people stood in line for hours to sit on folding chairs as at a graveside and hear the millionth wooden reprise of 'When the Saints Go Marchin' In.' I'm all for tradition, God knows, but tradition doesn't just stop at some arbitrary signpost; it's not some fossil, a scorpion in amber; it's ongoing. That's the whole point.
'There he is, ladies and gendemen,' Bo said. 'How's it going, Lew? Been a while.'
His first year in high school, Bo'd been principal trombonist, won afistful of blue ribbons playing stuff like 'Flight of the Bumblebee' and 'Carnival of Venice.'Then his band director, a Canadian named Robert Cinq-Mars who played mean clarinet and wrote his own music, introduced him to jazz. Next thing you know, Bo's looking up old players, hanging out with them whenever he can at jazz funerals, house parties, recording sessions, bars. He'd had a band himself awhile, a damned good one. Then he heard Dolphy and Parker and his life changed again. He knew he couldn't play like that, no way, and he put his trombone down for good, but he couldn't leave the music alone.
'What can I say, Bo? Don't get out much anymore.'
'I had someone like LaVerne at home, I wouldn't get out at all. Speaking of which.' He shoved a napkin across the bar, number scrawled on it. 'She says call her.'
'How long ago?'
'I don't know. Hour maybe.'
'You seen Doo-Wop?'
'Not for a day or so. Couple of conventions downtown, Ifigure he's staying busy.'
The skinniest young black man I'd ever seen-he looked like an ambulatory twig-climbed onstage. Stage was definitely a euphemism for this inch-high flatof rough lumber we'd have used back home to stack feed bags. He plucked a soprano sax out from behind a chair. Held it vertical in his lap as he disengaged the reed from the mouthpiece and put it in his mouth to soak. Another musician took his seat behind the piano. He hit several chords, ran scales and arpeggios off higher intervals of them, pawed at a few jagged, Monklike phrases, then sat with hands in lap waiting.
'Stick around. These guys are unbelievable. I don't know where it all comesfrom,' Bo said. 'Drink?'
'When'd you last make coffee?'
'What's today?' He poured a cup and pushed it towards me on the bar. 'Just kidding. Hey, you're still in New Orleans. I don't keep good coffee, they take away my license, deport me to Algiers, Chalmette. Rip the towel off my shoulder.' He angled one longfinger towards the napkin. 'Phone's still where it was, you get ready.'
I turned around on the stool, turned back.
'Seems to be in use.'
'Nah. That's just Crazy Jane. Comes in here every night, has a few drinks, spends the next hour or so having imaginary conversations with old lovers.'
Grasping the receiver in a death grip at least a foot from her head and shouting into it, Crazy Jane gave way without comment when I tapped on the booth. She replaced the receiver as though setting down an eggshell. I dialed the number on the napkin. The phone rang twice.
'LaVerne there?' Never knew who might be at the other end of one of LaVerne's numbers.
'Who's this?'
'This is the guy who's calling for LaVerne.'
'Yeah? Sounds like just another turkey to me.'
'Tou took your head out of your ass, you might hear better.'
'You got a definite point there.'
He backed the phone off a few inches and shouted: 'Hey, CNeil! Walsh up there? Well, he's for damn sure around here somewhere. Yeah you do that.' Moments passed. 'Griffin's on the line, boss.' A staccato exchange of words. 'Who else's it gonna be, mouth like that? Hey, always a pleasure talking to you, Griffin.' He handed the phone over.
'Lew.'
'I got a messagefrom LaVerne to call her at this number. She okay?'
'She's fine. Took her statement myself and sent her home in a black and white almost an hour ago. I asked her to call you.'
Crazy Jane stood outside the booth patiendy waiting. When I smiled, she smiled back, then ducked her head shyly like a schoolgirl.
'Verne said she was trying to help youfindthis Esmay woman, from the shooting. So she talked it up on the street-'just like setting out trot lines back home,' she said. Got her firstbite around dinnertime, second one not long after. Hell of a lot better than we ever did, or were gonna do. 'Lew says you always hang back,' she told me, 'see what the traffic looks like, give the landscape a chance to become familiar.' She had a couple of coffees at the cafe on the corner and kept her eyes open, came up here and walked into this.'
This was the messy anteroom of an apartment in a cul-de-sac off Jane Street.
Built in 1890 as a private home, the building persisted as such, various families moving in and out like hermit crabs, until 1954, at which time it came onto its first abandonment. The Sixties saw its irregular stories and multiple courtyards reincarnated as luxury apartments; late in the decade, following extensive consultations with lawyers, the building's new owners gave it over to use as an orphanage. Shortly thereafter began its second long decline.
These days, though a successful temp agency occupied its bottom floor, the rest remained an urban ghost town. Periodically movies were shot in those rambling uppers: crews would sweep in with brooms, paint and props, drape and hammer and arrange it all to look how they needed it, then disappear, leaving behind new habitats for the wild cats who lived there.
Don showed up to ransom mefrom the twenty-year-old pillar-of-salt sentinel stationed street level, frontdoor. We climbed narrow, listing stairs gone to rot and splinters, ducked through a sagging walkway.
Dana Esmay lay slumped just inside the entrance to apartment 3-B. A divider wall opened at either end into living room and kitchen areas. Green flocked wallpaper had been mostly torn away; what remained looked like healthy patches of mold. A dozen or so hats and caps hung from nails pounded into the wall.
'Wefigureshe was squatting here,' Don said.
'Someone was.'
'Evidence of the same in a couple of other apartments on the floor below. Power came from an extension cord, one of those heavy-duty orange ones. It's plugged into an external oudet on the patio downstairs.'
I lifted a hat off one of the nails, checked its size, held it close above what was left of her head.
'Look like afitto you?'
Don nodded. 'I see your point.'
Dana lay with arms and legs askew. Her throat looked like something from a butcher's block. An electric carving knife was on thefloor by one hand.
'We think LaVerne pushing the door open's what pulled the plug. She, the Esmay woman, was lying against the door. LaVerne remembers hearing a buzzing sound. Had no idea what it was at the time, of course.'
The wound in the woman's throat gapped open, oddly intimate. Some secret small thing had squeezed through this portal from elsewhere, leaving our own world forever changed. Beside the wound, to the left, were several long cuts. I leaned down to look closer.
'Hesitation marks,' Don said.
'Or signs that she was struggling, turning, trying to get away.'
Blood pooled beneath one turned-down wrist. Maybe she'd had a go at that, botched it, before moving higher. Or maybe instinctively she'd thrown that arm up in self-defense.
'Here's the rest.' Don turned her head. The back of it, from the crown well into the neck, was cut away. Scalloped came to mind. I couldn't remember when I'd last seen this much blood.
'ME says his best guess is she plugged the thing in, took a couple of trial swipes, then pulled it across. Both carotids are gone and she's dead at this point, but there's still ten to twelve seconds' worth of oxygen left in her brain. She's on automatic: her arm and hand keep going. Then the hand hits empty space and jerks around to the back. Two or three last whacks before she's down You okay, Lew?'
I nodded.
'It's her, right?'
'Yeah. It's her.'
