Felonious Jazz

by Bryan Gilmer

  He stared at the windows and thought until his jaw ached. His mind was traveling down the same dead ends again and again. Caroline’s business card lay next to his phone. He snatched up the receiver. He could consider her an ally at this point, and when you got down to it, he needed to catch the guy who now posed a danger to him. She was looking into the same guy. He punched in her mobile number.

  “I was hoping to hear from you before now,” she told him.

  “Sorry. Things have been a mess. I was wondering whether you’d like to hook up” – he realized it sounded like he was proposing a sexual encounter rather than a merger of investigations – “on this crime spree thing. Help each other out.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds. “Last time, you got mad at me.”

  “With pretty good reason.”

  She was quiet again. “Oh come on,” she said.

  “I think you got it wrong, anyhow. I don’t think this stuff is connected with Mickey Reuss’ land deal.”

  “Oh yeah? First, the guy goes after the two developers. Then he goes after the investigator the developer hires.”

  “But what about the DIY Warehouse killing?” Jeff probed. “Maybe you’ve found some connection between sad sack Robert Claypool and Mickey Reuss that I haven’t.”

  She sighed. “No. Although I figured maybe the point of that crime wasn’t to kill the guy so much as it was to do that elaborate display of native plants, to protest development.”

  “Seems like it makes sense, but how many native plants are left on a property that’s been a trailer park for a couple of decades? By the way, I got a charity donation e-mail similar to the one you shared with me. If you put the two of them together, I think the guy killed Reuss’ dog and the Hegwoods’ cat and then stole stuff, sold it and donated the money.”

  Now she sounded hurt. “You got mad at me for being sneaky with you when you were holding out on me at the very same time!”

  “A lot of damn good it did me.”

  And he could hear her smiling on the other end of the phone. He pressed his advantage: “You ever find out who’s behind the Knox Family Trust?”

  “You sneaky bastard.”

  “You could have gotten dressed in front of me, if you wanted to keep me distracted.”

  “For your information, I like to undress in front of you, but I prefer to dress in private. And you shouldn’t go digging through a woman’s briefcase.”

  “The file was lying open on your kitchen table. Anyway, I still think the trailer park angle is bullshit. Not that I have a good idea why else someone would commit all these crimes. Look, the suspect gave two fake addresses on job applications, but they’re not around here. Upsal and Germantown. Ever heard of them?”

  “Um, no.”

  Jeff got a sudden idea. He typed “Upsal Germantown” into his favorite Internet search engine. His eyes widened at the results:

  Upper Germantown

  Welcome to Upper Germantown. This area runs south from Upsal to Chelten Avenue …

  Mount Airy / Germantown - Philadelphia Restaurants, Philadelphia

  7165 Germantown Ave | At E Mt Airy Ave, $$$. Point of Destination Cafe …

  [PDF] 2005 MECHANICAL LEAF COLLECTION and RECYCLING SCHEDULE Lincoln Drive to Germantown .Avenue, from Allens Lane to Upsal Street …

  West Mt. Airy Neighbors - Religious Institutions

  Second Baptist Church of Germantown, Germantown Avenue and Upsal Street …

  He quickly clicked on each link and all the top hits had something to do with Philadelphia – one small section of northern Philadelphia. According to the search result for the Baptist church, the two streets actually intersected. The link led to a listing of places of worship on the website for something called West Mount Airy Neighbors. Jeff’s heart beat faster as he browsed around the site and discovered that West Mount Airy was an old streetcar suburb near downtown Philadelphia. Another site told him the neighborhood was unique because when black families started moving there in the’60s and ’70s, it had simply made the neighborhood racially diverse rather than causing total white flight. It was full of historic houses and was gentrifying after a period of malaise.

  “What is it?” Caroline said through the phone, and he realized he’d left her hanging.

  “One second.”

  Jeff switched back to the Mapquest window and punched “Germantown & Upsal, Philadelphia, PA” into the search box. The site pulled up a new map with a red star on the intersection, smack in the middle of the Mount Airy section of Philly. He was willing to bet the burglar had lived there at some point in his life. It was hard to invent original lies on command, so liars usually just scrambled elements of the truth.

  “Sorry – I have to call you back,” he told Caroline and hung up.

  Jeff clicked back over to the West Mount Airy Neighbors site. He picked up the phone to call Cooperton.

  “Hey, beau,” Cooperton said. “I was just gonna call you. We got a nice, clear picture of him off that security camera at the vet’s office. I owe you a favor.”

  Jeff checked his e-mail inbox and found a note from Cooperton with the color image attached. Sloppy looking guy with bad fashion sense and a bushy beard, just like the witnesses had described.

  “Listen – let me cash in that favor right now and do you another one. I need a handgun purchase permit in my name right away, and I understand your office is the place to get one.”

  “Stupidest damn law in the world. Didn’t the Legislature read the Second Amendment?”

  “Look, L-T, anything about these crimes pointing toward Philadelphia?”

  “Naw, don’t think so.”

  Jeff told Cooperton about Philadelphia. When he was done, Cooperton kept his mouth shut, for once. When the silence had persisted for half a minute, Cooperton said, “Pretty slick. How much gas you got in that little sports car of yours?”

