“Thanks for what?”
“For saving my ass back there, I guess.”
“I owed you one, man. Now we’re square.”
“You owed me one.”
“I did.”
Junior pushed up on the brim of his hat. He dragged on the reefer cigarette, kept the smoke in his lungs. He held the reefer out to Karras. Karras liked the smell of it, rough and overpowering but at the same time pleasing and sweet. But Karras had no desire to give it a try. He shook his head.
“Some other time.”
Junior exhaled, blew ash off the reefer cigarette. “Suit yourself.”
Karras followed the cord to its outlet, flush but unframed against the wood. “Nice work on running that line. You do it yourself?”
“I wouldn’t touch it myself. You know what they say about us colored boys, don’t you? There’s only two things we afraid of: alligators and electricity.”
Karras smiled, chin-nodded the phonograph. “What are we listening to?”
“Cat by the name of Charlie Parker. On the Dial label.”
“I mean, what do you call this kind of music?”
Junior grinned. “Call it Jazz.”
“Jazz. Swing music, you mean?”
“Naw, man, I ain’t talkin’ about no swing. I’m talkin’ about jazz. Hard bop, Karras. Head music. Kind of music, you can’t really read it straight off. Real crazy, man, like any damn thing can happen, but beautiful that way, ’cause you don’t know where it’s goin’. Like life itself.”
Karras scratched his chin. “I saw Harry James once.”
Junior, suddenly animated, leaned forward in his chair. “Harry James? Shoot, Karras, James and the Dorsey Brothers and Stan Kenton and any other of those gray faces you care to name, you know they don’t know nothin’. And everything they do know, they copped from Mr. Louis Armstrong and Mr. Fletcher Henderson. You can believe that. Now, you wanna stick to the big band sound, you go on and stick to it, that’s up to you. But if you’re gonna listen to that swingin’ orchestra thing, you might as well go on and listen to Duke Ellington, or the Count.”
“I’m just ignorant, I guess.”
“Naw, you ain’t ignorant. But you only know what you done heard. And you ain’t heard nothin’, not until you heard a man who can blow like Bird.”
“Your boss said you’re into that New York sound.”
“Well, seems like I’m up there every chance I get. I was up there Christmas Eve past, the night Miles Davis stepped down from Bird’s quintet, and Kenny Dorham stepped in his place. Saw Ted Dameron’s outfit at the Royal Roost, up there on Broadway and Forty-eighth. Been to Bop City, and the Clique. I even do a little dancin’ sometimes at the Savoy, on Lenox at One-fortieth. They got a dance floor there, must be a city block long. And everywhere I go—” Junior patted the briefcase at his feet — “my records and this here portable-model phonograph go with me. But don’t let me give you the impression that I don’t dig what we got goin’ on here in D.C. ’Cause we got our own sound here, too. Yes we do. Got musicians comin’ out of this town, good ones, people like Earle Swope. Swope, with that trombone of his, climbed on down into the city from up in Hagerstown, he’s got that Southern style of playin’, real relaxed. You won’t find a trombone sound quite like his anywhere else, I’ll tell you that. Uh-uh, man. Earl Swope can play.”
“You know, you’re makin’ me feel like I been tucked away all these years in my own world.”
“Don’t worry, man. You got your own thing, that’s all. I jus’ been tucked away in my own thing, too.” Junior leaned forward. “Sure you don’t want none of this tea?”
“I don’t use it. And I got a night ahead of me still.” Karras stood. “One thing’s botherin’ me, though — you said you owed me one. How could that be? I don’t even know you. Junior.”
“You just don’t recall that you do. But you do. I met you one time, ’bout fifteen years back or so. We weren’t nothin’ but kids.”
“What’s your full name?”
“Round my way — in Bloodfield, that is — they called me Junior Oliver.”
“I don’t—”
“Me and my boys, one summer day, we rumbled you and yours over on a field around Fifth. You had me dead to rights, right up on me. You coulda beat hell out of me. But you backed off. You let me go. I owed you one, Karras. Now we done squared things up.”
Karras shook his head. “I still don’t remember. How’d you recognize me, anyway?”
Junior Oliver smiled. “By those blue eyes of yours, and that fucked-up mark on your face. You had it then, and you still got it. I never saw too many white boys when I was a kid. You and that mark, it stuck with me.”
Karras touched the mole with his finger. “I’ll be goddamned.”
“Head music, Karras. The shit is plain crazy, sometimes.”
Karras put his hands in his pockets. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“I doubt it,” said Junior. “Most time, you and me be walkin’ through two different worlds. This thing here tonight? This was just an accident.”
