Richey grinned up at him. “Honey, I can see under your dress.” He rolled away from Tizzy’s kick and laughed. Then he propped himself up on an elbow. “Listen, here’s my part where I play like Teagarden.”
Then Johnny Nickles came in with a simple legato chorus in the style of the late Bix Biederbecke’s Sweet Sue.
Rayl grunted. “You got to give it to him. Before he got on this booze kick, the guy was great. Johnny Nickles blew real fine horn.”
In the doorway, Eddie said again, patiently, “We been fired.”
This time they heard him. The room was suddenly quiet. Rayl took a cigarette out of his mouth. Richey turned the volume down. “Fired? You nuts?”
Eddie Howard came into the room. He looked around for a chair. Finding none empty, he sat on the floor with the rest of them., “Yeah, Johnny just came by and told me. He told me to tell you guys. He gave me two weeks’ advance pay.”
They sat around without speaking, stunned for the moment. They had been fired innumerable times before, off small bands’ and big bands, good bands and lousy bands, individually and collectively. They had been fired out of joints all up and down the East Coast, the West Coast, the South, and points in between. Getting fired was an occurrence of extreme probability to all musicians. The band leader didn’t like the way you wore your socks. Or the owner of the joint thought you were making eyes at his wife. Or you got drunk one night and showed up on the bandstand without your pants. The one thing about the music business that was certain, was the uncertainty of your employment. Now and then you ran into a guy who had been with, say, Ellington for fifteen years. But most musicians, especially the good ones, were a restless lot. They grew tired of the same band. They didn’t like a guy’s arrangements. Or the leader started acting like he owned the band. Or you found out the guy next to you was a fruit. Either you got tired of the leader or he got tired of you. He said you played flat. You said he had a tin ear and anyway a Mickie band like his sounded more commercial if you played a quarter-tone flat. So you got fired.
So they were fired from the Sho-Tune bar on Honky-Tonk Street. The fact that they were relieved of employment was in itself not a shock to anyone. They were just surprised. Usually you could tell when a job was getting ready to fold up. The owner of the nightclub groused about business and complained that you were playing too loud. But only last night, Norman Norman had the biggest crowd he’d pulled in up to date. He’d looked as happy as a fat, greasy pig with a big new pail of slop.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” J. W. Richey said at last. “How come?”
Eddie Howard shrugged. “I don’t know, Johnny just came by and gave me this money. He said to tell you all about it and pay you off. Instead of two weeks’ notice, Norman gave him advance money.”
“Well, that’s the screwiest thing I ever heard,” Tizzy yelped. “That sonuvabitch wouldn’t give you the measles in an epidemic!”
“He and Johnny have a fight?” Link Rayl asked.
“I told you, I don’t know,” Eddie shrugged. “However, Johnny sure had a fight with somebody. His face looked like a fresh porter house steak.”
“That must have happened after he left the job last night.”
“Yeah, he left early,” Tizzy replied. “You reckon that’s what Norman got mad at? Cause he left early?”
“He’s left early before,” Richey said, sitting up. “Maybe if the sonuvabitch had left right after the first tune every night for the last three months, the band would have sounded better.”
“Well,” Link Rayl observed, getting to his feet, “I think we ought to go to a bar somewhere and talk this over. We’re going to have to decide where we go from here—whether we bust up or keep on going down the road with Johnny Nickles.”
“Down the road is right. That guy is just over the hill. I don’t know how you’d go much further down the road than the Sho-Tune, unless Johnny knows of some whorehouse over in shanty town where he can book us for a week’s run under scale.”
Everybody laughed at that. They agreed that Link’s suggestion about the bar was a good one. Tizzy Mole took off the towel and put on a rumpled suit. They went downstairs together.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DEAD MAN’S MEMENTO
Thursday Evening, 6:00 P.M.
Tizzy Mole was well on the way to becoming blotto.
