before...” She dropped the volume several notches before continuing. “Before, quite frankly, it is too late.”

D'Arcy paused, trying to figure out what this performance was all about. “I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“It is not for you to understand, Mr. D'Arcy, but for you to do – or die...”

She stood there waiting for him, arms folded across her chest, waiting. In the control booth, meanwhile, Peter Moonbeam was not as impressed as he felt he ought to be:

Sinister black giant butterflies have killed the shining sun,
A sealed book of magic, the Horizon sleeps – silenced...

“Think on this, Mr. D'Arcy. I will return... in a few minutes, but first – Dear God! do I need a smoke...”

And with that, she stalked away, leaving D'Arcy to stew in his own anguish.

Out on the sidewalk, Leahy-Hu stood smoking her long delayed cigarette when her cell-phone rang. It was Agent Aïda Lott with news that Buzz Blogster had taken their bait and was headed up Columbus Avenue, and moving quite quickly, apparently.

“Ah, perhaps there's a rendezvous point that had been pre-arranged with Dr. Dick, and he will wait for him, there. Put a tail on him.”

It had been clever, slipping a micro-GPS unit into his coat pocket, just like they'd done with Paul Meary in a famous case years ago when collaborations with former Security Director Barry Scarpia had been a joy, compared to her present experience. Perhaps Buzz Blogster will also, now, lead them to their quarry. There isn't much time, she noted, looking at her watch.

Just as she was about to go back inside to continue the interrogation with Mr. D'Arcy, Agent Manina hurried up to her and said simply, “Dr. Dick has escaped from the Met. We think he may be outside the confines of Lincoln Center by now. We've had to alert the NYPD. They've just sent out an all-points bulletin.”

Leahy-Hu just shook her head. It should have been so much easier than this. She turned to throw her cigarette into the street gutter and spotted a cab hurrying down 65th toward Broadway. She got on her phone, called Agent Lott back and ordered every available agent in New York City to report to the side entrance at the Juilliard School of Music immediately.

“Dr. Dick has escaped. He is to be considered armed and dangerous.” Well, that last bit was clearly an over-reaction but considering all the help he's been getting, you can't be too careful.

She stomped petulantly back into the school, determined to get V. C. D'Arcy to sing like a canary even if it meant she had to sing a little, herself. Joyce di Donato, eat your heart out!

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“Oh my gosh!” LauraLynn started to yell, suddenly getting very animated, sitting there between Buzz and me in the back seat of our cab, waving her hands in what I hoped were the throes of a scientific epiphany.

I tried to quiet her down, patting her arm. Buzz began to do the same on her other arm.

“No, no, you don't understand, we're going in the wrong direction! What we're looking for – you know? – is... is up at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. That's where we're supposed to meet him.”

“What? Who!” That made no sense at all. The old man had definitely given the Mighty Widow a specific address – and we were definitely headed in the right direction. The shock of everything must have finally affected her mind!

She pantomimed someone texting with a phone then holding it up to her ear, surreptitiously pointing with her other hand toward Bruno in the front seat.

It made sense, now: Bruno had not only heard the description, he was calling the NYPD that he knew where their 'persons-of-interest' were – in the back of his cab!

Nothing gets by me... 

Looking around behind us, I could see the reflections of the flashing lights from a police car trying to make its way down Broadway. “You know, I think you're right!”

“Wait... what?” the cab-driver said, looking up anxiously at the rear-view mirror, not sure he had overheard us right.

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

Just as we stopped at the light before we would enter Columbus Circle, LauraLynn pointed at the subway station across the street and said, “Look – see? We can take the #1 Train up to 157th. We can be there in minutes. No sense taking the cab – it would take forever, right?”

And with that, she reached across Buzz and pulled on the door handle, pushing him out the door and dragging me along by the hand.

It was then I could hear Bruno say, “No wait, they escape! Hey!”

I immediately pulled myself across the seat and followed them out the door, chasing after LauraLynn and Buzz as they raced toward the subway entrance, just as I heard Bruno yelling, “Wait! No! Stop! Come back here, you filthy capitalist swine!” This was followed by a string of no doubt Central Asian curse-words new to my vocabulary.

Dashing through the subway station, I found the signs all so confusing, everybody rushing this way and that way – this way to the A Train, that way to the 1 Train; this side was uptown, that side was downtown. With all the cross-currents for the B, C and D trains, I felt like a salmon swimming across Times Square.

While LauraLynn explained her plan, we managed to make it to the correct platform in time to catch the correct train on the correct side of the track and collapsed into the very last car just as it was closing its doors and pulling out. And with luck, we were alone. This gave us, we hoped, the chance to talk quietly among ourselves, once I caught my breath which I felt was still back somewhere near the entranceway.

