The Devil's Music

by Stephen Mertz

  “He’s pretty sure, Leon.”

  Leon’s voice lowered to make a point. I had to lean forward to catch his words.

  “I’m telling it to you like it is, Kilroy. Me and Stomp Crawford go way back together, man. He used to play here all the time. I’m married to his cousin. Wouldn’t anyone be gladder to see Stomper than me. But Stomper Crawford disappeared years ago and ain’t been heard from since. Left his band, his family, everyone else high and dry, and that’s a natural fact.”

  “Okay, Leon. Thanks. If he ever does walk in the door, give me a call, okay?”

  “You’ll be the first to know, baby. The first to know.”

  We shook on it and I edged my way out of the club.

  Outside, I moved up the sidewalk and around the corner to where I’d parked my car a half block down on a cross street. I was doing some thinking. Leon wasn’t the only contact I had in Five Points. The nighttime street symphony receded with each step until the darkness around me was almost silent again.

  I was fitting my key into the lock when I heard the scuffling of feet. They rushed me from behind, from the opposite curb. I started to turn, but they were on me by then. A savage kick from the side knocked my ankles out from below. When I came up a moment later, I was being pulled and held by a dude from behind while the guy in front went to work.

  He must have done time in the ring when he wasn’t beating people up on the street. Black, dressed in black, he was a blur in the night as he danced before me, stiff-arming left and right killer punches that popped me like hammer blows.

  “We don’t like competition, honky,” snarled the one in front as a right from way back made my knees buckle. Things started swimming. “Go home and don’t come back. Forget Stomper Crawford, dig?”

  The one holding me stepped back and I slumped. The whole thing had taken less than thirty seconds and hardly made any noise. I hit the pavement like a kid’s forgotten marionette. Only, I wasn’t forgotten. I knew what would come next. These guys wanted to put me out of commission.

  I gazed along at the level of the sidewalk. I saw the toe of a fighter’s right shoe pull back for the kick that would end the job. But there wasn’t a damn think I could do about it. The professional beating had left me paralyzed with pain. I’d be able to move in a minute or two, but a lot of good that would do me now.

  Then there was someone with us. A third someone who came thundering down the street at us from the direction of the club.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” a voice shouted.

  The foot rested. The fighter held his ground.

  “Beat it, brother. This is a private argument.”

  But the curious voice kept coming and, in another instant, there was a full-scale brawl going on over my head, and these guys weren’t playing. I heard a fist sink into someone’s gut and push the wind out. A body slammed back into a car, my car. Another punch into another body. Again. Someone grunted in pain. Someone swore. Then two pairs of feet slapping away on the pavement, disappearing into the night.

  Things were starting to fade back into focus, but the pain was still there, and it would get worse. I knew that from experience.

  The guy helping me to my feet wasn’t much into his twenties, if that. He was good looking, lithe, with that muscular wiriness a black man needs to survive in the ghetto.

  “You all right, mister?”

  “That’s okay. You got me curious back there in the club, so I followed you out. I heard you were looking for Stomper Crawford.”

  “You heard right. Can you help me find him?”

  “Maybe. My name is Isaac Crawford. Stomper’s my old man.”

  3

  He’d gained about forty pounds and put on considerable mileage since his heyday. I remembered the old publicity photos I’d seen reproduced in the blues history books. Stomper Crawford had been young, wild, hungry, and eager to please. His eyes and smile had flashed with the knowledge that he was bad to the bone and ready to break out of the local music scene and make his mark nationwide.

  Except... that “big break” never came.

  Now he was tired. He sat on the sagging couch in the apartment living room. The old two-strap undershirt rode down over the bulge of his stomach, it’s whiteness in stark contrast to the ebony of his skin. He wore an expression of weary resignation.

  “A man just can’t stay on the run forever. I’ve been livin’ that life long enough, traveling from town to town, hustling from door to door, and working odd jobs.” He glanced in the direction of his son, who sat beside him. “I’ve got my roots here. And my son Isaac didn’t think poorly of me for having ducked trouble all that time.”

