Looking for Chet Baker

by Bill Moody

  Fletcher gets two mugs out of the cabinet. He pours the hot water just short of boiling into the glass press and takes everything to the table. We sit down, and he lets the coffee sit for a minute before pouring it into the mugs. I add cream and sugar to mine.

  “FBI, huh?” He stirs in sugar for his coffee. “FBI girlfriend, cop friend, ex gonna be a lawyer. Man, you the most law-enforcement-involved piano player I ever knew. Lucky you don’t do anything illegal.”

  “Well, nothing much happened with Andie. It could have, though. We were kind of thrown together, made a trip to San Francisco and spent the night. She was pretty up front about things, let me know how it was, how it could be, but I was still involved with the ex-girlfriend.”

  Fletcher grins. “And let me guess. This FBI agent is a fine lady, and the girlfriend got jealous, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh, I know that song, man.” He shakes his head slowly from side to side. “Women sure can mess you up. Slow as a Shirley Horn ballad, but it happens.” He looks at me again. “Is the ex really an ex, or are you still deciding that?”

  “I think so. When I was working with the FBI, I couldn’t tell her what I was doing, and she took all the time I spent with the agent the wrong way. Even later, when I could explain things, maybe too much damage was already done.”

  “Yeah, it happens,” Fletcher says. “Sounds like you got some decisions to make. You haven’t talked to either of them since you left home?”

  “No. Natalie, she’s the ex, is still in L.A. Andie, the FBI agent, is in San Francisco.”

  Fletcher grins. “Well, maybe you should invite one of them over for a visit.”

  “Yeah, that’s just what I need now.”

  “Well, like Prez said, ‘Man does not live by jazz alone.’”

  “Lester Young said that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Sounds like something he’d say. He did say, ‘Stan Getz the money for playin’ me.’”

  “So you’re a philosopher too, huh?”

  “No, just an observer of the human condition.” Fletcher sips his coffee and looks at me. “So, got any plans?”

  I’d thought it through on the way back to the flat. The best course seemed to be to check out Rotterdam, the clubs there, see if Ace had been there, then work our way back to Amsterdam. “I want to go to the Dizzy Café and the Thelonious. You still want to come?”

  “Yeah. We can drive or take a train. There’s several every day, but might be good to have the car, so we can get around while we’re there.”

  “What I was thinking.”

  “When?”

  “Let’s go today, later this afternoon.” I’m anxious to get going, do something. I hate waiting around, not hearing anything.

  “Cool,” Fletcher says. “You want to play some first?”

  “Sure.” We take our coffee and go back to the living room. Fletcher gets his horn, and I walk over to the piano and warm up a little. Fletcher takes some sheet music from on the piano. “Let’s try this. New one of mine.”

  It’s called “Canal Bridge Stroll.” I look over the chord changes and try them out. “What’s the tempo?”

  Fletcher closes his eyes, moves his head up and down, walks in place for a minute. “About here. Play that first four bars, and then I’ll come in.”

  I play the setup, then follow Fletcher’s line, following the chords on the sheet. We clash a couple of times, back up, and start again until it makes sense. “You want to play with those chords, go ahead.”

  “Okay.” I try some substitutions, do a little reharmonizing, and it starts to jell.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Fletcher says.

  We work on it for a half hour or so until we’re both satisfied, then try some tunes we’ve already played. The interplay is even better now as we follow each other’s thoughts, mixing lines, playing off each other. With no drummer or bassist to follow, it’s just him and me, getting into one another’s head, a kind of musical telepathy. The more we do it, the better it gets.

  “We need a couple of bebop tunes. You know ‘Billie’s Bounce’?”

  “Yeah.” We take it fairly up, and we both know we’ll add it to the repertoire.

  “I like that,” Fletcher says. “Got us plenty of music to play.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Now all we have to do is keep you focused. Let me make some calls. Then we can pack a bag, have some lunch, and head out.”

  “You think this is a good idea?” I’m already having reservations, but at the same time, I can’t just let it go. I know I won’t rest till I find out where Ace is and what happened to him.

