The Mobster’s Lament

by Ray Celestin

  ‘How’d the tour go?’ Glaser asked.

  Louis gave him a rundown of the disaster.

  ‘You see the gate receipts?’ he asked when he’d finished.

  Glaser nodded.

  If he’d seen the receipts, then why was he asking? He knew the thing had been a bust.

  ‘Something’s gotta change, boss,’ said Louis.

  ‘Swing music’s dying,’ said Glaser. ‘You see the article in Time?’

  ‘I don’t need to read a magazine to know it,’ said Louis.

  ‘There’s the original jazz revival,’ said Glaser. ‘You sure you won’t reconsider?’

  Louis shook his head. ‘Nah, boss,’ he said. He could still feel the sting of the movie from the previous year. Louis needed a new direction. Not big bands, not revival music, not bebop. Something else. But how did you build an identity out of negatives? Earlier that year a press agent, Ernie Anderson, had approached Louis with a possible answer to that question. He’d had an idea for a concert that he said might rejuvenate Louis’ career. ‘Instead of earning three hundred and fifty dollars a night, you’ll be earning two thousand five hundred,’ he’d said.

  Anderson had suggested arranging a concert with Louis playing along with five or six of the best musicians in the country – an all-star band. A small band, like Louis used to play with when he was young, instead of a bloated swing orchestra. Anderson’s idea was that they wouldn’t be playing revival music, they’d be playing jazz standards, but updated, mixed with the newer sounds the young musicians of the band would bring – something different, a hybrid. Neither revival nor bebop. And definitely not swing. The man had come up with a way out of Louis’ dilemma. Supposedly.

  He’d managed to sell both Louis and Glaser on the idea. They signed contracts and Anderson had started assembling a band, booking a venue, securing finance for advertising and publicity. As musical director he’d hired Benny Goodman’s former trumpeter Bobby Hackett. The concert was due to take place in a few days’ time, and they were supposed to meet Anderson to discuss the details.

  As they waited Glaser told Louis about Los Angeles. Louis nodded, thought about Ida and wondered if she really would move there. She clearly wasn’t over the death of her husband, seemed trapped still, in stasis. Moving to LA made sense if it would help her move on. As long as she wasn’t just running away.

  Glaser droned on, Louis half-listened, stared out of the window, where he could see the cliff-face of the skyscraper opposite, in whose windows people were working away. He stared at them through the snow that was drifting down the canyon, at the rows of desks, the secretaries, the clerks. They all looked young, well-turned out, fashionable. What kind of office was it? An advertising agency? A political organization?

  As he stared, something nagged at him. Something to do with Ida and her investigation. Some connection he felt was in plain sight but also obscured. Maybe to do with the office workers, with Glaser, with Billie Holiday and LA, with the slaves playing banjos in the picture. What?

  As he was trying to find a thread to sew it all together his thoughts were disrupted by the receptionist entering, bringing with her a harried-looking Anderson.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ said the man. ‘I left my cab because of the traffic, ran three blocks up the Avenue. Mr Armstrong, sir.’

  He held out his hand. Louis grinned, stood, shook his hand. The man held out his hand for Glaser too, who didn’t stand, and shook it coldly.

  ‘Take a seat,’ said Glaser.

  Anderson sat, smiled at them both, his enthusiasm undimmed.

  ‘Everything’s arranged,’ he said, beaming. He had a strangely adenoidal tone, like the source of his voice was located somewhere in the depth of his sinuses.

  ‘Posters have been up in venues two months now. Adverts have been running in the trade press the last six weeks. The venue called me yesterday – it’s a sell-out. We’ve already had confirmed the jazz critics will be there from the Times and the Tribune and the Washington Post, Time Magazine and Newsweek. And this morning I finalized the details of the band with Bobby.’

  He turned to grin at Louis and passed him a sheet of paper: Jack Teagarden (trombone), Dick Cary (piano), Bobby Hackett (second trumpet), Peanuts Hucko (clarinet), Bob Haggart (bass), Sid Catlett (1st drums), and George Wettling (2nd drums).