He sat at the bar with the rest of the band, his shirttail hanging out sloppily, drinking steadily.
It was growing dark. Outside, the neon lights of Honky-Tonk Street were winking on. Nickelodeons were beginning to blare.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I’m going to Chicago.” J. W. Richey said, “I got the hottest little number that ever lived staked out in that town. I can go to work with a hotel band, this chick cooks my meals, keeps my clothes straight. Maybe I’ll buy a car. Yeah, I think I’ll buy a car. I’m getting too old to play for kicks anyway....”
“Yeah, I think I’ll quit the jazz bands,” Eddie Howard agreed. “It’s the commercial boys that make the dough. I think I’ll go to the Mayo brothers about my colon first. Then I’ll get me some quiet little cocktail lounge deal in New York. Maybe I’ll even quit music,” he went on recklessly, “and get a regular job.”
Link Rayl laughed without mirth. He swallowed his drink and stared into space. “I want to see any of you guys quit the business. I just want to see it. Hell, it’s in your blood like some kind of stinking cancer. You quiet it down in one place and it pops out of you somewhere else. You’ll stay with it until it gets you the way it did Biederbecke or Big Sid Catlett.”
“Yeah, or Miff and Zack—” Tizzy Mole stopped and shivered. There was a fine coating of perspiration over his face. He wiped at it with his fingers, smearing it. “Well, I’m gonna quit,” he whispered. “I can’t take no more of this. I lay awake nights. I keep hearing that damned Ghost Album. I pull the plug out of the record player, but it don’t quit. It just keeps going around and around in my brain, all those dead musician’s ghosts, playing again. And I hear Miff yelling something at me. I can’t make it out. He just keep yelling—”
Eddie Howard shook his head, his owlish eyes grave behind their thick lenses. “You’re getting symptoms, Tizzy. Definite psychosomatic symptoms.”
“What the hell’s that?”
“I had a friend used to see an owl on his shoulder,” Link Rayl put in. “He’d go around showing it to everybody and talking to it. But, hell, there wasn’t no owl there. At least I never saw one.”
Tizzy ordered another drink and lit a cigarette. He was still shivering. Maybe he felt it more than the other guys. Maybe because Miff Smith had been his closest friend. They had knocked around the music business together ever since they’d met. One would get a job on a band, pretty soon the other would follow him. They lent each other money and clothes. Hell, their clothes were so mixed up they had long ago forgotten who owned what.
They had even begun to look alike. People sometimes took them for brothers. But not the women. They always went for Miff. Not many gave Tizzy a tumble.
“Lay off,” he said. “You guys lay off me.”
They all drank in silence for a while, listening to the jukebox. Then Richey said, “Well, anyway, we’re breaking up the band. That’s decided. We ought to do something about
Miff’s stuff though, before we leave.”
“What do you mean?” Eddie Howard asked.
“Well, his stuff. You know, his clothes, music, his horn and all that junk up in his room. We can’t just walk off and leave it. He’s bound to have someone we can send it to.”
“Yeah, how about that, Tizzy? Miff have any relatives?”
Tizzy Mole brooded over his drink. “He had an old lady. A real nice old lady. He always talked about he was going to write her a long letter because she was all alone. But something always came up and he never got around to writing it, I guess.”
“Well, I guess we ought to pack up his stuff and send it to her,” Richey said. There was a lo
ng silence. Everyone was avoiding the other’s eyes. “Don’t you think so?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Eddie Howard agreed. “I think that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah,” Rayl said.
They drank in silence for a while longer.
“Well, you think we all ought to go up and do it?”
Howard put down his drink and rubbed his stomach. “There ain’t much sense in all of us going up there, is there?”
“One guy could do it.”
“Yeah.”
They all looked at Tizzy Mole.
He fumbled with the glass that contained his bourbon and water, spilling some on the back of his hand. “We could draw straws or something,” he said sullenly.
“He was your friend, Tizzy,” Richey pointed out.
