Jazz Funeral (Skip Langdon #3) (Skip Langdon Mystery) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

  “Don’t look,” he said to Patty, he didn’t know why.

  A waitress led them to a table and brought them a pair of five-dollar Cokes. George stared at a landscape dotted with “table dancers” like the girl with the walnut breasts. In the center was a carpet-covered stage, inhabited by three more naked beauties, performing on their backs—doing somersaults, leg lifts, getting into contortions that looked like weird yoga postures. They probably were yoga movements, it dawned on him—these clubs didn’t have choreographers; the girls probably had to use whatever they knew.

  But these girls were background—the table dancers were what hurt. High school kids shaking their booties in men’s faces. It made him want to throw up.

  Patty reached for his hand. “Do you see Melody?”

  “No.” It came out like a squawk. A girl came and whispered to Patty, who answered. The girl drew up a chair.

  “She asked me if I wanted to buy a table dance for twenty dollars to embarrass you,” Patty said. “I said we’d give her twenty bucks to talk to us.”

  George nodded. “Do you know a girl named Melody?” he said, knowing how futile it was.

  She shook her head. “My name’s Tulip.” She spoke in a high baby voice.

  “How old is that girl?” He pointed to the one lying on the counter.

  “Twenty-two. Me too.”

  What was there to say? Where should we look for our daughter?

  “I bet you’d never guess that,” said Tulip. “Because of my voice. I sound like a baby, don’t I?” Her words were slurred. She was pretty loaded. “The owner here told my girlfriend, ‘Tulip’s butt’s too big, but I had to hire her because she sounds like a child and I love to fuck children.’” Tulip giggled. “You get along however you can.”

  George threw his Coke against the wall. He didn’t know he was going to do it, later wondered how he’d decided to aim for the wall instead of the fat, stinking barker, who proved also to be the bouncer. The man was at the table, grabbing George under the armpits, muscling him out before the shards of the glass had hit the floor.

  “My money!” cried Tulip, her too-red lips twisted in despair.

  “I’m leaving, goddammit! Let me pay her!” The man let go.

  George tossed her two twenties and stalked out, Patty trailing.

  Blinking in the brightness outside, Patty was pale. “What happened, George? Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.” He spoke louder than he needed to, yelled at her, really. They walked in silence to their car. Only when the motor was running did George turn to her. “You read about that stuff, you know? You hear about it.”

  She nodded, her brows drawn together, as if she were trying to keep her face from falling apart.

  “But it doesn’t prepare you—I mean, you don’t know until you see it. You just don’t know.”

  Patty was shaking. She wasn’t crying, she was just shaking, as if she were very cold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Melody took the shuttle back to the Quarter, breathing everyone else’s beer fumes and wishing she could have gotten loaded at JazzFest, could have found someone to buy beer for her. This time, she was really at the end of the line; no turning back. She’d seen someone she knew and been chased. She couldn’t sing with the band anymore because people knew what she looked like now; Flip would spread the word. And she couldn’t stay with them because it was too sad, now that Chris had someone else. They probably wouldn’t let her anyway, if she wasn’t going to sing.

  She could go to the bar on Decatur Street, the one where the runaways and punks hung out, and try to meet someone to stay with, but she was afraid to. She’d had enough of the kindness of strangers for a while. She wanted to see Joel.

  He’d be practicing right now with Doug, practicing like crazy because he was going to play when the Boucrees performed tomorrow. She made a decision. It wasn’t rational, it was crazy, it was probably even stupid, but her brain wasn’t working, only her heart was. Or whatever lonely, longing part of her desperately wanted to be with someone she cared about.

  She took the bus to Metairie, walked to the garage, and simply sat down in the yard behind it, where no one ever went at this time of day, and waited till the music stopped; until Doug left. If they had come out together, she’d have had to scrap the plan, but Doug always left first. Joel liked to stick around and work by himself.

  “Hey, Joel.”

