Invasion of Privacy

help.”
    Evorov absorbed all this without looking at my ID. “Olga, she has some kind of trouble?”
    “I hope not.”
    His face darkened. “You will come in?”
    “Thank you.”
    Evorov made a curious gesture with his right hand, almost like a conductor cuing the brass section, and I followed him down a sparkling, tiled corridor, the floor beneath my feet feeling freshly waxed.
    “You do a fine job of maintaining the place.”
    “It is good job for me now. Olga, she helped me from her bank to get it.” We reached the end of the corridor, and he made the same conductor’s gesture toward a door just barely ajar. “Please.”
    I passed through a coat-closet foyer into a small living room, the furniture that puffy style of the Great Depression, the floor hardwood and as polished as the tiles outside. Instead of his niece’s Russian motif, though, Evorov had framed posters on one wall. Of Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, and other New York institutions. On another wall were framed photos, all eight-by-ten black-and-whites, showing a 1940s version of him in a tuxedo with entertainers like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.
    I said, “You were in show business?”
    “I played the concert violin.” He gestured again, this time toward a glass cube on top of a mahogany server. Inside the cube were a violin and bow, arranged like museum pieces. “Not for one orchestra only, but for many vocalists.”
    He walked to the wall of photos. “When I come this country—from Soviet Union, 1932—the boat lands in New York . But first I see the Statue of Liberty, and I tell you this thing: it makes me feel very good, very warm inside. I am then on the dock place, and all I have is my violin, in a leather case with handle. And a man I do not know”— Evorov touched the corner of a photo showing a man I didn’t recognize, also in a tuxedo, hugging him at the shoulders, “Teddy Adolph, who is there on the dock place waiting for a relative, he sees me with my case and he says to me, ‘You are musician or gangster?’ And I do not know what he talks about, but Teddy laughs and tells me if I am good violinist, he can maybe get a job for me. Imagine, I am in this country five minutes, and already yet somebody is helping me with job!”
    I nodded at the other photos. “And you got to work with some real celebrities.”
    Evorov shrugged. “Teddy, he was fine fellow and always with his camera, but he took photographs only of the ones we admire.” He touched the corner of another shot. “Sinatra, he was the best male vocalist I ever work with. The quality of the voice, the showmanship on the stage. Nobody else ever come close to him.”
    Evorov moved to a third photo, a man who was vaguely familiar, with flowing gray hair. “This is Leopold Stokowski, the finest conductor. His hair, like the mane of a lion it was. And the hands? Stokowski, he never used a baton.” Evorov made his curious gesture with both hands. “He used his fingers, so long, so graceful, and all his conducting he did with them. You play for him, and it is like watching the butterflies on the first day of spring.”
    Evorov touched a jaunty face I remembered from movie musicals. “And Maurice Chevalier, you see his straw hat? He made all the orchestra wear a hat like he did—a ‘skimmer’ is how he called it. Wonderful man, Chevalier, wonderful personality. Was only one problem for me with him. I have to wear the skimmer, and everytime I do an up-bow, I knock my hat funny. So I try to do more the down-bow, because it is the stronger motion, the exclamation point if music is literature.”
    And one more. “This of me with Judy Garland here, Teddy takes this photo at the old Metropolitan Opera House, where I play for her two weeks. She was the best female vocalist. Garland sang, you could hear the hurt in her voice. The only time I ever cry when I am playing for the public.” Evorov’s voice suddenly changed. “Mr. Cuddy, you going to make me cry about my Olga?”
    “I hope not.”
    He turned, indicating that we should sit. “Tell me what you here for.”
    I took a puffy chair across from his. “Your niece didn’t come to work at the bank today. I found your messages on her telephone machines there and at her apartment. Have you spoken with her since?”
    “Not since I leave for her the messages. She always calls me back, unless she tells me she is going on trip.”
    “Trip?”
    “Like for her bank or the vacation?” A small