The Howling Man (41 page)

He was a scrawny white kid with junkie eyes and no place for his hands, but he had the look. The way he ankled past the tables, all alone by himself; the way he yanked the stool out, then, and sat there doing nothing: you could tell. He wasn't going to the music, The music had to come to him. And he could wait.

Max said, "High?"

I shook my head. You get that way off a fresh needle, but then you're on the nod: everything's upbeat. "Goofers, maybe," I said, but I didn't think so.

"Put a nickel in him, Deck," Max said, softly. "Turn him on."

I didn't have to. The kid's hands crawled up and settled on the keys. They started to walk, slow and easy, taking their time. No intro. No chords. Just, all of a sudden, music. It was there all the while, Poppa-san, how come you didn't notice?

I couldn't hear a hell of a lot through all the lip-riffs in that trap, but a little was plenty. It was real sound, sure enough, and no accident. The Deacon had been dead right. Blues, first off: the tune put down and then brushed and a lot of improvising on every note; then finally, all of them pulled into the melody again, and all fitting. It was gut-stuff, but the boy had brains and he wasn't ashamed of them.

Max didn't say anything. He kept his eyes closed and his ears open, and I knew he was hooked. I only hoped it wouldn't be the same old noise again. We'd gone through half a dozen box men in a year.

Not like this one, though.

The kid swung into some chestnuts, like "St. James Infirmary" and "Bill Bailey," but what he did to them was vicious. St. James came out a place full of spiders and snakes and screaming broads, and Bailey was a dirty bastard who left his woman when she needed him most. He played "Stardust" like a Boy Scout helping a cripple across the street. And you want to know something about "Sweet Georgia Brown?" Just another seedy hustler too tired to turn a trick, that's all.

Of course, nobody knew what he was doing. To the customers, those smears and slides and minor notes were only mistakes; or maybe the ears didn't even notice.

"What's his name?" Max said.

"David Green."

"Ask him to come over when he's through."

I sliced my way past the crowd, tapped the kid's shoulder, told him who I was. His eyes got a little life in them. Not much.

"Max Dailey's here," I said. "He wants some words."

Eight notes and you wouldn't touch "Laura" with a ten-foot pole. "Okay," the kid said.

I went back. He dropped the knife for a while and played "Who," straight, or pretty straight. The way I'd heard it the night before, anyway, when it was too hot to sleep and I'd gone out for that walk. Funny thing about a box: a million guys can hammer it, they can play fast and hit all the notes and transpose from here to Wednesday. But out of that million, you'll find maybe one who gets it across. And like as not he can't play fast and won't budge out of C. Davy Green wasn't what you'd call a virtuoso, exactly. He didn't hit all the notes. Only the right ones.

After a while he came over and sat down.

Max grabbed his paw. "Mr. Green," he said, "you are a mess of fingers."

The kid nodded; it could have been "Thanks."

"You don't do a whole lot, but it's mostly good. The Deacon likes it." He took off his sunglasses and folded them real slow. "I'm a tight man with a compliment, Mr. Green," he said. "Rebop with the mouth, that passes the time of day, but I'm here for other reasons."

A chick in a green sarong popped out of the smoke. She had a little here and a little there. "Cents?"

"Bushmill's and soda," Max said, "and if you don't carry it, Bushmill's and nothing. Mr. Green?"

"Same, whatever it is," he said.

My cue: I got up and killed the rest of my Martini. Max always liked to business solo. "Gotta make a phone call, boss," I said. "Meet you outside."

"Good enough."

I told the kid maybe we'd see him around and he said, sure, maybe, and I took a fade.

Outside it was hot and wet, the way it gets in NO. I wandered up one side of Bourbon, down the other, lamping the broads. Tried a joint, but the booze was watered and the dancer didn't know. A pint-sized you-all with a nervous tic and rosy cheeks. She came on like a pencil sharpener. I blew the place.

Jazz might have been born in New Orleans, but it left home a long time ago.

Max was waiting in front of the Gotcha Club: he wasn't smiling, he wasn't frowning. We walked some blocks. Then, in that whispery-soft voice of his, he said: "Deck, I think maybe we have us a box."

I felt proud, oh yes; that's how I felt. "Cuckoo."

"Got to be handled right, though. The kid has troubles. Great troubles." He grinned. It was the kind of a grin a hangman might flash at a caught killer, but I didn't know that. I didn't even know there'd been a crime. All I thought was, the Band of Angels has got ten new fingers.

