He stopped the car with a dangerous skid on the wet pavement. Then he turned to her and said through his teeth, “There’s nothing wrong with me. There’s nothing wrong with my playing. If you want a ride home, okay. If I want advice from a bobby-soxer, I’ll ask for it!”
Her blue eyes flashed and her chin went up. She looked mad and cute. “Oh, you and your damned precious musician’s ego. You can’t face it, can you, Johnny Nickles? You won’t admit, even to yourself, that your playing stinks these days. You have to blame it on a poor old blind Negro who could play more with one hand than you ever—”
The slap of his palm across her mouth was loud in the small car. A choked scream worked free of her throat. Her eyes were blazing as she yanked open the door. She half-slid out of the car, twisting the hem of her skirt above her stocking tops.
Johnny swore and pulled her back into the car. He slammed the door shut and threw the car into motion. “You can’t walk home from here. You’d drown. Give me your address and shut up and I’ll take you home.”
She gave him her address and shut up. They both shut up and Johnny drove on with the bottle in one hand, taking a swallow from it every few minutes.
Then he began to talk—softly, half to himself. “...okay, so I’ve had a lot on my mind. Everybody has an off night now and then. I still play the best horn in town....”
They pulled up before the address she’d given him.
She sat silently for a moment, stiffly. Then she said, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I’m sorry I said that about you.” She turned to open the door.
She got out and stood on the sidewalk in the rain, then impulsively ducked her head back into the car. “I’d like to come around to where you play, Johnny. I want to dig your band—it would help my research for my thesis. Can I? If I promise no more advice?”
He shrugged. “I don’t own the place.” He lit a cigarette. A terrific struggle was going on inside him. Finally he said, “Look, you’ll be seeing Mamba before he leaves town. I—I wonder if you’d tell him—”
She smiled softly. “I’ll tell him, Johnny.”
* * * * * * *
Ruth Jordon came down to Honky-Tonk Street pretty regularly after that. She would sit at a corner of the bar at Norman’s Sho-Tune joint and make notes in a little book. She really ate up their kind of music. Her fingers tapped the edge of the bar to the rhythm of Miff’s drums. Her eyes shone and she laughed aloud when they slid into a real solid ensemble and Johnny rocked back on his heels and punched out the hard, driving licks with his horn tilted to the sky.
During intermissions, she’d ask the guys all sorts of questions about music.
Johnny didn’t think it unusual that she’d been in Miff’s apartment the night he was killed. He didn’t think there’d been anything romantic going on between them. Miff wasn’t her type. She often called on the fellows in his band to get information for her thesis. She had probably gone up to Miff’s Monday night with her notebook simply to ask him some technical questions about the place of the percussion instruments in the Dixieland jazz band ensemble. That’s the way Johnny figured it.
And he told himself as much for perhaps the hundredth time as he parked in the hospital driveway, climbed out of his car and walked up the dark, wet steps. The halls were dim and silent at that hour of the night. A nurse on night duty at the front desk told him in a whisper where he could find Ruth Jordon’s room.
On the third floor, he saw a uniformed police officer dozing on a chair propped next to one of the doors. The cop straightened up as Johnny neared him and his features grew suddenly belligerent. When Johnny told him who he was, they went down to the office together where Dr. Ed Nathan okayed Johnny. “Just talk to her for a minute, Johnny,” the doctor said softly. “And when you finish, stop by here. I want to have a word with you.”
The cop left him in Ruth’s room and resumed his station outside the door.
She was very still on the high hospital bed. A dim bed lamp spread a soft yellow glow over her head and shoulders, leaving the rest of the room in shadows. She seemed to be dozing, but when he moved up close to the bed, her eyelids fluttered open.
“Hi, Johnny,” she whispered softly, her eyes drowsy with sedatives. “I seem to be something of a mess, don’t I?” Her bare arm slid from under the sheet and her hand rested on the edge of the bed, palm up. He put his own hand in hers and her fingers squeezed. “I—they told me about Miff...,” she choked.
“Yeah,” Johnny answered softly.
