Death of a Tenor Man

by Bill Moody

We wait a few minutes for the room to clear out a bit, then make our way toward the exit, jostled by the happy group of tourists who will return to Iowa or Indiana raving about what they’ve just seen. I don’t have the heart to tell Coop that exactly the same thing will happen almost word for word at the midnight show and for the next two weeks as well.

  We finally emerge in the casino. Coop looks at his watch. “We’re supposed to meet this guy at the casino bar. Natalie, why don’t you—?” but she’s already ahead of him.

  “I’ve got a date with a poker machine,” she says. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.” She disappears into the crowd and Coop and I head for the bar.

  “Nice, Coop, very nice,” I say. “I don’t think you deserve her.”

  “We’ll see,” Coop says.

  At the bar Coop looks around and heads for a short stocky man with a brush cut and a dark suit. “That’s him,” Coop says. There are no other seats at the bar, so the man picks up his drink and follows us to a table.

  “Hi, John, how you doing? Evan, John Trask, Metro Homicide.” We shake hands briefly while Trask sizes. me up.

  A stunning brunette with exceptionally long legs takes our drink order. Trask shakes his head as she walks away. “That’s why I don’t come into the casinos,” he says. Except for his eyes, which seem to take everything in, there’s not much cop about Trask. He glances once at Coop and turns to me. I have the feeling they’ve already worked out something between them.

  “So,” Trask begins, “Coop tells me you’re investigating an old murder.”

  “I don’t think ‘investigate’ is the right word. Research is more like it, for a friend at the university. I also don’t know that it was a murder.”

  “It wasn’t,” Trask says. He’s all business now. “I checked our files. Of course they weren’t computerized in 1955, but it’s not listed as an unsolved. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if it was. In fact, it’s not listed at all. I did check with the coroner’s office, but all they have is an incident report. Wardell Gray is shown as a drug overdose.”

  Coop listens passively. I’m sure he knows all this already but wants me to hear it from Trask.

  “Wouldn’t there have been some kind of an investigation?”

  “Probably not,” Trask says.

  Even though I knew Trask was going to tell me this, it’s still disappointing. Then I remember what Pappy Dean told me. “Just out of curiosity, is there still any kind of organized crime presence in Las Vegas?”

  What I would describe as a meaningful look passes between Coop and Trask.

  “Sure,” Trask says. “That’s why the FBI has a task force here.”

  “Is it possible there are relatives left with from that era?” I don’t know where I’m going with this but it elicits a smile from Trask and Coop both.

  “Tony Spilatro was the last of the big guys from Chicago, and he and his brother were found in an Indiana corn field. You’re not planning to hunt up old mob guys and ask them if they know anything about Wardell Gray?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Good,” Trask says. He puts his empty glass on the table. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help.” He reaches in his coat pocket and takes out a business card. “If you have any more questions, give me a call.”

  “Thanks.” I glance at the card and think of something else. “Are there any guys still on with Metro who might remember the case?”

  “Like I said, there wasn’t any case.” Trask pauses and glances again at Coop, who seems preoccupied with the casino crowd. “There is a guy, he’s retired now, but he was a sergeant then. He might talk to you.” Trask takes his card back and writes a number and name on the back “Buddy Herman. He’ll entertain you. He’s got a lot of stories about the old days.”

  “Thanks,” I say, pocketing the card.

  Trask gets to his feet. “Well, gentlemen, it’s been nice. Good to meet you, Horne. Thanks for the drink. Coop, you too. Drop by and say hello.” Trask leaves the bar and is quickly swallowed up by the crowd of gamblers.

  “Well, are we even?” Coop lights one of his little cigars.

  “All square. Thanks, Coop.”

  “Take his advice,” Coop says.

  “What advice was that?”

  “Leave the past alone.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Drummers walk in four-four time; bass players just walk. When I get to the Hob Nob, that’s exactly what Pappy Dean is about to do—walk on two hundred years of German wood he wouldn’t trust to skycaps but which survives in a canvas bag and gets around on one wheel with Pappy’s arm cradling it like an old friend.

