Eye Wit (15 page)

Where to begin? How can I help you understand the excitement, the satisfactions, the shared joys and sorrows—twenty-three years of our souls united? To say they were the best years of my life is but a cliché, however true. The cliché holds for her too, I think. I must assume that, I have to. Do you understand?

Even Brigitta’s last days, those thirty rapid days between diagnosis of her esophageal cancer and the moment her eyes closed and her breathing stopped on January 5
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, were vital to us. Dominated as they were by sorrow and longing, those last days encapsulated our marriage, as if we were in fast rewind and replay mode. They defined us, and they set in motion the final acts of my life.

So let us speak of dance. Dance brought Brigitta into my life, and dance was still there at the end, right up until her final hospitalization in Lucerne on January 1, 2009. On the eve of that cruel New Year’s Day, we listened to Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances at home. When Dance #10 played—the beautiful “allegretto grazioso” (rapidly, gracefully)—we joined hands and waltzed ourselves into the new year, our living room our dance hall.

“I’m still here, Hans,” she said. “I’ll always be with you, meine liebe.”

Dance formed the core of my Brigitta’s soul. All kinds of dance, but especially dancing to the driving beat of fast jazz, of rhythm and blues, the joyous abandon of swing in particular. That night in Lucerne, we managed a final rapid and graceful waltz.

When I had first met Brigitta on that wonderful mid-winter afternoon twenty-four years earlier, she too was a student at NYU, studying music and art history to fortify her degree in education. She was in her second year, I in my fourth. I would graduate in June with a B.S. in mathematics and a teaching certificate, and I planned to support my bride by teaching in a New York City public school while Brigitta finished her degree. If we needed more income, I would play my fiddle in Soho clubs.

It was a good plan, level-headed and sensible for newly-weds: I would win our bread and in two years Brigitta would join me as a teacher, showing junior high kids there was so much more to music and dance than Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Ice T’s gangsta rap. All in all a very good plan that didn’t stand a chance. Life had other plans for us.

For the next ten years, Brigitta danced, every day and nearly every night, losing interest in her classroom studies. Why would she waste her time learning how to teach kids about dance when she was already teaching dance at the Cat Club with Frankie Manning?

Who was I to argue? I was right there with her, playing my fiddle instead of teaching math. To tell the truth, we didn’t really need any teaching income from me. Frankie was generous as an employer and disbursed his instruction fees more than fairly.

Brigitte became Manning’s most favored dancing partner and his number one assistant for his choreography commissions. To this day, “Black and Blue,” co-choreographed by Manning and five others, is acclaimed as the high-water mark of Swing. The musical opened to wide acclaim in Paris in early 1985, then opened on Broadway later that spring to rave reviews, its choreography only slightly revised.

Frankie Manning and the other four co-choreographers all received Tonys that year for their work. Brigitta didn’t, because her help with the Broadway revisions wasn’t credited anywhere, but Frankie knew the value of her work.

In 1992, when Spike Lee called upon Manning to teach Denzel Washington’s “Malcolm X” some Lindy hop moves for a dancing scene, Brigitta was Manning’s dance partner—and Denzel’s—during Denzel’s lessons on the sound stage.

In 1995, Brigitta and I left New York, summoned home to Lucerne, Switzerland, by my mother, Luminitsa, and my ailing father, Jurgen. Papa and Mama wanted to turn the family business over to me and Brigitta. It was a family thing. A Gypsy family thing.

When we arrived, Mama was even more insistent. “We need you, Hans. Ist time, und no one else will do so well,” she said. “Your English ist more fluent than Jurgen’s and mine own, und your German ist annähernd so gut (nearly as good).”

She paused a moment, smiled at Brigitta and me. “Your Français, well… You und Brigitta will work on your Français, no?”

Brigitta jumped in. “I would love to learn French.” She smiled at me. “Und Hans too. Right, meine liebe?”

Then, the clincher, from Mama. “You always did love the flying, remember, Hans? Und the apartment in Château-d’Oex ist big enough for all of us—und our home here in Lüzern ist, too.”

Mama turned to Brigitta. “You’ve seen the Prix de Lausanne and the Béjart Ballet Lausanne? Such beauty, those dancers. The Prix is in January, also the balloon festival.”