  “Huh?” He looked at her in surprise, as if she were a stranger.

  Her hand went to her blond and purple hair. “Hey, it’s me. Melody.”

  “Holy shit. That’s the ugliest hairdo I’ve ever seen on a woman who wasn’t my mama.”

  “I know you mean that in the kindest possible way.”

  He stood up and walked up to her, smiling now. She could tell he was glad to see her. “Hey, Mel, give me a hug.”

  She hadn’t expected that. The only time Joel had ever hugged her was when they won the Battle of the Bands at Valencia. She didn’t need to be asked twice. She gave him a lot more of a hug than he probably wanted, and when it wasn’t enough, she said, “Hold me tighter, Joel,” and proceeded nearly to squeeze the breath out of him.

  “Sit down,” he said finally.

  She did, smiling at him, unable to take her eyes off him; she felt she’d come home.

  “Melody, you had us all scared. Real scared.”

  “Really?” She couldn’t believe Joel had actually been worried about her. She didn’t know why, she just hadn’t thought about it.

  “You moron. The whole town’s worried about you.”

  She didn’t say anything. She had thought he meant he was.

  “I guess you had a good reason for splitting, huh?”

  She nodded. “I can’t talk about it.” Mortified, she realized her voice was going south on her. “Really. I can’t. Joel, you’re the only one I can trust. I came here because I knew you wouldn’t turn me in. I can’t go home, Joel. I just can’t.”

  “You can’t go home? Melody, listen, what are you saying? Where the hell else are you going to go, girl?”

  “Well, I have to figure that out.”

  “You’re sixteen and the whole city’s looking for you.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t recognize me, did you? Listen, I’ve already had a gig. No kidding, Joel. Tuesday, the day I ran away, I joined a street band. It was easy—I just sang for ‘em, and then next thing you knew I was singing with ‘em.”

  “You got a voice and a half, Mel. I always thought that.” What she loved about him was his generosity; that and his talent.

  “I know it’s nothing to you. You’ve been playing professionally all your life. But it was …” She struggled with the enormity of what it had been. “It was a beginning for me. It was the start of my career.”

  “So is that your plan? To keep singing in the Quarter? Somebody’s going to find you, Mel. You’d last three days max.”

  “There’s lots of kids there. I could make friends.”

  “Yeah, but you couldn’t go out in public.”

  “Well, I could—”

  “What? Dance on Bourbon Street? That’s still public.”

  She knew what she had to do. She had to leave town. But she couldn’t do it without money. She didn’t know how she was going to get the money, she didn’t know where to go, and she didn’t want to talk about it, even with Joel.

  She said, “Oh, Joel, I can’t go back. Not yet anyway. I need to be safe for a few days—with no adults around.”

  “I hear that,” he said, and leaned back in his chair, thinking about it. Melody liked that about him too—that he thought about things. “You want me to help you?” he said finally.

  “Is there anything you can do?”

  “Melody, what happened to you? What’s going on with you? Can’t you at least tell me that?”

  She flared. “I didn’t kill my brother.”

  “You two were real close, weren’t you?”

  Without the slightest warning, M
elody was crying again, shoulders heaving, deep sobs coming up for the eighteenth time. She wondered how long, how many months, how many years, before the crying would stop.

  “Oh, Mel, hey.” Joel had covered the distance between them and taken her in his arms before she had time to realize that was what he meant to do. No one in her family ever did anything like that. If Melody cried, she was sent to her room to do it in private. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.” He was holding her and stroking her hair. She felt like a big doll, not a person at all, and realized that she had done that herself with her dolls, when they had shed imaginary tears; had held them, stroked them. But she couldn’t remember anyone doing it with her. It was almost like having a mother or father. She wondered if Flip would have done it.

  Black people are so warm, she thought, and regretted for the millionth time that she wasn’t one.

