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                              THE MOZART CODE

                    An Ivan Davis Mystery Novel by Dick Adler


                                CHAPTER ONE



                  The bogus UPS man was now holding a gun. Like the
          purple and green running shoes, I was sure it wasn't a regular
          part of the uniform.
                  "Back off, fat man. And put your hands up -- high!"
                  It was the running shoes that had first caught my
          attention. Wearing a Santa Claus suit that didn't need much
          extra padding and a fake beard pasted over my real one, I was
          standing outside of Praeger's Jewelry Store on the third floor
          of the Westside Pavilion, ringing my bell and trying to get a
          line on how large quantities of merchandise were slipping out
          of the shop almost every day without being paid for. I had
          noticed UPS men and women coming and going several times a
          day, which seemed perfectly normal for the holiday season. But
          the rest all wore those standard issue shiny brown brogans.
          This guy, who came in once a day at about the same time,
          didn't fit the pattern. So I watched through the window as he
          went over to a woman behind the counter, and noticed that she
          looked around nervously before dropping half a dozen small
          packages into his sack. It wouldn't be the first time that
          someone inside a store had figured out a new way to steal.
                  "Mind if I look at those?" I said as quietly as I
          could to the UPS man as he came out of Praeger's. "Security,"
          I added, flashing the badge I'd been given when I took the
          job.
                  That's when he pulled out his gun and started
          shouting. I wasn't carrying anything more lethal than a small
          Swiss Army knife, buried deep under my Santa suit. If I could
          get it out, I might stab him with my ivory toothpick. On the
          other hand, his noise had already attracted the attention of
          several other Santas who were real cops and carried real guns.
                  There were too many possible hostages around; I had to
          do something before he thought of grabbing one. I started to
          raise my hands, and as naturally as I could I also began to
          swing my sack of toys toward his gun hand. The idea was to
          knock his hand away long enough for one of the armed Santas to
          get his own gun out. But I must have swung harder than I
          thought; the sack caught his arm and then his jaw and lifted
          him backwards, off balance. He hit the guardrail and kept on
          going, up and over and down three floors to the gallery below.
          I heard the screams from down there and hoped he hadn't taken
          any shoppers with him. He hadn't. The screams came from people
          upset by the sight of a body in a brown suit suddenly dumped
          into the Pavilion's decorative fountain...



                  "Remind me after rehearsal. I want to ask you a
          favor."
                  A favor. As I watched her enchanting bottom walk away,
          I wondered what kind of favor Esther had in mind. Sexual,
          perhaps? She was 28, a light soprano who one day could be as
          foxy as Janacek's "Cunning Little Vixen" and the next as soft
          and innocent as Sophie in "Rosenkavalier." She projected a
          combination of strength and vulnerability which most of the
          men in the chorus would have left home for. On the surface,
          she didn't seem to require the sexual services of a heavyset
          (to put it kindly) amateur bass 20 years her senior. But
          stranger things had happened, so I let the idea dance through
          my head while we tried to clean up the mess of the Fair Scene
          chorus from the first act of "Faust."
                  "It's about my father," Esther began as we drank a
          velvety Italian red wine from Barry Salzman's cellar in a
          booth away from the other singers. Aha! I thought. Maybe it
          was sex after all. The last two freelance outings I'd enjoyed
          had both called me Daddy at a certain point in the
          proceedings. "He's missing. Somebody told me that you look for
          missing people."
                  Five years before, when an Australian press lord
          bought the magazine I was editing and paid me two years'
          salary not to work for him, I spent six months of it getting
          my private investigator's license. I thought the work would be
          a continuation of what I'd been doing for 20 years as a writer
          and an editor -- getting people to help me find out things for
          money, love or other perverse reasons. For the next 18 months
          I sat in my office in the Writers and Artists Building on
          Little Santa Monica and waited for cases to walk up the two
          flights. It was a long 18 months. Then an orchestrated piece
          in the View section of the Los Angeles Times, another former
          employer, brought in a few clients. A couple were short-term
          and got me even more attention; some others were less
          interesting but became regulars. Now I actually lived on what
          I made as a p.i. -- although the $1,000 a month sent by my ex-
          wife, who I had once put through law school, helped pay the
          rent from time to time.
