“I don’t think you’re the thief anymore,” Heaven said.
“Good,” Jim said as he reached down and picked up Heaven’s hand and started kissing her knuckles. She let him kiss three before she drew her hand away, slowly.
“I think Louis and his father did it. I’m pretty sure Louis is fooling us.”
Jim pulled back and sat up straight. “What do you mean, fooling us? You think he has a tape recorder in his pocket? Jazz isn’t like pop music. He can’t pull a Milli Vanilli.”
“He acts as if he can’t speak English, but Sal . . . you know, at the barbershop across from my cafe . . . is positive he heard Louis speaking English to his father.”
“How?”
“Oh, I guess putting a subject and a verb together. I don’t know how.”
“No, Heaven, how did Sal think he heard him speaking English?”
“They came out of the cafe, stopped in front of his barbershop, and the kid said something to his dad in English. Now, why would the Vangirovs lie about Louis’s ability to speak English unless it meant something?”
Jim shrugged, nodding wisely. “Plenty of foreigners do that. They pretend they can’t speak the language so they can avoid answering a lot of silly questions and people will talk in front of them, say things they wouldn’t if they thought they were understood. I did it myself in France, played dumb. But I’ve never seen any evidence the kid understands a thing. And even if he did, it doesn’t mean he stole the sax, for heaven’s sake.”
“Well, we’ll see, won’t we,” Heaven said as she stood up.
“Heaven, I don’t like the sound of that. Please leave the poor kid alone.”
“Jim, this is your town and this is a district dedicated to the kind of music you play. This so-called curse of Eighteenth and Vine won’t exactly make people want to come down here, even though they showed up today, thank goodness. Now, I know I’m a little sensitive because of that photo in the paper this morning and I know the New York papers will pick it up because of Ella, but just about everything that could go wrong has, and I’m surprised that you’re not more upset about it. What if Louis and his father are some kind of decoy?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know—yet,” Heaven said with emphasis on the “yet.” She got up and walked toward the stage without waiting for Jim or looking back. He thought about, running to catch her but he couldn’t move. The gloom that had settled over him the day before was tightening its grip.
By the time Heaven reached the stage, Boots Turner’s set was over and Louis had run out to sit by the big man for a photo op. Heaven saw Murray talking to Mr. Vangirov behind the piano. She smiled broadly at both of them, a signal for Murray to do something.
“So, Mr. Vangirov, I thought Louis dropped the beat a wee bit on that first sixteen bars of the Jay McShann piece,” Murray said like a true jazz geek.
It didn’t take a detective to notice Louis’s reaction. He whipped around to see the idiot who had doubted his tempo. His little eyes were full of hurt pride for a second. When he caught himself, he smiled at Murray sweetly. “Louis has trouble with that piece,” Mr. Vangirov admitted. “Was it noticeable?”
“Gosh, no,” Murray said, not wanting to hurt the kid’s feelings if he could understand. He wasn’t sure Heaven was on target about this.
Boots Turner looked up and saw Heaven. “We meet again. How’s your head?”
“Sore. I see you’ve met Louis Armstrong Vangirov. Isn’t he amazing?”
“Boy has licks,” Boots said. Mr. Vangirov made the pretense of translating. Louis smiled beatifically.
“Have you ever played in Russia, Boots?” Heaven asked. Murray rolled his eyes.
Boots nodded in the affirmative. “All around the world, especially in the sixties. That was when the State Department would send us overseas to be their secret weapon.”
“Musicians?”
“Yeah. Old Congressman Adam Clayton Powell sent Dizzy, me, Louis. It was the Cold War, you know. We were fighting the Commies for the third-world countries.” Boots chuckled.
“I saw Louis Armstrong in Minsk in 1961,” Mr. Vangirov threw in proudly.
“They called ’em goodwill tours,” Boots mused. “We went to Africa, Asia, you name it. They loved us in Africa, baby. ‘Course, that whole goodwill stuff was a crock.”
“What was a crock?” Murray asked.
