The RagTime Traveler

by Larry Karp

  My God, where does this end? Find Mickey’s killer, find the music, now get this poor man out of his mess. What’s next?

  “Well, I’m going to do my best for you. Can you tell me why you’re in that hospital, how you got to be put in there? Everything you can remember.”

  “Oh, I remembers it all. Back when I were Jackson’s age, mo’ o’ less, this Mr. Raney, he tol’ me if I would sneak into Mr. Sam Blackstone’s house an’ come away with a duffel bag an’ give it to him, he’d have a hundred dollars for me, cash on delivery. Well, maybe that was something I shouldn’t’a did, I knew it then and I knows it now. But a hundred dollars, shoot. Two months’ pay pushin’ a broom. Wasn’t no trouble at all. So back I goes with the duffel, gonna meet Mr. Raney at the bar. He be happy as a pig in mud, say he get me the hundred right then. But he come back with a baseball bat, an’ I turn around jus’ in time to see him start his swing.

  Nex’ I know, I’s in the Colored Ward over by Bothwell Hospital, and they tell me it’s July, an’ it was May when I took the duffel bag. I figger Mr. Raney go back to that bar now ’n’ again, so I go there now ’n’ again, lookin’ for him. But the guy owned the bar, he didn’t like for me to be comin’ ’round there, and sometimes he call the cops an’ they ’rest me. I don’ make no trouble, though, so in a few days, they allus let me go. But one time, I did see Mr. Raney, sittin’ right at the bar there, an’ I went and hit him one in the jaw that stretched him out cold. Didn’ need me no baseball bat, neither. So when they ’valuate me, they say I be dangerous, that it weren’t Mr. Raney no how, but some other guy—”

  “Did you get his name?” Alan asked.

  Big Jack shook his head slowly. “They say it, but not so’s I could ’member. But it don’t matter. He was for sure Mr. Raney. Looked jus’ like I ’member him, sure’s you’ born.”

  Alan thought the man was getting upset, so he assured him that was fine, not to worry. “What was in that duffel bag? Did Mr. Raney tell you?”

  Jackson’s face went crafty. “No, he never did say…but he didn’t hafta. I done looked. It was a whole buncha music-type papers. I had to watch I didn’t laugh out loud and waken up Mr. Blackstone, why anybody’d want to give me a hundred dollars for some old music papers.”

  Alan clapped his hands. “Good, Big Jack. I think that’ll do it for now.” He shifted his gaze to JJ, who took his father by the arm, and led him back downstairs.

  Elvira moved to clear away the remains of breakfast, but Alan motioned for her to wait. “Do you remember just when Jack found the man he thought was Mr. Raney, Elvira? Close as you can come?”

  “Somethin’ I’ll never forget. My on’y child, taked ’way from me an’ sent off to the county. It was ten years ago, just like he say, in August. Jack, he get in one of his moods, and off he go, no one could stop him, no way. An’ they had the hearing just a couple weeks later and send him right off. I go an’ see him every Sunday, no fail, every Sunday till he snuck off and came here.”

  “Ten years in that place…” Alan sighed. “Nobody should have to deal with that,” he added, more to himself than anyone else.

  JJ came back into the room, dropped back on the sofa. “Okay, Boss,” he said to Alan, “What now?”

  “Whew.” Alan mopped a handkerchief across his forehead, then looked at his wristwatch. “Just past ten-thirty. I had some ideas about what to do next, but now I think the first thing’s got to be that we find out the real name of your dad’s ‘Mr. Raney,’ and any other information, like where he lived, what his work was…anything that might help us track him down quietly. Tom, Saramae, and Elvira—you go down to the Democrat, get Mr. Blackstone into his office for a few minutes, and find out what he’s willing to tell you from what he knows about that incident. Elvira, maybe if you’re there, you can give a little support to those ‘two kids’ who’ll be trying to pump him for information. The duffel bag stolen from his father’s house—why was it there, how did it get there? Does he know who Mr. Raney was? Whatever you can find out might help. I’ll go over to the courthouse and see whether I can have a look at the records from the case. Then, let’s figure to meet back here, say one o’clock, tell each other what we found out, and go from there.”

