In a True Light

by John Harvey

  Connie switched on the TV and clicked it off again; after half a chorus of Ella’s ‘Night and Day’, good or not, she consigned the disc to silence: vodka, peppermint tea; she lit a cigarette and stubbed it out. There was the newspaper, smoothed out on the kitchen work top after she had rescued it from the bin.

  UNKNOWN VICTIM IDENTIFIED

  The body of a young woman, found over a week ago alongside the West Side Highway, was confirmed yesterday as being that of thirty-six-year-old Diane Stewart, a nightclub singer who, until the time of her death, had been performing at the Manhattan Lounge. Police sources revealed that, although the most likely cause of death was being struck by a passing vehicle whose driver failed to stop, they have not, as yet, ruled out the possibility of foul play.

  Connie reached for another cigarette.

  Delaney’s voice: Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.

  She thought about the black bags stuffed full of clothing in the basement, waiting for the super to push them into the incinerator; the lipstick that had rolled down between the cushions of the settee, the hairgrips under the bed.

  Thought about the other women who had been a part of Delaney’s life, some of them, the ones she knew about. The week-ends in Baltimore or Philly, the sudden wayward flings in Vegas or Atlantic City, the countless one-night stands. Marks on his body where one or other had dug in her nails hard; once, a bruise that lingered like a stain upon his skin. Half-veiled hints at blows that had been struck, lessons forcibly taught and learned. And each time, when he had come back, half amused, contrite, she had closed her eyes and ears, shut out her fears, accepted him. From love and need or fear?

  Drawing deep on her cigarette, Connie opened the bottle of Absolut and filled a shot glass to the rim. When Delaney’s key turned in the lock the clear spirit splashed across the fingers of her hand.

  ‘Hi, sweetheart!’ Delaney called and then, seeing the open newspaper, ‘Been catching up on the news, I see.’ And, reaching past her, he tore the page in half and half again, before screwing the pieces to a tight ball in his hand.

  Ash spilled from the end of Connie’s cigarette on to the floor.

  ‘What?’ Delaney said, moving close. ‘You think that was anything to do with me? Yeah? That’s what you think?’

  Her eyes, the small tremor along her cheek, told him that it was.

  ‘Sure, I admit it. I waited till she was crossing against the traffic and stuck my foot down on the gas. Knocked her flying, sixty miles an hour. Smack! There, you feel better now? Now you know the truth.’

  Connie shivered and turned her back. ‘Vincent, don’t.’

  ‘Don’t what?’

  ‘Don’t tease me. Don’t lie.’ There were tears in her eyes as Delaney carefully folded back the collar of her shirt and began softly to kiss her neck, one hand reaching for her breast.

  ‘Vincent …’

  ‘Sshh.’

  24

  Eddie MacGregor was sitting in the lobby of the hotel when Sloane walked back in, mid-morning, MacGregor wedged into one of the low-backed chairs, uneasy, toying with an unlit cigarette.

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ MacGregor said. ‘I need a smoke.’

  The pianist’s hands were not quite steady as he struck one and then another match, his face the grey pallor jazz musicians often tend towards in daylight.

  ‘Pal of mine,’ MacGregor said, ‘bass player, got a call last night. Could he do a gig, short notice, backing some singer, place in midtown.’ MacGregor inhaled deeply, holding it down. ‘It’s Connie.’

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘Less someone else’s lookin’ to fuck up their career, using her name.’

  ‘Where?’ Sloane said. ‘Where is this?’

  ‘The Mint. On East Forty-ninth, between First and Second. Supper club. Nothing special.’

  Sloane nodded, aware of the adrenalin jolting through his veins. ‘Thanks,’ he said. And then, ‘You want to come along?’

  MacGregor shook his head. ‘Life’s too short to go that route twice.’

