'Think he'd be interested in a return to his family roots?' asked Price hopefully.
'You can ask,' I said as Officer Cooper, lean, teen, and neatly pressed, came in with a notebook in hand.
'How do I look?' asked Price, tugging at his jacket.
'Elegant,' I said before Cooper could speak.
'Distinguished,' said Cooper seriously.
'Can't trust either of you,' Price said. 'Take his statement and send him home.'
Cooper nodded.
'My car's still at the Mozambique,' I said as Price went out the door.
'Cooper,' called the chief.
'I'll take him back,' said the young cop as the door slammed.
'Doesn't care for his brother-in-law,' I said.
'Brother-in-law's the county water commissioner,' Cooper was whispering, even though the chief's freshly polished shoes were tapping well down the hallway.
I checked my watch. It told me it was eight-twenty. My watch was wrong as usual. It was the only thing my old man left me besides memories.
'It's five after midnight,' Cooper said.
'Let's get to it,' I said, sitting again.
Cooper didn't take the chief's chair. He sat opposite me in a chair in front of the desk, balancing the notebook in his lap.
'You know there's more than one way to spell cagey,' I said.
'Never thought much about it,' Cooper said, smoothing his pants and taking out his pencil.
It took about ten minutes to give my statement and another twenty for Cooper to type it up for my signature. I signed and he drove me back to my car in the parking lot of the Mozambique. There was one other car in the lot, an old Ford that glowed with wax or fresh paint by the night light of the Mozambique window.
'Ramone's car?' I asked.
'Wouldn't know,' said Cooper.
I got out and went to my Crosley. It wasn't locked. I slid in and started the engine. Cooper just sat there watching me. I pulled out into the street and headed north. When I got to the first corner, I turned right, parked at the curb, turned off the lights, and turned my engine off.
I rolled my window open and thought I heard the sound of Cooper's patrol car pulling out on the dead street behind me. I waited a few minutes, got out of the car, and headed for the Mozambique in the shadows.
The place was dark and the front door was locked. I knocked gently, hoping Lester had had enough for the night and had gone home instead of sitting in the dark on a tinder pile of broken chairs, tables, shot glasses, and beer mugs.
'Wow,' Sidney screamed inside.
I waited a few beats, ready with a lie for Lester, Officer Cooper, or an air-raid warden, but I didn't need it. I went to the east side of the Mozambique along the pink adobe wall to the window of Al Ramone's dressing room. It was closed now, but I doubted if anyone had fixed the latch in the last hour. It didn't make much noise as I slid it up and carefully climbed inside.
When I got inside I felt my way past the little dressing table and along the wall to the door. There wasn't much light from moon, stars, or the all-night ten-watt light bulb somewhere ahead of me through the open door.
I didn't bang my shins or walk into anything as I inched along the wall and smelled the night dust and alcohol. Across from the wall, I could make out a dark shadowed area where the rest room should be. Something? A creak? Sidney? Maybe Lester let Sidney fly around the Mozambique at night, a guard cockatoo with beak and claw and limited vocabulary.
Quiet.
I pulled the door of the broom closet open, groped till I found the bucket, turned it over, balanced myself on it, holding onto the lower shelf. Then I searched for and found the envelope with Gable's four fifty-dollar bills, his card, the killer's poem and notes, and the photograph I'd plucked from Ramone's mirror. I pulled the envelope down and tucked it into my Windbreaker pocket as I got off the bucket.
I was back in the little alcove, getting used to the ten-watt light, and was almost inside of Al Ramone's dressing room when the toilet flushed. I pushed my back against the wall, trying to cover myself with shadow, knowing I should just make a break for the window when the rest-room door came open and the light behind the man in the doorway lit me like Dame Myra Hess at the Hollywood Bowl.
Chapter 3
'You scared the shit out of me,' the old piano player said, his hand on his heart.
'Sorry,' I said, stepping away from the wall.
Lou Canton was wearing a ratty bathrobe two sizes too big for him and he was carrying a clear drinking glass with a toothbrush and a can of Dr. Lyon's Tooth Powder in it.
'I'm not a young man,' he said. 'And with poor Al…'
'Sorry,' I repeated:
'It's done,' he said with a wave of his hand. 'Done is done. You came through the window?'
'Yes,' I said.
'Told Lester to fix it a month, two months ago,' the old man said. 'But did he listen? No, he did not listen. Find what you were lookin' for?'
'I wasn't… yes,' I said.
'Good.'
He turned his back on me and headed toward the curtain that led to the bandstand.
'Hold it a second,' I said.
Canton, his back to me, slumped and shook his head.
'What? I'm tired. This has been a hell of a day. I'm an old fart and I don't sleep so good at night. What? You don't look like a crazy. I look more like a crazy than you do. So, I don't think you're gonna kill me. Al… well, maybe that's another story and you had reasons, but me, I figure it was the other guy. Listen to me, I'm talkin' too much. Happens when you get my age. Nobody listens to you, so you talk to yourself. I don't even listen to me half the time.'
'What other guy?' I asked.
'I told Lester,' the old man said. 'He didn't listen. I told the cops tonight. Did they listen? They didn't listen. Last night. Guy about your height. Thirty, thirty-five. Who knows? Sat at the bar nursing his drink and looking at Al like he was more interesting than Bing Crosby. I'm sorry what happened to Al, but the man had no talent. Couldn't carry a tune. Couldn't remember a bridge. I had to cover for hun every time. Ever carry an overweight baritone over a musical bridge? You drop him and you both look bad.'
'This guy…' I prodded, but Canton, who was rubbing a finger of his free hand across his thin mustache, kept going.
'Guy we're talking about looks like a crazy, maybe. You don't look like a crazy.'
'Thanks.'
'Not a compliment. The truth. What kind of compliment is it to say a guy doesn't look crazy? How old you figure me for?'
He shook the glass in his hand, tinkling brush and can of tooth powder against the sides.
'Sixty-five, maybe a little more,' I guessed.
'Eighty,' he said. 'I played with Isham Jones. Can you believe that? Did piano and even bass for George Metaxa and Paul Whiteman. Did a Caribbean cruise filling in for Claude Thornhill. No one noticed the difference. And now-' He looked around the alcove and shook his head.
'Now, you get old and you sleep on a cot in a bar and talk to a crazy bird.'