  Tom had a puzzled frown. “What good is finding the man he knocked out going to do? It couldn’t possibly be the same guy.”

  Saramae snorted, fisted him in the ribs. “Didn’t you hear what Big Jack said? ‘Looked jus’ like I ’member him,’ right? Maybe it ain’t the same guy, but if he looked that much the same, maybe it was his kid, or something like that.”

  Alan nodded. “Exactly right. Or if there’s another connection we haven’t thought of that we could use to get him out of that hospital.”

  Tom blushed. “Okay.”

  JJ looked at Alan. “I didn’t hear my name called. What you got for me to do?”

  “Hadn’t come to it yet. You stay here, JJ, get yourself some shuteye so you’ll be sharp for whatever we do this afternoon. And I can’t be sure we didn’t shake up your dad to where he might decide to go looking for Mr. Raney again, and we don’t want that for anything. You’re the only one of us who could stop him. And since you can’t go outside, either of you, that makes it your job.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Don’t worry. There’s going to be plenty for all of us to do, once we’ve found out who Mr. Raney is.”

  As JJ picked up cushions to spread before the front door, Tom sidled up to his grandfather. “Did you ever lie to me?” he whispered.

  “Have you ever thought I did?” Alan’s face was as droll as his voice.

  “No, ’course not.”

  Alan shrugged. “Then, there’s your answer. Come on, Thomas. Get moving before your team leaves without you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Alan forced himself to not slam the hotel room door. Nearly two hours of being sent from one department to another before anyone told him flat out to just give up. Alan mimicked the whiny voice of the last bureaucrat he’d spoken with. “‘For any case involving a committal, our policy is to restrict release of information to situations where there exist sufficient legal or medical considerations. Mental illness carries carries such a stigma, it’s necessary to preserve the privacy of the unfortunate sufferers.’ Stigma, my ass! What a jerk! I sure hope Tom got something useful out of Saramae’s father.”

  The old man ducked into the bathroom to catch up on his medication, then dropped back into the desk chair. Tom’s backpack was leaning against the wall next to the TV table.

  Not much point in keeping the music in that thing if we don’t remember to take it with us. Still, long as it’s here…Maybe I’m approaching the problem backward.

  Alan opened the pack and was reaching for the envelope of music when he spotted the snippet of piano string. He dropped the wire onto the table and pushed the backpack out of the way.

  If this works, we’ll…well, we won’t wrap everything up, but we will be miles ahead. If I can prevent Mickey’s death in the first place, that’d sure also solve a lot of problems right there. Including proving I haven’t flipped out.

  Alan looked at the length of wire on the table, a typical piece of bass piano string—steel wire tightly wrapped in a spiral of copper. But the amount of corrosion set it apart from any other piano string Alan had ever seen.

  He studied the pattern of rust and verdigris with the same intensity he normally brought to a new composition. Reaching the end where he had snipped it free of the longer string, he pictured it continuing, reconnecting into a single whole. The peculiar sense of rightness that accompanied his visits to the Maple Leaf Club guided his image. It took several minutes, backtracking whenever the sense of rightness faded, but at last he had it. The steel core was exposed at one end where the wire had been cleanly cut free of the tuning pin. The other end, a little more than four feet away, was cut raggedly, as though the cutter
had needed several attempts with a dull tool to snip through the winding and central core.

  How would the murderer have carried it to Mickey’s? His pants pocket, maybe?

  Alan mentally coiled the string and pictured it surrounded by cloth. The image felt right, but he couldn’t keep it stable. The size of the coil grew and shrank, the light brightened and dimmed, and the texture of the fabric shifted, rough, velvety, soft. Alan tried to expand his mental image away from the wire, the same way he had earlier expanded his picture of the invitational card away from Joplin’s lockbox. The harder he tried to picture Mickey’s house, the harder it became to hold on to the image of the string. He began playing the card strain in his head, hoping it would improve his focus. Instead, he lost hold of the picture entirely.

