The King of Ragtime (4 page)

Sid’s usual bland smile went sly. “And there’s nothing in it for you, right?”

Martin leaned toward him as if spies might be outside, ears against the wall. “I’ll tell you what’s in it for me. Part of the deal’s got to be that I’m an assistant to the producer, and then I’ll put what I learn about the theater together with what I’m learning about publishing, and who knows? Sid, for crying out loud, this is America. You gotta be a go-getter. When people see how sharp you are, then they want you on their team. And then…” Martin poked a finger into his friend’s chest. “
Then
, Sid, you get enough money and enough know-how, you get your own team. Niederhoffer Music. That’s for me.”

Through Martin’s little speech, Sid nodded and smiled, smiled and nodded. Then he said, “Well, okay. What’s this big musical about?”

“What’s any musical about? They sing, they dance, lots of pretty girls wearing not a whole lot of costumes. What do you mean, ‘about’?”

“Is it any good?”

Martin paused. “Well, sure it’s good. Didn’t I tell you, Scott Joplin wrote it? How can it not be good? He’s just finishing it up now, and when he’s done, we’ll make an appointment and go pitch it to Mr. Berlin.”

Sid laughed. “In other words, you haven’t seen it?”

Martin stomped to the window, stared at the crowds flowing along the sidewalks. Like sheep, he thought. They move this way, then the other, never even think about where they’re going and where they’re gonna end up. He spun around. “I’ll see it soon enough, Sid. And when you’re still stacking fruit and vegetables in a grocery, you’ll come and visit me in my own office, giving orders to other people. I’ll buy you lunch.”

Sid just smiled. “And I’ll bring you a box of raspberries.” He pushed back his sleeve, checked his watch. “After five-thirty already. Birdie went on home?”

Martin grimaced. “Yeah, her old man makes sure of that. She left right before you got here.”

“Hey, Martin, I know it’s none of my business, but you’re really sure about getting married? You’re only twenty-four. And she’s what, seventeen?”

Martin felt the familiar glow come over his face. Was love at first sight for real? Certainly seemed to be, at least for him. He wasn’t much on going to religious services, but one Friday evening last winter, his mother pleaded hard and long, and he finally gave up, agreed to go. And guess what. God rewarded him. After services, outside the synagogue, he caught sight of this marvelous girl, took two seconds to compose himself, then walked over and said hello. Before they were done talking, he’d invited her to go with him the next night to the New Amsterdam Theatre and see
Around the Map
, Klaw and Erlanger’s latest. She loved it, hummed “Here Comes Tootsie” all the way home. She was working in a shirtwaist factory, she told him, and hated the job, the boss, the older women, the whole works. Martin couldn’t believe his luck. The assistant bookkeeper at Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder had just gotten herself pregnant and quit. So two days later, Birdie was set up in Martin’s own office, five days a week. Within three months, never mind their parents’ objections, the two had an understanding.

He knew he had a goofy grin all over his face, couldn’t help it. “Yeah, Sid, I’m sure. I’ve never known a girl like her. She’s smart, she’s pretty, she cooks like an angel. And I can’t figure where somebody only seventeen got such great common sense. If I let her get away, I’ll hate myself the rest of my life. What I’ve been telling you about getting my own business, that’s not just for me.
She
doesn’t deserve to hear for the rest of her life about how my boss said jump and I had to ask him how high and how many times.”

Sid laughed easily. “Relax, Martin. Okay, you’re in love, it’s wonderful—but come on, it’s getting late. Go finish your columns before your boss gets back. We don’t want to miss the fights, and besides, I’m hungry.”

Martin fluttered a long breath through his lips, ran fingers through his red hair, squeezed at his scalp. “Yeah…okay. Just gimme a couple of minutes. I got myself so worked up, I need to take a leak. Be right back.”

Sid sat on Martin’s stool. “Go pee. I’ll check your numbers for you, make sure you didn’t get so worked up you added two and two, and got five.”

***

Martin strolled down the long hallway, past the bosses’ offices, through Reception. Days, you couldn’t hear yourself think in that place, and now, the quiet seemed unnatural. He dragged his feet all the way to the mens’ room, started toward the urinal, but decided he needed a sit-down in a stall. When he finished, he buttoned up, walked to the sink, washed his hands, then bent down and splashed cold water on his face. It felt so good, he kept at it, paid no mind to the water running down inside his shirt. Finally, he wiped his face on his sleeve, took another look down through the opened window at the packed herds, shifting and flowing along the sidewalk. “I’m not gonna be like them,” he muttered.