So that’s how we came to live in Switzerland, how I resumed my life as a Swiss Gypsy and how Brigitta and I began to create a new life for ourselves as impresarios of the hot-air balloon. We owned forty-eight of them and earned a good living for ourselves and for Mama and Papa, providing rides to tourists year-round in Château-d’Oex. Our grandest balloons always were aloft during the big festival in January. Balloonists from twenty countries—nearly a hundred aerostiers in all, plus thousands of enthralled enthusiasts—participated in ballooning’s premier event each January, all of them marveling at the incredible son et lumière, the nightly sound and light show.

Château-d’Oex is in the Guinness book now. The first balloon to encircle the globe non-stop? It launched from Château-d’Oex in 1999. It took twenty days for the Breitling Orbiter and Betrand Piccard and Brian Jones to set the record. Brigitta and I helped launch them on their way.

Ballooning has provided a bountiful life for me and my beloved Brigitta, and for my Gypsy family. We’ve kept the family business intact, even grown it. Brigitta wasn’t born a Gypsy, but she took to my heritage just as quickly and completely as she’d taken to dance. Some would say dance, like Gypsy culture, is colorful and outsized. Gaudy, even. I would say they are right, and Brigitta would agree. Isn’t that the point?

It was difficult for Brigitta and I to leave Frankie Manning in New York, but we still saw him at least once a year for his birthday party, the annual “Frankie Fest,” held over the Memorial Day weekend for many years. We were there for his 85
^th
birthday celebration in 1999—a sold-out party at New York’s Roseland Ballroom. A pair of his dancing shoes were placed in a showcase alongside Fred Astaire’s that year. The next year, we joined him in Tokyo. We missed Frankie’s 89
^th
birthday, a cruise ship celebration, but we were on the ship for his 90
^th
, when Brigitta was one of the ninety women he partnered with on the dance floor—his long-time birthday tradition of dancing with a partner for each of the years he’d been alive.

This year, we had planned to help him celebrate his 95
^th
birthday party, which would be the best Frankie Fest of all: a Lindy Hop over Memorial Day weekend, but neither Frankie nor Brigitta made it. Brigitta died on January 5
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, Frankie on April 27
^th
. Both Frankie and Brigitta would be happy to know that Frankie’s Fest went on as scheduled anyway, and on Sunday, May 24
^th
, those attending tried to set a record for the Guinness book: the most people ever to dance the Shim Sham in one place.

As I write this, I don’t know whether the Shim Shammers set the record; the folks at Guinness take a long time to ratify attempts at records.

I don’t know if what I am about to do will get me into Guinness’ book or not, but it would be a nice bonus if it does. They would have to create a brand new category: “First person to illegally pilot a hot-air balloon across Manhattan in the wake of 9-11, killing a disciple of Satan en route.”

25

Yoko knew that Zoran would tell her “exactly what happened” eventually, but God, it was frustrating, tagging along behind him in silence as they followed Sophia Fellini down the stairs from the roof. When he was a kid, Zoran must have read too many Stan Lee comic books with their cliffhanger endings.

She bit her tongue. Zoran had some reason to hold off telling her about his theory. He never did anything without a reason, like a chess master peering ten moves ahead. Yoko saw Sophia Fellini start down the flight of stairs leading to the brownstone’s first floor. Probably headed to her yoga studio.

Zoran turned left, into Marco Fellini’s study, where Amy Claussen and Kohichi Horiuchi were still going over the Ishi display case. Yoko watched Amy apply a length of tape to a flexible prong that once secured a hunting arrow. Amy pressed the tape against the prong then carefully lifted it off and affixed it to what looked like a microscope’s slide. She tucked the slide into a slot in a plastic case and put the case in the aluminum carry case.

“There, Kohichi,” Amy said. “I think that’s got it. Good sharp partial.”

Amy looked over at Zoran. “We’re done here, Zoran. Anything else we need to check?”

Zoran held his hand up to Amy in a wait-a-minute gesture, then glanced through the open door to the office. He saw Jessica and Iona looking at him curiously.

Everyone in the study heard Iona say, clear as a bell, “I’ve got to get out of here, Jessica. I’m going to Starbucks for coffee and a muffin. Can I bring anything back for you?”

