by Bill Moody
“So? Lots of people check out of hotels.”
“No, there’s something strange about it. I saw him in London, and we agreed that if I made this gig, we’d get together. I’m sure he would have left a message for me.” I pause for a moment, wondering what Fletcher thinks. “There’s something else.” I tell Fletcher about finding the portfolio. “He wouldn’t just leave it like that, forget it when he checked out. Especially hidden as it was.”
“Didn’t hide it too well,” Fletcher says. “You found it.”
“Yeah, I know. And that bothers me. What do you think?”
Fletcher studies me across the table. “I watched you playing last night. You even look like a piano player, got that look in your eyes, the way you listen, head to the side, looking for the right chord. Piano players are like that. Always thinking, watching everything, hanging back.”
“Really. You got all that?”
“Oh, yeah,” Fletcher says, with a mischievous smile. “Little game I play. I see people and try to imagine them playing an instrument. I’m usually right. Piano players and bass players and drummers are different. Well, drummers are really different. But piano players, they got nothing to blow, they have to touch those keys, bringing all that metal and wood to life. They have a different look when they’re comping, playing for other soloists, than when they solo. You got that look. Last night, you looked like you’d like to climb in that piano and never come out. I could see it in your eyes. You got a great touch, you listen, and you play the prettiest chords I’ve heard in a long time. You could give a lot of cats a hard time.”
“Thanks. Coming from you, that’s—”
Fletcher waves his hand, gives me a quick mock frown. “Oh, shit, I didn’t say you’re Bud Powell.”
“Okay, but thanks anyway, it means a lot. You don’t know how much I’d like to believe you’re right about Ace, but I don’t think so. Research is Ace’s thing. That portfolio is stuffed full of information about Chet Baker. That’s why he was in Amsterdam. He wouldn’t just go off and forget it, any more than you’d forget your horn.”
Fletcher shakes his head. “Don’t matter. Unless you want back in the detective business, you just turn your friend’s portfolio in to the front desk and let him claim it, or call them about it. You don’t know, man. Maybe he did just forget it. Got distracted when he checked out and didn’t remember till he was on a train somewhere.”
What Fletcher says makes sense to a point, but I still believe Ace would have forgotten anything but his portfolio.
The waiter brings our food then, two big steaming bowls of meaty stew and a small loaf of warm bread. Fletcher was right. It’s great. We eat for a few minutes in silence, both of us thinking. Finally, Fletcher makes another suggestion.
“Why don’t you check with the local police, tell them the whole story?”
“I’ve already thought of that, but what can I tell them? My friend checked out of the hotel. Like you, they’ll just say, So what?”
Fletcher nods. “Yeah, probably. He’s not exactly a missing person. Maybe he’ll just show up again, and you can give him the case in person.”
“I wish it was going to be that easy, but I know it’s not. I almost feel like he wanted me to find it.”
Fletcher puts his fork down and looks at me. “That’s getting a little out there, isn’t it? You said he didn’t even know for sure you would be in Amsterdam, and he didn’t know what hotel you’d be in, did he?”
Before I can answer, the door swings open. A tall lanky young black man in jeans, turtleneck sweater, and leather coat and sunglasses struts in, spots us, and saunters over to our booth.
“Uh-oh,” Fletcher says. “Here comes Shaft.”
“Fletcher Paige, what it is.” He holds out his palm. Fletcher smacks it lightly without looking up. The young man just smiles and rubs his hand over his shaven head. He has one gold ring in his left ear.
“Hey, Darren. We’re eating.”
But Darren is oblivious. He sits down next to Fletcher and smiles at me. “You must be the piano man. Evan Horne, right?” He holds out his hand for me to shake. He lets go, then leans in, takes off his glasses, and points at me with one long slim finger. His eyes are big and round. “Oh man, you the detective cat.”
“Don’t go there, Darren,” Fletcher says.
“Hi.” I look to Fletcher. He rolls his eyes.
“Say hello to Darren. Thinks he’s the hippest cat in Amsterdam.”