We broke at the pad, but the train didn't leave till eight the next p.m., so I had a party by myself. It didn't help. I dreamed all night about that little girl, and I kept hitting her with the car and backing up and hitting her and watching her bleed.

Funny part was, once it wasn't me in the car, it was Max, and the little girl was David Green . . .

The kid hooked up with us in Memphis. No suitcase, same clothes, same eyes. We were doing a five-nighter at the Peacock Room, going pretty good but nothing to frame on the wall. Davey eared a set and tapped Max's bass. "So I'm here," he said. "Want me to sit it?"

Max said no. "You listen. After the bit, then we'll talk."

Kid shrugged. Either he didn't give a damn or he was elsewhere. "Hello, Mr. Jones," he said.

"Hello, Mr. Green," I said. Brilliant stuff. He slumped into a chair, stuck his head on his arms and that was it.

Nobody was hot, so we played some standard dance tunes and faked a jam session and sort of piddled around until two. Then we packed up and headed for the hotel.

"This is the Band of Angels," Max said, but he didn't say it before we were at attention, all present and accounted for. "Deacon Jones you already know. He is a trumpet, also a cornet and sometimes, when we're in California, a flute. I'm bass; you know that, too. The tall, ugly fellow over there is Bud Parker, guitar. Rollo Vigon and Parnelli Moss, sax and valve trombone. Hughie Wilson, clarinet. Sig Shulman, our drummer, the quiet, thoughtful guy to my right. All together, the very best in the world--when they want to be. Gentlemen, our new piano: David Green."

The kid looked scared. He passed a limp hand around, as if he wished he was in Peoria. He almost jumped when Max put the usual to him. Who wouldn't?

"We're a jazz band, Green. Do you know what jazz is?"

Davey threw me a glance and ran his hand over his hair. "You tell me."

"I can't. No one can. It was a stupid question." Max was pleased: if the kid had tried an answer, that would've been bad. "But I'll tell you one of the things it is. It's vocabulary. A way of saying something. You can have a small vocabulary or a large one. We have a large one, because we have a lot on our minds. If you want to make it with the Angels, you've got to remember that."

Sig began to tap out some rhythm on a table, impatiently.

"Another thing. You've got to forget about categories. Some bands play Storyville, some play Lighthouse; head music and gut music--always one or the other. Well, we don't work that way. Jazz is jazz. Sometimes we'll spend a week kanoodling on the traditional, flip over and take up where Chico Hamilton leaves off. Whichever says what we have to say best. It's all in how we feel at the time. You dig?"

Davey said he dug. Whenever Max got the fever like this and started the sermon, you didn't plan to argue. Because he meant it; and he knew what he was talking about. Maybe it was the twentieth time most of us heard the routine, but it made sense. Practically everybody thinks of jazz in steps: from this to that. And there aren't any steps. Which is more "advanced"--Stravinsky or Mozart?

Davey didn't know how important it was for him to say the right thing, but he managed fine. For a few minutes he'd laid his troubles down. "I never thought of it just that way," he said. "It's quite a theory."

"Take it in, Green. Think hard about it. What you've been doing is high up, but one way. I believe you can be all ways. I believe it because I have faith in you."

He stuck his hand on Davey's shoulder, almost the same way he'd done with each of us over the years, and I could see that it hit the kid just as hard.

"I'll try, Mr. Dailey," he said.

"Make it Max. Doesn't take as long, and it's friendlier."

Then it was all over. Max closed the Bible and broke out some Catto's scotch, which is a drink he does not generally like to share; then he got the kid into a corner, by themselves.

I should have felt great, and in a way I did, but something was spoiling it. I went over to the window for some fresh: the sidewalks had been hosed down and they put up a nice clean smell, next best to summer rain.

"Nice kid." I looked over; it was Parnelli Moss. He still had the shakes, but not so bad as sometimes. Hard to see how a man could hit the bottle the way Parnelli did and still finger a horn. Hard to see how he could stay alive.

He was wound. And I wasn't in any mood for it. "Yeah."

"Nice fine kid." He held the ice-water near his forehead. Cold turkey, on and off. "Max hummin' up a new crutch."

I ignored it: maybe it'd go away.

It didn't. "Good?" Parnelli said.

"Good."