“They had goodwill for us when we were in other countries, but back home, we were still sitting in the back of the bus.
“Louis Armstrong was going to Africa and he canceled, bless his heart. Said as long as that Faubus was keepin’ children out of school in Arkansas, the government could go to hell.” Boots chuckled. “The FBI opened one of their files on him and tried to catch him doing something they didn’t like till the day he died.”
“Did you ever feel that you were being investigated?” Murray asked, completely sucked into this little wrinkle in history he’d never considered before.
“Oh, sure, baby,” Boots said, softly playing “All of Me” and letting Louis join in. “We had an integrated band, and to some, that was out of line. That group was as American as you could get: black, white, male, female, Jews, and Baptists. I remember a cracker spitting on Sam Scott in Atlanta, calling her a nigger lover.” With the mention of Sam Scott, Boots looked melancholy.
Jim Dittmar appeared beside Heaven. “Boots, are you stealing my duet partner?” he joked. “Louis, vamoose, we’ve got a show to put on.” The quartet playing next had joined the group around the piano and was waiting respectfully for Boots to get his butt off the stage. As Boots walked off, Heaven pulled Jim to the side.
Jim looked tolerant but condescending. “Well, Agatha Christie, did you trick the kid into an English phrase?”
“Listen to me,” Heaven said excitedly. “Boots was talking about how all the bands toured the world, sent by the State Department in the 1960s. And we know the Vangirovs had black market jazz records. That’s how Louis learned to play. So, what if someone back home in Minsk, or wherever, fell in love with jazz when those bands were going over there and now is willing to pay big bucks for Charlie Parker’s saxophone? I bet Louis and his dad took it and we have to get it back before they leave here. It’s a cultural icon! And yes, he understood when Murray criticized his tempo.”
Jim shook his head. “You have a wild imagination, Counselor. I can guarantee you that Louis did not steal the sax.”
“You cannot guarantee something like that,” Heaven said with a stomp of her high-heeled foot.
“Heaven, I’ve been thinking about what you said, about our city pride and all that shit. You’re going to have to trust me for a few hours. The Charlie Parker sax will not leave the city, if I play my cards right.”
“Tell me!” Heaven demanded.
“No. We have to get off the stage now. Come on.”
Heaven agreed only because she saw Detective Bonnie Weber moving through the crowd. She grabbed Jim’s arm. “Please, promise you’ll call me at the restaurant later.”
“I promise. Now, let me introduce this group,” Jim said tensely.
Heaven stopped for a word with Bonnie before heading for the cafe. She had to work the sauté station tonight.
Bonnie Weber had visited the Rosedale Barbecue stand and was digging into a beef on a bun.
Heaven, always bossy about food, corrected her choice. “At Rosedale, you order chicken. They have the best chicken. And someone around here has the best sweet potato pie. Murray got me a piece.”
“You know I hate chicken,” Bonnie Weber reminded her friend. “Unless I see its little head cut off right in front of me, I won’t be comfortable eating chicken. I only like homegrown chickens, not mass-produced ones.”
“And they are mass-produced,” Heaven agreed. “Their little claws never touch the ground. They live their lives in cages.”
Bonnie took a bite out of her barbecue beef and eyed her friends. “How’s your wound?”
“It hurts
like hell. How’s Ella?”
“She’s groggy still, but they don’t have to do brain surgery or anything. I talked to her about an hour ago, and the doc was right on my ass so I couldn’t really do a proper job of questioning, but Ella said basically the same thing that you did: she didn’t see anyone before she went down.”
Heaven decided she better trot out her new pet theory. “Okay, forget about that for a minute. I think Louis can really speak English and he’s been acting like he can’t and I know you don’t have time to solve the robbery too but the cases seem to be related so maybe if he’s lying about the English he might be lying about other things.”
“That bump on the head has addled your brain,” Bonnie said sarcastically.
