After I’d bought him one in return I thought it was time to go. Odin seemed to be settling in for the night but it was only about seven. I said let’s go, and we left. It had become cold. When the sun goes down in October the temperature falls rapidly.
“You want to lead off?” I asked him.
“No...after you.”
I could have laughed. It seemed a good time to teach Odin the technique of following one car in another.
I led off. The traffic had eased to a steady evening flow. I let him stay close until I saw a useful-looking traffic signal ahead. I watched it on green as I approached, eased off, let it flick on to amber, and accelerated through. Odin, being a law-abiding citizen, braked hard. I swung heavily over to the left, on the wrong side of the road, clamped my hand down on the horn, and accelerated fast. First left again, another left, and two blocks later I was trailing Odin. The poor devil was lost. You could feel him hunting around, never thinking of looking behind him. That’s the advantage of a black car, if you can get one.
He tried one or two side turns, went the wrong way down a one-way street and scared the hell out of a Victor, and I was still with him. Then he gave up and went off on his own affairs. I decided it was time I knew more about his affairs, so I went with him.
He headed out north. The thin mist was coming down again and there were haloes round the street lamps. Odin drove as though he knew where he was going. He was a careful driver, was Odin, and he gave me no trouble.
After a couple of miles he dived off down a side street. The buildings here had been up a hundred years and the re-development hadn’t yet sliced them down, except for the motorway extension. It was an area where officers prefer to go in twos, and then in a car. I might have guessed he’d have friends around there. Odin drew in. He parked, left his sidelights on, and I watched his huge shadow moving away under the one streetlamp. It was very quiet. A taxi cruised by. I let him get a hundred yards ahead, then locked the Oxford and padded after him. After a three-month lay-off, it was almost like coming home.
About halfway down there was a splash of meagre light on to the pavement. Odin’s shadow disappeared. I closed in and casually lit a cigarette.
It was called the Greenhorn Club. There was a dim foyer with a cubicle halfway down it and the place looked as though it had been a dance hall, in the days when dancing meant touching your partner. On one side of the entrance there was a display panel indicating the delights to be found within. I’d expected plump cuties, and coy eyes peeping over ostrich fans. There wasn’t one. At the top: Earl Goodhope—sixteen stone of coloured gentleman sitting side-saddle at a concert grand, flashing a full set of teeth and with his great fists poised over the keys. Below: Scott Richards, beating the hell out of the skins and caught in full frenetic fury by a very fast flash bulb. Below him: Carter ‘Fats’ Benson, a lugubrious West Indian, applying full lips to the reed of a clarinet. Then: ‘Slaps’ Chiswick, a grinning young man with rotten teeth, standing behind a double bass and with no indication of which was supporting which. And finally: Margie Dee, a pretty blonde with a fixed smile, clutching a mike in front of her teeth like an ice lolly. I had found a jazz club.
I’m not averse to a bit of jazz myself, though I don’t go much for this way-out progressive stuff. So I went in. Or rather, I got as far as the cubicle when a man appeared like magic through a curtain.
“Are you a member, sir?”
He was five feet four, fat, with a line of hair edging a shiny bald head. He gave me the impression that he would toss me into the street if I admitted I was not. Or even if I claimed I was.
“But I could join?”
“You’ll need a sponsor.”
Hell, they were going formal on me. “Will Odin Breeze do?”
The man positively beamed. Well of course, in that case, if I’d got the odd couple of quid membership fee...
I had got two pounds. He took them off me, disappeared into the cubicle, and reappeared with my membership card. While he looked me over to see I wasn’t concealing anything, I glanced at the card. I was member number 100367, and on the back was a list of seventy-two other clubs I’d just joined. It seemed unlikely, seeing that two of them were on Broadway, New York City.
“We’re very informal here,” he said. “Just help yourself to a table.”
I went through the curtain. There was a long, low room with a dais at one end and a bar all down one side, a man serving behind the bar, and a man serving the tables. No chucker-out, unless that was Odin. But I didn’t immediately spot him. The lighting was very poor, consisting mainly of one pellucid globe which might have been meant to represent a prairie moon. The walls had been painted in panoramic scenes of mesquite and cactus and wide, wide vistas, and in the corners were tubbed plants representing those wayside trees they were always hanging people from in the grand old days of the Wild West. A stuffed coyote on a stand howled noiselessly at the moon.
The place was about half full. The tables utilized all the available floor space, so that obviously the jazz was listened to without shuffling around. I began to feel better about the couple of quid.
On the dais a dark haired youth was playing runs and chords on an old ivory grand. He seemed to be keeping it warm. Nobody was listening. There was a rumbling undercurrent of general conversation and the air was already heavy with tobacco smoke.
I went to the bar and bought twenty cigarettes and asked for a ginger ale. I had to start economizing. The bartender said they didn’t have ginger ale but I could have my gin straight. So I thanked him and wandered away.
Odin Breeze was sitting at a little table up near the dais. He’d got something in a tall glass in front of him. I decided it wasn’t a good idea to let him see me just yet and found an empty table in the shadows almost opposite him. I’d hardly sat down before the waiter appeared at my elbow.