                  "It's one of the things I do," I told Esther, watching
          her teeth dip into the wine. "What's the story on your father,
          and how long has he been missing?"
                  "I'm not sure. I usually talk to him about once every
          two weeks, but he's on sabbatical and he's been travelling a
          lot this year, so I didn't think much about not hearing from
          him until Thanksgiving came and went. We always spend
          Thanksgiving together, because I go to my mother's for
          Christmas. They were divorced when I was in college," she
          explained, as though I'd asked a question.
                  "He lives by himself?"
                  "Yes. He has an apartment in Northridge, not far from
          the campus. Did I tell you he's a professor in the English
          Department? Anyway, I called and called and got no answer, not
          even his machine, so I drove up there on Friday. His car
          wasn't in his spot. I used the key he gave me to go in. I got
          the feeling that he hadn't been there for a long time -- but
          also that he hadn't planned to stay away so long. You know
          what I mean? And the answering machine was turned on, but the
          tape was full so it couldn't take any more messages."
                  I had been singing under Esther Lundberg's direction
          in the chorus at The Opera Cafe for six months, but this was
          the first time I'd ever had her to myself for more than 30
          seconds. I wanted to know a lot of things, chiefly did she
          ever fool around with older men, but I decided the best idea
          at this point was to stick to business. "You say he was on
          sabbatical, travelling a lot -- maybe he just got delayed
          someplace."
                  "I'm sure he would have called me if he did that," she
          said. "We're not the closest family in the world, but we both
          worked at it. No, I'm afraid he's sick or in some kind of
          trouble. I tried to file a missing person report with the
          Northridge police -- they told me to wait another week or two.
          'Sixty-year-old men get some funny ideas sometimes,' the
          detective said to me. Is there anything you can do to help?"
                  "I could probably do a little looking around, if you'd
          like," I told her. "I'm not overburdened with work at the
          moment." In fact, the Santa gig at the Westside Pavilion was
          all I had going, and this afternoon's little drama had
          probably ended that.
                  "The only trouble is," she said, turning the full
          force of her Nordic blue eyes on my face, "I haven't got much
          money. I thought maybe... we could work out some sort of an
          arrangement..."
                  Be still my heart. "An arrangement?" I echoed dumbly.
                  "Didn't you once say you wanted to take some private
          singing lessons but couldn't afford it? I usually get thirty
          dollars an hour -- I don't know how much you charge..."
                  I swallowed my dashed hopes manfully. In the long run,
          music lasted longer than sex anyway. "Something like that, but
          on a daily rate. Sure, that would be fine. Anyway, I'm not
          even sure I can help you. But I'll be glad to give it a try."
                  She arranged to meet me outside her father's apartment
          building the next morning, then slid out of the booth to grab
          some cake and catch the accompanist before he left for the
          night. I was watching her walk away again when Barry Salzman
          interrupted my thoughts.
                  "Keep your mind on the music, Ivan. That bass solo in
          the 'Faust' still sounds thin and ragged."
                  "It will improve dramatically after the first
          performance," I told him. "There's nothing like a little
          public embarrassment to motivate people into learning their
          parts."
                  The owner of The Opera Cafe was an entertainment
          lawyer who, like me, had chosen the straight world over music
          early in his life and was now regretting that choice. He
          plowed most of the money he made defending the lifestyles of
          the rich and famous back into his restaurant, which soaked it
          up the way a soprano soaks up love. There were 14 young
          professional singers like Esther on Barry's payroll, not to
          mention an authentic Italian chef from Parma and a gang of
          waiters straight out of the road company of "Hello, Dolly."
