The Jazz Kid (19 page)

“But suppose they're planning to kill him,” I said. “I have to warn him, don't I?”

“You stay the hell out of it. You haven't got no idea what Silva was up to. He ain't any better than the rest. Maybe he's just going to get what he deserves.”

“What if they take over the club? Will you lose the job?”

Tommy shrugged again. “Who knows? Something else'll turn up. There's plenty of work around Chi. Better to sit home for a week than get in trouble with the gangsters.” He nodded his head towards the club. “I got to get back.”

“Tommy, Herbie gave me ten dollars and told me to buy long pants. What if Silva suspects something?”

“Tell him I gave you the dough. Tell him I got sick of seeing you around in knee pants. Come on. I got to get back.”

S
OMETIMES
I
DIDN
'
T
wait for the club to empty out before I went to bed. I still wasn't used to staying up all night, the way Tommy was. He'd worked after-hours joints an awful lot, and night was day for him. At an after-hours club the job usually finished by six or so. Tommy'd go off with some of the boys in the band for a meal—usually eggs, bacon, pancakes was what you could get at that hour. If it wasn't too late they'd get somebody who had a car and go for a drive out into the country. Or play golf. The piano player was nuts about golf and Tommy'd go along with him. They were all worried about their lungs, especially the horn players. Everybody had stories about musicians whose lungs went from spending too much time in dives breathing cigarette smoke. They figured fresh air would clean their lungs out, so they'd play golf, go for a drive, or swim in the lake if the weather was okay. It was a funny way to live, playing golf at eight o'clock in the morning when everybody else was crowded on streetcars headed for factories and offices. I liked the idea of it. It was the way I meant to live, once I got myself going in music. But I wasn't used to it yet. I'd generally manage to keep myself going until four or five, when there wasn't likely to be more than one or two parties left in the club. Then I'd turn in. I could clean up after the last parties when I got up.

A couple of nights after Aronowitz had come around asking questions about Silva, I went to bed at around five. Silva was sitting at a table with a party, and the band was loafing its way through the last set—taking long pauses between numbers and playing a lot of slow ballads. By this time of night they were usually pretty beat.

I kicked off my shoes, lay down on the cot, pulled the army blanket over me, and fell asleep. Sometime later noises began to filter through my dreams and after a while I slid out of sleep. For a minute I lay there trying to figure out what was a dream and what wasn't. The sun was shining through the high window, which meant that it was around nine or ten o'clock, for the sun moved off that side of the building by the middle of the morning. I shook my head; and then I realized there were voices coming from the
club.
I sat up, listening.

“You been a naughty boy, Angelo. You know what happens to naughty boys.”

“I swear I never did it, Herbie,” Silva said. He sounded scared all right. “I wouldn't do nothing like that to you, Herb. Who told you I did it?”

“A little birdy told me.”

“Herbie, you got to believe me,” Silva said. “I never did it.”

There was a little silence. I sat there waiting, my heart pounding in my chest. “Socks, see if you can get Angelo to come clean.”

“Hey—” There was a thump. “Jesus,” Silva cried. “Go easy, Socks.”

The thump came again and then the sound of a chair rattling to the floor. There was another silence and then Silva said, kind of slow, “You want the club, Herbie? Is that it? Take the club, with my blessings. It's yours. I'll just walk out of here.”

“Not yet, Angelo. I ain't finished with you yet.”

I had to get out of there. What if they came into the back room and found me sitting there listening to the whole thing? My hands were damp and there was sweat dripping from my forehead. I wiped my face off with my sleeve. Could I squeeze through that little window? What if I got stuck halfway through?

Out in the club Silva said, “Please, Herbie, have mercy. I never did it.” There was another thump, and the clatter of an ashtray hitting the floor. I stood up off the bed as quiet as I could, picked up my shoes, and took my jacket off the nail in the wall. I tiptoed across the room, my shoes in one hand, my jacket in the other. My cornet was out in the club by the bandstand. It made me sick to think of losing that Selmer. Maybe Tommy could get it for me if I ever got out of this.

