Robert Heiss confessed yesterday, ending one of the more interesting criminal cases in town. These are the events as they occurred in chronological order. We begin with Boise Watson, who deals in junk on Maxwell street despite his doctorate degree in psychology.

        Boise bought a viola at the street market three years ago, which he later learned had been lost by a member of the Chicago Symphony, and which he figured to be worth around a million. The million figure was trumpeted by the local press after the principal violist for the Chicago Symphony, Charles Pikler, left his viola in its battered case on the sidewalk on Columbus Drive a block from Orchestra Hall and drove away, realizing his mistake and rushing back moments later to find it gone. That was in 1996. And Boise hid it under his bed, "a nest egg," he said, for a rainy day.

        And this bed he shared with Quintella Benson, his girlfriend, who was miffed at Boise for not treating her like a lady. Now, Quintella worked for Robert Heiss, who was engaged in a legal dustup with an ex-partner in the cookie-making business they shared. The 70-something Mr. Heiss and the 30-something Quintella became lovers, and in pillow talk Heiss learned of the viola and conspired with Quintella to abscond with it and make it appear a burglary.

        Then Mr. Heiss, attempting to convert the viola to cash, found, on the Internet, Fritz-Reuter.com, the web site of Chicago’s venerable violin maker and dealer, Fritz Reuter, who told me he immediately recognized it for what it was and contacted authorities, who arrested Mr. Heiss, who claimed he found it on Columbus Drive as he was walking back from visiting a friend at the Columbia Yacht Club. Mr. Heiss declared he had no idea as to its value or its ownership, although the insurance investigator who paid the 175,000 dollar policy to the CSO pointed out the case was clearly marked, "property of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra."

        Reading of Mr. Heiss’ arrest, Boise put two and two together, and the quavering Quintella and the desperate Mr. Heiss plotted to find the one stone to kill two birds, an assassin who would rid them of their impediments to happiness; his business partner, and her bothersome Boise. And I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There are no hit men.

        Without exception, everyone who agrees to accept payment for reducing by one the local population with extreme prejudice has taken an oath to uphold justice. When you sit down at a seedy bar with a 6 a.m. license in a deteriorating industrial area of unincorporated McCook and strike up a conversation with an ex-con unemployed machinist from Muskogee with the phrase, "Insane Butcher Boys," tattooed on the skin of his chest beneath his open leather vest with the Satan head on the back; sure, it looks promising, but sure as a compound sentence is two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction such as but, you might as well be speaking into a public address system for all the ears which will hear your voice played back at the trial.

        Anyhow, Quintella decided to turn state’s evidence against Robert and go back to Boise, who forgave her for trying to have him killed and she is now pregnant with a soon-to-be bouncing baby Boise.

        Now I said that Fritz Reuter, the violin dealer who blew the woodwinds on Mr. Heiss, instantly recognized the instrument for what it was. But more accurately; he recognized it for what it wasn’t. And what it wasn’t was a fabulously valuable 1723 Dominicus Montagnana, the greatest Venetian violin-maker of his time, which was what the Symphony had reported missing. It was a Montagnana a benefactor had donated to the symphony some time ago, or at least that’s what he purported it to be as he took the tax deduction.

        Mr. Heiss came to Fritz Reuter’s door, a well-dressed man of 71, accompanied, says Reuter, by an equally well-dressed lady companion (without question the querulous Quintella), wishing to have appraised a Stradivarius violin he had inherited. Three things appeared to the trained eye of Fritz Reuter: the instrument was not a violin, but a viola. Secondly, it was not a Stradivarius but the label instead declared it a Montagnana. Thirdly, Montagnana never made a viola. He made violins, period.

        So Reuter declares the instrument donated to the symphony and insured for 175 thousand dollars to be of Austrian origin and worth 40 thousand. So Fritz Reuter says it’s a crime somebody appraised that fake Montagnana so ludicrously high; the federal court says it’s a crime Robert Heiss schemed with his paramour to murder her live-in lover; and should a screenplay emerge from this melodrama, it should be R-rated for sex and violins.

©1999 Dave McBride, all rights reserved

(No reproduction or rebroadcast without express written permission from the Commissioner of Major League Baseball)