The King of Ragtime

by Larry Karp

  He hurried around the corner and into the building, but took the stairs more slowly, one at a time, first the left foot, then the right, all the while sliding his hand along the wooden rail. Careful. A fall wouldn’t be his first, but it could be his last, and he didn’t want to be found, broken-limbed, broken-necked, at the foot of the stairs, then be carted off to the morgue and dumped into a grave with five other bodies and enough quicklime to dissolve them all, leaving Lottie to wonder the rest of her life what had happened to him. If could bring in money, enough to last that dear woman as long as she lived, and still provide the composer a dignified grave with a headstone. SCOTT JOPLIN, it should say, AMERICAN COMPOSER. And the dates of his birth and death.

  On the second-floor landing, he paused to catch his breath. The glass door to an accounting firm faced him; he caught sight of a figure inside, an old stooped colored man. Probably the janitor, grown long in the tooth on his job, his employer kindhearted enough not to sack him. But then Joplin realized, no, that wasn’t what he saw. He was looking at his own reflection in the glass. He turned away, hurried up the next flight of stairs faster than wisdom would have recommended, then started down the hall.

  All of a sudden, a man barreled past him, put a hand to his shoulder, and ran to the stairs. The shove sent Joplin reeling, nearly knocked him to the floor. Someone ought to teach that fool some manners, the composer thought, but before he could say a word, the man was gone, crashing down the staircase. Joplin sighed, then walked the rest of the way down the hall and through the open doorway into Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder’s empty Reception Room.

  Like his last visit: no one in sight. No sounds. Was Berlin back in his office? Joplin walked past the reception desk and along the far corridor, past one closed door after another. Near the end of the hall, he saw sunlight streaming through an open doorway to form a rectangle on the floor. Berlin must have left the door open for him; he hurried into the room. But no, it wasn’t Berlin’s office. It looked like a bookkeeper’s little space…and, yeah, there was Martin, his pupil, head-down on his desk. Must be working late, and fell asleep on the job. Or could he be waiting for Joplin? Did he find out Berlin wanted to publish Scott Joplin’s new musical and put it on stage, and now he was going to help his piano teacher?

  Joplin trotted into the room. “Martin…hey, there…Martin.” No answer. Boy must’ve been up dancing all night, that little girl of his was a real live wire. The composer reached toward the young man’s shoulder to shake him awake, then suddenly realized it was not Martin. Martin had red hair; this man was blond. Just another bookkeeper. Oh, Scott Joplin, you fool, you goddamn fool! You thought that boy was different, he was going to help you like he said he would, but he’s just like everybody else. Just like Walton, just like Europe and Johnson, Otis Saunders…that pimp Morton, calls himself Jelly Roll…everybody. A little sweet talk, a promise that’s a lie from the start, that’s enough for Scott Joplin, he can go to hell, and nobody would care. The composer grabbed the blond man by the collar of his jacket, pulled him off his seat, and flung him to the floor.

  ***

  Martin Niederhoffer, primed to blast through those columns of sales figures in nothing flat, marched through the doorway, then stopped as if he’d walked into a glass wall. For a few seconds, he stood like an ox, gawking at Scott Joplin, a razor in his hand, crouched over Sid Altman, down on the floor next to the desk. Blood all over Joplin, over Sid, over the floor, over everything. The open ledger was covered with blood; blood dripped from the top of the desk. Finally, whatever held the bookkeeper in place let go, and he ran toward Joplin, dodging the pooled blood on the floor, taking care to keep Sid between the composer and himself. Quick glance at his friend’s doughy, blood-smeared face, oh, Jesus! Throat gaping ear-to-ear, like a second mouth, shirt a blood-soaked rag. Martin looked a question at Joplin, but Joplin didn’t seem to pick up. Finally, the bookkeeper pointed from the razor to Sid, then managed a strangled, “Mr. Joplin… What…why?” Sounding to his own ears like he was choking on his words.

  “I came in to see Irving Berlin, and I saw…” Joplin jabbed the razor toward Sid. “He was in your chair, there, he looked like he was asleep at his work, and I thought he was you, maybe you were waiting to come in with me to talk to Mr. Berlin. But when I saw he didn’t have your red hair, I got sore, and gave him a shove, and that’s when I saw…” With a wave of the razor, the composer took in the cut throat and all the blood; Martin quickly ducked away. “…this razor, down there on the floor, and I picked it up. Stupid!” Joplin flung the razor down; it bounced off Sid’s chest, onto the floor.