“Sure, Tizzy,” Eddie Howard chimed in. “You know more about his stuff than we do. We wouldn‘t even know where to send it.”
“Okay,” Tizzy said softly. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it. I’ll go.”
He stood up. He looked at them for a moment, opening his mouth as if to say something. Then he changed his mind, turned around and shuffled wordlessly out of the bar.
Outside, it was dark. People were beginning to wander along the narrow sidewalks of Honky-Tonk Street, stopping now and then to stare at the girlie pictures out in front of the bars.
Tizzy walked with his head down, bumping into one person after another. He couldn’t explain it, but a deep-seated feeling of dread had been growing in him all day. He felt as if he should be running off somewhere. But he didn’t know why.
The liquor hadn’t had much effect on him. The bleak sensation grew steadily and the drinks he swallowed were just like water. It made him think about the time when he was a little boy and his mother had fallen sick so suddenly. They’d sent for a doctor. And all day long, he’d sat by himself, huddled in a corner of the front porch of their tumbledown house. All their relatives had gone in and out of the house all day long, whispering with grave faces. His father had wandered around with a blank, lost look on his face. And no one had paid any attention to little Tizzy, huddled there by himself. He’d wanted to scream at them, “Don’t you know she’s going to die? Why do you keep saying she’ll pull through? I know better.” His father had wandered about all day long, muttering to everyone who came in, “She’ll pull through. She’s got a strong constitution.” He kept saying the words over and over again as if they were some kind of magic charm. And when there was no one to listen to him, he came out on the porch and said them over to himself, “She’ll pull through...strong constitution....” But Tizzy had known better. A bleak, empty feeling from somewhere deep inside him told him differently. And sure enough, a little after sundown someone inside the house began to cry and Tizzy knew it was all over.
Now he paused and looked up. He was standing in front of the old brownstone building where Miff Smith had lived.
Across the street and down the block was the building—a building much like this one—where Johnny Nickles and Link Rayl lived. Eddie Howard and J. W. Richey lived several blocks away. None of the guys in the band was married. Zack Turner had been married, but his wife lived in New York when he was on tour with a band. J. W. Richey had a wife somewhere, but he never talked about her.
Tizzy walked up the dark stairs slowly, dragging his feet with effort. He stood before the door of Miff Smith’s place, feeling through his pockets for a key. The police had told them they were through with the room. So they certainly wouldn’t object to his packing Miff’s belongings.
Reluctantly, he pushed the door open. Everything was exactly as it had been that Monday night when Miff died. Nothing had been touched. Somebody had even left the bed lamp on. The landlady had evidently been too unnerved by it all to check to see if all the lights had been turned out.
He walked in and stood in the center of the room, a funny little guy with big ears and a crew haircut and a shirttail hailing at half-mast. He looked around the room where his best friend had died. There was a big ugly brown splotch on the rumpled sheets. He tore his eyes away from that. His stomach suddenly turned over in a wave of sickness.
He went over and glanced down at Miff’s record player. The machine had been turned off, but the record Miff had been listening to when he was killed was still on the turntable. It was an old Gene Krupa recording. Next to the player, was a glass ashtray heaped high with cigarette butts. Half of them had lipstick smears. Well, that wasn’t unusual.
Methodically, Tizzy began to pull out drawers and empty them. First he gathered all of Miff’s clothes together and packed them into two genuine leather suitcases. Then he closed the record player, pulled out the plug from a wall socket and wound it around the machine. It was a portable unit with a carrying handle. He placed it on the floor beside the suitcases. Then he went through the music stacked on a table. He decided to send the records back with the record player. But most of the books and music could be thrown away. The bulk of it was just old manuscript stuff, ink-smeared and dog-eared. Arrangements dating back twenty years and more. None of it worth too much. But he looked through it all anyway, remembering the bands they had played in together when these arrangements had been used. Here was an old one by Jimmy Lunceford, in his own handwriting and with his inimitable signature. He delved deeper into the stack.
