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“No.”
“Do you remember a green Buick in the lot last night?”
“No.”
“Do your kitchen workers hang out in the lot?”
“Man, my kitchen people is too busy to hang out anyplace.”
“What about your hostesses? They sell it outside after you close?”
“Man, you are out of your bailiwick and way out of line.”
Da
Da
The drummer answered him. “Marty’s clean. Just took the cure.”
A lead—if it wasn’t one ex-con ru
The sax player snorted. “Years’ worth, but he kicked.”
“Where?”
“Lex. Lexington State Hospital in Kentucky. This about Marty’s parole?”
Da
Three clean reactions: the trumpeter scared, most likely afraid of cops on general principles; the drummer trembling; the sax man spooked, but coming back mad. “We all gots alibis, ‘case you don’t already know.”
Da
The sax said, “Marty was a fuckin’ cipher. All I knew about him was that he hung up his Quentin parole, that he was so hot to kick he went to Lex as a fuckin’ absconder. Big balls if you asks me— that’s a Fed hospital, and they mighta run warrant checks on him. Fuckin’ cipher. None of us even knew where he was stayin’.”
Da
“What?”
“Marty told me he had to meet a guy after the midnight set, and I saw him walking across the street to the Zombie parking lot.”
“Did he mention a name?”
“No, just a guy.”
“Did he say anything else about him? What they were going to do—anything like that?”
“No, and he said he’d be coming right back.”
“Do you think he was going to buy dope?”
The saxophone player bored into Da
Boos erupted from the audience; paper debris hit Da
The night air cooled his sweat and made him shiver; pulsating neon assaulted his eyes. Little bursts of music melded together like one big noise and the nigger sleepwalker atop the Club Zombie looked like doomsday. Da
The doorman backed off from his badge and let him in to four walls of smoke and dissonant screeching—the combo at the front of the room heading toward a crescendo. The bar was off to the left, shaped like a coffin and embossed with the club’s sleepwalker emblem. Da
The barkeep placed a napkin in front of him. Da
The bartender said, “Two spot for the drinks.”
Da
Squinting, the man said, “Is this guy older now? Maybe a different haircut?”
“These are six years old. Seen him?”
The barman took glasses from his pocket, put them on and held the mugshots out at arm’s length. “Does he blow around here?”
Da
“I mean does he gig, jam, play music around here?”
“Trombone at Bido Lito’s.”
The barman snapped his fingers. “Okay, I know him then. Marty something. He juices between sets at Bido’s, been doing it since around Christmas, ‘cause the bar at Bido’s ain’t supposed to serve the help. Hungry juicer, sort of like—”
Like you. Da
“Yeah, on the street. Him and another guy heading over to a car down by the corner on 67th. Looked like he had a load on. Maybe…”
Da
“Maybe a junk load. You work jazz clubs awhile, you get to know the ropes. This Marty guy was walking all rubbery, like he was on a junk nod. The other guy had his arm round him, helping him over to the car.”
Da
Customers were starting to swarm the bar—Negro men in modified zoot suits, their women a half step behind, all made up and done up to look like Lena Horne. The barkeep looked at his business, then back at Da
Da
Coleman reached over the bar, grabbed two handfuls of ice and pressed them to his face. Da
“Talk to this police gentleman here, he’ll tell you.”
Da
Da
The men shook. “Coleman Healy, late of Cleveland, Chicago and the planet Mars. Marty in trouble?”
The bourbon made Da
Healy’s face contorted. Da
Healy’s face was now gaunt, slack under his beard. “Chewed the fat with him a couple of times around Christmas, right here at this bar. Just repop—Bird’s new record, the weather. You got an idea who did it?”