by Ed Gorman
Rawlins always made a point of slamming his door. Kept the troops awake, he always joked. It can scare the hell out of you when you’re concentrating on your work. Shell-shocked.
He slammed the door extra hard for visitors. Maybe someday somebody’ll take a photo of him doing some door slamming. He could add it to his office wall collection.
“You know, he’s really a pretty decent guy when you give him a chance.”
We were eating lunch on a veranda overlooking the Mississippi. There was a soft river breeze sweetened by the scents of blooming spring. I looked with boyish longing at the craft on the water, everything from tugs to small yachts to bully-boy speed craft. Nothing spoke of freedom the way the Mississippi did. Just get on a boat and follow the river wherever it flowed.
Claire’s was the restaurant of choice for those thirty-somethings who had been led to believe that they were important in the Skylar scheme of things. This meant lawyers, bankers, land developers, the mayor and the city council people, and a cross section of doctors, visitors, TV station managers and various hangers-on and wanna-bes. I was here only because Osborne had insisted on it. Everybody knew who he was, of course. He gave little flickering dismissive waves to everybody who said hello.
“You’re talking about the Great White Hunter?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, he was downright charming this morning, Jason.”
“Was he ever charming to you all the years you worked for him?”
“No. But obviously he’s changed.”
Osborne had become a peacock, that was for sure. But one thing about him hadn’t changed. He was still naïve about people. That was his chief failure as a reporter. He wasn’t skeptical enough. He could be conned too easily.
“He hasn’t changed, Dave.”
“David.”
“David. He hasn’t changed at all. He’s only being charming because you’re a famous songwriter now.”
“He invited me to his club. That’s pretty impressive.”
“You’ll be his trophy guest. You really can’t see that?”
He smiled. “I’m not a complete dunce, Manning. I know he’s being nice because I’m somebody now. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be charming, does it?”
He checked his gold Rolex. “Listen, Jason. I’ve got maybe a half hour window here. If we’re going to do an interview, now’s the time.”
We did the interview while we ate. The recorder I used was about the size of a paperback. The smaller the better. Even people who are frequently interviewed get self-conscious if a big machine is grinding away.
Just about everybody in Skylar knew the story. Mild-mannered young reporter turns out to be brilliant songwriter. And not of Top Ten trash but real true popular music on the level of the great writers who had served two audiences—the big Broadway and radio audience; and the more refined, hipper jazz audience. You’ve never heard Porter or Kern or Larry Hart until you’ve heard them done by great jazz singers and musicians. Then you’ll find out just how rich their music really is.
That was about the only thing Osborne and I ever had in common. Our love of jazz. Her highness Dulcy Tremont let us both write many articles on Chicago jazz for her Entertainment magazine, the city being only two hours down the Interstate. We wrote several articles about the origins of Chicago jazz during WWI when the so-called Great Migration brought Southern blacks up from the South because the need for workers was so enormous. To give you an idea of how serious the migration was, in less than three years seventy-five thousand blacks came to the city where they found not only good wages but jazz legends such as Jelly Roll Martin and Erskine Tate already in place. New Orleans jazz merged with Chicago jazz and a new form was born. Then the era of Charlie Parker. And Miles. And Oscar Brown, Jr. All of them making significant contributions to the evolving genres.
We covered the contemporary scene, too. Improv jazz and fusion jazz and avant garde jazz. The Hungry Brain, the Myopic Bookstore, the Deadtech, the No Friction Café. So many cool venues. So much great music.
The contemporary scene was how Dave Osborne became the star feature writer for the paper. Before he gave Dulcy a chance to break his heart, he fell in useless love with an elegant young jazz singer named Eve Caine, the live-mate of famously jealous horn player Sam Reed. Osborne was no threat to Reed, which was obvious to everybody except Osborne. One night, after having snorted a couple lines of coke behind better than a pint of vodka, Reed sees Dave in the wintry parking lot of a jazz club talking to Eve. Reed yanks a .45 from the pocket of his Burberry and opens fire. Remember, wintry. The parking lot is covered with ice. Both Osborne and Eve try to dive for cover. But Eve dives exactly the wrong way. Right into the path of two bullets. Both of them entering her skull.
