Phoenix Noir (22 page)

Monk rose and put out his hand. “Thanks for seeing me.”

She pretended to be reading some paperwork and mumbled, “Uh-huh,” and didn’t proffer her hand again.

At the Raven’s Mill that night, Minerva “Minnie” Thaxton tore up a rendition of T-Bone Walker’s “Cold, Cold Feeling.” The club had been closed for years but several enterprising types, including a skateboarding champion turned brand name, had cleared up the title, then refurbished and reopened the place. There was money to be made on the nostalgia angle, and there were the loft dwellers trickling into the south side who knew all about the blues from public television.

The audience was more white and young than black and old, but the applause was genuine and the vibe mellow. She finished her first set with one of her own numbers, “The Heat of My Heart,” which showcased her searing riffs on guitar. Monk was allowed backstage as had been arranged, and after announcing himself, he entered Minnie Thaxton’s dressing room.

“Sheeeittt,” the big woman said, sipping more of the Stoli-over-ice Monk had been advised to bring. After introductions, she’d asked him to pour one for her and one for himself from the short dog he’d brought along. “That chick always did have her ways. Even back then when Nazeen and Hayzell were going around together, she was whispering in his ear about how he should go solo and whatnot.”

She took another dainty sip. Monk figured she could drink like that all night and not be affected.

“You know she was my manager for a while?”

“No, I didn’t know that.”

“Oh, yeah, Nazeen may be high-toned, but she can TCB, honey. She handles that fitness club hustle but puts on a few doo-wop concerts each year too. I play ’em, it’s good money.”

“She was your manager after Hayzell was killed?”

“Yeah,” she said, swirling the contents of her plastic cup. She tilted her head back. “That was some time around here. You from L.A. and I know about Watts in ’65 and all that, but black folks here in Phoenix, child, we caught double hell when it came time for us trying to get ours.” She shook her head. “Then, as now, this is Goldwater Country. It don’t matter he was part Jewish, that didn’t temper a goddamn thing. Don’t let them fancy golf courses over in Scottsdale or what they building round here fool you,” she shook a ringed finger at the wall, “there’s plenty of redneck cowboys left to remind you in case you get giddy.”

She cracked herself up and had another taste.

“I understand Hayzell died in his mother’s arms and you two were there. Is that why Nazeen Loveless is so sensitive about it? Watching him die?”

She put her feet up on a hassock and kicked off her heels. “I guess,” she sighed. “It messed her up bad when it happened. We all knew he was snorting up enough snow to coat the Rockies, but she wanted to believe she could help him. Well, she did for a time.” She licked her bottom lip. “Too bad he loved that shit more than her.”

“Burris Parchman was a replacement band member, wasn’t he?” Monk’s other task from Ardmore Antony was to clear up inconsistencies in the liner notes he was assembling. The producer also knew the eye couldn’t resist a juicy murder. The misguided and misunderstood fascinated Monk, for wasn’t he one of them? In understanding them, wasn’t this a method to better understand himself? He was as hooked on probing the psyche as Hayzell or any other cokehead was on his drug.

“Yeah, that Jheri Curl–head fool Burris sure could burn up that Hammond B-3. Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff didn’t shame him, I’ll tell you that. Coke wasted Hayzell, but it was tonic to Burris … Speaking of vices,” she jiggled the lonely ice in her cup at Monk, “hit me one more time ’fore my next set, dark and lovely.”

He did but refrained from refilling his supply. “So he and Hayzell were arguing in the recording studio?”

“That’s right.” She drank and chewed a piece of ice. “Used to be there was only Audio Recorders here in town when I got here in the early ’60s. But by then, nineteen and seventy-six, we had a couple of others, including Express Tracks. There was a break in taping and people, you know how they do, drift off, go outside and have a smoke, be it a regular cigarette or a border special.” She winked. “But these two go into this little room in the back and snort up. Seems Hayzell then accused Burris of stealing from his stash.”

“Did he?”

She made a face. “Sheee. Who knows with those two? But like I said, this is AZ and they don’t play around here. Sure, by then the Black Power thing was played out, but you gotta remember that the Sugar Kings had stepped out there after Hayzell heard Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” and got his head bent. Not to mention being high and getting inspired listening to Funkadelic and Sly Stone. Him and Burris even got into a little acid like them white boys cause they heard Hendrix and George Clinton had dropped some. So toward the end of ’71 we started experimenting. Doing some protest songs, for lack of a better word, in our concert mix. Songs about getting over. Sheeee.” She gulped what was left of her vodka. “We almost got shot in Flagstaff.”