"Poor Mr. Green. Deek, you listen--he'll stay good, but he won't stay nice. Hey, look out with that hoe, there, Max!"

"Parnelli," I said, just as cool as I could, "you're a fair horn but that's all I can say for you."

"That's what I mean' he said, and grinned. I suddenly wanted to pitch him out of the window. Or jump, myself. I couldn't tell why.

He rolled the glass across his forehead. "Give us this day," he said, singsong, "our Dailey bread--"

"Shut up." I kept it in whispers, so no one else would hear. Moss was loaded; he had to be. "Parnelli, listen, you want a hook in Max. That's okay, that's fine by me. Stick it in and wiggle it. But keep it away from me--I don't want to hear about it."

"What's the matter, Deek--afraid?"

"No. See, the way I look at it, Max picked you up when your own mother wouldn't have done it, even with rubber gloves. You were O, Parnelli. Zero. Now you're eating. You ought to be on your goddamn knees to him!"

"Father," Parnelli said, with a real amazed look, "I am. I
am!
"

"He's been a nurse to you," I said, wondering why I was so sore and why I wanted to hurt the guy this much. "Nobody else would have bothered."

"For a fact, Deek."

"They'd have let you kick off in Bellevue."

"For a fact."

I wanted to slug him then, but I couldn't. I knew he hated Max Dailey. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why. It was like hating your best friend.

"You like the kid, Deek? Green, I mean?"

"Yeah," I said. It was true. I felt--maybe that was it--responsible.

"Tell him to cut out, then. For the love of Christ, tell him that."

"Go to hell!" I swung across to the other room: it was like busting out of a snake house. Davey Green was there, all to himself, sitting. Only he was different. Those hard, bitter-type lines were gone. Now he just looked--sad.

"How you makin' it?"

The kid looked up. "The hard way," he said. "I've been talking to Mr. Dailey. He's--quite a guy."

I pulled up a chair. My back was sweating. Cold sweat. "How you mean?"

"I don't know, exactly. I never met anyone like him before. The way he has of, well, of knowing what's wrong and how it's wrong, and pulling it out of you--"

"You got troubles, kid?" The sweat was getting colder.

He smiled. He was damned young, maybe only twenty-five; handsome, in a Krupa kind of way. It wasn't junk. It wasn't booze. "Tell the Deacon."

"No troubles," he said. "Just a dead wife."

I sat there, getting scared and sick and wondering why. "How far back?"

"A year," he said, like he still didn't believe it. "Funny thing, too. I never used to be able to talk about it. But Mr. Dailey seemed to understand. I told him everything. How Sal and I met, when we got married and went to live in the development, and--" He shoved his face against the wall quick.

"If you talk about it, kid, you get rid of it," I said.

"That's what Mr. Dailey told me."

"Yeah." I know. It was exactly what Mr. Dailey had told me, six years ago, after the accident.

Except, I was still dreaming about that little girl, as if it had happened yesterday...

"You think I'll fit in, Deek?" the kid asked.

I looked at him and remembered what Parnelli had said; and I remembered Max, his voice, tow, always low; and it got too much.

"Cinch," I said, and blew back to my room on the second floor.

I don't bug easy, never did, but I had a crawly kind of a thing inside me and it wouldn't move. They have a word for it: premonition.

". . .
tell him to cut out, Deek. For the love of Christ, tell him that
. . ."

Next night the kid showed up on time in one of Rollo's extra suits. He looked very hip but also very skunked, and you could see that he hadn't had much sack time.

Max gave him a little introduction to the crowd and he sat down at the box.

Things were pretty tense. A one. A two.

We did "Night Ride," our trademark and the kid did everything he was supposed to. Very fine backing, but nothing spectacular, which was good. Then we broke and he got the nod from Max and started in on some sad little dancing on "Jada." It isn't easy to make that tune sad. He did it.

And the crowd loved it.

He minored "Lady Be Good," and then threw a whole lot of sparks oven "The A Train;" and the Peacock Room began to jam. I mean, we were always able to get them to listen, and all that foot-stomping routine, but this was finally it.

Davey Green wasn't good. He was great. He Brubecked the hell out of "Sentimental Lady"--keeping to Max's arrangement enough so we could tag along, but putting in five minutes more--and it was real reflective, indeed. Then, with everything cool and brainy, he turned right around and there was Jelly Roll, up from the dead, doing "Wolverine" the way it hadn't been done.