Jazz Funeral (Skip Langdon #3) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  “Hey, hey, Mel. What you doing?”

  What the hell. Why not say it? It was life or death. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  He turned full face toward her, took both her wrists and held them, as if to ward off an attack. “No, you aren’t.”

  “How do you know what I feel?”

  “Melody, we’re friends. You’re a real good friend to me. And you’re a great musician. But I don’t see us being anything else.”

  She wriggled out of his grasp, so embarrassed she thought she’d die on the spot. And angry.

  Furious. “Well, why not?”

  “Are you crazy? You’re a Capulet and I’m a Montague. Haven’t you got enough trouble without that crap?”

  “You’re such a racist!”

  “I am not. I just know this city. I know what would happen. And who needs it?”

  “Well, what would happen?”

  He shrugged. “People wouldn’t speak to us, in both our families, probably. Lots of your friends’d get pissed off. Some of mine too probably, at Country Day. And here in the real world, all of ‘em would. I got friends you haven’t even met, and won’t. They don’t like white folks.”

  “I can’t believe black people are such racists.”

  “Minority people can’t be racists. It doesn’t apply.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  He lowered his voice. It was obviously an effort. “Mel. Let me take you back, okay? We’re both tired.”

  She slept in her clothes that night, on a bare mattress, having stolen the sheets earlier. The meanness of it, the deprivation of it, suited her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Infuriated, hot, impatient beyond endurance, Skip sat in her car on Audubon Place, waiting for Ti-Belle to surface. Today was a prime day to look for Melody—Skip was sure she’d go to JazzFest, was positive she’d try to see the Boucree Brothers, and O’Rourke had saddled her with Ti-Belle. Skip was sending her silent psychic messages to get out to the fairgrounds, to have a yen for Boucrees. They were on at one. At twelve Ti-Belle came out, picked some flowers, and went back in.

  But a few minutes later she came out again with Nick, both in the official JazzFest uniform—shorts, T-shirt, running shoes (it was too dusty for sandals, and anyway, people stepped on your feet), straw hat, sunglasses, and belly pack containing cash and sunscreen. In an hour they’d be as sweaty as everyone else, and probably sticky from having strawberry sno balls spilled on them. Ti-Belle’s hair, pinned up against the heat, would be starting to escape in the same limp tendrils as the hair of the masses. JazzFest was a great leveler.

  Still, Skip wondered. Did you really just go out and mingle if you were a celeb? Of course they’d have backstage passes, but that didn’t seem like enough. There was still going to be the dealing-with-the-crowds problem, the spilled Sno Balls, the stepped-on feet, the prodigious lines for food, the pushing and shoving. It was the last day of the festival—the fans would be nearly eighty thousand strong, and it was eighty-five in the shade. Or would have been if there’d been any shade. Somehow, she couldn’t see these two braving the rolling sea of humanity for such a busman’s holiday.

  She hated to give O’Rourke any credit, but did Ti-Belle have the same idea Skip did? To track Melody down at the Boucrees’ performance? If ever Skip knew anyone had a gun, she knew Ti-Belle did. Maybe it was in her belly pack. In crowds like they’d be in, she could get within inches of Melody, shoot her, and melt away, just another straw hat and pair of khaki shorts. But what about Nick? He’d gone with her to buy the gun, but she could have given him some half-baked reason for needing it. Maybe she’d said her father had a brother who’d come gunning for her.

  Sure enough, Ti-Belle dropped Nick off at a friend’s. He opened the trunk, unloaded golf clubs, and kissed her good-bye. She drove straight to the fairgrounds.

  Skip’s heart was pounding. It wasn’t going to be easy, keeping anyone in sight in these crowds. Where were the Boucrees scheduled to play? She’d left her program in the car and couldn’t stop to get another or she’d lose her quarry. At first Ti-Belle moseyed like she didn’t have a thing on her mind, even standing in line for a rosemint tea. Then she started walking fast, cutting across to Congo Square and then toward the WVUE/WNOE stage, the one at the opposite end from the Ray-Ban stage, the biggest and most important—the one, now that she thought of it, where the Boucrees were most likely to play. It wasn’t what she’d expected. If Ti-Belle was going after Melody, surely she’d expect her to be at the Boucrees’ set.

