The Right To Sing the Blues (3 page)

A trumpet solo from inside the club was wafting out almost palpably into the hot, syrupy-humid night. People came and went, among them a few who were obviously tourists making the Bourbon Street rounds of clubs and drinks. But Nudger got the impression that most of Fat Jack’s customers were folks who took their jazz seriously and were there for music and not atmosphere.

The trumpet stair-stepped up to an admirable high C and wild applause. Nudger went inside and looked around.

Dim, smoky, lots of people at lots of tables. Men in suits and in jeans and T-shirts; women in long dresses and casual slacks. The small stage was empty now; the band was
between sets. Customers milled around, stacking up at the long bar along one wall. Waitresses in black, red-lettered “Fat Jack’s” T-shirts bustled about with trays of drinks. Near the left of the stage was a polished dark upright piano that gleamed like a showroom-new car even in the dimness. Nudger decided that Fat Jack’s was everything a jazz club should be.

Feeling that his heart was home, he made his way to the bar and, after a five-minute wait, ordered a mug of draft beer. The mug was frosted, the beer ice-flecked. Nudger was glad, right now, that he’d agreed to work for Fat Jack.

“Ain’t no ten-dollar bill,” said a deep, velvety voice just down the bar from Nudger, “I gave you a twenty.”

“Sorry, sir, it was a ten.”

Nudger leaned forward and saw that the deep voice belonged to a tall, lanky black man with wide shoulders, a scraggly goatee, and large, splay-fingered hands that looked strong enough to be leased out to industry. The “Sorry, sir” belonged to the bartender, who didn’t appear old enough to be working where liquor was served, but whose dark eyes had a wise and steady gunfighter calm about them.

“You tryin’ to pull some shit on me!” the black man said. He was working himself up to high pitch. Around him, the other customers let their conversations taper off to nerv
ous silence. “You owe me change from a twenty, clown, and you gonna pay!”

The bartender with the high-school face and been-around eyes said nothing, didn’t move. He did, however, smile slightly.

“I’ll give you a jive-ass smile under your chin!” the black guy said. He reached out with his big right hand to grip the bartender’s shirtfront, but the bartender took an easy step back, using the bar to shield him from harm. The big man’s other huge hand slid beneath the leather vest he was wearing over his red shirt, as if to pull out a knife to make good his threat of a tracheal grin.

The bartender said, “Marty.” Not in a scared voice, but as if he could handle things himself—just that oversized homicidal customers simply weren’t part of his job; something in the union rules.

Marty was already there. He was a medium-sized, bland-faced man in a brown suit that matched his straight, brown, razor-styled hair. Mr. Average, with a Sears-catalog look about him.

Marty’s hand snapped in a blur to the big man’s thick wrist. The abrupt, smooth movement reminded Nudger of a snake striking. Marty smiled in a kindly fashion while the large black face above him registered outrage, then surprise at the absence of fear in the smaller, bland white man and the strength of the fingers about his wrist. Some average. The big man calmed down, withdrawing the hand from inside the leather vest as Marty loosened his grip by degrees.

“He did me outa my twenty,” the man said, gesturing with his head toward the bartender. He was still plenty mad, still unpredictable and dangerous. But his outrage had lost its edge.

“Are you sure of that, sir?” Marty asked.

“Sheeit, yeah, I’m sure!”

“So let’s talk about it,” Marty said, further defusing the situation. “What are you drinking?”

The man scratched his patchy beard. “Uh, vodka with a twist.”

Marty nodded to the bartender, who poured two generous vodkas over ice and set them on the bar.

“On the house,” Marty said, picking up both drinks and leading the way to a corner table, not glancing back.

The big man looked uncertain for a few seconds. Then, glad for a way out of the confrontation without losing his machismo, he followed Marty and the vodka across the crowded floor.

They sat down and began talking quietly. The black man leaned his long body forward over the table, speaking earnestly, sensing he’d found an impartial ear. Nudger knew that sooner or later Marty would give him the extra ten in his change as a gesture of goodwill and good business, not to mention keeping the bartender alive.

Conversation picked up again around the bar. Nudger lifted his beer mug and sipped. He wanted to ask the bartender who Marty was, but the unflappable young man was working the other end of the bar for a group of middle-aged women ordering exotic drinks topped with pineapple slices and little paper parasols.

