The right to sing the blues an-3

by John Lutz

  Nudger was suspicious of people who referred to themselves in the third person, but he also knew the fee would be generous. Fat Jack had an equally obese bank account, and he had in fact paid a sizable sum for air fare and hotel expenses just for Nudger to travel to New Orleans and sit in the Magnolia Blossom restaurant over lunch and listen to Fat Jack talk. The question Nudger now voiced was, "Why me?"

  Fat Jack gave him a broad, flesh-padded grin. "Ain't that the big one of all the whys? The universal question?"

  "It is in my universe," Nudger said.

  Fat Jack repeated the salient query for Nudger. "Why you? Because I know a lady named Jeanette Boyington from your fair city. Jeanette says you're tops at your job; she don't say that about many."

  Nudger almost spilled his coffee. Jeanette Boyington continued to astound, even months after he'd last seen her. And yet he shouldn't have been surprised that the woman who'd tried to dupe him into being her accomplice in murder, who had been virtually destroyed by where their relationship had led him, would recommend him. That was the essential Jeanette Boyington; she was a gamefish who admired persistence above all else. Even from her room in the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Nudger wondered if Fat Jack McGee knew Jeanette Boyington's present address.

  "And because of your collection," Fat Jack added. An ebony dribble of coffee dangled in tenuous liquid suspension from his triple chin, glittering as he talked. "I mean, I heard you collect old jazz records."

  "I used to," Nudger said a bit wistfully, realizing that Fat Jack must have checked him out with some thoroughness. "I had Willie the Lion. Duke Ellington and Mary Lou Williams from their Kansas City days. Bessie Smith. Art Tatum."

  "How come 'had'?" Fat Jack asked.

  "I sold most of the collection," Nudger said, "to pay the rent one dark month." He gazed beyond green palm fronds, out the window and through filigreed black wrought iron, at the tourists half a block away on Bourbon Street, at the odd combination of French and Spanish architecture and black America and white suits and broiling half-tropical sun that was New Orleans, where jazz lived as in no other place. "Damned rent," he muttered.

  "Amen," Fat Jack said solemnly, kidding not even himself. He hadn't worried about paying the rent in years. The drop of coffee released its tremulous grip on his chin, plummeted, and stained his pure white shirtfront like a sacrilege.

  Nudger looked away from the stain, back out at Bourbon Street. It had become run down and attracted some of the wrong element-or rather, the wrong wrong element- since Nudger had last seen it, but it was still Bourbon Street and like no other street. High notes and low notes; topless and bottomless dancers-male and female; tourists and true jazz lovers. All in a grand and gaudy mix that ran through the heart-that was the heart-of the French Quarter. The relatively few violent ones couldn't change that. Tradition had a certain resilience.

  "So will you stay around awhile?" Fat Jack was asking.

  Nudger nodded. His social and business calendars weren't quite booked solid.

  "It's not Hollister himself who worries me," Fat Jack said. "It's Ineida Collins. She's singing at the club now, and if she keeps practicing, someday she'll be mediocre. Hey, I'm not digging at her, Nudger; that's simply an honest assessment of her talent. And talent is a commodity I can judge better than most."

  "Then why did you hire her?"

  "Because of David Collins. He owns a lot of the French Quarter and a piece of the highly successful restaurant in which we now sit. In every parish in New Orleans, he has more clout than a ton of charge cards. And he's as skinny and ornery as I am fat and nice."

  Nudger took another sip of the pungent coffee. "And he asked you to hire Ineida Collins?"

  "You're on to it, Nudger. Ineida is his daughter. She wants to make it big as a singer. And she will, even if Daddy has to pay double the fair price for a recording studio. Since David Collins owns the building my club is in, not to mention twelve-and-a-half-percent interest in the business, I thought I'd acquiesce when his daughter auditioned for a job on his recommendation. And Ineida isn't really so bad that she embarrasses anyone but herself, so I call it diplomacy."

  "I thought you were calling it trouble," Nudger said. "I thought that was why you hired me."

  Fat Jack nodded, ample jowls spilling over his white collar. "So it became," he said. "Hollister is a handsome young dude, and within the first week Ineida was at the club he put some moves on her and they became fast friends, then soon progressed beyond mere friendship."

