by Bill Moody
“But it went wrong somewhere along the line.”
“Very. Either Perkins got cold feet, even if they did fool me, which I’m not entirely sure of, or there was some disagreement on the split if the scam worked. Maybe the argument just got out of hand, and Perkins’s death was accidental. I don’t know.”
Coop continues to smoke, gaze out to sea, follow the flight of some gulls that hover overhead. “Why is it so important to know if the tapes are genuine? Bogus or not, there was a murder.” Coop puts his eyes on me now. “Forget the accidental death routine. You don’t shoot somebody accidentally twice.”
“Okay, it was murder. Why is it so important? I don’t know, it’s just something I have to do. If Cross made the tapes or stole them or whatever, there are other people involved. If I get close, maybe some of them will come out.”
“Or maybe Cross will come out and go after you. He’s going to think you’ll figure out how he faked the tapes, if they are fake.” Coop pauses, lets that sink in. “There’s a general rule about murder. If they’ve done it once, they’re capable of doing it again. Keep that in mind, sport”
“You said you had something to show me.”
Coop nods and takes a computer printout from his jacket. “Trask faxed this to me early this morning.”
I know what it is as soon as I glance at it. The FBI logo is right on the top of the page. There are a lot of numbers and evidence citations, some technical stuff about magnetic particles, but the good part is near the bottom. The lab test analysis conclusively shows the tape was manufactured in the ’50s. Comparison tests were made on currently available similar recording tape, and all tests were conclusive.
The tape I listened to couldn’t possibly have been recorded this decade, much less this year, unless Cross found some leftover stock.
“This is awfully fast service, isn’t it? Trask said something about having to get in line like everybody else with the FBI lab.”
“Usually takes weeks,” Coop says, “unless it’s given some kind of special priority. I wonder how that came about?” There’s a trace of a smile on his face.
I get up and walk over to the railing, look down at the water below. One hot summer’s day, when I was in high school, on a dare, I jumped off this pier just to see what it would feel like. Coop had followed me in, thinking I’d fallen, but it was me who saved him. I turn around and face Coop. “This doesn’t prove anything.”
“Doesn’t it prove what you wanted it to?” Coop says. “These tapes—at least that one—were made in the ’50s. I don’t care how carefully this Cross guy planned it, he didn’t start then, so maybe the tapes really are genuine.” He asks me the same question that’s been running through my mind. “Is it possible for someone to imitate a musician that convincingly?”
Pappy Dean thought so, as did Jack Montrose. In my own first hearing of the tapes I had been convinced immediately. Now I don’t know if I am or not. My theory about the murder fits a lot better if they’re fake.
Coop stands up and joins me at the railing. “There’s not much I can do here but keep your good name alive, such as it is. The murder was done in Vegas. Unless there’s a crime committed here that’s connected, my hands are tied,” Coop says. “Dare I ask why you don’t just drop it? You’re in the clear, you can just walk away from this.”
“No, I can’t, Coop. You know that.”
Coop shrugs. “You never can.”
We walk back to our cars, each with our own thoughts. We get to the Camaro first. Coop walks all around it. “Well, you finally got a car like you wanted in high school. Imagine cruising Santa Monica in this.”
I get in, roll down the window. Coop leans on the roof. “Thanks for the info.”
“You’re going to be busy, sport.”
“How’s that?”
“You’ve got to find some out-of-work trumpet player who likes to record like someone he isn’t.”
CHAPTER TEN
I start with Rick Markham at Pacific Records. I did him a favor once, and now it’s his turn. Maybe in the process I’ll again save him money. He actually sounds glad to hear me when I call, although I have to run an obstacle course of secretaries, assistants, and several “he’s on another line” routines.
“I’ll hold,” I say, with the last one, then spend the next four minutes listening to Michael Bolton moan and whine through his latest hit. There’s another dream concert for Coop. Michael Bolton and Kenny G.
“Evan, is that really you?” Markham asks, when he finally comes on the line. I can visualize him in his spacious office, spinning in his huge chair, juggling calls and visitors.