  B. B. King calls his guitar Lucille; Pappy calls his bass Trouble. “That’s what it is,” he says as he unzips the bag and pulls it off the bass. He neatly folds the bag and lays it near his amp. “Keeping it in tune, keeping it safe, keeping it working. It’s all trouble.”

  He cradles the bass and reaches for a key on the piano, a battered spinet covered with cigarette burns and stains from hundreds of forgotten drinks.

  “Don’t know why I bother,” Pappy says, banging on the key. “This motherfucker hasn’t been in tune for years.” He carefully lays the bass on its side and glares at the drummer, a tall thin black man who’s just beginning to set up.

  “We hit in fifteen minutes,” he says to the drummer. Turning to me, he shakes his head. “My gigs start on time. C’mon, I’ll buy you a drink.”

  I hadn’t planned on the Hob Nob, but Pappy had called right after I got back from the Sands. His call was more than an invitation. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep, so I took him up on it. The Hob Nob is light years from the Strip, literally across the tracks in an industrial area on Highland next to a sex tease club called—this week—Runway 69. I doubt if a single tourist has even been to the Hob Nob.

  The bandstand is nothing more than a cleared-away corner in the cavernous bar that was once a country-and-western club. Huge paintings of Kenny Rogers, Elvis, and Willie Nelson hang on one wall, and a half dozen pool tables fill up one end of the room.

  Heavy metal bands are featured on weekends, or nothing, but tonight is jazz night, which I assume management feels is better than nothing. The bands play for a percentage of the bar, which usually amounts to only a few dollars. Musicians who gig at the Hob Nob view it as a paid rehearsal. It’s the nature of jazz musicians to play, paid or not. Club owners know this, and often take advantage. I don’t know who’s smarter, the club owners who get a band cheap or the musicians who get a place to play.

  Pappy and I sit at the long bar—we’re the only two customers at the moment—and sip on the two beers the bartender has brought without asking. “Dude I want you to meet,” Pappy says. He tilts the Panama hat on the back of his head. “Tenor player named Sonny Wells. He ain’t saying much these days, but there was a time.” Pappy shakes his head remembering the past. “He’s been scuffling for years. If he ain’t crashed with somebody—sometimes me-he sleeps on the street downtown, plays for change in a storefront.”

  The name doesn’t ring a bell with me, but there are a lot of lost jazz orphans out there. “He knew Wardell?”

  Pappy nods. “He was around then. I think he knew Wardell in L.A. Might be able to help you. ’Course his brain is fried now.”

  I wonder about Pappy’s interest in this. He certainly has no reason to help me. I don’t want to ask, but I do anyway.

  “I don’t know, man,” he says. “People do a lot of funny things. This whole Wardell thing never set well with me or a lot of people. No tellin’ what he would have done if he’d lived. Look at Dexter Gordon. If there was more to it than a drug thing, I’d like to know.” Pappy looks at his watch, then toward the door. “Don’t look like Sonny’s gonna make it.”

  “If he doesn’t?”

  Pappy smiles and adjusts his hat to a rakish angle. “Then it’s trio time.” He swivels on the bar stool and watches the drummer finish setting up. The piano player has arrived, and the two of them are l
aughing and joking but glancing occasionally toward Pappy.

  I decide to push my luck with Pappy. I take out the photo of Rachel Cody and show it to him. “You know this girl?”

  Pappy takes the photo and frowns at it for a moment. “She a singer?”

  “Yeah, her mother was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge when it first opened.”

  Pappy looks from me to the photo and back a couple of times. His face creases into a huge grin. “Shit, you some kind of detective too, ain’t you?” He hands me back the photo and looks, at me with a new expression.

  “No, no, nothing like that. Her mother just wants me to ask around.”

  “Uh huh,” Pappy says. He’s not really buying it. “I think I do know her. I seen her around couple of places, sittin’ in.”

  “You remember where?”

  “Nah, couple of places on the west side, maybe out at Pogo’s. I think she’s doing some heavy coke, and that’s trouble.”

