Murder at the Kennedy Center (22 page)

“
Bueno
. Then let us go over this again.”

Tony Buffolino retrieved his .22 revolver from Security at San Francisco International Airport. He was licensed to carry the weapon, and had checked it with airline security in New York before boarding the flight. Revolver securely nestled beneath his arm, he pulled the new suitcase he’d bought at a Watergate luggage shop from the baggage carousel and went out front to take the shuttle bus and pick up the Hertz Continental he’d reserved.

“Nice, nice,” he said aloud as he settled behind the Lincoln’s steering wheel and adjusted the seat and mirrors. He read over the printout he’d gotten from the Hertz direction-giving computer, and carefully studied a map of San Francisco, placing an “X” on Santiago Street, in the Sunset district. He’d intended to go to the hotel first, but changed his mind. He started the engine and headed for the “X” on the map, reaching it almost an hour later after a series of frustrating, obscenity-producing wrong turns.

The house he was looking for was nondescript, on a nondescript street, in a nondescript neighborhood. Still, there was a refreshing neatness and cleanliness to the area. The houses were all painted in pastels, as was most of the city;
a shower of sun gave them a recently washed look. He parked across the street from number 21, got out of the Lincoln, spent a moment taking in more of his surroundings, then crossed to a two-family house; the numbers were 21A and 21B. The only number he’d been given by Mac Smith was 21—no letters. He took a chance on 21A and rang the bell. When there was no immediate response, he rang again, longer this time. Eventually, he heard an interior door open and close, and a female hand with chipped red nail polish pulled a flowered green curtain aside. Half her face was visible.

Buffolino flashed his biggest nonthreatening smile. The half-face continued to stare at him. “I need some help!” he yelled through the glass. The curtain returned to its original position, a key was turned, and the door opened as far as its chain would allow.

“Mrs. Feldman?”

“Next door.” She had a deep booze-and-cigarette voice.

“Thank you,” Buffolino said.

“She’s not here.”

“Do you expect her back soon?”

“No. She’s gone away.”

“Is that so? Has she gone away for good?”

“She still pays the rent.”

“Then I suppose she’ll be coming back,” Buffolino said, annoyed at the crabbed conversation and the narrow opening through which it was being conducted.

“Are you a friend of Mrs. Feldman?” the low voice asked.

“Yeah, I am, from New York.”

“I used to live in New York.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. Are you with a company?”

“Huh? No, I work by myself.”

“An opera company.”

“Opera company? No, ah … I dabble, if you know what I mean. Opera! Hey, are you an opera singer?” Before the low voice behind the door could answer, Buffolino said, “Opera is my chief love in life. What a coincidence. How about a cup a’ coffee and some opera talk?”

She looked him up and down.

“I mean, just open the door and let’s talk for a minute.” The chain was released and the door opened, revealing a tall, full-bodied woman with dyed red hair and an imposing bosom that threatened the thin fabric of a pink housecoat.

“Anthony Buffolino,” he said, extending his hand.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Buffolino. I am Carla Zaretski.”

“Pleased, I’m sure. Gee, I’m sorry I missed Mae. Any idea when she’ll be back?”

Carla slowly shook her head. “She had family business to attend to.”

“That so?”

“Yes. There has been a tragedy in her life.”

Buffolino looked serious and said, “Andrea being murdered. I guess Mae had to make a lot of arrangements.”

Carla placed her hands over her bosom and sighed. “A terrible thing to lose your only daughter. It devastated Mae, absolutely devastated her. Poor thing. Andrea was her only child … and such a good daughter. She visited often, always bringing things. And then
that
news. So tragic.”

“Like opera,” said Buffolino.

Carla glared at him.

“I mean, it’s just that opera is always … tragic … the plot, I mean.”

Carla’s sudden flash of anger subsided as quickly as it had flared. “Great tragedy is what opera is made of.”

“That’s what I was saying. Where do you figure Mae went?”

“To New York.”

“How come New York?”

“To find solace with her many friends. You say you are a friend?”

Buffolino shrugged and shifted from one foot to the other. “Actually, I was more a friend of Andrea’s. We were … well, we were pretty close once.”