  Martin had to strain to make out Joplin’s words, flying by at breakneck pace, no space whatever between them. “You didn’t…?” The young man could only point at his friend, sprawled like a recently-dispatched cow in an abattoir.

  Joplin shook his head violently. “I’d never…Martin, you know me. Do you think I could ever do a thing like that?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “We better call the police.”

  Which brought Martin around. “You really didn’t kill him?”

  “As God is my witness.”

  “All right. I believe you. But if we call the cops, they’ll never believe you. They’ll cart you off, and you’ll be as good as convicted.”

  “But I didn’t do it.”

  Martin tried to think. Wash the blood off Joplin’s hands, then tell the cops…what? That Martin and Joplin came in together and found Sid’s body? Then they’d both be suspected; there was nobody else in the office. Besides, did he really think Joplin could remember all the details of a made-up story, once the cops went to work on him? They’d break him down in nothing flat, and then the two of them would be in the soup for fair. And if they told the cops the truth, that Martin came out of the bathroom and found Joplin and Sid and the razor…wait. What if they got rid of the razor? Toss it in the incinerator, then call the cops? Martin sighed. No good. Joplin would forget, say something about a razor, and that would be that. Tell the story any way it didn’t happen, Joplin would give it away; tell it the way it did happen, Martin walking in on a colored man, razor in hand, squatting over a dead white man, and Joplin was a dead colored man.

  Martin looked from his teacher’s bulging eyes to his open mouth, to his trembling fingers. Those fingers had been shaking so much lately, he’d been having trouble getting them onto the right piano keys. No, Martin, thought, he didn’t kill Sid. Sid spent all day hauling sacks of vegetables and fruit, tossing them around like they weighed nothing. If Joplin had grabbed Sid, Sid would have made Hamburg steak out of him.

  The bookkeeper tugged at the composer’s sleeve. “Come on, Mr. Joplin—the cops’ll be sure you or me or maybe even both of us did this. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Joplin pulled away. “I’ve got to see Mr. Berlin, that’s why I came here. He called me to come down to talk about my musical.”

  Martin blinked. How much crazier was this going to get? “Mr. Berlin called you?”

  “Yes. About If. I think he wants to publish it and put it on stage. I’ve got to find him.”

  “But how would he know about it? We haven’t taken it down to him yet.”

  Joplin turned away and started toward the door. Martin caught him with both arms, wrestled him against the wall. “Mr. Joplin, listen. Please. Mr. Berlin isn’t here.”

  Joplin writhed and squirmed, but was no match for Martin’s strong, healthy arms. “He called me, Martin. Let me go now, hear? I’ve got to see him.”

  “Damn it, Mr. Joplin, I told you, he is just…not…here. Please, Mr. Joplin, trust me. Right now, you and me have got to get someplace else, fast. Then, after we figure out what’s going on, we can go talk to Mr. Berlin.” Martin paused to catch his breath, glanced at the razor on the floor, beside Sid’s hand. He’d read in the papers, police could sometimes use fingerprints to catch killers, and even he could see Scott Joplin’s prints, clear as day, in the blood on that razor. Martin snatc
hed it up, wiped it briskly on Sid’s shirt sleeve, then folded it and dropped it into his pocket. “Mr. Joplin, take off your shirt, put it on inside-out. That way, the blood won’t show so much. Your suit’s OK, it just looks like dark stains. Come on, now, hurry up.”

  ***

  Bartlett Tabor walked slowly up Broadway. The clock on the big billboard atop the roof of the Strand Theatre Building read six twenty-five; to the right of the clock, thick red letters stated it was TIME TO LIGHT A CHESTERFIELD. Time to check out Niederhoffer, Tabor thought. He walked into the building and up to the elevator, but then remembered, the operator left at five-thirty. He muttered a curse, and started up the stairs.