“Okay, then, I’m leaving if you don’t want my input. I’ve got to go to work,” Heaven said. She dreaded working the line tonight. Her skin was drawn across her head wound so tightly she thought it was going to burst.
“Don’t go away mad,” Bonnie said with a humorless laugh.
“What are you going to do?”
“Shake the trees a little, then go home and have dinner with my family. I’m bushed. Your little escapade last night wasn’t the most restful.”
“For me, either. If I get through this evening without biting someone’s head off, I’ll be doing good,” Heaven said as she marched resolutely away. She knew she should give Bonnie the photographs and tell her about Boots and the girls but she didn’t have the stomach for the trouble she’d be in. She had to get through the night first.
Bonnie Weber walked across the street to the open door of the new jazz museum. She could see Nolan Wilkins escorting a group of local businessmen from the big band area to the bebop department, where an empty wall case, the one that had held the famous saxophone, had been covered up.
Nolan spotted Bonnie Weber and quickly walked toward her. Nothing she had to say could be something the businessmen needed to hear. “Detective, terrible about last night. I thought the worst had happened already, what with Evelyn and the theft of our prize exhibit.”
“I thought you guys over at City Hall knew what we know at the police department: Things can always get worse. It doesn’t seem to have kept the crowd away.”
Some relief showed on Nolan’s worried face. “The crowds have been great. We were sold out last night for the concert, and today the families really seem to be enjoying themselves.”
“Just so you know, there were no fingerprints on Evelyn Edwards’s cell phone.”
“Good. I mean, I’m glad that’s over.”
Bonnie Weber pulled on Nolan’s tie, straightening it a bit. “It’s not over. The phone didn’t levitate up to her ear. Even her fingerprints weren’t on it. That means someone wiped it. A very bad sign. Now, go back to your sugar daddies.” Bonnie walked away, ready to take the night off if the bad guys would let her.
Heaven was exhausted. It was almost eleven-thirty and somehow she had made it through the night in the hellishly hot kitchen. She had waited as long as she could but had finally taken a swig of the Tylenol Three elixir the emergency room had given her. The tight band of pain around her head was diminishing. She stepped out in the dining room, released from cleanup by Sara Baxter. Murray came over to her and took her arm. “You don’t look so good, boss.”
She smiled. “We were busy. This Eighteenth and Vine weekend brought in some business.”
“Yeah, that was something, to have Tony Bennett and Sam Scott in the joint at the same time,” Murray admitted.
“Did it go okay? Did they enjoy their evening?”
“Heaven, telephone,” the bartender yelled.
“Yes, everyone enjoyed their evening. Go get the phone. It’s probably Hank,” Murray said. “He called earlier but I told him you couldn’t talk. He just wanted to make sure you were up and at ’em.”
It wasn’t Hank. “Meet me at Lincoln,” the familiar voice said.
“Please, don’t make me,” Heaven pleaded. “I just spent seven hours at the sauté station and my head is killing me.”
“You’ve got to,” the voice said, and hung up.
Heaven took off her chef’s jacket and walked back to the kitchen, grabbed her jean jacket, switched from kitchen clogs to high heels, and gave a weak wave to the kitchen crew. She was halfway there when she realized she hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
* * *
When Heaven had been an entertainment lawyer, one of her little tricks was to bring new clients to Lincoln Cemetery. There, she would lead them to Charlie Parker’s grave and they would ooh and aah and say how cool it was, almost as cool as Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris. Then Heaven would tell them this was a great example of why a musician had to have his affairs in order, because if there was one thing Charlie Parker had not wanted, it was to be buried in Kansas City. He had said it for the record dozens of times, yet here he was, planted in a town that “Bird” always felt didn’t really understand him or his music. And remember, she would scold, he had been a young man when he passed, so it was their duty to assign those royalty rights and make those wills, matters no young person likes to think about, especially musicians, who are not known for long-range planning.