“Hayzell carried the gun for protection?” Monk asked.

“Partly for the peckerwoods,” she allowed, “but he also dealt with bad folk on the road since he was always on the hunt for nose candy. Whatever the reason, way Burris tells it, their argument got out of hand and Hayzell pulls his roscoe. They wrestle and the gun gets knocked to the floor. Burris dives for it as Hayzell picks up a mike stand to brain him. Even when he wasn’t loaded, Hayzell did have something of a temper. I certainly remember several times when he’d go off on us after a gig for messing up the beat or coming in too slow or too fast on the bridge. He couldn’t read music, but goddamn his eyes if he didn’t have the most natural sense of timing I’ve ever witnessed.”

Thaxton had been one of the few women in that era making a living playing guitar. She gathered herself and added, “Burris had the gun. One shot and Hayzell went down, a fatal wound to his chest. We come rushing in, and at that precise moment his mother arrived to surprise him and take him to lunch. It had been weeks since he’d been back in Phoenix, you see.”

She finished her drink and plopped the cup down noisily on the dressing table.

“Parchman is tried for second-degree voluntary manslaughter. He does five years and some change at Safford.” She slipped her shoes back on and straightened her stylish wig. “It almost killed him, but Hayzell’s daddy did a magnificent service for his only son.” A quaver went through her voice but she remained clear-eyed.

“You know where I could find Burris?”

A mirthless laugh rumbled in her chest. “You gotta un-derstand, when he got out he tried coming back on the scene. But it was strange, follow me?”

“Him being the killer of Hayzell Mumford, the south side’s own. Whatever the circumstances.”

“Exactly. He was off the blow but hit rock bottom with the booze. He’d get gigs but it didn’t take long for some fool or another to bring up the incident and he’d be getting more attention than he wanted.”

“Like a regulator in the Old West who could never outrun his rep,” Monk observed.

“Now, could be I heard he was up Oakland way last I no-tioned on it. But,” she sighed, “that’s been a long damn time too. At least ten years.” She held out her hand. “Help me up, baby. I need to get back out there and entertain.”

There was a knock on the door and a trim bespectacled man in his early forties leaned his head in. “Five minutes, Minnie,” he said, grinning at her and frowning at Monk. He wore a houndstooth sport coat.

“Okay, honey,” she replied, blowing him a kiss. He withdrew but left the door slightly ajar.

Thaxton stretched and said, “I’ll have my man go over these papers and we’ll be in touch with Ardmore.”

“Great, I appreciate your time.”

“Not a problem.”

Monk departed and was at the side exit door when the man with the glasses stopped him.

“What’d you want with Minnie?”

Monk told him, assessing him as a protective younger boyfriend.

“Hey, that sounds like a winner,” the guy enthused when Monk got to the part about the proposed agreement for Thax-ton’s songs. “Let me give you my card. I’m Minnie’s manager.”

Monk guessed there’d been a succession of “sturdy mens” in his age range as her managers. He glanced at Charles Es-tes’s card while handing the man one of his own. “Good to meet you.”

“You know, my uncle wrote a couple of songs when he was a Sugar King. But maybe you’re not going to include him because of what happened. Really, it’s messed up what they laid on him.”

“Your uncle is Burris Parchman?” Monk said.

“He’s not really blood, but our families have known each other a long time. My dad and him went to the same grade school.”

“Charles, get over here,” Minnie Thaxton called out, standing before her dressing room door.

Estes grinned sheepishly at Monk. “Her majesty needs me.”

“What about your uncle?”

“Holler at me tomorrow, man. My celly’s on the card.”

He rushed away and Monk returned to the Ramada Inn on First. After all these years chasing chuckleheads, from the common street thug to the truly flagitious, and getting socked in the head or worse for his trouble, he was still on a budget. It was hard being the People’s Detective, he lamented.

Early the next day, Charles Estes called Monk, who was drinking coffee at a local café. “Hey, man, sorry I kind of misrepresented matters last night. Truth is, I haven’t seen Burris in a long time. I don’t know where he could be.”