  When she was calm again, he held her at arm’s length and looked at her, looked in her eyes. She could have melted, but she saw no passion in his eyes, no romance at all, only worry. “You’re in bad shape, girl. You need your mama.”

  She wrenched one of her arms away and swung at him.

  “Watch out! What you doing? You crazy?”

  “You just don’t get it, do you? If I had a mama, I’d be at home. If I had a dad, I’d be home! You’ve got a mama, you can afford to make statements like that, you don’t have any idea what it’s like not to have one.”

  “Whoa, now. Slow down. You telling me you don’t get along with your folks?”

  “Yes, I’m telling you that!”

  “Melody, I think you underestimate them. Betcha if you called ‘em right now they’d say they love you.”

  Why did I think he’d understand? He doesn’t know. Nobody from a normal family could know.

  The despair was like fading into a bottomless black hole, sinking deeper, deeper, free-floating, no equilibrium, nothing to grab on to, nowhere to put your feet and hands, no night, no day, just falling.

  I’m crazy. I’m going crazy because I can’t talk to anybody.

  But she should try. She should try to explain. There was just a chance, maybe the slightest chance, he would get it. She said, “Joel, what do you think love is?”

  “What is this? A philosophical discussion? After I knock off love, want me to tackle reality? Your parents love you, Melody. All parents love their kids.”

  “Just because they say it doesn’t mean they act like it.”

  “They send you to Country Day. Your mom brings you to school and picks you up every day.”

  “Because she has to. She hates it. She hates me.”

  “Melody, at a time like this, they’ve gotta be hurtin’. You’ve got to think about them.”

  Deeper and deeper into the black hole. And now she was spinning, spinning out of control.

  “Melody. Melody!” He was rubbing her wrists, pulling at her T-shirt. She was lying on the floor.

  “Did I faint again?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s what you did.”

  “Good.” She closed her eyes for a second, happy, proud of herself. It’s the only sane response. I wish I could do it on command.

  “You doin’ drugs?” said Joel.

  “No!”

  “Well, don’t get so mad. Come on, now. Sit up.” She obeyed. “Okay, that was impressive.”

  “It’s not fun, though.” She would have lain back down, but he caught her around the waist and held her in a sitting position.

  “I’ve got a place you can stay.”

  “You do?” She suddenly felt better.

  It was another garage, much like the one they practiced in, except that it was professionally fitted out. It was the Boucrees’ studio. Because people sometimes worked there all night, there was a small bedroom in the back, hardly bigger than a closet, with a single bed in it, and there was what her mother called a “half-bath”—toilet and lavatory, no shower.

  “I’ll bring you some food,” he said. “I can’t exactly take you home for red beans and rice.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why do you think? You’re too white for this neighborhood.”

  That made her angry. “Are your parents racist?”

  He looked at her, uncomprehending. “You’re crazy, you know that? Don’t be such a baby.”

  She shut up. If there was anything she hated, it was being thought naive.

  “You hungry?”

  She checked in with her stomach. “Um. Getting there.”

  “I’ll be right back. Stay put, okay. This is a black neighborhood. That’s B-L-A-C-K, got it? You’d look weird here.”

  She grumped at him. “O-kay.” But she’d have gone exploring if he hadn’t said it.

  He was gone about an hour, during which there was nothing to do but lie on the narrow bed and think, not her favorite activity of the moment. So she worked on the song awhile, the song about Ham. She was excited about it, knew it was going to be the best thing she’d ever done. She was ravenous when Joel returned.

  He came back with corn bread (which he apologized for—it was left over from breakfast) and some of the best gumbo Melody had ever had. Curiously, the food made her sad, made her remember what she didn’t have.

  What must it be like, she wondered, to have a mother who cooked for you? Who actually got up and made corn bread for breakfast? It wasn’t the most feminist idea in the world, she knew that—knew she didn’t want to do it for some kid herself. But a mother who did that must surely be a mother who cared.

  “They’re going to practice here tonight,” said Joel. “We have to go out.”

