Eye Wit (16 page)

“Scout’s honor. Zoran is so damn smart, the brass are willing to cut him some slack but not about carrying a gun. An unarmed detective would set a terrible precedent. So Zoran offered a compromise and by god, he’s carrying and both sides are okay with it, if not particularly happy.”

Yoko shook her head at the memory. Still, she thought, if there isn’t time for Zoran to unzip the baggie or me to grab my gun out of my purse, we can sure yell our heads off and distract Jessica long enough to disarm her. Or Kohichi can shoot her dead in her tracks.

She watched in surprise as Amy and Kohichi trotted over to the parapet at the edge of the brownstone’s roof, then stepped up on the 18-inch tall parapet and jumped onto the roof of the next-door building. It was about a foot lower than the roof of the Fellini brownstone’s roof and like many in the area, flat. So that’s what Zoran had been explaining. The forensics team squatted down out of sight to wait. Their location was at a right angle to Zoran, who stood in the entrance to the archery run. They would have a clear view of Zoran as well as the doorway of the stairway structure. The shooting distance, if it came to that, would be about ten yards, an easy shot for Kohichi. Yoko would be closer still when she emerged from behind the stairway structure. She’d be directly behind Jessica, only five yards away. Okay, she thought. This will work.

They waited. And they waited. Yoko sneaked a peek at Zoran. He stood stone still in the entrance to the archery run. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Zoran motionless for so long. Must go against everything in his nature. She waggled her hand at him, gave him a thumbs-up sign.

Zoran gave a little wave back, and took a deep breath. “She should have been here by now,” he whispered. “I was certain she would be here by now.”

Yoko’s cell phone buzzed in her right pants pocket. She fumbled for it, trying to get it open and stop the ringing. Now was not the time for Jessica to be alerted to the fact that anyone other than Zoran was on the roof. The telephone message she received was brief. She snapped her phone shut quickly.

“That was Vinnie, at the precinct.” She didn’t bother to lower her voice. “A patrolman on the street radioed in. He’d been keeping an eye on this building and just now he saw Jessica Ware and Sophia Fellini on the street outside the house, halfway to the Arts Club, almost at a run. He said it looked like Jessica was dragging Sophia along, trying to get her to speed up.”

Zoran’s shoulders slumped. “I miscalculated. I ought to have seen this. It could just as easily have been Sophia Fellini as Jessica Ware. I have made a terrible mistake. Now why would the two of them go to the National Arts Club?”

“We’re stuck!” Amy said. “This bloody tar!” She and Kohichi finally pulled one foot, then the other from the sticky surface of the adjoining roof.

“Dan! Where are you?” Yoko had reached the landing outside the Fellini brownstone. She looked down the street in the direction of the National Arts Club. Sophia and Jessica were nowhere to be seen.

“About halfway back from the one-three. Why? What’s up?”

“Get to the Arts Club right away. Sophia Fellini and Jessica Ware will be at the Ishi archery exhibit. Unless they’ve already been there and gone. It looks certain that one or both of them killed Marco Fellini. Zoran and I will be there in a few minutes.”

“‘Kay,” Dan said. “Be careful. Don’t take any chances. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

26

In some ways, Brigitta was fortunate, I suppose. She didn’t have long to suffer before dying. There was no wasting away, no weight loss. Three of the five days she was in the hospital, she was able to eat normal hospital meals. Three times a day, I ate with her, ordering from the same menu. The food wasn’t bad. It was too bland to be good, still, it wasn’t bad and it smelled and looked and often tasted like real food.

“I’d kill for a piroshky,” she said at lunch on the third day, staring down at the compartmented plates on our luncheon trays: mashed potatoes, a slice of turkey breast, green beans—all drizzled with a gravy that was a little too shiny. She picked up a dinner roll, soaked up some gravy and took a bite. “Even a mystery-meat burrito from Taco Bellisimo.”

“Wait here,” I said. As if she was going anywhere. “I’ll be right back.”

I dashed from the room and took the stairs to Lüzerner Kantonsspital’s lobby and ran out to the street. In less than five minutes, I was back in Brigitta’s room with two steaming hot white Wienerli
wrapped in soft rolls, smothered with sauerkraut, laced with brown mustard.

“Best I could do on short notice,” I said, folding back the wrapping on one and handing it to her. “It’s not a real Coney dog, but close enough.”

We took huge bites, managing to catch most of the spilled sauerkraut in the wrapping paper.

When we were finished, I set the trays of hospital food on a laundry cart outside the room, where I also retrieved the other treats I had scored for my beloved. I removed the lid from her cup of Starbucks Cafe Au Lait—Venti-size, of course. Then my own.

“And here’s something else,” I said, handing her the day’s
International Herald Tribune
. “Something to read with our shade-grown, fair-traded, entirely organic coffee, steeped with unfiltered water from Alpine streams by baristas who have full health insurance coverage and whistle while they work.”

“Perfect, my dear. All the comforts of home, plus a bed that’s perfect for reading,” she said, unfolding the paper and handing me the first section, keeping the second for herself.

“Now…let’s see what’s happening in New York.”

For the next several minutes we lost ourselves in the affairs of the United States and the rest of the world, as filtered by reporters on the payroll of the
New
York
Times
.

“Hans! Look at this.” Brigitta handed me the second section of the
International Herald Tribune
, pointing to an article on page 6.

I read the headline: “Fellini Deals in Eclectic Tastes,” and scanned the first paragraph before focusing on the color photo of Marco Fellini seated in a red leather wing-backed chair in front of a fireplace, gazing at treasures on his mantelpiece and the wall above. The photo did not have a caption.

