Shark and Octopus Page 21

  There was no need for debate. Griffin saw that every piece of paper, all six of them, named the same instrument: the 1742 Guarneri del Gesu violin.

  *

  Bobby spoke first: “Alexandra Webb’s dissertation was the product of a young scholar on her way to a doctorate in economics, right? Not surprisingly, the text is littered with equations. Fun for Saif conceivably, but indecipherable to me. So I opted for a different approach. Reading her dissertation, I asked myself, ‘Self, what gets Alexandra Webb most excited?’”

  “Did yourself have a good answer to your question?” Griffin asked.

  “Naturally. Alexandra Webb opened her dissertation with backgrounding. The facts about Alfred Rosenberg and the Special Task Force For Music. She covered much of the same information as Kit did in his presentation on the back porch. Except her work was at greater, obsessively footnoted length. This section, despite its thoroughness, gave off a whiff of having been dutifully done. To me, at least.”

  “Me too,” Annie threw in. “Like a child working through dinner just to get to dessert.”

  “Well said,” Bobby agreed. “Kit was righteously incensed by Alfred Rosenberg. But Alexandra Webb simply presented the facts, without judgment. Did you notice that she rarely even mentions the Nazis? Griffin, it’s obvious how troubled you are that Hans Baeder was a Nazi.”

  “He had no choice,” Griffin replied, with some force.

  “Alexandra? None of that mattered to her. Her interest is elsewhere.”

  The waiter arrived with a basket of rolls. Kit speared an onion roll before the basket hit the table. Then he wolfed down a sesame. Bobby stayed quiet until the waiter returned to the kitchen before resuming.

  “Because Alexandra was studying economics, the second section of the dissertation is an extended analysis of the estimated value of the many stolen pianos, cellos, and all the instruments other than violins. As you told us, Griffin, the loot was staggering. The Special Task Force kept very busy.”

  “The term for her type of economic analysis is econometrics,” Saif said, with a verbal shudder, as if he’d said “maggots” or “sludge.”

  Bobby kept going. “The list of estimated values for the stolen instruments went on for page after page. To be honest, I skimmed a lot of this. Alexandra didn’t seem particularly interested in this part of the dissertation either. I inferred she produced it to satisfy her economics professors at the Sorbonne.”

  Annie took a sesame roll and passed the basket to Saif, who, after reflection, selected a slice of banana bread. He passed the basket to Kit, who, with no time for reflection whatsoever, helped himself to another onion roll and a garlic parmesan. By the time the basket got to Griffin, it was empty. That day Griffin hadn’t stopped researching to eat and his knife was already buttered in anticipation of a roll.

  Watching from the doorway, the Lenin lookalike waiter saw this. He brought a second basket of rolls. This time Kit waited until the basket actually made contact with the table before taking a roll. Once the waiter was out of earshot, Bobby continued.

  “Alexandra saved her passion for the third and final section of the dissertation. Here she focused on stolen violins. Naturally Stradivarius I had heard of. But she discussed other violin makers of apparent world-renown. Like Amati.”

  “Andrea Amati,” Saif volunteered. “Sixteenth century Italian, did most of his work for King Charles IX of France.”

  “And Antonio Stradivarius,” Kit said, “the best known violin master of all time.”

  “In a seventy year career,” Annie added, “he made more than 650 violins.”

  “And of course Guarneri del Gesu.”

  This was Griffin. He motioned for someone to pass him the basket of rolls. By the time Kit did, the basket was again empty.

  “Oh, did you want one?” Kit asked Griffin slyly. Kit waved to the waiter, who carried over a third basket.

  Griffin grabbed the roll on top, pumpernickel it turned out to be, and as he buttered the roll he asked Kit, “What made you pick the Guarneri del Gesu? What led you to that decision?”

  “I asked myself, what does an economist care about? The answer, of course,” Kit proclaimed, “is money. Remember the nine page inventory of stolen violins in the dissertation? Alexandra wrote pages and pages about that.”