Reed is never seen again. All sorts of speculation in the months following Eve’s death. Suicide. The west coast. The east coast. Europe.
Osborne becomes a local celebrity.
The way the media handle it, you’d think he and Eve had been hot and heavy. He is the Other Man in a story that involves a beautiful young woman, a psycho horn payer and murder. Is this a story or is this a story? And the man right in the middle of it just happens to be a newspaper writer.
Osborne not only wrote a number of articles, he also wrote a screenplay and a book. They didn’t do great business but they did reasonable business, the book and the film. But they made him some serious money, anyway. And then he started writing songs. Correction: then he started writing good songs. He’d been writing songs since I’d met him. Bad ones. I’d do my best to support him by bringing my lady of the moment to whatever tiny club he was moonlighting in. But it wasn’t easy. He was pretty bad.
The talent agency that had handled his screenplay and book deal had a music division. When he sent a tape of six of his new songs to them, the head of the music division flew him to Hollywood where four of the songs ended up in a romantic drama that won two Oscars, one for leading lady Cameron Diaz, and another for best song, written by David Osborne.
That was pretty much the last we saw of him. It seemed that every singer of any note wanted a David Osborne song. He even recorded his own CD and won a Grammy for it. Following his cosmetic surgery, he became a perennial on Most Desirable Bachelor lists. He had a Malibu house, more than enough ladies, and, to be fair, a gift for creating music that was both elegant and memorable. I loved his stuff. He was as modern as Elvis Costello and as timeless as Duke Ellington.
This was what we covered in the interview. He was clever enough to always put a modest spin on all the major turning points in his life, attributing it to “luck” and “good timing.” Best to let the reporter brag on you, rather than you bragging on yourself. He even admitted to the fear that someday it would all leave him—the talent, the glitz, the celebrity. “All things end,” he said three times in the course of that interview.
If only he’d known how prescient his words would prove to be.
2
There was an e-mail waiting for me when I got back to my desk that afternoon. Actually, per usual, there were many e-mails waiting for me when I got back. But only one that made me curious enough to open it right away.
Jason—Please stop by my office as soon as you can.
Dulcy
The e-mails I could ignore. The phone calls, I couldn’t. They had some urgency to them. A reporter works on any number of stories at a time—the way a detective works on any number of cases—and two of them seemed to be off respirator and breathing on their own again. I spent half an hour catching up on them. And then it was time for Dulcy.
The men of the newsroom resented her because she always made it clear that they were not worthy of her attention. The women disliked her because she inhaled most of the sexual air available. Her natural gifts were only enhanced by her clothes, all of which she bought on frequent trips to Chicago. Not even the most lavished-upon Gold Coast mistress dressed any better than Dulcy. Made you wonder, and frequently speculate in coffee break moments, exactly
how much the Great White Hunter was paying her.
Today she wore an emerald green summer dress that displayed her body with wondrous ease, flowing, hugging, defining her with every step she took. She wasn’t in her office when I got there. But just as I reached the doorway to leave, I saw her and that dress moving in a ballet of tasteful sexuality among all the worker bees in the newsroom. She was headed to her own office. And to me.
“I really appreciate this, Jason,” she said, walking past me into her office. As Cal Rawlins’ office was a hymn to his prowess as a hunter, hers was a hymn to her prowess as an Important Personage. Each wall was a museum of photos showing her with various other Important Personages, including Bill Clinton, George Bush, Gwyneth Paltrow, and two Illinois governors, at least one of whom would soon enough be in prison, which was too bad because he was actually a rather decent guy. No matter who else shared the photo with her, the eye went instantly to Dulcy. She never showboated or flaunted. She didn’t need to. She was a surprisingly quiet and even somewhat reticent woman by inclination. She didn’t need any tricks to attract or sustain attention.