  A couple of stairs down from the third floor, Martin heard footsteps. He put a hand on Joplin’s arm, peered over the railing, saw Tabor, whispered a brief curse of his own, then put a finger to his lips and pulled the composer into the pass-through behind the elevator shaft. Carefully, he edged his head forward to watch the top of the stairwell. When he saw Tabor come up onto the landing, he ducked back to the far side of the space, pulling Joplin with him, then listened hard. Key in a lock…door opening…slamming shut. Martin blew out a sigh, then pulled Joplin from behind the elevator shaft and onto the stairwell. “Let’s go!” he half-whispered.

  Tabor walked through Reception and down the corridor to the bookkeeper’s space. One step inside the doorway, he stopped cold at the sight of a body on the floor, sprawled in a lake of blood. Niederhoffer? Tabor rushed forward. No, not Niederhoffer. Who in hell—

  Tabor sprang back from the body, flattened against the wall. The office was stone-quiet. He charged out, through the Reception Room, into the hallway, and leaned over the rail to peer down the stairwell. Footsteps, but all the way down—he’d never catch them. Back he charged through Reception and into his office, yanked the window up, and leaned forward just in time to get a clear view of a red-headed white man hustling a colored man out of the building, onto the sidewalk, and then out of sight past the Strand marquee. “Christ,” Tabor muttered. “Niederhoffer—and that looks like Scott Joplin with him. God damn that crazy nigger.” He banged a fist on the wall, then hurried back to the receptionist’s desk and picked up the phone.

  ***

  As Martin and Joplin shoved their way through the Broadway crowd toward the Fiftieth Street subway kiosk, a young man lowered himself into a dark-red plush armchair next to a gleaming mahogany grand piano in the living room of his suite in the Chatsworth Apartments on Seventy-second Street, just short of Riverside Drive. Six-thirty, the workday finished for most people, but this young man wasn’t most people. He was Irving Berlin, Composer of A Hundred Hits, The Boy Who Revived Ragtime. When Irvy first saw light, twenty-eight years earlier, in Russia, he was Israel Baline. Six years later, the boy came with his family through Ellis Island, then grew up on the teeming streets of New York’s lower east side, where he was known as Izzy. No one in the Great Land of Opportunity had a sharper eye for the main chance than Izzy Baline, but what the skinny little guy had in push, he lacked in polish, and so, when the newly-designed-and-labeled Irving Berlin moved uptown, he was determined to leave Izzy behind on Cherry Street. But a little thing like a court document changing his name was not nearly sufficient to convince the tenacious, rough-spoken Izzy he no longer existed. Where Irvy went, Izzy went, and he spoke his mind freely whenever he thought Irvy was in any way falling short.

  Berlin eyeballed the magazine reporter, smoothing her skirt on the couch to his right. One of those women, flirting with forty, eats like a bird and smiles to herself when her friends call her Slim. Creamy silk blouse under a perfectly-tailored smart gray suit, blonde hair curling every which way from under the matching gray cloche hat. That sparkler on her left ring finger was a whole year’s-worth of royalties from “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and then some. She’s gotta be a sharp dame, not enough going on around the house to keep her busy and interested, so she writes articles for magazines. Respectable articles, respectable magazines. Kinda magazines where Irving Berlin’s name needs to be.

  The composer cleared his throat. “Sorry to be a little late, Mrs. Allred, but I had some pressing business. I’m writing a musical with Victor Herbert for Flo Ziegfeld, and the time’s getting to be pretty short.” He lowered his jaw just enough to part his lips, then opened his eyes wide and dropped his gaze. He chuckled, just the right bit of self-deprecation.

  It worked. It always did with woman-reporters. Mrs. Allred smiled openly. “That’s all right, Mr. Berlin. Your butler made me very comfortable. And considering how busy you are, it was good of you to fit me in at all.”

  “Well, you said your deadline was in the morning.” Berlin extended his hands in an extravagant shrug. “So what could we do, huh?” Big smile. Pain in the ass, but it’d be crazy to kiss off a feature piece in Green Book.

  Mrs. Allred pulled a notebook from her purse, flipped it open, said, “I do appreciate that, and I’ll try not to keep you too long. My piece will be titled, ‘How The Ragtime King Writes His Songs.’”

  “I guess I can help you with that, all right.” Berlin gestured at the lustrous grand. People think I just sit down at the piano, hit maybe a couple of keys, half an hour, and boom, there’s my next hit song.” Quick finger-snap. “But that’s not how it goes. A song’s kinda like a kid, you know, bashful, but maybe a little bit of a wisenheimer, it stands there sticking out its tongue at me, and it goes, ‘Nyah, nyah. Betcha can’t catch me.’ But I sit at the piano and play and play, because I know the song’s there, all right, and if I don’t let the kid get my goat, sooner or later, I am gonna nail it.”