  Jeff grinned. “I need to think about what to pack. Let me get your opinion: Given your constitutional interpretation a minute ago, I take it you wouldn’t get upset if a good buddy of the department’s had made a pistol purchase somewhat out of order?”

  “Not as long as he knows enough about a pistol not to shoot my nuts off with it by accident. What date do you want on the permit?”

  “How about last Friday?”

  “Sure.”

  “Perfect.” Jeff grinned. “How soon will you be ready to leave for Philly?”

  Cooperton huffed into the phone receiver. “I can’t, beau. Been getting a couple of questions on why you’re always around. I can help you over the phone, but for the in-person stuff, you’re on your own.”

  “Okay. Then I guess I’ll go up there by myself.”

  “Keep me advised.”

  The voicemail light on his desk phone was flashing, had been ever since he’d arrived at the office. But as Jeff hung up, he decided to blow off the messages until tomorrow. Any important calls would come in on his cell, and it hadn’t rung.

  He didn’t want to go to Philly alone, because it would all be legwork he could use help with, just banging on doors and showing the photo around and asking if anyone knew who it was. He dialed Caroline’s number again, and the phone barely rang before she clicked on.

  “What was all that a minute ago?”

  He explained about the street names. “Come to Philadelphia with me. Let’s find out who this guy is.”

  “Send me that picture, let me write a quick story, and then pick me up at my apartment.

  When Jeff picked her up in the Audi, she buckled in, stuck a duffel bag beneath her knees and told him, “I’ve been getting these e-mails.” She pulled several sheets of copy paper out of her briefcase.

  Forty-three

  Jeff and Caroline stopped in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for a late lunch and bought gas and more cinnamon gum for Caroline. She knew how to drive a five-speed, and Jeff felt wiped out, so he let her take a turn at the wheel. He’d never let anyone else drive the car before, but he liked watching her shif
t gears in the little miniskirt.

  Past Washington, D.C., he took the wheel again, and Caroline fell asleep. At dusk they passed the exits to Center City Philadelphia, and the freeway went through a big park. Jeff exited where Mapquest had told him to and drove through a district that looked like it had been destroyed in a war 30 years before. One brick smokestack actually had the word ASBESTOS spelled out vertically in white bricks, clearly a point of pride at the time it was built. Many of the industrial buildings reminded him of his donut factory, but 30 times bigger and with broken windows. The sites were probably so contaminated that it was too expensive to clean them up and do something else with them. The shells of factories stretched down both sides of the street for a couple of miles, reminding him of the stunning number of identical Southside Chicago housing project towers that had stood along the Dan Ryan expressway while he was at Northwestern. How did a city approach revitalizing this kind of district, so thoroughly desolate for so long? It was hard to believe this was America.

  The guys in bandannas and baggy pants made him especially nervous. He felt unsafe even with the pistol in his briefcase.

  Finally, Jeff began to see blocks with houses, and judging by street names he recognized from Mapquest, he knew he was drawing near the Mount Airy neighborhood. He touched Caroline’s knee to wake her, and she jumped, smiled at him and then sheepishly wiped a trickle of drool that had slipped out of her open mouth.

  They stopped for dinner at a storefront deli called Newman’s because Caroline said, “We’re in Philly, so we have to get a cheese steak,” and Jeff thought the place looked local.

  The décor was basic and dominated by the white tile floor and a large stainless vent hood over the grill that ran parallel to the lunch counter where Caroline and Jeff sat. They ordered two cheesesteaks and two orders of fries and orange sodas.

  “Make mine a chicken cheesesteak,” Caroline told the counter man, who turned out to be the owner. He picked up on their non-native accents, and when he heard they were from North Carolina, chatted with Jeff and Caroline as they ate.

  Black folks, white folks and Jewish folks all stopped in during their meal to pick up takeout.

  The counter man said that New Yorkers who had been priced out of Manhattan and then Brooklyn and then Queens were moving into these North Philly neighborhoods and commuting by train to jobs on Wall Street or in Times Square. But most of the folks in the community still had family connections that stretched back generations.

  As Jeff pushed their empty sandwich baskets toward the back edge of the counter, he realized he had no idea where they would sleep. He opened his phone to call the concierge service his credit card company provided to get help finding a room.

  “Shit, the battery,” he said. The phone was completely dead, and he realized he hadn’t been at his factory to charge it in a long time. He would have to find a store and buy another charger.

  “Here,” Caroline said. “Use my phone.”

  He took it from her as they passed a hair salon called Nefertiti.

  Philadelphia, Mount Airy neighborhood

  JULY 1975

  Forty-four

  The white kid squatted behind the garbage bin after midnight and waited for the knot of black guys down the block to look away. Smoke rose from their mouths in widening cones, as it once had from the dead smokestacks of North Philly a mile south. They laughed and elbowed each other and passed a 40-ounce of malt liquor.

  When they turned to holler at a woman leaving the Inside Out Club, the 15-year-old crossed the sidewalk, granite cobbles and No. 23 Trolley tracks of Germantown Avenue and melted into a two-foot alley between stone storefronts.