                  Barry slipped easily into the seat just vacated by
          Esther, and I cursed again his ability to eat at his own
          restaurant every night of the week and still look as gaunt as
          a marathon runner. Maybe he was a secret bulemic, sneaking
          into the onyx-walled john to unload all that angel hair pasta
          primavera and anisette-soaked cheesecake. "I've got some work
          for you, if you're available," he said.
                  "Absolutely," I replied. "Which one of your superstars
          is in trouble?"
                  "Fish Taylor. Remember him?"
                  "Sure. I used to buy all his records in the Sixties.
          'Street Girl,' 'Sun Dreams,' 'The Last Time I Saw Samantha' --
          great stuff. Didn't he change his name and become some sort of
          religious fanatic?"
                  "Brother Serenity," Barry said. "He lives at a place
          called Earth Works, near Santa Fe. Lots of rich people trying
          to find redemption by working the soil."
                  "And just what seems to be Brother Serenity's problem?
          Somebody dipping into his supply of nose candy? From what I
          recall, he snorted up a sizeable slice of Colombia in his
          time."
                  "He swears he's been clean for five years," Barry
          said. "That was my first thought when he told me about the
          death threats -- that they were drug-related. I tend to
          believe him. I know that the people who started Earth Works
          make a big thing about renouncing all artificial stimulants. I
          can't even get a cup of coffee when I go out there." As if to
          compensate, Barry drained his inky espresso and signalled for
          a refill.
                  "What form did these death threats take?" I asked.
                  "A few postcards and then two phone calls. It was the
          calls that made Fish turn to me for help. He was sure after
          the second one that he recognized the voice -- and that it was
          someone he and I both know. That's when I thought about using
          your services. For a singer, you know how to keep your mouth
          shut when necessary."
                  I thanked him for the compliment. "And now you're
          going to tell me who he thinks the mystery voice belongs to?"
                  "Not yet. Drop by the office tomorrow and we'll kick
          it around some more. I just wanted to be sure you were
          interested," Barry said as he rose to leave.
                  "Interested? I'm fascinated. I'll see you after lunch,
          if that's acceptable. About 2:30?"
                  Barry said that was fine, and moved off to talk shop
          with some of the women in the chorus. The Opera Cafe was
          becoming an increasingly expensive hobby until his wife Rose
          had the brilliant idea six months ago of starting a chorus of
          dedicated amateurs who enjoyed singing opera enough to pay a
          hundred dollars for eight rehearsals and three performances.
          Esther liked the idea because working as choral director added
          to her meager income. The Salzmans liked it because each of
          the 40-odd members of the chorus filled the restaurant on
          performance nights with their friends and families. I liked it
          because it combined three of my four major interests -- music,
          food and (in the form of fantasies about Esther and a whiskey-
          voiced alto named Jeanine who I had my eye on) sex. As for my
          fourth major interest, crime -- things seemed to be looking up
          in that direction as well.



                  Esther's father lived in an apartment complex that
          looked like a Swiss chalet on the outside. Inside, it had the
          same cottage cheese ceilings and metal-framed sliding windows
          and midget pool as my place in Santa Monica -- which looked
          like a Morroccan cathouse from the front. She had kissed me on
          the cheek as I got out of my car. "Did you check his mailbox?"
          I asked to cover my confusion about this change in our
          relationship.
                  "I don't have a key, but it looks empty." Which meant
          either lying in wait for the mailman or a visit to the post
          office to see if he'd left a temporary hold order.
                  As we entered her father's apartment, I knew what
          Esther meant about nobody having been there for awhile. The
          air was stale and dusty, with the faint odor of dead plants.
          The only sign of life was the flashing red light on the
          answering machine on the desk in the living room. It was the
          kind you can call from any touchtone phone to get your
          messages and clear the tape. I rewound it now; the tape was
          full, and most of the messages seemed routine. "Call me when
          you get back and we'll have dinner," said a woman named Norma.
          A book editor from New York had called three times; the second
          time he sounded impatient and the third time he was definitely
          angry. I wrote down all the names and numbers as possible
          leads. Then I checked the outgoing message, which Esther
          wouldn't have heard. A smooth, unruffled man's voice gave no
          indication of being away for an hour or a year.
