The King of Ragtime

by Larry Karp

  The New Yorker started up, pulled out of Union Station, rumbled slowly through East St. Louis, then picked up speed, rolling hellbent for leather through Missouri farmland. Staring through the window into cornfield rows that stretched as far as he could see, Stark saw blue lines of soldiers, marching between the corn-rows, headed south. John Brown’s body lies a-mold’ring in the grave… Some dreams fade over time, but the older he got, the more that one cursed dream of his came around to torment him. He’d never have had the dream at all if he’d never enlisted in the Indiana Heavy Artillery Volunteers, but then he’d never have gone to New Orleans, never met Sarah, nor a fifteen-year-old colored boy named Isaac who would have been shot dead by the very Union soldiers he’d saved from an ambush. If the price of sleep without nightmares was Sarah, his three children, and the best friend he’d ever had, he’d pay without a second thought.

  Thinking of Isaac, just an hour or so earlier, swinging forward on his crutches across the platform toward the train, made Stark smile. “Wisht I could come with you, Mr. Stark.” The colored man jabbed an accusing finger at the white plaster cast on his left leg. “But I’d be more hindrance than help.” Stark knew better than to argue, just nodded, said good-bye, and shook his friend’s hand. But as he turned to board the train, Isaac grabbed him by the arm, then reached around the crutch with his free hand. “Here,” a hoarse whisper. “If’n I can’t go, I’m gonna send a trusty friend to look after you.” Stark stared at the old Civil War pistol, felt his heart go racing out of control. The gun looked clean, freshly oiled. “You take it now.” Isaac thrust it into Stark’s hand. “I’m hopin’ you can bring it back here just the way it is, but if you can’t, then I’m gonna be even gladder you took it.”

  With trembling hands, Stark lowered his suitcase to the ground, snapped the clips open, and laid the pistol inside. Before he could shut the bag, Isaac dropped a knotted red kerchief, which came to rest beside the pistol. “Dog food,” the colored man said. Can’t take a dog to New York without no food for him.”

  Stark closed the bag, clapped Isaac’s arm, and got on the train.

  ***

  Elias Niederhoffer was a stocky man with gray hair like steel wool, and the arms, legs and chest that come from nineteen years of pushing a cart loaded with fruit around the streets of New York. Mr. Niederhoffer enjoyed—as much as he ever enjoyed anything—a reputation on the lower east side as a peddler you didn’t try copping a piece of fruit off. Better to give him his nickel for an apple or an orange than to go home with a bloody nose or a blackened eye.

  But the two men facing Niederhoffer in the doorway to his apartment were not fruit snatchers, and the peddler was working hard at trying to keep the shakes out of his voice. Back in Austria, police at your door meant you had real problems, and as far as Niederhoffer was concerned, a cop was a cop, same in New York as in Vienna. He extended his hairy forearms, palms up. “Mister Policemen, listen, would you please. I ain’t never made no trouble—”

  The blond man in the cop suit, standing a bit to the side, snickered. The heavier, darker-complexioned man in the brown suit and fedora hat interrupted. “That’s fine, Mr. Niederhoffer. I’m sure you’re a model citizen. It’s your son, Martin, we’re looking for. Is he here?”

  Elias looked sideways at his wife, Antoinette, broad-beamed, wide-eyed, mouth gaping. Wei iss mir, the peddler thought. They’re gonna take us down to the station and beat us with clubs till we’re dead. “No, no, sir. Martin ain’t here. He didn’t come home from work yet.”

  The dark man made a point of looking at his watch. “It’s almost eight o’clock. Doesn’t he usually get home by now?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Mind if we take a look inside?”

  Niederhoffer moved left, his wife right. The two men walked in, then separated to look through the rest of the apartment. By the time they reconnoitered in the living room, Martin’s five younger brothers milled around, asking their parents what was going on, and who were these guys? Their mother shushed them, finger to lips, but the interrogation didn’t break off until their father raised a hand, and then it stopped on a dime. As the policemen converged on Elias, Antoinette let out a strangled scream. The blond cop snickered again, but the darker, plainclothes cop said, with surprising gentleness, “Don’t worry, Mrs. No one’s gonna get hurt. I just need to ask a few questions. Mr. Niederhoffer, do you have any idea where your son, Martin, is?”

