The Octopus on My Head (11 page)

“Well I guess this ain't Ivy Pruitt,” the phone said, adding with a shout heard round the room, “because that prick knows who I am!”

“Mr. Pruitt is in a meeting,” I replied primly. “May I take a message?”

“Since when is a fuck in the shitter and he can't talk on the goddamn telephone?”

Ivy peeked under the saucepan lid.

“What,” the phone screamed, “he needs both hands to wipe?”

“I'm sure I can't answer that, sir.”

Ivy replaced the lid.

“Put on Pruitt,” the phone demanded. “This is important!”

“A call from Mr. Important.” I held out the phone. “He insists on exchanging insults with you personally.”

Ivy took the cellphone. “Yo, Sal—” he began. “—What?” He listened. “Wait a minute, why should we kill the guy? He paid off. We went away.” Ivy said, to us, “Did you guys shoot that Stepnowski guy?” I shook my head. Lavinia rolled her eyes. “No,” he said to the phone, “they didn't shoot him. Obviously, that shit happened later.” He listened some more. Then he said, “How many repos have I–? No, no, no, Sal, I beg your pardon, it's more than twenty. Yeah. Has anybody gotten killed—who? That wasn't my gig, dickhead, that was Tony's gig. Yes,
your
nephew. Who, in turn, as I recall, got himself killed just last Christmas. So much for nepotism—Of course it was cash. Cops? How did–? A receipt…?” Ivy frowned. Then he said, to nobody in particular, “The cops found a World of Sound receipt in Stepnowski's hip pocket.” I looked at Lavinia, who bit her lip. “Shit!” Ivy said, and angrily turned off the flame under the saucepan. “No, Sal, not you, I'm trying to cook some breakfast here. Sure I eat. He told you what? So what's a cop know about it? Oh. Ouch. What? All hundreds. Sure
….
I'll send it over with Curly. Watkins. Yes, yes,
the
Curly Watkins.” Ivy winked at me. “Sure you know him. He's probably another guy who owes you money.” Ivy shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Okay, Sal, today you don't know him. What the fuck difference—Illegal? Since when? Oh. Yeah. Well, yeah, sure, of course murder's against the law.” Ivy waved an impatient hand at the saucepan.

I plucked the lid off the egg poacher with one of the new potholders and set it down on the stove top. In the die-cut platter, each egg cup was frosted white, like so many UFO windshields of a crisp winter's morning, say, but in fact they were more like the sclerae of a five-eyed dragon.

A real delicacy.

“Sal, you don't give a shit about Stepnowski, so get off it. The bread's here, you'll get it this afternoon. When? What's the big deal? Curly's not there, he's here. Sure. Here is Oakland, but—Okay, Okay! Fuck you, too. And very much.”

Ivy held the phone at arm's length, made a face, and pitched it to me. I caught it with the potholder and turned it off.

“A fucking receipt,” Ivy muttered disgustedly. “I thought you guys went through his pockets.”

“Curly went through his pockets,” Lavinia corrected him, somewhat defensively. “I only touch live men.”

“Pocket,” I corrected them both. “The dough was in the first pocket I checked, so that was that.”

Ivy wasn't even listening. “Whatever happened to the handshake deal?” he groused. “Isn't a man's word good for anything anymore? Fucking paper trails
….
”

His attention fell upon the egg poacher, and his mood shifted. After a close inspection of the cooling saucepan, he happily scrubbed his hands together.

“I'll take the vapor trail,” he said. “Every time.”

Chapter Eleven

S
AL
‘T
HE
K
ING
' K
RAMER'S
W
ORLD OF
S
OUND IS ON
F
OLSOM AT
Sixth, right
across the street from a place called the Brainwash, where you can watch your clothes tumble dry beyond a soundproof glass wall while you sit in a comfortable chair eating a cheeseburger with a beer and pretend to listen to live poetry while in fact browsing the sex ads in the back of the
Bay Guardian.