I’d been put off by Markham when I’d found his half-brother Elvin Case during the Lonnie Cole episode. But I’d alerted him to some possible discrepancies in Pacific’s own stock. He’d been grateful, even offered me a job. I don’t think he was surprised when I declined.
“I need a favor, Rick, just some information really.”
“Glad to help if I can,” Markham says, with only a trace of apprehension in his voice. When I explain what I’m after, he’s puzzled but interested in my request.
“That’s not really my area of expertise. Tell you what, let me get my guy on that and we’ll set up a meeting. How’s that?”
“Fine, the sooner the better.”
“You got it.” At least he doesn’t say, “Let’s do lunch.”
I only have to wait an hour for his return call. “How about tomorrow morning? Ten o’clock, my office.”
“Thanks, Rick, see you then.”
I kill the afternoon on a tour of music stores to see if anyone can identify the bottle of valve oil that was in the trumpet case, but most of the clerks are too young, have no idea of the brand or if it’s still even made. They try to sell me other brands, larger bottles of new improved valve oil that, so they say, are far more effective.
Most of them gaze at my nearly empty bottle with the rubbed-out name, hold it up to the light, and shake their heads as if they are looking at a relic from another era. Some even say exactly that, which is precisely what I want to hear.
“I don’t think they make it in bottles that small now,” one guy at a store on Lincoln Boulevard tells me. “I know they don’t make it in glass bottles.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never seen glass.” He turns and reaches for a plastic bottle on the shelf behind him. “Here, try this stuff, it’s our most popular oil.” He sets a larger plastic bottle on the counter. The brand name is Al Cass. He touches the rubber dropper on top of my bottle, unscrews the cap, holds it up to his nose, then throws his head back quickly.
“Wow, smell that.”
I already can, very strong kerosene.
“Used to be more kerosene content. You can still smell the new stuff, but, not as much.” He opens the new bottle for me to sample. He’s right; the kerosene odor is still there, but much lighter.
“Any idea what the name might have been?”
He looks at the rubbed out label. “Ick Stu? Got me, man.” He suddenly smiles. “Maybe Vanua White could figure it out.”
“What?”
“You know, the TV show, Wheel of Fortune, the word puzzles.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll call her.”
“Sorry I can’t help,” he says, sliding the new bottle across the counter. “You should try this. Same stuff Wynton Marsalis uses.”
“No, thanks anyway.”
It goes like that all afternoon. I decide to try a couple of shops in Hollywood that cater to professional musicians, and maybe talk to some trumpet players who might have once used whatever this is. But that’s all for tomorrow.
Around six I call my mentor.
Most people have had somebody in their life who represents a turning point, a time when things become clear, when someone or some event shows you the way to your own destiny. Sometimes it’s a parent, a good friend, or perhaps a stranger who says just the right combination of things to open your eyes to what you’
ve always been aware of but have never seen clearly. For me that person was Calvin Hughes-Cal, to anyone he allowed to enter his world.
I’d heard about Cal long before I met him. He was one of those legendary underground figures that slide around like shadows. I’d heard about him as I made my way through the labyrinth of the jazz world. Like Art Pepper, Cal had been one of the few white musicians accepted on the bandstands of Central Avenue, which in the ’50s was the Los Angeles equivalent of 52nd Street.
“You should have heard Cal Hughes with Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray,” musicians would tell me.
By the time I was out of music school, a degree in hand, armed with a lot of dreams and some optimism, Cal had already quit playing years before. No reason that anybody knew; he just quit. No one knew why, and the legend grew, the jazz counterpart to the legend surrounding writer J. D. Salinger. I learned through the grapevine, however, that Cal occasionally took a student. Not for the money—somehow, according to the scant information available, he managed to survive on a small inheritance, living in a tiny house in the Hollywood hills. He rarely went out. You had to pass a certain test to be accepted by Cal, but nobody seemed to know what the requirements were.
