The club itself had a Martian quality, the maroon plush and tobacco smoke and golden chandelier light and the unusual intermingling of whites and Creoles and Negroes conspiring to create an otherworldly atmosphere. It was said that on Mars all races lived and toiled beside each other in peace. Did they also dance together to the sounds of the stars? For tonight in the Cosmopolitan Club they were.
“That is some funny stuff,” said a white man seated at one of the front tables, after Isadore’s first solo. “Funny it up some more, will ya?”
Their set was the same but his playing was different. In “Chicken Dog” he made the horn squawk like a rooster and bark like a terrier.
“That man is dangerous!” someone screamed.
During “Make Me a Pallet on the Floor” he improvised a conversation between a crying woman and a fractious man with a deep baritone. In “Ole Miss” his cornet growled like a bear, hissed like a snake, and sang like a meadowlark.
“Play it, mister. Play that thing.”
He went soft to draw the audience close, then played the chorus loud, driving them into fits of giddy dancing. He slurred and growled and klaxoned. He called out all his props, bending notes, executing long, breathless runs, applying a series of mutes, glasses, even a bucket.
“Damn the world. Damn the heavens. Damn my eyes.”
He played the happy parts melancholy and the melancholy parts happy, the raw parts polished and the polished parts raw. He did all this without ever losing the melody. But it was all just a buildup for “The Whore’s Gone Crazy.”
“Slaughter me dead!”
Through his horn he shouted, Love me! Hear me! Want me! The crowd shouted back.
Frank Bailey had been right all along. He was right about the Axman and right about the importance of giving the audience something new—something tricky that made the saliva flow. That was the only way to become king. Like Oliver with his showmanship, Bolden with his volume, Ory with his tailgate trombone, Isadore had his own trick: a horn that impersonated animal and human voices, seduced women, emboldened men, discovered alien tones and colors and languages.
Even Orleania, sitting at the end of the bar, looked surprised. After nearly a week of caring for Isadora without interruption, Orly left the baby with Miss Daisy so that she could watch the Slim Izzy Quartet play the most important show of their lives. Not even she had heard Isadore play this way before. Nobody had. Only now, during the second encore, could he appreciate what he had done, before members of Uptown and downtown society, musicians young and old. Buddie Petit and Honoré Dutrey, who had played an earlier set, stood by the bar, mouths open tall enough to catch flies. Johnny Dodds and Lee Collins stared with expressions of wonder and scrutiny from a distant table and Isadore recognized other musicians too, not to mention every advance man in town. And it had all happened because of Orly. She had insisted that he play the show—not just for himself, but for her too. She was proud. The pride filled her to the brim.
There was something else too, if he were to be honest with himself. If there was one place in New Orleans where he could feel safe from an ax-wielding maniac, it was at the Cosmopolitan Club in front of a large crowd.
But when he stepped off the stage into the ravenous applause he saw that the pride in Orly’s eyes had been replaced by a clammy terror that he had seen just once before, on the night of the Axman’s jazz, when he returned from the Van Benthuysen party to find her weeping with fear after having been visited by a strange white man bigger than big.
“He’s here,” she said, through clenched teeth. “The man from Tartarus. Angry eyes.”
She was interrupted by a white stranger. He placed an arm roughly around Isadore’s shoulder, grinning as if he were an old friend come to congratulate Isadore on a fine performance. But his voice was cheerless and urgent.
“Detective William Bastrop,” he whispered wetly into Isadore’s ear. “New Orleans Police. Walk to avoid trouble.”
Over the man’s shoulder Isadore looked at Orly. From her surprise he could tell that this was not the man she had warned about. The detective was not bigger than big, after all. He was a couple inches shorter than Isadore, with thin arms, a pale, unshaven, cadaverous face, and recessed eyes. He looked unhealthy and ravenous. He had a damp, wheezing cough. His cheap suit was baggy and wrinkled, as if he’d slept in it or stolen it from somebody who had.