  ‘Like I promised you, Mr Armstrong,’ he said. ‘The best band you’ve played with in twenty years.’

  The man grinned again. The musicians really were the best he’d played with since his heyday in Chicago in the twenties. All of them first-rate and forward-looking. Hucko and Bobby Hackett had played with Benny Goodman, Catlett and Teagarden had worked with the bebop bands in Midtown. The band was a perfect mix of the current and the future.

  A warm feeling came over Louis, a feeling he hadn’t had in years – excitement. He grinned, passed the list to Glaser.

  ‘All that’s left now is deciding on the set list and rehearsals,’ said Anderson.

  He pulled a ragged sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘I’ve got some ideas.’

  Twenty minutes later, Anderson and Louis walked out of the office and through the reception.

  ‘You know,’ said Louis, ‘I wasn’t sure you’d pull this off.’

  Anderson laughed. ‘I haven’t, yet,’ he said.

  They stepped into the elevator, it shivered, then began its descent.

  ‘You might have already gathered,’ Anderson said, ‘but I’m a fan.’

  ‘Yeah, I kinda figured on that already.’

  ‘I grew up listening to your Hot Five and Hot Seven records. Best jazz ever recorded.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks, pops. They weren’t too shabby.’

  They reached the first floor, exited the building. Anderson hailed a cab and hopped in. Louis watched him go then looked about the crowds on the street, hurrying through the whirling snow. He looked up at the building opposite, felt that same nagging sensation he’d experienced before Anderson had turned up, that something related to Ida’s investigation was maybe connected to the meeting he’d just had, or to the building opposite, or to the people inside it, or to the sky whirling with snow.

  PART THIRTEEN

  DAILY NEWS

  NEW YORK’S PICTURE NEWSPAPER

  City Edition Final Saturday, November 8th 1947

  LOCAL NEWS

  HOUSE OF HORRORS HOTEL OWNER KILLED

  David Newark—Crime Correspondent

  Manhattan, 7th Nov. – Milton Eldridge, 54, the owner of the hotel at the center of last summer’s ‘House of Horrors’ murder sensation was killed today in a hit-and-run accident on 128th Street, Harlem. Mr Eldridge was crossing the intersection with 7th Avenue shortly after 10 a.m. when he was knocked down by a passing vehicle. He was found unconscious but alive at the scene by two patrolmen. He succumbed to his injuries, however, before the arrival of paramedics. No witnesses to the accident have so far come forward, leading police to make an appeal. Those with information are asked to contact the 28th Precinct on 8th Avenue between 122nd and 123rd, or to call the precinct emergency crime hotline number on UN ivrsty 4-8783.

  32

  Saturday 8th, 11.00 a.m.

  The fund-raiser was being held in the meeting rooms of a grandiose Anglican church on the Upper East Side, one of those opulent, gilded buildings whose walls were made of money. The ticket had cost fifty dollars and helped fund a charity that sought to alleviate the plight of the city’s poor. Michael and Ida had read about the event in a newspaper when they were researching Congressman Paul J. Helms the previous day. Michael had called the organizers and was told there were still tickets available. He’d bought one and headed down there. He wanted to see him in person, to get the measure of the man, to see if he might be hiding a secret dope addiction that Cleveland was blackmailing him over, or if the blackmail concerned something else.

  Michael arrived early, sat in an aisle seat in one of the middle rows. The rest of the audience was elderly and wealthy-looking – bejeweled m
atrons with perfectly fussy haircuts, old men who seemed to have been dragged there against their will, who couldn’t see the angle in helping the city’s poor.

  On the stage in front of Michael sat six people – the five speakers, all in a row, and a master of ceremonies who stood at a lectern in the center of the stage, introducing the speakers. She gave brief bios of each one, and what she said about Helms tallied with what Ida and Michael had learned of him – a young congressman from upstate New York, a war hero, a campaigner for social change, a rising political star, someone we would all be hearing a lot from over the next few years.

