Satie spent most of his time in Paris, walking to and from the city each day, stopping en route to take coffee and aperitifs and jotting musical ideas in the small sketchbooks he carried folded in his breast pocket .
Mary E. Davis
Erik Satie; Critical Lives
Mrs. Hanson introduced Miguel not only to music but to how musicians lived. She gave him a little, black book where he could write his musical ideas and told him how many composers received their ideas while walking. Miguel thought that walking a wire was a superb place to get a musical thought. That was why he always had his phone playing music while he rehearsed above the ground.
Reggie had met Angelika Hanson, Stevie’s mother, during another homicide case when she turned out to be a victim of a burglary. An elegant woman in her sixties with stylish short, silver hair, Angelika was a concert pianist and also a teacher. It made Reggie a little nervous to talk to her because he knew so little about music and the world Angelika traveled in, was foreign to him. He was now on his way to Stevie’s home to talk to Angelika about Miguel Cervantes and Jorge Gonzales. He was curious about what she might know concerning these boys. How much would a piano teacher know about a teenage boy’s life outside of lessons?
The yard around Stevie’s house was ablaze with color on this summer evening. Roses dressed in bright orange, coral, and red clamored up the trellis along the side of the house. The scent of this beauty rested on the air and mixed with the warm smell of moss. Reggie always noticed these kinds of things because it was such a contrast to his apartment building in the city. Concrete and escapee weeds, which burst through cracks in the rock around his building, limited his exposure to nature.
“My mother isn’t home yet. Let’s go to the backyard.” Stevie led the way along the side of the house as Reggie dodged a few stray vines. The temperature felt to him to be still in the seventies.
“I am anxious to open up the windows to let a breeze through the house. I’ll be right back.” Stevie said.
The garden furniture, soft and comfortable, was plastic and Reggie knew his shirt would soon be sticking to the back rest. He pulled over a footstool and propped up his feet. Closing his eyes, he thought about the odd assignment they had been given. They were investigating a strange death, in a small town, where they were not welcome. Reggie couldn’t really buy the motive that Jorge Gonzales jimmy rigged his friend’s equipment so that he would plunge to his death because he was part of a rival gang. He didn’t feel any aggression from this young boy.
Reggie looked over at the house and through the window watched Stevie walk around inside the kitchen. She stopped and gathered up her long hair. He noticed her slender neck as she put it in a pony tail. He could almost smell the light citrus scent that would come from her hair.
The crunch of gravel brought his attention to Angelika walking onto the patio from around the side of the house. She stopped and looked at Reggie, and then looked beyond him to her daughter in the kitchen window. Did she know he was gawking at Stevie? He sat up and took his feet off the footrest.
“Hello. Are you stopping by for dinner?” Angelika smiled.
Reggie jumped up and awkwardly extended his hand.
“Good evening, Mrs. Hanson. No,….we actually came to talk to you.”
“To me? About what?” she asked as set a basket full of books onto the table.
“Ah…I think Stevie would like to start this conversation.” Reggie tried to seem overly happy so that she would not anticipate the bad news of Miguel’s death.
At that point Stevie appeared with a pitcher and glasses on a tray. The tray seemed heavy and Reggie stood to take it from her and set it on the table. Stevie embraced her mother and they all sat down.
“Let me pour you something cold?” Angelika said.
“Mom, Rosa didn’t come to clean the house today.” Reggie noticed that Stevie was shifting in her seat so that she was facing her mother.
“How do you know she didn’t come?” Angelika looked alarmed and Reggie thought back at the visit they had with Miguel’s mother. What kind of relationship did Angelika have with her housekeeper?
“Because, ….we were with her today when we had to give her the news that Miguel, her son, fell while walking on a wire that he and his friend attached to the bell towers in Highland Park. He did not survive the fall.” Stevie looked to Reggie to be both relieved and agonizing about how her mother would respond. She must have been carrying the burden of making this announcement all day.
“What? Miguel? How did he fall?” Angelika asked.
“The wire was weak and it collapsed.” Reggie wanted to reach out and push back the veil of long, dark hair that was hiding Stevie’s face from his view. “I didn’t know until today that you were teaching Rosa’s son.”
“Well, it wasn’t a secret.” Angelika looked down into her lap and Reggie saw her clutch the folds of her skirt with her hands. “Some years ago Rosa mentioned that a family had abandoned their piano when they moved. She managed to get it moved into her house. I helped her find someone to tune it and make minor repairs.”
Reggie wondered how Rosa could afford piano repairs and why it would be would important to her to even have an instrument in the first place.
“I can’t believe this is true. He was just here having a lesson this week.” Angelika took Stevie’s hands and looked into her eyes with sorrow. Reggie looked away from this open show of grief. It made him uncomfortable.
