by Phil Swann
I’d say the two men were locked in conversation, but it appeared as if it was Chuckles doing all the conversing, and he wasn’t telling jokes. Cabaneri remained expressionless as the old man went on in a most animated way. I considered situating myself at a nearby table to see if I could overhear what he was so upset about, but concluded eavesdropping might be pressing my luck a bit too much, especially since it was entirely possible that I was the proverbial bee in the old bugger’s bonnet. For whatever reason, it was obvious from the start that Chuckles was more than a little nonplussed about me rewriting Gabriella’s arrangements. So, I curtailed my curiosity and returned to the mission of breaking the ice with the tango band.
“Greetings, gentlemen,” I said, walking up to the table, flashing my choppers. “We weren’t properly introduced. My name’s Trip Callaway.”
None of the old men looked up at me. In fact, all five suddenly stiffened and struggled to find a place to fix their gaze. After a moment, one of the violin players gave me his eyes.
“Hola,” he grunted.
That’s when it hit me. They weren’t rude, they just didn’t speak English.
“Hola,” I replied, nodding my new understanding, and then adding, “Yo soy…la persona…que toca…la trompeta.”
“Yes, we know,” the bass player said in perfect English.
Then, one of the bandoneon twins, the skinnier one not wearing glasses, added, “You’re our brilliant new arranger.” His speech was slurred, but still clear enough for me to realize he was equally as well versed in the language.
He took a drag off his filthy cigarette, and the others laughed.
“Yes, well, I just wanted to introduce myself. That was some rehearsal this morning, wasn’t it?”
No one replied.
“So, how are you gentlemen enjoying America? I understand you only recently arrived.”
The same twin piped up again, “It’s too crowded, the air is polluted, and this is the worst food I’ve ever put in my mouth.”
Once again his bandmates laughed.
I’d worked in enough lounges to know when someone was intoxicated, and this guy was properly pickled. It wasn’t just the stench of alcohol that gave him away, either. The bloodshot eyes, the puffy face, the way he bobbed his head up and down when he spoke, were all telltale signs. I tried to take that under consideration when I replied, “I’m sorry. I’ll see what I can do about that,” making sure my tone reflected my offense.
Understand, it wasn’t that I disagreed with the old boozer’s assessment. For in truth, Los Angeles was crowded, the air was bad, and although I had yet to have firsthand knowledge of the commissary’s cuisine, I suspected it might not be exactly five star. My problem with his comment was that Pop raised me to be a gracious host and an even more gracious guest. Drunk or not, this guy and his buddies were anything but. I hadn’t given these clowns a single reason to dislike me, yet they all seemed to go out of their way to be boorish and ill-mannered. I considered perhaps they were still upset about the way I spoke to Gabriella at rehearsal, but then remembered their discourteousness began before I ever laid eyes on her. Thus, I had to conclude they were just jerks, and at least one of them a drunken jerk.
They were starting to get under my skin, so I decided the best thing I could do was to remove myself from the situation before I said something I might regret. Yes, surprisingly, I can, at times, act like an adult and do the responsible thing.
“Well, good day, gentlemen. I look forward to making music with you.” I turned and walked away. I heard no response from the quintet.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth stating again. I’m forever amazed at how my remarkable brain works. How, without me knowing it, it’s able to process important bits of information, catalog it, and then deliver it back to me later. It’s a gift, for sure, and I don’t take it for granted. I didn’t clock it at the time, but there was something about what the inebriated man had said—or more specifically how he had said it—that would become essential to me remembering later. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
As I walked back to the register, I glanced over at Cabaneri and Chuckles. Now, Cabaneri was doing all the talking. I remained intrigued but had to let it go. I paid for my lunch and made my way back to the refrigerator they called a soundstage.
