“We gonna split,” Kilroy said. “Too much traffic here.”
“Damn right,” Background agreed. The two friends, Kilroy in front and Background behind, walked unsteadily into the street.
“Drop you off?” Keel asked.
The two musicians hadn’t heard. Rubbing shoulders together, they walked away, involved in another conversation.
Ruppert lived in the West Eighties behind the facade of Central Park West. Up here the side streets pulsed with people and music just as the streets downtown did.
“One more time,” Hillary said, referring to the hunt for information on Eagle.
“Yeah,” Keel said. “It’s gettin’ there.”
The cab jolted to a stop along the side street to wait for the kids to clear out of the way. “Little bastards,” said the hackman.
“No hurry,” Keel said. “They gotta play somewhere.”
The cabby slammed his vehicle into gear without a word.
“This house,” Keel said.
They climbed out of the cab and stood for a moment on the curb.
“Another ten years,” Keel said, “this’ll be just another part of Harlem. They won’t let it happen on the east side.”
They climbed the steps of the brownstone and rang Ruppert’s bell. While they waited Keel said, “Three other musicians live here with their wives and families. All mixed marriages.” He had said it to warn Hillary so that he would not show surprise or uneasiness. Hillary smiled.
Keel thought of the wives in the building, all white, who spent their time, when their husbands were on the road or in Europe, visiting one another, baby-sitting for one another, going shopping or forever cleaning house. By themselves, they fought the loneliness imposed upon them by their marriages, yet they were, the husbands and the wives, so much like other people. Perhaps he and Della would be just like them.
Ruppert’s wife, a petite brunette, came down to open the door. “Keel, baby,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, then stood back to await the introduction to Hillary.
“This is Dave Hillary, Toot. Dave, Ruppert’s wife.”
Toot stepped forward, smiling, and extended her short arm. “How y’makin’ it, Dave?” Without waiting for an answer she backed up and said, “Come on in.”
As they went up the carpeted steps, Toot asked about Della.
“She’s all right. She’s working. Look, doll, this is business with your old man. Where is he?”
“Right here at the top, man, watchin’ you lovin’ up my babe.”
Hillary and Keel glanced upwards; to Hillary it seemed that the man was angry, but Keel knew Ruppert was only putting them on.
“Pop you right in your damned eye, Keel, you don’t watch who you kissin’ on.” He frowned then at Hillary. “You too, man. You stood there and let him do it.” Ruppert met them at the top of the stairs with an outstretched hand and a smile. “I’da come down, Keel, but Toot wouldn’t let me go.”
As Toot passed them and went inside, Keel said, “You mean you wouldn’t let her go.”
“Dig, man, dig.” He looked with friendliness toward Hillary. “Who’s your man?”
“This is Prof—Dave Hillary. The cat that saved Eagle on his last—uh—misadventure.”
Ruppert and Hillary shook. “Good knowin’ you, Prof. Let’s go in and wrap our rubies around some cold beer. TOOT!”
“Yes, love?” she said with mock attentiveness.
Ruppert raised his hand and snapped his fingers three times.
Toot looked puzzled. “That means three beers?”
“Three beers.” He looked at Keel and Hillary and explained. “I’m trying to train her.”
“And I,” Toot said when she returned with the beer, “am trying to indulge him for a few days. It’s over now,” she said, “and if you want anymore beer, get it your damned self.”
“Yes, love,” Ruppert said, pretending to be cowed.
“Can’t I stay?” Toot asked, all playfulness gone.
“No, baby,” her husband said. She closed the door behind her.
“Kilroy tell you what Candy said?”
“Yep,” Ruppert said. He was a big, dark man with a round face and a comfortable manner. Behind him on the wall of the room were pictures of himself with various musicians. In such company, Keel thought, Ruppert could afford to be comfortable in the knowledge that he was a musicians’ musician. “The cat goofed,” Ruppert said. “He hit on this broad and she dug him. Nice-lookin’ babe; I saw her first. I knew she was the owner’s wife, but I dug she knew how to work her way around. Guess I was wrong.”
