by Bill Moody
“That’s really nice,” she says, clutching her shopping bag. I smile back and nod a thanks and almost lose my place.
I’m a long way from jazz clubs and concert stages.
I had a VW when I was in college, but it’s been years since I’ve driven one. This one is in excellent condition—I’m sure Janey Buffington never drove it more than to the store or short trips around town. She and Ace had installed an add-on air conditioner, but it does little more than turn down the blow-dryer heat to low. I keep one of the wing windows open to create some air flow.
Jacket off and tie loosened, I leave the Fashion Show parking lot and head west on Spring Mountain, across the railroad tracks—after a slow freight holds things up for ten minutes—and on to Decatur, where I turn right. With the rest of the afternoon still ahead of me, I can’t resist taking a look at the Moulin Rouge, the site of Wardell Gray’s last gig.
Bypassing downtown and the freeway, I turn east on Bonanza. I pull up to a warehouse parking lot across the street from the casino and get my first look at the Moulin Rouge. In its neglected state the large red-and-white structure looks like a small transplanted Strip hotel that’s been abandoned. From what Ace has told me, the inside is worse.
Opening in 1955, the Moulin Rouge quickly became a celebrity hangout, packed nightly. I try to imagine opening night. A jammed parking lot, limos pulling up to deposit the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Benny Carter’s band onstage, a line of show girls, celebrities, and skinny Wardell, the thin man of the tenor, standing up to solo. A gig for Wardell that was his last; a dream of an interracial hotel-casino that was over in six months. Ace tells me there’s a move under way to raise money, renovate, and try again.
All I can think of is, what happened to Wardell Gray?
Time for some research. I leave the warehouse lot and continue east on Bonanza, all the way to Maryland Parkway, then south to the UNLV campus. The summer-school rush is on, but thanks to Ace’s temporary faculty permit hanging from the rearview mirror, I manage to find a parking spot near the library.
I’ve visited Ace at the campus several times in the past, so I generally know my way around. It’s a short but hot walk to the library. The students, male and female, are dressed mostly in shorts and T-shirts, and many of them carry water bottles or Big Gulp drinks from the 7-Eleven. Something I’ll have to look into.
At the library building I make my way to the elevator, where, following Ace’s instructions, I got to the fourth floor, Special Collections. A thin blond man I take for a graduate student looks up from his computer when I walk in. There are no other takers.
“Hi,” he says, as if glad for the interruption. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Evan Horne,” I say. “Professor Buffington in English may have called you.”
“Oh yeah, right,” he says, consulting a pad in front of him. “You’re looking for stuff on the Moulin Rouge.” He shakes hands and gives me a file folder. “Ted Rollings,” he says. “I pulled what we have. You can look at it over there,” he says, indicating a row of tables. “Anything you want copied, I’ll do it for you.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking the file. While Rollings goes back to his computer, I sit down and flip through the clippings, newspaper stories and photos documenting the brief history of the Moulin Rouge.
Halfway into the pile, after a number of articles about the building of the hotel-casino and its opening, I find the first mention of the saxophonist’s death in a series of newspaper articles.
NOTED JAZZ SAXOPHONIST
WARDELL GRAY FOUND SLAIN
The body of one of the nation’s leading Negro jazz musicians, Wardell Carl Gray, was found in a weed patch at the side of the road in Vegas Heights yesterday. Sheriff’s deputies said the well-dressed man apparently had been slain.
The story goes on to say that robbery was ruled out, since Gray’s watch, wallet, and ring were still on his person. According to the testimony of another musician, Gray owed someone in Los Angeles nine hundred dollars. Investigators theorized that that person might have followed Gray to Las Vegas to collect.
Would someone murder Gray for nine hundred dollars? Today it happens all the time for much lesser amounts, and if Gray was involved with drug dealers, it’s certainly a possibility.
Another story cites dancer Theodore Haley, professional name Teddy Hale, member of the Moulin Rouge show, as a suspect. Hale’s story was that he met Gray after the second show, and the two of them went to Hale’s apartment for a “joy pop” of heroin. Both passed out. When Hale regained consciousness, he tried to revive Gray, but the saxophonist fell off the bed and hit his head on the floor. Hale panicked, fearful he would be prosecuted for narcotics possession, and drove Gray to the desert, where he left the saxophonist’s body. Hale sticks to his story even with a lie detector test, which he apparently passes. Another headline:
DANCER CLEARS SELF IN DEATH OF SAX PLAYER
The police evidently bought Hale’s version of what happened; he describes in detail the events leading up to the discovery of Gray’s body. The police reported that they discovered several needles and spoons in Hale’s home but did not find any actual heroin.
In still another article, a different theory is offered by the deputy coroner. The headline stops me cold.
HINT JAZZ MUSICIAN STILL ALIVE
WHEN BODY DUMPED BY DOPED DANCER
The possibility that jazz musician Wardell Gray was still alive when his body was dumped in a weed patch near a remote ranch Thursday is being considered by police here.