  Fletcher pauses a moment. “Now, don’t take this the wrong way. If we’re looking for your friend, I understand that. I’d do the same. But if you get hung up on Chet Baker and what happened to him, we might go on a detour, go down the wrong road.”

  “I don’t think so, Fletch. I think they’re the same road.”

  ***

  After lunch, we each pack enough for an overnight stay, throw the bags in Fletcher’s car, and head south on the A4 Expressway for Rotterdam. I let my mind wander, thinking about Chet Baker making this same drive over eleven years ago for his gig at the Thelonious, weak, hurting, and unaware he’s going to find only a handful of customers, not even enough to get paid. How did that feel? Is that what set him off to wander the streets, lose his car, and hustle back to Amsterdam to fix?

  “Got it figured out?” Fletcher asks. He’s a careful driver, both hands on the wheel, shaking his head as car after car passes us. He’s found a music station on the radio, and it plays softly in the background.

  “What? This trip?”

  “Why your friend would copy all that shit in his portfolio?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a wild theory or two.” I look out the window, watching the green fields flash by; I still haven’t seen a windmill.

  “When don’t you?” Fletcher laughs and looks at me. “I’m just keeping your feet on the ground.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Well? What is it?” Fletcher keeps his eyes on the road but turns down the radio.

  I shift in my seat, light a cigarette, and crack the window a couple of inches. “Well, let’s suppose he did leave the portfolio, hoping I’d find it. Then, he knows I did, but wants to keep on with his research and needs his notes and the articles. So he steals it back, copies all the papers, and then makes sure it turns up again.”

  Fletcher is already frowning. “And just leaves it somewhere, hoping somebody will find it, turn it in to the police, and they’ll call you and give it back?” Fletcher laughs. “Man, your imagination is something else.”

  “Well, I told you it was a wild theory. I don’t think he consciously left it to be recovered. I think it was stolen, something he hadn’t counted on.”

  “Well, that’s slightly better,” Fletcher says. He frowns again. “Tell me again why he wanted you to have it in the first place.”

  “Because he wanted me to help him research Chet Baker. I turned him down flat in London, but he knows from past experience I would follow the leads in that material. You know, go to the archives, check out musicians, see the film. I’m sure he thought the temptation would be too great.”

  Fletcher looks at me again. “Yeah, just like you’re doing. He was right.”

  Maybe he was. I’d thought about it a lot. If I’m honest, I have to admit my fascination with solving mysteries. Dekker’s story about Hemingway’s suitcase opened the flow for a lot of juices. But when the mysteries deal with jazz musicians, the pull is even stronger, especially when I discover not many people have bothered to solve them. So far, Chet Baker’s death is unsolved, on record as an accident because nobody could come up with anything better.

  “Yeah, maybe he is. Don’t you wonder what really happened to Chet?”

  Fletcher shrugs. “I’d be interested, but not enough to want to do all this research and
spend all this time on it.” He laughs out loud then.

  “What?”

  “I was just thinking about what some guy in Maynard Ferguson’s band told me. They were on the bus, going to some gig. Maynard was going to take a nap and said, ‘Don’t wake me up unless they find Glen Miller.’” He holds out his palm for me to slap.

  I laugh too. From what I’ve heard about him, that sounds like Maynard. Glen Miller’s plane was never found after it went down somewhere in the English Channel.

  Fletcher turns up the radio again. I put out my cigarette and lean back on the seat and close my eyes. “Well, remember what Maynard said.” I drift off, and before I know it, Fletcher is shaking me.

  “No Glen Miller, but we’re in Rotterdam.”

  ***

  We check in to a hotel Fletcher knows from previous visits. It’s small, clean, and Spartan, but the price is right for two singles, and we’re not going to be spending much time in the room. We grab something to eat, and Fletcher makes a couple of calls from the restaurant. I’m finishing coffee and a cigarette when he comes back.

  “The Thelonious is closed, but the owner was there.” He shakes his head. “Tried to get me to come down cheap for a weekend. Anyway, he hasn’t talked to anyone asking questions about Chet Baker.”

  I put out my cigarette, feeling really disappointed. “So, any other ideas?”