Her face was pale. Gauze covered her left cheek and temple. Her blonde hair was spread out over the pillow, framing her face and bare shoulders. The sheet had fallen away from her bosom and the thin gown she wore emphasized the notion he’d always had, that there’d been no cheating under her sweaters.
“It’s such a horrible deal, Johnny. They keep asking me questions and I don’t know what to tell them. Everything’s all jumbled up in my mind.” She pressed the heel of her left hand against her eyebrow. Then she looked up at him and her eyes were very wide and stained deep violet. “They don’t think I shot Miff, Johnny, do they? Isn’t that ridiculous?” She began to giggle raggedly. “Why, Johnny? Why would I want to—”
“Take it easy,” he said gruffly. “You’ve got to hang onto yourself. Nobody’s accusing you of anything. Why should you want Miff dead? You hardly knew the guy.”
Her mouth worked. “Do—do you know anything, Johnny, about this mess?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Nothing definite yet.”
She sighed. “I was scared. I feel better now that you’ve come to see me. Johnny—my parents live in the East, you know. And I don’t want them to find out about this mess I’m in. Dad has a weak heart. The worry would be bad for him.” She half-turned and propped herself up on one elbow, facing him. She was very young and lovely in the dim light of the bed lamp. To a guy who’d slapped around as much as Johnny, she seemed clean and fresh. He found himself thinking she would be good for some guy to marry. Her own purity would wash away a man’s dirty memories. And she would be a one-man woman. You wouldn’t have to wonder who was getting next to her every time your back was turned. Furthermore, her guy wouldn’t want to roam because those firm young curves silhouetted under the gossamer covering of her silk gown held the promise of plenty of fire.
“I’ve done a lot of thinking, Johnny, here by myself—thinking about you.” Her lips suddenly looked full and swollen. “Mind leaving a kiss behind, Johnny? I think I might sleep better....”
Johnny bent over. Her lips were fresh and cool. They trembled and parted under his. Her smooth bare arm slid around his neck. Johnny had trouble with his breathing for a few minutes after that.
She sighed and leaned back. She was sleeping peacefully when he tiptoed out of the room.
Dr. Ed Nathan walked down the corridor with Johnny and they conversed in soft undertones. The hush of the sick, the convalescent and the dying pervaded the air of the place. Hospitals made Johnny nervous.
“It’s a type of amnesia, as I told you on the telephone,” the doctor said. “You see, the human mind has all sorts of protective devices to guard itself from severe shocks. The mental blackout is one of them. When an extremely painful experience is forced on the conscious mind, it simply rejects it, refuses to remember the details. That is what has happened to Ruth.”
Johnny nodded. “Doc, I’m just a barrelhouse musician. I’m nowhere with all this medical stuff. But as I understand it, Ruth is not able to tell the police a thing that happened Monday night, or who killed Miff and shot at her. But what I’d like to know is this—is this just temporary, or will she always be blank on the subject?”
Nathan lit a cigarette. “Sometimes, Johnny,” he admitted, “I’m—‘nowhere’—as you put it, with this medical business, too. The human mind is a very complex, difficult thing to understand. We doctors have to still rely to a certain extent on guesswork and instinct. I’m a psychiatrist with ten years of training and eight years
of practicing experience behind me, but I couldn’t give you a definite answer to that question. I will say this, though. Usually, such cases of mental or nervous shock do regain their full memory after a certain length of time, when the mind becomes adjusted. How long it takes, however, no one can say for certain.”
They stood together in the archway of the hospital entrance. “I thought,” Nathan continued, “she might show some signs of recovery when you talked to her.”
Johnny shook his head. “Not a thing.” He was thoughtful for a moment, then glanced at the doctor. “How long have you known her?”
“Since she was a youngster. Her family used to live here on the Coast. I’ve known them for years. She’s—well, she’s pretty swell people, Johnny.”
He nodded. He suddenly found himself liking Nathan a great deal. The guy was friendly and straightforward. He didn’t put on pretentious airs or fake bedside manners.
“Well,” Johnny said at length, “then you know as well as I do that she didn’t kill Miff.”
“Of course not!” Nathan exploded. “Ruth couldn’t possibly have done anything like that!”
“What do the police think?”
