Key Witness (36 page)

The jazz scene in the city had gradually evaporated in the last two decades. All the old, established clubs had died out. Lack of patronage, uneasiness about crime in the areas where most of the clubs had been located, the paucity of a core group of younger fans—the market wasn’t there anymore, certainly not for the nationally known players. Wyatt couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a straight-up local jazz joint.

Trombone and tenor, his two favorite instruments. Sit back, have a few drinks, listen to some good music. This was a hopeful sign, that there was a new club in town. It wouldn’t hurt to throw it his business, help keep it open.

It had been several years since he’d been in the area where the club was located, and it wasn’t as he’d remembered it. No longer mixed (meaning a smattering of white families), it was solidly black, the only exceptions being a few stores with Asian lettering on the fronts. Vietnamese or Thai, it looked like. The stores were closed, protected from break-ins by heavy steel-chain awnings pulled down and locked into the concrete sidewalk. This city is so balkanized now, he thought as he drove down the avenue, looking for the address he’d scribbled on a Post-it. During the day—walking the downtown streets, at work, in stores and restaurants—you saw whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, all bumping up against each other, asshole to elbow; but once the sun went down they all went back to their own little enclaves, and the drawbridges were pulled up.

He turned left off the avenue onto a narrower side street that was part apartment buildings, part stores. It took some concentration finding the right street—he had to take several left turns and a few rights, doubling back on his tracks a couple of times, before he found his place. The club was halfway down the block, a converted shop of some kind. A large plate-glass display-type window, protected by wrought-iron bars, fronted the sidewalk, covered with an ersatz black-velvet curtain with a likeness of Miles Davis in the center. Above the door the maroon awning proclaimed
The Jazz Table
in white stenciled-on script.

There was a space big enough for his car across the street, a few doors down. He parked and locked the car and crossed over toward the club. Half a dozen black men, middle-aged and nattily dressed, were standing around outside the entrance, talking and smoking cigarettes. They looked like the kind of men who had been hanging around jazz clubs for as long as he could remember.

He pushed open the heavy wooden door and went inside. To his left as he entered was a long bar, with high stools in front of it. The rest of the room was taken up with tables for four, covered with white tablecloths. Each table had a candle in a hurricane-style holder and a single rose in a glass flute in the center. The bandstand was set up to his right, behind the window with the velvet curtain. A small upright white piano, a drum kit, and a stand-up bass laid down on its side were at the back, and the trombone and tenor were on stands down front. A Sonny Rollins chart he recognized but couldn’t name came out of the jukebox.

He checked out the trombone. A Yamaha, the same kind J. J. Johnson played.

He looked around to get his bearings. The place was about threequarters full, more men than women, but enough women to make it feel smooth, cozy. There were a few younger customers, men who looked like they would be devotees of Joshua Redman and Wynton Marsalis, but most of the patrons were his age or older. Old-time jazz fans, like himself.

There were only three other white people in the place, in a group. They looked like regulars. For a moment he felt uncomfortable, as if he were an intruder, but that passed—he had been in jazz bars before where there hadn’t been many white faces. That’s how it was. He loved jazz and they loved jazz, that’s all that counted.

A young woman sitting behind a table by the door, reading a college chemistry textbook, hit him up for a five-dollar cover charge. He handed her a ten. As she gave him his change she stared at him, a puzzled look on her face. “Have you been in here before?” she asked.

“No.”

“You look familiar somehow,” she said. “I thought you might have been.”

“No, I’ve never been here.”

He walked down the length of the bar. As he was making his way through the room a few people, as the covercharge girl had done, took a closer look at him. He could have told them that they had seen him on television. That he was the lawyer for the man accused of those murders. A young man from their own community. Over time, as this trial became a big celebrity shindig, with the lawyers trying the case in the media, his face would be familiar to everyone, including the denizens of this establishment. For now he was happy with his anonymity. He found an empty barstool near the back and parked his behind.

“What’ll you have?” The bartender, a barrel-shaped man with an unlit cigarillo tucked behind his ear, sidled up to him.

