A Conversation with the Mann (38 page)

Then I waited for word from the shadow of my past. Making it through one day, through a night and a show carrying fear and
anxiety was like trying to live a normal life with fire ants crawling over you: They were always with you, always tearing
away at you. They were with me the second day, the second night and show. The third day of not hearing from the hick did nothing
to calm my worries, but it gave me a little pinprick of hope that maybe he'd gone away. Maybe he'd gotten scared or lost his
nerve or figured putting pressure on me would likely cause him more trouble than—

The phone rang. It was Spooner.

We met again in the hotel bar. He wasn't alone this time. This time he was with a woman, long and lean and plumpless. From
neck to ankle she was a stick of a figure, no bumps, no curves. The secondhand clothes she wore—shirtwaist dressed in three-year-old
Montgomery Ward fashion that would most likely get stretched into service for another two—said she was probably Mrs. Spooner.
That she was anywhere near the man at all said definitely holy matrimony was involved.

I got in Dighton's eye line, waved him over to me. He waved me over to him. He was holding the cards. I went.

“Jackie,” he said with a big show of excitement at my arrival. “There yew ahr.” To the woman: “Told ya Ah knew Jackie. Didn't
Ah say Ah knew him? Jackie, say hello tah tha missuhs.”

“… Hello” was all I could force from myself. I knew nothing of the woman except that she was with Spooner. That's all the
more I needed to despise her.

Mrs. Spooner returned my greeting. Then she went on to tell me how much she had enjoyed my show, couldn't recall when she'd
had herself such a good laugh. She told me, in a pleasant Southern lilt, that vacations, going out, were a rare treat, and
that seeing me onstage would make their trip all the more memorable.

I wanted to hate the woman, but as polite as she was, as humble as she was, as different as she was from the man she'd married,
all I could do was feel sorry for her.

Spooner, impressing his wife taking a backseat to the bitterness grown from the compliments she handed me, stood and walked
me aside.

Alone together, away from the table, I handed over an envelope of get-lost money. The way Spooner eyed the cash I'd have figured
he was going to get sexual with it.

Breaking up his revelry, I leaned close and hissed vicious. “You and me are even now, you understand? Blackmail's a crime.
You come around again and jail's where you're heading even if I've got to head there with you.”

“Yew expec' me tah think yew'd—”

“Yeah, I would.” I was sharp about that. Sharp as a brand-new razor.

One long stare passed between us. There was some serious eye-screwing going on. As serious as the jail time I could do for
murder or he could do for extortion. Spooner was the first to flinch, just a little, as he licked his cracking lips. He needed
a drink. I could tell. But I could also tell he wanted to get away from me as much as I wanted him gone.

Wagging the envelope of cash: “This heyah's all Ah come for. Tah hell with yew” was his good-bye. He went back to the table
and collected his wife.

I watched them go. To the side of the woman's left eye: a fading mark that looked something like a bruise.

I sat.

I stretched out my hands before me. All they did was shake. I calmed them down enough to signal a waiter. He came by and I
told him I needed some liquor. What kind, I didn't care as long as it was strong.

My eyes closed.

A couple of deep breaths.

I'd made it.

I'd made it.

Five thousand dollars.

Spooner could have taken me for so much more. He could have taken my whole career from me, but I'd made it. I'd bluffed him
and sent him off. Twice now I'd gotten away from him.

Still …

My mind was stuck in a groove of possibilities, and the nasty pictures it painted for itself—me in jail. Me in headlines.
Me in ruins— is what gave me the worst of my jangles.

The waiter came back with my drink. I had to two-hand it up to my mouth. The second the juice hit my throat it burned hot,
lavaed its way along my body, slagging all nerve endings, deadening all sensations. Halfway through my second glass I felt
good and steady, and by the bottom of my third I wanted to smile. Were things really so bad? Were they? Trouble had come my
way and I'd sent it walking. Jackie Mann had elevated himself to a place where he could buy his way out of a jam. Isn't that
what the real stars did back in Hollywood? When situations went wrong—when they'd married the wrong person, when the wrong
girl got pregnant, when they got busted smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes—didn't they just throw money at the problem and
make everything right? When you looked at things that way, I was more the star than I thought I was.

Man, let me tell you: The liquor helped me think straight.

I ordered another glass of gas, understanding why Sid'd used it to ease the hurt of losing his wife. Finally understanding
why my pop dedicated his life to the stuff.

M
ONEY GOT ME OUT OF TROUBLE
. Money helped me bury the memory of trouble.

When I got back to New York, feeling free and alive after my near existence-ending experience, I used money as a green salve
to numb my pain.

I took myself a march along Fifth Ave. heading out to burn cash the way Sherman burned Atlanta.

Suits. I didn't much need them, but I got them. I got them tailored. Cye Martin's. They were good. They had to be good. They
were what Sammy wore.

