“Don’t try to stop me, Johnny,” he said softly. “I have a gun in my pocket, you know.”
“I’ll bet it isn’t a Luger,” Johnny said. You planted that in my room for the cops to find.”
The clarinet player smiled, a forced grin that skinned the lips back from his teeth. But he remained eloquently silent.
He got up and moved off the stand.
Johnny put his trumpet down. He was afraid to tackle the guy there. Teegerstrom had two murders hanging over him, plus that old Chicago killing. If he started blasting here, he wouldn’t stop until all his bullets were used up and a half-dozen people’d be killed or injured. Enough people had died because of the Ghost Album.
He pushed through the crowd. He groped for the small automatic he had taken from Ruth Jordon back at the Cowles house. Then he was out on the sidewalk, with his hand in his coat pocket, holding the gun. The night wind came in off the water. He saw Teegerstrom a block away. He was walking frantically, running half a block at a time, his jacket flapping. Then he slowed to a walk, then started running again.
Teegerstrom turned around suddenly and stood straddle-legged on the sidewalk. He lifted his gun and fired at Johnny. Nickles heard the wind of the slug slap past his ear.
Johnny felt terribly old and tired inside. He took careful aim. Then he shot once...twice...three times.
Charlie Teegerstrom just stood there. Then his gun fell out of his hand. He turned and started across the street. He walked in queer, tripping steps. When he reached the far curb he stumbled and fell in the gutter.
Johnny and the musicians who had followed him from Mamie’s Place ran to his side. He was lying in the dirty water that was always present in the chug holes and gutters of the narrow, winding street. Johnny lifted him so his head would be up out of the water.
He coughed and looked up at the row of faces around him. “For the record,” he choked, “I killed Miff and Tizzy....”
Johnny leaned closer to him. “You were in your room practicing Monday night when Miff was shot. I heard you.”
“Tape recording...,” he whispered. “...hour’s tape—”
Teeg tried to say something. Eddie Howard bent over close to his lips, his thin face pasty and sick-looking. Then he pushed his way out of the crowd, into the nearest bar that had a jukebox. In another minute, music came out of the place. It was the Ghost Album record. Teegerstrom Struts His Stuff.
The whole street was miraculously hushed now. It was the only music to be heard.
“Listen,” Teegerstrom whispered. “Listen, Johnny. I was good there...wasn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Nickles said, his gravel voice hoarse. “You played real fine on that one.”
The twin strains of the tortured clarinet floated out of the place and down the crooked dirty street filled with mud puddles and lined with bars and honky-tonks and neon signs.
CHAPTER TWENTY
STRICTLY DOWNBEAT
Coda
Mamie had a new band in her place. And business had doubled since they came in. She went around beaming and slapping patrons lustily on the back. She was even considering remodeling the place.
One night, George Swenninger came around to hear the band. Mamie sat down at his table.
“They sound fine,” he nodded.
“Hell, yeah they sound fine,” Mamie swore brassily. “Best damned musicians on the Coast!”
They looked up at the stand where six musicians and a blonde girl singer were selling to the crowd. In front of the bandstand, at the microphone, was a stocky guy in a flashy suit, with a huge diamond on his little finger. He was blowing a golden trumpet. He rocked back on his heels when he played, blasting the hot notes straight up at the ceiling.
“Gawd,” she swore admiringly, “some day he’s gonna blow a hole clean through the roof with that damn thing!”
When they had finished the tune, Johnny took his trumpet down from his lips. The blonde girl singer winked and grinned at him. She was wearing a blue ribbon in her hair. There was a tiny gold band around the third finger of her left hand. And there was a special light in her wide blue eyes whenever she looked at Johnny.
A young man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and clutching a notebook walked up to the bandstand and tugged at Johnny’s trouser leg.
“Mr. Nickles, I’m taking a poll for DownBeat. We’d like to know who you think was the greatest trumpet player who ever lived?”
Johnny stared at him in amazement, then turned to his band. “Get this cat! Who the hell do you think, sonny? Johnny Nickles, of course!” He lifted his horn. “Okay, fellas. Let’s provide a little tune for the folks. One...two...three—” He put the mouthpiece against his lips and closed his eyes and started to play.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charles Beckman (the pen name of Charles Boeckman) is a native Texan. He grew up during the Great Depression when there was no money for music lessons. Fortunately, everyone in his family played a musical instrument. Those were the days of the big bands and their sounds were on all the A.M. radio stations. Hearing Bennie Goodman and Artie Shaw, he fell in love with the clarinet. He found a fingering chart for the clarinet and taught himself to play that instrument. To get a job on a big band in those days, a reed man was expected to play both saxophone and clarinet, so he also taught himself to play saxophone. The year he graduated from high school, in 1938, he played his first professional job in a South Texas country dance hall. He continued playing weekend jobs in dance halls all over South Texas until the mid 1940s, when he moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, and played as a sideman in bands in that city. In the 1970s he formed his own New Orleans style Dixieland jazz band, which became quite popular. He still plays in the Texas Jazz Festival every October. In recognition of his many years on the music scene in the area, he was awarded a star in the South Texas Music Walk of Fame in June of 2009.
While music has been a part of his career, his main occupation has been that of a professional writer. He has had dozens of books and hundreds of short stories published all over the world He uses his music background as setting for many of his mystery stories. He sold his first suspense story to Detective Tales in 1945. In 1965, he married Patti Kennelly, a school teacher. With Charles’s help, she also became a writer. At this writing, they have been happily married for forty-six years. They have a daughter and two grandchildren. In the 1980s they collaborated on a series of twenty-six Harlequin Romance novels that sold worldwide over two million copies.
More about Charles Beckman’s career can be found on his web site, charlesboeckman.com.
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