“Stevie, he was really good at the piano. There was a natural talent that made it easy for him to learn and he loved music. He really loved music.” Angelika brought Stevie’s hands up to her heart and wept.
Reggie looked over at Stevie and couldn’t help feeling moved by the sorrow he saw between mother and daughter. Tragedy was not foreign to these women as they lost their husband and father, in years past. To Reggie, Stevie’s compassion was both admirable and a little unnerving. He appreciated the love she had for her mother and saw her compassion bestowed on his own father, Harold Watts, when she came to play the piano at the care home where Harold lived after his stroke. But, Reggie pushed away too much compassion as a hindrance to his investigations.
“Mom, can you tell me what you know about Miguel Cervantes? What was he like and what do you think motivated him to learn music?” Stevie asked. She gently dried some tears off Angelika’s face with the back of her own hand.
“What I know about Miguel came from listening to him play the piano and answering the questions he had about music.” Angelika said.
“How long have you been teaching him?” Stevie asked.
A fresh breeze cooled the garden as the evening chatter of birds died down. The leaves rustled, sounding like gossiping whispers to Reggie as he relaxed into the story Angelika was telling them.
“I started three or so years ago. He came to lessons on the city bus, after school. For him it was a commitment of two and one-half hours travel, including the lesson time. For me it was a commitment of opening my home to an after work student. Really quickly, I realized that he was feeding me with his enthusiasm and work ethic. You said you talked to Rosa? Oh Stevie, she must be heart broken. Miguel was one child who was choosing a different way to live.” Angelika continued to strongly press Stevie’s hands against her heart. Reggie could see the effort of extending her hands was difficult for Stevie.
“What way of life are you referring to, Mrs. Hanson? How did her other children choose to live differently?” Reggie asked. Hearing Reggie speak made Angelika turn and release Stevie’s hands.
“She told me some years ago that she suspected Pablo had joined a gang. His father was killed in a gang shooting and she was frightened that he was following in his footsteps. Wait…., do you think Pablo’s death was gang related?” Angelika shook her head quickly back and forth. “No, not Miguel. I think I would have sensed if he was spending time with that kind of negativity.”
“But he was only with you an hour a week.” Reggie said
“No, you don’t understand. In that hour we didn’t just learn music, we talked of how to best manage our lives, to allow beauty and truth to come through us. We read biographies of composers, looking for secrets to their creativity. There would have been clues to his duplicity if he was also running with a gang.” Angelika said.
Reggie was skeptical of her knowledge.
“Pardon me for pointing this out, but he was living a duplicitous life already. He was hiding his wire walking from his mother and brothers.” Reggie picked up his glass of lemonade and drained in in two gulps.
A moment of silence made Reggie feel he had stepped out of line, countering Angelika’s analysis.
“Mother, did he talk to you about his passion with wire-walking?” Stevie asked.
Angelika clasped her hands together and interlaced her fingers, holding them over her mouth, just under her nose.
“Yes, he talked about his years of gymnastic classes. It was about the time he started walking higher installations that he discovered the composer Erik Satie.”
Who was Erik Satie? Reggie had never heard of him him before.
“This composer’s eccentric view on life fascinated Miguel. He read a few biographies and talked to me about his rejection of the musical world he lived in. Miguel thought himself like Satie, in that he rejected the world of his brothers.”
“So you are saying that Miguel talked to you about his brother’s gang involvement?” Reggie became more alert as he waited for Angelika to explain.
“No.”
Reggie was not surprised. Why would a kid talk to his teacher about being in a gang?
“He never once told me that his brothers were in a gang but he did tell me that he felt very different from his brothers. They were aggressive and controlling. He wanted something else. His desire was to embrace music and movement as a way of life. That was taking him in a direction very different from his brother’s activities. I just put two and two together, knowing about his father’s death and what his brother’s might be doing. ” Angelika stood and slowly made her way into the house.
Reggie watched her go up the shallow wooden stairs and then he turned to Stevie.
“Did I offend your mother?” he asked.
“No, not really. Reggie, she is saddened with this news about Miguel. I’m sure she is having a difficult time lining up her history with Miguel and with the facts of our investigation.”
“Maybe I should go. It’s too late to go back to the station. Shall I pick you up tomorrow morning on the way to Highland Park?”
“Yes.” Stevie stood and came around the table to stand before Reggie. She took his hand and squeezed it gently. “Thank you for being considerate with my mother.”
Reggie stood with his hand still in Stevie’s grasp and couldn’t think what to do next. She released it suddenly and cleared her throat.
“Let me walk you to your car.”
“No, please, go spend some time with your Mom. I can see myself out.”
Reggie turned and walked along the pavers, set into perfect sized steps along the side of the house. He could feel that Steve was watching him and for the life of him he could not figure out what she might be thinking.