Darren laughs. “Thinks? Man, you know it. I am the man. Well, next to Fletcher, anyway. Word is y’all were smoking last night at the Bimhuis.”
“Ain’t you got something to do, Darren?” Fletcher says. “You’re interrupting our lunch.”
Darren holds up his hands. For all his bravado, it’s clear he doesn’t want to offend Fletcher. He puts his glasses on again but keeps the smile intact. “That’s cool, man. Yeah, I got lots to do. I might catch you tonight, dig some sounds.” He stands up, waves at me. “Later.”
Fletcher shakes his head. Darren waves briefly at the bartender and is gone.
“Who was that?”
“Darren Mitchell. From Newark. Came over here a few years ago and stayed. I don’t really know what he does except try to act hip and bother me. Thinks he wants to be a PI. He gets his dialogue from old jazz movies. Bad old jazz movies. Used to call me Pops, but I had to put a stop to that shit. He tells anybody who will listen that when Chet was around, he used to hang out with him, score for him, that kind of shit, but he wasn’t even here then, and Chet didn’t hang around with nobody ’less it was a woman.”
“Did you ever play with Chet?”
Fletcher finishes off his stew and signals for another beer. “Yeah, couple of times, but Chet had his own thing. Beautiful player, I’ll give him that, but that dope fucked him up.”
“What do you think happened?”
Fletcher nods his head. “No telling. There’s all kinds of stories. He just leaned out the window too far and fell. He was pushed, or he tried climbing up that damn drainpipe and fell. Wasn’t no reasoning with Chet.”
“Who would push him?”
Fletcher shrugs. “Dealers, maybe. He always owed somebody money, and he always had cash. Word is he had a lotta bread from that last record date he did in Germany. Got paid and drove right here to score like he always did.” He stops, shaking his head as if remembering something. “But I lean toward the falling-out-the-window story. He just nodded out and fell.” Fletcher laughs then. “I saw Philly Joe Jones do that in San Francisco with Miles at the Jazz Workshop. Little small stage, drums against the wall. They were playing ‘Oleo,’ kickin’ ass—Philly, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Hank Mobley—when the drums just stopped. Miles turned around, and there was Philly, his head against the wall—gone, out. Miles just walked off. But Chet? He’d been trying to commit suicide for a long time. Just took him thirty years to finish it.”
Fletcher lets me pay the check this time, and we get up to leave. Outside, the Old Quarter is getting busy. Fletcher looks up at the sky. Big white puffy clouds move by slowly in the deep blue sky. “Can you find your way back to the hotel okay?”
“Sure, I’m fine.”
Fletcher doesn’t look at me, just stares straight ahead. “Look, man, I know you worried about your friend, but there’s probably an easy explanation. If I were you, I’d just let it be, you dig?”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Now he looks at me and smiles. “All right, then, catch you tonight.” He takes a few steps, then turns around. “Hey, you know ‘Lush Life’?”
“Yeah, you want to do it?”
“Uh-huh, long as you let me play the verse. You know Billy Strayhorn was only sixteen when he wrote that song? Cat was a motherfucker, huh? Later.”
“Hey, Fletcher,” I call to him. “You ever picture Darren on an instrument?”
He stops for a moment, thinks, then turns to me. “No. Darren would be
a jive-ass singer.”
Fletcher Paige, on the verge of seventy, walking away, humming the first few bars of “Lush Life.” I watch him till he disappears around the corner. It’s a picture I want to keep in my mind.
***
We play “Lush Life” and more at the Bimhuis. Fletcher and I are meshing well, better than I thought possible. The bassist and drummer sense it and know enough to stay out of our way, just adding their support. The audience feels something too. They don’t know what exactly, but they feel it, some kind of magic happening right before them.
On the break, I can feel the electricity surge through the crowd. Nobody is leaving, but it’s hard to stay focused when people are talking to you, and they don’t know what to say. It isn’t just the language, either. They want to communicate, but they can’t get across that gap. You like to give, and the music, the playing, is what attracts people.