  When she’d got to the end of the introductions, she asked the first of the speakers up to the lectern, a Catholic preacher with a parish in Harlem, there to explain to these people who lived in the wallow of wealth how heroin was ravaging the community that lived a ten-minute drive uptown. The preacher, a red-faced Irishman, extolled the evils of the narcotic in a fire-and-brimstone oratory style that wouldn’t have been out of place in nineteenth-century Dublin.

  While he made his points, Michael studied Helms. He was young and handsome, tall and broad-shouldered. He projected an aura of good health, of cornfield freshness, a cleanness that in politicians and salesmen made Michael suspicious. If what the sound effects artist had told them was true, this was the man whom Cleveland was blackmailing, the man ultimately responsible for Tom’s imprisonment. Somehow Helms provided a link that descended from the political class at the top of society down through the world of the entertainment industry, to the city’s bohemians, to its underbelly of criminals, murderers and addicts. The question was how. One thing was for sure – Helms was not a junkie, he was much too healthy-looking for that. Whatever Cleveland was blackmailing him over, it was not a secret dope addiction.

  The Irishman finished up his speech and was followed by a woman who ran a shelter for battered wives. Then Helms took to the lectern, talked about the charity’s schemes to help servicemen coming back from the war. He talked about his time in the Eighth Army during the Invasion of Italy, the horrors and destruction he had seen in Sicily and Naples. He played the war hero, capitalizing on the social currency it gave him without ever overtly sounding like he was doing so. He played it to perfection.

  And it grated. The way Helms used the war to score points, the way Michael could see through the sheen to the self-serving man on the inside. Helms seemed to be one of those people who mistook entitlement for confidence, who was best-adapted to do well in a superficial culture, and took that as a sign of something great and good inside them, rather than as a sign of something wrong in society.

  Michael’s thoughts drifted off on a sea of resentment and before he knew it, the speeches were over and the emcee returned to round things up. A smattering of applause finally brought things to a close. People rose, milled about, opened check books. The speakers descended the stage and mingled.

  Helms worked the crowd, shaking hands, smiling, chatting, in a patter that was smooth and oiled. Michael got lost in contemplation again. Here was a guilty man being lauded, there was Michael’s innocent son in Rikers, beaten, broken, surrounded by killers, the electric chair waiting in the darkness. Michael had always been honest, had always put himself last. Helms seemed to be his opposite. Maybe this was why Helms was a rising star and Michael was fighting to free his son. Maybe it was Michael’s morals that had got him into this mess. Maybe more selfishness would have served his family better.

  Without his really realizing it, Helms had approached while Michael had been brooding over things, was standing in front of him now – beaming smile, not a strand of hair out of place, not a fiber of lint on his suit.

  ‘Sir,’ said Helms, holding out his hand. ‘Thank you for attending.’

  Michael glared at him.

  Helms waited, his hand in the air between them. Michael wanted to swing a punch at him, bruise his face as Tom’s had been bruised. But he wasn’t sure he could still do it. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been in a fight. And more importantly, he couldn’t make a scene for Tom’s sake. If Helms found out they were on to him, Tom was in even more danger of being taken out in a jailhouse hit. Michael was supposed to have gone to the fund-raiser incognito, to have melted into the crowd, to have left after the speeches.

  Helms continued to wait, his hand still hovering, confusion spreading across his features.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Michael, eventually. He shook Helms’s hand. It was cold and clammy, but his grip was strong.

  Helms nodded. Michael prayed he hadn’t raised Helms’s suspicions. But he couldn’t see any trace of it in the man’s blank face, and soon enough Helms had moved on. Ushered towards the door by his advisors, whisked through the fawning crowd.

  Michael watched him go. He suddenly felt weary. Old and tired and powerless and stupid. Why had he even come here? To get an inkling of what dirt Cleveland might have had on Helms? To get the measure of the man? Or to stupidly risk it all?

  He walked out of the hall, down the stairs, out into the New York morning. Helms and his entourage were on the sidewalk, a pair of black Cadillacs waiting for them in the road. They stopped to talk to a gushing mother, who held the hand of a little girl in a blue-and-white winter coat. Michael stopped and watched them. Helms leaned down, talked to the girl. The wind blowing down the street made the fur which trimmed the girl’s coat dance and sway. Helms chucked her under the chin. Something about the gesture filled Michael with resentment once more. This man who was responsible for the deaths of four people in Harlem, who might well see Tom electrocuted, playing the nice guy with this mother and daughter.