  “That list is the only inventory of instruments looted by the Special Task Force to survive the war,” Saif pointed out.

  “For every violin in that nine page inventory,” Bobby said, “Alexandra Webb assigned an estimated value in 1987, when she wrote her dissertation. She listed the estimated value of every violin in that one big chart of hers.”

  “And in the other column of her chart,” this was Annie speaking, “was her projected value of the instruments twenty five years later. Five years ago now.”

  The comments were flying so quickly around the table that Griffin, to his pleasure, felt like he was watching a four way tennis match.

  Bobby: “I went online to different sites to see if Alexandra Webb’s estimated values for the instruments three years ago were accurate.”

  Kit: “So did I. They weren’t even close to accurate.”

  Saif: “The estimated values of the instruments were far too low.”

  Annie: “Amazing, isn’t it, how many websites are devoted to the 1742 Guarneri del Gesu.”

  Griffin: “It is amazing. Oceans of digital ink have been spilled on that one instrument.”

  The waiter arrived with their dinners and conversation about the dissertation ceased.

  *

  What did they talk about during dinner? Afterward, Griffin had no recollection and he guessed the others didn’t either. They all shared their entrees with each other. Griffin raved about Bobby’s grilled sturgeon and Annie’s dumplings, but in truth he did not taste anything. Until this – quest, is that what this had become? – was over, Griffin’s taste buds would be on hiatus.

  Once dinner was over and the dead plates cleared away and after the waiter had brought their coffee and desserts and departed, discussion of the Alexandra Webb dissertation resumed.

  Griffin asked, “Did any of you notice any mention of Hamburg or Ulm in the dissertation?”

  “None,” Saif agreed. “I saw that as well. Alexandra Webb, for as thorough as she was in everything else, avoided mentioning anything about the possible location of the instruments stolen by the Special Task Force For Music. I realize that question was not central to her analysis, but…”

  “But it’s not like the lady has no interest in the question,” Kit stated. “She’s devoted enormous effort through the years, trying to track down the del Gesu.”

  “Trips to Hamburg and Ulm,” Bobby threw in.

  “Calls to Hans Baeder,” Annie added.

  There were a few moments of quiet broken when Griffin said, “I was stunned to see what some of the Guarneri del Gesu violins are bringing in.” This time it was Kit first to speak. “Six million dollars for one auctioned off in 1999.”

  Saif added, “In 2001, a group of sixteen investors got together and formed a corporation to purchase a Guarneri del Gesu for three and a half million.” Saif poured milk into his coffee as he explained, “They lease the instrument to a violinist for the Tucson Symphony for twenty years. He pays twenty thousand annually for maintenance and insurance, just for the chance to play the thing.”

  Kit finished up Saif’s story. “At the end of those twenty years, the investors plan to sell the violin, when its estimated value should exceed twenty million after taxes. And none of these violins are from 1742, the truly golden year for the Guarneri del Gesu violin.”

  Annie said, “The 1742 del Gesus are such a big deal that the one owned by the city of San Francisco has its own name, The David. When it’s not being played it’s kept in a glass case in a museum.”

  This exchange was bouncing around the table even more rapidly than their talking before dinner.

  Over his coffee cup Griffin said, “Guarneri del Gesu, first name
Giuseppe, made 13 violins in 1742. Twelve are accounted for. The remaining one went missing in the Second World War.”

  “The philosopher Karl Wittgenstein’s family,” Saif mentioned.

  “That’s right,” Kit agreed. “Remember the deal the Wittgenstein family cut with the Nazis to stay out of the concentration camps? Alexandra Webb has a full section on it in her dissertation. The Nazis got all the money. And the Nazis got the Wittgensteins’ musical instruments – most importantly, a 1742 Guarneri del Gesu. In exchange, the Jewish Wittgensteins were permitted to stay in Vienna and out of the concentration camps.”

  “Which probably saved their lives.”

  “Yes, Bobby, which probably saved their lives.”

