The King of Ragtime

by Larry Karp

  Birdie lifted her head from the straw. “How do you know somebody wasn’t hiding someplace inside the office?”

  Martin blew out a long breath. “I don’t, you’re right.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  No answer.

  Birdie pursed her lips. “Martin, where are the two of you staying? I want to know, in case I need to find you.”

  “Okay. We’re at Mr. Joe Lamb’s, in Brooklyn. He writes ragtime, and he’s a friend of Mr. Joplin’s. Come on, now, we don’t have much time. Tell me what’s been going on at the office. Maybe there’s something that’ll help me make some sense.”

  “Martin, you’re—”

  “Birdie, just tell me. Please.”

  Sigh. “Okay. When I came in, Mr. Tabor was already there, and old Walter was mopping up the floor in your office. Mr. Waterson hadn’t come in yet. A detective was there, and a policeman, the same ones who came to my house last night, looking for you. They took us, one at a time, into your office, and asked us questions about you and Sid. That went on pretty much all morning. After the policemen left, Mr. Tabor called me in and he started asking me questions. I told him I didn’t know anything about where you were, or anything else. He said he was concerned for you because when he saw you and Mr. Joplin going off down the block, he figured maybe you had walked in after Mr. Joplin killed Sid, so Mr. Joplin kidnaped you, and you might get hurt if we don’t find you soon.”

  “What did he think? Mr. Joplin held a razor to my throat and ran me off down Broadway?”

  Birdie tried to stifle a giggle with a hand to her mouth. “That’s exactly what I said to him. But he just looked at me, you know the way he does, like I was just the dumbest little cow he’d ever seen. Then he said, ‘No, Miss Kuminsky. Of course I didn’t think that. But a nig—’” She caught herself. “Mr. Joplin, I’m sorry.”

  Joplin shook his head. “Never mind. I’ve heard the word before.”

  The girl was crimson-faced. “He said a nigger keeps a razor strapped to his leg, a knife in one pocket, and a gun in the other. He thought maybe you were taking Martin away with a gun pointed at him.

  Martin pictured Joplin a few days before, raging at Lester Walton, and had to admit to himself, he could see Joplin in one of his terrible fits, shooting Walton to death. What he could not picture was Joplin slipping a gun into his pocket in the first place, or strapping a razor to his leg.

  Birdie looked at the big clock above the counter, drew in a sharp breath. “I’d better go—there’s nothing else I can tell you. After Mr. Tabor was done with me, he gave me that awful pile of bloody papers and told me to recopy them, fast as I could, and not make any mistakes. I’ve been working all day, and I haven’t heard anything else about the murder. Please be careful. And let me know how you are. I’m scared.” She squeezed his hand as she pushed the folder of blank pages toward him. A quick smile for Joplin, then she was gone and out the door at a trot, dodging through the foot traffic.

  For a moment after she left, neither Martin nor Joplin spoke. Then Joplin said, “She’s a lovely girl. When she talks, she puts melodies into my mind.”

  Martin grinned. “‘The Birdie Rag’. You’ll have to write it out and dedicate it to her.”

  Joplin hummed several notes.

  Martin sucked the last bit of egg cream through the straw, then muttered, “Damn! I don’t even know where to start.”

  ***

  As he stepped out of the rail car, John Stark looked around the platform, but no sign of Nell. She’d said she’d meet him, and when Nell said something, that something happened. Perhaps she was out at the gate. Stark worked his way ahead, up the stairs, elbow to elbow, until the crowd pushed its way into the main concourse of Pennsylvania Station and suddenly thinned. Like going through a funnel backward.

  From the top stair, he spotted Nell, on tiptoes, glancing this way and that. When she finally caught sight of her father, she smiled, if a bit tentatively, then walked up to give him a peck on the cheek. Stark cleared his throat, a sound that never failed to put his daughter on full alert. “I’m glad to see you, my dear. Jim’s working, is he?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Let’s get your bags and get out of here.”

  Stark raised his eyebrows.

  At the baggage claim, Nell reached to grab the suitcase away from Stark. He swung it to his other hand. “I’m not incapacitated, Nell. But thank you. Besides.” He turned a sly smile her way. “I’d say you have all you can handle with that bag of yours—it’s two feet across, if it’s an inch.”