“What’s her old man like?”
“He’s the kinda cat who’d do just what Candy said. He don’t have to take no crap. He is the mob out there. And he’s got a temper. How does that go—?”
“‘There but for the grace—’” Hillary started.
Ruppert grinned. “Whooooeee, yeah.” More seriously he said. “And it would have killed Toot.”
“Where in the hell would he be now—” Keel pondered aloud, “if he wasn’t with the band when it left Minnie?”
“Might be shacked up with this broad. He’ll pick up the tour in Milwaukee or Chicago.”
“Hell, it could be that he’ll never leave Minnie.”
Hillary asked, “How can you stop something like this?”
Ruppert and Keel looked at one another. “Ol’ rabbit’s foot,” Ruppert said.
Hillary could tell by Keel’s look that he agreed.
“Maybe we can leave word for him at the hotel in Milwaukee,” Keel said.
“Sure,” Ruppert said. “Hell, he’s gonna be all right.”
They finished the beer in silence and Ruppert showed them out. In the street, Keel started to hail a cab.
“Let’s walk,” Hillary suggested, squinting into the sun.
“Man, that’s over seventy”—Keel looked at Hillary—“all right, Prof, if you want.”
CHAPTER 12
Richie Stokes sat in the first window seat, left, behind the bus driver. His hat was pulled down over his eyes, but he stared from beneath it at the medium-size town they were pulling into. “Onondaga Falls,” someone muttered. The bus moved slowly in the night traffic. The glare of the street lights and neon signs was suddenly almost too bright to bear after the last, long stretch of road. The silence among the musicians was beginning to wear off; there was murmuring from the rear and the sound of cases being shifted one against the other. Fortunately there was no concert scheduled until the next evening. The musicians could get all the rest they wanted, though many of them wouldn’t. Eagle, for one, was thinking of the people he knew in the town and where they might be on this week night.
His weariness cut deeply to the bone, and he thought about the friends here without a sense of warmth; they were merely habit. Since joining the band at Milwaukee (where he had picked up Keel’s message) Eagle had been obsessed with the idea that he would never again go on the road. It had nothing to do with Keel’s message; the feeling had been with him at the start of the tour. And it wasn’t that, like so many musicians, he had decided to make-do with gigs in New York; he was just through touring.
He was not clairvoyant nor was he really given to rituals in mysticism, though, aware of the legends built around him, he did play some of them out, like suddenly opening one eye and pretending to be sleeping in this fashion if someone entered his room. He asked himself: then why am I through on the road? He could not find an answer and dozed back off.
The bus growled up before a hotel and stopped. The bus driver opened the door and Demetriades, who had followed the group in his Cadillac, climbed in.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is Onondaga Falls. As you know, there’s no concert tonight. Tomorrow, however, we play at Kinkaid Auditorium. Most of you know where it is. Please be there at seven. And please,” he said, looking at Eagle, “don’t let us have to hunt for you all over town.”
The musicians started to file out. Eagle was last. “Gimme som
e bread, Walter,” he said.
“Now Richie,” Demetriades began.
“I got it coming. Just gimme some of it.”
“How much?” Demetriades asked. Stokes could be as petulant as a child sometimes. If you didn’t give him some money—which he treated as though it grew on a tree—he might forget to show up for the concert. There was always legal action of course, but that didn’t bring back the money refunded because the star of the concert hadn’t bothered to put in an appearance.
“A bill.”
“All right.” Demetriades gave him the one hundred dollars, making a mental note that it was to be deducted from Eagle’s money. For Demetriades a mental note was like chipping a date in granite; he didn’t forget. “Look, take it easy tonight, will you? After all, what can you do in this country town? Get yourself some rest.” Demetriades said it, but he knew that wherever Richie Stokes went, some’ part of the town he was in lit up.