“Ginger ale,” I said.
“Ain’t got no time for the funnies,” he said. “What you having?”
“Can’t I just sit here?”
He looked scandalized. “And not drink anythin’?”
Considering I’d paid two pounds to sit there I didn’t think it was an unreasonable request. “And not drink anything,” I agreed.
“I’ll have to ask Mr Green.”
Presumably baldy I’d already met. I didn’t want to upset anybody so I reached out and caught his arm as he turned away.
“All right, if it’ll make you happy. Scotch.” I smiled. “Single.”
“Single scotch,” he agreed miserably.
Half an hour later I had turned the glass around a thousand times and memorized the glass-bottom pattern on the table top. Odin was on his sixth lager, or whatever it was. The youth had deserted the piano some time ago, and had never once allowed himself to drift into a melody. A flutter of impatience ruffled the tobacco smoke, which was three feet thick just below the ceiling. Somebody began a rhythmic thumping. It was Odin. Two other people took it up good-humouredly. There was some laughter.
Earl Goodhope came on to the dais. He was very much older than his photograph and about half the weight, but he was still wearing the same dinner jacket and shirt. He sat down and played himself in with a few more runs. I noticed suddenly that Scott Richards had appeared behind the drums and was coming in with a gentle stroking of the wire brush. Then the others came on, and in five minutes we were away.
It was pure, improvised jazz. There was something of Fats Waller in Earl’s phrasing. He had a beautiful left hand. Carter Benson, who was playing tenor sax and not clarinet, played a smooth and unemotional style.
I was beginning to decide my two pounds was well spent.
After about half an hour they stopped for a laugh and a smoke. Drinks appeared on the floor at their feet and for a few minutes they threw back ribald answers to ribald comments from the audience. They seemed to be using a brand of English I did not recognize. Then abruptly Margie Dee was up there, fingering the mike, whispering to Earl. There was a pattering of applause.
Odin thumped the table and spilt his beer.
She sang in a clear high voice, the standards mainly, in a style I could not place. She had bright yellow hair and a peach bloom complexion, and great, soft brown eyes. She smiled often at Odin. In the edge of one of the smiles there was a gold tooth. She wasn’t wonderful but she got by, mainly because her style was not derivative.
The. customers seemed to know her well, and threw suggestions to her. She was willing to comply, and Earl knew them all. She was five feet two of slim, shimmering evening dress that sparkled and caught what light there was.
Then at last she waved what must have been goodbye, but she didn’t go anywhere, just went and sat with Odin, who’d got a pink gin waiting for her.
It seemed to be one of those easy going places where the customers were encouraged to have a go. When the combo got going again there were shouts for somebody called Charlie, who turned out to be a fat and grinning engine driver or the like, who took over the piano whilst Earl perspired himself back to normal at the nearest table. Charlie played a heavy but competent rolling boogie. After that, and during the applause, I thought I heard calls for Odin. I was right. Odin it was.
Odin was not the bashful type. He got up from the table carrying the case of what looked like a clarinet, but when he’d got it together it turned out to be a flute. Then Odin played flute. How he got his huge fingers round it so delicately I don’t know, but he played flute like an angel, with Margie Dee clapping daintily, and then with Margie Dee singing to his accompaniment. They’d obviously done it before, many times. She sang two songs I’d never heard before, and the style was not pure jazz. Folk? Pop? I don’t know. She had a clear, piping voice that went well with the flute. It all sounded just fine.
I called the waiter and ordered a double scotch, and settled down to wait as long as it lasted.
It went on a long time. Two more indifferent amateurs had a go, and the combo was three parts canned by that time. Then, at around one, it faded out. The combo drifted away until there was only Earl, rolling in a kind of self-induced hypnotism at the piano. Margie went and said something and he came back at us, smiled around exhaustedly, and left.
So did I. It appeared to me that Odin and his Margie would soon be leaving, and it would do no harm to discover where he lived. I sat in the car with the music still haunting me and waited for them to come out. After a quarter of an hour they appeared from a side alleyway. She was wearing a cheap coat over her evening dress; he was still in the lightweight suit. It seemed that Odin gave scant attention to the weather, because it was darned cold by that time and the mist was nearly thick enough to claim itself as a fog.
Walking together they looked almost humorously contrasted. He could have reached over and picked her up with one hand at her waist. He’d got his arm round it at the moment and he was handling her as delicately as his flute.
I was beginning to enjoy watching Odin getting into his car. He distorted himself ludicrously, yet seemed to slide in without pain or dislocation. Somehow or other Margie Dee found room beside him. I reached out for the starter. The engine refused to fire. I tried again.
I was still trying when Odin drove away into the mist.
8
I got in about three. The battery was nearly flat, what with revving the starter motor off its nuts and then having to drive back with dipped headlights. It was clear that I was going to have to give the car some attention, and maybe find a bit of life left in there somewhere.
I was up at ten, out of the place by eleven. The battery would barely turn the engine over, so I hefted it round to the nearest garage to have it charged, and while I waited put in a new set of plugs and points. It was raining, but I found that I could do all that was necessary without the electrics getting wet. Only me.