  Side by side, you knew they were father and son.

  Isaac could have doubled for those old publicity shots. Young, wild, hungry. But not so eager to please. Black T-shirt and denim jeans. Black brogans. Hair worn natural and clipped short, the way black men’s hairstyles, in general, were shifting away from the old processed look. Plenty of muscle and street face that did not brook foolishness. A formidable young man.

  He hadn’t spoken much to me, matter of fact he hadn’t spoken a word, between the time of our initial “introduction” and him bringing me to the basement apartment except to give me directions on the drive over.

  Isaac decided that now was a good time to join the conversation.

  He said, “Thing is, we don’t need an outsider messing things up.”

  His stare was as blunt as his words.

  The aches I’d sustained from the roughhousing back on the street were all but forgotten. I was still trying to believe that finding Stomper Crawford had been this easy. I’d been enthused by the music we’d been listening to when I’d left Carl’s apartment, so I had not mentioned to Carl what I’ve learned from experience. Tracking people who don’t want to be found can be done, but it’s not always easy. I’d expected dead ends, evasions, blank-eyed stares, and the simple fact that years had elapsed and most folks honestly wouldn’t remember anything about the one I was looking for. I knew that routine going back to my earliest days as a repo man in LA. But yes, it was easy this time around. It’s like that sometimes too. It was like that now.

  I looked at Crawford, Senior. Surviving the hard times had given him the kind of silent dignity you often find in black men of his age. Past his prime? Maybe, maybe not. The tiredness emanating from him seemed to come from his bones. From his very soul. But he wasn’t missing a thing going on. He wasn’t the type of guy you spoke around as if he weren’t there. I recalled a line of braggadocio from one of his up tempo songs. The line was about how he was always going to stay young and sharp because of a lot of loving and because “black don’t crack.” It would be easy to imagine the tired man on the couch rejuvenated and tearing it up again behind the microphone.

  Or maybe I had been spending too much time with Carl.

  I said to them both, “I don’t understand how you think I could gum things up. If anything, I’ve confirmed for you what were only suspicions before. You came back not knowing if there’d be people after you. I drew them out. Now you know. That should count for something.”

  “It does,” agreed Stomper. “That’s why Isaac brought you here to see me. Now you understand. Now you can go back and tell your producer friend so that he’ll understand, too. Right now, I’ve got all the help I’ll need, Mr. Kilroy. Isaac’s a good son. He’ll see me through. Maybe then we can talk business. I’d like to talk business now, but—“

  He ended with an expressive shrug. He appreciated my coming by, my offer of assistance, but blood was thicker.

  Based on what Stomper had already told me since my arrival, father and son had stayed in touch over the years, agreeing mutually to keep the contact to themselves. The hardest part, according to Stomper, had been when Isaac’s mother died from her cancer and Stomper had remained in hiding, a testament to his certainty that assassins would not rest until he was dead unless he could avoid them. A few times Isaac had traveled off to connect with hi
s father, and they had spent time together. Isaac’s sister wanted nothing to do with her father and had moved to New York to pursue her dreams. Isaac had himself a good job as a mid-level managerial position at a May D&F store at Cinderella City. Stomper didn’t say as much but my reading was that with his wife and daughter gone and with a dawning awareness of his own mortality, Stomper had decided to reclaim his life. But that plan had only gone so far and here I was...

  I looked at Isaac.

  “How do you intend to help your father?”

  “My group has this block and the ten square blocks around it.” The response was heavy with a young man’s macho pride. “Dad’s going to start his comeback by playing the local clubs again. Leon’s already said he could play his place.”

  “Is that what you were doing there at Leon’s this afternoon?” I asked Stomper. “Lining up a gig?”

  Stomper nodded.

  “Leon was surprised as hell to see me after all these years,” he chuckled. “I told him to keep it under his hat until I got things squared away. I guess he did. He’s married to my cousin, you know.”