  "You figure he's attracted to Daddy's money?"

  "Nothing like that," Fat Jack said. "That'd be too simple. Part of the deal when I hired Ineida was that I keep her identity a secret-David Collins insisted on it. She wants to stand or fall alone; all that making-it-on-her-own bullshit. So she sings under the stage name of Ineida Mann, which most likely is a gem from her dad's advertising department. It doesn't make it any easier for me to be her guardian angel."

  "I still don't see your problem," Nudger said.

  "Hollister doesn't set right with me, and I don't know exactly why. I do know that if he messes up Ineida in some way, David Collins will see to it that I'm playing jazz at clubs on the Butte, Boise, Anchorage circuit."

  "Nice cities in their fashion," Nudger remarked, "but not jazz towns. I see your problem."

  "So find out about Willy Hollister for me," Fat Jack implored. "Check him out, declare him pass or fail, but put my mind at ease either way. Hey, that's all I want, an easeful mind."

  "Even we tough private eye guys want that," Nudger said.

  Fat Jack removed his napkin from his lap and raised a languid plump hand. A waiter who had been born just to respond to that signal scampered over with the check. Fat Jack accepted a tiny ballpoint pen and signed for the meal with a ponderous yet elegant flourish. Nudger watched him help himself to a mint. It was like watching the grace and dexterity of an elephant picking up a peanut. Huge as Fat Jack was, he moved as if he weighed no more than ten or twelve pounds.

  "I gotta get back, Nudger, do some paperwork, count some money." He stood up, surprisingly tall in his tan slacks and white linen sport coat. Nudger thought it was a sharp- looking coat; he decided he might buy one and wear it winter and summer. "Drop around the club about eight o'clock tonight," Fat Jack said. "I'll fill you in on whatever else you need to know, and I'll point out Willy Hollister and Ineida. Maybe you'll get to hear her sing."

  "While she's singing," Nudger said, "maybe we can discuss my fee."

  Fat Jack grinned, his vast jowls defying gravity grandly. "Hey, you and me'll get along fine." He winked and moved away among the tables, tacking toward the door.

  The waiter refilled Nudger's coffee cup, and he sat sipping chicory brew and watching Fat Jack McGee move along the sunny sidewalk toward Bourbon Street. He sure had a bouncy, jaunty kind of walk for a fat man.

  Nudger wasn't as anxious about the fee as Fat Jack thought. Well, not quite as anxious; he knew he'd be paid for his work. The reason he'd jumped at the case wasn't totally because of the fee, even though he desperately needed something to toss to Eileen and the various wolves queued up at his door. Years ago, at the Odds Against lounge in St. Louis, Nudger had heard Fat Jack McGee play clarinet in the manner that had made him a jazz legend, and he'd never forgotten. Fat Jack's was the kind of music that lingered in the mind, that you thought of at odd moments: while you were waiting in a doorway for the rain to stop, or sitting on the edge of the bed tying your shoe. It was music that permeated dreams, that hooked real jazz fans forever.

  Nudger needed the money, sure. But he also needed to hear that clarinet again.

  III

  Fat Jack's club was on Conti, a few blocks off Bourbon Street. Nudger paused at the entrance and looked up at a red-and-green neon sign that visually shouted the synonymous names of club and owner. And there was a red neon Fat Jack himself, a portly, herky-jerky illuminated figure that jumped about with the same seeming lightness and jauntiness as the flesh-and-blood vers
ion.

  A trumpet solo from inside the club was wafting out almost palpably into the hot, syrupy-humid night. People came and went, among them a few who were obviously tourists making the Bourbon Street rounds of clubs and drinks. But Nudger got the impression that most of Fat Jack's customers were folks who took their jazz seriously and were there for music and not atmosphere.

  The trumpet stair-stepped up to an admirable high C and wild applause. Nudger went inside and looked around.

  Dim, smoky, lots of people at lots of tables. Men in suits and in jeans and T-shirts; women in long dresses and casual slacks. The small stage was empty now; the band was between sets. Customers milled around, stacking up at the long bar along one wall. Waitresses in black, red-lettered "Fat Jack's" T-shirts bustled about with trays of drinks. Near the left of the stage was a polished dark upright piano that gleamed like a showroom-new car even in the dimness. Nudger decided that Fat Jack's was everything a jazz club should be.

