The Ring of Truth

by George Harmon Coxe

  Standish’s thoughts reverted to the moment when he realized that the three people were on their feet and about to leave. He also was aware that the music had stopped and the bandstand was empty. When he could not locate Estey and was sure he was not table hopping, he finished his drink and went looking for him.

  2

  THERE WERE two doorways leading to the rear area of Hennessey’s, one on either side of the bandstand. On the right, double swinging doors with glass inserts led directly to the kitchen; on the left, a curtained doorway gave on a hall with Hennessey’s private entrance on the ground floor and, just ahead of it, were stairs leading to two rooms above.

  Over the years the entertainment policy of the establishment had changed from more elaborate cabaret-type acts to the simple presentation of a working band. There had been a need at one time for dressing rooms and the first of these, the smaller of the two, was now the personal province of the musicians, a hideout between sets for card games and private drinking for those not inclined to mingle with the patrons or unwilling to listen to a lot of silly chatter as the price of a drink.

  A cleaning woman swept out once a week, usually Mondays; the rest of the time the men policed the room themselves. No one was allowed inside except by invitation, including Hennessey himself, and such guests were usually limited to the members of the profession—agents, song pluggers, arrangers, itinerant musicians less lucky at the moment than themselves, and, sometimes, girls.

  Standish knew all this. He also was aware of the clannish snobbery of the breed. He had seen it demonstrated in other places. If there was a musicians’ table and some enthusiastic buff joined it unasked between sets, there would be a gradual one-by-one exodus until the final member of the band excused himself and stood up. Only then did the outsider realize how openly he had been snubbed and abandoned, and by that time he had no choice but to slink back to his own table and companions, feeling like a pariah who had been publicly exposed. That is why Standish knocked at the closed door and stood patiently until Ralph Estey opened it.

  Over the trumpet man’s shoulders Standish could see the interior with its threadbare carpet and discarded furniture. The piano player was stretched out on a battered-looking studio couch. The drummer and trombone player were playing gin rummy across an oblong table, and the clarinet man who doubled on the sax was slouched in the room’s one easy chair with a copy of Variety. Estey’s pale thin face wore a practiced frown until he recognized his visitor. The look of surprise that followed seemed genuine.

  “Oh,” he said, as though he had not seen Standish in three weeks.

  “You said something about buying a drink.”

  “Yeah,” Estey said uncertainly. “That’s right, I did.”

  “Then let’s go downstairs,” Standish said. “That way I won’t have to invade your sanctuary.”

  By that time he had Estey by the arm and there was no further protest as they went down the stairs and past the bandstand and found a table off in one comer.

  A waiter moved up and asked Estey if he would have the usual. Estey said no, he’d have brandy with a spot of soda on the side. Standish, not wanting a drink but aware that he had to continue the pretense, asked for another Scotch and water. When the waiter went away, he reached for Estey’s wrist.

  “Hold still,” he said when Estey tried to pull away.

  “I’m all right,” Estey said, but he made no further move and after ten seconds Standish removed his fingers.

  “I’m beginning to believe you’re right. How’s the headache?”

  “About gone.”

  “So what was that all about outside? Did you really swing at Flemming first?”

  “Hell yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was bothering Sheila.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh”—Estey gestured impatiently—“hanging around and wanting to take her home and calling her up.”

  “He’s a very mean guy from what I hear.”

  “Sure. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was sore. We had some words and he asked me if I wanted to step outside and repeat them, so I did.”

  Standish considered the statement and was impressed. It made him wonder if perhaps Estey had more courage than good sense. Then he remembered something else.

  “Have you really got a gun?”

  “Sure. An old H & R .32. I’ve had it for years.”

  “And if he roughs you up again you’re going to use it?”

  “Damn right.”

  Standish grunted softly. “Oh, great,” he said. “That would take care of Flemming all right. These days you probably wouldn’t get the chair either. What would probably happen is that you’d wind up leading the prison band for the next thirty years.”

  “Not me.” Estey shook his head and there was a strange determination in his voice. “If I decide to kill him, I’ll grab my horn and run for it. If I can’t make it, I’ll stick the gun in my mouth and pull the trigger. It would be a break for Sheila and who the hell would care. I’m not going anywhere any more; I’ve been.”

  The waiter brought the drinks and Estey took a sip of brandy, a swallow of soda. He was scowling now and making little circles with the bottom of the brandy glass. Standish, watching him and bothered by what he had heard, spoke again of Jess Flemming.

  “How long has Sheila known him?”

  “Last year. Down in Florida. I was down there for a while. That’s where I met her. Four of us were down there playing in a trap in Miami—not Miami Beach, Miami. She was doing some singing then and the boss put her on for a couple of weeks.”

  “She sang when she first came here, didn’t she?”

  “Right. Pretty good too. The trouble is there are a thousand other chicks in the same boat. Even if a girl has something special she needs a lot of breaks to make it big. She has to know the right people, and get the right agent to handle her, and have the right arrangements, and the right kind of promotion.”

  He took another sip of brandy and said: “I knew I had this spot lined up, so I asked her if she didn’t want to come North and she said maybe if she knew she had a job. I talked Hennessey into giving her a two-week trial and she came.”