One of them was apparently persistence. I tried for months to make contact, sure that studying piano with Cal Hughes would be my postgraduate work, but I was rebuffed at every turn. Finally, coercing the address out of someone who had once played with him, I simply drove up to his house one summer evening and knocked on his door. By that time, I figured I had nothing to lose.
“Come on in. I’ve been expecting you,” was all he said. And so began our intense but sporadic relationship.
That first evening, I felt like I was in the presence of some holy man. He sat me down in his living room, and we talked while the sun set, the splinters of light that seeped through the mesh curtains giving way first to shadows, finally to darkness.
Cal hardly seemed to notice, and at first I thought he was partially blind. He chain-smoked while he listened to why I wanted to play jazz. For distraction he nuzzled the ear of his only companion, a tan Labrador named Milton, who remained at his master’s feet and regarded me with little interest.
As if suddenly noticing the darkness engulfing us, Cal turned on the one lamp next to his chair. There was a small table, laden with stacks of books ranging from poetry to essays to the novels of James Joyce.
“Let’s go outside,” he said. From the street, the house appeared to be wedged against the side of the hill, crammed between two mansion-size homes. But on the tiny balcony, there were two chairs and something of a view of Hollywood below.
Between coughing fits, we spent another couple of hours talking about jazz piano before he abruptly told me I had to leave. I thanked him for his time. He scribbled his phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to me.
“Are you coming back?”
“Of course, if you’ll take me as a student. I’d be very grateful.”
“Maybe,” Cal said. “We’ll see.”
Weeks of visits followed. Long talks, listening to records, me going to the store to bring back bottles of Scotch and cigarettes. Finally Cal asked me to play on the shabby, scarred spinet piano that lay soundless in one corner of the room, stacked high with music, some of it penciled in Cal’s own hand. When I did finally play, Cal simply said, “Come back next week. We’ll start then.”
In all the time I knew Cal, I never once heard him play that or any other piano. I learned later he had heard me many times, right after I began asking around about him.
Once when I came across one of his old records, I brought it to him, thinking he would like it. “Get that out of here,” he’d said, as if I’d brought him something repugnant. I was determined to gain his favor and learn why someone so obviously talented had simply quit. I never found out, no matter how subtly or obviously I pursued the subject.
“I prefer not to,” was his only reply. “That’s from a Herman Melville story, ‘Bartleby the Scrivener,’” he’d said with an enigmatic smile. I dug out the story, read it many times, but Cal’s answer remained as ambiguous as Bartleby’s.
Cal was ruthless in his teaching, spare in his praise, but always inspirational. He saw something in me that I didn’t see myself, and with his own eccentric method sought to expose, develop, and nurture what talent I possessed. “You have a gift, don’t squander it.” His words rang in my head for weeks.
Finally, at the end of one long, grueling session, he said, “Get out of here. I can’t teach you anything else.”
As my career progressed, we lost touch, mostly due to my neglect. The visits became fewer and were reduced to the occasional phone call, but I know he kept track of my minor successes. Over the years, our relationship went from student-teacher to friend-mentor. He berated me, for example, for playing and conducting for Lonnie Cole. “Why waste your talent on some goddamned singer unless it’s Ella or Sarah?” He critiqued my one album as a leader harshly but fairly and with a touch of praise: “Not bad, Evan, not bad.”
Only once did he call me, and that was shortly after the accident that left my solo hand useless and my career in doubt. “I’m sending you something,” he said. “Don’t give up, Evan.” Those three words became my motto.
A few days later, a package arrived. It was a Charles Mingus album—Cal had total disdain for CDs. There was a brief note attached that said, “If you don’t know this piano player, you should. Three fingers on his right hand don’t work.” The pianist was Horace Parlan.
I nearly wore it out, playing it again and again, eventually replacing it when it was reissued on CD.
Now, as I pull up in front of Cal’s house, I know he is the one person who will understand why I’m chasing Clifford Brown’s phantom, why I can’t let go of so many things. Information and reassurance is what I want, and hopefully what I will get from Cal.