  “We can try Dizzy’s. They’re open, but no guarantee we’ll find anything there either.”

  “Worth a shot, I guess.” I didn’t really expect to find the pianist from the film after all this time. I pay the check, and we go outside.

  “Let’s walk,” Fletcher says. “I need some exercise.” He laughs. “Maybe we’ll find Chet’s car.”

  Fletcher leads the way. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk to the small club. A trio is playing a lackluster set of standards to a handful of people in the room. “Shit, wish I’d brought my horn,” Fletcher says. “Might shake these guys up.”

  We go to the bar and order a couple of beers. The bartender recognizes Fletcher, and they have a brief reunion before he introduces me. “This is one bad piano player,” Fletcher says. “Evan Horne.”

  I shake hands with Jan and, after the pleasantries are over, ask him about Ace, showing him the photo. He looks at it, shakes his head. “No, nobody like that,” he says. “Chet Baker. Haven’t thought about him in years.” Fletcher gives me an I-told-you-so look.

  “Well, thanks for your time,” I say, then remember the pianist from the film. “He was in a band called Bad Circuits.” But this draws another blank.

  “Oh no, he moved, to Paris I think. Some time ago.”

  “Well, we tried,” Fletcher says. He suddenly sits upright and smiles. “Stove. The guy’s name I was trying to think of. It was Stove.”

  The bartender looks at Fletcher and stops drying the glass in his hand. “Yes, I remember him. He sometimes helped the promoter who booked Chet. Some musicians used to stay with him. Woody Shaw, and an alto player, I think. Yes, Woody Shaw.”

  “That’s the one,” Fletcher says.

  “Yes,” Jan says. He puts the glass down as gears mesh in his head. “Now I remember. He was with Chet that night. He and another man—Blok, I think his name is. He still comes in here sometimes. He has a small secondhand record shop near here.” He takes out a pen and paper and writes down the address. “He lives over his shop.”

  “Thanks, thanks very much,” I say and drop some money on the bar.

  “Send him to me,” the bartender says. “He still owes me money.”

  ***

  We give the address to a taxi driver, and make the ten-minute ride in silence. I feel my excitement growing with every turn. I tip the taxi double for the short ride, and we get out. The shop is closed, but there are lights on upstairs and a night bell and intercom near the front door of the shop.

  I press the button and wait. A voice comes through the intercom shortly. “Allo.”

  “Mr. Blok? I would like to talk with you, please. About Chet Baker.”

  “The shop is closed. Come tomorrow. Chet Baker is dead.”

  Fletcher rolls his eyes and pushes the intercom button himself. “We know that, man. Just come down here a minute. This is Fletcher Paige.”

  “Fletcher Paige?”

  “Yes, c’mon, man.”

  “A moment, please.”

  A couple of minutes later, we see the light go on in the store and the shade go up on the door. A thin man in a sweater and pants peers out at us. His face flashes in recognition at Fletcher, and he opens the door. He’s all over Fletcher, inviting us in, offering us coffee, which we refuse, then locking the door and pulling down the shade once more.

  We go to the back of the small shop. Most of the space is taken up with bins of vinyl LPs. I glance at the tabs and see the names of jazz greats, from Louis Armstrong to Miles Davis, printed in black marker pen.

  “Look,” Blok says, stopping at the P’s. He shuffles through some albums, pulls out one of Fletcher, and hands it to him.

  “Damn,” Fletcher says, looking at it. He turns it over and looks at the liner notes. “Sweden. Forgot I did this one.”

  Blok holds out a pen. “Please.”

  Fletcher signs it and hands it back. Blok takes it back to an old desk with a cash register and props it up against the register. “This will sell quickly,” Blok says. “Come, we talk.”

  He takes us back to a small office that was probably once a closet. “You play with Fletcher?” he asks me. In the harsh light, his face is lined, ravaged by time and probably a lot of drugs.

  “Yes, at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam.”

  “Ah yes, I have heard.” He asks Fletcher some more questions. It takes a while to get him focused, but finally I take him back to that night in 1988. “Yes, I was with Chet and Stove, at the Dizzy Café. Chet was not good. He did not play well.” He puts his hands out and shrugs. “He needs…”

  “Yeah, we know what he needed,” Fletcher says. “Did he have a connection here?”