  Niederhoffer shook his head slowly. “He tells us he’s a grown man, he comes and he goes as he pleases. I know he takes piano lessons from some schwartzer up in Harlem.”

  “Huh?”

  The detective turned to the patrolman. “Schwartzer, Charlie, that’s Yiddish for nigger.” Back to Niederhoffer. “You don’t happen to know the name of that schwartzer, do you, Mr. Niederhoffer? Or where he lives?”

  Niederhoffer shrugged, but the youngest boy, Abe, a hefty sandy-haired fourteen-year-old copy of his mother, stepped up and said, “It’s Scott Joplin, sir. He lives up on West 138th. I once went up with Martin to hear his lesson.”

  The policemen looked at each other. Both smiled. Then the plainclothes detective said, “Thank you, young man.” He turned back to Elias, handed him a card. “All right, Mr. Niederhoffer. If you hear from your son, tell him the smartest thing he can do is call me. Detective Ciccone—Nicolo Ciccone. The sooner he does, the better it will be for him.”

  Mrs. Niederhoffer couldn’t hold back longer. “What has Martin done, Officer?”

  “We don’t know that he’s done anything, Ma’am. But a few hours ago, a man was found murdered down at Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder Music, where your son works, and we’re hoping he can tell us something about it.” He tipped his fedora, then left the apartment, Charlie riding his wake.

  For a moment after the policemen left, the Niederhoffers stood silent, then everyone started shouting at once. Elias grabbed Abe by the neck and slapped his cheek, again and again, forehand on the left side, backhand on the right. “Mr. Bigmouth,” Elias shouted. “You think the cops’re gonna give you a cookie for being a good boy and telling them all about your brother’s piano lessons?” He gave Abe a hard shove; the boy stumbled against the side of a stout wooden bookshelf, then fell to his knees. He rubbed his cheek, looked away from his father. In the now-silent room, Niederhoffer glared at his sons. “In Austria, a fourteen-year-old pisher knows he only speaks when he’s spoken to, ’specially by a policeman. In Austria, what a father says, goes. Not here. Now I got a son who’s maybe a murderer. I’m sorry I ever came.”

  ***

  Daylight faded. Lottie Joplin turned on her reading lamp, settled into her comfortable chair, swung her aching feet up onto the hassock…and heard a hard knock at the door, followed immediately by a second knock. And then, “Police. Open up or we’ll knock the door down.”

  “No call to be that way,” she muttered. She hauled herself out of her chair, walked to the door, and pulled it open. Two cops, a young blond one in a uniform, all red in the face and sweaty, and an older guy, a plainclothes, hook-nosed and round-shouldered, with dark bags under large, brown eyes. Probably an Italianer. The men looked around and past Lottie like they were searching for something or someone inside. The older one flipped a billfold open under Lottie’s nose; she had just about long enough to see the shiny star before he flipped it shut and back into his pocket. “I’m Detective Ciccone,” he said. “New York City Police. Are you Mrs. Joplin?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “We’re looking for Scott Joplin.”

  Foolish to get them sore, Lottie thought. “He ain’t here,” she said, keeping herself in the middle of the doorway.

  “Doesn’t he usually come home for dinner?”

  “Oh yes. He usually do. But he ain’t come yet today. He be a composer and a musician, and sometimes he have business in the evening.”

  The Italian in street clothes allowed himself a faint smile. “You mind if we take a look inside?”

  Lottie knew
about warrants, but again, no point getting these cops mad at her. One way or another, they’d end up looking around, and the more she made them work to do it, the more she’d pay. She gave silent thanks that right now, only one room upstairs was in use. “Long as you don’t tear nothing up,” she said. “Onliest thing is, my sister from Virginny’s visitin’ me, and she’s in her room right now, havin’ a private talk with a young man, been showin’ her some interest. ’Least, you oughta let me go tell ‘em you might want to talk to them.”

  “You just wait right here,” the plainclothes said. His partner stepped around Lottie, and walked through the living room, into the kitchen. The detective strode to the open living room window, looked out onto the fire escape, then craned his neck to search above. Then he walked into the bathroom, checked out the bedroom, finally came back to the living room to meet his partner. Both cops shook their heads. “All right, Mammy,” the plainclothes said. “Take us up to your sister and her friend.”

  The blond cop snorted.

  Lottie stamped hard as she could, going up the stairs, then turned to the first door on the right and knocked. “Sis…Sis. Some policemens’re here askin’ after Scott, they want to look inside.”