“Do you see what I see?” Brigitta said. “There, on the left.”

I held the paper closer. “A crystal ball. God, it looks like….”

“Grandma Luludji’s!” Brigitta said. “Look at the base it’s sitting on. Isn’t that copper, and isn’t it just like your Mama and Papa described?”

“Sure looks like it,” I said. “Could it be? Does the article…?” I scanned quickly and found the reference.

I read the paragraph aloud.

“Besides the personal treasures one would expect to find in a premier art dealer’s home—the Louis XVI loveseat; the early Picasso over the fireplace; the hunting bows and arrows made by Ishi, the last of the Yahi tribe—are oddities like a massive amber geode Fellini found near Deming, New Mexico; a cabled request from Pope Pius XII to Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio in Budapest, encouraging the Hungarian government to be moderate in its plans for treatment of Jews; and a four-inch crystal ball that Fellini believes is Roma in origin. ‘I’ve always been fascinated by Gypsy culture,’ Fellini said. ‘When this ball was offered to me, I couldn’t resist. Just look at the carving on the base. Isn’t it exquisite?’”

How could it happen? I wondered. After all these years, how did our family’s most cherished treasure wind up on an art dealer’s mantelpiece, in plain view?

“Hans. You must contact this Marco Fellini. If this is Grand-Mama Luludji’s crystal ball, you must get it back for your family—for our family. Promise me, Hans. Do it for your Mama, your Papa. It will mean the world to them.”

The next morning, her fourth day in the hospital, the doctors needed to put Brigitta on more oxygen, much more oxygen. The nasal cannula they had been using wasn’t supplying enough to keep her oxygenated after so many pulmonary emboli had formed during the night. She hated the mask, hated the narcotics now flowing through the catheter in the back of her left hand. My murmured assurances that she would feel better soon were greeted with grimaces. Finally, at eight p.m., she swatted the mask off her face. “I won’t have this thing, Hans, get rid of it!”

I found the doctor at the far end of the hall, showed him the mask and explained the situation. He sighed, then leveled with me.

“I’m so sorry, Hans. I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do for her now. I was planning to start her on chemo today, but with the emboli she is too weak and the chemicals would only make her weaker. Her scan this morning showed tumors in her liver and pancreas, even her brain—as well as the emboli. It’s too late now. All we can do is to try keep her comfortable. I’m so sorry Hans, so terribly sorry. Brigittat never had a chance.”

“What about the mask?” I said, tears streaming . “Can I…?”

He hesitated only a split second. “You’re right, there is no point. And I will have the nurse increase her morphine to keep her comfortable.” He grasped my arm as I turned to leave. “Hans, you will want to gather everyone who needs to see her before she passes. It will not be long.”

He patted my shoulder then walked to the nurses’ station. I dug the phone from my pants’ pocket, dialed Mama and Papa, and gasped out the news. Then splashed ice-cold water on my face from a fountain in the hallway and dried myself with an already sodden handkerchief. Then returned to Brigitta’s room and removed her oxygen mask and threw it into the waste basket with a flourish.

“Thank you, Hans,” she said.

Mama and Papa were just able to catch the 9:06 p.m. departure from Château-d’Oex, the first possible SSB train, which arrived in Lucerne right at 1:10 a.m., on time, as always. A cab whisked them from the terminal to the hospital in four minutes, just in time for final hugs, kisses, grief-choked goodbyes. Brigitta could no longer speak because of the morphine in her system, but she acknowledged each of us by trying to smile as tears seeped from her eyes.

My Brigitta passed at 1:20 a.m., and Mama, Papa, and I fell apart in each others’ arms.

The staff at Lüzerner Kantonsspital, no strangers to death, knew what to do. They left us alone, except for one brief intrusion by a somber male nurse who entered the room to turn off the oxygen supply line and remove the catheter from my beloved’s left arm. He turned to the three of us, bowed his head briefly and left without saying a word.

When I eventually recovered the ability to speak I showed Mama and Papa the article in the previous day’s
International Herald Tribune
.

Mama pointed to the picture. “That is my mother’s crystal ball.
Look, there—at the base. It's just as it was described to me, so many times."

“Yes,” echoed Papa. “It is Luludji’s, I am sure of it.”

Mama scowled. “Why does that man have it?”

Then I told Mama and Papa of my promise to restore GrandMama Luludji’s crystal ball to our family, of my sacred vow to my Brigitta—and her last words to me before Mama and Papa arrived.

“The ball, Hans. Get the ball for me.”

27

Jessica Ware and Sophia Fellini stood in front of a large glass exhibit case in the large gallery at the National Arts Club––the gateway exhibit for the collection of American westward expansion artworks covering the walls of the well-lit room. The eight-foot tall, three-foot wide, two-foot deep case contained two of Ishi’s bows and a half-dozen arrows—all loaned by Marco Fellini for the show, as indicated on the three-inch by five-inch card affixed at eye level to the right of the display’s front door: “From the Collection of Marco Fellini.”

The curator, a tall, balding stick of a man, was highly distressed, not an unusual state for him, but exacerbated now with this latest tribulation. He tried to sound understanding without lapsing into insincere unctuousness. “I do understand that you want to remove the bow and arrows, Mrs. Fellini. I just cannot understand why. Could you explain…?”

“My husband is dead. You do understand that?”

“Yes, of course. I heard the report on the news. You have my deepest condolences. I am truly sorry for your loss. Marco was a tremendous supporter of the NAC, and we will all miss his knowledge and his help, terribly so.”