  Connie stood, front and centre, cigarette trailing an inch of ash in one hand, all but empty glass of vodka in the other. Her eyes were half closed, her back to the two curved tiers of empty chairs and tables, whatever was going through her mind at that moment hers and hers alone. The three musicians, piano, bass, guitar, waited, silent, in the cramped space towards the back of the stage. The bassist, Eddie MacGregor’s friend, leaned against the piano’s curve, while at the piano itself a youngish black man, head shaved, swayed the upper part of his body lightly side to side and resisted the temptation to touch the keys. Angled towards them, the guitarist, swivelling on his stool, made minor adjustments to his amplifier’s controls, smoke from the cigarette fixed between the strings of his instrument rising in a slow spiral to the ceiling. It was a little after four thirty in the afternoon.

  Delaney came through the doorway between the kitchen and the bar, pulled out a chair and sat down.

  Connie opened her eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘why don’t we try that again? And Wayne … is it Wayne?’

  ‘Wayne’ll do fine,’ the pianist said.

  ‘Okay, let’s take it up a tad this time, huh? We don’t want everyone dropping off into their hors d’oeuvres.’

  Wayne nodded at the other musicians, beat in time with the outside edge of his left shoe, and set off at a pace that had Connie waving her arms, ash falling across her clothes.

  ‘Hey, hey! A tad, I said, not a fuckin’ gallop.’

  With a grin Wayne brought them in again, medium tempo, eight bars that ushered Connie into the melody, ‘Day In, Day Out’, the fifth time they’d run through the tune that afternoon without ever once getting it right. This was fine until they came to the bridge, Connie stumbling over the words and knocking the microphone aside, cursing as she stalked off the stage towards Delaney’s table and slammed down her glass. ‘I need another drink.’

  ‘I know what you need,’ Delaney said, even and calm.

  ‘That asshole, he’s fuckin’ me around.’

  ‘Wayne?’

  ‘Yeh, fuckin’ Wayne.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Delaney said. He knew the last time Dee Dee Bridgewater had been in town and her regular pianist, the French guy, Eliez, had been taken sick, it had been Wayne she had asked for. Wayne, who had just come off a week at the Blue Note with Ron Carter’s band and was only doing this gig because of what he owed.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ Delaney said, ‘I’ll talk to Wayne. Meantime, why don’t you go back, check out your dressing room? Might find something, help the mood.’

  As Connie slipped from sight, Wayne pressed his thumb up against first one nostril then the other, sniffed loudly and laughed.

  Instead of laying out the two lines of coke on Connie’s dressing table horizontally, Delaney had crossed them in the shape of a kiss.

  The door was open to the street and Sloane stood listening as the sounds spilled out, a guitar solo swinging to a close. Even before he had entered, all the way back along the street, his stomach had been alternately looping some crazy loop or clenched tight in a knot. And now, before he set eyes on her, there was the voice, taking up the tune from the beginning of the middle eight and riding it almost jauntily home. ‘I Cried For You’. Pretty much the way Billie had sung it back in 1936, except there was no Johnny Hodges, no horns at all and the voice was lighter, thinner, distilled from a different draught of pain.

  He had stared at Connie’s picture, framed in the window – Opening Tonite – slender shoulders pale against the straps of a black dress, a face Sloane searched for signs of her mother and found in the eyes, the nose perhaps a little also, but certainly the eyes. For the rest, if this were to be trusted, Connie was thinner-faced, cheekbones sharp against her skin, closer to the Jane he had seen in Italy than the vivacious woman he had known in his late teens.

  You loved her, didn’t you? Of course you did. And you thought that she loved you, at least you wanted her to.
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  As the music started again Sloane eased the door wider and stepped inside.

  Connie was leaning over the keyboard, talking to Wayne; the pianist using a pencil to make notations on the sheet music spread along the top of the piano; bassist and guitarist laughing quietly at something one or other of them had said. Wayne relaying instructions now, the others nodding as Connie lit a cigarette, moved towards the microphone and stared out across the empty room.

  Watching, Sloane held his breath.

  The first sound came from Connie’s voice alone, an exhalation, one note sliding towards the next. The bass then, descending and ascending, a rhythm over which, wistful and slow, she drew the words. The guitar joining in, its chords adding texture, an extra bounce and spring, the tempo gradually increasing till, midway through the song, the pattern resolved and about to repeat itself again, the piano entered with a mazy, skittering run that buoyed Connie over the edge and carried her on, stronger now, towards the chorus end.