Karras turned and pushed through the screen door. He took the steps down to the cobblestones, cut right. He quickened his pace. The colored jazz trailed him and faded as he limped down the dark alley.
Out on the street, Karras hooked his forefinger and pinky in his mouth, whistled for a cab. A yellow Dodge pulled over and Karras climbed inside.
“Where to, pal?”
“Shaw,” said Karras.
“Express, or you wanna see the monuments?”
“Fourteenth and R.” Karras dropped a one over the front seat. “Make it fly.”
32
Jimmy Boyle picked up the ringing phone.
“Hello?”
“Officer Boyle?”
“Go ahead.”
“Matty Buchner.”
“Buchner. What’s up?”
“Somethin’ maybe. I don’t know. Somethin’s been botherin’ me since Friday night. It might be nothin’, but—”
“Talk, Goddamnit.”
“Why, you don’t have to be so impatient.”
“I got the caffeine shakes, is all it is. I’m tellin’ you, I’m just plain jumpy.”
“Well, let me tell it from the beginning. I was in this bar the other night—”
“What bar?”
“Jeez, officer, I don’t remember.”
“So you were running some cold-finger action in a bar. Listen, Matty, I’m gonna get it from you anyway—”
“All right, I was in the Hi-Hat. Now can I just tell it?”
“Go ahead.”
“So I’m in the bar, minding my own business, enjoying a cocktail or two, and I overhear this conversation between this customer and the house tender. The customer, he’s ordering up a punchboard through the tender, who’s nothing more than a pimp who builds drinks on the side.”
“Keep talking.”
“I wouldn’t ’a thought anything of it, see, but this customer, when he’s giving the bartender his order, he asks him to make sure the broad’s a big one. A big one, just like him. What with that murder on Friday night, I don’t know, I thought the two things might connect.”
“Why?”
“On account of the dead punchboard was a big one. And it’s on the street already that this one went like all the others.”
“When’d you say this was?”
“Friday evening.”
“You gotta speak up, Buchner. You know I got a dead ear.”
“All right.”
“Describe the customer.”
“Big and round and ugly. Wears clothes real neat and clean, like — whad’ya call that? — a dandy. Not the criminal type, if you ask me — the guy doesn’t look like your average yegg.”
“What else?”
“Here’s the part that’s drivin’ me nuts. The guy reminded me of some character actor. At first I thought it was Victor Mature, but I knew straight off that the guy was too ugly to remind me of Mature. And then it hit me yesterday: This actor I was thinkin’ of, he was in a picture with Mature, see?”
“What picture?”
“I can recall the story, but for the life of me, I can’t remember the title of the pic. There’s this guy, see — Vic Mature — and he’s in love with this dame who gets scratched.”
“Who’s the actress?”
“Carole Landis is the one gets murdered. My God, Landis has this set of tits on her like—”
“Go on, Matty.”
“So Mature, he falls in love with Landis’s sister, played by Betty Grable. It’s the only picture I ever saw Grable in where she didn’t sing. Anyhow, there’s this cop, he’s after Mature for the murder, even though Mature, you know from the start he didn’t chill Landis. But this cop is screwsville over pinning the crime on Mature. He can’t let go of it. In the end, you see the cop, he’s gone over the deep end with his obsession. He’s built a shrine in his apartment to Landis, like a church or somethin’, with candles and shit, the whole nine yards.”
“Who plays the cop?”
“I don’t know! I seen him in a lot of pictures, but I don’t remember his name. Funny thing is, he killed himself a couple of years ago, on account of he couldn’t live with being so ugly and fat. Ugly and fat, officer, like this character I saw in the bar the other night.”
“You didn’t happen to lift this guy’s wallet, did you, Matty?”
“Ixnay. I wouldn’t of thought of such a thing in a million years.”
“Matty—”
“And anyway, he never checked his coat.”
“I’m gonna get back to you on this.”
“Always happy to keep you up on things.”
“You think of the name of that actor, you let me know.”
“Believe me, it’s killin’ me that I can’t.”
“You just keep thinkin’.”
Boyle racked the phone. He looked across his apartment to the hall mirror. He’d had the appetite of a bird for the last week, and he’d lost a good ten pounds. His cheeks looked drawn, and black circles ringed his hollow eyes.
Boyle went to the bathroom, got his pep pills from the shelf. He palmed one into his mouth, threw his head back, dry-swallowed the pill. He’d felt himself notch down in the middle of his talk with Buchner. The pill, that would shoot him back up; if he was going to catch a break now, he’d need all the energy he could get.