Eagle didn’t answer. He pocketed the money and went into the hotel, glad to be out of the bus where, for the last eight hours, the musicians had vied with one another to see who could break wind the loudest. Eagle had won; he usually did. Going up to the room he had been assigned, Eagle wondered who Demetriades had designated to watch him until concert time. It didn’t matter; Eagle would turn him on too.
The view from the window, Eagle saw, as he was dressing after his shower, was drab and flat, extending to a lake which reflected the light of the full moon. He wouldn’t be going that way in any case. Miserable view, lousy city, but all of them were. It would be good to be back in New York—depending on many things though, for it could be a pretty ratty town itself.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come on in,” Eagle said.
The door opened and Al Fox came in. He was a tenorman with the group.
“Hey, Al, what’s happenin’, baby?” Eagle said. He knew that Al had drawn the assignment or maybe he had asked Demetriades for it. It was no secret that Al worshiped Eagle. In the past couple of years he had become cool about it, but it was there. Eagle had always allowed him to sit in if the tenorman was in the club with his ax. And they had talked many times, teacher and pupil.
“How about dinner, Richie?”
“Crazy. I know a spot.”
“Good. You almost ready?”
“I stay ready, baby. Anybody readier got to go by me.”
“I’m hip they do, Richie.”
With a flourish, Eagle finished knotting his wide, flowery tie and slipped on the plaid jacket which matched his trousers. He glowered into the mirror, then smiled into it. He dipped both index fingers into his mouth and smoothed his brows with the saliva. “Ready,” he announced.
Down on the street, Al walked beside Eagle without knowing where they were bound.
“Where to?”
“Little place down the way here,” Eagle answered. His eyes swept slowly up and down the street, seeking landmarks and people he might have known. He would have preferred it if Al had not been with him. He didn’t know if Al was on or not—probably not, and he didn’t want these young musicians to see him the way he sometimes was when he’d had it. Well, maybe after they had had something to eat he could send Al back. Al would mind him quicker than he’d mind Demetriades.
“Listen, Al,” Eagle said, “I been meanin’ to talk to you about your changes. I think if you play with ’em on the piano they’ll come better for you, you know?”
“How about my chords?”
“They all right. Tell you a secret.”
“What?”
“Get next to a good guitar man an’ you’ll learn some cute things about chords and harmony progressions, dig?”
“You ever play with Charlie Christian?” Al asked.
“Shit, I played with everybody who blew anything good.” Eagle stopped suddenly. “Man, this might cut you, but stop trying to sound like Pres. You got to have a style that suits you, that says what you think and feel. You don’t know what Pres was thinking or tryin’ to do when he came on with his scene. You can’t know.”
When Eagle was kind, Al thought, he could let you know in the nicest way that what the Negro musician and the white musician thought were worlds apart. “But I don’t try to sound like Pres.”
“All right, baby, all right.”
They walked a dark street in silence, then halted on a corner.
“What’s wrong?” Al asked.
Eagle turned slowly around, grinning. “Nothing. Just gettin’ my bearin’.”
“Man, we’ve passed three or four restaurants,” Al complained.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re hungry.”
“I thought we were going to eat, Richie.”
“Yeah, man. You right. You better get something to eat. Tell you what—” He took Al by the arm and guided him a couple of feet down the street. “You run in there and order for both of us. I got to make a little run and I’ll be right back. Order me something good now, baby.” Eagle turned and walked quickly into the shadows. Al returned to the last restaurant they’d passed. He didn’t want to see Eagle with it either. No one else in the group could stay up with Richie; Demetriades couldn’t hold him responsible.
David Hillary glanced up at the new arrival, then bent again to his dinner. Hillary had arrived that afternoon by Greyhound to keep the appointment with the chairman of the English Department. There was a chance for a spot during the summer session, He would know for sure tomorrow. Both Della and Keel, though it had been a few days since he had spoken to Della, had wished him luck on the interview. Lately, they seemed to be getting on better, but still Hillary harbored the thought that if he did secure the position he might ask Della to come with him.
