Crime Plus Music Read Free Page B

off it in years. And most of what I had I put in my arm, like you did.”
    The Sam Cooke song had ended and the next song started. And there was Sherman doing the deep bass intro. “Ehh-de-doom-wopa-de-doom-wop-de-doom wop duh-duh . . .” Before Frankie came in with the other fellows, his high voice all velvet and brass, with streetwise choirboy sass. “Ooo-wah. Ooo-wah . . .”
    She started rummaging through her bag. All at once, he realized there were no accidents. Curses were real. She hadn’t just seen him randomly in the bar. And he hadn’t just randomly picked Sam Cooke on the jukebox. The purse bulged as she put her hand in it and he thought he discerned the shape of a gun.
    â€œYou owe me something, Frankie. And you know it.”
    Ever since Sam Cooke died, he’d had a premonition that he’d go the same way. But he thought that it would be one of his wives who pulled the trigger.
    â€œI’m sorry.” He put his hands up, his voice cracking in the wrong way. “But I don’t have anything left to give you. It’s all been took or given away.”
    In the background, his young voice seemed to mock him. Young Frankie wailing, “Tell me why, tell me whyyyyy” before giving way to the bodacious blare of Mr. Wright’s dirty hot sax solo, which promised decidedly adult pleasures just down the pike.
    She pulled a crumpled Kleenex from the purse. “I want you to acknowledge me.”
    â€œOkay, you’re acknowledged.” He dropped his hands. “Now let me be.”
    â€œThat’s not enough. I know Morris Levy must have put a few dollars in your pocket when he brought you back up here.”
    â€œBarely enough to put a song on the jukebox.”
    She bunched up the tissue in her hand. “I know a spot around the corner where they say Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday used to score.”
    â€œUh, Miss Brooks, I’m supposed to be trying to stay clean, case you hadn’t heard.”
    And God knew, it wouldn’t take much to get him chipping again. His doctor at Manhattan Psych said he never saw an addict more determined to get a hypo in his arm.
    â€œCome on, Frankie. I’m just trying to get what I need, same as you.”
    â€œAnd what is it you think I need?”
    She sighed. “We both know that if you had another verse, it wouldn’t be about fools in love, or rain from above, but ‘why’s someone in pain put a stick in his vein?’ Some things just got to be.”
    He watched her blow her nose and in the dim light of the bar, he almost reached out to touch her tracks. She was right. They were the same. Chasing that feeling they once had. She’d gotten it when she was sitting by the window waiting for Kenny Tyrone’s wife to leave so she could go across the hall. He’d gotten it when he was waiting to hit that seraphim-clear high note that would make girls scream. And less and less these days, when he was waiting for the powder to stir up his blood and bring on the rush.
    As the sax break finished and his old voice came back in with Herman, Jimmy, Joe, and Sherman, he saw a couple of the other patrons look at him, bop their heads nonchalantly and smile. And he had the strangest sensation that he was here but already gone. The people were taking the song and making it their own, like the guy who sang it wasn’t standing among them like a ghost. It was part of their stories now. His presence was irrelevant. He was just a vague memory to them, not significant for who he was, but for how he reminded them of how it used to be in their own lives.
    For a half second, he thought about what it would have been like if he’d never gotten his hands on her letters. Then there never would have been that song and they wouldn’t have gotten past the audition. He would’ve stayed in this neighborhood, working as a delivery boy at the grocery down the block and occasionally picking up two