  “It’s a foot and a half, Dad. Where else am I supposed to put my music and my stand, never mind all the things you stuff into your pockets? In case you hadn’t noticed, women don’t have pockets.”

  So easy to get her goat, ever since she was small. Stark supposed by now it was expected of him, that not to bait her might suggest his affection had lessened. “Just so, my dear. Let’s get on our way.”

  They pushed through the mass of humanity, flowing this way, that way. Whiffs of bad breath, a persistent stink of unwashed bodies, then as they finally pushed their way into the main waiting room, Stark stopped to gawk at the four entry staircases. He raised his eyes up to the gorgeous tiled arches, fifteen stories above his head. Nell chuckled. “You look like a jay, Dad, fresh off the farm. You lived here, remember?”

  Stark shook his head. “You remember. They didn’t open this until after Mother and I left. I’ve never seen it…magnificent. Wasn’t it designed after one of the ancient Roman baths?”

  “Caracalla, enlarged twenty percent. Dad, please, enough history lesson. Let’s get back to the apartment. We need to talk.”

  Stark narrowed his eyes. “More trouble than you told me about over the telephone, eh?” He hefted his suitcase and began to walk.

  She easily matched his pace. “We’ve had some new developments, yes.”

  ***

  Nell led her father into a small room with a four-poster bed, dresser and oak rocker. “Chez Stanley’s guest room, Dad. As long as you’re here, any stranded musicians will just have to find another place for the night. I hope you’ll be comfortable.”

  Stark looked around, nodded approval. “I’m sure I will be. You’ve got a very nice place, my dear. West Seventy-second Street, I’m impressed. I could never have aspired to live in this neighborhood.”

  “Our family never lacked for anything, Dad, not anywhere we lived. Jim just wanted to be in a neighborhood where I wouldn’t have to be concerned to go out by myself to buy groceries.”

  “He’s a good man, Nell. I couldn’t want a better son-in-law.”

  He couldn’t have missed the cloud that sailed across his daughter’s face, but it was gone as fast as it appeared. “He’s a good husband.”

  “At work, is he? Recording session?”

  “Yes and no. He’s on the road with his Quartette, a short tour through New York State, Pennsylvania and Ohio. One of the music acts in a Keith program fell apart all of a sudden. Their trumpeter had ideas about starting his own orchestra, and ran off with the singer. So Keith asked Jim to plug their hole with the Stanley Quartette.”

  Stark picked up on the bitter turn in her speech. “In a way, that’s a compliment.”

  No answer.

  “But you’re their accompanist, and here you are. I hope you didn’t refuse to go out of spite.”

  Her eyes flared; he readied himself for a full frontal assault. But she shook her head, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. “You know me better than that. No, I stayed…oh, Dad, Scott is just in terrible condition. One minute he’s his old self, gentle, polite, good-humored, and the next, he’s throwing dishes and screaming about the way someone he passed on the street looked at him. Lottie’s worn down to her bones, trying to look after him. It was easier to find another pianist for the Quartette than someone who could help Lottie take care of Scott.”

  Stark banged a fist onto the top of the dresser. “C
ruel! Joplin always wanted more than anything to be respected and respectable. To have him dying like this, of such a disease.” He shook his head. “I’d have sworn on anything holy he never visited a sporting house, except to play piano to put food on his table.”

  “Brothels aren’t the only places a man can get syphilis, Dad. I won’t have you thinking any the less of him.”

  The Irish in her voice set him on his heels. “I hope you know me better than that. I was commenting on the irony, nothing more. Our Lord in Heaven’s got a nasty sense of humor.”

  Nell began to cry, then walked to the doorway, pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed at her eyes. Stark took a step toward her, but stopped, let his hands fall to his sides, and stood, waiting. Finally, Nell said, “It was a good thing I did stay. The situation has gotten considerably worse since I talked to you.”

  Stark sat on the edge of the bed.

  “There’s been a murder.”

  “Scott didn’t—”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But the police do. And the young man with him—”

  “‘Young man with him…’ Nell, where is Joplin. Just what’s going on here?”

  She motioned with her head toward his suitcase. “Why don’t you get your bag unpacked, and I’ll make some coffee. It’s going to take a little while to tell you about it.”