                  "Can you tell if any of his clothes are missing?" I
          asked Esther as we moved into the small bedroom. "What kind of
          luggage did he use?"
                  "I gave him a matched set last Christmas -- a garment
          bag and a small suitcase in tan canvas with brown leather
          trim," she said, going through his closet. "I don't see them
          here. And his good blue blazer isn't here, either. He wore
          that for dressy occasions. Shoes I can't be sure about, but I
          don't see his desert boots. He lived in those." She checked
          off a few more obviously missing items -- a favorite tweed
          jacket, a shirt she had given him for his birthday. Adding
          them to the absence of basic toilet articles in the bathroom
          convinced me that Carl Lundberg had gone on a trip somewhere.
                  But looking around the apartment also made me agree
          with Esther that he probably hadn't meant to stay away longer
          than a couple of weeks. The plants in the living room each had
          those self-watering gadgets that would keep them moist for up
          to two weeks, but the things had all run out of water and the
          plants were dry and in some cases long dead. And there were
          three books neatly stacked on the hall table, waiting to be
          returned to the UCLA Music Library. I recognized the signs of
          a fellow library compulsive and checked the due days; the
          books were 10 days overdue. My guess was that Lundberg had
          planned to stay away for two weeks, but hadn't been back here
          for a month. I'd be able to pin down the dates better when I
          checked with the post office and called some of the messages
          on the answering machine. What bothered me most was why he
          hadn't called in to get his messages. Esther may have thought
          about the same thing, but I wasn't going to mention it in case
          she hadn't.
                  "Is there anybody else he might have told where he was
          going?" I asked her. "A friend at college, maybe? Or a woman -
          - the Norma on the tape?"
                  "He never mentioned women to me," Esther said. "I
          tried to ask him about it a couple of times, to encourage him,
          but he always changed the subject. Daddy was very reserved
          about things like that -- very Norwegian, if you know what I
          mean. And the only friend I ever met was Briscoe McBride, the
          director of the opera program at Northridge."
                  McBride's name and number were in the Rolodex on
          Lundberg's desk, which I asked to borrow. The desk itself
          looked curiously neat and bare. "Did he do most of his work
          here?" I asked.
                  "No, he used the computer in his office. He joked
          about becoming very dependent on it in his old age."
                  I looked through the rest of the apartment and asked
          Esther if there was someplace nearby where we could get some
          coffee. I followed her in my car and we joined the early lunch
          crowd at a Denny's down the road.
                  "You said your father was on sabbatical. Did he have
          some definite project in mind?"
                  "Oh yes, he was working on a book about Lorenzo Da
          Ponte in America. He was very excited about it; he found some
          research material at the University of Texas that hadn't been
          looked at for 50 years."
                  I knew enough about Da Ponte from reading various
          Mozart biographies to understand why Lundberg would want to
          write about him. Born a Jew near Venice, he became a Catholic
          priest and poet, got mixed up with Casanova and was kicked out
          of the Church for adultery, then wound up writing the libretti
          for Mozart's three best Italian operas in Vienna. After that,
          Da Ponte had moved on to London and ended up in New York,
          where he worked with Clement Clark Moore at Columbia College
          and helped bring Italian opera to America. A hell of a life; I
          envied Lundberg for having the chance to dig into it.
                  "Could that be where he is now -- in Texas?" I asked
          Esther.
                  "Maybe. But I think he had already finished the work
          he had to do there. He was in Austin for about three weeks in
          September, looking through the material. He couldn't stop
          talking about it after he got back." The memory of  her
          father's happiness brought tears to her eyes.
                  "What else can you tell me about him?" I asked gently,
          to get her over the hump. "How was his health? Did he have a
          problem with drinking?" I hadn't seen any signs of that in
          Lundberg's apartment, but he might have been the type who
          never boozes at home.
                  "I don't think Daddy has ever been drunk in his life,"
          she said. "The most I've seen him take is a second glass of
          wine. And as far as I know, his health is good." She paused,
          then looked me full in the face with those dazzling eyes.
