Chapter One
Victoria Parlanski was deep in her daily six-hour violin practice session in one of
Carnegie Hall's practice rooms, when a messenger entered to tell her she had a phone
call. Putting down her violin, she hurried excitedly to the reception desk. Her concert
the previous week at Lincoln Center had gone very well and got good reviews. Perhaps,
finally, at twenty nine and after twenty years of practice, she was on the verge of
recognition as a concert violinist. Perhaps her agent had lined up another performance for
her.
Her expectation was correct, though it was hardly for a conventional concert
performance.
"Morning, Vicki," her agent said when Vicki picked up the phone.
"You've got another booking if you want to accept it. It pays very well, but
it's a little unusual."
"Oh?" was Vicki's cautious reply. "What does unusual
mean?"
"Have you heard of Meyer Goldstein?"
"He's some kind of a crook, isn't he?"
"There's some debate about that, but the District Attorney thinks
he's got enough evidence to put Goldstein behind bars for life. Goldstein, for his
part, has announced that he's not going down alone."
"What does that mean?"
"Rumor is that the extortions, embezzlements, and larcenies he's going to
be charged with were done with prominent accomplices. The Second Division Chief of Police
is often named. Meyer has been subpoenaed to testify before the Grand Jury
tomorrow."
"So, what's this got to do with me?" Vicki asked impatiently.
"Goldstein wants you to perform the Kreutzer sonata for him, at his home
tonight. He's offering to pay ten thousand dollars."
"Wow!" Who's the pianist? How many people in the audience?"
"No pianist. You do the violin part solo, and it's an audience of
one."
Vicki thought a minute. "I don't think so. I could sure use the ten grand,
but being in a room alone with a mobster?"
"There's more. Goldstein says you're to use his violin."
"No way! Playing the Kreutzer on an unfamiliar fiddle is a career buster for
sure."
"It's a Stradivarius, the Vienna Stradivarius."
Vicki was silent. She'd lusted after the chance to get her hands on a
four-hundred year old violin made by Nicolo Stradivare, supposedly the richest-toned
violin ever made, the way teen-age girls lusted after male movie idols. She knew being
alone with a man on his way to prison would be disastrous to her reputation, not to
mention the actual danger if he wanted to play games. Still to play a Strad...
"I'll do it, she announced.
"You're sure?"
"Of course, I'm not sure. But if you had a chance for a one night stand
with the President of the United States, would you take it?"
"I get your point. O.K. here's the address. Be there at nine p.m.
tonight."
Vicki spent the rest of her practice session working on her fingering of the very
difficult first movement, the one that Kreutzer, greatest violinist of his day,
wouldn't touch. After a visit to the hairdressers, Vicki decided to splurge on a new
dress, which she thought would be appropriate for a private concert with a mobster. It was
a thigh-length, low-cut sheath of black satin with spaghetti straps. She studied with a
purely clinical interest how the dress rode the mounds of her breasts in front, dipped to
the cleft of her back just above the swelling of her hips. Packaging was important, for
violinists as well as rock stars, she reflected. She felt that this new model was up to
her standard. Just in case Goldstein wanted more for his ten grand than fiddle-playing,
Vicki got out some long unused birth control pills and took one.
As she checked her appearance in the mirror that evening, Vicki found herself
mentally apologizing to her dead mother, a long-standing habit with her.
'No, Mother, I do not look like a cheap whore! This isn't Gdansk. In
America serious musicians dress like this.'
She knew her mother wasn't satisfied. Until her mother died in London four
years ago, Vicki's every action was done to gain her mother's approval. The
family, father, mother and little girl had made the very difficult escape from Communist
Poland to England so Vicki could realize her mother's dream of her becoming a concert
violinist. Vicki's mother could have been a brilliant violinist if she hadn't
once spurned the advances of the local Communist block leader, which meant she could never
be admitted to a music school.
Ever since they escaped to London when Vicki was nine, her mother had lived through
her and Vicki's every move was intended to further her musical career and thus to
please her mother. Vicki grew up without a childhood and without a social life. She had
practiced on the violin six hours every day of her life since. She had an iron will and an
unforgiving standard of excellence where her music was involved.
Then, four year as ago, both her parents had died, killed by a Pakistani taxi driver
in Trafalgar Square. Vicki used the insurance money to immigrate to the United States,
where she settled on a position as second violinist with the Newark Symphony Orchestra.
In a failed bid for freedom from her mother's ghost, she had married the third oboist
in the orchestra, a willowy, self-absorbed young man of indifferent sexuality. The
marriage had lasted two years.
Her mother still haunted her and Vicki deprived herself of most comforts to pay for
private lessons, driven inexorably towards success as a soloist, or crushing failure. No
middle course would be acceptable. Now, Vicki had an audacious hope the turning point had
come.
At 8:45 that evening, the cab pulled up in front of a Long Island mansion and
deposited her before an impressive portico. Two uniformed policemen stepped out of the
shadows and challenged her. Satisfied that she was an invited guest, she was turned over
to a liveried butler who led the way up a winding stairway and to a locked door policed by
two more of New York's finest. The butler knocked and then unlocked the door,
ushering Vicki into a spacious upstairs office. At the far side of the room sat a portly
man with a bad complexion.
"Pardon me if I don't rise, my dear," he greeted her. Not only is my
gout acting up again, but I've got a very exhausting day ahead. I've studied
your career with great interest and found your performance at the Lincoln Center last week
the best from a young violinist in decades.
"You may wonder why a man with my business background should be interested in
concert music, but my life could have taken that turn. At least, I have been able to
indulge my taste for the best in violins. On the table in front of you is the Vienna
Stradivarius, conservatively valued at three million dollars."