It was a different set than the one I had walked onto that morning. Meaning, it was calmer and considerably quieter, if not necessarily any warmer. Granted, it was probably because most people were still at lunch, but I had a suspicion there was another reason for the sudden tranquility. No one was on the edge of their seats anticipating the arrival of the diva from Hades. That alone had to have brought everyone’s blood pressure down to a healthier level. It was so relaxed, in fact, that a couple of the fellas on the crew offered a friendly hello as I walked past them. I concluded that my confrontation with Gabriella earlier that morning had elevated me to near legendary status in their eyes, but as has always been my way, I wore the moniker of their personal hero with humility. So, after shaking the paw of a few lads and lasses who went out of their way for the pleasure, one of whom being the beleaguered director himself, I planted myself at the piano and went to work on the charts.
I toiled fast and furiously, barely taking my eyes off the staff paper. I pulled on every scrap of musical knowledge I had accumulated over my years to accomplish what, for any other mere mortal, would have been an impossible task, but by the time two o’clock rolled around, I had completed all the songs, and in my nonobjective opinion, had more than risen to the occasion. The arrangements weren’t genius, mind you—meaning Nelson Riddle had nothing to worry about—but they were a darn sight better than they were, and I was confident in proclaiming that no one, not even Mr. Riddle himself, could have done a better job given the time allotted to me.
Little by little, folks started drifting back onto the set, and not surprisingly, everyone’s stress level started heading north again. When I saw Chuckles and the guys from the tango band enter, I got up from the piano, gathered my work, and reclaimed my chair on the bandstand. Daniel, Miriam, and Ira walked in together, and as they ascended the bandstand, I handed each of them their revised charts. This earned me a most pleasant smile from Miriam.
Once everyone was back in their places, the lady in red sequins made her grand re-entrance. As she strutted past the cameras and approached the bandstand—and yes, all the box stands were now painted fire engine red—a hush fell over the studio.
As she stepped up to the mic, the tension in the air became as thick as peanut butter. One could sense that everybody was figurately nibbling on his or her fingernails. Nobody knew what to expect. Would there be a repeat of the debacle from the morning? Would this time Gabriella completely lose her mind, and start breaking things? Or had Trip Callaway truly saved the day?
Well, of course he had.
The rehearsal went off without a hitch. Not only did Gabriella refrain from uttering a single unkind word, I might have even seen her smile once or twice. Everything ran so smoothly, in fact, that inside of an hour, we had played through all the songs twice. After our final time through a tango version of “Satin Doll,” Gabriella nodded to Chuckles and departed the stage, saying nothing to me, nor anyone else. She simply exited the studio like Aphrodite returning to Olympus. Zeus…or rather, Cabaneri, was nowhere in sight.
I glanced over at Miriam, who shot me a look that I took as gratitude mixed with a fair amount of awe. A nice reward, indeed. Impressing a pretty girl is never a bad thing. I breathed a sigh of relief and proceeded to put my charts back in order. Our performance wasn’t perfect, and there was certainly some polishing that needed to be done, so I was prepared for Chuckles to want to run us through the songs again without Gabriella present. That would have been standard operating procedure. That’s why I was more than a little astonished when I saw the tango band put away their instruments, and Chuckles get up from the piano and walk away.
I glanced at Daniel, who looke
d back at me and shrugged. The stage manager made it official when he announced the rehearsal was over, and that we were all released for the day. I looked back at Daniel again, who this time beamed and began to put away his horn like a man late for court. Before I knew it, he was bolting out the door, with Ira only a few steps behind him.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t in such a hurry to get away and was still wiping down my horn when Miriam strolled up.
“Congratulations, Mr. Callaway,” she said, picking up my music folder as if it were some type of award. “This is an astounding bit of musicianship, sir.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Kaplan. It was nothing.”
She laughed. “Nice fishing. It’s Miss Kaplan.”
I feigned surprise. “Oh, really? Well then, Miss Kaplan, you should have dinner with me tonight.”
She grinned. “Goodness, I see charts aren’t the only thing you’re fast at.”
“Hey, I figured it’s the least you could do.”
She cocked her head. “The least I could do?”
“For saving your job,” I answered.
