Free Country of Old Men by Joseph Hansen Page B

Daddy,’ she said. ‘I’m not her Rachel anymore.’”
    “Mr. Vickers tells me she’s changed now.”
    “How changed—to shoot a man, even such a man as that, in cold blood? By you, that’s changed?”
    “I don’t think she did it, Mr. Klein,” Dave said. “And neither do you.”
    Klein lifted his hands and let them fall. “What do I know? I thought I knew her. Music. She loved music. The finest music.” He peered at Dave through those lenses again. “You say you visited my shop. Then you know I always had classical music on the radio. Softly. In the background. It was the same at home. She was raised surrounded only by the best symphonies, concertos, chamber music. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven—the finest orchestras, the greatest conductors, never mind some of them were Nazis.”
    “I’m told she had a beautiful voice,” Dave said.
    “Rich and deep. Her high school teacher called it a huge voice. We took her to our cantor—a great singer in his time, Chaim Chernov—you’ve heard of him, maybe?”
    Dave nodded, recalling a lieder recital, long ago, in a wooden auditorium at some Westside park. Brahms, Schubert, Mahler. A tenor like a golden bell.
    “He said she should think seriously about the opera.” The memory thrilled Klein. He placed his hands together in front of his mouth, his eyes bright, and said again, in an awed whisper, “The opera.”
    “She was working for Say What? Records when she met Cricket,” Dave said. “How was that?”
    “To pay rent on her own place in Los Angeles,” Klein said. “Chernov retired as cantor, and left the valley for an apartment he owns there. He was her teacher, her mentor, her god—she had to be near him.” His face clouded. “I should have kept her here. Her mother didn’t want her to go. She knew already she was sick, sicker than she told either of us. But she smiled and let her move away because it would be best for her future. She had to study, to practice, to learn. So much. The days when a singer could simply sing, those days are gone, you know. These young artists today—they know harmony, counterpoint, what can I tell you? A dozen languages, history, dancing, acting—”
    “And then she met Cricket,” Dave said.
    Klein scowled. “And that was the end of her.”
    “Jordan Vickers thinks she made a complete recovery.”
    “What does he know? A man who goes around with his head shaved and wearing earrings and rags? What kind of authority is he supposed to be? A onetime basketball player, Rachel said, when he brought her here to see me. What can a basketball player know? They pay them to play basketball at college—they don’t have to learn anything. Half of them can’t even read.”
    “He tried to reunite the two of you,” Dave said. “Didn’t that make you think well of him?”
    Klein slid out of the breakfast nook. “Until she told me they were sleeping together. I don’t think well of a man who would do that.” He opened a door under the sink and dropped the empty bottles into a trash basket there, and closed the door. “Or a woman either.” He turned and picked up the empty glasses and set them in the sink. He shook his head. “Rachel, Rachel.”
    Dave got out of the booth. “This apartment she took to be near her teacher. Was that where she’s living now?”
    “Mr. Klein?” Screen door hinges creaked. The balding young man came in from the backyard. “We haven’t got a carton that will hold that whole set of Dickens. Always at least two volumes over.”
    “I’ll be there in a minute,” Klein said. The young man left, and Klein told Dave, “No. A young woman at the record company had an empty bedroom in her apartment, and Rachel moved in with her. They split the rent.” Klein made another sour face. “Then she met Cricket and got her own place.”
    “Do you remember the young woman’s name?”
    “Karen Goddard,” Klein said. “I liked her.”
    Before he got onto the freeway, he stopped for gas. While the tank