“Fay is worried sick.”
“I expect she is.” Amos said to Darren, “Sounds to me like we ought to pick up this young’un, take him for a ride out to Wendell.”
Wendell was home to the largest state pen, notorious for its boot-camp attitude. Local police departments often took young repeat offenders for a walk down Melody Lane, as the central hall was known. The felons always sang the young boys a very warm welcome.
Marcus said, “There’s a local hardcase by the name of Sephus Jones.”
“You’re mixing with some bad stock there, Marcus.”
“He’s the guy who harassed Kirsten. I’d appreciate it if you could find out where he might be found.”
“I’ll see what I can turn up.” Amos climbed into the passenger seat, rolled down his window, and gave Marcus a little of the heat he had revealed inside. “Show a little intelligence from now on. You got anything you feel has to be done around here, you call for backup.”
CHAPTER 8
As usual, Reiner Klatz compressed his fifty-three-year-old body into clothes designed for sleeker greyhounds doing the Königsallee strut. He called goodbye to his wife, left his apartment on the fashionable Oberkasseler Weg, and drove across the Rhein Knee Bridge. Parking around the opera house was impossible as always. Reiner left his new S-class in the Carsch-Haus underground lot and hoofed it to the Kö, as the place was known to locals.
The Königsallee and its surrounding lanes made up the primo shopping region of all northern Germany. The main drag was about a kilometer long and was split by a moat, useless medieval bridges, a fountain Wagner would have swooned over, and shops selling cashmere socks. Reiner Klatz made it a point to be seen daily somewhere along its length. He flitted about, far too busy to sit down and actually say something. The greyhounds all knew him, of course. The blue-hair set liked to kiss the air by his cheeks. But his chance to really shine, the one occasion when all the Kö’s spotlights swiveled and followed him down the lane, were opening galas at the Düsseldorf opera.
To say the least, the Düsseldorf opera was not Paris. Nor Vienna nor Berlin nor La Scala. But beneath this first rank huddled a second tier, provincial houses and some which pretended to be far more than that. Of all these houses, Reiner considered Düsseldorf tops. Hands down, without qualification. Premier of the second league. And that, as Reiner would tell anyone who cared to listen, was not a bad place to be.
Düsseldorf was unable to retain rank upon rank of opera stars. But those it did engage were counted among the best. Where La Scala might have twenty divas under long-standing contracts, Düsseldorf had three. Yet these three had all starred at La Scala at one time or another. And Glyndbourne. And Berlin, Nice, Paris, Rome, and the Royal Opera House. One had even sung at the Met.
Reiner spotted the duchess in time to wipe the bitter cast from his face. Thinking about the New York Metropolitan Opera House, even for an instant, was enough to ruin a perfectly good day. The duchess seethed through the Königsallee summer crowd like the SS Bismarck through dinghies in some teeming third-world harbor. This week’s pair of personal attendants and her private secretary skittered along behind.
The duchess planted herself in front of Reiner and blared, “I want you to explain to me how it is I cannot have the director’s box!”
“A lovely day, is it not, your highness.”
“Stop with this nonsense. Do I look like a fool to you?”
“Never have I thought-”
“Then do not cloud the air with blather!” The duchess was the real thing-real title, real money, real power. She was built like an aging Wagnerian alto, with a bovine figure that would have caused a rampant steer to blanch. “I spoke with the director again this morning and he informs me that the box is still untaken!”
“Please excuse me, highness. I have sought twice to alter matters with Frau Brandt. But with the chancellor coming …”
The duchess balked. Although the chancellor’s power was far younger than her own, it was of a realm she could not safely attack. Which was of course why Reiner had mentioned him. But in truth the chancellor had been refused the box as well. Which had almost given Reiner a stroke. But Erin had insisted. And when Erin insisted, particularly the day before a gala opening, there was nothing Reiner could do. When she had returned from the United States and agreed to start back at Düsseldorf, Erin had written into her new contract that the director’s box was hers by right for every gala event in which she starred.
For now, however, the box remained strangely empty. Which was baffling. Erin had personally written the chancellor and explained in her precise convent-taught script that this was an event of national importance. The Düsseldorf opera was going on an international tour, in which Erin was singing just twice-tonight at their sole performance in Germany, followed by the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden three nights hence. It was the first time the Düsseldorf opera had been invited en masse to Covent Garden, and there she would be singing before the Prince of Wales. To Reiner’s delight, the chancellor had accepted. Yet not even he would be seated in the director’s box.
Reiner extricated himself from the duchess and scuttled along the Kö. As he passed a news kiosk his eye was caught by the local rag, which naturally had Erin’s photograph on the front page. Reiner had almost come to blows with the managing editor over the coverage they had given Erin in her moment of direst need. At least, that was how Reiner had put it, standing over the woman’s desk and screaming so loud he had drawn people from two floors below. Erin Brandt could sing anywhere she wanted. The paper had publicly lamented the fact when Erin had departed for America two years earlier.
Anywhere, that is, save the Met.
Standing over the managing editor’s desk, Reiner had shrieked and wailed and torn his Seelbach cashmere jacket over how Erin had been treated upon her return. The same paper that had wept poignant tears over her departure had spread tales of a bitter divorce and an abandoned baby. Was it true, the managing editor had dared ask. True? Who cares what was the truth? Erin Brandt was a star! Stars were expected to misbehave!
To an opera diva, the Met was the ultimate prize. Yet Erin had never been granted the starring role she truly deserved. Not even when she moved to America with this as her goal. Not even when she paid her dues singing to rave reviews in Chicago and San Francisco and even before the President at Washington’s Kennedy Center. Not to mention a variety of more mediocre stages-Atlanta and Miami and Phoenix and Dallas. Dallas! But nothing had done any good. Seven long months she had bowed and scraped and licked their societal boots. To no avail.
No wonder she got herself pregnant and let that horrid man drag her down to Wilmington, North Carolina. Reiner shuddered as he took the backstage stairs two at a time, recalling his one visit to Swampville, as Erin now called it. When Erin announced she was returning to Europe and singing and him, Reiner could have wept from sheer joy. He should have. Really.
When he entered the star’s dressing room, Erin was the calm at the center of a force nine gale. That was one of her greatest gifts, facing the horrendous pressures of a major live performance and remaining the ice queen. Reiner inserted himself into the crowd, and waited.
The dresser was busy with yet another final fitting. During the previous day’s dress rehearsal, the stays had snagged and bitten until Erin had bled quite profusely. Yet Erin had seemed not to notice the blood oozing from beneath her left arm, until Reiner had pointed it out and almost fainted in the process. Afterward she had claimed she was too involved with the music to notice anything so minor. Now the conductor and the makeup man and the wig mistress all gaped in horror at the stain. Even after a frantic dry cleaning the bloody shadow remained. By this evening it would become another component of the lady’s legend.