  Feeling that his heart was home, he made his way to the bar and, after a five-minute wait, ordered a mug of draft beer. The mug was frosted, the beer ice-flecked. Nudger was glad, right now, that he'd agreed to work for Fat Jack.

  "Ain't no ten-dollar bill," said a deep, velvety voice just down the bar from Nudger, "I gave you a twenty."

  "Sorry, sir, it was a ten."

  Nudger leaned forward and saw that the deep voice belonged to a tall, lanky black man with wide shoulders, a scraggly goatee, and large, splay-fingered hands that looked strong enough to be leased out to industry. The "Sorry, sir" belonged to the bartender, who didn't appear old enough to be working where liquor was served, but whose dark eyes had a wise and steady gunfighter calm about them.

  "You tryin' to pull some shit on me!" the black man said. He was working himself up to high pitch. Around him, the other customers let their conversations taper off to nervous silence. "You owe me change from a twenty, clown, and you gonna pay!"

  The bartender with the high-school face and been- around eyes said nothing, didn't move. He did, however, smile slightly.

  "I'll give you a jive-ass smile under your chin!" the black guy said. He reached out with his big right hand to grip the bartender's shirtfront, but the bartender took an easy step back, using the bar to shield him from harm. The big man's other huge hand slid beneath the leather vest he was wearing over his red shirt, as if to pull out a knife to make good his threat of a tracheal grin.

  The bartender said, "Marty." Not in a scared voice, but as if he could handle things himself-just that oversized homicidal customers simply weren't part of his job; something in the union rules.

  Marty was already there. He was a medium-sized, bland-faced man in a brown suit that matched his straight, brown, razor-styled hair. Mr. Average, with a Sears-catalog look about him.

  Marty's hand snapped in a blur to the big man's thick wrist. The abrupt, smooth movement reminded Nudger of a snake striking. Marty smiled in a kindly fashion while the large black face above him registered outrage, then surprise at the absence of fear in the smaller, bland white man and the strength of the fingers about his wrist. Some average. The big man calmed down, withdrawing the hand from inside the leather vest as Marty loosened his grip by degrees.

  "He did me outa my twenty," the man said, gesturing with his head toward the bartender. He was still plenty mad, still unpredictable and dangerous. But his outrage had lost its edge.

  "Are you sure of that, sir?" Marty asked.

  "Sheeit, yeah, I'm sure!"

  "So let's talk about it," Marty said, further defusing the situation. "What are you drinking?"

  The man scratched his patchy beard. "Uh, vodka with a twist."

  Marty nodded to the bartender, who poured two generous vodkas over ice and set them on the bar.

  "On the house," Marty said, picking up both drinks and leading the way to a corner table, not glancing back.

  The big man looked uncertain for a few seconds. Then, glad for a way out of the confrontation without losing his machismo, he followed Marty and the vodka across the crowded floor.

  They sat down and began talking quietly. The black man leaned his long body forward over the table, speaking earnestly, sensing he'd found an impartial ear. Nudger knew that sooner or later Marty would give him the extra ten in his change as a gesture of goodwill and good business, not to mention keeping the bartender alive.

  Conversation picked up again around the bar. Nudger lifted his beer mug and sipped. He wanted to ask the bartender who Marty was, but the unflappable young man was working the other end of the bar for a group of middle-aged women ordering exotic drinks topped with pineapple slices and little paper parasols.

  The lights brightened and dimmed three times, apparently a signal the regulars at Fat Jack's understood, for they gradually began a general movement back toward their tables.

  Then the lights dimmed considerably, and the stage, with its gleaming piano, was suddenly the only illuminated area in the place. A tall, graceful man in his thirties walked onstage to the kind of scattered but enthusiastic applause that suggests a respect and a common bond between performer and audience.

  The man smiled faintly at the applause and sat down at the piano. He had pained, haughty features, blond hair that curled above the collar of his black Fat Jack's T-shirt. He was thin, but the muscles in his bare arms were corded; his hands appeared elegant yet very strong. This was Willy Hol- lister, the main gig, starbound but still their own, the one the paying customers had come to hear. The place got quiet and he began to play.