Out in the club there came a shriek. “Socks, you're gonna break my arm.” I reached the back wall, put my jacket on the floor, and with my free hand unlatched the window. I swung it down toward me. It gave off a squeal, for it hadn't been opened for a long time. I stopped, holding it halfway open. From out in the club there came a snapping noise. Silva shrieked. “You busted it, Socks. You busted my arm.”

I lowered the window all the way. It made a good loud squeal. I flung my shoes
and
jacket into the alley. From the club I heard Herbie say, “What the hell was that?” I grabbed hold of the windowsill, heaved myself up, and shoved my head and shoulders through.

“Go see what that noise was, Socks. I'll keep an eye on Angelo.”

I pulled myself through the window and out into the alley. Behind me I heard the door to the furnace room open. A voice shouted, “Hey, you.” I grabbed my shoes and jacket and ran in my stockings down the cold dirt of the alley. I didn't look back, but kept on running. When I hit the street I turned left, away from the club, and ran on. There were a lot of people out, and they stared at me running along the sidewalk in my stockings, carrying my shoes and jacket, but I didn't dare stop to put them on. I prayed I wouldn't run into a cop, for he was bound to think I'd stolen the jacket. I came to the corner, swung around it, ran on up the block, across the street and down another side street. Here, finally, I stopped, panting and soaked with sweat, and looked back.

Nobody was coming that I could see. Quickly I knelt, put on my shoes, stood up and put on my jacket, already running again while I buttoned it. As I came out onto the avenue I saw a streetcar coming along. I jumped on, had another look behind me, and then squirmed into the middle of the streetcar where the crowd was thick. I'd got away—but everything I'd worked for was lost.

I took the streetcar as far as Madison and got off. I didn't even have to think where I was going. There was only one place, and I went there, walking along as quick as I could, scared and lonely and looking around all the time, just in case.

When I got to Tommy's it was five of ten, according to the clock in the drugstore across the street. Tommy wasn't even home yet. Would Herb Aronowitz figure out I was likely to go to Tommy's? I went around the corner and leaned against a building where I could see the stoop to Tommy's boarding house. For a good half hour I waited there, and then I saw Tommy coming slowly up the street in his old brown overcoat, his cornet case in his hand. I waited until he was nearly at the stoop and darted out. “Tommy,” I called.

He looked up. “Hey, kid. What're you doing here?”

“
I'm in real trouble. Herbie is looking for me.” I looked around.

He looked around to see what I was looking for. “What the hell for?”

“I'll tell you. Let's get off the street.” We went up to Tommy's little room, with the records scattered around the floor and clothes lying on a chair. We sat side by side on the bed and I told him the whole story—about Angelo Silva getting his arm busted, and me climbing out the window just as the gangster was coming into the furnace room.

“Maybe he didn't see you. How could he tell who was going out the window when all he could see was a couple of legs?”

“Who else would they think it was?”

“Silva knows you was sleeping in there, but how would Herbie know? It could have been some waiter, anybody as far as those guys knew.”

“I can't take a chance on it. Herbie's going to take over the joint. When I don't turn up tonight they'll know for sure it was me who overheard them. If they ended up killing Silva they'll want to make sure I don't squeal on them.”

Tommy didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, “Maybe I can find out something. I have to be damn careful, though. I can't let on that I know anything.”

“What'll you do tonight?”

“Just go in as usual and play, like I don't know nothing about it. I'll see what I'll see. Who knows, maybe they just roughed Silva up a little. Maybe he'll be by the door as usual with his arm in a sling and some story about spraining his wrist when he was cranking his car.”

“What should I do, Tommy?”

He was quiet again. Then he said, “Maybe you should go home.”

“How can I do that? Once Herbie sees I'm not working at the club anymore, he's bound to go around to Pa's house to see if I'm there.”

