by Andy Conway
But it was clear what it was. An uptempo jig that you might think was ragtime or maybe a military band, but wasn’t quite either.
This was the long lost Buddy Bolden recording. No one in the modern world had heard this.
“Oh, it’s so quaint!” Alma cried.
She was trying to sound like Natalie Curtis, but this wasn’t a novelty record. She couldn’t hear what Mitch could hear. There it was, in the swirl of sound: the thing he’d heard jazz historians talk about in serious documentaries: the skip in the rhythm they called the ‘big four’, as if a marching band had heard the armistice bells ringing and, mid-beat, stepped out of their march and danced for joy; and floating over the jaunty ragtime beat, a rich, fat, bold cornet sound. It swooned and dipped and swerved, audacious and free, and then dared to just hover, keeping a single note, as the band played on.
In two minutes, it was over, leaving just the crackle of the cylinder. Mitch heaved for air, realizing he hadn’t breathed.
A shuffle behind them. They turned to see Gustav standing at the door.
Alma cried out with shock, as if he were holding an axe, not a pencil. “Gustav! I had no idea you were here! I thought you were at the Met.” She was suddenly the chastened girl who’d woken father from his sleep, not the gay hostess.
Gustav ignored her, just staring at the cylinder. “Almschi, you must never play that terrible music here again,” he said.
But he didn’t look outraged. He nodded, put his finger to his lips, nodded again, turned and walked back to his room, closing the door behind him.
Alma wrung her hands. “You must go. You must take this thing and go.”
James rushed to the phonograph and detached the cylinder. “Certainly, ma’am.”
“I am so sorry,” said Alma. “My husband hates any sort of musical disturbance when he is composing. Only a few weeks ago I had to pay an organ grinder to cease playing outside the hotel. Gustav demands complete silence. I hope you understand.”
“I certainly do, ma’am,” said James. He had already put the cylinder in its tube and shoved it into his satchel.
“Please don’t lose that,” Mitch said, gripping his arm.
James smiled at his vehemence. “I certainly won’t, Mr Mitchell.”
“You don’t know how important it is!” Mitch urged him.
But he would lose it. It would be lost to the world. If only he’d come through with a phone, he could have recorded what they’d just heard and take it back to the present. To 2018. And the world would hear Buddy Bolden.
But was it wrong to do that? Would he be interfering with time? Surely not. It was the same as finding a lost Rembrandt, an Egyptian tomb, a Saxon hoard. Wasn’t that interfering with time also?
“I shouldn’t have allowed this,” Alma groaned. “Gustav despises Negro music. He has said to me how there shall never be a great American composer because there is no American folk song as there is in Europe. Their only folk song is imported by savage Africans and is little more than rhythmic drumming.”
Mitch remembered this was Mahler’s dark secret: his appalling racism. He’d read it with disgust as a teenager. That a man whose music showed such compassion, such understanding of the human condition, could be so narrow minded, so poisonous. And that he was a Jew who’d suffered anti-Semitism everywhere. A Jew who’d clawed his way to the top of respectable society and now spat on those below.
“Gustav is wrong,” said Mitch.
“Don’t say that about my husband,” said Alma.
“He’s wrong about this as he’s wrong about so many things, Alma. He’s so puffed up and conceited he can’t see what’s right under his nose.”
“Stop it, I say.”
“America’s classical music is being born right now, and it’s being created by this man.”
“Don’t be absurd,” she said, half laughing.
James looked open mouthed, as if it was Mitch being hysterical.
“Jazz will be America’s classical music, and America’s Bach, its Mozart, yes, its Mahler, will be a black man. It will be a Negro! And you’re all too bloody stuck up to see it, you idiots!”
“Stop it!” she screamed, covering her ears. ‘I won’t have it!”
He followed James out of the door and slammed it shut on Alma’s weeping.
“I should go,” said James. He skipped off down the corridor to the elevator and rang the bell, not looking back.
