Falling Angel (7 page)

Fifty-second Street looked down-at-the-heels. Two blocks east, “21” preserved elegant speakeasy memories, but a fantan chorus line of strip joints had replaced most of the jazz clubs. With the Onyx Club gone, only Birdland kept the temple fires of bop burning over on Broadway. The Famous Door had closed forever. Jimmy Ryan’s and the Hickory House were the only survivors on a street whose brownstones housed more than fifty blind pigs during Prohibition.

I walked east, past Chinese restaurants and petulant whores with zippered leatherette hatboxes. Don Shirley’s trio was on deck at the Hickory House, but the music didn’t start until hours later and the bar was quiet and dim when I entered.

I ordered a whisky sour and settled by a table where I could watch the door. Two drinks later, I spotted a guy carrying a saxophone case. He wore a brown suede windbreaker over a cream-colored Irish-knit turtleneck. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray and cut short. I waved and he came over.

“Vernon Hyde?”

“That’s me,” he said through a twisted grin.

“Park your axe and have a drink.”

“Solid.” He placed his saxophone case carefully on the table and pulled up a chair. “So you’re a writer. What kind of thing is it you write?”

“Magazine work mostly,” I said. “Profiles, personality pieces.”

The waitress came over and Hyde ordered a bottle of Heineken’s. We made small talk until she brought the beer and poured it into a tall glass. Hyde took a long sip and got down to business. “So you want to write about the Spider Simpson band. Well, you picked the right street. If cement could talk, that sidewalk’d tell you my life story.”

I said: “Look. I don’t want to lead you on. The story will mention the band, but I’m mainly interested in hearing about Johnny Favorite.”

Vernon Hyde’s smile twisted so far it became a frown. “Him? What’d you want to write about that prick for?”

“I take it he wasn’t a pal of yours?”

“Besides, who remembers Johnny Favorite anymore?”

“An editor at
Look
remembers him well enough to have suggested the story. And your own memories seem sufficiently strong. What was he like?”

“The guy was a bastard. What he did to Spider was lower than Benedict Arnold’s jockstrap.”

“What did he do?”

“You got to understand that Spider discovered him, picked him up from some nowhere beer hall in the sticks.”

“I know about that.”

“Favorite owed Spider plenty. He was getting a percentage of the gate, too, not just a salary like the rest of the band, so I can’t see that he had any complaints. His contract with Spider still had four years to run when he split. We had some heavy bookings canceled because of that little fade.”

I got out my notebook and mechanical pencil and pretended to take notes. “Has he ever been in touch with any of the old Simpson sidemen?”

“Do ghosts walk?”

“Sorry?”

“The cat’s croaked, man. Got bumped in the war.”

“Is that right?” I said. “I heard he was in a hospital upstate.”

“Could be, but I think I remember he was dead.”

“I was told he was superstitious. Do you remember anything about that?”

Vernon Hyde smiled his bent smile again. “Yeah, he was always off in search of seances and crystal balls. Once, on the road, I think it was Cincy, we hired the hotel whore to make like she was a palm reader. She told him he was gonna get the clap, and he didn’t so much as look at any frail until the end of the tour.”

“He had a high-society girlfriend who was a fortuneteller, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, something like that. I never met the chick. Johnny and I were on different orbits at the time.”

“Spider Simpson’s orchestra was segregated when Favorite sang with you, right?”

“We were all ofays, yeah. I think there was a Cuban on vibes one year.” Vernon Hyde finished his beer. “Duke Ellington didn’t break the color line back then either, you know.”

“True.” I scribbled in the notebook. “Getting together after hours must have been another story.”

Hyde’s smile lost most of its crookedness at the memory of those smoky rooms. “When Basic’s band was in town, a bunch of us would get together and jam all night.”

“Did Favorite make those sessions?”

“Nope. Johnny didn’t care for spades. After a gig, the only black people he wanted to see were the maids in Park Avenue penthouses.”

“Interesting. I thought Favorite was a friend of Toots Sweet.”

“He might of asked him to shine his shoes one time. I’m telling you, Johnny Favorite had a thing about spades. I remember him saying Georgie Auld was a better tenor man than Lester Young. Imagine that!”

I said it was beyond comprehension.

“He thought they were bad luck.”

“Tenor players?”