The poet Jim Carroll once observed that, while he enjoyed fronting a rock and roll band, when the gig was over, he wanted silence. The guys in his band, however, would go home and listen to music. He couldn't figure it out.

What I can't figure out is drummers who go down to Kramer's World of Sound and pretend to test-drive the most expensive kit in the inventory, by way of practicing their paradiddles, at ten o'clock in the morning. Another thing I wonder about is how Sal Kramer can stand to smoke a nickel cigar at that hour—or any other, for that matter. Traffic was inexplicably light, so, as we sank down the Fifth Street ramp, westbound off the Bay Bridge, I expressed these concerns to Lavinia.

“That's easy,” she said. “They're connected—the practicing drummers and Sal's cigars, I mean. Plumbers smoke cigars to mask the smell of shit, right?”

“You know,” I admitted, “I never thought of it that way.”

She tapped her right temple. “Vassar.”

“I got another question.”

“Shoot.”

“What about that back window?”

As she made a right at Seventh, broken safety glass rattled over the rear window shelf. It sounded like the percussion instrument known as a rainstick.

“Insurance. Ask me a hard one.”

“Okay, how much dope will be left by the time we get back to Oakland?”

“Any amount of dope divided into a zero like Ivy equals zero dope left over.”

“Vassar,” I concluded.

She nodded.

“Do you think Sal was making it up, insisting that we had to bring his thirty-seven fifty to him immediately?”

“Otherwise Sal would have no choice but to admit to the cops about siccing Ivy onto Stepnowski?”

“Which would force the cops to admit to themselves, disappointing as that might be, that Ivy was under lock and key in their own basement the whole time Stepnowski was getting himself killed?”

“But wasn't his payment to the bail bondsman in cash?”

“Hundred dollar bills, in fact.”

“Of which Stepnowski had some twelve examples in his jeans when they found him.” Lavinia looked at me. “Right?”

I shrugged. “The paper didn't say anything about it.”

“How much do cops make?”

“About that much a week, I'd think. But don't get your hopes up.”

“I guess we're about to find out,” Lavinia said, grasping the steering wheel with both hands. “Here we are.”

Actually, we'd been in the World of Sound's parking lot long enough for Lavinia already to have parked and turned the engine off. Immediately to our left, a purple two-story cinderblock wall with yellow flowers and green leaves painted on it emitted deep thuds.

“It was generous of Ivy to allow us a couple of fat bumps apiece before he threw us out,” Lavinia said. “I was really tired.”

“Me, too,” I admitted. “Not that I care about the stuff.”

“But it made you feel better, didn't it.”

“Sure did.”

“Real better.”

“Yeah. It's too bad we didn't take the time to make breakfast, too.”

Lavinia shrugged. “What can you do in the kitchen of a man who says food makes him paranoid?”

“Eat his breakfast for him.”

“Isn't that some kind of business homily?”

“You're asking me about business?”

The thudding stopped. One minute elapsed peacefully. Beyond the hood of the car, orange nasturtiums bloomed along the base of a chain link fence.

“Hey, Curly, remember what Saint Augustine said?”

“Fuck no.”

“If you can understand it, it is not God.”

Another minute of silence passed.

“That speedball sure is nice.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell you what.”

“Tell me anything you want.”

“If we manage to navigate through today without getting arrested, let's celebrate with a little speedball.”

“Good idea.”

“Just a little.”

“Yeah.”

“Couple hits each.”

“Sure.”

“Get us through the night.”

“Yeah.”

“We could even have sex.”

“What did you say?” I asked mildly.

“Let's get this over with.”

Sal ‘The King' was sitting at a desk within a glass-walled cubicle in the back of the store, the atmosphere inside of which reeked of an electrical fire doused by soy sauce. It looked that way, too. Invoices, pieces of cardboard, cymbals and drumheads in and out of their cartons, drumsticks and curly cords, packs of guitar strings and styrofoam coffee cups littered every available surface. The fax machine was overflowing faxes into an overflowing wastebasket. A gold record hung among framed and autographed concert posters and band photographs on the wall behind the desk. Everything was askew and covered with dust.