The lights brightened and dimmed three times, apparently a signal the regulars at Fat Jack’s understood, for they gradually began a general movement back toward their tables.

Then the lights dimmed considerably, and the stage, with its gleaming piano, was suddenly the only illuminated area in the place. A tall, graceful man in his thirties walked onstage to the kind of scattered but enthusiastic applause that suggests a respect and a common bond between performer and audience.

The man smiled faintly at the applause and sat down at the piano. He had pained, haughty features, blond hair that curled above the collar of his black Fat Jack’s T-shirt. He was thin, but the muscles in his bare arms were corded; his hands appeared elegant yet very strong. This was Willy Hollister, the main gig, starbound but still their own, the one the paying customers had come to hear. The place got quiet and he began to play.

The song was a variation of “Good Woman Gone Bad,” an old number originally written for tenor sax. Hollister played it his way, and two bars into it Nudger knew he was better than good and nothing but bad luck could keep him from becoming great. He was backed by brass and a snare drum, but he didn’t need it; he didn’t need a thing in this world but that piano and you could tell it just by looking at the rapt expression on his aristocratic face. He wasn’t playing the music; he
was
the music.

“Didn’t I tell you it was all there?” Fat Jack said softly beside Nudger. “Whatever else there is about him, the man can play piano.”

Nudger nodded silently in agreement. Jazz basically is black music, but the fair, blond Hollister played it with all the soul and pain of its genesis. He finished the number to riotous applause that quieted only when he swung into another, a blues piece. He sang this one while his hands worked the piano. His voice was as black as his music; in his tone, his inflection, there seemed to dwell echoes of centuries of suffering.

“I’m impressed,” Nudger said, when the applause for the blues number had died down.

“You and everyone else with ears,” Fat Jack said, sipping absinthe from a gold-rimmed glass. “Hollister won’t be playing here much longer before moving up the show-business ladder—not for what I’m paying him, and I’m paying him plenty.”

“How did you happen to hire him?”

“He came recommended by a club owner in Chicago. Seems he started out in Cleveland playing small rooms, then moved up to better things in Kansas City and your town, St. Louis, then Rush Street in Chicago. All I had to do was hear him play for five minutes to know I wanted to hire him. It’s like catching a Ray Charles or a Garner on the way up. The man’s an original.”

Nudger didn’t remember Hollister ever playing St. Louis, but that wasn’t surprising. Nudger hadn’t listened to live jazz in years, and not much recorded jazz since his collection had been ravaged by incensed creditors. Diluted FM radio music had comprised most of his listening lately. The stuff of elevators.

“So what specifically is there about Hollister that bothers you?” Nudger asked. “Why shouldn’t he be seeing Ineida Collins?”

Fat Jack scrunched up his padded features, seeking the word that might convey the thought. “His music is . . . uneven.”

“That’s hardly a crime,” Nudger said, “especially if he can play so well when he’s right.”

“He ain’t as right as I’ve heard him,” Fat Jack said. “Believe me, Hollister can be even better than he is tonight. But it’s not really his music that concerns me. Hollister acts weird sometimes, secretive. Sam Judman, the drummer, went by his apartment last week, found the door unlocked and let himself in to wait for Hollister to get home. So what happens? When Hollister discovers him there he beats up on Sam—with his fists. Can you imagine a piano player like Hollister using his hands for
that
?” Fat Jack looked as if he’d discovered a hair in his absinthe. “He warned Judman never to snoop around his apartment again. I mean, talked hard to the man!”

“So he’s obsessively secretive,” Nudger said. “I still don’t see why you need me.” What am I doing, he asked himself, trying to talk myself out of a job? What would Eileen think if she could hear me? What would her shark of a lawyer think? Blood in the water.

But Fat Jack said, “Hey, believe me, I need you. Hollister has been troubled, jumpy, and unpredictable, for the last month. He’s got problems, and he’s seeing Ineida Collins, so I got problems. I figure it’d be wise to learn some more about Willy Hollister.”

“I understand,” Nudger said. “The better to know if his intentions toward the lady are honorable, as they used to say.”

“And in some quarters still do,” Fat Jack pointed out. “Only they don’t fight duels over those matters around here anymore; in a duel both parties have a chance. What we see now are mostly one shot affairs, usually in somebody’s back.”