  “I thought your bass was trouble.” Pappy grins and slaps my outstretched palm.

  “You want to play?” Pappy asks me. He gets off the bar stool and brushes off some lint from his jacket.

  I knew this was coming. I knew I’d be tempted, and I know how I’m going to answer. I feel like I’ve walked into a party without an invitation, and the host is embarrassed but accommodating. Pappy is this party’s host, but he’s not embarrassed. “I don’t think so,” I say.

  Pappy nods again. “When you know, just holler.” He heads for the bandstand, picks up Trouble, and starts walking a blues line the drummer and piano player quickly pick up. The drummer rushes slightly, but Pappy reins him in. After the head, the piano player spins off a few adequate choruses, but his heart is not in it, despite Pappy’s prodding. He knows the tunes but does nothing more than run the chords. Maybe it’s too early.

  They do better on a couple of standards. Pappy is solid as a rock and plays decent lines against the pianist’s chords. I listen, mentally playing the substitute chord game with myself, realizing I wouldn’t sound any better if I had played.

  Forty minutes later there is still no sign of Sonny Wells, nor any more customers, except for two guys in jeans and T-shirts who shoot a couple of games of pool. The crack of the balls competes with the band, and between shots they stare at Pappy’s trio like they are aliens. Not everybody likes jazz.

  Just after midnight the door opens, and two guys in their mid-thirties dressed like they’ve just come from Armani walk in. They scan the room, then take barstools on either side of me. When the bartender comes over, they wave him away. The biggest one stares impassively at the band. Expensive or not, his suit is too tight. His arms bulge at the sleeves, and I imagine he spends a lot of time with heavy weights.

  “Your name Evan Horne?” the other one says. He’s about my height and weight, wears his hair in a ponytail, and chews vigorously on wad of gum.

  “Yeah. Do I know you?” I glance toward the bandstand. Pappy is pulling on his bass, eyes closed, head nodding in time to the music.

  “Not likely, but for the record it’s Tony.” He doesn’t offer his hand. He shifts on the bar stool and unbuttons his coat. “This is a dump, Horne,” Tony says, looking around the bar. “Bad neighborhood. All kinds of things could happen to someone in a place like this. I think there was a knifing here just last week. Isn’t that right, Karl?”

  Karl doesn’t look at either of us. “That’s right, Tony.”

  “You see what I mean,” Tony says. “Karl is up on these things.”

  Karl looks like he could make some of those bad things happen. Pappy and the trio have stopped playing. They hover around the piano, talking, lighting cigarettes, and glancing our way. I’m beginning to regret not taking Pappy up on his offer to play.

  Tony pops another stick of gum in his mouth and smiles at me. His eyes are cold. “Horne, you look like a smart man. I’ve got some advice for you.” He pauses, then looks directly at me. “Do your research in the library, you know what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Then we understand each other. I can tell my boss that our conversation was very positive. He’ll be pleased to hear that.”

  “And who is your boss?”

  Tony smiles again. “That’s not important, Horne. What’s important is that I can give him a positive report.” He gets up. “Nice talking to you, Horne.” He heads for the door with Karl trailing close behind.

  Pappy walks over, wiping his forehead with a towel, and stands for a moment watching the door.

  “Godfather dudes,” he says.

  I wait until Pappy and the trio start another set, but Sonny Wells never shows. Pappy promises to try and get in touch with the saxophonist, and we say good-bye.

  “Watch yourself, man,” Pappy says.

  I do. When I go out to my car, I’m extra careful checking the parking lot, but there’s no sign of Tony and Karl.

  Back at the apartment I turn on some music, Miles’s Kind of Blue, and sit up a long time debating whether to tell Ace or Coop or even John Trask at Metro about Tony and Karl’s visit to the Hob Nob. Ace would panic; Coop and Trask would say I told you so.

  I think about calling Cindy as well. A friendly voice would be welcome about now, but I put it off, settling instead for Miles, Cannonball, and Coltrane weaving their way through the haunting “All Blues.” It’s like three guys talking on a street corner.

