Murder at the Opera

THIRTY-SEVEN

Willie and Sylvia found Chris Warren at Takoma Park, where he accompanied Tosca’s chorus as it ran through the changes dictated by Zambrano. Their unexpected presence, one at each door to the vast rehearsal space, caused the chorus director, a rotund man with a shock of snow-white hair, to stop the run-through and approach Sylvia. “I’m afraid this is a closed rehearsal,” he said.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but we’re here on police business.” She showed her badge. “We need to speak to Mr. Warren.”

The director turned and looked at Chris, who sat stoically at the piano.

“Can’t it wait?” the director asked. “We’re almost finished. We can’t continue without him.”

“Sure, we can wait,” Sylvia said, “but not for long.” She looked at her watch. “Fifteen minutes?”

“Yes, that should be sufficient time,” he said, and returned to his position in front of the singers.

The voices filled the room, sending a shiver up Sylvia’s back. The power and majesty of the music was breathtaking, and she looked forward to hearing it in context that night on the Kennedy Center stage-provided this new wrinkle didn’t have them pulling night duty, too. She glanced at Willie, who leaned against the doorjamb, a smile on his face. The music was getting to him, too, transcending any cognitive understanding and reaching a spot far deeper and less tangible than the mind. Fifteen minutes later, the choral director applauded the singers: “Splendid. That was splendid. That movement has now come alive.”

As everyone began leaving the room, Sylvia wondered what Warren would do. Certainly he knew that they were there because of him. Would he come to them, or make them go to him? It immediately became evident that it would be the latter. He gathered up sheets from the piano’s music desk and started to walk away.

“Mr. Warren,” Sylvia announced as she and Willie converged to block his path.

“What do you want?” he asked. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“You’ll have to come with us,” Sylvia said.

“Why?”

“Because we say so,” Willie said, taking a menacing step closer to the young musician, who wore a white T-shirt with a wavy black musical staff emblazoned across the chest. “Don’t give us a hard time again.”

Warren looked confused, as though contemplating his options. Submit? Run? He was obviously contemplating the last time he’d tried to flee and its ramifications.

“All right,” he said, “but I want someone from the embassy with me.”

“Sure,” Willie assured, placing a large hand on Warren’s bony shoulder. “We just have a few questions to ask. You answer them right, you’re back here tickling the ivories in no time.”

Annabel Smith was also at Takoma Park that day. She and Genevieve had spent the morning choosing costumes for a dozen supers to wear the following night at the Opera Ball. Genevieve had pulled out all the stops and tapped her list of past supers to come up with twelve volunteers. She’d inquired whether Mac and the other Tosca supers from academia would be willing, but they all declined, which she understood. Mac and Annabel would be guests at the ball by virtue of Annabel’s position on the board and the ball committee; Mac’s tuxedo had already been slightly let out by their tailor, and Annabel’s gown had been purchased, fitted, and now hung in her closet, ready to go.

Annabel and Genevieve left at one that afternoon and went to WNO’s administrative offices on Virginia Avenue, where yet another meeting of the ball committee was scheduled. That lasted until three. Individuals on the committee made plans to gather at various homes the following morning to read the reviews of the opening night of Tosca; Genevieve, Laurie Webster and her husband, Camile Worthington and her husband, and two other couples would join Mac and Annabel at their apartment for breakfast, ideally a place to celebrate how the critics received the production.

“Mind if Ray joins us for breakfast?” Genevieve asked as she and Annabel shared a taxi.

Annabel didn’t respond.

“Is there a problem?” Genevieve asked.

“Oh, no, of course not,” Annabel said, not admitting that she did have a problem. “By all means, ask him to come.”

Chris Warren sat alone in an interrogation room, the same one in which he’d been questioned earlier. Berry, Portelain, and Johnson observed him through the one-way glass.

“He give you a hard time?” Berry asked.

“No,” Johnson answered. “He balked at coming with us, but only verbally. Came along nice and peaceful.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Only that we had some more questions for him. We didn’t say what it was about. We didn’t mention Baltsa.”

“Good. I sent a team out to National Airport to look for Melincamp. We checked passenger manifests for flights going to Toronto today-Air Canada, United, and U.S. Air. No Melincamp booked on any of them.”

“Maybe he flew someplace else,” Willie offered.

“That’s always a possibility,” Berry said, “although why tell you he was going back to Toronto?”

“To confuse us,” Johnson said.

“If so,” Berry said, “I’d view that as consciousness of guilt. I put an APB out for him.”

“He was a bundle of nerves when we talked to him,” Johnson said.

“Like maybe he’d just offed somebody,” Willie said.

Berry looked through the window at Warren again. “All right,” he said, “you two lay it on the line for him, see if he breaks.”

“What about his lawyer?”