          "Tell me the truth, Ivan. Do you think something has happened
          to him?"
                  "It's too early for theories. He could be in Bermuda
          with some hot-blooded companion and has just been too busy to
          call home." She smiled gamely, either at the thought or my
          attempt to ease her mind, then handed me the picture I'd asked
          for. It showed a 20-year-old Esther, her blonde hair a lot
          longer than it was now, laughing and resting her head on the
          shoulder of a handsome, silver-haired man in his 50s. They
          were standing outside of what appeared to be a Western saloon
          or restaurant.
                  "That was taken in 1978, on our last vacation as a
          family, at Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe," she said. "Daddy
          hasn't changed much since then, although lots of other things
          have." That meant Mommy was presumably behind the camera. But
          Esther hadn't mentioned her directly, and I decided not to
          pursue the subject just yet.
                  Esther had a lesson to give in Pasadena. I asked her
          to write a "To Whom It May Concern" note explaining that she
          had retained me to look for her father. She brought up the
          subject of payment again; we agreed that I'd spend another few
          hours of my valuable time trying to come up with a lead and
          worry about our barter arrangement later. After she left, I
          sat for a moment, finishing my coffee and looking at the
          picture she'd given me. Carl Lundberg was a good-looking guy,
          in good health, with a job he liked and a daughter who cared
          about him. What could make a man like that decide to drop out
          of sight? I could think of a lot of things, none of them
          pleasant, so I stopped speculating and headed for the main
          Northridge post office.
                  I had noticed a current voter registration card in the
          top drawer of Lundberg's desk and slipped it into my pocket
          just in case. Rather than go through some long and possibly
          useless routine wagging my note and license at the mail pickup
          window, I flashed the registration card instead, said I was
          back from vacation and asked for my mail. "Stayed away a
          little longer than you planned to, eh Mr. Lundberg?" said the
          clerk, who looked like a black, female version of the
          Pillsbury Dough Boy. "That's all right, no additional charge
          for the extra two weeks," she chuckled.
                  "What did I put down I'd be gone, two weeks or three?"
          I asked, trying my best to look like an absent-minded
          professor.
                  "You put down from the sixth through the 20th," she
          said, waving a form. "Guess you couldn't tear yourself away,
          huh?" Today was the 10th of December, which meant that
          Lundberg had been gone for exactly five weeks. There wasn't
          much mail to show for it, either -- none of the catalogues
          which clog my box with memories of past excesses, only a few
          magazines like "Opera News" and "The New Republic," plus a
          dozen bills and a couple of personal letters.
                  One, with Lundberg's name and address hand-printed in
          green ink, no return address and a Santa Fe postmark ten days
          old, I opened on the spot. Inside there was just a single
          sheet of music paper, with no note attached. It wasn't the
          kind of printed score I was used to reading. This was written
          out by hand, the notes sketched in quickly in pencil, the
          words printed in slanting letters below. It seemed to be a
          scene from an opera, with a rough orchestra line and two voice
          parts -- a baritone and a soprano duet. The words were in
          Italian, and I didn't recognize them. But there was something
          familiar about the pattern of the music, or what my fading
          sight-reading skills could make of it. I thought it was by a
          composer I knew, someone whose work I had been looking at
          recently. Since that could have covered anyone from Mozart to
          Gounod, with Gilbert and Sullivan thrown in, I decided to get
          some expert advice.



                  Briscoe McBride wasn't back from lunch yet, so I used
          the time and Esther's note to check out Carl Lundberg's office
          in the English Department's motel-like wing on the Cal State
          Northridge campus. The secretary who opened his door for me
          thought she hadn't seen Lundberg for about a month, but hadn't
          worried about it because he hadn't come in more than once or
          twice since he'd been on sabbatical anyway. That sounded odd;
          Esther said he was doing all his work on his office computer.
          "Could he have come in early or late, without you seeing him?"
          I asked her.
                  "I guess so. Now that I think of it, Professor
          Lundberg once said he was a night owl. And I leave at 5, so
          maybe I just missed him."