  Bill Evans’s piano makes me regret not sitting in with Pappy’s group. What could be more safe? A deserted bar and, except for Pappy, musicians I’d probably never see again. I’d come close, but I couldn’t make myself take the plunge, not yet. Maybe I was kidding myself.

  After the accident, when I was going through therapy and squeezing my rubber ball, there was a time I didn’t even want to hear any live music, much less play it. There’s no way you can prepare for something like that, when a few seconds change your life forever.

  I’d never once contemplated not having a career in jazz, playing the piano. Suddenly and perhaps permanently not being able to do what I’d always done left me drained emotionally and physically. I tried to make analogies with athletes—promising quarterbacks who blow out a knee, sit out a season, then return and take their teams to the Super Bowl.

  I visualized myself in a recording studio making an album or a jazz dub in New York on tour with my own trio. It helped, but when the facility failed to return, when things seemed beyond my control, I nearly gave up. Weary of sympathetic looks, well-meaning advice, and words of encouragement, I avoided jazz clubs for the most part and lost contact with a lot of musician friends. It didn’t take long for me to be out of the jazz loop.

  Then one morning when I was at about the lowest point, I woke up, flexed my hand, and felt a difference. It was slight, almost imperceptible, but I felt it, enough that I approached my piano for the first time in weeks. I sat down with apprehension for a companion and struggled through a ballad.

  One solo chorus told me. I knew I was on the way back. It might be a long, tortuous journey, but I was convinced I would make it. Enough to take the Las Vegas gig. But now I’d gotten more than I bargained for.

  What I should do is pack my bags, make my apologies to Ace, plead injury to Brent Tyler at the Fashion Show Mall, and go back to L.A. Las Vegas was a bad idea. But I know I won’t. I hate unanswered questions, which is why my dad and I never got along and my mother was peacemaker in the family.

  What started as a favor to Ace and curiosity to me is now more intriguing than ever. Who would send two central-casting mob types to warn me off investigating the death of a jazz musician more than thirty-five years ago? More importantly, why? Does it have something to do with Louise Cody and her daughter? What did whoever sent Tony and Karl think I was going to find?

  I run this around for another hour or so and get nowhere. I finally drop off to sleep with Coop’s last words running through my mind.

  Leave the past alone.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It’s the p
hone that finally wakes me. I grope for the receiver and find out it’s only Ace. “How about some breakfast? I got coffee going already.”

  “Sure, sounds good, I think. Give me a few minutes.”

  “You got it,” Ace says. He sounds entirely too cheery. I fight off the grogginess from sleeping too little and starting too late. My head begins to clear as I stand under the shower for several minutes. I throw on some shorts and a T-shirt and feel almost human when I join Ace in the kitchen of the main house.

  I bring the jazz reference books with me, and while Ace busies himself with some scrambled-egg-and-peppers concoction, I work on a cup of coffee and stave off the desire for that first cigarette. I look up Sonny Wells and Pappy Dean. Both get a couple of short paragraphs, Pappy’s being the longer one.

  Pappy is from Detroit. He’s spent considerable time on the road with some of the early territory bands, had a short stint with Count Basie and a number of singers before settling in Las Vegas. Sonny Wells—now I know why the name is familiar—was part of the West Coast contingent that worked on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. The writer describes him as “a hard-edged tenor player who was influenced by Don Byas.” He has two recordings to his credit, but the last mention of him was in Las Vegas in the early ’80s. All roads, it seems, lead to Las Vegas.

  Ace delivers his breakfast special, which includes a stack of sourdough toast. “So how was last night?” He joins me at the table and starts to wolf down the eggs. “Your friend enjoy Wayne Newton? He’s a cop, isn’t he?”

  I fill Ace in on Coop’s big night but leave out the Hob Nob and Tony and Karl. I don’t want to panic Ace, and I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.

  Ace eyes the reference books. “Something new?”

  “Just looking up a couple of musicians. One of them might be a lead.”

  “Really?” Ace says. He pours me some more coffee and waits to hear more.

  “Nothing much to tell, really. Just a guy who might have been around here when Wardell was. I’m going to check it out today.”