Watches. I needed more than one watch less than I needed the suits. What I really didn't need was the Vacheron Constantin
I had my eye on: $1150. I got a two. I got a $900 Patek Philippe to go with it. If it shined, it was mine. I bought first
and asked no questions later.

“Last time I checked, money was for spending,” Sammy had told me. Only now was I hearing him loud and clear. He also told
me I was strictly a star these days. You couldn't be a star without star attitude and star style. I was planning on stocking
up on both.

Make it two Patek Philippes.

I
SCREAMED AT THE CABDRIVER
to pull over. He did. Not so much because I told him to as because my screaming made me come off as some kind of nutcase
that chances should not be taken with.

More screaming: “Turn it up.”

“What are you—”

“Turn up the radio!”

The hack driver grumbled Brooklyn prayers at me but increased the radio's volume.

I'd been expecting it. Not at that exact moment, no, but I knew Tommy had cut a record. I knew it'd been released to radio.
I knew it had gotten some play, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I heard it.

My fists were shaking. Fists, because I was so excited for Tommy that on their own my hands had balled up until my fingers
dug into my palm.

Tommy. My Tommy. And the picket-fence reception the radio got through the towers of Manhattan couldn't hurt the sweetness
of her voice. A voice I was concentrating so hard on listening to, the song was half over before I could relax enough to enjoy
it.

I ignored the cabbie, him barking at me that he didn't care how long I sat he wasn't about to shut off the meter, and listened.

And then the song ended.

And then I got excited all over again in anticipation of the disc jockey announcing her name, Tommy's name, my girl's name
over the airwaves for all of New York to hear. And he did.

Sort of.

He said the name of the song, said something about how it was some fresh wax out of Detroit by a hot new sensation. Then he
said a name I didn't recognize.

The deejay was wrong. He had to be wrong. I'd know my girl's voice anywhere, but the name …

I paid up the driver, forgot about wherever else I used to be going, and set out to find a record store. My legs moved to
the rhythm in my mind: The deejay was wrong. He had to be wrong.

Tommy's disc was so new, I had to hit three stores before I found one that carried it.

The deejay was wrong. He had to be—

I checked the label. The deejay wasn't wrong. No matter how much I recognized the voice, the name wasn't the same. Tommy was
going by Tammy. She'd said that. I remembered, vaguely, Tommy saying something about going by Tammy. Tammi with an “i.” So
that was a kick, but just a little one. What really slugged me was that along with her first, she'd changed her last name
as well. Tommy, my Tommy Montgomery, was now Tammi Terrell.

I
CALLED
T
OMMY
. T
AMMI
. She wasn't at her apartment.

I called over to Motown. The woman who answered the phone told me she was in the recording studio and couldn't take a call,
asked if I wanted to leave a message. I hung up.

I got myself out of the Detroit airport—only eighteen hours since I'd heard the record—got a cab, and headed the driver for
Motown. This time it was me who had a surprise for Tommy. Tammi.

The cabbie took me where I was going. I didn't know what I expected, but I expected more than what I saw: a brownstone— small,
plain—that looked a couple of late payments shy of being abandoned. In a window was what looked to be some schoolkid's class
project, a handmade sign:
HITSVILLE, U.S.A.
Other than that, I wouldn't've known I was in the right place. Until I walked through the door. Black people. Nothing but
black people. Black singers and songwriters, musicians, engineers. Black executives and accountants, and black secretaries.
It was a sight not regularly seen in those whitewashed days: black people working together in a business setting. Black people
owning and earning and achieving. That's just how rare it was; even if you were black, the sight of seeing your own kind making
it was enough to shock you. That's how conditioned we were.

“Jackie!”

I turned, looked. Lamont Pearl making his way over to me.

“Jackie, what are you doing, man? How long you been here?” He took my hand, pumped my arm like he was hoping I'd spit gold.

“Just, uh … I just walked in.”

“You doing a show this week?”

“No, I was … had a few days off. Thought I'd fly in.”

Impressed, or at least acting so: “Fly in? You're doing all right.” Like he wasn't doing fine himself. If nothing else, and
there was plenty else to him, Lamont knew how to stroke with the best of them. “And look at that suit. What is that, is that
a—”

“Cye Martin.”

“Yeah, that's sweet. That sure is sweet. Sammy wears those, you know. What am I talking, 'course you know. Read in the
Courier
you and Sammy—”

“Tommy around?” I said what I said stressing her old name. I said what I said to the point, trying to let Lamont know that
maybe he had time for chitchat, but I didn't. But the effect of my attempt to take charge was the opposite. Lamont just smiled
at me the way you smile at a kid playing soldier. His thumb made the rounds over his fingertips. Back and forth and back again.

“Sure, Jackie. Let's go find your girl.”

Lamont walked me by rows of small recording studios. Little universes in a bottle. Passing the glass windows, you looked in
on men and women, solo, in groups—their faces young and unfamiliar, hungry to be famous—recording, rehearsing, listening to
playback, but all done in silence behind soundproof walls. It was if I were a god up high looking down on the festival of
man.