Her grin widened. “Does that mean I have to buy dinner, as well?”
“No, I’m far too antediluvian for that. I’m on board with the whole modern woman thing, but I have my limits. Dinner will be on me.”
She placed her tongue in her cheek and thought for a moment before answering. “Okay, Trip Callaway. Except for being someone who uses the word antediluvian, you seem harmless enough. Is eight o’clock okay?”
“Where do you live? I’ll pick you up.”
She removed a pen from her purse, wrote on my music, and handed it to me. “Here’s my address. And my phone number in case you get lost.”
“I never get lost,” I replied. “I’ll see you at eight.”
To claim I exited the Gabriella soundstage to a chorus of deafening cheers and exuberant exaltations would be an overstatement, but not much of one. The crew went out of their way to offer their personal congratulations on a job well done, and I accepted their praise with typical Trip Callaway unpretentiousness, replying with a simple “thank you” and the obligatory “it was nothing.” It was a lovely gesture on their part, and as such, I was leaving the studio in a darn sight better mood than when I arrived. The feeling of positivity enveloped me so much that once I made it out to the parking lot, I decided to make the most of my newly found joie de vivre and add a little pizazz to it, all courtesy of the Southern California sun and Henry Ford.
I was dropping the ragtop on my Falcon when I saw a black Lincoln pull up in front of the studio complex. A driver, who appeared to be more ape than human, leaped from the car and opened the rear suicide door. An unfortunate term for a car door, no doubt, but the term nevertheless used by car-folk to describe the unusual way the rear door on a Lincoln opened, the reverse of how a normal car door opened. Because I was something of a gearhead, I knew that the origin of the macabre colloquialism came from it being the type of car door—officially called a coach door—that was preferred by mobsters in the thirties. Supposedly, a door of such design made it easier to toss some poor chump out when that was the thing that needed to be done. This illicit endorsement was why I wasn’t at all surprised when I saw it was Anthony Cabaneri who stepped out of the car.
I was expecting Cabaneri to enter the building, but instead, he just crossed his arms and leaned against the fender. I naturally assumed he was waiting for Gabriella to come out, but moments later it was my jovial conductor who emerged from the building. He approached the car and said something to Cabaneri, who replied with a simple nod. The driver reopened the rear door, and both men got in. The driver closed the door behind them, got back in the car himself, and within seconds was tearing out of the studio’s parking lot. I didn’t think twice. I jumped in my bird, fired her up, and set off in, as they say, hot pursuit.
Forty-five minutes and a half a dozen freeways later, I still had the black Lincoln in my sights. In all candor, the only reason I could accomplish this remarkable feat was due more to luck than my expert tailing acumen. Bad traffic is a fact of life in L.A., but the nonstop stop-and-go ridiculousness worked in my favor when it came to preventing the Lincoln from getting away from me. That was the good news. The bad news was I had been paying so much attention at keeping the car in my crosshairs, I hadn’t been paying attention to where I was going. The result being I was completely lost. All I knew for sure was that I was somewhere south of the city, and the smell of the ocean was slapping me in the face. It wasn’t until I followed the Lincoln off the freeway and saw the humongous cargo ships in front of me that I deduced I was approaching the docks. The sign that read PORT OF LOS ANGELES kind of gave it away too.
My Phoenician yellow Falcon was not the most inconspicuous vehicle in the world, and though I was certain that neither Cabaneri, his driver, nor Chuckles knew what kind of car I drove, I didn’t want them to see it at the television studio later and become suspicious. That’s why my plan was to keep at least two cars between me and the Lincoln as we took to the surface streets. It was a good plan, albeit a futile one. For no sooner had I turned off the exit ramp than I found myself directly behind the Lincoln. I tried to lay back as best I could, but traffic forced me to stay closer than I would have preferred. Before I could rectify the problem, I was trapped on an enormous suspension bridge and driving over a large body of water I could only assume was an inlet waterway. As I came off the bridge, I saw another sign. This one read WELCOME TO TERMINAL ISLAND. An ominous greeting if I’d ever heard one.