  “The Wittgenstein Del Gesu wound up in a Paris violin shop after the war,” Saif said, picking up the story from Kit. “The owner later died. His widow said she didn’t remember how they acquired what has to be the most valuable violin in the world. And she says she doesn’t know what happened to the violin. The shop no longer had it. How could she not know that?”

  “As I recall,” Griffin answered, “Alexandra Webb wasn’t convinced either. She predicted the violin would someday be offered on the black market.”

  “So where does that leave us?” Griffin asked, accelerating his voice as the waiter banged through the kitchen door carrying another coffee pot. “A 1742 Guarneri del Gesu violin may have survived the war. Alexandra Webb placed the value of a 1742 at what, Saif?”

  He held off answering until the waiter departed. “Forty five million, as of five years ago.”

  “But we all agree she undervalued the instruments.”

  “Absolutely,” Saif concurred. “In my research today I determined that three of the instruments in her dissertation chart have been recently auctioned off. Two Stradivariuses and an Amati. A Spanish collector bought the Stradivariuses; a billionaire in Brazil purchased the Amati. Each time the auction price of the instrument exceeded, substantially exceeded, the value Alexandra Webb predicted years ago when she wrote the dissertation.”

  “So: your estimate of a missing 1742 Guarneri del Gesu?”

  Saif: “Fifty million.”

  Bobby: “Got to be more.”

  Kit: “Ginormous.”

  Annie: “Who could say?”

  They sipped their coffee in awed silence.

  “No way,” Griffin said, breaking the quiet.

  “No way what?” someone asked.

  “No way could I do this without all of you.”

  There were a few more minutes of coffee-soaked silence. From his spot by the kitchen door the waiter looked over at Griffin. The waiter stroked his Lenin-like beard and waved the check in Griffin’s direction. Griffin shook his head. They weren’t done yet.

  “As Miss Paulette would tell you – eagerly tell you – I know next to nothing about classical music,” he said. “Can anyone tell me what is so remarkable musically about the 1742 del Gesu?”

  To Griffin’s surprise it was Annie who answered.

  “I read a wild explanation about that today. Would anyone like to hear it?”

  Everyone would.

  “The explanation is from a Hungarian violinist who has played violins from different parts of Guarneri del Gesu’s career. The Hungarian said, ‘The tone of a Guarneri del Gesu is so rich that playing one other than the 1742 is like drinking the finest glass of wine you’ve ever tasted in your life. Playing a 1742 is like being served the wine by your mistress, naked.’”

  *

  “We’ve got to get going, but I have to ask – in your reading of Alexandra Webb’s dissertation, do any of you recall her discussing the rich tone of a violin?”

  “No, but she’s an economist. Tone isn’t what economists care about,” Kit answered. The others nodded their agreement.

  “True, but...” Griffin had thought extensively about this issue, but was only now coming to a conclusion. “Doesn’t it feel like the dissertation could be about diamonds or petroleum futures or any commodity? Instead of musical instruments stolen during the war, don’t you get the feeling she’d be just as interested in anything that turns a profit? A violin exists to make music, not money.”

  “You got a point in there, Griffin?” Kit wanted to know.

  Griffin answered, “My point is that Alexandra Webb and the man in white – whoever he really is – may be after the same violin, but they have very different interests. I think he’s the buyer and she’s the seller. We’ve never known the connection between the two. The connection is certainly there. We all saw the security tape Grace sent us of the man in white calling Future-Ride from Arazzo Castle.

  “I think that’s their connection: buyer-seller. I figure they have an arrangement. He wants the violin. She gets a commission for obtaining it. She made all those trips to Ulm and Hamburg trying to find where the Special Task Force For Music had stashed its loot. She called Hans Baeder every month for 19 months. She must have hired the thug who Timothy Dean called Dude to break into Hans’ house. Dude was looking for the del Gesu violin. Her commission? Say twenty percent.”

  “Of forty five million or more?” Saif suggested. “Not a bad payday.”

  “But, Griffin!” Annie demanded. “Did Hans Baeder have the del Gesu, do you think? I agree Alexandra Webb wants that to be true.”