  The entourage moved on, disappearing into the Cadillacs, into traffic, into New York.

  And as the girl and her mother turned to walk away, Michael realized why he had come. It wasn’t every day you got to look the devil in the eye, and shake his hand.

  In the cab heading downtown he tried to fight his despondency. He watched the Saturday afternoon shoppers on 4th Avenue, pressing on despite the wind that was whisking through the city. The cab stopped at an intersection and through the crowds and the snow that had started to fall, Michael saw a billboard affixed to the side of a building. Posters advertising laundry services, car tires, costume jewelry. Some of the more recent posters were peeling at the edges, revealing the older posters behind, including one for war bonds. It showed a smiling GI walking through a gate in a white picket fence towards a perfect American house. At the bottom of the image were emblazoned the words Bring him back sooner, buy war bonds.

  Michael stared at the poster, annoyed by it. He thought of Helms returning home to a glittering political career, and Tom returning home to wander the streets and into a prison cell. Cleveland too, coming back damaged, picking up a drug addiction. Even Bucek fought in the war, to come home and be slaughtered in a Harlem flophouse.

  The cab drove on and the image of the GI and the white picket fence disappeared from view, but Michael kept thinking about it, something jarring. All down 4th Avenue the image tugged at his subconscious, snagged on something in the shadows of his mind, something that demanded attention.

  And then it all fell into place.

  The war.

  Cleveland, Bucek and Helms had all fought in the war.

  What if they all fought together?

  What if that was what connected them?

  Michael thought back to Helms’s speech, how he talked about fighting in Italy with the Eighth Army, and something else clicked into place. Faron. Carrasco saying there was a rumor Faron had fled to Italy before the war. Maybe Faron had been in Italy too.

  Faron, Cleveland, Helms. Maybe all their paths crossed during the war. How else would a Negro jazz musician and a young politician and a mobster meet if not during the great leveling of status that happened during war-time?

  If Cleveland was stationed in Italy with Helms, then maybe Cleveland had been blackmailing Helms over something that happened during their time there. Not anything to
do with dope, or homosexuality, or louche parties in Greenwich Village.

  And maybe Bucek was stationed in Italy too. And he and Cleveland were in the blackmail plot together, and that’s why they both ended up at the Palmer Hotel.

  ‘Pal?’ Michael heard a voice say.

  Michael looked up, saw the cab had stopped, the cabbie was turned around in his seat, staring back at him, the toothpick in his mouth bouncing up and down.

  ‘We’re here,’ he said, looking at Michael like he was a fool.

  33

  Saturday 8th, 1.45 p.m.

  Michael stumbled off the street and into the bar, still dizzy from the breakthrough, looked around. It was an old-fashioned place, with butcher-shop sawdust on the floor, barrels behind the bar, metal spittoons between every other stool. He slipped through the crowds looking for Carrasco and Ida. The place was busy with workers who’d just finished their five-and-a-half-day work week, and were already spending their wages.

  Michael found Ida sitting alone at the bar.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Where’s Carrasco?’

  ‘Came and went,’ she said.

  They’d arranged to meet him there to pick up the call logs from the payphone at the Palmer Hotel. Ida slipped a few folded-up sheets of paper from her jacket’s inside pocket, to show Carrasco had come through.

  ‘You want a beer?’ she asked, gesturing to the schooner in front of her.

  He shook his head.

  ‘I think I figured out what’s going on,’ he said.

  He told her what had happened with Helms, the mention of fighting in Italy. The link with Bucek, Cleveland, Faron.

  She looked puzzled for a moment, then her eyes lit up.

  ‘At the nightclub,’ she said, ‘Cleveland’s friend said he fought in Europe. It could be they were all stationed in Italy.’

  ‘It fits with Faron,’ said Michael. ‘He flees to Italy in ’33 to avoid the heat from the diner attack. A few years later the war in Europe starts. He’s stuck there. The war ends, he heads back stateside.’