“How was lunch?” she asked once the door was closed and we were seated.
I shrugged. “Fine. I think I got a good interview for the magazine.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” Then, “Gosh, I barely recognized him when he walked in.” I’d never been able to figure out if her “goshes” or “gollys” were her preferred word choice or simply an affectation of innocence.
“I didn’t either.”
“So how did he sound? Pretty much as he always was or kind of a star?”
You have to understand how unlikely this conversation was. This was maybe the fourth time I’d ever been in her office. This was also about the longest conversation I’d ever had with her. Back in the days when Osborne and I were writing all those jazz articles—we stopped doing them even before he left for the coast; except for reviews of current acts, we’d pretty much covered all the highlights of Chicago jazz history—she dealt with Dave; I dealt with her assistant, who always conveyed Dulcy’s thoughts on revisions.
But this afternoon she spoke as if we were friends or at least amiable associates who did this sort of thing quite often. There was even a non-sexual kind of intimacy in her tone.
“Oh, about half and half, I guess. Sometimes he was like the old Osborne. Sometimes he was definitely a star.”
“I was wondering if you’d do me a favor.”
So now we’d come to it. The reason for the meeting. The reason for the cordiality.
“Sure, if I can.”
“I was wondering if you’d invite him to dinner tonight.”
“Can’t. I’ve got a date.”
She shook her gloriously blonde head. “Not dinner for you two— dinner for David and I.”
“Ah.”
“I know it’s stupid—it’s just I’m—uncomfortable—calling him myself. We were never—while he worked here, I mean—we were never, you know, close friends or anything.” She paused. “I mean, I know what people say about me. That I’m not always as warm as I could be.” I didn’t even try to contradict her. “And there’s another thing.”
Those pure blue eyes shifted eastward for the moment. Eastward from her desk meant the office of the Great White Hunter. “This has to be strictly between us. Certain people—Well, I don’t need to go into the whole thing do I? Certain people wouldn’t necessarily be happy if they found out I had dinner with David. I wouldn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings over this.”
I was reluctant to make the call for her. It was sort of high school. Adults tended to make their own calls when they wanted dates. But I hadn’t thought of how a dinner date like this would rankle Cal Rawlins, an arrogant man who badly needed rankling.
“I’ll have him call you. If he’s agreeable, I mean.”
Her smile was almost oppressively sweet. “That’s so nice of you, Jason. Why don’t you start feeding me some ideas for the magazine again? I can probably get you some pretty decent freelance money if the pieces are major enough.”
“I’d really appreciate that.”
Twenty minutes later, on his cell talking to my cell, Osborne said, “You know how many sex fantasies I had about that bitch?”
“Not any more than I had. Have. I don’t live in Malibu so the Dulcy Tremont Fantasy Theater is still open for me. You, she’s asking out to dinner.”
“I played it pretty cool with her today. Didn’t look at her once.”
This was the old Osborne. Hurt, vindictive, childish. You know, just like the rest of us.
“You need the phone number?”
“I didn’t say I’d go.”
“Sure, you’ll go. Because you want to see what happens.”
“Bitch better come through for me if I go.”
“Well, that part of things, you’ll have to handle for yourself. Can’t help you there.”
“I should plant a video camera in my hotel room. Tape us going at it. And then put it on the net.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty classy.”
“It may not be classy, Jason. But think back to how she treated us all those years. Lording it all over us. Running to Rawlins every time she was unhappy. Never speaking when she walked past. She wasn’t real classy herself, when you think about it.”
“No, she wasn’t. But things are different now. You’re famous. And rich.”
“And handsome. I paid a lot of money for this face, man.”
“I didn’t want to mention your new face. You being so humble and all, I thought it might embarrass you.”
