The Right To Sing the Blues Read Free

the white-tiled bathroom but not the small roach that scurried behind the washbasin, then handed over the room key.
    Larry had black, intense eyes. He hadn’t said a word, and maybe he couldn’t talk, but he was a hell of a watcher. Nudger tipped him two dollars, eager to be rid of his presence. Larry grunted as he pocketed the bills, shot a mechanical smile in Nudger’s direction, and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. Nudger walked over and slid the bolt home, locking the door from the inside.
    He unpacked hurriedly, then turned down the thermostat on the window air conditioner and removed his sport coat. From an inside pocket of the coat he drew the envelope Fat Jack McGee had sent him, then draped the coat on the back of the desk chair. With the envelope’s contents spread before him on the bed, he reread the letter. Then he picked up the Touch-Tone phone from the bedside table and with his forefinger pecked out the office number printed on Fat Jack McGee’s thick white business card. It was time to arrange that meeting the rotund jazz legend wanted so badly.
    “There’s this that you need to know about jazz,” Fat Jack told Nudger an hour later. “You don’t need to know a thing about it to enjoy it, and that’s all you need to know.” He tossed back his huge head, jowls quivering, and drained the final sip of brandy from his crystal snifter. “It’s feel,” he said across the table to Nudger, using a white napkin to dab at his lips with a very fat man’s peculiar delicacy. “Jazz is pure feel.”
    “Does Willy Hollister have the feel?” Nudger asked. He pushed his plate away, feeling full to the point of being bloated. The only portion of the gourmet lunch Fat Jack had bought him that remained untouched was the grits, which Nudger didn’t think belonged on the plate to begin with. Fat Jack had told him it was Hollister who was troubling him, but he hadn’t said how or why.
    “Willy Hollister,” Fat Jack said, with the unmistakable reverence one consummate artist feels for the work of another, “plays ultrafine piano.”
    A white-vested waiter appeared like a jungle native from around a potted palm, carrying chicory coffee on a silver tray, and deftly placed cups before Nudger and Fat Jack with a gingerness that suggested the dark liquid might explode if spilled.
    “Then what’s your problem with Hollister?” Nudger asked, sipping the thick, rich brew. He rated it delicious simply on the basis of the aroma, but the taste didn’t disappoint. “Didn’t you hire him to play his best piano at your club?”
    “Hey, there’s no problem with his music,” Fat Jack said hastily. “Before I go into any detail, Nudger, I gotta know if you’ll hang around New Orleans till you can clear up this matter for old Fat Jack.” Fat Jack’s tiny pinkish eyes glittered with mean humor. “For a fat fee, of course.”
    Nudger was suspicious of people who referred to themselves in the third person, but he also knew the fee would be generous. Fat Jack had an equally obese bank account, and he had in fact paid a sizable sum for air fare and hotel expenses just for Nudger to travel to New Orleans and sit in the Magnolia Blossom restaurant over lunch and listen to Fat Jack talk. The question Nudger now voiced was, “Why me?”
    Fat Jack gave him a broad, flesh-padded grin. “Ain’t that the big one of all the whys? The universal question?”
    “It is in my universe,” Nudger said.
    Fat Jack repeated the salient query for Nudger. “Why you? Because I know a lady named Jeanette Boyington from your fair city. Jeanette says you’re tops at your job; she don’t say that about many.”
    Nudger almost spilled his coffee. Jeanette Boyington continued to astound, even months after he’d last seen her. And yet he shouldn’t have been surprised that the woman who’d tried to dupe him into being her accomplice in murder, who had been virtually destroyed by where their relationship had led him,