  “Be right along, Lottie,” said a female voice.

  That set both of the policemen to snickering. They walked past Lottie, down the hall, opened each door, looked inside. By the time they returned, the door to the first room stood open. A slim, light-skinned colored man and a well-built woman about the man’s shade, glared at the intruders. The man’s shirttails hung over his trousers; the woman’s red dress was higher over her left shoulder than her right, and it didn’t take much looking to see she had nothing on beneath the dress. Lottie saw interest in the blond cop’s eyes. The Italianer gave the man a long stare. “You wouldn’t happen to be Scott Joplin, would you?” he asked.

  “I be George Weston,” the colored man said, just politely enough to be sure he wouldn’t offend the policeman.

  “Prove it?”

  The colored man reached into his pocket. Lottie saw both policemen tense. The blond cop moved his hand toward the pistol on his right hip. Lottie held her breath. “Slow, there, George,” the detective said. “Just you go nice and slow.”

  The colored man’s hand came out of his pocket holding a billfold, from which he pulled a crinkled white card, which he handed it to the detective. “Colored Vaudeville Benevolent Association. George Weston. Member in good standing…hmm.” The detective passed the card back to Weston. “You a musician?”

  Weston almost smiled. “Yessir. I play horn.”

  “Okay. Now, Miss…?”

  “Stokes,” the woman said. “Patty Stokes. Lottie’s sister.”

  The detective nodded. “All right. Sorry to bother you. You can go on back to your private visit.”

  Lottie wanted to wipe the smirk off his face with the palm of her hand.

  Downstairs, the detective asked did she have a picture of Scott Joplin. She pointed at a print on the wall, next to the sofa. “That be me and him.”

  A quick glance, then the detective told Lottie to be sure to let them know when her husband came in.

  “Why you lookin’ for him?” she asked.

  “Just need to ask him a few questions,” said the detective, and then the two of them were gone. Lottie closed the door and collapsed into her chair. Got to tell Nell about this, she thought, but maybe best to wait just a little, make sure those cops ain’t right back knocking again.

  ***

  Detective Ciccone took a few seconds to appreciate the sight standing before him. That Niederhoffer kid had good taste in women. Give her thirty years, she’d be just another fat housewife, but right now she was a juicy, ripe peach, begging to be bitten into. Ciccone swallowed, then smiled and said, “We’re looking for Martin Niederhoffer, Miss Kuminsky. Do you have any idea where he is?”

  The girl shook her head. Dark curls flew back and forth across her smooth cheeks. “No.”

  Ciccone thought she might be lying. She looked scared silly. The detective nodded to her parents, standing behind her. “It’s important,” Ciccone said. “Very important. Are you sure you don’t know where he could be?”

  The girl shook her head. “I don’t have any idea. I left the office at five, like always. Martin had to stay to finish up the monthly sales numbers. Then he was going to the fights with his friend, Sid. Why are you looking for him? What’s wrong?”

  Her father said something into her ear, but Ciccone couldn’t catch it. The girl waved him off. “Yes, I’m afraid something is very wrong,” the detective said. “Sid was found in your boyfriend’s office, dead. Someone cut his throat.”

  A loud sucking sound came from behind the hand that whipped over the girl’s mouth.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Kuminsky.” Ciccone stopped for a moment, just for effect. A little suspense often worked well for him. “And your boyfriend was seen running out of the building afterward.”

  The girl rested a hand on the door jamb. Ciccone positioned himself to catch her if she fell. Her father was furious now, eyes bulging, lips nearly colorless. He spoke to her again, this time more urgently, but still, Ciccone couldn’t make out the words. The mother looked petrified, one hand to her throat, the other holding her apron in a death grip. Birdie turned her head, said “Papa, I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Miss Kuminsky…”

  The girl looked back to Ciccone.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you all this, and I’m sorry to upset you. But I know how close you and Mr. Niederhoffer are, and I figure you’d want to help him any way you can. The best thing you can do is persuade him to come and talk to us, the sooner, the better. The longer he takes, the worse it’s going to look for him.”

  “If you want to find Martin so bad, why are you here, bothering me and scaring my parents?” Birdie snapped. Why don’t you go to his place? Talk to his parents?”