“In ten seconds,” said Bastrop, “it gets bad.”
“He wants me to go,” said Isadore.
“Leave,” said Orly. “Go with him. Now.”
The weight of Bastrop’s arm guided him away from the throng of well-wishers that waited by the bar. Bastrop pushed him back onto the stage and across it, to the dressing room, where Sore Dick reclined on a chair, cherishing a cigar.
“I never seen you storm like that before, Iz.”
“Say something,” said Bastrop into Isadore’s ear.
“Just going to have a conversation with this man here.”
Sore Dick raised his eyebrows. “Which establishment do you work for, sir?”
“All of them.”
Bill pushed Isadore through the back door, into a dark long hallway.
“Pick it up,” said Bastrop.
“What is this anyway?”
“You know what it is.”
Isadore considered his options. He could run and get shot. Or he could continue walking away from the club, down the dark, mildewed hallway, escorted by the detective to some unknown future. It wasn’t promising, exactly, but better than certain death. Better than waiting in the Cosmopolitan Club for the bigger-than-big man.
Bastrop pushed Isadore through another door and they stumbled into the Cosmopolitan’s newer annex, which had its own lobby and was less formal than the original hotel. It fronted Bourbon Street and was busy with drunk tourists and their loud laughter. Bastrop’s hand pressed more tightly around Isadore’s shoulder. The lobby’s electric brightness accentuated Bastrop’s features unsympathetically: his nervous mouth, small ears, sweat-dripping brow, the bluish hollows in his cheeks. When he coughed, the explosive force seemed to catch him by surprise. It attracted the attention of a porter, who seemed perplexed by the sight of the white man walking in a semi-embrace with the Creole jazz musician. The porter was too well trained to intercede, however, and they made it to Bourbon Street without obstruction. A police car waited at the curb.
“We’re going to the station,” said Isadore.
“Nah,” said Bastrop. “We’re going to the canal.”
It was a black night, the moon hid behind clouds. Beyond the white-burning cones of the headlamps the world was empty. Bastrop had the energy of a newt, twisting and fidgeting and looking everywhere except at the street ahead of them. Pedestrians emerged from the gloom just in time to leap away from the oncoming automobile, shouting in terror or outrage as they did. As a concession Bastrop began honking the horn every few seconds to alert the onrushing night.
“I don’t think I am who you think I am.”
“What?” Bastrop looked pained. The engine was too loud for conversation.
“Can you go slower?”
Bastrop honked four times.
“Who do you think I am?”
Bastrop ignored him. He was too busy glancing this way and that, his pupils scrambling like mosquitoes. Isadore held tightly to the strap above the passenger’s window. Bastrop turned up Esplanade, nearly knocking over a horse feeding from a bucket. He turned downriver on Burgundy and after five blocks pulled over. Darkness had eliminated the street behind them. He cut the headlamps. The engine sputtered, the chassis heaving, out of breath. Isadore touched the door handle. If Bastrop tried anything, he’d dive out of the car and run. But if Bastrop was going to try something, why had he stopped the car in the middle of a residential street full of potential witnesses, leaving the door unlocked? Why had he marched Isadore out of a club before a crowd of more than two hundred people? The adrenaline of the performance had morphed into an anxiety approa
ching panic.
“You wrote the letter.” Bastrop kept his eye on the rearview mirror.
“I didn’t kill anyone. The letter was a gag. I didn’t realize—”
“I know that. But I only figured it a few minutes ago.”
“How?”
“An old friend told me.”
“Who told you?”
“You don’t know him. A buddy from the war.”
“What are we doing here, then?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?”
“For the actual killer.”
“He lives here?” Isadore looked at the street: a row of spavined shotguns, lit from within by frail dancing candlelight.
“He’s coming.”
“Why do you need me? I have nothing to do with the man.”
“You’re bait.”
The man from Tartarus, Orly had said. With the angry eyes.
“I am not a musical expert.” Bastrop turned his searching, blank eyes to Isadore. “But I never heard noises like that.”