Mitch thought of going after him, but he couldn’t. His rage had destroyed his defences, his empathic nature sucking in all the emotion around him. He stumbled down the long corridor to his room, assaulted by a terrible umbra of white light. It pierced the defensive wall he’d built around himself, anger and shame rushing in. He swooned for his bed and fell into a black hole.
— 26 —
LIKE HE’D BEEN PUT through a shredder. He woke, nerves frazzled. An hour he’d been out. Knocked out cold on the canvas. He pushed himself up off the bed, groggy, moaning.
Arguments always wiped him out. Confrontation wounded him. Even with so many barriers around himself — shutting off New York and its dangerous emotional cacophony — still Alma Mahler’s tantrum could floor him.
Stumbling, drugged, he propped himself up against the wall and waited for the blood to rush back to his face. A violent gaping hole in his belly.
He staggered out and down the corridor, swerving past the door to the Mahlers’ suite, staring at the bright maroon carpet, and careening to the elevator.
He was walking wounded, just like Alma. She promenaded with her nose in the air but left a trail of blood from her heart. Mourning her dead daughter. Her hand on his. She’d kissed it. Reaching for him in the dark lounge. Wanting him. She was reaching out to someone, anyone, who might show her a little pity. Secret sips of alcohol from her purse. To numb the pain of every day.
Avoid her. He had to escape them both and the toxic cloud of death around them.
He found his feet and they took him down to the restaurant where delicious aromas made him drool. He took a table and acted civilized, detached, as if food were the last thing he could possibly want or need, and when a bowl of chicken soup came, tried not to bury his face in it and lap it up like a dog. He ate the lot. No delicate leaving the bowl half full, and munched on the bread and butter till it was thick in his throat.
He drifted out to the street. Let the Mahlers go hang. He needed to get away, to recover, his head buzzing like he’d been electrocuted, his whole being smudged, his senses blurred.
In a trance, he found he’d walked right across Central Park, spectral in evening snow, and found his way onto the Metro, barrelling down to Union Square.
He was going to call on Irving Berlin at Jimmy Kelly’s saloon, it appeared. His feet had decided for him.
The reek of the East Village, its press of human stink, didn’t bother him. He was immune, walking dead, a man only half occupying his own body. He floated through it, sensing nothing — a ghost, a spectre, a spirit that no one saw — and half wondered if he really were walking to Jimmy Kelly’s bar or was still lying on his bed at the Majestic and only dreaming this.
The pleasant blast of heat from inside the bar thawed his soul and he knew he was here, in this moment, in this place. He found a stool at the mahogany bar and hunched over it in his overcoat.
Irving Berlin stopped short when he came through.
“Not expecting to see me, Izzy?”
The boy smiled. “You know, to tell you the truth. I thought you would be pushing up the daisies already.”
“Yeah, thanks for setting me up.”
Izzy stepped closer and lowered his voice. “I didn’t set you up, buddy. I just passed on your message.”
“You told Selig Silverstein to go visit Mock Duck too?”
“Mock Duck? Boy, do you like poking at the hornets’ nest. You got a death wish?”
He went to go. Mitch pulled him back. “I tell you to give a message to Selig Silverstein and he says that message tel
ls him to go and visit Mock Duck at the Mann Fang.”
“Not my message, my friend. I didn’t even send no message to Silverstein. I passed on your particular threat to an acquaintance who knows how to pass on messages to the underworld. He’s a proper Orpheus, you might say.”
Izzy shrugged him off and went to serve another table, singing a ditty, greeted by laughter and applause.
“You drinking or just here for the ambience?”
A hulk of a bartender. No nonsense.
“Whiskey,” said Mitch. “Overholt.”
It came and he sipped it, felt it bloom through him, golden warm.
Izzy came back behind the bar and made to clean glasses. “Look, why would I send this Selig guy to Mock Duck? It don’t make sense. Unless someone who doesn’t like you wants to send this Selig guy to Mock Duck. That’s not me. I like you.”
“You think it’s Zelig?” Mitch asked.