One summer when I was about seventeen, Pop and I took a road trip to Baltimore to visit his brother Clem. Uncle Clem was a big man with a big voice and an even bigger personality—completely opposite from Pop. For years Uncle Clem had been badgering Pop to come for a visit, so when we finally did, he was overjoyed. Uncle Clem relished showing us around his adopted home. We saw Fort McHenry, Edgar Allen Poe’s house, and ate crab cakes. We must have eaten a hundred pounds of the critters. But what thrilled Uncle Clem the most was showing off where he was employed.
Uncle Clem was a dock worker at the Port of Baltimore—or as he referred to himself, a “containerization specialist.” Basically that meant he was the guy who operated the gigantic gantry cranes that removed cargo containers from ships, and placed them on eighteen-wheelers that would, in turn, deliver said containers to warehouses across the country. This was a new way of doing things back then, so Uncle Clem considered himself akin to those guys who worked at mission control for NASA. Not a totally unreasonable analogy, I suppose, given there weren’t that many people who could do what he did. As a result, Uncle Clem made good money at his job—something he reminded Pop of at every turn.
I followed the Lincoln off the bridge and was immediately surrounded by goliaths, not unlike those Uncle Clem operated. The only difference was that these monsters were twice as big, and there were more of them—many, many, more of them. The road I was traveling on looked like any other two-lane service road except for the sign that informed me it was officially called Route 47. There were also exit ramps every few hundred feet with signs designating a specific pier and birth; Pier A, Birth 400; Pier H, Birth 411; and so on. The Lincoln exited at Pier T, Birth 419. I, of course, followed.
With no cars behind me, I could finally put some distance between me and the Lincoln. But as we drove closer to the pier, and two-axle vehicles became more and more scarce, I became concerned that no matter how far back I stayed, my presence was becoming uncomfortably conspicuous.
I saw a huge ship docked up ahead and wondered if Cabaneri’s chauffeur was going to drive right onto the thing. Finally, just before reaching the water’s edge, the Lincoln came to a stop beside what looked to be a warehouse. I whipped the Falcon onto the side of the road and turned off the engine. I opened my glove box, retrieved a pair of binoculars Clegg had given to me on my last assignment, and watched.
The driver opened the Lincoln’s rear door, and Cabaneri and Chuckles got out. They stood in pla
ce for a moment until three men appeared from around the building. One of the men wore black trousers, a white shirt, and a black necktie. The other two men were burly sorts in blue dungarees and black knit caps. The three men walked up, but no handshakes were exchanged. After a few words were swapped, the man in the necktie turned and headed toward the building. Cabaneri, Chuckles, and the two men in knit caps followed. One of the burly men jumped ahead of the others and opened a door located on the side of the building. The man in the necktie entered first, and everyone else followed. Once they had all disappeared inside the building, the chauffeur leaned up against the car and lit a cigarette.
I desperately wanted to know what was going on inside that building, but to do that, I would need to get by Cabaneri’s chauffeur. I convinced myself there had to be another entrance, so having no clue if I was correct or not, I stashed the binoculars, hopped out of the Falcon, and took off in faith.
I darted behind some cargo containers, and for the next several minutes scurried in and out of them like a mouse in search of cheese. Ultimately, I reached the building, but on the opposite side from where Cabaneri, Chuckles, and the other men had entered. As I had hoped, there was a wooden staircase attached to the side of the structure leading up to another door. I had no idea if the door was unlocked or not, but knew there was only one way to find out. I looked around to make sure no one was watching and then bolted up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Once I reached the door, I gave it a hearty yank. It opened. I took one more look around, let out a resolved breath, and then ducked inside.
I entered onto a wooden landing. Below me were crates and containers of every size and shape. It was hot, and the air was musty and damp. All the light was focused below me, so I was certain I was hidden in darkness. I saw a wench, or hoist, or something like that, dangling just above the warehouse floor below me, and I could just make out the rafters that held it in place.