                  Lundberg's computer was a Wang, one of several hooked
          up to the department's hard disk. I knew enough about it to
          turn it on and try to call up his files. "ENTER PASSWORD"
          flashed on the screen, and on a hunch I typed in "ESTHER."
          Sure enough, up came a directory listing a dozen separate
          files. Ten were labeled "PONTE.l" through "PONTE.10," and
          seemed at a fast look to be working drafts of chapters of his
          book. One was called "PERSONAL"; feeling even more like a
          voyeur than when I went through his apartment or his mail, I
          called it up. There wasn't much in it: copies of letters to
          people at other colleges, asking for or giving advice on
          details about Da Ponte's life; a household inventory for
          insurance purposes; a standard short form will, leaving
          everything to his daughter. If Lundberg's personal life added
          up to just these few electronic bytes on a computer screen, I
          felt sorry for him.
                  There was one more file on his directory, labelled
          "LIBRETTO." I tried to call it up and got another "ENTER
          PASSWORD" message. "ESTHER" didn't work this time; neither did
          "CARL" or "LUNDBERG" or "LORENZO" or any of the other
          possiblities I tried. I wondered what was in this particular
          file that made Lundberg cover it with extra security. Then I
          saw that the computer was hooked up to a telephone modem.
          Definitely a job for Nephew Charles; I smiled to myself as I
          wrote down the modem's calling code.
                  McBride's office in the Music Department was just a
          short jog across campus, and he was back from lunch when I got
          there. Exploding out of his tan corduroy suit, his round face
          framed by wisps of long, unnaturally black hair, he looked
          more Russian or Italian than Celtic, and his voice boomed with
          European authority. "I called Carl twice last week to invite
          him to dinner, but I got no answer," he told me. "I thought
          he'd come back from Santa Fe and forgot to turn his answering
          machine back on."
                  "What was he doing in Santa Fe, do you know?"
                  "It was all very mysterious," McBride said. "Carl
          wasn't the most communicative man in the world anyway,
          although once he got going on Da Ponte he could talk your ear
          off. I gathered there was someone or something in Santa Fe
          that was important to his research. I got one card from him
          about three weeks ago, and he wrote something very strange on
          it -- 'LSD Lives!' I didn't know if he was talking about
          drugs, the old British sign for pounds, shillings and pence,
          or something else entirely."
                  I showed McBride the page of music from Lundberg's
          mail, and he too thought it looked familiar. "Wait a minute!"
          he said as he got up to check a score from a bulging shelf
          behind him, then "I thought so!" as he found  something of
          interest. "Look at this. It's 'La Nozze di Figaro' -- do you
          know it?"
                  "I've tried learning a couple of Figaro's pieces," I
          confessed. "As Tito Gobbi said, they're a lot harder than they
          look." Now, as McBride held the handwritten page up against
          one from the printed score, I saw what he meant. "The patterns
          are similar, aren't they?"
                  "Similar isn't the half of it," McBride said. "Every
          composer has a definite signature, a style you can recognize
          if you look for it. It's hard to be certain from just one
          page, but I'd still be ready to go out on a limb and say this
          was either by Mozart or someone doing a damned good
          imitation."
                  "Any idea what it's from?" I asked.
                  "That's just it -- I haven't a clue! I know all the
          Mozart operas fairly well, and this isn't from any of them. I
          don't recognize the words, either; they don't seem to tie in
          with any of the Italian operas he wrote, so this probably
          isn't a scene cut out from one of them. Can I copy this, do
          you think? There are some Mozart experts I'd like to consult."
                  At the time, I didn't see any harm in letting him show
          the page around. He ran it through the department's copier,
          clucking like a hen who has suddenly found herself sitting on
          an unusual egg. I appreciated his enthusiasm, but it didn't
          seem to bring me any closer to understanding why Carl Lundberg
          was three weeks late picking up his mail.

                      (TO BE CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE)


Copyright (c) 1992 by Dick Adler.