Vicki looked down at an open violin case on a low table before her in which nestled
a worn, but well-maintained violin. She felt her heart race and had to hold her hands
consciously at her sides to avoid picking it up. In a voice choked with awe she said:
"It must be wonderful to play that violin!"
"Oh, I wouldn't dream of touching it. I saw away on a good, but cheap
modern violin.
From time to time, I invite people like you to play for me. Go ahead pick it up. Try
a few notes."
Vicki had to stop her hands from trembling before lifting the instrument to her
chin. It was in perfect tune. On an impulse, she launched into the first movement of
Bruch's violin concerto, a banally sentimental tune that had always been a favorite
of Vicki's. After a moment's play she set the bow down and lowered the violin.
"Like it?"
"It's the finest instrument I've ever played."
"Would you like to own it?"
Vicki laughed in astonishment. 'I could never afford that. Itzhat Perlman
couldn't afford that."
"Let me give you a little personal detail about my life. The Manhattan D.A. is
out to get me. Likely I'll spend tomorrow night in jail. My Strad will be confiscated
under the RICO laws. If I sold it, the money would be confiscated. So it's very much
in my personal interest to give it away. Besides, though I haven't found much to
respect in my fellow man, I do love and respect that violin. It is my responsibility to
see it goes to a violinist who loves it as I have done and will coax the most from
it."
"Mr. Goldstein, there are no words..."
"You've probably heard that we most appreciate things we have made a real
sacrifice to own. So there is a catch. I want you to play the Kreutzer nude. I see you on
the stage in those form-fitting sheaths you wear and I wonder what's underneath. When
you play, you are yearning so to express yourself, I'm sure a performance without
clothes would be most satisfying for you and the finest thing I've ever watched. Will
you agree?"
"Mr. Goldstein, I've never done anything like that." She paused,
looked down at the precious violin and nodded.
"Fine. A completed sales contract is inside the case, along with a history of
the instrument. That door on your left leads to a bathroom, dating from the time this was
a bedroom. Please step in there and get in costume. I'll be waiting for the finest
performance of my life."
Vicki opened the door and found a 1920-style bathroom with massive porcelain
fixtures, a tiled floor and an antique claw-foot bathtub. A heavy armoire stood beside the
door. She closed the door behind her.
It took a minute to get her hands to stop trembling so she could open the side
zipper and slither out of her dress. She pushed down her thong panties. She could wear no
bra under that sheath and her breasts stood firm on her chest, plump and quivering. She
glanced at herself in the mirror on the door and almost backed out. She needed to lose ten
pounds. Her thighs were too plump.
'Just stage fright,' she told herself. Every time you step on a stage,
you're selling yourself, your body as well as your music. This is no
different.'
Consciously, she squared her shoulders, making her breasts stand out and apart, took
a deep breath, pasted a welcoming smile on her face and stepped into the office, facing
the old man. Vicki could hear a sharp intake of breath and took it for welcoming applause.
She bowed deeply and saw Meyer's eyes follow her breasts as they swung forward and
down. She turned to the table, giving the man the view of her firm and rounded backside.
She turned again, tucked the violin under her chin, took the bow in her right hand and
waited till her audience was still.
From the first note, she forgot everything but Beethoven's music. She forgot
that she was standing before a stranger naked. She forgot her nervousness. She became the
music. The Strad came alive in her hands, wanting, as she did, to make this the greatest
performance of the violin sonata ever. All too soon, it seemed, she had reached the
crashing climax. The violin howled out the last memorable notes. Exhausted, Vicki tenderly
tucked the instrument back in its case.
"That was incredible!" Goldstein said. "Dare one ask for an
encore?"
"Of course," Vicki said, smiling her appreciation for his pleasure.
"But let me have ten minutes to rest, just what I would get in Lincoln Center."
He nodded and Vicki stumbled into the bathroom, collapsing on the closed commode
lid. In ten minutes or a little less, her breathing had returned to normal and she had
decided on Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major. It was long for an encore, but
Mr. Goldstein had paid for a full night of music if he wanted it.
She stepped to the bathroom door and opened it, just as a big man dressed in dark
jeans and a black turtle-necked sweater burst through the hall door, which should have
been locked, took three swift steps across the room and stopped before the seated man. He
raised a pistol and began firing rapidly into Meyer's face, neck and torso. There
must have been a dozen shots or more, each making the body jump and twitch. The shooting
was over in two seconds. The big man in black whirled to escape and found himself face to
face with a naked girl standing in the bathroom doorway.
In a reflex action, he brought the pistol up, holding it three feet from her it and
pointed between her eyes. He squeezed the trigger. It didn't depress. The man swore
and working with both hands, ejected the empty magazine and pulled another from his
pocket. As he looked down to insert it, Vicki stepped back, slammed the bathroom door and
locked it. She looked around for someplace to hide. There was no place protected from the
heavy bullets. Vicki grabbed her purse from the armoire, shoved the heavy piece of
furniture against the door and dived into the antique bathtub, just as the first slugs
ripped through the heavy door, the armoire and the upper part of the cast-iron bathtub.
Vicki lay as flat a she could and the bullets passed her six inches from her breasts and
belly. She pulled out her cell phone and punched in 911. When her assailant paused for the
second time to change magazines, Vicki said into the phone:
"I'm in Meyer Goldstein's mansion. A man came in and killed him. Now
he's trying..." She was interrupted by a shout from the other end of the line.
"They got Goldstein! Killer's still in the house."
Within two seconds, Vicki heard footsteps hammering up the stairs. There were no
more shots.
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