Sid’s voice came from within Martin’s head. “So what’re you gonna do? Stand around in a toilet, and then one day, by some kind of magic, you’re gonna be a big shot?”

Martin closed his eyes. “All right. Okay. I’m gonna have those goddamn numbers done in jig time, you just watch.” He pushed through the doorway, started back to his office.

***

Scott Joplin strode past the Strand Theatre, glanced up at the blank marquee, then remembered the polio epidemic that had closed New York theaters for the summer. Well, that would be over in a few weeks, and maybe after that, some marquee in town was going to read,
IF, THE NEW MUSICAL. BY SCOTT JOPLIN
. And maybe in just a few minutes, he was going to find out
which
marquee.

He hurried around the corner and into the building, but took the stairs more slowly, one at a time, first the left foot, then the right, all the while sliding his hand along the wooden rail. Careful. A fall wouldn’t be his first, but it could be his last, and he didn’t want to be found, broken-limbed, broken-necked, at the foot of the stairs, then be carted off to the morgue and dumped into a grave with five other bodies and enough quicklime to dissolve them all, leaving Lottie to wonder the rest of her life what had happened to him.
If
could bring in money, enough to last that dear woman as long as she lived, and still provide the composer a dignified grave with a headstone.
SCOTT JOPLIN
, it should say,
AMERICAN COMPOSER
. And the dates of his birth and death.

On the second-floor landing, he paused to catch his breath. The glass door to an accounting firm faced him; he caught sight of a figure inside, an old stooped colored man. Probably the janitor, grown long in the tooth on his job, his employer kindhearted enough not to sack him. But then Joplin realized, no, that wasn’t what he saw. He was looking at his own reflection in the glass. He turned away, hurried up the next flight of stairs faster than wisdom would have recommended, then started down the hall.

All of a sudden, a man barreled past him, put a hand to his shoulder, and ran to the stairs. The shove sent Joplin reeling, nearly knocked him to the floor. Someone ought to teach that fool some manners, the composer thought, but before he could say a word, the man was gone, crashing down the staircase. Joplin sighed, then walked the rest of the way down the hall and through the open doorway into Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder’s empty Reception Room.

Like his last visit: no one in sight. No sounds. Was Berlin back in his office? Joplin walked past the reception desk and along the far corridor, past one closed door after another. Near the end of the hall, he saw sunlight streaming through an open doorway to form a rectangle on the floor. Berlin must have left the door open for him; he hurried into the room. But no, it wasn’t Berlin’s office. It looked like a bookkeeper’s little space…and, yeah, there was Martin, his pupil, head-down on his desk. Must be working late, and fell asleep on the job. Or could he be waiting for Joplin? Did he find out Berlin wanted to publish Scott Joplin’s new musical and put it on stage, and now he was going to help his piano teacher?

Joplin trotted into the room. “Martin…hey, there…
Martin
.” No answer. Boy must’ve been up dancing all night, that little girl of his was a real live wire. The composer reached toward the young man’s shoulder to shake him awake, then suddenly realized it was not Martin. Martin had red hair; this man was blond. Just another bookkeeper. Oh, Scott Joplin, you fool, you goddamn fool! You thought that boy was different, he was going to help you like he said he would, but he’s just like everybody else. Just like Walton, just like Europe and Johnson, Otis Saunders…that pimp Morton, calls himself Jelly Roll…
everybody
. A little sweet talk, a promise that’s a lie from the start, that’s enough for Scott Joplin, he can go to hell, and nobody would care. The composer grabbed the blond man by the collar of his jacket, pulled him off his seat, and flung him to the floor.

***

Martin Niederhoffer, primed to blast through those columns of sales figures in nothing flat, marched through the doorway, then stopped as if he’d walked into a glass wall. For a few seconds, he stood like an ox, gawking at Scott Joplin, a razor in his hand, crouched over Sid Altman, down on the floor next to the desk. Blood all over Joplin, over Sid, over the floor, over
everything
. The open ledger was covered with blood; blood dripped from the top of the desk. Finally, whatever held the bookkeeper in place let go, and he ran toward Joplin, dodging the pooled blood on the floor, taking care to keep Sid between the composer and himself. Quick glance at his friend’s doughy, blood-smeared face, oh, Jesus! Throat gaping ear-to-ear, like a second mouth, shirt a blood-soaked rag. Martin looked a question at Joplin, but Joplin didn’t seem to pick up. Finally, the bookkeeper pointed from the razor to Sid, then managed a strangled, “Mr. Joplin… What…why?” Sounding to his own ears like he was choking on his words.