“Why would Big Jack Zelig do that? He can take care of business himself, if you know what I mean. And you sending him threats means I never expected to see you again.”
“So what’s Mock Duck got to do with it?”
Izzy whistled. “Forget it, it’s Chinatown.”
Selig hadn’t even seemed to know about the Mahlers. He’d chattered on about Chinatown business that seemed nothing to do with any blackmail attempt on Alma. So it was Zelig all the time and not Selig?
“Who passed the message on for you?”
“You don’t wanna know, trust me.”
“I’ll pay. Same again.”
Izzy whistled a bar of Alexander’s Ragtime Band and looked at the clock. “I get off in an hour, and my boss don’t like the look of you. So meet me eight-thirty. Madison Square Park. I’ll be there.”
“Can I trust you?”
“Oh, I’m on the level. Besides, you’re a big shot music publisher, ain’t you? You’re gonna help me out.”
Mitch laughed. Irving Berlin wouldn’t need any help with that, not where he was going. He slapped a coin onto the bar and stalked out.
— 27 —
WITH AN HOUR TO SPARE, Mitch walked around the Flatiron, holding onto his hat and stamping his feet against the bitter wind. It really was like a storm raged around the building every hour of the day. A notice in elegant filigree promised fine dining at the Flatiron Restaurant, so he walked inside and found a stylish lobby.
The restaurant was in the cellar, down a grand stairway, and he thought of the Titanic — a palace on the ocean. He was in an ocean liner on Fifth Avenue. The floor polished like glass. An orchestra playing on a raised stage. The restaurant was so vast it must stretch under the streets. Waiters roamed the snow-clad tables bringing steaming dishes and wine.
He ordered baked pork served in a dark beer sauce. Most of the menu seemed German. It warmed him right through and afterwards ordered a Lagavulin from the extensive drinks menu that listed thirty-five whiskies from around the world. He sank into a tar pit of iodine warmth, peaty and brackish. It had changed over the years. Oh how it had changed. This was a hit of the pure stuff. He wanted to buy the bottle and hug it.
When the clock struck 8:30, he paid his bill and wandered back out, standing by the ‘cowcatcher’ retail outlet at the prow of the building. It seemed to be a cigar store. A great Stars and Stripes flag on the prow, and two giant cigars sticking out either side like cannons.
Izzy Berlin caught sight of him from over by the park and trotted across the street.
“So where is he?”
“Where’s who?”
“The man you gave my message. I thought you were bringing him here.”
“All in good time, my friend. We’re going to him.”
“And where’s that?”
“Right up to the top.” Izzy laughed and pointed up.
Mitch craned his neck. The Flatiron’s prow towering above, as if about to crush their boat.
“Come on!” Izzy was already walking to the entrance.
Mitch followed him along the Broadway side into the Flatiron lobby, where Izzy was tipping his hat to the concierge and pointing upstairs. The concierge nodded and smiled and Mitch followed him into the elevator.
“You’ve been here before.”
“Oh boy, do they know me here. Floor eighteen, please sir.”
The bellboy pressed a button and the elevator juddered into life. A brass plate listed the building’s occupants and Izzy read them off as they rose.
“The Equitable Life Assurance Society have the entire third floor. Ain’t they the big deal. All but one office, which is for the Imperial Russian Consulate. An insurance company bigger than a country. Who knew? Frank A. Munsey’s got the entire eighth floor. Ain’t a magazine in America don’t come from that floor. Sercombe press on the tenth. They’ll publish any book you care to pay for.”
Mitch laughed and Izzy warmed to his theme.
“You’ve got it all here.” He started singing, turning it into a tune.
Good old Daniel Langton,
he’ll landscape your estate.
The Bromonio Company
will fix your heart rate.
We got Roebling Construction
will build you a fort.
And if you’re lonely in town
you can get an escort:
just try the fourteenth,
where Bohemian Guides,
will show you around
all over the town.
But even though they look
so delectable,
Mrs Dana assures us
they’re all respectable.
