The Hunt

Sugar candy

When I’m with you

She ended the set on a high note with Kraus and bass player Chuck Graves jamming behind her. When she finished, Kraus, Graves, Keegan and Rudman all were speechless for seconds before they simultaneously burst into applause.

“Immaculate, lady, immaculate,” Kraus said, flashing a million-dollar smile.

Dead silence for a moment when she finished, then Keegan snatched up the extension phone. “Well?” he asked.

“How soon can you get her to New York?”

“Are you kidding!”

“Not this time.”

He cupped the receiver. “He wants to know how soon we can come to New York,” he said to Jenny.

Jenny bit her lower lip. Her heart was pounding. This was a chance she had dreamed about since she was a child. But

she had other responsibilities. Her eyes began to well up with tears. Keegan was so happy, so happy for her. Perhaps they could go to New York for a few weeks and test the waters. Perhaps if she was a success she could do something significant for her friends and family in Germany. Perhaps .

“Go . . . go . . . pick up the phone,” Keegan said.

“Oh no, no she said shaking her head with embarrassment. He grabbed her hand and put the extension phone in it.

“Here, say hello to John Hammond,” he said, and went to the other phone.

“Hello she said hesitantly.

“Miss Gould, you have a voice that would put the heavenly chorus to shame. Quite simply, you have a great voice and you know exactly how to use it.”

“Oh, thank you,” she whispered.

Keegan picked up the other phone. “So.. . Where do we go from here?” he asked Hammond.

“You get her this far and I’ll take it from there. We’ll introduce her around, maybe get her a guest shot at Kelley’s or the Onyx, one of the downtown clubs. I’ll get Benny and Bill Basie, maybe even Lady Day herself down there to hear her. With a voice like that she can sing her way through any door in town.”

“All right, all right!” Keegan cried.

“Do me a favor,” Hammond said. “I’ll call Louis Valdon at the Gramophone Recording Studio there in Paris and set up a session. Cut all four songs and send them ahead to me. I want to hear what she sounds like on wax. Put Charlie on a minute.”

“Go in the other bedroom and get on the phone,” Keegan yelled to Kraus. A moment later the dapper arranger picked up.

“Charlie, we’ll do a session with her. All four songs. Maybe you can add drums behind her, what do you think?”

“Sounds right.”

“Can you produce it for me? Francis will pick up the tab, won’t you, Francis?”

“You skinflint.”

“Hey, I told you, get her to New York and I’ll take over. Listen, if she sounds as good on wax as she does over the phone, I’ll have the city hopping up and down by the time she gets here.”

“You’re on.”

“I’ll call Louis right now and tell him to expect your call. Let me know when you’ll be in New York.”

“Thanks, John.”

“Hey,” Hammond laughed, “after ten years I finally got something out of you.”

That night they ate alone in a small unknown restaurant on the Left Bank. She would go to Berlin in the morning to say her goodbyes. He would stay on in Paris and make arrangements for the trip, then fly over to Berlin in five days to pick her up. He booked her on the ten A.M. plane to Berlin the next morning.

“We’ll fly to London and take the Queen Mary over,” he told her.

After dinner they walked down the banks of the river. The bateau-mouche slipped by and they sat down for a moment, watched and listened to the laughter of the people on the pleasure boat. They walked on, started across the wooden foot bridge that crossed one of the small tributaries at the Quai de Bethune. From the middle they could see the gargoyles on Notre Dame, squatting ominously in spotlights, and beyond it, the Eiffel Tower, a brilliant, luminous triangle.

“It’s like a diamond glittering in the dark,” Keegan said.

“Why did you decide to live in Berlin when you came from the States?” Jenny asked. “You seem to adore Paris so much.”

“I was doing business in Germany. And I truly liked the people. That’s why I really don’t understand what’s happened to them.”