  Stark began to object, thought better of it. Instead, he swung his suitcase up and onto the bed, flipped the catches, pulled the lid open. Nell’s eyes were like dinner plates. “Dad—what on earth? You carried that cannon on the train, all the way from St. Louis? What ever were you thinking? This is New York, not the wild west.”

  Rather than angering him, his daughter’s indignation struck him funny, and he began to laugh. “I know where I am. Isaac badly wanted to come along, but he broke his leg squirrel-hunting a couple of weeks ago, and he’s got a big, clumsy cast on it. He came to the station with me, and just as I was getting aboard, he handed me the gun and insisted I take it. I was not about to hurt his feelings.” Stark opened the top bureau drawer, laid the pistol inside, then the kerchief full of bullets. He pulled a pile of shirts from the valise, and set them in the drawer on top of the weaponry. “There.” He smiled at Nell. “Isaac sends his love. For that matter, so do Till, Margaret and Meggy.

  Nell flushed. “Sorry, Dad, I should have asked. How are they all?”

  Stark shrugged. “Isaac is impatient with his cast, but otherwise well. Till and Margaret, you know. Dear people, both of them, but the same as ever, perhaps more so. And Meggy…” The old man’s eyes lit. “There’s a girl after my own heart. She’s fourteen, and in a few years, she’s going to want something more than what she can find in Maplewood.”

  His daughter gave him the fish eye. “For which, I’m sure, you can take credit.”

  “As I do with you. I only hope I’ll be around long enough to help her when she’ll need it.”

  Nell shuffled in place. “I can’t imagine you won’t. Why don’t you finish unpacking, then come in the kitchen. I’ll make us that coffee, and bring you up to date.”

  ***

  Good thing Martin sat facing the door. He had his hand in his pocket, reaching for a nickel to leave the waiter, when he spotted two bluecoats walk into the deli and up to old Mrs. Schneider behind the cash register. He nudged Joplin’s hand. “Mr. Joplin, don’t turn around,” a rough whisper. “Cops just came in here.”

  Joplin hunched his shoulders. “So?”

  “Maybe they’re looking for us. The murder yesterday, remember? We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Joplin turned as if by reflex and looked toward the stairs leading down to the men’s room.

  “No, that won’t work. They’ll go down there for sure, and we’ll be trapped. There’s a delivery alley behind this whole block, so there’s gotta be a door from the kitchen.” He motioned with his eyes to his left, toward the steel swinging doors. “At least, let’s hope there is. Come on.”

  “But when are we going to talk to Berlin about my music?”

  “Later. When Birdie tells us we can.”

  As he spoke, Martin pulled Joplin out of his chair. They slithered across the aisle, and through the swinging doors, into the kitchen. Six pairs of eyes took them in: two cooks behind a stovetop counter, a colored man washing dishes, and three waiters, putting plates of food onto trays. Martin pulled Joplin toward the back of the room, where the outside door sat open, propped with a broom, to vent the broiling heat. One of the cooks, a heavy man in grease-stained whites, moved in front of the runaways, arms folded across his chest, his more-than-ample body blocking the doorway. “Skippin’ out on the check, boys?” A snarl.

  Martin pointed back toward the restaurant. “I paid the check, but listen—there’s a couple gorillas just came in, their boss is holding my marker off some bad horses. They see me, they’re gonna start shooting, and neither one of us knows how good their aim is.” He stepped toward the door. “Come on, we don’t have a whole lot of time.”

  The cook didn’t change expression, but he did move aside. “Aw right, go ahead. I’ll shut the door an’ tell ‘em you was never here.”

  Martin and Joplin charged into the alley and took off running as the door snapped shut behind them. Martin clutched Joplin’s arm, urged him on, taking care he didn’t stumble and fall. At Broadway, they turned downtown and melted into the crowd as they worked their way to the Times Square subway station. Martin dropped the nickel he was going to give the waiter into the slot, pushed Joplin through, then fed the machine a second nickel, charged onto the platform and shoved himself and his teacher onto an uptown local.

