Part 3 (1/2)
I gave him five bucks and lifted off three of the wrist bands. Stiff Indian leather embossed with an eagle's head. The same ones Siggy was wearing.
”Let me help you,” Mr. Smooth Salesman offered, expertly tying the bands on my wrists and all but copping a feel as he did so.
I took an even closer look at the bracelets. No doubt about it, these were the kind that Charlie Conlin had left on my kitchen table while he showered.
”Thanks a lot,” I said innocently. ”Now I want something else.”
He grinned and pa.s.sed his hand over the table in a gesture of magnanimousness. ”Just you tell me, sistah. What else you want today?”
”I want you to tell me if you had a skinny white guy buy a lot of these lately. He would have been carrying a saxophone case most likely. Long hair. Young.”
He cast a glance over at the other man and then turned his eyes back to me.
”Come on, sistah,” he said derisively, ”why you want a white mon when you have me?”
”You're very good,” I said, and I meant it, actually. ”But I've got to catch a train. Do you know the man or not?”
”Know n.o.body,” the second guy spoke up then, a frost in his voice like they don't often get down Jamaica way.
”Oh really?” I said pleasantly, a little frightened but brazening it out. ”Well, I think maybe you do.”
”No no,” cutey protested, still good natured. ”We don't know your mon, sistah.”
”You know what else I think?” I replied.
”What?”
”You look like a liar, mon.”
He smiled wickedly. I took a ten out of my wallet and placed it on the table.
The second guy just shook his head.
”Okay, fellas,” I said with a sigh, ”I've got to make a quick decision here. I've got three phrases running around in my head. And I don't know which one is going to get me my answer the fastest when I start screaming. So let me try all three of them out on you. Number one: rape! Number two: vendor's license. Number three: green card.”
Salesman Two started for me at that moment, but the smoothie put up a staying hand. ”Mon didn't buy them,” he said to me, voice suddenly affectless. ”We give them to him for being lookout when we work Penn Station. He hang with old dude name of Wild Bill. They hustle, same as us. Okay, sistah?”
”Just fine,” I said.
”Sorry to see you go, Sweetart.”
Later that afternoon, a commuter in a tan raincoat-of all people-led me out of the wilderness. Just before he turned into Penn Station, the man called out to a musician standing nearby, ”How's it going, Wild Bill?” and pressed a couple of bucks into the guy's pocket.
Wild Bill was trumpeting something that might have been pretty and autumnal if weren't for the bitter hootiness in his tone. He reminded me of a mezzo past her prime, straining hideously for the same note that had once poured out of her throat like good vodka over ice.
The man who was playing looked, in fact, more like a clowned-out decoy at the rodeo than a jazz musician.
He wasn't young. But through the zigzags of white in his hair I could plainly see the remnants of flaming Malcolm X red. Poil de carotte, as we say in French.
The map of the colored man in America was written on his face. Yes, the black past was there, but there was something else.
I approached him in the same way I'd done with all the other musicians I'd interviewed during the day-walking up close to the person, listening attentively to his number, and then, without making too big a deal of it, leaving a donation in the hat or instrument case at the feet of the player. Then I leaned in casually and asked if by any chance he knew a white guy named Sig who blew alto.
Wild Bill laid his trumpet in its case, on top of my five. He straightened his dirty scarlet tie and checked his beaten up shoes for scuffs ... and adjusted his suit jacket and pinched the pleat in one greasy trouser leg. All without making a second's worth of eye contact with me.
I was beginning to feel like a housefly.
When I repeated my question about Sig, he deigned to acknowledge me. Wild Bill looked me up and down. But there was no hint of lasciviousness in his glance.
”I was wondering if you've seen Sig lately,” I said politely.
”Yeah, I saw him ... Have you seen a beautician lately?”
Aha. So that was what I'd glimpsed in his face: he was mean.
When he was through cackling, he turned his head slightly, coughed and lit a cigarette.
I let him have that one. He knew Sig. I couldn't afford to unsheathe my rapier wit just now. Instead, I pressed on in the same pleasant tone. ”When was it that you saw him, Wild Bill?”
”Two, three days,” he offered. Like we were friends now.
”Wow,” I said. ”I've got a gig for him but I can't find him anywhere. Friend of mine wants him to play at his wedding. Any idea where his lady is ... uh ... whatshername?”
”Inge.”
”Right, Inge. Know where she is? I could just give the message to her.”
”'Message' is just about right, baby. You look like the mailman in those threads.”
Okay, that made two. I've never been a baseball fan, but everybody knows, three strikes and you're dead.
Still, I remained calm and good humored. And in a few minutes-thank the baby Jesus-Wild Bill grew tired of me. And just told me straight out, in plain English, no more zaps, that I would find Siggy's girlfriend near the school on Twenty-sixth and Seventh.
The ”school” was the Fas.h.i.+on Inst.i.tute of Technology.
The street was popping with activity: traffic bombing then crawling down Seventh Avenue, students resplendent in their downtown anti-fas.h.i.+on chic, luncheonette busboys in dirty ap.r.o.ns, wealthy ladies hailing cabs to all manner of late afternoon a.s.signations in Soho. And then there was Inge.
She was seated on an old camp stool, her appreciative little audience forming a semicircle about her. There was her hat. There was her sax. There were her dead blue eyes and her dirty blond hair. There was her big rust colored seeing eye dog ... Lord have mercy she was blind.
She was playing September Song. She was awful. But a white man was crying anyway. I waited out her set, trying to decide what to say to her. She treated us to a touchingly incompetent Lost in the Stars. Then she tackled Speak Low. And finished up, after that mini Kurt Weill festival, with a few pitiful riffs of Cherokee. d.a.m.n, thought I, life is strange.
The people dispersed and she began to feel her way through the take in her hat. In a minute she stopped, c.o.c.king her head in my direction. But she remained silent, the smallest little smile on her lips.
Finally I spoke up. ”Inge?”
”Yes?”
Asked and answered. Now what was I going to say? I wasn't ready.
”You're Siggy's friend, aren't you?” I improvised.