He had left New York that afternoon, riding up in fine weather over the network of thruways. His arrival within the limits of the town had set him thinking again about Angela and he had taken a few drinks to obliterate her. Impossible. Tomorrow when he sat with Doerffer, who knew, she would be back—everything would be back. He would have to fight it or live with it.
The young man who had just come in sat facing the window. Between bites of his food—there was another plate beside him with the food growing cold on it, Hillary noted—he strained to see out of the window.
Some broad, Hillary thought, has stood him up. Hillary finished his beer and paid his check. He walked out, glancing back once at Al Fox’s pale face which peered anxiously into the darkness outside. Must be, Hillary thought, quite some broad. He toyed more times than he should have with the idea of going up to the Crimson but finally decided against it. He might run into someone from the department before he had even had his talk with Doerffer. The thought, however, reminded him of his thirst and he bought a pint and a paper on the way back to his hotel.
Rid of Al Fox, Eagle proceeded to the Negro section. At first the thought that he and Al would eat and talk together had seemed pleasant enough, even if Al was red-dogging him. But then a powerful sense of hopelessness came: what the hell had he and Al in common anyway? Eagle ate alone in a two-by-four diner filled with off-duty migrant workers. This part of the section was changing: he saw no one he knew. Finished, he wiped his mouth and laid the hundred-dollar bill on the counter. As he had anticipated, a cautious atmosphere developed suddenly. He laughed. The cook sent out for change and Eagle sat and waited, smiling because the eyes were upon him, all of them. When the change came, he laid the tip judiciously by and left.
He plodded alertly through the streets, passing like a shadow beneath the darkened elms and maples. Now and again a voice cried out, and there was brief, hard laughter. A radio was suddenly turned up loud and then turned quickly down again. In the road a big convertible tooled by filled with softly talking Negroes. Eagle passed a church, a bar, a shabby record shop, a barbecue joint that smelled up the block. He paused before a pair of shabby houses and looked quickly up and down the street. Then he took the walk between them to a house in the rear and carefully climbed the sagging steps. No light em
erged from the windows, but he knocked at the door and waited. He heard soft steps approaching.
“Who’s it?” a man’s voice asked.
“Eagle.”
“Eagle?”
“Yeah, baby. Open up.”
The door opened. “C’mon in, man,” the form said. Eagle passed through the door into a smelly, dilapidated room; he couldn’t see it, but he could sense its disarray. The stranger took Eagle by the arm and led him from that room into another apartment. He closed and bolted the second door. This apartment was luxurious with deep rugs on the parquet floors, rich, white walls and startling red drapes and furniture. Books on shelves filled one wall and hundreds of records, another. On the long, red couch a girl in tights lay watching television. A speaker, fixed in a corner, emitted the soft sounds of a record.
“I saw the papers, man,” the stranger said, “and I figured you’d make it to the crib.” He turned to the girl. “Baby, this’s Eagle. You’ve heard me talk about him.”
The girl hung her head over the side of the couch and looked up.
“Hullo, Eagle,” she said.
“Ummm-mummm!” Eagle said. “I know you got a sister! Ain’t she, Brindle?”
“Better than that,” Brindle said. To the girl he said, “Call Shirley.”
“Now?”
“Get off your ass and call Shirley. Tell her to get down here.”
“Can’t I wait for the commercial?”
“Do it now.” Brindle turned his back, opened a cabinet and brought out a whisky tray. “Help yourself.”
The girl got up and left the room. They heard her talking to Shirley.
“Tighten me,” Eagle said after he had downed a half-glass of scotch.
Brindle, a slim, wide-eyed man of indeterminate age said, “C’mon,” and he led the way into the bathroom. “Wait there.” Eagle took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. Brindle came back, the hypodermic held high as he pushed out the air bubble. “You ’bout used up, baby,” he said.
Eagle said, “That one. Lower. All right.”
Brindle was deft with it.
Eagle reached in his pocket.
Brindle smiled. “Have I ever taken bread from you?” “No.”
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