He was tempted to say “Scotch and milk”—legend had it that’s what Coltrane drank—but he thought that would be an affectation, and he didn’t know if he’d like it. “Johnnie Black with a splash. Club soda back.”

“Ice?”

“A couple.”

The bartender set his drinks in front of him. The man poured a generous shot—the thick old-fashioned glass was almost full. He made change from Wyatt’s twenty, which Wyatt let ride on the bar, pushing a dollar forward for the tip. Hoisting his glass to the bartender in salute, he took a sip.

Mother’s milk. He’d have to watch himself—two drinks tonight would be his limit. He had to drive back to the hotel through unfamiliar streets, and he had a ton of work to do tomorrow.

The quintet reassembled on the bandstand. The tenor man was the leader—he made a few remarks, thanking everyone for coming out tonight, made a couple of jokes, then put his horn to his mouth and counted out four beats with his foot. The group started playing an old classic, “Stella by Starlight.”

Wyatt sat at the bar, eyes closed, his foot tapping against the railing in time. Grooving with the rhythm. He’d forgotten how much he loved this life, these sounds.

He stayed throughout the hour-long set. When they broke, and the musicians ambled over to the bar to chat up the customers and order their drinks, he struck up a conversation with the trombonist. The man was a few years older than he, and had played with the Basie band for a brief time in the sixties. They compared axes—his Bach, the trombonist’s Yamaha (“It’s the easiest horn in the world to pick up cold and play, which is important when your gigs are as infrequent as mine are now”), vintage Kings and Conns. Clubs on both coasts they’d been to, some of which the professional had played in. They sat there at the bar, talking like old chums, until it was time for the trombonist to go back to work.

Wyatt had planned to leave after one set, but now that he’d made the connection with the ’bone player he decided to stick around for a few more tunes. He nursed a drink, listening to the music, occasionally looking over the other patrons.

The group was good. They had been playing together a long time, he figured. The way they moved in and out of each other’s solos, the piano comping on the breaks, the drum and bass keeping everything level, driving. No one was paying him any attention—he had faded into the scenery. If someone was heading to the bathroom, which was located at the rear, they glanced over as they passed by him. He smiled pleasantly, and most of the time they would acknowledge him. No one frowned or gave him the impression that he was trespassing.

The music, the Scotch going down easy, the dark smoky low-ceilinged ambience, it all made for a warm, comfortable, seductive experience. He was feeling horny; for his wife, and for other women, too. He hadn’t been horny like this for some time. Maybe it was because he and Moira were on the outs and were having sex hardly at all the past couple of months. He thought about her, then about Josephine, and about women sitting here with their men. Women.

This was another aspect of the changes he was going through. Switching the kind of work he did was the tip of the iceberg; a symptom, not a cause. He was going to have to be careful about how he handled some of these changed feelings, especially on the sexual front.

“Last call.”

He came out of his thoughts. The bartender was leaning on the bar. He looked at his watch: 1:15. He had completely lost track of the time. The band was starting on their final song; less than a dozen people were still in the club.

How many drinks had he had? Only a couple, he thought, yet when he looked at his change lying on the bar from his twenty there were only a few bills left. He must have had more than a couple, without thinking about it.

He felt fine. His head was clear, he wasn’t at all tired. He had been carried away by the music, and time had literally flown.

“Any chance of getting an Irish coffee?” The caffeine wouldn’t be enough to keep him awake, but it would help him stay alert on the drive back to the hotel.

“No problem.” There was a half-filled pot of coffee warming on a hot plate on the backbar. “Don’t see too many of your type in here,” the barman said, placing the hot drink on a coaster in front of Wyatt. They were the first words he had spoken to Wyatt all evening, except to ask if he wanted another Scotch. “That’ll be four dollars.”

Wyatt slid him a five and held up his hand to signify that he didn’t need change. The bartender rang his drink up on the register, poured himself a shot glass of cognac.