“Spades, man. To Johnny they were like black cats, no pun intended.”

I asked him if Johnny Favorite had been close to anyone in the band.

“I don’t think Johnny had a friend in the world,” Vernon Hyde said. “And you can quote me if you like. He was a loner. Kept to himself most of the time. Oh, he’d joke with you and always had a big smile on his face, but it didn’t mean a thing. Johnny was good at charm. He used it like a shield to keep you from getting too close.”

“What can you tell me about his private life?”

“I never saw him except on the bandstand or riding through the night on some bus somewhere. Spider knew him best of all. He’s the guy you should talk to.”

“I have his number on the coast,” I said. “We haven’t connected yet. Another beer?”

Hyde said why not and a round was ordered. We spent the next hour swapping lies about 52nd Street in the old days, and Johnny Favorite’s name was not mentioned again.

THIRTEEN

Vernon Hyde departed for points unknown shortly before seven, and I walked two blocks west to Gallagher’s and the best steak in town. I finished my cigar and second cup of coffee about nine, paid my check, and caught a cab on Broadway for the eight blocks down to my garage.

I drove uptown on Sixth, following the traffic north through Central Park, past the reservoir and Harlem Meer. I left the park by the Warrior’s Gate at 110th and Seventh and entered a world of tenements and shadowy side streets. I hadn’t been to Harlem since before they tore down the Savoy Ballroom last year, but it looked just the same. Park Avenue was under the New York Central tracks at this end of town, so Seventh, with its concrete center islands dividing the two-way traffic, became the street to be seen on.

Crossing 125th Street everything was bright as Broadway. Further along, Small’s Paradise and Count Basie’s place seemed alive and well. I found a parking spot across the avenue from the Red Rooster and waited out the light. A young coffee-colored man with a pheasant feather in his hat emerged out of a group loitering on the corner and asked if I wanted to buy a watch. He pushed up both sleeves of his natty topcoat and showed me a half-dozen timepieces on either arm. “Can make you a nice price, brother. Real nice.”

I said I already had a watch and crossed on the green.

The Red Rooster was plush and dark. The tables around the bandstand were crowded with uptown celebrities, big spenders with their bare-armed ladies glittering beside them in a rainbow display of sequined, strapless evening gowns.

I found a stool at the bar and ordered a snifter of Remy Martin. Edison Sweet’s trio was on deck, but from where I was sitting I saw only the piano player’s back as he hunched over the keyboard. Bass and electric guitar were the other instruments.

The band was playing a blues, the guitar darting in and out of the melody like a hummingbird. The piano throbbed and thundered. Toots Sweey’s left hand was every bit as good as Kenny Pomeroy had promised. The group had no need of a drummer. Above the moody, shifting bass rhythms Toots traced an intricate lament, and when he sang, his voice was bittersweet with suffering:

I got them voodoo blues,

Them evil hoo-doo blues.

Petro Loa won’t leave me alone;

Every night I hear the zombies moan.

Lord, I got them mean ol’ voodoo blues
.

Zu-Zu was a mambo, she loved a hungan man;

Messin’ with Erzuli wasn’t part of her plan.

The spell of the tom-tom turned her into a slave.

And now Baron Samedi’s dancin’ on her grave.

Yeah, she’s got them voodoo blues,

Them bad ol’ hoo-doo blues …

When the set ended, the musicians laughed and talked and wiped their sweating faces with large white handkerchiefs. After a while, they drifted in toward the bar. I told the bartender I wanted to buy the group a drink. He filled their orders and nodded in my direction.

The two sidemen picked up their drinks, shot me a glance, and moved off into the crowd. Toots Sweet took a stool at the end of the bar and leaned back so he could watch the house, his large, grizzled head resting against the wall. I collected my glass and made my way over to him.

“Just wanted to say thanks,” I said, climbing on the next stool. “You’re an artist, Mr. Sweet.”

“Call me Toots, son. I don’t bite.”

“Toots it is, then.”

Toots Sweet had a face as broad and dark and wrinkled as a slab of cured tobacco. His thick hair was the color of cigar ash. He filled a shiny blue serge suit to the bursting point, yet the feet encased in two-tone black-and-white pumps were as small and delicate as a woman’s.

“I liked the blues you played at the end,” I said.