The expression on Carla Zaretski’s face was sheer horror. “Then you, too, have suffered a great loss. Were you there when … when it happened?”

Buffolino looked at the ground and slowly shook his head. “No, and that makes it even harder. If I had been,
maybe I could have done something. I can’t get that out of my mind, you know, always wondering if I could have done something to prevent it.”

Carla, who was a few inches taller than Buffolino, looked down into his eyes and asked, “Would you like a drink?”

Buffolino gave her his best aren’t-you-a-wonderful-person-for-thinking-of-it look, and broke into a smile. “That’s very kind of you. Yes, I would enjoy a drink, but only if you’ll join me.” He had no doubt that she would.

A few minutes later, he stood in the middle of her modest living room, a glass of warm whiskey in his hand. The walls were filled with photographs, all of them featuring Carla Zaretski. A badly scratched recording of Mozart’s
Marriage of Figaro
came from small, cheap speakers.

“Memories,” Carla said from where she’d arranged herself on a chaise longue that bore the scratch marks of four cats that roamed the room.

“You were a star, huh?” Buffolino said.

“No, never a star, but I sat on the threshold of stardom. The voice is such a fickle slave. I lost my portamento prematurely.”

Buffolino stared at her. “Jesus, I’m sorry to hear that. What’d you have, an accident?”

“Accident?” She started to laugh. “You are absolutely charming. Portamento, you know, is when the singer is no longer able to smoothly transverse the octaves.”

Buffolino joined her laughter. “Yeah, right,
that
portamento.” He quickly turned his attention to the photographs on the wall. “Who’s this with you?”

“My dear friend and one of the world’s great divas, Roseanna Gateaux. Surely you recognize her.”

Buffolino had certainly heard of Gateaux, and remembered Mac Smith mentioning her as part of his blow-by-blow description of the events at the Kennedy Center the night Andrea Feldman was murdered. “Sure,” he said, “but that picture must have been taken years ago.”

“She is here now, singing Leonora in
Il Trovatore
. How sad Mae can’t be present.”

“Yeah, I know. Let’s talk about that. Talking eases the pain sometimes.”

An hour later, Buffolino decided it was time to leave. His hostess had lapsed into a nonstop recounting of her failed operatic career, which, the more she talked, Buffolino realized had never amounted to much except unrealistic dreams and empty, childish artistic pretensions. Still, he knew that Miss or Mrs. Zaretski represented the sort of direct link to Mae Feldman that he needed. Mac Smith had told him to find out everything he could about Andrea Feldman’s mother. This was paydirt.

He told her he had to leave, but added, “I’ll be staying in town a few days. How would you like to have dinner with me?”

“Dinner? On such short notice?” She fluffed her hair. “You mean tonight?”

“Let’s make it tomorrow night,” Buffolino said lightly. “Hey, you were some knockout. I can see from the pictures. You haven’t lost much as far as I’m concerned.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl.

“Come on, I don’t know anything about San Francisco. Dinner’s on me, and you show me the sights. Whattaya say?”

When she didn’t immediately accept, he asked, “Are you going to see your friend Roseanna while she’s here?” He knew the answer; Roseanna Gateaux was not her friend, and she probably didn’t have enough money to buy a ticket. “I’d sure like to hear her sing,” Buffolino said. “
Traviata
. That’s one of my favorites. What do you say we go together?”

“
Trovatore
,” she said, but there was no hesitation now. They made a date for dinner the next night. She suggested he buy tickets to the opera, but he reached into his pocket and tossed a hundred dollars on the table. “You do it, pick some good seats. Is that enough?” She frowned. He tossed down another hundred. “Get the best.”

“I will.”

“Great, I’ll be staying at a hotel called the Mandarin Oriental, down in the financial district. Maybe you could call me there tomorrow and we’ll set it up.”

She walked him to the door. “You are a very sensitive and kind man,” she said.

“Well, I … hey, I’ll level with you, I just happen to have taken a shine to you, you know? And opera, a chance to see Roseanna Gateaux. My lucky day.”

The lunch at the Four Seasons was pleasant, but turned out to be mission impossible. Annabel spent the lunch negotiating with a collector of pre-Colombian art for a sculpture of were-jaguar. The collector was a prissy little man who wouldn’t budge on the price, which, Annabel knew, was far in excess of the piece’s worth. They parted and agreed to keep in touch, although she decided the only way that would happen was if he called to announce he’d cut his price in half.