  With the sole of a sneaker on each building, Leonard Noblac climbed the stones until he could rest his feet on a second story windowsill. He pushed up the sash, which was never locked, and hauled himself into the long-vacant shopkeeper’s apartment, now a storeroom for the musical instrument store downstairs. The air was moist and stifling, like his mother’s breath.

  A narrow staircase took him down behind the counter, where the cash register drawer stretched open under a lamp to prove it was empty. Through the windows’ iron bars and silver alarm tape, he could see across the street to Nefertiti Beauty Shop and the beautiful black woman in cornrows and beads on its sign. That stood next to a Jewish silversmith. The neighborhood was “going black,” and his mom said it wasn’t safe any more. But they couldn’t afford to move.

  Leonard turned the opposite way, toward the rear of the narrow store. He walked past a rack of trumpets and trombones to a raised display platform covered in red shag carpet. He moved a Fender Precision Bass guitar to the floor and climbed into its place. Sweat moistened his hairline.

  He picked up the tall double-bass fiddle and embraced her, positioning her neck close to his, feeling the thick veins beneath his fingertips, pressing his pelvis against her curves, imagining she was really his. Gently, he teased each string, reaching above his head to twist the keys and bring her into perfect tune.

  For two hours, he played the solos from his favorite jazz records. He imagined the voices of the other instruments, imagined the platform was the stage in a smoky club full of girls in lipstick and heels. There were maybe a couple of record producers at a front table. People shook their heads in wonder, nodded their heads as he grooved.

  When he was done, he stepped back to the floor and rearranged the instruments on the platform. He only felt happy when he came here and played – lately, three or four nights a week.

  Now, for the first time, he stole something: A set of new strings for his second-hand bass guitar at home. He just stuck them into the back pocket of his Levis. Easy.

  Leonard climbed out the second-story window and back down to the alley, the stone rough on digits tender from fingering notes. He stole back across Germantown Avenue and crept unnoticed under the maple and spruce trees, past elegant stone Victorians, to his strip of run-down rowhouses.

  From the alley, he climbed to his second-story window on the rope ladder his mother had bought so he wouldn’t burn up in a fire.

  Leonard undressed to his briefs, stashed the envelope of new strings under his pillow and lay in bed. Mom had taught him it was wrong to steal. A sin. You’d feel guilty and have to pray to the Holy Mother.

  But stealing felt fine.

  It felt right.

  The music store owner wouldn’t even let him in to look around while the shop was open.

  That guy owed him friggin’ strings.

  Leonard was so energized that he couldn’t fall asleep for two hours. He fantasized about having his own stand-up bass. About the applause when he played her onstage in a real club.

  About the lipstick girls introducing themselves instead of the old queers who hit on him on the R8 train to center city.

  Forty-five

  Leonard walked toward the front door of the Raleigh Statesman Hotel, the portico over which focused brilliant, interlocking circles of light on the dark downtown sidewalk. He had to give VWC credit – their $69 leather briefcase under his arm was better than what department stores charged a couple hundred bucks for. He would gladly have stolen it at twice the price.

  Leonard’s chin and lip felt odd without his beard. He reminded himself he could grow it back in a week, become himself again, and he felt better. He just didn’t want to take any chances. He wore gel in his freshly cut hair for the first time ever, and no hat, also a freaky feeling. Black pants, turtleneck, brown sweater. He looked so friggin’ corporate. The Soulless Bitch No. 2 would be so happy to see him like this.

  The bellman held the door for him, something that never usually happened, and it felt as good as a round of applause. He smiled and nodded at the dude. Bellman, one of the few jobs he’d never had. The marble tiled lobby made him remember his old steady gig at the Viceroy Hotel in Manhattan, where he’d met TSB-2.

  The gig was with a piano player named Patrick, a guy who was missing a finger from his left hand. But no one could tell f
rom listening to his playing. He was that good. “Cocktail jazz with Leo & Pat,” the hotel billed their Saturday night sets. The money was good for New York in those days, $150 apiece, but cocktail lounge gigs were a pain in the ass. Very few people paid attention while you played.

  Leonard perfectly remembered the night he’d spotted the intelligent-looking redhead at a back table, plainly dressed and not terribly pretty – except when she smiled. And she was not just paying attention but bobbing her long hair as he and Pat jammed out to “ ‘Round Midnight.” She had sat with this old married couple, sipping some kind of clear drink from a double-old-fashioned glass, looking at Leonard – not at Pat like chicks usually did:

  When Leonard’s solo ended, the girl started clapping. Though the crowd hadn’t been applauding solos all night, everyone joined in. Leonard twirled his bass to one side and bowed a little, and when he stole a glance at her, she gave a big smile. Then, right before the end of the set, she and the couple – her parents, he realized – stood and left. Leonard went to the bar to share his disappointment with Johnnie Walker.

  He’d heard a woman order a gin and tonic a few minutes later and looked over to find the redhead on the next stool, looking kind of goofy and blushing. But she charmed the pants off him when she sputtered, “That was a really cool number. I mean you were really cool on that number. What a solo!”