The Right To Sing the Blues Read Free Page B

wants to stand or fall alone; all that making-it-on-her-own bullshit. So she sings under the stage name of Ineida Mann, which most likely is a gem from her dad’s advertising department. It doesn’t make it any easier for me to be her guardian angel.”
    “I still don’t see your problem,” Nudger said.
    “Hollister doesn’t set right with me, and I don’t know exactly why. I do know that if he messes up Ineida in some way, David Collins will see to it that I’m playing jazz at clubs on the Butte, Boise, Anchorage circuit.”
    “Nice cities in their fashion,” Nudger remarked, “but not jazz towns. I see your problem.”
    “So find out about Willy Hollister for me,” Fat Jack implored. “Check him out, declare him pass or fail, but put my mind at ease either way. Hey, that’s all I want, an easeful mind.”
    “Even we tough private eye guys want that,” Nudger said.
    Fat Jack removed his napkin from his lap and raised a languid plump hand. A waiter who had been born just to respond to that signal scampered over with the check. Fat Jack accepted a tiny ballpoint pen and signed for the meal with a ponderous yet elegant flourish. Nudger watched him help himself to a mint. It was like watching the grace and dexterity of an elephant picking up a peanut. Huge as Fat Jack was, he moved as if he weighed no more than ten or twelve pounds.
    “I gotta get back, Nudger, do some paperwork, count some money.” He stood up, surprisingly tall in his tan slacks and white linen sport coat. Nudger thought it was a sharp-looking coat; he decided he might buy one and wear it winter and summer. “Drop around the club about eight o’clock tonight,” Fat Jack said. “I’ll fill you in on whatever else you need to know, and I’ll point out Willy Hollister and Ineida. Maybe you’ll get to hear her sing.”
    “While she’s singing,” Nudger said, “maybe we can discuss my fee.”
    Fat Jack grinned, his vast jowls defying gravity grandly. “Hey, you and me’ll get along fine.” He winked and moved away among the tables, tacking toward the door.
    The waiter refilled Nudger’s coffee cup, and he sat sipping chicory brew and watching Fat Jack McGee move along the sunny sidewalk toward Bourbon Street. He sure had a bouncy, jaunty kind of walk for a fat man.
    Nudger wasn’t as anxious about the fee as Fat Jack thought. Well, not quite as anxious; he knew he’d be paid for his work. The reason he’d jumped at the case wasn’t totally because of the fee, even though he desperately needed something to toss to Eileen and the various wolves queued up at his door. Years ago, at the Odds Against lounge in St. Louis, Nudger had heard Fat Jack McGee play clarinet in the manner that had made him a jazz legend, and he’d never forgotten. Fat Jack’s was the kind of music that lingered in the mind, that you thought of at odd moments: while you were waiting in a doorway for the rain to stop, or sitting on the edge of the bed tying your shoe. It was music that permeated dreams, that hooked real jazz fans forever.
    Nudger needed the money, sure. But he also needed to hear that clarinet again.
    II I
    at Jack’s club was on Conti, a few blocks off Bourbon Street. Nudger paused at the entrance and looked up at a red-and-green neon sign that visually shouted the synonymous names of club and owner. And there was a red neon Fat Jack himself, a portly, herky-jerky illuminated fig ure that jumped about with the same seeming lightness and jauntiness as the flesh-and-blood version.
    A trumpet solo from inside the club was wafting out almost palpably into the hot, syrupy-humid night. People came and went, among them a few who were obviously tourists making the Bourbon Street rounds of clubs and drinks. But Nudger got the impression that most of Fat Jack’s customers were folks who took their jazz seriously and were there for music and not atmosphere.
    The trumpet stair-stepped up to an admirable high C and wild applause. Nudger went inside