I went through different stages with that. I used to feel very arrogant at one time, would hardly talk to anyone. Later, I was switched off in a different way. It’s hard because sometimes you don’t want to talk to anyone and there’s nothing to do but kill time, wait for the next set, then get back up there and lose yourself in the music. Time on your hands, and with some people, it can start funny habits.
Playing jazz, playing it well, is something that’s very hard to do, so if you drink, or smoke, or whatever at the same time, it doesn’t work, at least not for me. There’s an element of it that can be destructive when art takes place in clubs, and that element has claimed many musicians. The Bimhuis doesn’t feel like that. For the most part, these people have come for the music, to be witness to something they can talk about tomorrow or next week or next year, so they can say, “Yeah, I was there the night Fletcher Paige and Evan Horne played in Amsterdam.” Tonight they’re getting their money’s worth.
I come off the stand feeling up—energy keyed up and have all this time. I’m working, but everyone else is having a good time enjoying me working. Once, during the second set, Fletcher eyes me over his horn as if to say, “This is where you belong,” and in that moment, I know he’s right. However short-lived these moments seem, they mean everything.
When we finish for the night, Fletcher and I have a last drink at the bar, avoiding as much as we can the constant well-wishers who want to come by and say hello—especially those pseudo fans who’ve come to be seen, to sit in the front, wear sunglasses, snap their fingers, nod their heads, hoping they’ll be perceived as cool.
I sit there with Fletcher, basking in the glow, knowing I’ve played well. “Feels good, huh?” Fletcher says. He looks totally at peace with himself.
Leaning back, relaxed for the first time in weeks, I can’t help but grin. “That it does,” I say. “That it does.”
But then, across the room, something makes me sit up straight, break the spell. Fletcher sees my expression and turns to see what I’m looking at, then rolls his eyes.
The resemblance is uncanny at first glance. It’s the ghost of Chet Baker, as if he stepped out of the photo in the hotel lobby—this young man in jeans, white T-shirt, hair falling over his eyes. The only thing missing is his trumpet. He sits at the bar alone and stares moodily, sipping a beer. Nobody is paying any attention to him.
“That cat’s around here all the time,” Fletcher says. “Got some obsession with Chet. Dresses like him in his younger days. Before that, it was James Dean, the actor.”
I can’t take my eyes off him. “Does he play?”
“Nothing but the radio.”
I nod, relaxing a bit now. “It’s spooky, though.”
“Yeah,” Fletcher says. “Ghosts always are. C’mon, man. We got some more music to play.”
On the last tune of the night, “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,” we take it at a medium tempo. But after everyone solos, Fletcher doesn’t take it out. He starts on a long tag, inviting us to join him as he turns the chords inside out, challenging me to stay with him, playing like he’s somewhere else than a club in Amsterdam. The bass player digs in, and the drummer finds the groove as we roll on almost to the breaking point. Then Fletcher, with only a slight nod, finds an opening, and we go out.
Over the applause, he eyes me as if he’s done that tag to prove a point. It’s like a drug, but I also feel another kind of pull, in another direction, a path I’ve been down before.
It’s one I don’t want to follow, not yet. But the question, as always, is how long can I avoid it.
Chapter Five
After breakfast, I decide to check once more at the front desk for messages. Maybe Ace has called in, left a message or asked about his portfolio. “No, nothing, Mr. Horne,” the clerk tells me, “but the owner is here this morning.”
“Where?”
“In the bar.”
“Thanks.” I hurry through to the adjoining bar and find a short, stocky man drinking coffee, reading the newspaper.
“Excuse me. I’m staying here. The desk clerk said you were here. Are you the owner?”
“Yes?” He looks up at me. “Is there some problem with your room?”
“No, the room is fine. I’d just like to ask you about a friend of mine. He stayed here a few days ago.” The man looks puzzled for a moment. “He might have talked to you about Chet Baker?”
“Oh, yes, a professor, Buffington, wasn’t it?” He puts the newspaper aside.
“Yes, that’s right. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Of course. Please, sit down. You will have some coffee?”