So driving toward Lincoln Cemetary at midnight, while not what Heaven wanted to be doing, was bringing back memories. For once, maybe because she was so tired, she was enjoying the snatches of scenes that she had played out at Charlie Parker’s grave without thinking about what might have been if she hadn’t lost her license to practice law. The tour and lecture had always involved drinking a bottle of champagne; she remembered that part fondly.
The gates to the cemetery were closed, so she parked her car on the street. This particular cemetery had beautiful old headstones, and high school kids with guns, when not shooting each other, loved to blast the top off a sandstone cross or riddle the fine old photographs that were part of some headstones with bullet holes. But it wasn’t hard to get into the cemetery as the low stone walls on the side streets were built long before you had to protect the dead from the living. Heaven slipped over the wall and stood for a moment getting her bearings in the dark. The pain reliever was making all the edges of the scene soft and out of focus, surreal. Long before her eyes adjusted to the dark, her ears picked up a melody. Even if she hadn’t been to the Parker grave before, all she’d have to do tonight was follow the wail of an alto saxophone playing a bluesy rendition of “Take the A Train.”
Heaven found Jim Dittmar sitting on the ground, leaning on the Parker headstone with a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne wedged between his legs and the stolen sax in his hands.
Heaven sat down beside him. “I forgot you can play the sax,” she said. “Too bad you can’t afford anything but this plastic number.”
Jim laughed ruefully and poured some champagne into a plastic cup. “This here is a four-million-dollar baby, Heaven. Cheers,” he said, and clicked his plastic glass against hers.
“Are you going to tell me how this happened?”
“Here’s the story,” Jim said. “Take it or leave it. You got a call, a mysterious call, telling you to come out to Lincoln Cemetery and there, on Charlie Parker’s grave, the caller said you would find something very important. You made the trip, found the sax, and get to be the hero.”
“No questions asked or answered?”
Jim reached over and touched Heaven’s face. “I will volunteer one piece of information.”
“I’m ready.”
“I didn’t hurt you, nor do I know who did. Please believe that.”
Heaven took another gulp of champagne. “I do believe that. But why don’t you play the hero? Since we’re making this up, the sax could fall into your hands just as easily as mine.”
“Trust me, Heaven, it’s better this way. I’m in enough trouble already; I don’t need a front-page story.”
Heaven desperately wanted to grill Jim until he told her the truth. But she was off her form. The head injury, the day and night on her feet, and the Tyleno
l elixir were taking their toll. She was more than willing to take the saxophone and run with it. In a minute. “When you say trouble, are you going to be arrested by INTERPOL or something? Do they still have INTERPOL?”
Jim chuckled. “No, I’m not talking about that kind of trouble. You know how it goes, Heaven. Sometimes it’s easier said than done.”
“What’s easier said than done?”
Jim hadn’t really told Heaven the story of his second career. Maybe later, in a month or two. Maybe not ever. “Leaving our past behind. Do you want this or not?” he said, waving the sax.
“Yes, hand it over. I thank you; the city thanks you,” Heaven said as she jumped up and gave Jim a hand to get to his feet. He offered her the champagne bottle and she took a swig. She liked the way champagne straight from the bottle tickled your nose. She lowered the bottle and turned to Jim, pulling his head to hers. He had always been a great kisser. After a few seconds in an awkward but passionate kiss, awkward because their hands were full, she put down the champagne and took the saxophone.
“You coming?” Heaven asked.
“Nah. I think I’ll stick around and kill the Dom, talk to the Bird a little, tell him my troubles. You know, you’re the first person I visited this historical site with, Counselor.”
“I was thinking about that on my way over here. Get your affairs in order was the lesson, as I remember. How are you doing on that one?”
“Better now,” Jim said quietly. “I almost made a big mistake.”
“Someone’s going to be dissapointed. Is it those Russians?”
Jim laughed and shook his head. “You never stop, do you? No, it’s not the Russians I’m worried about.”
Heaven kissed him again, this time on the cheek, and turned toward the street and her van, waving the sax in the air. “Isn’t it great when we get a second chance?” she called over her shoulder.
* * *
The Cornbread Killer Page 19