The Violin Conspiracy(2)

At the airport, he filed into the TSA PreCheck line. Had he only gone through regular security. Why had he been in such a hurry? He should have waited in the long queue. If he’d waited, the screener might have randomly pulled his suitcase aside or asked him to open the violin case. Someone would have noticed or asked; it was security, after all.

Instead he placed the roller bag on the conveyor belt, violin case behind it, and they sailed through the X-ray and he sailed through the body scan, oblivious.

Later, over and over, he replayed in his mind the next two hours: boarding Delta Flight 457, stowing his luggage (the violin case could manspread alone in the overhead bin), returning to Charlotte, home to his little house, the air musty and stale. He lay down on his bed for half an hour, grateful to be back, violin case on the floor next to him, where he always set it. He let the travel wash itself from his skin, into the air, felt himself getting centered. Getting focused, ready to play.

It was just after 2:00 p.m. on May 16 when he kicked himself off the bed. He stood up, took three strides across the room, picked up the violin case, and set it on his bureau.

He flicked open the left clasp, then the right, and the lid lifted back.

His violin was gone.

Inside sat a white tennis shoe: a Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star high-top canvas shoe, men’s, size 10?.

Ray wore a size 12.

Poking out of the shoe’s mouth like an obscene tongue: a sheet of white office paper, folded in thirds.

He unfolded it.


SEND $5M IN BITCOIN FROM BISQ TO WALLET 34U69AAV89872

TRANSFER ON JULY 15 BETWEEN 12:00 PM EST–1:00 PM EST

YOU WILL RECEIVE NO FURTHER COMMUNICATION





Chapter 2


    Day 1: Darkness


The next few hours were a blur, and all that he could remember afterward was how he’d repeatedly opened and closed the violin case. Every time he was absolutely certain—absolutely convinced—that if he opened the case one more time, this time—this time—the violin would be there, glowing, its tiger stripes shimmering like flames: because how could it not be there? Instead the obscenity of its empty mouth yawned back at him. Its barrenness was impossible, as if water were no longer wet.

He’d called the Charlotte police and none of it made sense: he was calling to say that the violin was stolen (but of course it wasn’t stolen, it was right in its case where it belonged). The house was filled with uniforms and pale faces turning toward him and then they were taking the violin case away from him—how could they take it away from him?—and for moments at a time he forgot how to breathe, as if the air had suddenly become something difficult and foreign. He was talking to New York police and the FBI and then he was on another Delta plane back to New York and it was impossible: because the violin was not on his shoulder and was not within arm’s reach and he couldn’t touch it. Its absence gaped on his back, where the case should have been slung.

The violin’s absence was like nothing he’d ever felt before. He could tell you the exact pressure that he should feel—that he should be feeling—of it against his jaw, knew the flare of its ribs the way he knew the flare of his own. His thumb should rest against its neck right where the wood darkened at the seam. The smooth roundness of its back was lit with orange and gold and brown, but those were words and couldn’t touch the reality of how the pattern rippled and called out to him in a voice that only he could hear. How could anyone say it was just a violin?

When he arrived back at the Saint Jacques, the hotel clerk—the skinny blonde who’d been so rude to him last year, so long ago, that first day—put him up in another suite on the same floor as his and Nicole’s previous suite. The police were in his old room, but they wouldn’t let him in. He wanted to show them exactly where he’d stood, where the violin case had rested, but the crime scene crew was dusting and measuring and keeping him out. It didn’t matter. The room had already been sanitized for the next guest: all the irreplaceable, priceless forensic evidence vacuumed, Windex’ed, bleached away.

He stood for a while outside the room, looking in, and then found himself back in this new alien suite. He had no violin case, which was just insane, because of course always near him was a violin case and a violin, inside. People—detectives, the hotel manager, the concierge, even Mike the doorman—would appear in the doorway to take Ray’s fingerprints or to ask an apparently random question: Did he have it in the elevator? Was he sure the housekeeper left with the breakfast cart? Over and over he repeated his story, every detail: practicing the afternoon before; dinner, drinks; back to the hotel, sleep, shower; breakfast, orange juice; flight.

There were Delta Airlines representatives. There were agents from the FBI Art Crime Team—Ray hadn’t known that an art crime team even existed. He couldn’t keep anyone straight and didn’t bother trying.

He tried not to snap at them: they were here to help. He tried to breathe but his ribs had been wrapped in piano wire. He tried to remain calm. He tried, very hard, not to cry.

“I’m telling you,” he kept telling them. “It was either my family or the Marks family. It had to be one of them. Go check them out.”

His words seemed to disappear into the air, to vanish unheard.

“We hear you, sir,” said a NYPD detective, a fit, muscled guy with cheekbones that looked sharp enough to puncture the skin. “I assure you we’re looking into it. We just want to get more information about your own movements. Yours and your girlfriend’s. When did you say she was coming back?”