We tried to bring Buzz up to speed on what had happened since we last parted company even though in the hurrying we made it sound even more jumbled and preposterous than it was. I was also eager to try my theory about the “figured bass” numbers on Mozart's back, reordering the line about CRABS GOLDEN HORN.

The train sped noisily through the dark tunnels, heading to our next destination as I realized how much of my visit to New York this time was being spent underground.

*** ***** ******** ***** *** CHAPTER XI *** ***** ******** ***** ***

The glow of the news he would soon – within the hour, the text message had said – have the knowledge he had been seeking all these years combined with the pleasure he felt from the various balms and lotions he had applied to his body. But even though it came unbidden, the memory itself was not unpleasant: he relived it many times, finding it helped him understand how he had changed inside once the process of his own personal modulation had begun.

It always started the same way, the sense that he was falling, suspended, floating – as if he had started as a flying squirrel before turning into Icarus. It came to him when he was in that state between consciousness and unconsciousness, that moment when, as a composer, he was most open to finding Inspiration, somewhere between Reality and Art. Time would stop. Time was no longer important. Time, after all, was what he had most.

But eventually, reality hit him upside the head and the pain was excruciating. He had heard the crack of the pistol shot but he felt no pain from it. Had he been hit? When he went to duck, he tripped backwards over a fallen branch, hit his head on a low, over-hanging tree limb and was flung inadvertently out over the cliff.

He began to fall, slowly and accompanied by hypnotically rotating pinwheels. Before the gun shot, he had imagined himself standing in front of a mirror, taunting the old man, before falling through the mirror with a splash, then descending into unending darkness and seeing, as if through keyholes on his way down, a man getting shot repeatedly by a firing squad, a child crawling up the wall and over the ceiling chased by a whip-wielding woman wearing widow's weeds, an armless statue come threateningly to life, a snowball fight, a card game, lips in the palm of his hand, lips he wanted to kiss but was afraid would bite his face – and then (bloody poet) finally he hit the ground.

He had no idea how long he had lost consciousness. On the way down, he must have dislodged a rock which landed with a great crash on the ice and broke open a hole. Between the splash from the rock and from the heavy snow-fall, he was half-frozen and half-dead when he came to and he had the distinct sensation that weasels had ripped his flesh. His jacket was torn, his turtleneck was practically shredded and a branch had pierced his side like a spear. His left arm felt like it was fractured if not badly broken and his right ankle was so badly bruised, he could barely put any weight on it. And that didn't even account for the throbbing headache that made him wonder if a minor concussion could turn into serious brain damage if left unattended.

He knew there was a rocky stretch of rapids not far downstream – you could see them from the road that led up to the house, near where he'd hidden his car. After staunching the wound in his side, he managed to drag himself through the brush for what seemed like miles though he knew it must only be a few hundred yards to the dead-end spur off the main driveway to the house. There was a picnic table here, no doubt a place of happy memories for neighborhood families, but for him it was merely a convenience. He could rest here but with fresh tire-tracks on the driveway – the police, probably – he could not plan on lingering any longer than he already had. They couldn't have seen his car, hidden in the snow behind some bushes. No one would have thought to look there but they will no doubt be back in the morning.

They will have already followed his trail as far as the cliff, led there by Robertson Sullivan, proud to show off how he had defended his family and property. They will have seen the hole in the ice made by the rock – they would probably assume it had been made by him, instead – but they would have been unable to see his body lying shattered on the bank under the snow-covered bush that barely broke his fall. They would assume, of course, that he was dead and that perhaps, in the spring thaw, if someone would remember, they might try dredging along the river's banks to see if his body had ever surfaced.

What they wouldn't have assumed was that he would be driving south on Route 218 till it met up with Route 9-W just beyond West Point, then switching over to the Thomas E. Dewey Thruway before heading back to New York City.

The local classical radio station had just finished playing a Telemann concerto and was now gearing up for some obscure German symphonist from the 1740s named Johann Joachim Agrell. Where do they keep finding these guys, anyway? And it's pronounced AH'-grull but this guy keeps saying uh-GRELL. Idiot... 

After a few seconds of Mr. Agrell, he switched it off: silence, he decided, was preferable.

But minutes later, his annoyance increasing because of his failure to achieve his simple goal, he switched the radio back on, found a local all-night station that might help keep him awake.

It was then he'd heard the bulletin about the police looking for the murderer of Mrs. Katherine Shaw following a break-in at the home of local composer and teacher Robertson Hope Sullivan.

He hadn't realized he had shot her and at first the discovery that he was responsible for her death shocked him. But the more he thought about it, the more he considered it almost poetic, like a fine improvisation that turned out to be the best performance during the concert. It brought a smile to his face.

Perhaps the night had not been wasted, after all. 

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to be continued...

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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, September 13th.
©2010