“And then I’ll remember fondly the eleven-year-old girl who begged me to teach her, not the thirty-year-old ingrate who has turned her back on me and everything we’ve worked for together for almost twenty years.” His tone was scathing, filled with bitterness, edged with sadness. “You’ve been J.J. Pepper for eight months. Eight months, damn you, and not a word.”

“I wanted to tell you.”

“You didn’t.”

She stiffened. “You’re right-I knew what a jackass you’d be about it.”

“The Chopin,” he said.

She got up and walked over to Len. “That’s Eric Shuji Shizumi at the end of the bar,” she said, whipping off the turban. Her blond hair tumbled onto her shoulders. “I’ve lied to you, Len. My real name’s Juliana Fall. I’m a concert pianist.”

Len folded his arms on his chest. “Names aren’t what’s important here. It’s who you are, babe, what you want to do, that counts.”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

“Well, until you do, it’s okay by me if you want to keep up with your J.J. Pepper act. Just no hairy-assed stuff, okay?” He grinned at her. “Unless you want to do brunch.”

She managed a smile. “That would really kill Shuji. May I play now?”

“Piano’s yours, Juliana Fall, muddy bass and all.”

She glanced over at Shuji. He was still working on his martini, not smiling, not understanding, wrapped up in his own hurt and anger. A pang of horror sliced through her as she tried to imagine going on without him. What would she do?

She sat at the piano and played the first chord of Chopin.

But she couldn’t continue. She couldn’t betray Len, her Club Aquarian audience-J.J. Pepper’s audience. She couldn’t betray herself. And, finally, she couldn’t betray Shuji. Playing the Chopin now, here, would be a lie. He wouldn’t see it that way, of course, but she couldn’t help that. She switched to a short Duke Ellington piece she thought everyone might like, even Shuji.

But when she finished and turned around, he was gone. In his place at the bar there was only a half-drunk martini.

Seventeen

H endrik de Geer blew on his frozen fingers as he stood at the edge of Central Park opposite the Beresford. It would be a bitterly cold night. He longed for a bottle of gin, but he had forsworn drink. Sentiment and drink would make him careless. He couldn’t permit that to happen. It was clear to him, now that the coward Ryder had told Bloch everything, that the sergeant would have to find out for himself if the Minstrel was lost. He would never settle for anyone else’s word; the possibilities for the stone were too tremendous. Hendrik well understood that kind of thinking.

It left him with two choices. One, he could walk away. Two, he could act.

But first, before he made up his mind, he must gather information. He had already discovered that Catharina was being watched. Now he was at the Beresford, and he could see one of Bloch’s men standing out at the bus stop in front of the Museum of Natural History, stamping his feet in the cold.

So the daughter was being watched, too. Bloch was taking no chances-he never did-but he was not yet prepared to make his move. The sergeant was a hard, unyielding man with no apparent weakness. He was just starting out in this business, but already he had a solid reputation. He paid well and on time. That was what had drawn Hendrik to his employ. Profit and survival. They had been his chief interests for many years, and if Phillip Bloch wished to make them possible, then Hendrik would work for him.

Several well-dressed men and women, in tuxedos and furs, came out of the Beresford, followed by a stout old woman in an unremarkable wool coat, a scarf tied peasant-style around her head, and ankle boots.

Across the street, Bloch’s man threw down his cigarette.

Hendrik squinted as the woman came into the glare of the street lamp, and he saw the plain, square face.

Wilhelmina!

He almost laughed aloud. Of course she would be here! Even given the underworld in which he’d operated for forty years, Wilhelmina Peperkamp remained the most suspicious person he had ever encountered. Ah, Willie. He could see she’d already spotted Bloch’s man. Once Hendrik had been attracted to her bluntness and competence and had found her plainness comforting, even appealing. She was so reliable. For a while, that had been enough.

She went across West Eighty-first, walking at a good clip, and Bloch’s man started after her. Hendrik stayed where he was. He wasn’t worried. Willie had outwitted the Nazis for five years. She would have outwitted them until the end, had she not trusted Hendrik de Geer.

In a few minutes, Bloch’s man returned, looking dismayed and frustrated. This time Hendrik did laugh aloud. The man wasn’t necessarily incompetent; he simply didn’t know the kind of woman with whom he was dealing.

As he reached for a cigar, two men darted out of the dark, cold shadows of the park and came up on either side of the Dutchman. They flashed knives. Hendrik grunted, disgusted. Damned New York! He had no patience now for a mugging. Both men looked very fit, older than he’d have expected. Without a doubt, they thought they were fierce.

“Your wallet, old man,” one said.

Hendrik shrugged, thinking he must be getting old. He should have heard them coming, anticipated this. But now he was at a disadvantage, and he wished not to attract attention. His fingers cold and stiff, he removed his wallet from his trousers pocket and handed it to the man who’d made the demand. The second man kept his knife pointed while his comrade inspected the wallet.

“What are you doing?” Hendrik asked, suspicious. “‘Take the thing and go-”

Wait, he thought. If they were ordinary muggers, they would have taken the thing and gone. They would already have disappeared into the park with their booty. There was no need to check for identification.

They wanted to make sure who he was.

Before they obeyed Master Sergeant Phillip Bloch’s orders and killed him.

“Bastard,” Hendrik said without emotion.

“Huh?”

Their puzzled looks quickly changed to surprise, then pain and horror as Hendrik slammed his hand sideways into the throat of the man with his wallet. The second man sliced toward him with his knife, but the Dutchman was ready and dodged, the knife grazing his coat. While the other man choked and sputtered, Hendrik pushed his comrade down, moving fast, with an agility that amazed even him. His opponent had no chance to grab on to him.

He fled, running out into the middle of Central Park West. Cars screeched, horns blared.

Not until he was on the other side of the street in front of the Beresford did Hendrik look back. The two men had scurried away. In front of the museum, Bloch’s other man had disappeared. Hendrik grunted to himself without satisfaction.

Twenty years ago he would have killed them all.

Aunt Willie had found nothing to her liking in her niece’s kitchen and had gone out looking for something to eat. Juliana had taken no offense. Instead, with her aunt gone, she sat at the piano. She didn’t expect to be able to practice. There were too many distractions. Yet she did, with an absorption that had eluded her for months. With her uncle dead, her mother not talking, her aunt outside in the dark, her building being watched, with Matthew Stark and his black-brown eyes and leather coat tugging at her emotions, she began to make progress on the Chopin. The real world hadn’t thrown her off. It had become not something to escape, but something to express.

So simple.

If only Shuji would understand. But he never would. She remembered when she was eleven and she and her parents had gone to his magnificent Upper East Side house, and she’d thought him the handsomest, most incredible man she’d ever seen. She owned all his recordings, would listen to them late into the night, when her parents thought she was asleep. His ability had made her cry with rage and jealousy and amazement at all he could do and all she couldn’t, at least not yet. But when Shuji had taken her alone into his studio, her first words were not to tell him how wonderful he was but to tell him she’d worn white for their introduction because he always wore black.