  “I heard her once, I think,” Standish said. “She sounded pretty good to me.”

  “She was good enough but she’s a smart kid and she knew the score. She’s got a lot of determination and she knows what she wants. . . . You remember Jenny, the hat-check girl who was here before?”

  “She got married.”

  “Right. When Sheila found out about it and got an idea of what Jenny was making, she thought she could do even better if she put on the right kind of act. She asked Hennessey for the job, figuring she wouldn’t last as a singer, and he gave her a trial rim. Well, she’s got a good memory for faces, so that after once or twice you don’t have to take a check, she’ll remember you. She fusses over you just enough and gives you that smile that says you’re really something special and the tips get bigger. Hell, she’s making as much money now as I am, maybe more.”

  “How is it between you?”

  “What do you mean?” Estey’s glance came up, his head tipping slightly.

  “Are you in love with her?”

  “Maybe. I guess you’d call it that.”

  “And how does she feel?”

  “She likes me okay, but if you mean is she going to many me, I doubt it. Why the hell should she?”

  “You’re one of the best.”

  “Ha!”

  Standish let the remark go and digressed.

  “Your wife got the divorce?”

  “Six months ago.”

  “Alimony?”

  “No, thank God. Ruth had a new husband lined up. I send her twenty-five a week for the support of the boy— he’s five now—and I had to take out an insurance policy for ten grand payable to him before she’d go for the divorce. No,” he said, his thoughts coming back to the previous subject. “Sheila wants something better than a
broken-down trumpet player. She wants a house in a suburb and kids and security—and who can blame her?”

  He drained the last of the brandy from the glass and swallowed some soda. He slipped down in his chair, making his chest even more concave, and his gaze went beyond Standish to fix on something that only he could see.

  “Things used to be different,” he said, his voice softly reminiscent. “I remember when I went down to New York, just a kid out of high school. There were a dozen places then on Fifty-second Street, all of them jumping. Downtown there was Condons and Nick’s. You remember Nick’s?”

  “That’s where I caught you for the first time.”

  “A real right guy, Nick,” Estey said as though he had not heard. “He loved musicians, especially Dixieland musicians. You remember how he had that second piano down on the floor? When he felt like it he’d sit down and play along with the group, and enjoy every minute of it. So the poor guy died and pretty soon they closed the joint. The Embers is gone. The Roundtable changed to belly dancers. I don’t know what they play there now but it ain’t jazz. There’s practically nothing on Fifty-second Street. So what you’ve got is Condon’s and Jimmy Ryan’s and the Metropole —if you want to stand up and blow your brains out.”

  He sighed, but the distance was still in his eyes. “The guys—real good guys—are standing in line to get into Condon’s. They call up, or their wives do, once a week to see if there’s going to be a change so they can bring a group in.” He sighed again and now he looked at Standish. “Why do you think I’m up here in the sticks? I’ll tell you. It’s a job, and it’s steady, and by giving these so-called jazz concerts Sunday afternoons around the state I pick up a little extra loot. That is, if we get a good-enough turnout.

  “I’m not blaming anybody, you understand? There are a lot of good horn men around—Ruby Braff, Clark Terry, Don Jacoby, Howard McGhee—and they’re cutting records and getting heard. I had my chances if I had been smart enough to grab them. I’ve done the big-band route. I played with most of the good ones. I had a couple of chances to snag on with a studio band years ago and if I had I’d be making three times the dough I’m getting now and I’d be getting it regularly. But no, I wanted to play my way.”

  He half turned in his chair, put one arm straight up until he caught the waiter’s eye, and gave a pantomimic signal for another drink.

  “What I didn’t know then,” he said, “is that it takes more than talent and hard work to make it big. You need some breaks. You need exposure and a genius for an agent. Take Al Hirt. A great Dixieland man, right? Fine technique.”

  “Sure.”

  “Ha! You’re not even half right. Hirt played first trumpet with guys like Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Horace Heidt. Strictly big band. He didn’t play jazz, he didn’t improvise, he read what they put in front of him. But his home was in New Orleans and he had a wife and a couple of kids —he’s got a flock of them now—and his wife wanted him home. Hell, he couldn’t even play Dixieland. He had a staff job on a local radio station. And on the side he played two or three nights a week with a Dixieland group on Bourbon Street. At first he had to learn his parts and play them from memory while all the rest of them were improvising their heads off.”

  He watched the waiter place the drink in front of him and took a sip. “So he finally picked up enough Dixieland stuff to start his own combo. He worked Bourbon Street for three or four years until an agent heard him and wanted to sign him up. By then he had more kids and his wife said no, not unless he got more dough than anyone was about to offer for some unknown Dixieland band. So what happens? The agent gets him a spot in Las Vegas. He plays there a month. Dinah Shore hears him and gives him a spot on her TV show. He gets another spot in New York. He gets a little more TV exposure through Dinah and Ed Sullivan. You know the rest of it. He gets a thirteen-week network TV show as a summer replacement. Sure he can play Dixieland now. He’s got a good group with him. That little reed man and Freddie Crane, his piano player—great. Hirt’s getting the loot but he’s a pop trumpet player, he’ll tell you so himself.”

