Tiger Rag

  Kenji was waiting in front. Smoke was purling from the limousine’s exhaust pipe. Snow was still falling fast.

  “I need to work on my speech back at the hotel,” Ruby said.

  “Do you mind if I join you later, Mom? The cold air feels good.”

  “Of course.” Ruby pulled on her gloves as Kenji opened the rear door for her. “You know, I always knew I fell for an SOB because my father was an SOB.”

  As the limo pulled away, Devon glanced again at the note Browne had given her. It was not the name and address of the nightclub. It read: COME BACK IF YOU WANT TO DISCUSS THE CYLINDER.

  She went back upstairs and found Browne still behind his desk. “So soon?” he smiled. “Let’s get right to it, then. I could see how intrigued you were by the Bolden cylinder.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I have a proposition for you. I realize you have no idea of the cylinder’s whereabouts. You had not even heard of it until today. Yet you may be able to help me find it.”

  “How is that possible? You’ve been searching for decades.”

  “Yes, retracing Owen’s history was nearly impossible. He left a very broken trail. Look at how long it took me to locate your grandmother. But now you may be able to learn more about it than I ever could. Then you can share that information with me.”

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  “Money? The more information you bring back, the more I will pay.”

  “Kind of like the deal you offered my grandfather.”

  “You mean, the deal he offered me. Are you interested?”

  “I’d like to hear some details—with no strings attached.”

  “Fine. And if you’re not interested, I’ll bid you goodbye a second time. First, I have always believed that Joan Neptune knows more than she says. I only met her twice, and she made it clear she would never speak with me again.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of my connection to Valentine Owen.”

  Devon was surprised. “What about my connection to him?”

  “He died before you were born. Even your mother hardly knew him.”

  “Still, it’s a nasty calling card.”

  “Why present it, then? You don’t need to introduce yourself as Owen’s granddaughter.” He leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what to say.”

  “You mean, you’ll tell me how to lie.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you need much coaching.”

  “What?”

  “Not with your history—a criminal record, drug problems …”

  “I don’t believe this,” Devon said, standing up and heading for the door.

  “Suit yourself,” Browne shrugged. “You’re missing an opportunity.”

  “Go to hell.”

  Devon was furious with herself for going back. What did I expect? she thought, stepping into the cold.

  She took out her phone and found an AA meeting in a Unitarian church three blocks away. Before going in, Devon lit up and huddled among the other smokers on the sidewalk. The meeting was in the basement, a rec room with fluorescent lights and linoleum tiles. Sunday school tables were pushed up against the wall. Several dozen people were sitting on folding chairs. The woman chairing the meeting was about Ruby’s age, wearing the kind of prim business suit Ruby used to favor. After she had someone read the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the woman asked, “Is there anyone here for the first time?”

  Hands went up.

  “Anyone under ninety days?”

  Devon raised her hand slowly. “My name is Devon and I’m a drug addict and an alcoholic. This is my seventy-third day.”

  Everyone clapped.

  The speaker was a former cop. His qualification was no-frills: before discussing the amends he had made, he described the last time he had picked up, in a bar in Canarsie, only to wake up the following morning in a men’s room stall in Bangor, Maine, with blood on his coat.

  “And it wasn’t my blood,” he said.

  Several people spoke from the floor in a similar vein. But it was the slight, soft-spoken old man who concluded the meeting that caught Devon’s attention. “Here’s what I know after forty years in the rooms: not drinking isn’t the same as being sober. Take an action.”

  Devon tried to stay with that as she walked outside. But when she thought of Browne taunting her—You’re missing an opportunity—her anger rose up again. He was so devoured by greed that perhaps he didn’t realize he himself had given her an opportunity she couldn’t have imagined a few days before. She didn’t grasp it herself until that moment.

  Take an action, indeed, she told herself, stepping through a snowdrift and hailing a taxi.

  Her driver skillfully worked the stagger on Park Avenue, and they didn’t hit a single red light all the way to Harlem. He even knew where Algiers was, on the north side of 124th Street. It was a sleek, darkly curtained nightclub, no neon sign—no sign at all, in fact, just the name in discreet gold letters on a blue canopy.