He had the grace to laugh, anyway. “I laid the star trip on everybody pretty heavy this morning. Sorry, Jason. I really do consider you a friend.”
I’m easily swayed. He probably didn’t mean it but it was damned decent of him to say it.
“Call her, David. And then tomorrow, I’ll expect a full report.”
“Lunch’ll be on me again. And don’t be surprised if I show up with a video.”
After a conversation like that, the rest of the afternoon was pretty dull. But I’m a mule. Any time, any place there’s work to be done, I do it. I just plug my brain in and proceed. Time goes a lot faster when you’re working than when you’re just watching the clock and waiting for the day to end.
I played racquetball after work then went to Pizza Hut with Suki Zimmerman afterward. For nearly six months, Suki and I had lived together. We had both decided that it was time to get Serious about somebody. We were pretty much equally matched as to brains, inter-ests, wit and looks. And the sex was mighty fine. There was just one problem. We never fell in love. We kept expecting to wake up next to each other one fine sunny morn and be absolutely gaga over each other. But it never happened. That was a few years back. Between Serious Relationships, we still got together sometimes, which was one of the things I admired about both of us. We did our share of sleeping around but we were faithful when we were involved with somebody. I hadn’t cheated on her once when we’d lived together; I don’t think she cheated on me, either. That seems hard to come by these days.
The sex was always good and it certainly wasn’t any different tonight. Very good, in fact. Afterward, we got sentimental about each other, but that ended when the phone rang and it was a woman I’d been seeing occasionally. Reminded Suki we’d moved on, I guess. She didn’t stay over. She ran her own three-woman public relations agency these days. To keep the cash flow coming, she got to the office at seven a.m., six mornings a week. She wanted her own bed and her own shower.
She was just leaving when the phone rang again— “Popular guy,” Suki said at the door—Dulcy Tremont sobbed into my ear, “Somebody shot him, Jason! Somebody killed him!”
She didn’t need to drop a name on me. I knew who she was talking about.
3
The national TV folks hit town before dawn. A number of producers phoned me at home to find out what I knew. They seemed surprised I was asleep. Dulcy and I had ended up in a
franchise restaurant pouring down hot coffee and going over all the details she’d gone over with them for more than three hours…
They’d turned the lights down in most sections of the nearly empty restaurant. The few remaining customers didn’t seem animated in any way. Like props or zombies. I wondered if the franchise made them put life-like early-morning dummies in place to give an impression the restaurant was busy. But these were zombies designed by Edward Hopper. Not scary zombies—lonely ones.
Dulcy claimed she was convinced that the person who’d fired the shot from the darkness was some old enemy of Osborne’s from his days on the newspaper. I was convinced that she was saying that because she didn’t want to admit there was at least a chance that the killer had been Cal Rawlins. I mostly listened as she described her date with Osborne, a date that had gone well enough to conclude in a most passionate way on her stately couch in her stately living room. Osborne had been hoping for consummation. But she’d held off. Said why didn’t they talk about it tomorrow night. She mentioned that four times in the three hours they’d been in her apartment the phone had rung. She’d picked up all three times. But then the caller had hung up immediately. She had Caller ID but the number had been blocked from the other end.
“I got tired. It wasn’t that late—it was about what, eleven when I called you?—but I was tired and Cal wanted me to be at the Chamber of Commerce right at seven-thirty for this breakfast. So we decided we’d take up where we’d left off tomorrow night. Then he left. He was yawning. He said he was tired, too, all of a sudden. I’m not much for sleepovers so I didn’t ask him to stay. I assume you know all the stories about Cal and I. Well, there’s no sense lying about them now. It’s bound to come out. In fact, it already has. Chief Feller asked me—very tactfully, of course—if I might have a jealous boyfriend somewhere in the background. He meant Cal, of course, but he wouldn’t say so. He’s afraid of Cal. Just about everybody is. The newspaper can be a powerful weapon.”