He opens the door, Milton at his side, and ushers me in. As usual the room is lit only by the reading lamp. A book is open face down on the table. He sees me glance at the title. It’s a collection of essays by critic and essayist Stanley Crouch.
“Just reading about Miles’s sellout,” Cal says. “Crouch is right. Miles fucked up. Couldn’t play anymore, so he became a rock star.” He lights a cigarette from a still-burning butt, settles in his chair, and gazes across at me.
I don’t have to ask how he’s doing. The cough still racks his body, and he seems to have shrunk. His hair, all white now, is long, straggling over his collar in thin strands, but his eyes are still clear and sharp, his voice hoarse. He watches me take in his appearance. He smiles, chuckles.
“What were you thinking of saying? ‘Looking good, Cal’?”
“No, I wasn’t. Have you seen a doctor?”
He shrugs, waves a hand in the air. “I’m dying. I don’t need a doctor to tell me that. Put it out of your mind. I have.”
We sit for a few moments, letting the stillness surround us while I wonder for the thousandth time why he quit playing.
“Drink?” he says, eyeing the paper sack I’m holding.
“Sure, why not?” I hand him the bag, and he pulls out the bottle.
“Oh my, Glenlivet. The detective business must be good.” He winks and smiles, letting me know he knows all about what I’ve been doing. He goes to the kitchen. I hear the clatter of ice trays, cubes clinking in glasses. He returns, pours us both an ample drink.
“To you, Sherlock,” he says, raising his glass. “Well, let’s review for a moment. You put Lonnie Cole and his partner in jail, uncovered a record scam, and in Las Vegas you almost solved Wardell Gray’s murder. You were right, that’s what it was, a murder. Poor Wardell, just wanted to play his horn. And now you’re chasing after Clifford Brown. You have good taste, I’ll give you that.” He looks again at his glass. “In Scotch and musicians.”
When I called, I briefly ran down what I knew so far, told him about the tapes, and asked if he’d listen to the cassette. I was counting on Cal to
dredge up some memories of the West Coast jazz scene, see if he could remember anyone who could play so much like Clifford Brown or if he knew about any recordings Brownie had done that nobody would have known about.
“Where’s this trumpet?”
“In a pawn shop in Las Vegas.”
Cal nods, sips his drink. “Smart—some irony to that as well. Let’s hear the tape.”
Cal’s distrust of CDs is still unwavering. There’s a turntable, a couple of hundred records—many of which would be interesting to collectors, I think now—and a cassette deck. I put the tape in and press the play button. We sit in the semidarkness for one whole side of the tape. Cal’s only movement is to pour another drink. Milton occasionally cocks an ear at one of the trumpet’s high notes. These are again some tunes I don’t know, but the sound is there, the heartbreaking vibrato on the ballads, the total control on the fast tempos. Every time I hear the tape, I think something different. When it ends, there’s a click as it shuts off.
For a few moments Cal says nothing. His face is totally in shadow. I can’t read his expression. Finally, he puts his head back on the chair. “Jesus, that’s impressive,” he says. “The trumpet, I mean. The piano player’s really scuffling though. Definitely not Richie Powell, nor is the drummer Max Roach.”
“But is it Clifford Brown?” If anyone knows, it’s Cal. Not from educated guesses, but from gut feeling. He won’t be able to explain how or why he knows, but his answer will be enough.
He crumples a cigarette pack, opens another, and lights up. “I don’t think so.”
“The FBI have verified that the tape was vintage ’50s stuff, so it wasn’t made recently.”
“The FBI—well then, we’ve nothing to worry about. I’m sure they did, but that doesn’t matter. It’s someone so close to Clifford but just missing, not by much, but enough. I’d stake what’s left of my life on it.”
Well, there it is. Proof—but from an eccentric, reclusive former jazz piano player who lives in the Hollywood hills with a dog named after a poet. He sees no one and wouldn’t dream of entering a courtroom. A perfect witness. I might as well have Howard Hughes for my source. I try to imagine Cal accompanying me to Rick Markham’s office.