Fat Jack grinned, his vast jowls defying gravity grandly. 'Hey, you and me'll get along fine.' He winked and moved away among the tables, tacking toward the door.
The waiter refilled Nudger's coffee cup, and he sat sipping chicory brew and watching Fat Jack McGee move along the sunny sidewalk toward Bourbon Street. He sure had a bouncy, jaunty kind of walk for a fat man.
Nudger wasn't as anxious about the fee as Fat Jack thought. Well, not quite as anxious; he knew he'd be paid for his work. The reason he'd jumped at the case wasn't totally because of the fee, even though he desperately needed something to toss to Eileen and the various wolves queued up at his door. Years ago, at the Odds Against lounge in St. Louis, Nudger had heard Fat Jack McGee play clarinet in the manner that had made him a jazz legend, and he'd never forgotten. Fat Jack's was the kind of music that lingered in the mind, that you thought of at odd moments: while you were waiting in a doorway for the rain to stop, or sitting on the edge of the bed tying your shoe. It was music that permeated dreams, that hooked real jazz fans forever.
Nudger needed the money, sure. But he also needed to hear that clarinet again.
III
Fat Jack's club was on Conti, a few blocks off Bourbon Street. Nudger paused at the entrance and looked up at a red-and-green neon sign that visually shouted the synonymous names of club and owner. And there was a red neon Fat Jack himself, a portly, herky-jerky illuminated figure that jumped about with the same seeming lightness and jauntiness as the flesh-and-blood version.
A trumpet solo from inside the club was wafting out almost palpably into the hot, syrupy-humid night. People came and went, among them a few who were obviously tourists making the Bourbon Street rounds of clubs and drinks. But Nudger got the impression that most of Fat Jack's customers were folks who took their jazz seriously and were there for music and not atmosphere.
The trumpet stair-stepped up to an admirable high C and wild applause. Nudger went inside and looked around.
Dim, smoky, lots of people at lots of tables. Men in suits and in jeans and T-shirts; women in long dresses and casual slacks. The small stage was empty now; the band was between sets. Customers milled around, stacking up at the long bar along one wall. Waitresses in black, red-lettered 'Fat Jack's' T-shirts bustled about with trays of drinks. Near the left of the stage was a polished dark upright piano that gleamed like a showroom-new car even in the dimness. Nudger decided that Fat Jack's was everything a jazz club should be.
Feeling that his heart was home, he made his way to the bar and, after a five-minute wait, ordered a mug of draft beer. The mug was frosted, the beer ice-flecked. Nudger was glad, right now, that he'd agreed to work for Fat Jack.
'Ain't no ten-dollar bill,' said a deep, velvety voice just down the bar from Nudger, 'I gave you a twenty.'
'Sorry, sir, it was a ten.'
Nudger leaned forward and saw that the deep voice belonged to a tall, lanky black man with wide shoulders, a scraggly goatee, and large, splay-fingered hands that looked strong enough to be leased out to industry. The 'Sorry, sir' belonged to the bartender, who didn't appear old enough to be working where liquor was served, but whose dark eyes had a wise and steady gunfighter calm about them.
'You tryin' to pull some shit on me!' the black man said. He was working himself up to high pitch. Around him, the other customers let their conversations taper off to nervous silence. 'You owe me change from a twenty, clown, and you gonna pay!'
The bartender with the high-school face and been- around eyes said nothing, didn't move. He did, however, smile slightly.
'I'll give you a jive-ass smile under your chin!' the black guy said. He reached out with his big right hand to grip the bartender's shirtfront, but the bartender took an easy step back, using the bar to shield him from harm. The big man's other huge hand slid beneath the leather vest he was wearing over his red shirt, as if to pull out a knife to make good his threat of a tracheal grin.
The bartender said, 'Marty.' Not in a scared voice, but as if he could handle things himself-just that oversized homicidal customers simply weren't part of his job; something in the union rules.
Marty was already there. He was a medium-sized, bland-faced man in a brown suit that matched his straight, brown, razor-styled hair. Mr. Average, with a Sears-catalog look about him.
Marty's hand snapped in a blur to the big man's thick wrist. The abrupt, smooth movement reminded Nudger of a snake striking. Marty smiled in a kindly fashion while the large black face above him registered outrage, then surprise at the absence of fear in the smaller, bland white man and the strength of the fingers about his wrist. Some average. The big man calmed down, withdrawing the hand from inside the leather vest as Marty loosened his grip by degrees.
'He did me outa my twenty,' the man said, gesturing with his head toward the bartender. He was still plenty mad, still unpredictable and dangerous. But his outrage had lost its edge.
'Are you sure of that, sir?' Marty asked.
'Sheeit, yeah, I'm sure!'
'So let's talk about it,' Marty said, further defusing the situation. 'What are you drinking?'
The man scratched his patchy beard. 'Uh, vodka with a twist.'
Marty nodded to the bartender, who poured two generous vodkas over ice and set them on the bar.
'On the house,' Marty said, picking up both drinks and leading the way to a corner table, not glancing back.
The big man looked uncertain for a few seconds. Then, glad for a way out of the confrontation without losing his machismo, he followed Marty and the vodka across the crowded floor.
They sat down and began talking quietly. The black man leaned his long body forward over the table, speaking earnestly, sensing he'd found an impartial ear. Nudger knew that sooner or later Marty would give him the extra ten in his change as a gesture of goodwill and good business, not to mention keeping the bartender alive.
Conversation picked up again around the bar. Nudger lifted his beer mug and sipped. He wanted to ask the bartender who Marty was, but the unflappable young man was working the other end of the bar for a group of middle-aged women ordering exotic drinks topped with pineapple slices and little paper parasols.
The lights brightened and dimmed three times, apparently a signal the regulars at Fat Jack's understood, for they gradually began a general movement back toward their tables.
Then the lights dimmed considerably, and the stage, with its gleaming piano, was suddenly the only illuminated area in the place. A tall, graceful man in his thirties walked onstage to the kind of scattered but enthusiastic applause that suggests a respect and a common bond between performer and audience.
The man smiled faintly at the applause and sat down at the piano. He had pained, haughty features, blond hair that curled above the collar of his black Fat Jack's T-shirt. He was thin, but the muscles in his bare arms were corded; his hands appeared elegant yet very strong. This was Willy Hol- lister, the main gig, starbound but still their own, the one the paying customers had come to hear. The place got quiet and he began to play.
The song was a variation of 'Good Woman Gone Bad,' an old number originally written for tenor sax. Hollister played it his way, and two bars into it Nudger knew he was better than good and nothing but bad luck could keep him from becoming great. He was backed by brass and a snare drum, but he didn't need it; he didn't need a thing in this world but that piano and you could tell it just by looking at the rapt expression on his aristocratic face. He wasn't playing the music; he was the music.
'Didn't I tell you it was all there?' Fat Jack said softly beside Nudger. 'Whatever else there is about him, the man can play piano.'
Nudger nodded silently in agreement. Jazz basically is black music, but the fair, blond Hollister played it with all the soul and pain of its genesis. He finished the number to riotous applause that quieted only when he swung into another, a blues piece. He sang this one while his hands worked the piano. His voice was as black as his music; in his tone, his inflection, there seemed to dwell echoes of centuries of suffering.
'I'm impressed,' Nudger said, when the applause for the blues number had died down.
'You and everyone else with ears,' Fat Jack said, sipping absinthe from a gold-rimmed glass. 'Hollister won't
