The Chalk Girl

Nadler?’

‘The police guard at the door wouldn’t find children suspicious,’ said the ADA. ‘Maybe that was the cover-up.’

‘But not the cover-up you bargained for,’ said Coffey.

‘Not the one you got paid for,’ said Mallory from the back of the room.

Good shot. Carlyle was frozen for a moment. And then one stiff hand tugged at his tie, as if it might be a tight fit today.

Mallory stepped up to the table with her first lie. ‘We know what you said to the parents.’ She leaned down to the ADA’s ear to bring this bluff home. ‘You told the Nadlers a student from the Driscol School was arrested for Ernie’s assault. But you never said it was Toby Wilder. That wouldn’t have made any sense to them. They knew their son never blamed that kid for the wino’s murder . . . And you knew it, too.’

Every little twitch of Carlyle’s mouth was a confession. ‘I couldn’t give the Nadlers any details,’ said Carlyle. ‘Juvenile records are sealed.’

‘And they bought that?’ Jack Coffey smiled. He could still be surprised when Mallory’s lies came true. ‘Well, I guess the parents were a little distracted at the time. Maybe they were wondering what to do when their little boy woke up – how to explain his amputated hands.’

‘But then,’ said Mallory, ‘after Ernie was murdered in the hospital – that solved all your problems with the bogus case against Toby Wilder.’

‘I want a lawyer,’ said the lawyer.

THIRTY-ONE

I know the headmaster believes me. He goes a little pale while I tell my story in his office. I sit there between my parents. My mother seems embarrassed by murder, and I’m sure my father is disappointed in me for ratting out the wino’s killers. The smirking detective stands by the window, hardly listening.

The headmaster knows I’m telling the truth, but he was once a teacher, one of the deaf-and- blind people. I guess that’s why he tries not to hear me, shaking his head, shaking out my words. And when I’m gone, he’ll probably forget that he ever saw me while I was alive.

—Ernest Nadler

‘Hey, man, you’re early.’ Chick Dolan smiled and waved the detective into his Chelsea loft.

‘Nice digs.’ Riker had no idea that writing musical arrangements paid so well. The price of New York living space was measured in light, and the street side was almost solid glass. No interior walls – only furnishings to define the spaces for sleeping and lounging, shooting a game of pool – and work. Riker admired the grand piano. He was about to ask what came of Toby Wilder’s musical score for a jazz symphony.

‘This is it.’ Chick handed him a CD. ‘Nothing fancy, not like a studio cut. Just a crummy pocket recording from the rehearsal session. But that’s your music, and now I know who those riffs belong to. I should’ve remembered the other night in Birdland. I’m gettin’ old. Listen here.’ He played a ripple of piano keys. ‘This kid – well, he wouldn’t be a kid anymore, maybe in his fifties now. I didn’t know him well, and I sure didn’t know him long – just his style. He was a studio musician when he wasn’t playing clubs. He’s got credit lines on at least ten of those albums.’ Chick pointed to the large freestanding bookcase behind them.

Riker whistled. There were enough CDs, vintage cassettes and old vinyl records to open a small music library.

‘You won’t find any written scores for the best of them,’ said Chick. ‘This guy couldn’t even read sheet music. He was all tunes in freefall, improvisations on a theme. Finest kind. So his style comes shining through every time. Jess left the scene twenty years ago. Back in the day, he played the sax better than any man on the planet. Now, on piano, I’d have to say he was merely fucking marvelous.’

Riker hefted the CD in his hand. ‘So he’s in the wind.’

‘On the run? I wish. No, Jess was still young when he flamed out, and then he drank himself away. Last I heard, he was panhandling on the street, but that was ages ago. Sorry, man. You got this dead-end look in your eye.’

Charles Butler opened the door of his apartment to greet his second guest of the day, the detective who did not hold a grudge against him.

When Riker entered the front room, Mallory flashed a look of irritation. Always late. Her partner held up a CD as a peace offering. ‘Chick Dolan’s buddies recorded the music, and it’s not a total loss.’ He smiled, possibly waiting for some sign of interest from her. Giving up on this idea, he handed Charles the sheet music transcribed from Toby Wilder’s walls. ‘Chick underlined all the signature passages. And he gave me a—’

‘You’re interrupting,’ said Coco.

‘Sorry, kid.’ Riker gave the disk to Charles and then joined his partner on the couch, where he patiently listened as Coco explained how a cat-size rat could fit through a hole the size of a quarter.

Charles opened the doors of an eighteenth-century armoire that hid a twenty-first-century stereo, a stack of state-of-the-art components, and one of them would even play his collection of archaic vinyl records. This was the only electronic gift from Mallory that he actually liked and used. She had wired his entire apartment to surround him in sound so that he could walk around inside of sonatas and symphonies. He slipped in Riker’s CD, but hesitated on the play button until Coco had concluded her lecture on the compression factor of rat bones.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Riker. ‘I made a stop at the Hall of Records.’ He leaned across Coco to hand his partner a sheet of paper. ‘That’s a birth certificate for Toby. The kid’s father was Jess Wilder, a great sax player.’ He turned to Charles. ‘Chick says the style is pure Jess, but the guy couldn’t read or write sheet music. And he only played other people’s tunes.’

Charles pressed the play button. ‘Then this score belongs to Toby.’ He riffled the pages of sheet music to see all the highlighted passages. ‘But the father’s influence is everywhere.’ Literally. He saw it everywhere on all the pages.

And now he could hear it as well – all around him.

A rippling passage from a saxophone began the overture, and other instruments dropped in notes with a perfect balance of sound from speakers on every wall, drums to the right of him, strings to the left. Piano keys, soft as shadows, followed the saxophone through the music that wound throughout the room.

‘I don’t care how gifted the father was.’ Charles paused for a wilding of notes, an auditory landscape of windblown strings and horns. ‘A man who can’t write sheet music can’t do an orchestration for fifty instruments. This is the son’s creation.’

Charles lost his train of thought, as did they all. And they heard out the rest of the work, waiting for a crescendo. The tension was exquisite – any moment – soon, soon. Every chin was lifted, waiting to catch the high notes when they crashed to earth. But then the music wandered off, tapering down to the sax playing solo notes that ended mid-sentence, and a piano finished the saxophone’s song.

This departure from the logical progression of music was akin to defying gravity. ‘Beautiful – and original.’

Charles riffled a drawer to find the police photographs of music writ on walls, and he laid them out on the coffee table in front of the detectives, pointing to places in every picture where notes had been whited out and written over. ‘Toby altered the very structure of the bones – his underlying melody. You can actually see the creative process at work.’

Ah, but now he could also see that Mallory wanted the short version. After years of training him, she had only to raise one spread hand, a signal for him to cut to the best part – something useful.

‘It’s not derivative work,’ said Charles. ‘It’s a virtual fusion of father and son. I think Jess Wilder was still in Toby’s life when the boy was locked up in Spofford.’

‘If the father is the saxophone,’ said Coco, ‘he’s dead.’ In unison, every pair of eyes turned to the little girl, and she picked up on this as a cue to perform. ‘It’s a story.’ She pointed to the stereo. ‘Play the last part again.’