  “Yeah, he mentioned that.”

  Blood is thicker. So is race. At least, it had been between Leon and me.

  I glanced back at Isaac. There was nothing even resembling trust in his eyes, but for the most part, he was keeping his thoughts inside in deference to his parent.

  I said, “Is it safe to expose your father like that? Those two guys tonight were pros. They could get luckier when it comes to your old man. There could be more of them.”

  Isaac’s angry expression tightened.

  “Let those dudes try for my father in my own territory. They’re welcome to what we’ll lay on them.”

  Stomper read my expression.

  “Don’t get the idea my Isaac’s in some neighborhood gang,” he said. “It’s a Neighborhood Action Group, they call it. There’s a whole world of difference. They’ve done plenty for this neighborhood: food relief, a day care center for kids whose folks have got to work, helping out teenagers on dope. They’re the new generation. They’ve got new ideas and the energy to back them up.”

  “No one’s questioning their motives,” I said. “But wasting whoever comes around to waste you is the wrong way to work it. Think of it. Your comeback and that violence will go hand-in-hand. Something like that always follows you, Stomper.”

  “We take care of our own on this end of town,” Isaac bristled defiantly.

  I ignored him and pressed at his father, “It’s something that could always be dug up and used against you. What this guy Hensman is offering you is a legitimate comeback. A ticket back into the recording studio. You’ve already got the name from the old days. Those scratchy old 45’s have been reissued a couple of times on albums.”

  Stomper said, “Well shoot, you think them who put out those albums should cut some bread my way, right? I mean, heck, ain’t it my music they’re selling?”

  “You’d think,” I said. “It’s called white-collar crime. But we can get our own lawyers and accountants to look into that for you. The point is, educated listeners know who you are and there are those out there who would be damn glad to see and hear something new from Stomper Crawford.”

  Stomper said, “Sure would be nice if you was right, white boy.”

  I kept at it. I said, “Let my friend Hensman produce a session. He’ll put up the money, but it’ll be your show. He’ll market the tapes to a label and you’ll be back in business.”

  Isaac had heard enough.

  “You know it ain’t going to be that easy. It never is.”

  I said, “I’m talking about a goal for your father and a strategy to get there.”

  Isaac sneered. “Yeah, get him right out where some sucker can nail him. I say we start small. Isolate whoever it is that was trying to kill my dad. Nail them! Then Daddy will be free to do whatever he wants without having to look over his shoulder all his life. But we’ve got to do it here in the neighborhood where I can keep things covered. We’re strong here. Out there we’re vulnerable.”

  “By out there you mean out of the ghetto,” I said. “The ghetto is where the trouble started, remember, Isaac?” I looked back at Stomper. “Run it by me one more time,” I suggested. “Maybe Isaac and I can both help.”

  “Maybe you can at that,” the old man nodded. His voice had that deep phlegmy richness that was recognizable instantly from his old records, and he sounded like he was singing the blues lyric without musical accompaniment. “But I don’t see what good going over it again would do.”

  “That’s right,” said Isaac. “Tell it like it is.”

  “You think I haven’t been over it enough during the past eight years to last me a lifetime” said Stomper. “But it was dark. I didn’t see a thing and that’s God’s truth. I just wish these bad dudes would believe me.” His eyes got a faraway look. “I was the King of the Blues, is what they called me around Five Points. Then disco came in and the young kids who bought the records didn’t want to hear us old-timers anymore. But if I wasn’t a star, I could still draw them in my ‘hood, you best believe it. Yes sir, in the bars around Denver, they knew how good my band was! Yes, indeed. But then some joker with a fast knife had to take that away from me too.”

  I said, “You saw a man get wasted in the alley out back of Leon’s while you were taking a break. Didn’t Leon ever get curious and try to follow it up?”