Nathan shrugged. “I don’t know any more than you do.... But they’ll have to find the weapon and a motive before they can build any kind of case against her.”
“So,” Johnny went on, “meanwhile the real killer is running around loose. And he will stay free as long as Ruth doesn’t get well and remember who the killer was—”
The words died away and left them contemplating a cold, chilly fact that they both considered in silence.
The murderer of Miff Smith faced the electric chair if caught, so why not kill again and be completely safe?
Now the shadow that trailed Johnny Nickles’ band also stalked Ruth Jordan. It was a toss-up where it would strike next.
“How long will she be here?”
“She’s well enough to leave tomorrow. I’ve been keeping her under pretty strong sedation, but I’m easing up now.”
“Will the police let her go home?”
He shrugged. “There you know as much as I do, Johnny.”
“Well,” Johnny said, “thanks for giving me the call and letting me come down here. Like you say, Doc, she’s a pretty nice kid.”
Nathan looked at him with a peculiar expression in his eyes. I’d hate to see her get hurt in any way, Johnny.” Then he changed his tone abruptly. “I hope the police find the real murderer soon, Johnny, and I feel sure they will. Good night.”
Johnny went down to his car Driving home, he thought about Ruth Jordon and the time bomb she was sitting on. At last he reached his building, parked the car and walked up to his apartment. It was almost morning now. He walked up the short flight of dark, silent stairs. At his apartment door, he inserted the key in the lock, turned it and opened the door.
Light spilled out of the living room. Two men were sitting in the room. Johnny recognized one of them—Fred Botello, the hulking, lumbering sheriff. The other was a huge blond giant, well over six feet tall. Botello was seated on the horsehair sofa and had sunk back into its ragged depths. His right fist was resting on his pot belly, holding a heavy blue-black revolver that was aimed straight at the second button of Johnny’s shirt.
Botello belched softly and spoke. “Come in, Johnny, come in,” he said. “You kept us waiting a long time. Come on in....”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE SMELL OF TROUBLE
Thursday Morning, 1:30 A.M.
Johnny walked slowly into the room and closed the door behind him. He knew what was coming. It was in the air itself.
Johnny could literally smell trouble. He had played in Chicago in the days when most of the nightclubs and speakeasies were run by Capone and his henchmen. Once he had seen a gunsel go berserk on rotten gin and empty his pistol at a band Johnny was playing with, because he didn’t like the tune they were playing. Three of the guys in the band and their girl singer died right there on the stand, and the bell of Johnny’s trumpet had a hole in it by the time the shooting had died down.
So he could feel this sort of thing when it was in the air. He’d been around a lot tougher men than Botello. He wasn’t particularly afraid.
“So you say you have a pin,” Botello grunted. He stayed hunched down in the sofa looking up at Johnny through the brush of his eyebrows. “You say you found a pin near where your drummer was killed Monday night.” He dug his little finger into his ear, then frowned down at the particle of wax that came out on the nail. “I’d like to see this pin, Johnny.” he went on softly. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the murder. But I think I’d better see it anyway.”
“Yeah?” Johnny’s grin was twisted. “I’ll bet you do.” He glanced at the big blond man. “And who is this creep?”
Gene Hargiss-Jones looked hurt. “I say, old chap, that isn’t a nice way to address company.”
Johnny grunted. “Harvard, yet! I didn’t know they let pansies in there.”
Hargiss-Jones jaw muscles bulged and he half-rose from his chair, then he suddenly relaxed, sank back and smiled. “Watch it, you gut-bucket Beethoven. You’re on the verge of an awful lot of trouble.”
Nickles swung his gaze back to Botello. “Sam Cowles is worried, huh?”
“Shut up!” Fred Botello said too loudly. He rose painfully to his feet. “This is official business, Nickles. You’re withholdin’ evidence in the murder of Mifford Smith. That’s a serious offense. I want that pin and I want it without no more double-talk.”
“Sure,” Johnny answered peacefully. “Sure. I want you to have the pin. Let’s go down to Headquarters now and we’ll turn it in.”
