“Lady, get out of my house.” He moved back to the front door, opened it. It hung on its hinges like an open mouth.
She took a step toward him, but not as if to leave. “We will sue you,” she said. “We will sue you and your whole family for every penny you made, and will make, if you don’t give it back to us. Are you seriously prepared to spend thousands, tens of thousands, maybe a million dollars, to try to keep it? Because we will spend whatever it takes.”
Dante said, “Look, Rayquan, there’s no way you’re gonna win this thing. Save yourself a lot of time and heartache and just give it back.” He fumbled in his breast pocket, opened an envelope, leaned forward and showed him a cashier’s check. “Look. This is yours. You can surely buy a nice instrument for that. Let’s not fight, and let’s make it easy on all of us. Now, where’s the violin?”
He turned as if to move deeper into the house, as if the conclusion were foregone, as if he were just picking up the golf clubs he’d mislaid the last time he’d been over at Ray’s place, after they’d come back from playing the back nine at their country club.
Something cold had lodged in Ray’s throat. Did he have his phone on him? Could he call the police? What would the Charlotte police do when a ragged Black man called them over to report two well-dressed white people pleasantly chatting in his living room? They’d tell the police that the violin was theirs, and the police would give it to them.
Suddenly he stood up straight. He threw back his shoulders. He would not stoop to their level. They hated him; they hated what he stood for. They were not ashamed by their past; they reveled in it. But he would not hate them. He would not become them. He would be tall and respectful and he would command them.
“Leave now,” he said, and he didn’t recognize his own voice, as if it came from a deep part of his diaphragm, lower than he’d ever heard himself before. “If you leave right now, I won’t press charges.” He willed them outside.
To his immense surprise, Andrea wobbled out, and her brother behind her. Ray pressed his back against the wall to avoid touching them.
On the doorstep, Dante turned. “Think about it, Rayquan. You can’t afford this. You won’t win. Do the right thing and give us back the violin.” He held out the check again, between two fingers, as if its edges could cut him.
Ray closed the door, gently but firmly, and locked it.
It took all his effort to just keep standing, leaning his forehead against the cool wall. Could this be legitimate? Could they really sue him for his violin? Had Grandma Nora been totally honest about the violin? Was it really stolen?
He fumbled open his phone.
“Hello, Aunt Rochelle? I need your help. Everything is just going nuts.”
“Whoa, slow down. What’s—”
“They just came in talking crazy! They said he stole it!”
“Who said that? What are you talking about?”
“This brother and sister—the Markses—said the violin is theirs. She read some crazy letter from her great-great-great-great-grandpa or something saying that PopPop stole his violin and—”
“What? PopPop stole his fiddle? Slow down.”
He tried taking a breath, then repeated what had happened. “They came to actually take the violin! Just walk in and take it! Now they’re threatening to sue me. I don’t know what to do. I think I need to find a lawyer. Which is why I called you.”
“You need to talk to somebody about this,” Rochelle said. “My firm doesn’t do a lot of these kinds of personal property cases—we’re mostly personal injury. But let me get you a number. Someone who’ll make this all go away for you.”
“How can I afford a lawyer? I don’t need this.”
“It’s over for now. Don’t worry about it. We’ll find you a good attorney and we can get this sorted out. Give me a couple hours and I’ll call you right back.”
After they hung up, Ray tried to play, but ended up just sitting there, as afternoon folded into night. Just cradling the violin and trying to imagine life without it.
Chapter 17
Birdland
8 Months Ago
The offices of Mendel, Panofsky & Levine sprawled over the entire forty-seventh floor of a solid-glass skyscraper just below Central Park. One of the top art-and-entertainment law firms in the country, there was no art hung on the walls: just blank expanses of white, and glass windows with killer views of downtown Manhattan. The receptionist—pale blond hair, wearing a white sheath and white pumps—ushered him into the conference room. Five minutes later, Kim Wach was shaking his hand. She was short, barely over five feet tall, her silver hair cut short in a bob, wearing a beautifully tailored dark blue suit, dark pumps, and a crisp white shirt. She came at him smiling, hand extended. He had the impression that she should be wearing glasses. Her teeth were very square and white.