“Fuckin' junk faxes,” Kramer said to nobody in particular, reading a page as the machine excreted it. “
Repair Grandfather Clocks At Home In Your Spare Time for Big $$$!
” He threw the sheet to the floor. “That's my fuckin' paper they're wasting, my toner, my phone line—I should pay for this shit and read it, too? I pay some recycler he should cart them faxes away, I pay some kid he should go to the Office Depot to buy me more fucking cases of toner and paper
….
I'd like to fax the Federal Tax Code up this clock guy's ass. This grandfather clock guy's costing me money! Look at this!” He snatched up another sheet from the floor. “
$99 Disney Vacation!
Fuck! See that 800 number? Tiny print, right? Tough shit. Buy yourself some glasses. Says, If you feel that you've received this fax in error, please call 1-800-HIY-ASAP and request that your name be removed from our database. Right!” He threw the sheet to the floor. “Look at this!” He pointed his cigar at the wastebasket. “How many faxes you think are in there? A thousand? A million? It's a fire hazard! I got time to call all these jerkoffs? No!
They
should call
me
. And beg me—
beg
me—not to kill them when I catch the cocksuckers. I pick up this phone—” He jabbed his cigar at a telephone hidden beneath a coil of audio cable on his desk. “And right now,” he snapped his fingers, “the guy is dead.” He snapped his fingers again. “Grandfather clock guy is a dead grandfather clock guy.” He abruptly collected himself. “What am I saying? Here I am, raving on and on about junk faxes, for chrissakes—junk faxes! I should kill somebody? For a junk fax? And right here in my office are a couple of musicians, a couple of envoys from the most sensitive tribe on the planet.” He waggled the cigar. “My children, disregard the petty concerns of the workaday world, and take a deep breath. Center yourselves. Now.” He exhaled a gout of fetid smoke toward Lavinia's breasts. “Tell me what kind of gear you need, and what kind of credit problems you have. And
….
” He tapped his chest with the forefinger of his cigar hand, “Sal Kramer will show you how you can afford it. They don't call Sal ‘The King' for nothin'. Hell, I knew Joe Ellis when he couldn't even blow out the candles on his birthday cake, let alone hold down first desk in the pit on
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Greatest Hits!
—that show's been camped at the Orpheum for, what, twelve years? Joe still had hair when he started that gig.” He pointed the cigar at Lavinia. “You hearda Joe Ellis?” Lavinia shook her head. Sal took one of Lavinia's hands between his, the cigar protruding from his fat fingers like a zeppelin leaking fumes. “Joe Ellis didn't have a watch to keep time with when I sold him that horn. On credit, too. One hundred percent financing! But ‘The King' believed in Joe. ‘The King', for no money down—”

I suddenly said, “Joe Ellis didn't buy that trumpet from you.”

“He—What?” Kramer squinted through the cigar smoke at Lavinia. “Who let him in here?”

“Lambert Deutschen sold his trumpet to Joe Ellis in the basement of the Great American Music Hall in 1988 for enough cash to buy an ounce of blow, a thousand bucks, about one sixth what that horn is worth. It was a dark hour in the history of jazz. But if he hadn't sold it to Joe, he would have sold it to somebody who didn't know what it was. But you know what, Kramer?”

Kramer hadn't taken his eyes off Lavinia's breasts. “Tell him to go away, sweetheart.”

Lavinia got her hand back and said, “What, Curly?”

“If Lambert ever asked Joe to return his trumpet, Joe would give it to him.”

Lavinia frowned. “Didn't Lambert Deutschen die of a heart attack while snorting cocaine off the dashboard of a car behind a club in Detroit about ten years ago?”