After lunch, and with a revived battery in, it started at once and ran smoother than I could remember it doing since I’d had it. The performance gave me new confidence, so while I’d still got it I phoned Elsa. She sounded numbed. Shock was setting in.
“Wondered how you were,” I said. “Have you found anything?”
I didn’t know the answer to that one. What I had to suggest needed a little delicacy and while I skated around for a minute or two, leading into it, she made her own suggestion. The inquest was to be tomorrow, the Friday, the funeral Saturday. Would I go? Of course I would. Geoff was to be buried in the family plot at the cemetery in the next village. Elsa would need somebody with her. I said I’d make myself available, or something formal like that, and by that time what I had to suggest sounded even more bad taste.
But I could persuade myself it was business. I asked if I could drive over and pick her up about six. I was quite uncertain about Elsa’s views of the conventions, but if she rejected the idea I was ready to back down at once.
“What had you got in mind?” she asked cautiously.
“Dinner somewhere in town, then a club, and then the Jaguar.” I was deliberately presenting it as baldly as possible, half hoping she would dismiss it out of hand. But she was very quick.
“You’ve found something?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll come, of course.”
“You don’t think...maybe...with things as they are, it might look a little strange...”
“David, I’ll go mad sitting here on my own, doing nothing but think about it. And if there’s anything I can do...”
“I’ll book a table somewhere quiet, and we’ll go on afterwards to this club I’ve found. There’s something I want you to see.”
She accepted that as though it was the most normal behaviour for a young and lovely widow. “What was that about the Jaguar?”
“I thought maybe you could pick it up and take it home.”
So I’d got a date. I dug out my darkest suit, not wishing to go too formal with a dinner jacket, which might be rather conspicuous at the Greenhorn. I spent an hour pressing it and finding a presentable shirt. Then I booked a table at the Constanza and drove off to pick up my best friend’s widow.
She was quiet, restrained and formal. She had put on a jersey wool dress in black with the relief of a discreet and expensive single row of pearls, black handbag and shoes. She put over it a short jacket with a bit of mink trimming it. I felt very proud to have her beside me. I’d have felt better if Geoff had been alive. In the car she said:
“What is it you’ve found?”
“You’ll see.”
“But surely you can tell me.”
I couldn’t though. She would toss it back at me with scorn, and refuse to go there. “I’ll keep it a secret.”
“Oh...you’re maddening.”
No mist that evening. The rain had washed it down the gutters. The car was running like a dream.
“We could have used the Rover,” she said.
“The idea was for you to pick up the Jaguar,” I reminded her.
“Oh yes,” she agreed without interest. How anybody could be so little concerned over a nearly-new 4.2 Jaguar I couldn’t imagine.
I drove on. We were silent. Then after a while:
“But David, I haven’t got the key.”
“To the Jag?” I had been assuming again. “But I thought they handed over the keys.”
“The key to the Jaguar wasn’t with them. I told you, I recognized all but one.”
“I remember.” I thought about it. “And you never had the duplicate?”
She shook her head, her hair swirling with it. “It was always Geoff’s car. I had the Rover.”
Once again I had the vague thought that it would be nice to have money. It made me wonder whether I could show Elsa the sort of evening she might expect, even take for granted.
The evening did not start well. I thought the trout was tasteless. Elsa made no comment and I began to worry whether she was thinking about backing out of the rest of it. One glance at the Greenhorn might send her shying away.
I collected the bill and paid up with all the nonchalance of a man who’s
got a whole walletful of the stuff. We left. It was raining harder than ever. Elsa waited under the awning while I dashed out and brought the car round, and I had to wait while a Rolls emptied its contents and oozed away.
There was no sign of an orange Mini.
“What is this place?” she asked, when we’d got going.
“A jazz club.”
“Jazz?” She glanced sideways at me. “That’s hardly my line.”
“I wasn’t taking you for the music,” I pointed out. “And anyway, your Maurice Ravel isn’t all that far from jazz.”
“Now how can you say that?”
Which began a discussion that lasted us to the Greenhorn. Elsa had become so immersed in defending Ravel though I’d have said it might be called a compliment—that she failed to notice where we were heading. I parked behind Odin’s Mini.
“Here?” she said.
I grinned. “A few yards down on the other side.”
“But I can’t go in there, not in this dress.”
That put me in a quandary. For one thing, I didn’t know what she meant. For another, she might have been correct. After all, I’d decided against a dinner jacket. “It’s very dim inside.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what you mean.”
“It’s a great pity you were never married.”
If it made life that complicated I was inclined to disagree. I said, “it’s a gap in my education.”
“Poor David! Aren’t we going to get out?”
But she’d got me wondering whether I could pitch her out into the rain, which was belting down at that time. I decided not.
“I’ll drive you down to the entrance and drop you there.”
I did, and she nipped out smartly. Then I couldn’t find an empty bit of kerb for a couple of hundred yards and had to gallop back and arrived soaked.
Elsa was explaining to Green that she was not a member, so I was just in time to save her a couple of quid.
“Good evening, sir. You know your way around, I’m sure.”
He held back the curtain for Elsa, and she gave him a smile that prickled his scalp with sweat.
Time to Kill Page 7