Isadore realized he’d left the cornet backstage. Would Dick know to take it for him? Would Orly? It took Isadore the space of a heartbeat to remember that the fate of his horn would be irrelevant if he was slaughtered in the middle of this dark Marigny street.
“How did you learn to play like that?”
“It’s difficult to concentrate,” said Isadore. “Given the situation.”
“Don’t worry about the situation. Leave the situation to me.”
Isadore nodded. He looked for shapes in the darkness but only saw darkness. “I learned all the other ways to play. But none of them sounded right to me.”
Bastrop looked at him very seriously for a while. “I know what you mean.”
A white light pierced the rear windshield. Bastrop flipped the ignition. “That’s him.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s driving too fast.”
Bastrop hit the headlamps. The chassis grumbled into motion. The second car followed them a block behind. Isadore thought he could make out the driver’s gigantic shape, like a black bear hunched over the steering wheel. Bastrop resumed his steady honking and accelerated. He coughed between honks and the coughs were almost as loud inside the car as the horn. They must have been going nearly twenty-five miles an hour. Burgundy was the only paved street between the Vieux Carré and the Industrial Canal, two miles downriver, but it was frequently interrupted by potholes and cracked pavement stones. Isadore held tightly to the strap with both hands to avoid knocking his head on the ceiling.
“What am I supposed to do? Just hope you kill him first?”
“What?” yelled Bastrop, between honks, glancing through the rearview.
“Who is he, anyway? The killer.”
Bastrop honked crazily.
Ahead a bicyclist fell and ran to the curb to avoid a collision. Bastrop swerved to avoid the bicycle. Several seconds later the headlamps behind them repeated the swerve. The neighborhood grew sparser as they advanced downriver. They passed a block with only five houses, a block with two houses. Then they were amid overgrown fields and horse pastures. A cow raised its head at the sound of the approaching automobile and stared into the headlamps. Its eyes were embers.
The second car did not attempt to close the distance but remained about one block behind. Everything felt choreographed: the way the detective had swept him out of the Cosmopolitan, the police car waiting at the curb, Bastrop’s confidence that the Axman would follow, the measured progression downriver, the acceleration—and now came another wonder. As the bascule bridge that led over the Industrial Canal came into view, Isadore recalled that its construction had not yet been completed. He tried to explain that a wooden barricade was blocking their path and if they hit it they would not survive the collision, but there was no time. He braced for the collision, sinking into his seat, flinging his arms over his head to block the cascading glass shards.
There was a jolt, but it was only the hum of the tires as they jumped onto the steel grating of the bridge. Isadore glanced back in time to see the discarded barricade in the headlamps of the trailing automobile. It had been moved to the shoulder, clearing the way. Bastrop had never even decelerated.
Bastrop spun the wheel sharply at the end of the bridge. The car pivoted, the tires skidding, and sped left, toward the lake. Where there had once been pastures and luxuriant long-limbed live oaks was a sere wasteland. The headlamps only created varying shades of blackness. The blackest shade marked the point where the earth ended, at the bank of the man-made river.
“What the hell is going on, man? Are you trying to kill us?”
Bastrop cursed loudly but not in response to Isadore. He saw something in the rearview mirror. Isadore turned. The dust kicked up by the tires gave them a vague and twinkly wake, the dust glittering like mica in the headlamps of the Axman’s car. It followed them along the canal, weaving slightly in the loose dirt. Isadore saw the source of Bastrop’s irritation. A third car had joined the procession. It crossed the bridge.
Bastrop spun the wheel and with it Isadore’s insides. They came to rest, facing the direction from which they had come. Dirt sleeted the windshield. Isadore prepared for another collision. But the Axman braked and the two cars faced each other, lamps glaring, the dust mushrooming between them. The Axman cut his engine. Bastrop cut his engine. The chassis relaxed, as if lowering itself slowly to a seated position.