  As the subway rumbled past Fiftieth Street and through Columbus Circle, Martin snuck a peek at the paper in his pocket. Yes, Mrs. Stanley did live on West Seventy-second, Number 114. He could leave Joplin there. Come to think of it, didn’t Mr. Berlin also live on Seventy-second? Sure. Mr. Waterson was always making fun of him behind his back, saying, “I live in d’ Cha-a-tswoith, on Sev’ndee-sekkint, right by Riv’sidrive.” Which gave Martin an idea. But first, he had to get Mr. Joplin off his hands before his teacher’s behavior landed the two of them behind bars.

  He readied himself to get off at Seventy-second, but then thought about what Mrs. Stanley would have to say to him for running out of Mr. Lamb’s apartment. Besides, Mr. Lamb had given her a spare key, and what would she do but haul him and Mr. Joplin right back there, no questions asked, and there he’d have to stay. He’d better cook up a different stew, and in a hurry. Maybe take Mr. Joplin back to his missus?

  They stayed on the train through the stop at Seventy-second, then swayed back and forth with the motion of the car to 135th Street, where Martin herded Joplin out of the car and up the stairs into brilliant sunlight. Five shouting ten-year-olds dodged past the two adults, ran up to a hydrant on the corner, and went to work with a large wrench. Martin laughed, then looked up and down the street, caught sight of a Nedicks sign half a block up St. Nicholas Avenue. He took his teacher’s arm, guided him along the sidewalk, into the Nedicks, and up to the bank of telephone booths. He knew the number, had called it many times over the past several months, and as he recited it for the operator, he prayed Lottie would be in.

  Three rings, then, “Hello?” A woman’s voice.

  “Mrs. Joplin?”

  “Who this be?”

  Probably thought he was the police. “Mrs. Jop…” He faltered. “Mrs. Joplin, this is Martin Niederhoffer.”

  “Martin, you sound scared. Something the matter? Something happen to Mr. Joplin?”

  The boy pushed words through a tight throat. “No, Mr. Joplin’s fine. He’s here, with me.”

  “At Mr. Lamb’s house, right?”

  “Well, no…not exactly. Mrs. Joplin, it’s a long story. I had to do something, and I didn’t want to leave Mr. Joplin by himself. But I’ve got more to do now, and I need to get him back to you. I figured I’d better call instead of com
ing over.”

  Short silence. Then Martin heard, “Boy, are you tellin’ me you walked outa Mr. Lamb’s place, took Mr. Joplin with you, and now you’re out on the streets someplace?”

  “Well, yes…that’s kinda it. We’re at the Nedicks on St. Nick, half a block up from 135th. That’s where I’m calling from.”

  “Hoo-ey! Well, I guess the best thing I can say is you got at least enough brains in your head, you didn’t just come gallivantin’ right over here. Cops’ve been by, and they got one of them all the time out in front of my house. Why you don’t you take Mr. Joplin back to Mr. Lamb’s?”

  “Because we’re locked out of there, and Mr. Lamb won’t be back for at least another couple of hours. And I have got some stuff I need to do. Isn’t there some way I can get Mr. Joplin to you? Then you could check with Mrs. Stanley and see if you should take him to her place or back out to Mr. Lamb’s. Mr. Lamb gave her a key last night. I’ll come by later, when I’m done.”

  Silence.

  “Mrs. Joplin?”

  “Hold on to your pants, Martin, I be thinkin’. All right. You know where’s the Alamo Club? On 125th?”

  “No, I never—”

  “Between Seventh and Eighth Avenues.”

  “I can find it.”

  “Mr. Joplin’ll recognize it. Go through the bar room and on inside the big room. I’ll see you there.”

  “But how are you going to get past the cop?”

  “You leave that to me, boy. Just get yourself and Mr. Joplin over to the Alamo, fast as ever your feet can move you.”

  Martin hung up the phone, feeling like an eight-year-old whose mother had just finished bawling him out and told him he should wait until his father got home. He shuffled out of the booth and looked around. No Joplin.

  His first thought was to get himself outside, fast as ever his feet could move him, and not slow down until he was in Chicago. But then he looked toward the rear of the store, and there was his piano teacher, counting out money and giving it to a white-clad soda jerk. Then Joplin walked away from the counter, carefully carrying a waxed-paper cup in each hand. He gave one to Martin, and took a long drink from his own. “I’m real thirsty,” he said. “The way we’ve been running around.”