  “Hell!” Alan admitted temporary defeat. “It felt right, but…” He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “If the problem is that I’m nuts, there’s nothing I can do about it.” He let his mind go blank for a moment, then slapped his forehead.

  I’m not trying to go to the Maple Leaf Club and I’m not using the card. That’s too many changes all at once—and the card was in Mickey’s house right up until the killer left.

  He pushed the wire aside and set the card in its place on the table, then easily built a mental image of the card in the duffel bag. Alan smiled to himself and began spreading his picture outside the bag. His grin vanished when he imagined the duffel in the hidden space under Mickey’s closet. The pile of paper in the bag began shuffling itself in his head, the light strobed from noon-bright to midnight-dark, and the surface under the bag flashed from dirt floor to chipped Formica, blotter-covered wood, bare concrete, and the worst 1970s shag carpet. Playing the strain in his head sped up the changes until they all blurred together.

  “Fuck!”

  Felt like trying to change the channel on a TV with the vertical hold on the fritz and the channels overlapping. Mickey’s murder is too, hmm, call it loud. So if I step back…Worth a shot.

  Alan put the card back into Tom’s backpack and returned his attention to the wire. Rebuilding his mental image of the longer wire was simple. Instead of trying to force an image of its surroundings, he let his fancy fill in the details.

  Sunlight slanting down, but shadows around the wire, dangling from someone’s hand. Outdoors? Yeah.

  Alan started his mental play-through of the card strain, but stopped after the first bar.

  Not right. Maybe that music doesn’t have anything to do with this scene? What would…? Of course!

  Alan could, and often did, play “Maple Leaf Rag” in his sleep, so playing it in his head should have been easy.

  No. Right music, wrong style.

  He sped up. Getting there. The music turned showy, highlighting the pianist’s skill at the expense of the composer’s design—not just fast, but with sudden tempo changes and improvised variations. Alan could play it that way—any ragtime pianist worth his salt could—but it set his teeth on edge.

  As the piece went on, the sound got clearer and increasingly unpleasant in Alan’s head, with mistuned notes, missing notes, and a peculiar rattling buzz around the middle octaves. The imaginary pianist slammed the final chord with a particularly awful combination of buzzing and unintentional dissonance.

  Alan took an involuntary step back, banging his shoulder on a door frame. He found himself standing just inside the door, looking out at a partially covered yard which held pianos in various stages of disassembly. The instrument furthest from the door had been stripped of much of its cabinet; the top, front board, desk, and shelf had all been left leaning against the side of the cabinet.

  The young, dark-skinned black woman Alan had last seen wearing a ridiculous hat reached inside the dismantled piano, doing something he couldn’t see. After a few seconds, she straightened and glanced around warily. Her gaze passed over Alan, standing in the comparative darkness of the shop. She reached beneath the keyboard and removed the lower panel. She touched the strings, then straightened and moved her fingers over the keys without touching them, apparently counting from the left. She pulled a tuning lever out of her purse, and reached into the cabinet.

  She yanked the lever, repositioned it, yanked again, and dropped it back into her purse. She rummaged and came out with a pair of wire cutters. Another furtive glance around the yard, and she reached into the piano with the tool.

  Alan winced. Even with the tension reduced, piano strings whip violently when cut, and the woman hadn’t reduced the tension very much.

  She obviously understood the danger, but was unwilling or unable to take proper precautions. Once she had the clippers positioned, she buried her face in her free arm. A couple of seconds passed—Alan figured she was steeling her nerve—before she quickly pulled her hand out of the cabinet. Even across the width of the yard, Alan heard the string snap against the keyboard as the cut end whipped forward and down.

  The woman took a deep breath, and extended the wire cutters into the piano again. Another cut, another snap, and the clippers went back into her purse. She bent, grabbed the cut wires, and yanked them down and out of the piano. She coiled the wires quickly but carefully, avoiding the cut ends whipping through the air. Alan caught a glimpse of the ring she wore on her left hand—heavy, silver metal, a design worked in black in place of a stone. The woman tucked the wires into her purse as she turned toward the door.