“Yes, thanks.” He signals the bartender and turns back to me. “Your professor friend was very persuasive. He stayed in the same room as Chet Baker and asked me a lot of questions. I took some photos of him, in front of the hotel.”
“Yes, I can imagine. We were supposed to meet here, but he checked out and didn’t leave a message or anything. It’s not like him to do that, so I just wondered if you have any idea where he might be. If he said where he was going next.”
“No, I’m afraid not.” The waiter sets down my coffee and another for the owner. “I’m not here much these days. I have a manager who runs the hotel.”
“Thanks.” I take a sip and light a cigarette. “What did you talk about with him?”
The owner shrugs. “Mostly Chet Baker. He said he was researching a book. He had a great deal of papers already, but I’m afraid I couldn’t tell him anything. I wasn’t here the night it happened. I’d been in the country. My manager called me, and I came back and talked with the police. I confess at the time I didn’t know how famous Mr. Baker was.”
“What did the police think happened?”
“That Mr. Baker was involved in drugs, was perhaps intoxicated, and fell from the window.” He looks away for a moment, remembering. “It was very distressing to have that happen here at my hotel, of course, but there was nothing I could do.” He smiles, remembering something. “You’d be surprised at the number of trumpet players who have come to stay in that room. Since we’ve had the sculpture outside, we get lots of inquiries. I thought for a while of charging extra, but that wouldn’t be right.” He studies me for a moment. “You are also a trumpet player?”
“No. Piano. I’m playing over at the Bimhuis, with Fletcher Paige.”
“Ah yes, Fletcher Paige. He’s become as famous in Amsterdam as…was it Weber?” He sips his coffee, then looks at me.
“Webster. Ben Webster.”
“Yes, that’s it. Forgive me for saying so, but somehow that doesn’t seem right. All these American musicians coming to Europe, playing, living, dying here and, I suspect, forgotten in their own countries.”
“No, you’re quite right. It is a shame.”
“And Chet Baker? He was famous in America?”
“Well, at one time he was, the early days. He had some hard times.”
“Yes.” I can see his mind is already elsewhere. He finishes his coffee and folds up the newspaper. “I’m sorry I can’t be more
help.” He stands up to go. “Well, excuse me. I have work to do. Are you also staying in Amsterdam?”
“Me? I don’t know yet.”
“Well, if I think of anything else, I will let you know.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
I watch him leave, sitting there for a while, the day stretched before me, wondering what to do next. Maybe after my blunt refusal of Ace’s proposal in London, he simply decided to not bother catching up. But it nags at me. It’s a loose end I want tied up. There are a couple of other places I can check, and I think both of them are not far from the hotel. The desk clerk marks both places on a city map and sends me on my way.
***
There’s a truck loading cases of paper in front of the Old Quarter police station. Inside, two women sit on a wooden bench, talking quietly. One seems to be comforting the other. The small reception desk is manned by a young officer in a light blue shirt with gold epaulets on the shoulders and dark blue pants, looking through some papers. He glances up when I approach the desk.
“Ah, excuse me. I’d like to talk to someone.”
He looks like he’s not quite sure how to respond. “Yes?”
“Yes. It’s about my friend. I think he is missing. Well, I don’t know if he’s missing, but—”
“A moment, please.” He picks up the phone and talks briefly in Dutch with someone, then hangs up. “I’m sorry, my English is not so good. Wait, please. Someone is coming.”
“Thank you.” A couple of minutes later another, older officer comes out, looks at me. He’s short, stocky, looks to be late fifties, and dressed in civilian clothes—dark pants, white shirt with the cuffs rolled up, and a tie loosened at the neck.
“Yes, can I help you? I’m Inspector Dekker.”
“It’s about my friend. He was staying at the Prins Hendrik Hotel.” I can see he’s trying to figure out what I want, whether I’m just a nuisance or really have a problem. “Look, can we go somewhere and talk?”
Dekker looks around, then nods. “Yes, of course. Come this way, please.” I follow him down a corridor to an office not much bigger than a closet. Beyond his office, I can see the corridor opening onto a larger room with several uniformed policemen. “Sit down, please,” Dekker says.