“I don’t get down this way often.” Wyatt looked around. “It’s a nice room. And I like the group. They cook.” When was the last time he had used the expression “They cook”? College, maybe.

“Yeah, they’re good,” the bartender agreed.

Wyatt finished his drink. “It’s been a pleasure.”

“Come on back, then.”

“Thanks. I will.”

The band finished their last song and played a sixteen-bar coda tag. The houselights came on.

“Thank you one and all,” the tenor player said into the microphone, which went dead in midsentence. “And take it cool getting home.”

Standing up, Wyatt felt a momentary dizziness from sitting for hours without moving. He thought about going to the bathroom before driving back, but he’d gone once, during the break. As he walked out the door the trombone player gave him a raised finger in salute, and he nodded back and smiled.

The cool night air hit him with a rush. He stood on the sidewalk, swaying, taking in a healthy gulp. Around him people were leaving, saying their good-nights to each other, making their way down the street. Wyatt walked to his car. The street was empty now, not a soul in sight. Long shadows cast by the overhead streetlights gave the scene an Edward Hopper feeling.

He got in the Jag, maneuvered a U-turn, and headed back toward the center of the city. Tomorrow night, when he went home, he’d spend a couple of hours with his trombone. Listening to the sounds tonight and talking to his fellow trombonist had gotten him energized about making his own music.

A couple rights, a couple lefts—this didn’t look familiar. After fumbling around to get here he thought he knew his way back from the club, but this definitely was not a street he had been on before.

He was feeling the effects of the alcohol. Two Heinekens, three Scotches in the bar (maybe four, he’d lost track?), the Irish coffee. Plus he had been up almost twenty hours. He wasn’t drunk, not even high; a light buzz. Just enough that he was disoriented as to his directions.

Lombard Avenue, the main thoroughfare he had taken to get down here, had to be to his left, which would be west—he knew he was heading in a vaguely northward path, because the tall high-rises of the center-city area could be seen glowing that way, some miles off. Swinging the car around in another U-turn, he took off back down the street, then turned right.

He didn’t know this street, either. But he knew enough to sense that he didn’t want to be on it. It was completely dark—all the streetlights were out. Shot out or burned out, he didn’t know. It felt like a shot-out kind of street.

This wasn’t good. He needed to get out of this area. He checked his doors to make sure they were locked.

At the end of the block he hesitated, looking out the windshield in both directions. North didn’t look promising; he’d already been there. South, then west. That had to lead him to where he wanted to go. He turned right.

Before he had gone a block he knew that he’d made another mistake. This street was a dead-end, a cul-de-sac. He could see where it terminated a block away, ending at a high cinder-block wall covered with spray-painted gang graffiti.

This is like being in an English box-garden, he thought, the kind that is cut like a maze. That trapped, claustrophobic feeling.
Alice in Wonderland.

Turning around and heading the opposite way, he saw some lights on at the end of the street to his right—an all-night 7-Eleven. They’d be able to give him directions out.

He parked directly in front, locked the car, and went inside. For a moment he thought it was empty; there were no customers at this late hour, and there didn’t seem to be a clerk, either. It was well after midnight and he was lost in a section of town he had no business being in.

The clerk was in the back, restocking the refrigerated section. A young, tall, thin mocha-colored man with a headful of dreadlocks and a pair of John Lennon-style granny glasses. He did a literal double take when he saw Wyatt standing at his front counter.

“You want something?” the clerk asked suspiciously.

“I’m lost,” Wyatt explained. “I need to get back to center city. Lombard Avenue would be the way I know.”

“How’d you get down here?” There was an edge to the question.

“I drove.”

“Yeah, of course. I mean …”

“The reason? To hear some music. A place called the Jazz Table. It’s not far from here.”
What difference does it make? Just tell me how to get the hell out of here.

“Shit, man. How’d you get here from there?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t be here.”

The clerk nodded as if Wyatt had imparted a heavy truth. “Yeah, okay. Okay … pull out of here, hang a right, then another right, then go two blocks to Dover Street, you got that?”