“Not for me, thanks. Go ahead, I’ll hold down the fort.”

Iona left the office. Jessica returned to studying the open file on her desk, deliberately not looking at the cops next door in Marco’s study.

Zoran smiled at Yoko and the two forensics specialists. He spoke in a stage whisper, knowing Jessica would overhear. “I need to check one more thing on the roof. Why don’t you head back to the precinct and let me know whose fingerprints are on the case. I believe I know whose fingerprints they are––Marco Fellini’s killer’s––but I need to be sure.”

The phone in the office rang and they watched Jessica pick up the receiver and answer, turning away as she did so. They could not overhear what Jessica was saying.

Zoran turned and walked back out to the hallway and staircase, pausing outside the door to confer with his colleagues. “Follow me,” he said, his voice low. “Make no noise at all. We are going to set a trap.” Then he climbed the stairs to the roof. Yoko, Kohichi and Amy followed.

When they were on the roof, Zoran explained. “Jessica Ware will come up here shortly, if I’m not mistaken. She knows I know that she killed Marco Fellini, and she will try to eliminate me before it’s too late for her.”

Jessica had answered the phone in the office quickly when she recognized the distinctive ring of an in-house call. She turned her back to the police in the study before speaking softly into the phone. “I was just going to call you. They know. We need to meet. Now. The Arts Club, by the Ishi exhibit.”

Jessica hung up and looked towards the study. The room was empty. Where had they gone? She’d heard the lead detective say he was going up on the roof, but what about the others? She grabbed her purse and walked into Marco’s study. It was indeed empty. She walked into the hall. No one there either. She stood still and listened, and thought she could hear muffled conversation trickling down the stairway that led to the roof. Then heard the roof door snick closed.

Ah, they were back on the roof. Perfect. Jessica hurried to the stairway to the main floor and trotted down the stairs. Sophia was already heading out the door. They joined up on the landing outside the front door and forced themselves to walk calmly down the steps to the sidewalk then west, gradually quickening their pace.

Yoko said, “You know it’s Jessica, Zoran? Are you certain? How can you be sure?”

“No time to explain,” Zoran said. “I can do that later, after she is in custody. Right now, you need to hide.” He looked around. “Yoko, get behind the stairway structure here, where Jessica will not be able see you when she opens the door. Amy and Kohichi, go over there, behind the parapet.” Zoran stepped close to the two CSI types and Yoko couldn’t hear what he said until he raised his voice again. “Squat down and listen. When you see Jessica do something or if you hear me call her name, get back here quickly, with your guns drawn. You too, Yoko.”

Yoko said, “Where will you be, Zoran?”

Zoran moved over to the entrance to the archery run. “I will be right here, where Jessica Ware will see me immediately.

“Go,” he said. “Remember to get to me quickly. I will be completely exposed and she is an excellent shot with the bow. As we have learned, those arrows are exceedingly sharp, deadly weapons.” He shuddered, and rubbed his palms on his thighs, then crossed his arms over his chest, his hands tucked into his armpits.

Yoko was amazed. This was a new side to Zoran, one she’d not seen before. He was at once direct and issuing commands rapidly yet his body language displayed uncharacteristic nervousness. Ah, she realized what it was: Zoran didn’t normally have to use himself as bait.

“We’ve got your back, Zoran,” she said. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You bet, buddy,” echoed Kohichi, holding up his Glock. “Remember, I’m the best shooter on the force.”

That was true, Yoko knew that Kohichi always wowed the precinct with his prowess on the shooting range. A month ago he’d won the NYPD city-wide trophy for marksmanship for the second consecutive year. Now me, I’m not too bad a shot but I don’t want to kill anyone. As for Amy, she’s definitely not in Kohichi’s league, not even second tier. Yoko pulled her shoulder bag snug to her body, checking to make sure that the top zipper was open so she had fast access to the small handgun in the bag. At that moment, she wished she wore a shoulder holster like Dan’s, which was under his left arm for easy access to his Glock. But she’d never worn a shoulder holster. As for Zoran, he was reluctant to carry, although he had to, as a detective and sworn member of the police force. Of all of NYPD’s detectives, Zoran was the most averse to guns.