  An interesting hobby you have, Mrs. Nowlin. Which means that piano—

  Alan interrupted himself.

  Later. Don’t let her see you.

  An organ console stood at an angle to the back door. Alan sat on the bench and bent over, pretending to study the stops. He heard rapid steps, and then a male voice from further inside the store.

  “Find what you needed, Miss Angeline?”

  Alan started.

  “’Fraid not, Mr. Taylor. Nothin’ looks to fit m’ Concord. Guess I’ll jes’ have t’ play ’round the gap a while longer.”

  “Too bad, too bad. I shouldn’t say it, as I could certainly use your business, but might Lathan carve a whippen for you? Your husband’s gift for the mechanic arts should certainly be up to that.”

  Alan missed the next several exchanges.

  Angeline—A.—Nowlin? And a Lathan? Even if he’s a Nowlin instead of a Blackstone, the idea is ridiculous. And that ring could have been the same as the one I saw on the old bag in K.C. Maybe I have slipped a gear or two. He shook his head. But if I don’t trust my own mind, I’m not going to find the music, or the killer.

  A deep breath.

  And Tom’s right: I can’t give up, not on Mickey and not on Mr. Joplin. Not even on JJ’s father, God help me. I’ve got to treat these visits as real unless I see something that proves they’re hallucinations.

  Alan returned his attention to the conversation on the other side of the console.

  “…pleased to inform you, should I find one.”

  “I’d be powerful ’bliged, Mr. Taylor. The club’ll prob’ly hold a letter for me.” Alan heard Angeline’s footsteps crossing the floor and a burst of noise from the street as she opened the door.

  “Oh! I beg your pardon, Sir! I didn’t hear you come into my shop.” The speaker, a well-dressed man in his early forties, looked like a prosperous businessman, despite the dusting of sawdust on his legs and chest.

  “Quite all right, Mr. Taylor. You appeared to be occupied, and I needed the chance to sit for a moment.” Alan decided to take a chance. “I was at the Maple Leaf Club when the disgraceful incident with their piano took place.”

  Taylor nodded. “Disgraceful, indeed, Sir. A real shame to treat a fine instrument that way.” He hesitated, then went on. “I know some would say such ill behavior is natural to the black race, but accidents will happen, Sir. Even in the best homes and churches. If my pianos could speak, they could tell you stories! Fortunately, I don�
��t believe the damage was mortal. I shall, I am quite certain, be able to restore it, if not to its full capacity, good enough for common entertainment.”

  “Really? I would have thought it was beyond help.”

  “You are interested? Come, come.” Taylor led Alan out the back door and across the covered yard, talking non-stop as he went. “Luckily, very little of the…liquid reached the soundboard. I shall have to refinish the cabinet to eliminate the…odor, and of course I shall have to detune it while the action dries. Some strings will no doubt need to be replaced, and of course more than a few of the hammers will need to be refelted…” He stopped in front of the piano Angeline had pillaged.

  Alan caught up. “But the broken glass?”

  “Primarily large pieces. Most fortunate. It will take several cleanings to remove all of the shards, of course, but it can be done. It will be done.”

  “Lucky for Mr. Williams.”

  “Indeed, indeed.” Taylor’s gaze sharpened for a moment. “His wallet may not agree. But even with the cost of renting an instrument while I work on this one, he’ll still be better off than if he had to replace it.” He turned back to the piano.

  Alan leaned into the cabinet, holding his breath—one whiff made it fully clear that this was the piano he had seen at the Maple Leaf Club. To cover his interest, he asked “You’re still disassembling it, then?”

  Which strings…Ah, both of the A-flat 1 strings. There are easier ones to reach, so she must have wanted that note in particular…

  “Indeed, Sir. It arrived just today, and I’ve been working on it between customers. I shall leave the cabinet here to air while I clean and repair the action indoors. Then I shall refinish the wood, and be done.” He frowned. “Though I confess, I don’t recall removing the lower panel. A haunted piano? I daresay Mr. Williams would not appreciate that.”