“I came in to see Irving Berlin, and I saw…” Joplin jabbed the razor toward Sid. “He was in your chair, there, he looked like he was asleep at his work, and I thought he was you, maybe you were waiting to come in with me to talk to Mr. Berlin. But when I saw he didn’t have your red hair, I got sore, and gave him a shove, and that’s when I saw…” With a wave of the razor, the composer took in the cut throat and all the blood; Martin quickly ducked away. “…this razor, down there on the floor, and I picked it up. Stupid!” Joplin flung the razor down; it bounced off Sid’s chest, onto the floor.

Martin had to strain to make out Joplin’s words, flying by at breakneck pace, no space whatever between them. “You didn’t…?” The young man could only point at his friend, sprawled like a recently-dispatched cow in an abattoir.

Joplin shook his head violently. “I’d never…Martin, you know me. Do you think I could
ever
do a thing like that?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “We better call the police.”

Which brought Martin around. “You really didn’t kill him?”

“As God is my witness.”

“All right. I believe you. But if we call the cops,
they’ll
never believe you. They’ll cart you off, and you’ll be as good as convicted.”

“But I didn’t do it.”

Martin tried to think. Wash the blood off Joplin’s hands, then tell the cops…
what
? That Martin and Joplin came in together and found Sid’s body? Then they’d both be suspected; there was nobody else in the office. Besides, did he really think Joplin could remember all the details of a made-up story, once the cops went to work on him? They’d break him down in nothing flat, and then the two of them would be in the soup for fair. And if they told the cops the truth, that Martin came out of the bathroom and found Joplin and Sid and the razor…wait. What if they got rid of the razor? Toss it in the incinerator,
then
call the cops? Martin sighed. No good. Joplin would forget, say something about a razor, and that would be that. Tell the story any way it didn’t happen, Joplin would give it away; tell it the way it did happen, Martin walking in on a colored man, razor in hand, squatting over a dead white man, and Joplin was a dead colored man.

Martin looked from his teacher’s bulging eyes to his open mouth, to his trembling fingers. Those fingers had been shaking so much lately, he’d been having trouble getting them onto the right piano keys. No, Martin, thought, he didn’t kill Sid. Sid spent all day hauling sacks of vegetables and fruit, tossing them around like they weighed nothing. If Joplin had grabbed Sid, Sid would have made Hamburg steak out of him.

The bookkeeper tugged at the composer’s sleeve. “Come on, Mr. Joplin—the cops’ll be sure you or me or maybe even both of us did this. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Joplin pulled away. “I’ve got to see Mr. Berlin, that’s why I came here. He called me to come down to talk about my musical.”

Martin blinked. How much crazier was this going to get? “Mr. Berlin
called
you?”

“Yes. About
If
. I think he wants to publish it and put it on stage. I’ve got to find him.”

“But how would he know about it? We haven’t taken it down to him yet.”

Joplin turned away and started toward the door. Martin caught him with both arms, wrestled him against the wall. “Mr. Joplin, listen. Please. Mr. Berlin isn’t here.”

Joplin writhed and squirmed, but was no match for Martin’s strong, healthy arms. “He
called
me, Martin. Let me go now, hear? I’ve got to see him.”

“Damn it, Mr. Joplin, I told you, he is just…not…
here
. Please, Mr. Joplin, trust me. Right now, you and me have got to get someplace else, fast. Then, after we figure out what’s going on, we can go talk to Mr. Berlin.” Martin paused to catch his breath, glanced at the razor on the floor, beside Sid’s hand. He’d read in the papers, police could sometimes use fingerprints to catch killers, and even he could see Scott Joplin’s prints, clear as day, in the blood on that razor. Martin snatched it up, wiped it briskly on Sid’s shirt sleeve, then folded it and dropped it into his pocket. “Mr. Joplin, take off your shirt, put it on inside-out. That way, the blood won’t show so much. Your suit’s OK, it just looks like dark stains. Come on, now, hurry up.”