  She stopped in mid-munch. “Oh. Okay.” Going out with Joel was her idea of heaven. The sadness left her. She might have no family, but maybe things worked out somehow. Ham used to quote Mick Jagger, so Melody knew that a pedagogic universe was more likely to bludgeon you into what you needed than treat you to what you wanted. But this seemed the opposite of the song— she needed her brother, a regular family like other kids had, a home—and instead her dreams were coming true. She’d already had a singing career, now she was spending time with Joel. She didn’t know what to make of it. But she knew enough to enjoy it while she could.

  I might not live that much longer.

  The thought didn’t exactly shock her, didn’t float in out of nowhere. She’d always thought she would die young—that was why she believed you had to get it while you can. She just hadn’t thought about how young.

  “Where shall we go?” she said.

  “Now that’s a question. Nobody knows you in this neighborhood, but by tomorrow everybody would if we stayed here.”

  “Not the Quarter. I’ve had it with the Quarter.”

  They went to the Burger King on Morrison Road, and Melody was thrilled that Joel took her to a place in his neighborhood. He smiled at her. “I’ll buy you some dessert.”

  They sat there for two hours and then, restless, drove out by the lake and walked there. Finally they ended up in their own practice garage, not daring to play music, barely whispering; instead of lights, using a candle Melody had brought one day after a power failure.

  Melody had nearly finished the song for Ham, “Blues for a Brother,” and she sang it for Joel. He went crazy. He said it was the best thing she’d written, but she knew that and he knew she did. What she wondered was where it stood in the general scheme of things. Joel, seeming to know that, said it was as good a song as any the Spin-Offs played, a song that would move people, that people would remember.

  She was embarrassed. “Oh, Joel, don’t.”

  “Why don’t?”

  “You’re such a much better musician than me.”

  “No, I’m not—Melody, I’m barely adequate. I couldn’t get into NOCCA—didn’t you know that?”

  He meant New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. “You couldn’t get in?”

  He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “Well, I didn’t want to go anyway. I want to be a doctor—did I ever happen to men
tion that?” He sounded defensive.

  “But Joel—your music!”

  “Yeah, that’s what the Boucrees say, some of ‘em. ‘Specially my granddaddy’s generation.” He shrugged. “Music isn’t my life, that’s all. It’s great and and I love it and everything, but I’ve got other things I want to do with my life.”

  “But how could you—I don’t understand. If I were as good as you-”

  “You’re better than me, Melody—don’t you get it? You’ve got the soul; you’ve got the passion—I just don’t.”

  She was struggling with that, trying to figure out if he was making fun of her, when he said, “I’m too damn well-adjusted.”

  She had known there had to be a catch. “Only screwballs are musicians, is that it?”

  “Art comes out of pain, babe—don’t you believe that? Why do you think that song you just wrote is so good?”

  “You really think it’s good?” She didn’t believe him.

  “They don’t call it blues for nothin’—you of all people ought to know that.”

  “But you—all the Boucrees. Music’s in your blood. It’s your heritage.”

  “Bullshit! Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!”

  “Joel!” He had sounded almost violent.

  “My ancestors learned to play the banjo back on the old plantation ‘cause that was all they had except a back-breaking life and a bullet to look forward to if they tried to split. A public whipping at the very least. Can you imagine that, Mel? To be tied up and whipped? Don’t look at me like that. Your people did it to mine.”

  “Well. I didn’t.”

  He ignored her. “Why do you think black people converted to Christianity so easily? ‘Cause that’s were the music was—the only thing that eased the pain. You ever notice how many gospel songs talk about being saved? Why do you think that is? We Boucrees came out of poverty—the ones that weren’t musicians were laborers; the women cleaned white ladies’ houses.”

  He said “white ladies” with utter contempt—they were the enemy to him, she saw now, and she wanted to tell him that she wasn’t, she’d do anything for him, she worshiped him.