Then he paused. He took out a sheet of folded paper, opened it and glanced at it before scaling it into a nearby wastepaper basket. Then his hands began to shake. And suddenly he was over and the pounding drums of doom inside him reached a deafening crescendo.
He got out fast and began to walk in circles, going up one street and down another.
It’s all so easy, Tizzy: you simply go to the police station.
That’s all you have to do.
Or you might even call them.
Yeah, but it wasn’t that easy. In a nightmare, you could be on the edge of a precipice, only a foot from safety, but you couldn’t stir yourself to move even that single foot.
He paused across the street from a lighted bar. There was a telephone inside. You just had to lift the receiver and you’d be safe again. But, would you be safe? There were people in there. Too many people—
A bullet could come whistling out of a crowd like that. It could crash between your shoulders before you spoke three words into the telephone.
He began walking again. Better outside, he thought. Safe in the dark streets. But lonely. He could see ahead and behind for blocks. He could hear any other footsteps in time. “Go on,” he told himself reassuringly. “You’re going to be all right.” He talked that way to himself for a few minutes, telling himself it would be all right.
For some idiotic reason he heard himself say, “I’m gonna pull through...I got a strong constitution—” And he gagged on the words. He looked around, sweating and goggle-eyed. A car was cruising along slowly, coming toward him. A taxi? Yes, that would be safe. A taxi! Taxis had strong constitutions. He stumbled out into the road, waving at it with his arms.
It came toward him slowly. Then it screamed at him with raking gears. It came faster. It grew in size until it was all and everything looming up and hurtling at him.
He just stood there, lips twitching, his eyes fascinated by the way it grew and leaped at him. The scrap of paper in his hand was forgotten. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the Ghost Album began to play. It played with a slow, mournful beat, like an old New Orleans parade band playing a dirge on the way to the cemetery....
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TOO NICE TO LOVE
Thursday Evening, 10:00 P.M.
Johnny Nickles moved slowly along the dark street in the little Mexican village. In a half-crouch, he slid close to the wall, staying well within the heavy, black shadows.
There was no sign of life anywhere. Only the silent, empty streets. A sickly pale moon crept from behind scudding clouds, throwing a faint light over the scene.
He was afraid to stray too far from Ruth. After a couple of blocks he gave up and r
eturned to her. She was in the same doorway, trying to push herself through a wall.
“I was scared,” she admitted blankly.
“There wasn’t anybody back there. At least, no one I could find.”
The tequila had died down in both of them. He still felt lightheaded and dizzy, but perfectly sober.
He handed the pistol back to her. “Where did you get that thing?”
“It’s an old one of Dad’s. I kept it around the apartment, living alone as I do.”
They walked through the streets hurriedly, pausing now and then to listen. But the pursuing footsteps had vanished.
In the car, heading back to town, Ruth let out her breath and leaned back. “It looks like we weren’t kidding about that can of dynamite.”
Johnny shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
The shadow that stalked his band had fallen over her now, too, as he knew it would.
She kept her eyes straight ahead as she asked, “You...think they’ll try again?”
Johnny shrugged. “Maybe. If you give them the opportunity. Can’t you remember anything yet? About Monday night?”
She pressed her forehead with her fingertips, shook her head hopelessly. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I keep trying, but—nothing.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence, listening to the radio.
As they entered the city limits, Johnny said, “It won’t be very safe in your apartment by yourself. Maybe you’d better spend the night at my place.” He knew it sounded like a line, and she picked it up.
She grinned at him wickedly, “Wheee!”
“Your mind’s always in the gutter.”
She laughed.
After another few minutes of driving he suddenly pulled over to the curb, nosed into an alley and parked.
“I just thought of something. You wouldn’t be much safer at my apartment. There’s a dingy little hotel near here. Would you mind if I got you a room there for the night? I don’t think anyone would be able to trace you there.”
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