  Standing at the back, in shadow, only the stage lights on, Sloane’s mouth was dry, the skin at the back of his neck and along his arms electric and cold.

  ‘Good, isn’t she?’ Delaney said, his voice barely above a whisper, and when Sloane, surprised, spun round, Delaney stepped out of the near-dark, not quite as tall as Sloane but thicker set, his suit expensive, tie just so, rings on the fingers of both hands.

  Sloane nodded, said nothing.

  ‘First show’s at ten tomorrow,’ Delaney said amiably. ‘Come along, tell your friends.’ Deft as a dancer, he swivelled sideways, allowing room for Sloane to pass.

  Sloane didn’t move.

  ‘Okay,’ Delaney said, smile still in place but impatience in the voice, ‘you’ve had your freebie, now let’s go.’

  ‘I need to talk to her,’ Sloane said. ‘Connie.’

  ‘You say.’

  ‘I thought maybe after the rehearsal …’

  ‘Anyone wants to talk to Connie, first they talk to me.’

  ‘This is private,’ Sloane said. ‘Personal.’

  Delaney looked at him carefully, studying his face. On stage the trio were working their way through a medium-tempo blues, Connie sitting on the edge of the stage, smoking, listening. Delaney gestured towards the lobby and, with one last backward glance, Sloane followed him back through the door.

  ‘So what is it you need to talk about?’ There were photographs on the wall behind Delaney, framed and signed, some beginning to fade: Nancy Wilson, Jimmy Scott, Freddy King.

  ‘Her mother,’ Sloane said.

  ‘Her mother’s dead.’

  ‘And she knows?’

  ‘Of course she knows.’

  ‘Then it shouldn’t be a problem, my talking to her.’

  ‘About the money?’ The beginnings of a smile now in Delaney’s eyes.

  ‘What money?’

  ‘Whatever she left. The will.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about any money,’ Sloane lied.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Messages she wanted me to pass on, things she wanted to say.’

  ‘Shame she left it so fuckin’ late.’

  ‘She’d tried getting in touch before.’

  ‘Then she should’ve tried harder.’

  ‘Sometimes those things work both ways.’

  Back inside the body of the club, Connie was singing again. Miles Davis: ‘All Blues’. Sloane knew the melody, had never known it had words. ‘Look,’ Delaney said, changing tone, a reasonable man. ‘Connie, hearing when she did, it came at a bad time. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how she felt. Whatever it was she kept it to herself. She’s been goin’ through some stuff, you know? Tryin’ to put herself back together. This job here now, it means a lot to her, first time back in the city in I don’t know how long. She’s under a lot of pressure. This stuff you’re peddling, opening old sores, it’s not what she needs, okay?’

  ‘Maybe that’s for her to say, not you.’

  Delaney stared at Sloane and Sloane stared back. Distant, the piano was rolling out a phrase, rubato, deep in the left hand.

  Delaney’s expression changed. ‘You want to come in here, you pay your cover, listen to the show, eat your steak, whatever. That’s fine. But you keep away from Connie. Right away. That clear enough?’

  Sloane looked down at Delaney’s right hand, which was pointing, fingers extended, towards the centre of his chest. Gave him a look Delaney understood.

  Slowly, Delaney stepped back and smiled. ‘Maybe you’d be better off trying somewhere else. Stacey Kent’s at the Vanguard; I hear she’s pretty good.’

  Sloane held Delaney’s gaze for just long enough, turned and left, not looking back.

  Fifty yards along the street he stopped and leaned sideways against the wall, eyes closed, hearing again the brittle emotion in the voice as he tried to recapture the movement of the hands, the face. Jane’s daughter, yes, but his child? When you find her, then you will know. But what if you did not, for certain? And if he were not certain, why the chill in his belly, the trembling in his hands?