She had time to kill; the appointment she’d made with Herbert Greist wasn’t until six. It was a lovely day in New York, sunny and mild but with enough nip in the air to remind you that summer wasn’t here yet.

She decided to take a leisurely walk, and chose upper Fifth Avenue. Although she’d dismissed the notion that she’d been followed yesterday, the thought had come back to her a few times that morning, causing her to look behind in search of the same man. He was never there, and by the time she’d reached the Four Seasons, she’d put him out of her mind again.

Now, as she took her post-lunch stroll up Fifth and over
to Madison to browse shop windows, she stopped to admire a good collection of antique jewelry in a small store. The light was such that Annabel could clearly see her reflection in the window, and she moved to avoid it to see the jewelry more clearly, and saw instead the reflection of a man across the street. It wasn’t the same man as the day before, but he was dressed similarly in a tan raincoat, and seemed to be reading the pick-up times on a corner mailbox. She wouldn’t have thought much of it except that she wondered how much information could be on the box to keep him engaged so long. Either the entire Constitution was pasted there, or he was illiterate.

She went to the corner and waited for the light to change, looking straight ahead but seeing in her peripheral vision that he’d crossed the street against the light and now lingered on the far corner. This time, he looked down at what appeared to be a map in his hands.

The light changed in her favor. She started to cross, quickly reversed herself, and walked east on the cross street, stopping halfway down the block in front of a restaurant. She looked inside. There was a bar by the window with one man sitting there. She entered and went to a bar stool that placed her in front of the window.

“Yes, ma’am?” the bartender asked.

Annabel, who had swiveled on the stool to look out the window, said without turning, “Club soda with lime, please.”

She saw the tan raincoat pass on the opposite side of the street. He didn’t seem to be looking for her; he’d probably seen her enter the restaurant. He never looked in her direction as he passed from her view. She paid for her drink, stood at the window, and looked up the street. He was gone.

She left the restaurant and scanned the block. No sign of him. He’d either decided to keep going, or had found a spot from which he could observe without being seen.

“Damn,” she said as she retraced her steps to Fifth and continued uptown. She stopped occasionally to see if he’d fallen in behind her, but saw no more of him.

Greist had wanted to meet at his office again, but Reed insisted they meet in a public place. His office was just too
stifling and tawdry. They agreed on the Oak Bar in her hotel.

When Greist arrived, Annabel sensed he’d already been drinking—nothing overt, just that tendency to reach for the floor with his feet rather than finding it naturally. He was also outwardly more pleasant, which, she assumed, went hand in hand with whatever he’d consumed. He joined her at the small corner table she occupied.

“Did you talk to Mr. Smith?” Greist asked after he’d been served a scotch and soda.

“Yes, I did. His attitude matches mine, Mr. Greist. Unless there is some specific indication of the nature of the information you wish to sell, and proof, we couldn’t even begin to consider it.”

He sat back and held his drink in both hands, staring into it as though seeking his next line from the quietly bubbling liquid. He said to the glass, “That’s a shame.”

Annabel’s laugh was sardonic. “You wouldn’t expect us to recommend to our client that he pay half a million dollars for something we haven’t seen, would you?”

“Faith, Ms. Reed. There is no such thing anymore as faith and trust.”

“There certainly isn’t in this situation, and I think you’re absurd to expect it.”

A tired smile formed on his lips. “Ms. Reed, this is a treacherous world. Information can be its salvation, or its ultimate destruction.”

The word “crackpot” crossed her mind. She had the feeling he was about to give a speech, something vaguely political and filled with clichés about the state of the world as he perceived it. She could do without that, did not want to waste time being on the receiving end of it. He slowly turned to her and said, “The information I offer your client, the honorable senator from California Kenneth Ewald, could change the course of events in this country, perhaps in the world, if it were to get into the wrong hands.”

Annabel couldn’t help but laugh. “Mr. Greist, you’re not making any sense at all. I think we’d get a lot further if you would be specific instead of talking in grandiose terms about world change.”