“Maybe somebody in your family might know.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” and the line went dead.

That was a kiss-off. Thaxton must have told Estes to get the party line right. Why didn’t she want him talking to Burris Parchman? It must have something to do with the shooting. Phoenix was unknown territory to him. But he had a day left on the room that Antony was paying for, and figured he’d use the time productively.

At the main library on Central, an imposing five-story rectangular structure seemingly modeled on a space-age toaster, he went through collected bound hard copy and microfiche newspaper accounts of the shooting. He studied the coverage in the black newspaper, the
Arizona Sun
, and the white press too, including the
Herald Examiner
in L.A. The pieces contained various mentions of the pioneering civil rights work of Hayzell Mumford’s parents, the Reverend Asa Fairchild Mumford and Dr. Justine Mumford, PhD in social anthropology. From World War Two and Jim Crow–divided Fort Hua-chuca, where the reverend was an officer not inclined to bow and scrape to whites, to the early ’90s, the Mumfords were a driving force in various struggles for social justice. From job equality in the public sphere, school betterment for minority students, and housing integration in the greater Phoenix area, they’d been at the center of many pivotal moments of change in the state.

On July 4, 1976, during the nation’s bicentennial, Phoenix, like a lot of cities, put on a large parade and celebration. The Mumfords were to be honored, and, Monk noted in one account, the Sugar Kings were slated to perform. But it had been the week before that the fight had taken place at the studio, so naturally that segment of the festivities had been canceled.

From what Monk could gather, the reverend was not a fan of his son’s avocation. “I cannot be reconciled with Hayzell’s pursuit of these most temporal and tempting of concerns,” Mumford was quoted. Another article contained, “I can only continue to pray that the Lord will guide him out of this episode of his life and return him to the fold.”

More recent online searches showed that the father had died in 1998. The partisans who attended the funeral included Harry Belafonte, Oliver Stone, who at that time was trying to get a film made about the Mumfords, and former Congressman Gus Hawkins, the first black man elected to the California legislature. Monk then read a quote from Nazeen Loveless in the
Examiner
:

One shot and Hayzell goes down, a fatal wound to his chest. We came rushing in, and at that moment, precisely, his mother arrived to surprise him because she wanted to take him to lunch. It had been weeks since he’d been back in Phoenix.

Monk did an eyebrow raise worthy of Spock. He then searched for references to Parchman. There were no articles about him online except for the time during the shooting. But looking back at the bound hard copies of the black newspaper, he spotted several ads for local clubs where Burris was listed as a headliner. The last one was from 2004. That was just a few years back, indicating he was still active, at least then, in the Phoenix area. Loveless and Thaxton had said Parchman had disappeared before that. Maybe he snuck into town and left promptly. Or maybe not.

Burris Parchman wasn’t listed in the white pages, and though Monk called several music booking agents, he got nada. He did find a listing for the Mumfords’ church, Greater First Congregational Methodist on East Jefferson, once the heart of the black community’s south side.

“Yes, you see,” Monk told the helpful woman over the phone, “I’m wondering for the purposes of this documentary we’re putting together if we could interview Mrs. Mumford. I realize she retired some time ago. Is there a way you can get her a message?”

“I would like to help you,” she said. “Justine would love to participate, only …”

“Yes?” Monk said in a solicitous tone. What sort of bad ju-ju was he racking up lying to a good woman like this?

“She’s been under the weather,” the woman said in a way that suggested Mrs. Mumford wasn’t simply suffering from a cold. She was in her eighties, after all. “Let me see what I can do. Give me a number to reach you at, would you?”

He gave her his cell number and the one to his office in Los Angeles, then hung up.

Monk walked about downtown, came upon a barbecue rib and chicken joint, and had a late lunch. It was past 2 and still over a hundred degrees of dry heat. His cell chimed as he swallowed a bite of tri-tip sandwich. After his hello, a quiet voice said, “My name’s Burris Parchman. I hear you’ve been looking for me.”

“Oh, yes, sir. Who told you?”

“Charley did. Course, he also convinced me to let him resurrect my so-called career. Once the Sugar Kings compilation comes out, he said he’d be able to get me some new gigs.” He had a rumble of a laugh like the organ he played. “Well, one thing at a time, I guess.”