  “Skip!” She looked around. She was being videotaped by a playful Steve.

  “Goddammit!” It was all she could to keep from making childish obscene gestures. Later she thought perhaps it was only the thought of being taped that had kept her from it. “I haven’t got time for this,” she hollered, and looked around for Ti-Belle.

  She’d lost her.

  Seventy thousand people at the fairgrounds, and no Ti-Belle in sight. What were the odds of finding her again? She probably had a better chance of winning the lottery.

  “Shit! Fuck! Kill!” People were staring at her. She decided to keep going in the same direction.

  “Skip! Wait up!”

  “Shut up, goddammit!” What was he trying to do, get her to strangle him in front of half the world?

  He caught up. “What’s going on?”

  She didn’t stop, kept barreling through the crowd. “My assignment, in case you’ve forgotten, is keeping Ti-Belle in sight. I saw her buy a gun yesterday, have good reason to think she’s going to try to kill Melody, and thanks to you I’ve lost her.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “I quite agree.”

  “Hey, wait. Is that her?”

  “Are you kidding? Is what her?”

  “Up there. In the hat.”

  She tried to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Which of the thirty thousand hats in view would that be?”

  “Pink band. Matches her T-shirt.”

  “Yes! Where?”

  “Come on.” He threaded through the crowd, close enough that Skip spotted her. Ti-Belle was still headed toward the stage at the far end of the fairgrounds.

  “Who’s at that stage?” she asked Steve.

  “Dixie Cups? No, their set’s over. I can’t remember; I’ve got to tape the Boucrees.”

  “At the Ray-Ban stage?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Damn! Why can’t I be two people?” She should have called in another officer, and there was no time now. She couldn’t risk losing Ti-Belle again.

  “Can I help?”

  “If anybody gets killed, just get it on tape.” There was no point telling him to look for Melody. He couldn’t do that and do his job too.

  The band onstage was a hot pop group, judging from the huge crowd, but Skip didn’t know them. And didn’t like them particularly, couldn’t understand why a singer like Ti-Belle wanted to brave the crowds to hear them.

  Ti-Belle skirted the edges of the crowd, undoubtedly looking for the backstage entrance. Skip wasn’t quite sure what to do. She could follow by using her badge, but the backstage area, the marked-off spot for VP fans, was so small she’d be spotted. Or rather, there were so few people in there, she couldn’t hide in the crowd. The actual area was huge. You entered from the back, walked across a long green space, then ended up in front of the stage and slightly to the right, separated only from the hoi polloi by metal barricades. The barricades were close to the stage at the front, but extended about fifty feet on the three other sides. It would take forever to walk around them, to push through the crowds, to observe Ti-Belle from the front of the stage. And if she decided to leave before Skip got there, Skip would lose her.

  That meant she had to follow her in. She sighed. Getting spotted might even be a deterrent. Ti-Belle wasn’t going to shoot anybody with Skip watching.

  Skip kept her distance, standing well behind the backstage crowd, behind Ti-Belle, and felt frustrated.

&nbs
p; It isn’t O’Rourke’s fault. He did me a favor—I’d never have known about the gun if he hadn’t given me that stupid order.

  Ti-Belle was boogying to the music, acting like anyone, the bass player’s girlfriend or something, anyone at all but a famous singer. She seemed blissed out, the last person in the world who’d shoot anyone.

  Should I leave?

  But in her heart she knew the chances of finding Melody at the Ray-Ban stage—even if she hadn’t changed her appearance again—were next to none.

  Yes, but at least I’d know I tried.

  Melody woke up, teeth chattering, at six A.M. She pulled the bedspread over her, and the blanket, which she had disdained the night before because it was rough and because she thought it might be harboring worse vermin than the ones she’d brought there herself. Bundled up, she realized she wasn’t cold. She was nervous.