  “Follow what up?” he sighed. “Whoever did it split after they fired those shots at us. I went over and saw that the dude they’d left behind was dead – his throat was cut ear to ear – and I went back inside to get Leon. Those boys knew their business. Two held him and the third did the cutting, and they cleaned up after themselves real neat and tidy when they were done. Wasn’t a damn thing to call the cops about.”

  “Not that they’d have given a damn,” growled Isaac. “It’s a tough couple of blocks down there after dark. Hookers, pimps, pushers, guys on junk. A lot of heavy stuff goes down. It could have been anything, what my father saw. The cops don’t like to come down to this end of town unless they have to. They don’t have to if it be just another couple of niggers killing each other.”

  “Somebody hung around on cleanup detail because they figured you saw a face,” I reminded them, as if they needed reminding. “The cops could have helped with that.”

  Stomper treated that remark as being too foolish – or idealistic – to deserve a response.

  He said, “I should have kept my mouth shut but I let the cat out of the bag with Leon. It’s just the way life is.” He added with resignation. “Word gets around.”’

  “So somebody started throwing bullets at you that night and you decided it was time to split town.”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” he grumbled.

  “And now you’re back.”

  Isaac’s eyes burned with belligerence.

  “Damn straight,” he added.

  I finished my thought with, “And here you are, right back where you were before you left. That is, if you go back to haunting the old neighborhood and playing the same old bars until they track you down and kill you. That is, if you’re right. I’m offering you a way out of that, Stomper.”

  Isaac said, “My father is through running.” He turned to his father, his voice taut with emotion. “Look here, Pop. Let’s send this dude packing back uptown where he belongs and where he came from. He’s bringing us nothing but trouble. Let me handle this thing for you, like we agreed. You know I can do it.”

  “I know you can, son,” said Stomper slowly. “But you’ve got to admit there’s some sense to what Mr. Kilroy is saying. If we’re open targets outside the ghetto, so are the boys who are after me. That could come together in a good way that would work for us. You did say you were a private detective, Mr. Kilroy?”

  I thought, Touchdown!

  I said, “I did and I am. Consider me your bodyguard, if you want me. Call it a payment for all the good times I’ve
had listening to your records. Every time I ever played one, I’d wonder what happened to you. Now that we’ve found you, I intend to keep you healthy. If something did happen to you now and Isaac didn’t do me in, Carl Hensman would. That’s a lot of incentive to keep you breathing.”

  The younger Crawford leapt to his feet. He could see which way the conversation was heading, and he didn’t like it. His hands were clenched, and you could almost feel the heat of his anger.

  He snarled at his father, “Ever since Mama died, it’s been just me and you. The whole time you were gone, whenever you contacted me, I always kept quiet about where you were, just like you wanted me to. You think that didn’t pull me apart inside with Mom? Now you’re back and I’ve kept quiet about that, too. All to help you.”

  Stomper’s eyes were somber and so was his voice. “I know how much you’ve done for me, son. I’ve tried to show that. I thought you knew it.”

  Isaac said, “Then why are you throwing in with the first honky dude off the street who walks in with a smooth line? How do you know he isn’t one of them?”

  “Now, Isaac—”

  But the kid was hot.

  He said, “Haven’t you been ripped off enough by every white man you ever signed a recording contract with? Isn’t that enough for you? Your record sales bought them Cadillacs while your own family had to wear rags. But you still fall for the same jive!”

  Then it was Crawford, Senior’s turn to growl.

  “That’ll be enough talk like that, Isaac. I respect Mr. Kilroy as an honest man and there’s truth to what he’s saying. I don’t see why the three of us can’t work together on this.”

  Isaac said, “We can’t work together because I don’t work with the enemy,” Then he turned one last snarl and glare on me. “Anything happens to this old man, I’m laying it on your shoulders, man. I’ll find you and kill you with my bare hands.”

  Then he spun on his heel and was gone. The door slammed behind him.

  The heat of his anger seemed to remain, a brittle, almost tangible thing in the stillness of the room.