The bellboy put his white gloved hand to his mouth and tried not to laugh.
On the nineteenth
it’s the Fuller Co.
They built the place
so it’s good to go.
But before we get
to the very top,
let’s take us a little
musical stop.
The elevator jolted on the eighteenth and they stepped out to the sound of pianos tinkling down the corridor.
“This, my friend, is home to music publishers. Mostly. There’s no more room in Tin Pan Alley so they’re spilling over here.”
They strolled down the long corridor, office doors on either side, tunes wafting out of each one.
Straight ahead was a single door, light shining feebly through the transom window. A man had just stepped out in an overcoat and derby hat. He locked the door and reached up, placing the key on the transom. He turned, saw them approaching and froze.
“Max!” Izzy called. “I brought along my recent acquaintance. He needs to look into that business we talked about.”
Max smiled and held his hands out. “I thought you wasn’t gonna show. I was about to get home to the wife and kid.”
They walked right up to him and Max looked Mitch up and down. The brass plate beside the door said The Saratoga Trunk Company.
“Come on in, guys.” Max reached back up and took the key from above the door and they stepped into a cramped, dark office. Street light came through the window at the V of the room and Mitch saw that it looked right up Fifth Avenue. They were at the prow of the Flatiron.
Max sat behind his desk and switched on a green banker’s lamp, the light catching his face in a sinister way. But he smiled. He was a boy, just like Izzy. A teenage boy in his first job, the office junior, all spick and span in a suit and waistcoat, even a nice little moustache to make him feel older. But he was still a boy.
“Max, this is Mr Mitchell,” Izzy said.
Max stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet ya, Mr Mitchell. Max Siegel at your service. Take a seat.”
They sat opposite him on two chairs.
“You want to order a trunk, this time?”
Mitch looked to Izzy. What the hell was this? “I don’t think so. I’m not sure what this is.”
Izzy grinned. “This, my friend, is what you might call a front.”
Max leaned back and hitched his thumbs in his waistcoat. “I
t’s not a front so much as a legitimate business. Only the name is a front. You want to send someone a trunk, because you think they should get out of town, I’m the guy who can arrange that.”
“You send them a trunk?”
“Do you see any trunks here?”
Mitch looked around the cramped office. There was not a single trunk in evidence.
“Or let’s say you don’t wanna send a trunk,” said Izzy. “Let’s say you just want to pass on a message to a person who’s in the trunk business.”
Max smiled and hooked a thumb at himself.
“I need to know who you gave my message to,” said Mitch.
“So you’re the man who threatened Big Jack Zelig? Can you beat it?”
“You sent it to Jack Zelig, not Selig Silverstein?”
“Silverstein? Why would I send that nobody a message?” Max puffed his chest out. “Say, you ain’t implying that I sent it to the wrong guy, are ya? Cause that don’t go here, see? I run a business here, mister.”
“I don’t mean to cast aspersions on your business,” Mitch said.
Max looked at Izzy. “Get a load of that. Aspersions.”
“I told you he was real English,” said Izzy. “Like a duke.”
“I just need to ascertain to whom the message went, and what it said.”
“Cut it out, fresh guy. Ascertain! Boy you got a silver tongue, buddy.”
“Selig Silverstein came to me complaining that he’d received a message telling him to go to Mann Fang. He didn’t like it. He thought it was a trap.”
“Well, that ain’t the message I sent. And I didn’t send it to no stew bum politico.” Max tapped his temple. “I got your message right up here, your honour, where I keeps all my messages. Mr Mitchell says he’s working with Mahler and he knows your game. The letter is fake and we won’t be paying. Not a nickel. And that’s your problem, right there.”
“What’s my problem?”
“The problem is you’re still alive. Flip guys like you don’t just poke people like Big Jack Zelig in the eye, not if they don’t want to take a walk off a tall building. You even gave him your address. If I were you I’d get on your pins and skidoo. Or why not just walk out of that window and get it over with?”