“That's not the point.” I stabbed my forefinger at my chest and said, “I saw the look in Joe's eyes when that deal went down. I—”

“What the fuck were you doing there,” Kramer interrupted, “cleaning the toilets?” He smiled lasciviously at Lavinia. “Not for nothing do they call Sal Kramer ‘The King', baby.” Confused and alarmed, Lavinia looked back and forth between us. Sal ‘The King' Kramer called me a motherfucker and stood up. I advised Sal that on the contrary he was the motherfucker, and stepped up to meet him.

We embraced.

“Curly.”

“Sal.”

“Long time.”

“I've missed you.”

“No you haven't.”

“Okay, I haven't. How you been keeping? Let me look at you.” Sal held me at arms' length.

“Ah, I don't look as good as you, Sal.”

Sal's smile faded. “That's true. You don't look so good.” His face assumed a pained expression. “Where's my money?”

“It's all bullshit.” Lavinia shook her head. “Why should musicians be allowed to talk? Why can't they just play music and go afterwards to a shelf in a closet away from the rest of us, some place where they can't make normal people crazy?”

I produced the wad of hundreds.

Kramer plugged the cigar into his mouth, took the money, sat into his office chair and counted the bills into the styrofoam lid of a take-out carton. “Thirty-seven.” He looked up. I handed him fifty in small bills. He counted those, too, then stacked the lot. “Okay.”

Kramer cleared a windrow of cut-sheets and invoices away from a computer monitor on his desk and began to mouse around. “Receivables
….
Stepnowski
….
Balance due
….
Wait a minute.” He peered at the screen. “There was a synthesizer.” Sal swiveled his chair. “You see a keyboard lying around Stepnowski's place? Specifically,” he turned back to the computer screen, “a Kurtzweil FX-11? Fifty-five keys? Black?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Nope,” Lavinia affirmed.

“He bought it a month later.” Sal swiveled to squint at the computer again. “Sonofabitch. The guy's dead, and the account's still open.”

“Somebody should tell him,” I suggested.

Sal swept the clutch of audio cables off the phone and touched a preset. A woman came on the speaker almost immediately. “Beat me, Bwana, order me about.”

“Invoice number 2381-16,” Sal said. “It's a synth. I'm moving it up in the cue.”

“I'm on it like brown on rice.” The woman rang off and Sal went back to mousing. “She's a vegetarian so she gets to talk like that,” he told the computer screen. “The Peavey 1430 Sound Reinforcement System is now … paid in full and … right here we write off … the recovery fee. Save. Okay. Now print, you bastard.”

Tractor-fed invoices began to inch up out of a box on the floor into a printer, which stippled noisily.

“Curly,” Kramer spun his chair, “How the fuck did you get mixed up with Ivy Pruitt?”

“I've known Ivy for years, Sal. Same as you.”

“But you're a working musician.”

“So? If I only hung out with working musicians I'd be as lonely as Nixon after Watergate.”

Sal shook his head. “Ivy Pruitt's nothing but trouble, Curly. Not only that, you should stick to what you know how to do, which is playing the same ten songs three sets a night five nights a week, and leave Ivy Pruitt to do what he knows how to do, which ain't playing no music.”

“I'm up to eleven tunes, Sal,” I pointed out, but I could feel my cheeks coloring at the slant the conversation had taken. I didn't understand it, but neither did I think Sal Kramer had any right to give me this kind of advice. On the third hand, I had no doubt that I was in over my head with Lavinia, let alone Ivy Pruitt, but I had no intention of giving up that information to Kramer. Worse, Sal was right. It was a bad idea to be associating with Ivy Pruitt. Everybody in the business knew he was a junky, and if word got around that I was hanging out with him, club owners might suddenly discover that there is an amazing number of people out there willing not only to play ten or even eleven songs over and over again but to sing them too, all night long, for no money at all.

But I wasn't about to give Kramer the satisfaction of knowing that I agreed with him about the last twenty-four hours, most of which I'd spent spending money I'd taken off a dead man, getting shot at on a back street in Oakland, not to mention buying, transporting and consuming heroin and cocaine, not to mention playing no music whatsoever; all because of Ivy Pruitt.