  25

  The remains of a Chinese meal sat in its waxed containers on the table; a bottle of wine that had been sent free with the delivery, uncorked and undrinkable. Connie never liked to eat before a show; with Delaney it was the reverse. Wearing dark suit trousers and a pale blue shirt, he sat slumped in the armchair, fidgeting a piece of shredded pork from between his teeth while he watched a rerun of The Crossing Guard on TV. Jack Nicholson and Angelica Huston slugging it out as if they meant every word.

  When Connie came in from the bedroom, still wearing her robe, he turned the sound down with the remote, bit his tongue about the time. Opening night and she was looking to be late.

  ‘Okay, sweetheart?’ he said, stroking her rear as he crossed to the drinks trolley, poured a small J&B for himself and for Connie an Absolut with a drizzle of tonic, a slice of lime. As many as half the apartments in the building opposite were brightly lit, no curtains drawn, no blinds – Rear Window without, as far as he could tell, the murder, the body in the trunk.

  ‘Vincent?’

  ‘Huh?’ Turning to face her, reading the anxiety in her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know about tonight.’

  Delaney set down the drinks, went slowly towards her. ‘You know what Wayne said to me, earlier? You know what he said?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Said he’d no idea just how fine you were.’

  ‘Then he’s a liar,’ Connie said.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ said Delaney, who was.

  Like stroking a cat, he felt the knots along her spine, taking pleasure from the way the skin slid over them beneath his fingers. ‘It’ll be better’n fine,’ he said. ‘It’ll be terrific.’

  Releasing her, he picked up her drink and took it to the kitchen for ice. Connie lit a cigarette and stood there, watching the screen: Nicholson loud-mouthing with his friends in some cheesy bar, jowly and overweight. Did he have to be that way for the part, she wondered, or was that how he really was?

  Coming up behind her, Delaney slipped the glass down into her free hand.

  ‘Who was that I saw you talking to earlier?’ Connie asked. ‘At the club.’

  ‘Just some guy.’

  ‘Some guy?’

  ‘Some guy wandered in off the street.’

  ‘That was all?’

  ‘You know,’ Delaney said, with a glance down at his watch, ‘it’s not that I want to hassle you or anything …’

  ‘I know, I know, I should be getting myself in gear. Here …’ Handing him the cigarette. ‘Finish this for me. I’ll be fifteen, twenty minutes, tops.’

  Delaney knew that meant thirty, forty-five. He would phone ahead, warn them.

  ‘Con?’

  ‘Yes?’ Her head poked back into the room.

  ‘We’re okay together, right? Back together and everything?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Good,’ Delaney said. ‘That’s good.’

 
As long as she believed it enough; as long as he could convince himself, keep things on an even keel. The last thing he wanted right now, the last thing he needed, Connie coming apart at the seams.

  Sloane caught the last set, Delaney nowhere to be seen.

  Visibly nervous, Connie took the stage to polite applause, the club little more than half full. For the first couple of numbers she was uncertain, straining for effect, pushing her voice too hard; and even though she relaxed a little, by the time she thanked the trio for all their hard work, some thirty minutes later, Sloane had heard nothing to compare with the best of that afternoon.

  Uncertain whether or not to go backstage, wondering if Delaney were in her dressing room, Sloane ordered another Scotch and waited. Less than fifteen minutes later Connie came back into the main room alone, intercepted a waitress on her way towards the bar, went to an empty table and sat down.

  When the waitress had brought Connie’s drink and a fresh pack of cigarettes, Sloane left his table in the upper tier, walked down the short flight of steps and across the floor. A ballad was playing through the house stereo, tenor sax and organ, and a couple were dancing in the small space in front of the stage.

  Sloane stood alongside Connie’s chair and waited for her to look round. So close, he wondered she couldn’t hear the sound of his breathing. When she didn’t move he bent forward and said, ‘Do you mind?’

  Taking her shrug for assent, he sat down. Up close, she looked tired, all of her forty-odd years. She’d started to wipe off her make-up, then changed her mind. There was a lipstick smear at the corner of her mouth and mascara smudged around her eyes.

  ‘I enjoyed your show.’

  ‘It sucked.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What do you know?’ She looked at him for the first time, little more than a glance. The flesh around her eyes was swollen and Sloane wondered if what had ruined her mascara was tears.