  Blok eyes Fletcher warily. “It was not me, but…I tried, but…”

  “Did Chet stay with Stove, at his house?”

  “Yes. I was there, I saw him. He slept and slept, but then he left and went back to Amsterdam the next day. He was very impatient.”

  That at least explains the time gap, but doesn’t put us any closer to Ace’s whereabouts, and I don’t even bother asking Blok if he’s seen Ace. “Who would Chet see in Amsterdam? For drugs, I mean? Did he have somebody?”

  Blok looks around, as if the police will break down the door any moment. “It was a long time ago, a different life for me. Now I have my shop.” He stops, sees us waiting for more. “Sometimes he can get methadone from a doctor. Heroin?” He spreads his hands and shrugs. “Van Gogh, perhaps—”

  “Van Gogh?” I look at Fletcher.

  “Oh, shit,” Fletcher says. “We don’t mean no damn painter.”

  Blok laughs. “No,” he says, “a different van Gogh. If he is still alive.”

  “How do we find this van Gogh?”

  “You must ask. Someone will know.” We spend another ten minutes with Blok but, getting no further, finally thank him and leave.

  “Well, what now?” Fletcher asks as we walk back to our hotel.

  “You think van Gogh is a waste of time?” I’m disappointed, but it’s a name, and we have nothing else to go on.”

  “I think he just wanted to get rid of us. Van Gogh, my ass. We can ask around, but maybe it’s time to give this up. Have you thought about that? Nobody could say you haven’t given it your best shot.”

  I have, of course, and Fletcher is right. What more can I do? What more could anybody do? I reported Ace’s disappearance to the police. They have Ace’s photo, his portfolio, his jacket. It’s really up to them now. Chasing down a onetime drug connection named van Gogh in Amsterdam seems like a bad joke. But those questions won’t go away. It still does
n’t feel right somehow, and Ace is still missing.

  “Yeah, I guess. Not much else I can do anyway.”

  We stop for a beer at a bar next to the hotel, thinking our separate thoughts. Fletcher, though, rekindles the fire. “Hey,” he says. “I just thought of something. There’s a guy in Amsterdam. Chet used to stay with him a lot. He’s a trumpet player too. Maybe Ace stumbled across him.”

  “Who?”

  “What was his name?” Fletcher thinks for a moment, then snaps his fingers. “Hekkema, Evert Hekkema. Knew Chet real well.”

  I remember then. “Oh yes, he was interviewed in the film. He sold Chet a car.”

  Fletcher looks at me. “Maybe I should see that film. Might give me some more ideas, jog my memory.”

  “Cool. When we get back.”

  “Hey, I didn’t tell you. I’m going to be in a film too, about us jazz cats living and working in Europe.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, they called me a few weeks ago. Don’t pay shit, but what the hell. I’ll talk.”

  “Where is this going to be?”

  “Maybe on our gig, some at the house. Don’t be surprised if a camera crew shows up.” Fletcher laughs. “Well, I’m tired, man. Don’t forget I’m old. Let’s head back to the hotel.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “I got these,” Fletcher says, taking out some money for the beers. “Hang on a minute. I want to make a call.”

  While Fletcher is gone, I run over everything again in my mind, still haunted by the thought that something has happened to Ace. He should have been here. He wouldn’t have seen that film and passed on these two obvious sources on Chet Baker. It just isn’t right.

  When Fletcher comes back, his expression has changed completely. “Just checked my messages at home.”

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  “A call for you from that policeman, Dekker. They found something on your friend.”

  ***

  The drive back to Amsterdam seems to take forever. Fletcher drives, plays music, and keeps trying to convince me that it isn’t over yet, that Dekker’s call might not be anything. I haven’t slept much. Every time I close my eyes, I see myself identifying Ace’s body. By the time Amsterdam comes into view, I’m impatient to get to the flat and call Dekker. But even that doesn’t work out. Fletcher exits the expressway, and we make our way slowly into the city center.