  He ratcheted the corners of his lips for the lady. Sweet, endearing little Irving Berlin, just a tiny bit embarrassed.

  “I’m sure that must be very frustrating, Mr. Berlin.”

  “Quick flash of panic. ‘I’m sure that must be very frustrating, Mr. Berlin’. Sarcastic? And that smile on her face—was she mocking him? He rushed to speak. “No, it ain’t…that is, it isn’t frustrating, not really. Just part of the game. That’s why a good songwriter can’t be on any kind of a schedule. I’m always writing songs. The tune I was working on last night? It’s in my head right now. Even while I’m talking to you.”

  The woman’s smile covered her face. “Would I be presumptuous…that is, would you be willing to play that tune for me?” She pointed. “On your piano. It would be just fascinating.”

  “Well, sure, why not? Berlin stood, then walked slowly to the piano, stretching his fingers as he went. Draw the woman’s eyes to his hands, and maybe she won’t notice how he’s only five-six. He slid onto the piano bench, looked back at the interviewer. “Remember a little while ago, I told you what I’m working on right now?”

  “Yes, of course. Mr. Ziegfeld’s new revue. Victor Herbert and you. It’s called The Century Girl, isn’t it?”

  Izzy cackled. “Herbert and you! Not you and Herbert.”

  God damn it, she was mocking him. Irving Berlin was a songwriter, but Victor Herbert didn’t just write songs. He composed serious music, conducted orchestras, played instrumental solos. Next to Victor Herbert, Irving Berlin was a singing waiter with a shtick. Berlin willed himself to keep talking. “I’m working on this one particular song,” he said, then turned to the piano and tossed the rest of his comments back over his shoulder. “It’s for Hazel Dawn, a duet for her to sing with one of the male leads. I’m calling it ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”

  He began to play a musical theme, a bit hesitantly, then picked up speed. Mrs. Allred leaned forward to peer over his shoulder. Perfume like that, she didn’t buy at the Five and Dime. Berlin felt sweat pop out across his forehead; a drop ran down from his armpit. “Mr. Berlin—you do play only on the black keys, don’t you?”

  “Nigger keys.” Izzy snickered. Show-biz lingo, everyone said it, even the colored. But Berlin knew better than to say it to a woman-reporter, never mind a society woman-reporter. Instead, he said, “That’s right. I compo
se in F-sharp major. The key of C is for people who study music.”

  The woman smiled. Going along with the gag? Or patronizing him? Keep talking, just keep talking. “Wait’ll you hear this song in the theater. It’s going to be one of my best. Most of the lyrics, I’ve got already.” His fingers tapped out the first theme again. “All I need now is to make the music—”

  “Fit,” said Mrs. Allred, just a little too brightly for Berlin’s taste.

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “And of course you will.”

  Berlin moved to take back control over the interview. “I know what—I’m gonna get you tickets for opening night. Then, you can let me know if I made it fit right. How’s that sound?”

  “Why, I’d be delighted,” Mrs. Allred crooned. “I’m certain you’ll make it fit, and I know I’ll simply love the song. Particularly after having been present at its birth.”

  “At least during the labor,” said Berlin, then winced as Izzy slapped his face. “Schmuck! One thing with the boys or chorus girls at rehearsals. But this is a society woman. You don’t talk about stuff like that in front of her.”

  “I…I’m sorry,” Berlin stammered. “I hope I didn’t offend you.”

  Mrs. Allred looked surprised, then confused, then finally burst into a full-throated laugh. “Oh, Mr. Berlin, no, of course not. You didn’t offend me in the least. And even if you did, I wouldn’t have valid grounds for complaint, would I? After all, I was your straight man.” She glanced down at her pad, pursed her lips, then looked back to the songwriter. “May I ask you just one more question?”

  Berlin resisted a fierce urge to look at his watch. He’d sooner sweep floors for an hour than give an interview, but every reader was one more potential sheet music buyer. And of course, once the articles were written, he loved to read them. Shy smile. “Well, yes. Of course. What’s the question.”