“Listen close,” said Bastrop. The hot white light of the pursuing headlamps grimly illuminated his rheumy eyes, his sallow cheeks. “I have a plan!”
“Why the hell should I trust your plan?”
“If you follow it, we’ll both live.”
“If not?”
“I’ll kill you myself.”
Bastrop reached inside his suit and showed Isadore his service revolver. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m your friend in this.”
“What choice do I have?”
“I’ll prove it. Do you know how to shoot a gun?”
He had held Bailey’s Webley & Scott plenty of times—had aimed it plenty—but never shot it. “I’m not exactly a professional.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Bailey removed a pistol from beneath his seat. “Hold it as if you know what to do.”
It could not be a good idea to accept a pistol from a cop.
“Just take it.” Bastrop forced it into Isadore’s hand. “When we get out, you point it at the driver of the other car. I’ll do the same.”
“That’s the plan?”
“He can’t shoot the both of us.”
“Why not?”
“Two against one.”
“Let me get this right. We both aim at the guy and hope you shoot him before he shoots both of us?”
“It’s not much,” Bastrop conceded. “I figured out as far as getting us here. I figured if he followed—”
They were interrupted by the sound of a car door opening. A leg stomped heavily onto the ground. Ribbons of dust plumed around it.
“No more talk,” said Bastrop. “Get out.”
“I don’t want to get out of the car. No, sir. I do not want to get out of this car.”
The other leg, about the circumference of an oak stump, emerged from the driver’s seat.
“If I go out,” said Bastrop, “how do I know you will follow?”
“I tell you plainly that I will not follow.”
“If he sees me, and he doesn’t see you, he might leave. The whole business will be squandered. He’ll be on the run again and we might never catch up.”
Isadore did not believe for a moment that the detective would shoot him. He recognized now, in the white headlamp glare, a familiar look on the detective’s face. He’d seen it on his own face before—in the mold-covered mirror in Virginia’s bedroom, when the navies arrived; in the mirror at Sis Pinky’s, when he thought he’d have to give up music and rely on crime to support his family; in the window at Charity hospital, when Orly in her birthing fr
enzy chanted an old Creole chanson and it seemed the baby would never come. Yes, he saw it plainly in the detective’s incandesced face: Bastrop was terrified. He coughed loudly, a deep bronchial cough that ended in a wheeze. His face was slippery with mucus and sweat.
Bastrop clutched his revolver and, with a violent grimace, opened the door. “Perl,” he said, addressing neither Isadore nor himself, but something in the night. “Perl.”
Bastrop lurched out of the car. Using the door as a shield, he aimed his pistol out the open window. The dust thinned to reveal the Axman standing beside his car. His arms hung from his sides like meat hooks. The head had the weight and authority of a Roman bust; it was too big even for his gigantic body, a stately, ridiculous head, a head like two heads merged into one. He hunched forward, as if overwhelmed by its weight. His mouth was arranged in a sickly grin. Isadore recognized him at once: Giorgio Vizzini, who used to supervise the dig, chewing ice and blasting the laborers with the power hose. He had always struck Isadore as a sadistic bully. He wouldn’t have believed the man capable of a series of calculated murders but it was impossible to know what a man was capable of until he was pushed.
Isadore shrank into his seat, bracing for another collision. He did not sink so low that he couldn’t watch the action, however. He squeezed the door handle as if it were Orly’s open hand. If someone started shooting, he could roll out of the car, using the door as cover, and run to the precipice of the canal. From the steep high wall, he would plunge to the bottom. But a few broken bones would beat a bullet.
“New Orleans Police—” Bastrop was interrupted by his own violent cough.
Vizzini appeared amused by the detective’s presentation. Bastrop might have been trying to order a wild, carnivorous animal hunched over a carcass to stop eating.
“Hi there, navy. You hiding the jazz-playing nigger in there?”
“New Orleans Police Department. Drop your weapon.”
Vizzini’s response was drowned out by a sudden roar. The third automobile, a Peerless Model 56, skidded to a stop alongside his car.
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