  She tried deep breathing, then tensing and relaxing her muscles, but her tricks ran out with that one. Insomnia was new to her.

  Finally she just lay there, waiting for it to be late enough to get up. And realized she had the flu. She got up and threw up.

  But it wasn’t the flu. It was nerves.

  What the hell, she thought. I’m going to die today. No wonder I’m nervous.

  She was surprised when she heard bustling and traffic. She must have dropped off after all, like the other night when she had the crabs.

  That was last night.

  It seemed years away. She got up and went to the restaurant downstairs, knowing she had to eat to get through the performance. But she could get nothing down except some coffee, which left her wired and more nauseous still.

  She lay down for a little while, trying to recover, but her stomach felt like an entire Social and Pleasure club was marching in it.

  Finally she got up and applied the makeup that turned her black, wishing some magic could make it really happen. She thought about being reborn as a black person. How would that be? She couldn’t imagine it at all.

  Next the wig. Shopping with Joel, she’d considered a turban, but that emphasized her features too much, drew too much attention. Louise had wanted to sell them a wig with tumbling curls that she could shake around to hide her face, but it looked too much like her usual hair. She’d opted for a sleek, straight, shoulder-length one with long bangs that hung in her eyes; maybe they’d hide the blue. Billy DuPree had had plenty of sarong-type things in African fabrics, but too much skin would be exposed. She might get hot and the makeup might run. So she’d gotten a fabulous huge caftan with flowing long sleeves, which meant she had only her face, neck, hands, forearms, and feet, which would be in sandals, to worry about.

  Already she was sweating. The day was hot, the wig was hot, and the caftan was a furnace. Yet she had to dress here, because otherwise someone might see her white skin.

  She went back down to the air-conditioned restaurant and got a biscuit, which she crammed down, really felt she must. It was like a mud pie, baked dry in the sun.

  “Well, if it ain’t the African queen.” It was Terence, come up behind her. “Mama, you look fine.”

  His eyes were so obviously admiring, she actually believed him. He hadn’t looked at her like that when she was white, and that told her something; something painful. Joel would like her better this way too and she couldn’t produce it for him. She had convinced herself before she slept last night that Joel had rejected her for her own protection. Because he knew how hard it would be, being part of an interracial couple, and he wanted to spare her the pain. He loved her and he couldn’t bear to see her go through what black people had to go through as a matter of course.

  In the cold light of day, with Terence admiring her African magnificence, she saw this as pathetic grasping for straws. And she knew Joel hadn’t come for her because he was too embarrassed; or too frightened she’d pounce on him again.

  “I don’t feel so good,” she said, and ran for the door. She threw up at the curb.

  “You got the worst case of stage fright I ever saw in my life.”

  “I’ve got to go back up and brush my teeth.”

  She blocked everything out of her mind.

  Just get through it!

  But why? Why not just die now?

  Because I don’t want to! I want to sing before I die. I want to perform just once. Just this once.

  But she wasn’t sure she really did. She felt tired now, tired and wired at the same time. She wanted to lie down on the bed and stay there till she could gather enough strength to find a tall budding.

  She went downstairs. She wasn’t going to ask where Joel was, she had too much pride for that, but Terence said, “Joel’s sorry he couldn’t come. His daddy made him pack up all the equipment.”

  “It’s okay.”

  But she thought he understood how sad she was, wondered if Joel had told him why he didn’t want to come. He said, “You look just like Rwanda Zaire, you know that?”

  It was the name they’d decided to give her.

  Raymond had said, “Janis Frank! It sounds like a poor man’s Janis Joplin.”

  “We need a show biz kind of name,” said Martin, the patriarch, the one three or four of them called Daddy. “Something that sounds made-up and African. Kind of modern and political.”

  “Yeah,” Joel said. “Something to explain the weird outfit.”