“Wrote that one day in Houston, years ago, on the back of a cocktail napkin.” He laughed. The sudden whiteness of his smile split his dark face like the end of a lunar eclipse. One of his front teeth was capped in gold. The white enamel underneath gleamed through a cutout shaped like an inverted five-pointed star. It was something you noticed right away.

“That your home town?”

“Houston? Lord, no, I was just visitin’.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Me? Why I’m a New Orleans boy, born and bred. You’re lookin’ at an amfropologist’s dee-light. I played in Storyville cribhouses ‘fore I was fo-teen. I knew all that gang, Bunk and Jelly and Satchelmouth. I went up ‘de ribber’ to Chicago. Haw, haw, haw.” Toots roared and slapped his big knees. The rings on his stubby fingers flashed in the dim light.

“You’re putting me on,” I said.

“Maybe just a little bit, son. Maybe just a little bit.”

I grinned and sniffed my drink. “Must be swell having so many memories.”

“You writin’ a book, son? I can spot me a book writer quick as a fox recognizes a hen.”

“You’re close, old fox. I’m working on a piece for
Look
magazine.”

“A story ‘bout Toots in
Look
? Right in there with Doris Day! Haw!”

“Well, I won’t put you on, Toots. The story’s going to be about Johnny Favorite.”

“Who?”

“A crooner. Used to sing with Spider Simpson’s swing band back in the early forties.”

“Yeah. I remember Spider. He played the drums like two jack-hammers fucking.”

“What do you remember about Johnny Favorite?” I asked.

Edison Sweet’s dark face assumed the innocence of an algebra student who doesn’t know the answer. “I don’t remember nothin’ about him; ‘cept maybe he changed his name and became Frank Sinatra. Vic Damone on weekends.”

“Maybe I’ve got the wrong information,” I said. “I figured you were pretty good pals.”

“Son, he made a record of one of my songs way back when and I thank him for all the long-gone royalty checks, but that don’t make us pals.”

“I saw a picture of the two of you singing together. It was in
Life
.”

“Yeah. I remember that night. That was at Dickie Wells’ bar. I seen him around once or twice, but he sure didn’t come uptown to see me.”

“Who did he come uptown to see?”

Toots Sweet ducked his eyes in mock coyishness. “You gettin’ me to tell tales out of school, son.”

“What does it matter after all these years?” I said. “I gather he was seeing a lady.”

“She was every inch a lady, to be sure.”

“Tell me her name.”

“It ain’t no secret. Anyone who was around fo’ the war knows Evangeline Proudfoot was makin’ the scene with Johnny Favorite.”

“None of the downtown press seemed to know.”

“Son, if you was crossin’ the line in them days, it wasn’t something you wanted to brag about.”

“Who was Evangeline Proudfoot?”

Toots smiled. “A beautiful, strong West Indian woman,” he said. “She was ten, fifteen years older than Johnny, but still such a fox that he was the one looked the fool.”

“Know where I could get in touch with her?”

“Ain’t seen Evangeline in years. She got ill. Store’s still there, so maybe she is, too.”

“What sort of store was that?” I did my best to keep any trace of cop out of my question.

“Evangeline had an herb shop over on Lenox. Stayed open till midnight every day ‘cept Sunday.” Toots gave me a theatrical wink. “Time to play some mo’. You gonna stick around for another set, son?”

“I’ll be back,” I said.

FOURTEEN

Proudfoot Pharmaceuticals was located on the northwest corner of Lenox Avenue and 123rd Street. The name hung in the show-window in six-inch blue neon script. I parked half a block down and looked the place over. The window contained a dusty display bathed in vaporous blue light. Faded boxes of homeopathic cures sat on small, circular cardboard shelves arranged along either side. Stapled to the rear wall was a multicolored anatomical diagram of the human body, flesh and muscles peeled way to reveal a tangled visceral pudding. Each of the cardboard shelves was connected to the appropriate internal organ by a drooping length of satin ribbon. The stuff linked to the heart was called, “Proudfoot’s Beneficial Belladonna Extract.”

Over the back wall of the display, I could see into a portion of the store. Fluorescent lights hung from a pressed tin ceiling; old-fashioned glass-fronted wooden shelves ran along the far wall. The swinging of a clock pendulum seemed the only activity.