  He took another swallow of his drink and said: “What about Pete Fountain? I understand he played for Hirt after Hirt went Dixieland. So how does Fountain make it? By sticking it out two years with Lawrence Welk. He takes a solo a week and millions of people see him and then he comes back to New Orleans and there it only takes a few thousand to open up a club.”

  “You made a lot of records,” Standish said. “I’ve got some of them.”

  “Yeah. I’ve made a million of them. But I never gave the downbeat. I didn’t have enough brains or push or a good-enough agent to front for a band. I’d cut out a record and take my dough and stick my horn under my arm and that was that.” He leaned forward, tapping the table top with his index finger for emphasis, his remoteness gone and the sound of reality in his voice.

  “I’ve got some damn good boys with me right now. Do you know what they get? Scale. There’s some guys around that get less than that.”

  “But,” Standish said, his surprise showing, “how can that be? If they belong to the union—and they have to, don’t they?—they have to be paid the union scale.”

  Estey said “Ha!” again and his laugh was abrupt and mirthless.

  “Oh, they get it on paper all right. That’s how their checks are made out, and that’s how the owners put it down on their income tax, but if you’re real hard up and you need the work—and don’t think the bosses don’t know the score— you’ll kick back twenty bucks a week under the table if you have to. And you know why things are so tough?” he demanded.

  “Why?” said Standish, coming in on cue.

  “Rock-and-roll. These screwy dances the society guys and gals are going for. You know what they have now in real swish joints that used to have bands and a reputation? Record players, maybe backed up with a band consisting of three guitars, a bass, and a mechanical drummer. Guitars,” he said, making the word profane. “I hope I never see one again, unless maybe George Van Epps or Charlie Byrd is holding it. What the hell is the name of this new craze everybody’s got—discotheques. French, isn't it? You know what it means?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Me either. To me it means no bands, no live musicians. They got a couple in town and they don’t even have a band: just records. Look at this combo of mine. Solid, but where’s my bass player? Hennessey won’t go for the extra salary. “You sound okay without one,’ he says. Ha!”

  “He’s right about your sounding great,” Standish said, “but I guess it means you have to work a little harder or blow a little louder or something.”

  “You said it.” Estey pulled himself erect in his chair and grinned. “So why should a smart, ambitious, good-looking chick like Sheila settle for a guy like me?”

  “You’re selling yourself a little short, aren’t you?”

  '‘Not permanently, I hope.”

  “If you both work for a while—”

  “No.” Estey shook his head. “That’s no good. But don’t get the idea I’m giving up, Doc. I’ve got some tilings lined up that don’t look too bad. Maybe next year—”

  He broke off as a chord sounded on the piano and he turned quickly to find the piano player seated and the other three men moving onto die bandstand. He pushed back his chair and came to his feet.

  “I got to go,” he said, glancing at his watch as he did so. “If I don’t start blowing I’ll have Hennessey on my tail. See you, Doc. I didn’t mean to run off at the mouth like that.” Standish left his unfinished drink and signaled the waiter for the check that he had not expected Estey to pay. When he had added a tip and signed it, he started for the doorway. Apparently Sheila Keith had seen him coming—she made it a point of being alert for departing guests she knew, especially good tippers—because she had his hat in one hand, his coat over her arm. Her smile was much better now, the veiled intimacy, which Standish understood was deliberate, working in her greenish eyes.

  “You had quite a se
ssion with Ralph,” she said as she held his coat. “You’re sure he’s all right now?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “I never saw him so angry. He’s not like that usually.”

  “I guess he had all he could take from Flemming. A man who is jealous enough—” - “Jealous?” The shadowed eyes opened. “Of me? He had no reason to be.” She put his doctor’s bag on the counter while Standish produced a half dollar. “What did he say? He was kidding about the gun, wasn’t he?”

  Standish adjusted his collar. “He says he has one and if he takes you home tonight—”

  “Oh, he doesn’t take me home. I mean, not often.”

  “But you’re good friends?”

  “Oh, yes. I think he’s wonderful. He got me my job.”

  “But not enough to marry him.”

  “Is that what he said?”

  Standish grinned at her. “I’m not sure I remember exactly what he did say. Maybe you should ask him. If you get a chance, tell him not to get silly about the gun. That bit on the sidewalk was probably just talk. He’ll be okay once he calms down.”

  “Sure he will.” The smile came back, bright and approving. “Good night, Doctor.”

  3

  UNTIL 9:50 in the evening of the following Monday, Paul Standish had devoted his time, as a young doctor should, to the demands of his growing private practice. Monday was one of his clinic days and he had spent most of the morning in the hospital. Office patients scheduled between one and three had been more numerous than usual, and Mary Hayward, on her own initiative, had made appointments for three workingmen between six and seven.

  Standish had dined quietly and alone at the University Club and he was looking forward to some reading and an early bedtime when he put his car away in the row of garages that flanked the alley in back of his apartment. He came out on the street, swung right at the next comer, and not until he approached the entrance of his apartment house was it necessary for him to put on his second hat and face up to the additional duties of his official job as medical examiner.