“I’ll notify the Canadian Embassy again, but I won’t rush. See what you can get from him before I do.”

Johnson sat across the table from Warren. Portelain stood behind him.

“Okay, Chris,” Johnson said, her voice and smile friendly, “let me get right to the point of why you’re here. When did you last see Ms. Baltsa?”

The question generated confusion on his face. “Zöe?”

“Why don’t you let me ask the questions first?” Johnson said.

Warren looked nervously back at Portelain, who leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his massive chest, a scowl on his face.

“When did I see her? I don’t know, maybe a day ago, maybe two.”

“You’re sure about that?” Johnson asked, her eyes confirming that the tape in the small machine on the table was running.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Why? Is something wrong with that?”

Willie pushed away from the wall and leaned over Warren. “You know what, dude?” he said. “You might be one hell of a piano player, but you suck as a liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“The hell you’re not.” Portelain now pulled up a chair next to Warren. “Where were you last night, say around midnight?”

“I was-”

“Careful,” Willie said. “You flunk as a liar, so you might as well start telling the truth. Where were you?”

“Home. At the apartment. I-”

“Chris,” Johnson said softly, “we know you visited Ms. Baltsa at midnight at the Hotel Rouge. We’ve got a positive ID on you, and your prints are all over the hotel room.”

“I forgot.”

The slap of Willie’s ham-hock hand on the table jarred both Warren and Johnson, and sent the small tape recorder an inch into the air.

“Look, my man,” Willie said, “you don’t seem to get it. You say you forgot going to see her at midnight last night. You forget stickin’ her in the chest with a knife, too?”

“Oh, no,” Warren said, jumping up from his chair and going to the room’s only window.

“Sit down,” Willie said.

“She’s dead?” Warren moaned from where he stood.

“Yes, she’s dead,” Johnson confirmed. “Now, why don’t you sit down and tell us all about it.”

Philip Melincamp vomited in a men’s room at U.S. Air at Reagan National Airport before boarding a shuttle to New York City. He felt faint for most of the flight, his plight noticed by a flight attendant, who asked, “Are you all right, sir? Is there something I can get you?”

“No, no, nothing. Thank you. It’s just a cold, maybe the flu.”

She kept a wary eye on him for the duration of the short flight to New York’s LaGuardia Airport. She kept a wary eye on everyone.

At LaGuardia Airport, he stepped in front of other passengers waiting in a taxi line, ignoring their shouts of protest, and gave the driver an address on Steinway Street, in the Astoria section of Queens, an area known as “Little Egypt.” After some wrong turns that took them past dozens of Middle Eastern grocery stores, restaurants, and clubs, the cab pulled up in front of a café whose sign boasted AUTHENTIC ARAB CUISINE AND HOOKAH. He paid the driver, overtipping him, and dragged his two small, wheeled suitcases behind him into the restaurant. A short, swarthy man looked up from where he’d been counting money. “Can I help you, sir?”

Melincamp looked to the back of the long, narrow room, where four men sat drawing in shisha, fruit-flavored tobacco, through the water pipes known as hookahs, the smoke shrouding their faces and creating swirling patterns as it gravitated to recessed lighting fixtures in the low ceiling. “I came to see someone back there,” Melincamp said, shoving his luggage into a corner of the entryway and walking to the rear. A young Arab man removed the pipe from his mouth and frowned up at Melincamp.

“Can we talk?” Melincamp said, aware of sweat running down his cheeks.

Without responding, the Arab placed the pipe in its holder and went to a door leading from the hookah room to an alley. Melincamp followed. They climbed a wooden set of exterior stairs to an apartment above the café, where another Arab male, considerably taller and heavier than the first, sat at a scarred, yellow kitchen table, an Arabic newspaper open in front of him. His swarthy face was deeply pitted from acne. He wore a traditional male Arab headdress-a keffiyeh-in a black-and-red pattern and secured by an egal, a thin rope circlet.

“Why do you come here?” the man at the table asked.

Melincamp turned to the man who’d led him upstairs. “Joseph said to come here if there was trouble.”

“Is there trouble?” the man at the table asked.

“Yes.”

Another large man stepped from behind curtains separating the small kitchen from another portion of the apartment.

“I can explain,” Melincamp said.

“I am listening,” said the man, who closed the newspaper and glared at Melincamp in a way that drained blood from the talent agent’s face and turned his legs to jelly.

Melincamp grabbed hold of the back of a chair to support himself. He saw a glass half filled with water on the table. “Please,” he said, “could I have some water?”

The man picked up the glass and threw its contents into Melincamp’s face. Melincamp collapsed into the chair.

“It is too late for trouble,” the man said. “The plan goes forward. Are you ready?”

“No, but there is a reason, a good reason,” Melincamp said, his voice weak. “You see-”

He was struck from behind, and tumbled to the floor, unconscious.