  Ciccone fought off a terrible urge to smack her across the face, something he’d have done to his own daughter if she ever dared to talk smart like that to him. “We’ve done that, Miss Kuminsky,” he said without moving his lips. “He’s not there. And he’s not at his piano teacher’s. This is Stop Three, but you need to know, it’s not even close to the end of the line, and the train’s not going to quit running until we find your boyfriend. Now, I’ll ask you again—”

  “I have no idea where Martin is,” Birdie shouted, and burst into tears. Her mother threw her arms around the girl, and turned a look on Ciccone that he hadn’t seen since the time his mother came home too soon from her grocery shopping, and caught him in his bedroom with his girlfriend, who then became his wife a whole lot faster than he’d figured on. He tipped his fedora, walked down the hall, took the steps to the ground floor two at a time, Charlie clumping after him.

  Mrs. Kuminsky smoothed Birdie’s hair, then said, “Sounds like Martin did something bad.”

  Birdie pulled away, ran across the living room and disappeared down the hall. A moment later, her parents heard a door slam. They looked at each other. “She better keep away from that Niederhoffer boy,” Mr. Kuminsky snapped “He gets her in any kind of trouble, I’ll give him a sock in the snoot he’ll never forget. She’s only seventeen.”

  Mrs. Kuminsky’s smile could have broken hearts. “That’s what my father said to me when I was seventeen. And how much good did it do?”

  ***

  Up in Harlem, in their apartment above the grocery store on West 131st Street, Clarence and Ida Barbour, and their nephew, Dubie Harris, sat down to dinner at the kitchen table. Despite a wide-open window, the room was sweltering. Dubie eyeballed the fire escape and wondered whether his aunt and uncle would let him sleep out there. This New York place was hotter and more humid than Missouri, which was saying a bunch. The boy bowed his head while his aunt said grace; when she thanked the Lord for the day’s bounty, Dubie’s heart leaped. His bounty that day made a pot of pork and beans look
pretty damn puny. When Aunt Ida finished her prayer, and began to spoon out the meal, Dubie said brightly, “I did mighty good today, my first day in New York.”

  Clarence half-closed one eye; grooves you could plant crops in spread across his forehead. A corner of his gray mustache twitched. But Ida’s moon face radiated joy. “You did, did you? Well, now, come and tell us about it.”

  “Did James Reese Europe put you in his band?”

  Clarence’s question was a damper on Dubie’s fire. “No, not that. Mr. Europe’s out of town right now, but they took my name and told me they’d be callin’ me when he gets on back.”

  Clarence didn’t pause, just shoveled in a forkful of beans.

  Ida squinched her eyes and bit her lip. “Well, that’s something, anyway.”

  “I gave them the phone number in the booth down in the store—that be okay, ain’t it?”

  His aunt’s smile made an instant comeback. “’Course it is, Dubie. ‘Course it is. How else they gonna find you? You know how happy I’d be, answering a telephone and hearing that.”

  Clarence laid down his fork. “All right then. Just what is this big news you been talkin’ about?”

  “Oh, well, see, that’s what I be tryin’ to tell you. Just one day in New York, and already I be gettin’ my music published.”

  Ida clapped her hands. Clarence nodded gravely.

  What an old stick-in-the-mud, Dubie thought.

  “Just who is it, gonna be publishin’ your music?” Clarence asked.

  “None other than Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder, best house in town. That’s what Mr. Blake tol’ me yesterday, on the train. He wrote me down their address. So after I got done at James Reese Europe’s, I went on downtown to Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder. They put me in a room with some young kid, not any older’n me, I played him a couple of my tunes, and he said no thanks, not interested, goodbye. I could tell by the look on his face, wasn’t no way he was gonna buy a piece of music from some nigger, walk into his office. And that made me pretty da—” Dubie picked up the frown on his aunt’s face. “Pretty darn’ mad. I decided I’m gonna stand up for myself, so I went out in Reception an’ tol’ the secretary-lady I not goin’ anywhere, not till I gets to see the boss man, Mr. Irving Berlin hisself. And you know what? Off she takes herself, and not a minute later, she be back with Mr. Berlin. He look me up and he look me down, and then he tell me all right, I a busy man, but come on back real quick and play me your tunes. So I do that, and you know what he say? ‘Boy, you got yourself a talent. We gonna publish the two a these, and maybe that be just for starters.’ Now, what you think a that, huh?”