  “As does the man in white,” Kit added.

  “But did Hans actually have the del Gesu? Did he have it that day outside Ulm when the American planes attacked.”

  Griffin answered quickly. “I think Hans did have a del Gesu. Miriam Freitag convinced me of that. That’s the violin Hans got wounded saving. The much bigger question of course-”

  “Where is that del Gesu now?” Annie finished for Griffin.

  “Exactly. Where is it now? I don’t know. There is one thing we know for sure.”

  “Which is what, Griffin?” Bobby asked.

  “Alexandra Webb and the man in white don’t know either.”

  Everyone rose from the table. The waiter handed Griffin the check. The amount nudged into three figures; Griffin had only $98. They were pursuing a violin worth tens of millions of dollars and Griffin lacked the cash for dinner and tip.

  Annie reached into her purse and handed Griffin a twenty.

  “The change is yours,” he told the waiter.

  The waiter stroked his Lenin-ish beard.

  “Everyone in your party seemed to be enjoyin’ themselves tonight, I’m thinkin’,” he said, in a thick Baltimore accent which decapitated every “g” at the end of his words. The man may have resembled a Russian revolutionary, but he’d grown up inside the beltway. “What’re you folks doin’ next?”

  “I may have an idea,” Griffin replied.

  THIRTY-ONE

  June 26

  8:33 am

  Two days later Grace called Griffin. He told her, “Grace, if I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were positively giddy.”

  “Mr. Gilmore,” Grace started and stopped and Griffin could tell she was struggling to dampen the delight in her voice. She couldn’t quite. “You have done us a huge favor.”

  “Because?”

  “Because you asked me to track down everyone awarded a signet ring by the Order of Maximilian the Younger.”

  “Which I found out about from Mike MacGregor, the violin professor at the Peabody Institute. There can’t be all that many recipients of rings from the Order of Maximilian the Younger.”

  “Mr. Gilmore,” Grace repeated in a cheerleader’s cheeriness Griffin couldn’t help but grin at. “It turns out that in the two centuries of that award, there have been 33 recipients. Learning their identities was easy. We knew that within hours of your phone call Wednesday night. But it took our people four days to determine that of those 33 rings, the whereabouts of only 32 can be accounted for.”

  “And the one unaccounted for, Grace?”

  “The one ring that isn’t accounted for must be the one you saw on your man in white, the night you met in the B
altimore Museum of Art.”

  “So you know who he is?”

  “We do, Mr. Gilmore. After all this time we do. And that is why you have done us a huge favor.”

  “Who is he?”

  The excitement in her voice still evident, Grace began her backgrounding.

  “Your man in white’s name is Roberto Ruiz. Born 1954, Barcelona, Spain. Ruiz was his mother’s name. His father remains unknown, even to Roberto, it seems. His mother was a prostitute in Barcelona, a heroin addict who died of a drug overdose when her son was nine. Roberto pretty much raised himself on the streets. He slept in an abandoned school bus. Dinners he often retrieved from a dumpster.

  “Are you at your computer?” Grace asked him. “I’d like to send you an email attachment with the only known picture of Roberto Ruiz as a child. His nickname was Chico.”

  “Which is Spanish for boy,” Griffin pointed out.

  “With an unmistakable condescension to the name,” Grace clarified. “Roberto detested being called Chico. He boasted that someday he’d be a man of respect. No one would call him Chico again, which is what happened. Here comes the picture.”

  Griffin was in his backyard beneath a pine tree, laptop on a folding table. It was the morning after their dinner in the Russian restaurant. He felt eyes on him. Over his shoulder he spotted Dr. Eckleburg staring at him from the kitchen window.

  “Got the email,” he told Grace.

  *

  Griffin opened the email attachment. She’d sent a class picture, old enough to be in black and white.

  “Seventh grade,” Grace informed him, anticipating Griffin’s question. “Roberto Ruiz is in the back row, tallest kid in the class.”