Beads of moisture were forming in the thick creases of Botello’s forehead. He began to lumber over toward Johnny. “We ain’t goin’ nowhere...,” he rumbled from deep in his phlegmatic throat, “until you turn that pin over to me.”
“That’s what I thought.” Johnny was suddenly hopping mad. “When you told Sam Cowles what I had, he sent you down here with one of his gorillas. Well, get this straight, you big, fat sonuvabitch—and take it back to Sam Cowles. This is one of the dirtiest towns I’ve hit yet, and I’ve seen some stinking ones in my day. It’s rotten all the way through. Still, if the citizens want to let Sam Cowles get away with running things, that’s their business. But when it gets to the point where his spoiled lush of a daughter can come down and put a bullet in a fine guy like Miff Smith, and not even be called in for questioning, he’s playing God—and that’s too much!”
Gene Hargiss-Jones lazily unwound his six-foot-four frame from the chair. A small cold smile, like a gust of winter air, was playing around his lips. “Why don’t you tell your troubles to Petrillo, Mozart? All we want is the pin.”
“You’ll play hell getting it,” Johnny told him.
“Wait a minute, Gene,” Botello interrupted, waving the big ape back. His perpetually harassed face had creased into a deep scowl. “Just what makes you so sure Raye Cowles had anything at all to do with the death of your drummer?”
“Hell, she’s had hot pants for him for over a month. She came down slumming with her crowd one Saturday night. They came in when Miff was taking a drum solo. He used to be something to see when he went to work on those skins. She got a yen for him that night and Miff left with her. She’s been carrying on with him ever since. But she made one mistake. She tried to get possessive. And Miff just naturally wasn’t a one-woman man. She found out he had a couple of other girls on his string and that’s when the trouble began. I heard her threaten him more than once.”
Botello’s bulldog face looked even more unhappy and harassed than it had a moment before. He rubbed the pit of his stomach with the fingertips of his free hand while he kept the big police revolver pointed at Johnny. “Okay, Gene. I guess he needs a little talkin’ to.”
It wasn’t much of a fight. On even terms, Johnny could have given him a fair tussle. He’s been brought up on rock fights in the back streets
of New Orleans and had, in time, graduated to the touch boys of Chicago. But, while Hargiss-Jones kept him busy from one side, Botello lumbered around, surprisingly agile for his bearish bulk, and swatted him with the revolver. It was heavy and every time the barrel smashed across the side of Johnny’s head, waves of sickening black nausea drenched him with sweat and robbed him of his strength.
He got in only one satisfactory score. Hargiss-Jones’ big paw had smashed him against a wall. Weakly, he slid down into a heap. Grinning that same cold wintery smile, the big blond man dove at him. But Johnny brought his feet up and sank his heels into the big man’s midriff. Hargiss-Jones sprawled back over the card table, going down in a melee of scattering manuscript sheets. Johnny came up off the floor with a brick bookend in his hand. He put a dent in the blond’s forehead with it just before Botello’s gun barrel descended on the back of his head for the last time and put the lights out.
When his eyes swam back into focus, he felt the nerve wrenching impact of a heavy toe crashing into his guts with deadly monotony. Every time the foot kicked him, scalding pain exploded inside his belly. He heard somebody screaming and he realized the hoarse animal sounds were coming out of his own mouth.
“All right,” he heard Botello yell, from away off in the distance, “f’ cryin’ out loud, let up, Gene! I don’t want the guy killed yet.”
A hand dragged Johnny off the floor and propped him against a wall. He looked into the contorted face of Hargiss-Jones and it was a nightmarish thing to see. Blood was running out of the gash in his forehead, splattering all over his face and clothes. It looked like a gushing fountain. Out of the gory mask peered two eyes flecked with insanity.
Over Gene’s shoulder, through a red haze, Johnny could make out the sheriff’s bulky form and he saw that Botello still held the revolver in one hand. In his other hand, Johnny saw the glittering flamingo costume pin that had been taken from Johnny’s pocket.
Botello pulled the panting Hargiss-Jones aside and looked down at Johnny. “Now, son,” he grunted, breathing heavily, “Maybe you understand better what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into.”
Honky-Tonk Girl Page 6