“I thought your pa was a pal of Herb's. Couldn't he put in a good word?”

I remembered the way they'd pushed Pa around. “He's not that much of a pal.”

“I still think you ought to go home, kid. Let your pa work it out somehow. Maybe send you out of town for a while. You got relatives downstate, ain't you?”

“
Please, Tommy. See what you can find out tonight.”

“Okay. I'll try.” He shook his head. “I always figured I had ‘em beat for getting myself in messes, but you take the cake. You better hole up here tonight.”

“What if they come looking for me?”

It ain't likely. I'll lock you in when I go out. Better go out and get yourself a couple of sandwiches to tide you over.”

So I went around the corner to the greasy spoon, ate a ham sandwich even though I wasn't hungry, and brought another one home. Tommy was already asleep when I got back. I snuggled down in his beat-up easy chair and went to sleep myself. I slept through to the middle of the afternoon, and woke up feeling nervous and queasy in my stomach. I wished I dared go for a walk so as not to feel so nervous, but I didn't. Finally Tommy woke up. We chewed the fat for a little while. Then he said he had a date and was going to the steam baths to clean up first. “If anyone knocks, climb out the window and go down the fire escape.” Then he left. I heard the key turn in the lock.

After that there was nothing to do but wait. I sat on the floor playing records for a while, until I remembered that anybody out in the hall could hear the music and would know somebody was there. My heart wasn't in it, anyway. I read a couple of old dime westerns Tommy had lying around and finally, around ten o'clock, I turned off the lights and lay down on Tommy's bed. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep, for I'd gotten used to staying up late; but by and by I dozed off, and slept through until Tommy came in at eight o'clock, carrying coffee and pastrami sandwiches.

“Well, you was right, kid. Herbie thinks it was you in there.”

“What did he say? Is he taking over the club?”

“Looks like it,” Tommy said. “Silva wasn't nowhere to be seen. Herb said Silva had an accident and asked Herb to cover for him at the club. Everything was to go on normal.”

“Do you think they killed him?”

He thought about it. “Probably not. They didn't have to. Probably just busted him up enough so's he'd be out of circulation for a while.”

“
And he knows it was me who was going out the window.”

“Yeah, I guess he does. He came around after the second set and said, ‘Where's the kid?' I said I didn't know, but that Silva told me he caught you stealing liquor last week and was going to can you. I don't know as he believed it.”

“Why wouldn't he believe it?”

“He saw your cornet case sitting there. He said, ‘Isn't that the kid's horn?' I said, ‘No, it's mine, I was lending it to the kid.' He said, ‘Well leave it sit there for a while.' “

“Boy, am I in a mess.”

Tommy didn't say anything for a bit, but chewed off a bite of the pastrami sandwich. Finally he said, “Kid, I hate to tell you this, but you got worse trouble than you think. Herbie thinks your pa had something to do with it.”

“Pa? He thinks that? Why would Pa have anything to do with it?”

“He told me that once, a while back, your pa sent you around to that other club where we was playing, with some cock-and-bull story about looking for a wrench. He said, “Frankie Horvath is up to something. If you see the kid, tell him I want to talk to him.”

“Pa didn't have anything to do with it,” I cried. “I made that whole story up myself so's to get in there and hear you guys.”

Tommy nodded. “Knowing you, I can believe it. It's just the thing you'd do. But that ain't the way Herbie sees it. You got to remember, these here gangsters don't trust nobody or nothing. They see some old pooch sniffing around the place, they take it for a cop. That's what it's like being a gangster. You sit with your back to the wall all the time, sleep with one eye open and a machine gun for a pillow. A guy like Herb Aronowitz has got more money than most banks, and nobody messes with him. But I wouldn't want to be him for all the tea in China. He can't take a woman out to dinner without worrying she's going to double-cross him to the cops, he can't take his dog for a walk after dinner without worrying there's somebody down behind every bush drawing a bead on him. It don't take very much to get him suspicious of somebody.”