Nudger felt a cold twinge of fear. He didn’t like murder; he didn’t even like talking about murder.

“Are you afraid David Collins might shoot you?” he asked.

Fat Jack lifted the massive shoulders inside his pale jacket. “Naw, I guess not. What I’m afraid of is he’ll see to it that I wanna shoot myself.”

Nudger wasn’t totally reassured. Nobody could exude fear like a fat man, and fear seemed to live and feed inside Fat Jack like a malignant overmatched tapeworm.

“Who’s Marty?” Nudger asked, looking around but not seeing the brown-suited man who’d so skillfully handled trouble earlier in the evening.

“Marty Sievers,” Fat Jack said. “He’s my floor manager.”

“You mean bouncer?”

“Naw. Marty’s in charge when I’m not here. And we don’t need a bouncer with him around. He’s ex-Green Beret.

Black belt, all that mean stuff. But he don’t use it if he don’t have to.”

“The ones who really have it usually are that way,” Nudger said.

“I guess. You know any martial arts? A guy in your business should.”

“I’m yellow belt,” Nudger said, “only mine runs vertically, up the back.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Have you talked to Marty about Hollister?”

“Some. Not much. I asked him to keep an eye on the situation, keep me clued in on anything that happens between Ineida and Hollister that I should know about. Marty’s too busy running the place to see much else, though. He’s got enough of a job keeping watch on the liquor and seeing the help don’t dip into the till.”

The lights did their three-time dimming routine again, the crowd quieted, and Willy Hollister was back at the piano. But this time the center of attention was the tall dark-haired girl leaning with one hand on the piano, her other hand delicately holding a microphone as if the heat from her fingertips might melt it. Inside her plain navy-blue dress was a trim figure. She had nice ankles, a nice smile, nice eyes. Nice was a word that might have been coined just for her. A stage name like Ineida Mann didn’t fit her at all. She was prom queen and Girl Scouts and PTA and looked as if she’d blush fire-engine red at an off-color joke. But maybe all of that was simply a role; maybe she was playing for contrast. Showbiz types were good at that.

Fat Jack knew what Nudger was thinking. “She’s as straight and naive as she looks,” he said. “But she’d like to be something else, to learn all about life and love in a few easy lessons. You know how some young rich girls are.”

Nudger knew. “Is Hollister the guy to teach her?”

“You might think so, judging by his surface qualities, but I think he might be a phony. I think he might take her straight through to graduation, but no diploma. And that’s what scares me enough to hire you.”

Someone in the backup band announced Ineida Mann. There was light applause, and she acknowledged it with a smile, slipped into the pensive mood of the music, and began to sing the plaintive lyrics of an old blues standard. She had control but no range. Nudger found himself listening to the backup music, which included a smooth clarinet.

The band liked Ineida and went all out to envelope her in good sound, but the audience at Fat Jack’s was too smart for that. Ineida finished to more light applause, bowed prettily, and made her exit. Competent but nothing special, and looking as if she’d just wandered in from suburbia. But this was what she wanted and her rich father was getting it for her. Parental love could be as blind as the other kind. Sometimes it could cause just as much trouble.

The lights came on full brightness, and conversation and the sale of drinks stepped up in volume and activity. There apparently would be no more music for a while. Some of the customers began drifting toward the door, to continue roaming the night for more fun or blues or whatever else they needed. It was early yet; there was promise in the air.

“The crowd’ll thin out soon,” Fat Jack said. “It’s Hollister they came to hear.”

“They stuck around for Ineida’s act.”

“Jazz folks are a polite audience. And like I told you, Ineida ain’t all that bad. She’s worth the cover price, once the customers are in. But it’s people like Hollister that get them in.” Fat Jack took another delicate sip of his absinthe, diamond ring and gold bracelet flashing in the dimness. “So how are you going to get started on this thing, Nudger? You want me to introduce you to Hollister and Ineida? Or are you gonna sneak around sleuth-style?”

“Usually I begin a case by discussing my fee and signing a contract,” Nudger said.

Fat Jack waved his immaculately manicured, jewel-adorned hand. “Hey, don’t worry about fee. Let’s make it whatever you usually charge plus twenty percent plus expenses. Trust me on that.”