The coroner explains that a heavy shot of heroin sometimes produces a coma like state resembling death in a human body, with hardly detectable breathing and heartbeat.
Hale, however, claims he checked for a heartbeat and even put a mirror against Gray’s nose and mouth to see if he was breathing. Murder or manslaughter charges would not be filed against Hale unless there was some new development in the case. Apparently there was none. Hale was released with the possibility that he could only face charges of illegal use of narcotics and illegally disposing of a body.
There are subsequent articles with background on Gray and quotes from friends and other musicians, but the story ends on that note.
Like most musicians, I’ve heard the stories of Gray’s death that get passed around the music world, embellished in the retelling until they reach mythic proportions, but I’d never seen anything in print, nor had I ever heard this theory that Gray might have been alive when Hale dumped the body. The coroner’s report citing head wounds consistent with blows from a blunt instrument also pops off the page. Blunt instrument? Head wounds? Caused by the floor when Gray fell?
There are several more follow-up articles, which I gather up and ask Ted Rollings to photocopy for me. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I find the stairs exit, step into the hall, and light a cigarette, musing over the clippings. “Did Gray and Hale have an argument? Had Hale accidentally killed Gray? You don’t get head wounds from a blunt instrument by falling out of bed, do you? This sounds as improbable as trumpeter Chet Baker’s alleged suicide, caused, some theorized, by Baker jumping off the second-floor balcony of an Amsterdam hotel.
Did someone else kill Gray and dump his body in the desert? Who, if not Teddy Hale? Junkies can get into trouble with all kinds of people. Or maybe it was because of something at the Moulin Rouge. That was a different time and place.
I go back inside and find Ted finishing up the photocopying. He puts the copies in a manila envelope. “Come back any time,” he says.
“Thanks for your help,” I say.
I take the agonizingly slow elevator back to the first floor and walk across campus to the student union, where I’m to meet Ace before his late-afternoon class. The heat is relentless, and I envy the students in shorts. The coolness of the student union is welcome, and after fighting the lines of students and faculty, I get a giant Coke, filling the paper cup with ice.
A
few minutes later Ace joins me. No tennis gear today. He’s in sandals, chinos, and a golf shirt, with a pile of books under his arm. He takes in my tie and smiles. “Better watch it, you’ll be taken for faculty,” he says, sitting down, “or worse yet, an administrator.”
“Not if you all dress like that. How’s the molding of young minds coming?”
Ace shakes his head in disgust. “The students are fine, it’s the new idiot department chair that’s the problem. The man is determined to get even for all the slights he’s felt over the years, at the expense of some damned good programs and people.” Ace shakes his head in disgust. “And we teach the humanities. What a joke.” He takes a long drink and glances at his watch. “So how did it go with you?”
“My wrist is aching, Brent Tyler’s certainly interesting, but I got through the set okay.”
Ace nods. “Did you get to the library?”
I tap the envelope of clippings on the table. “Yeah, Rollings was very helpful.”
“And?”
It’s hard to talk over the din of students. “I think you may be onto something. According to several newspaper accounts, it sounds like Wardell might have done more than fall out of bed.”
“I’ve seen some of that stuff,” Ace says, his eyes lighting up, “but I’m more interested in what, if anything, you find out from some of the old musicians in town. I’ve got a couple of jazz history books you can look through. There’s not much. There are a couple of accounts of Wardell’s time at the Moulin Rouge.”
I watch Ace for a moment until he catches my expression. “I know, I know, it was nearly forty years ago, but you’ve got to admit it’s damned intriguing.”
The safest kind of thing to investigate—the past. That other voice I hear keeps trying to get in. After the Lonnie Cole case, the past suits me fine.
“So how about we grab something to eat tonight, and you have a relaxing weekend. You can check out the Four Queens on Monday. Alan Grant should be able to give you some leads.”
“Sounds good to me,” I say. “I’m going home, get out of this suit and soak in your pool.”
Ace stands up to go. “Just imagine how it was before air conditioning. See you later.” I watch him shoulder his way through the crowd of students, wondering how anyone can keep his mind on nineteenth-century literature when it’s one hundred ten degrees.
I finish my drink and look through the clippings again. Most of it is background stuff about the construction and later the casino’s demise, when the owners of the three million dollar resort filed for bankruptcy. Bad management, financial troubles, or even pressure from competing resorts are possible reasons given for the closing.
Bandleader Benny Carter’s statement is ambiguous at best, calling Gray one of the most dependable musicians he’s ever employed. Benny is still around, still blowing at eighty-four. I wonder what he remembers. Gray, the story said, was replaced by a local musician. Who was that, and is he still around? One more lead to check for the ace detective.
Reluctantly I leave the coolness of the student union and head for my car. It’s all I can do to resist running through the sprinklers, but then that wouldn’t do if someone took me for faculty.
Click here to learn more about Death of a Tenor Man by Bill Moody.
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Here is a preview from Upon My Soul, the first book in the Hitman with a Soul trilogy by Robert J. Randisi:
PROLOGUE
The day Sangster woke and discovered he had a soul after all, everything changed.
