“I’m V I Warshawski. I’m an investigator who spoke to her about the possibility of meeting you.” I knew I sounded chilly, but his unexpected arrival had me off-balance.
“I know—the detective who went to see her when she was talking to her publisher. Then you’re the person who is friends with the survivors from my family.”
“No,” I said sharply, trying to slow him down. “I have friends who may know someone from the Radbuka family. Whether that person is related to you would depend on a lot of details that we can’t really get into tonight. Why don’t you—”
He interrupted me, his eager smile replaced by anger. “I want to meet anyone who could possibly be a relative. Not in some cautious way, going back to you, finding out who these other Radbukas are, checking to see whether they could really be related to me, whether they want to meet me. That might take months, even years—I can’t wait for that kind of time to pass.”
“So you prayed and the Lord directed you to Mr. Loewenthal’s address?” I said.
Spots of color burned in his cheeks. “You’re being sarcastic, but there’s no need to be. I learned at Rhea’s that Max Loewenthal was the man who was interested in finding me. That he had a musician friend who knew my family, and that the musician was here only until tomorrow. When she put it like that, that Max and his friend thought they might know someone of my family, I knew the truth: either Max or his musician friend must be my missing relation. They are hiding behind a cloak of pretending to have a friend—I know that—it’s a common disguise, especially for people who are frightened of having their identities known. I saw I would have to take the initiative, come to them, overcome their fears of being found out. So I studied the newspapers, I saw the Cellini was visiting from England, with their last concert today, I saw the name Loewenthal as the cellist and knew he must be Max’s relation.”
“Rhea told you Mr. Loewenthal’s name?” I demanded, furious with her for breaching Max’s privacy.
He gave a supercilious smile. “She made it clear she wanted me to learn it: she’d written Max’s name next to mine in her appointment book. Which made me sure Max and I were linked.”
I remembered reading her square hand upside down myself. I felt overwhelmed by his easy manipulation of facts to suit his wishes and demanded sharply how he’d found Max’s house, since his home phone isn’t listed.
“Oh, it was simple.” He laughed with childish delight, his anger forgotten. “I told them at the symphony I was Michael Loewenthal’s cousin and that I badly needed to see him while he was still in town.”
“And the CSO gave you this address?” I was staggered: stalking is such a serious problem for performers that no symphony management worth its salt gives out home addresses.
“No, no.” He laughed again. “If you’re a detective, this will amuse you, maybe even be useful to you in your work. I did try to get the address from the symphony management, but they were very stuffy. So today I went to the concert. What a beautiful gift Michael has—how wonderfully he plays on that cello. I went backstage afterward to congratulate him, but that wasn’t so easy, either—they make it hard to get in to see the performers.”
He scowled in momentary resentment. “By the time I got backstage, my cousin Michael had left, but I heard the other performers talking about the party that Max was holding tonight. So I called the hospital where Max works and told them I was with the chamber players but I had lost Max’s address. So they found someone in the administration—it took a while, because it’s Sunday, that’s why I’m late—but they called me with the address.”
“How did you know where Mr. Loewenthal works?” I was reeling so hard in the face of his narrative that I could only grasp at the corner points.
“It was in the program, the program for the Birnbaum conference.” He beamed with pride. “Wasn’t that clever, to say I was one of the musicians? Isn’t that the kind of thing an investigator like you does to find people?”
It made me furious that he was right—it’s exactly what I would have done. “Despite how clever it was, you’re here under a false impression. Max Loewenthal is not your cousin.”
He smiled indulgently. “Yes, yes, I’m sure you’re protecting him—Rhea told me you were protecting him and that she respected you for it, but consider this: he wants to find out about me. What other possible reason could there be than that he knows we’re related?”