  The song was a variation of "Good Woman Gone Bad," an old number originally written for tenor sax. Hollister played it his way, and two bars into it Nudger knew he was better than good and nothing but bad luck could keep him from becoming great. He was backed by brass and a snare drum, but he didn't need it; he didn't need a thing in this world but that piano and you could tell it just by looking at the rapt expression on his aristocratic face. He wasn't playing the music; he was the music.

  "Didn't I tell you it was all there?" Fat Jack said softly beside Nudger. "Whatever else there is about him, the man can play piano."

  Nudger nodded silently in agreement. Jazz basically is black music, but the fair, blond Hollister played it with all the soul and pain of its genesis. He finished the number to riotous applause that quieted only when he swung into another, a blues piece. He sang this one while his hands worked the piano. His voice was as black as his music; in his tone, his inflection, there seemed to dwell echoes of centuries of suffering.

  "I'm impressed," Nudger said, when the applause for the blues number had died down.

  "You and everyone else with ears," Fat Jack said, sipping absinthe from a gold-rimmed glass. "Hollister won't be playing here much longer before moving up the show-business ladder-not for what I'm paying him, and I'm paying him plenty."

  "How did you happen to hire him?"

  "He came recommended by a club owner in Chicago. Seems he started out in Cleveland playing small rooms, then moved up to better things in Kansas City and your town, St. Louis, then Rush Street in Chicago. All I had to do was hear him play for five minutes to know I wanted to hire him. It's like catching a Ray Charles or a Garner on the way up. The man's an original."

  Nudger didn't remember Hollister ever playing St. Louis, but that wasn't surprising. Nudger hadn't listened to live jazz in years, and not much recorded jazz since his collection had been ravaged by incensed creditors. Diluted FM radio music had comprised most of his listening lately. The stuff of elevators.

  "So what specifically is there about Hollister that bothers you?" Nudger asked. "Why shouldn't he be seeing Ineida Collins?"

  Fat Jack scrunched up his padded features, seeking the word that might convey the thought. "His music is… uneven."

  "That's hardly a crime," Nudger said, "especially if he can play so well when he's right."

  "He ain't as right as I've heard him," Fat Jack said. "Believe me, Hollister can be even better than he is tonight. But
it's not really his music that concerns me. Hollister acts weird sometimes, secretive. Sam Judman, the drummer, went by his apartment last week, found the door unlocked and let himself in to wait for Hollister to get home. So what happens? When Hollister discovers him there he beats up on Sam-with his fists. Can you imagine a piano player like Hollister using his hands for that?" Fat Jack looked as if he'd discovered a hair in his absinthe. "He warned Judman never to snoop around his apartment again. I mean, talked hard to the man!"

  "So he's obsessively secretive," Nudger said. "I still don't see why you need me." What am I doing, he asked himself, trying to talk myself out of a job? What would Eileen think if she could hear me? What would her shark of a lawyer think? Blood in the water.

  But Fat Jack said, "Hey, believe me, I need you. Hollister has been troubled, jumpy, and unpredictable, for the last month. He's got problems, and he's seeing Ineida Collins, so I got problems. I figure it'd be wise to learn some more about Willy Hollister."

  "I understand," Nudger said. "The better to know if his intentions toward the lady are honorable, as they used to say."

  "And in some quarters still do," Fat Jack pointed out. "Only they don't fight duels over those matters around here anymore; in a duel both parties have a chance. What we see now are mostly one shot affairs, usually in somebody's back."

  Nudger felt a cold twinge of fear. He didn't like murder; he didn't even like talking about murder.

  "Are you afraid David Collins might shoot you?" he asked.

  Fat Jack lifted the massive shoulders inside his pale jacket. "Naw, I guess not. What I'm afraid of is he'll see to it that I wanna shoot myself."

  Nudger wasn't totally reassured. Nobody could exude fear like a fat man, and fear seemed to live and feed inside Fat Jack like a malignant overmatched tapeworm.

  "Who's Marty?" Nudger asked, looking around but not seeing the brown-suited man who'd so skillfully handled trouble earlier in the evening.