But along with the soul came a conscience, something else he had never experienced in his thirty-seven years. He was not awake five minutes when he began to weep. He wept not only for the people he’d killed over the years, but for their families, who had been deprived of their loved ones. He wept uncontrollably, and it was a day of firsts, for he had never cried before, not even as a child.
Sangster was a new man, but the question became...was he a better man?
He left his apartment that day and never returned. In fact, no one in California ever saw him again, and for many years he was presumed dead. Those who knew him figured that his line of work had finally caught up with him.
It seemed logical to assume that a man who was an assassin for hire would fall prey to an assassin, himself.
But that was not the case...
ONE
Three years later...
Sangster looked up from the chessboard at the man who had appeared at the end of his front walk. In the almost three years he had been renting this house on Algiers Point—one of the neighborhoods left dry by Hurricane Katrina located across Lake Ponchatrain from the French Quarter—the only person who had ever come up that walk was his neighbor, with whom he played chess at least three times a week.
“Know ’im?” Ken Burke asked.
Sangster glanced across the table at the older man, who had not looked up from the board.
“Yeah,” he said, “I know him.”
The man advanced up the walk carefully, as if he expected somebody to take a shot at him at any moment. He probably would have felt better if he knew Sangster hadn’t touched a gun in three years.
When he reached the porch he stopped and stared at Sangster before he spoke.
“Hello, Sangster.”
“Primble.”
Burke looked up at that, eyed Sangster, who could only shrug his shoulders.
“What do you want?”
“A lot of people think you’re dead,” Primble said.
“That was kind of the idea, Eddie.”
“It worked pretty well,” Eddie Primble said, “until now.”
“Well, you didn’t find me,” Sangster said. “I know that much. Who was it?”
“Top secret,” Primble said. “Is there someplace we can talk?”
“You don’t want to talk in front of my friend?”
Primble looked at Ken Burke, who continued to eye the board intently.
“You have a friend?” he asked. “Things have changed quite a bit in three years.”
Sangster looked at Primble.
“Yes, “he said, “they have.” He looked at Burke. Primble had aged badly in three years. Sangster knew Primble must have been forty, but much of his hair had receded and he’d put on weight. He looked fifty—healthy enough, but fifty. The cut of his suit also bespoke of some progress financially. He was sweating. It was February, but that didn’t mean much in New Orleans. It was still nearly ninety degrees.
“I have to talk to this man,” he said to his chess opponent.
“Go ahead and talk,” Burke said. “I’m concentratin’.”
Sangster looked at Primble.
“He won’t listen, he’s concentrating.”
“I intend to talk very plainly,” Primble warned.
“Talk as plainly as you want,” Sangster said. “I have no secrets from Burke.”
“Your friend,” Primble reiterated.
“And neighbor,” Sangster said. “He lives in the house next door.”
“How much does the old timer know?”
“Everything.”
“Everything?” Burke asked. He ignored the “old timer” remark. After all, he was seventy. If that didn’t qualify as an old timer, what did? “If I knew everything, this game would’ve been over a long time ago.” Sangster knew—Primble did not—that Burke was not only talking about chess.
“Eddie,” Sangster said, “you found me—or somebody found me for you. What do you want?”
“I need you,” Primble said, “to...to do what you used to do.”
“He wants you to kill somebody,” Burke said, eyeing the board, chin in hand.
“That’s what I used to do,” Sangster said. He looked at Primble. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“You don’t—come on, Sangster,” Primble said. “What else does a man like you do?”
“I’m retired.”
“Retired?”
“I don’t kill anymore,” he said. “I
haven’t killed anyone in three years. I don’t even own a gun, and I haven’t held one in all that time.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Primble asked.
“I don’t care what you believe, Eddie,” Sangster told him. “It’s the truth.”
Primble thought a moment, put one foot up on the first step. It was warm, and he was sweating. He loosened his tie, undid the top button of his shirt.
“All right,” he said. “For the moment let’s assume that you haven’t killed anyone in three years.” He adopted a look of complete puzzlement. “Why not?”
“That’s not important,” the ex-assassin said. “All you need to know is that I don’t do it anymore. You need to find someone else.”
“Do you know how long it took me to find you?” Primble demanded.
“Let me guess,” Sangster said. “Three years?”
“I’m not just gonna take no for an answer, Sangster,” Primble said. “That’s not what I do, remember?”
“I remember very well.”
“In fact,” the man went on, “when you walked out you left behind an unfinished assignment. I had to have someone else do your job for you.”
“Luckily,” Sangster replied, “you hadn’t paid me in advance.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I know,” Sangster said. “I’ve been trying to get you to see the point, Eddie.”
“Sangster,” Primble said, “you were the best I ever ran.”
“I’m out of the business, Eddie.”
“You can’t get out of this business, Sangster,” Primble said. “Why don’t we just call the last three years a vacation?”
Sangster looked at the chess board. The old man hadn’t made a move yet. He had his chin in his left hand, and his right hand was down out of sight.
“Eddie—”