  Rwanda Zaire was what they’d come up with. Melody liked it. It was stage magic, sleight of hand—if she kept saying she was black in a thousand different ways—her outfit, her skin, her name—it wasn’t going to occur to people that she wasn’t. She’d heard it said that magicians worked by telling the audience to look at their left hand while they did the trick with their right. She was an octopus with seven arms to distract them; it had to work.

  Terence said, “You know what, Rwanda? You’re lucky you got me instead of Joel. ‘Cause I got somethin’ that straight-arrow’d never have in a million years. Cine that stage fright so fast you forget its name.”

  “What?”

  “Hash. I got some hash you’re not gonna believe.”

  He packed a pipe—it couldn’t have been easy while driving, but he’d obviously had plenty of practice. “You light it.”

  She did, to be a good sport, but she was afraid to really inhale, not at all sure what it would do to her performance. “I’ll be okay,” she said. “I don’t really need it.”

  Sweat was running down her neck, and her teeth were chattering. Her heart was a jackhammer. Just as they pulled up to the fairgrounds, she said, “Terence? Could I change my mind?”

  He handed her the pipe. “Listen. We can’t close with ‘Blues for a Brother.’”

  She sucked on the pipe, knowing she’d made the right decision, hoping the hash would knock out the pain of the blow, her last and greatest disappointment. The great gesture she wanted to leave the planet with, and Terence was telling her she wasn’t going to get to do it. Her last fucking act on Earth!

  She said, “I sing that song or I don’t go onstage.”

  “What you so excited about? We’re gon’ do the song. Why you think we wouldn’t do the song? It’s a great song, we’re gon’ do it. It just can’t be last, that’s all.”

  “What are we going to close with?”

  “‘Tell It Like It Is.’”

  She’d argued against doing that one at all. It belonged to Aaron Neville and she couldn’t see the point. But they said that was the point—the audience knew it and loved it. It was a favorite.

  She didn’t care. The hash was working. She was going to sing Ham’s song and nothing else mattered.

  A couple of tokes was all it took. But Terence looked at her like a doctor: “That ain’t gon’ last long. Here.” He gave her a little bit to eat.

  She was a new person, a floaty, African kind of person, someone who glided rather than walked, and who couldn’t remember how she got onstage. All she knew was that Tyrone had said, “Miss Rwanda Zaire!” and she, Melody Brocato, was on the Ray-Ban stage
at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Singing to thousands and thousands of people. Singing her heart out. Belting “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”; belting like Janis; maybe better. She wasn’t aware of anyone or anything except the music, how damn good it felt to be there, to be doing it, singing it, feeling it, feeling the thing whatever it was, that came up through her feet and worked her body and her voice. Melody had melted. Even Rwanda had melted. There was nothing but the music.

  She could have sworn the Boucrees were playing at the top of their form, even better than usual, and she was with them. They were a unit, each note blending with each other note, her instrument blending with theirs, she blending with them, with each of them, and it was as close to a religious experience as she’d ever had or was ever likely to have. This was what music was. This was art, this was life!

  This was happiness.

  She was giddy with the happiness of it. The crowd liked her, she could tell that right away, but after “Turtle Blues,” they went crazy. Jumped up and down and hollered. It had been taking a chance to do that song, she knew that, but it showcased her—it was perfect for her. Tyrone was so excited he came forward and introduced her again. “Miss Rwanda Zaire, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Rwanda Zaire!” Melody took her bow like a pro, and they swung into “Tipitina.” Then two more upbeat songs and after that “Blues for a Brother.”

  Steve grabbed Skip from behind, for once having the sense not to shout her name and alert Ti-Belle. But she jumped as if stuck with a pin.

  “I’ve found Melody. Come on.”

  She followed without another word until they were out of the backstage area.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s singing with the Boucrees.”

  “Onstage? You mean just standing there in front of the whole world?”

  “Come on.” He pressed urgently through the crowd. “She’s now Rwanda Zaire, black blues singer. Her mirror wouldn’t know her. And let me tell you something—she’s fantastic. One of the best singers I ever heard.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”