  Devon didn’t want to sit at the bar. She took a table in the rear. A trio was setting up onstage. This was the kind of high-end club she had once dreamed of playing in. The room was beautiful to look at, humming with energy. Customers streaming in dressed to the nines. The waitress came over, and Devon ordered a plate of nachos.

  “Anything to drink?” the waitress said.

  Devon watched a tray of martinis and margaritas go by. A girl sitting alone at a nearby table was stirring a mojito. How easy it would be, she thought, to get drunk and tally for the thousandth time her thousand and one grievances against her parents, only to arrive at what? Her thousand and first drink? What did Giselle tell her when they were trash picking by the highway? Instead of trying to control other people, control yourself. Listening to Browne in his mausoleum, Devon had found herself drawn to that lost world where music was a religion and for a wild, fragile moment King Bolden was its high priest. His cylinder was the grail of that world. She had to hear it. If she never got near it, or if it no longer existed, then in order to write about it she would have to imagine and make palpable the music it preserved, which embodied nothing less than the genesis of jazz. If she could do that, if she could write about jazz, and interpret it, the way she had once hoped to perform it, it might light her way back to the parts of herself she had lost. The Bolden cylinder could help her begin a new chapter in her life. She was amazed at the power it had held over all these men for over a hundred years, driving some to revere it but keep it under wraps, and others to cheat, steal, and maybe die for it. Even the good men, who didn’t see it as a dollar sign, became warped in the end, coveting it until it was not just a secret thing but a forbidden one. They locked it away so no one could hear it, just as Bolden himself had been locked away and never heard from again.

  “Cranberry juice,” Devon told the waitress. “Lots of ice and a twist of lime.”

  It arrived with the nachos.

  Devon listened closely as the trio—piano, bass, drums—began playing an intense version of Art Tatum’s “Deep Purple.” The young pianist, leaning into the keyboard, working the pedals, was more Bud Powell than Tatum: playing soft block chords, elaborating right-hand melodies that broke off unexpectedly, allowing the bass and drums to converse—like the marathon duets of Mingus and Max Roach between Powell’s solos.

  Devon finished her juice and signaled the waitress. She had a plan, and it was time to put it in motion.

  “Could you tell me if Joan Neptune is here tonight?” she asked.

  The waitress looked at her more closely. “I wouldn’t know, Miss.”

  “Is there someone here who would know?”

  “You can ask the maître d’.”

  The greeter’s smile on the smartly dressed young black woman at the door disappeared when Devon asked her the same question.

  “She owns this club, doesn’t she?” Devon said. “I wondered if you could give her this note.”

  Reluctantly the greeter took the note. “I’ll give
this to the manager. But I can’t guarantee it will be passed along,” she added politely.

  “I don’t need a guarantee. Please just say it’s important.”

  “You’re going to wait?”

  “I’m at that table there.”

  Devon ordered another cranberry juice. She studied the crowd flowing in, classy, young, black and white. After a half hour, she began to think no reply was forthcoming. Then she saw a broad-shouldered black man in a brown suit make his way through the tables toward her, occasionally stopping to greet someone.

  “Would you come with me, please?” he said pleasantly.

  He led her through the maze of tables, around the stage, to a door marked PRIVATE. Around a corner there was a flight of stairs to a steel door, then a carpeted hallway at the end of which was another door marked PRIVATE. He opened it and disappeared.

  The office she entered was spacious and well furnished and obviously soundproof: you would never know there was a nightclub below. The windows were curtained, the carpets thick. The track lights were dimmed over an L-shaped sofa to the right. In the middle of the room a tall, attractive black woman in her thirties was sitting behind a gleaming desk. She was wearing a green dress and gold earrings. A short, heavyset man, also well dressed, was sitting beside the desk. His eyeglasses were tinted yellow, magnifying his small eyes. The amber desk lamp was also low, so that the left side of the room was completely dark. Devon couldn’t make out what was there, or how much distance there might be between the wall of darkness and the actual wall.

  “Please, sit down,” the woman said. She had striking bright eyes and beautiful hands. “Your name is Devon Sheresky?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Adele. This is Leon.”

  Leon nodded.

  “Thank you for speaking with me,” Devon said.

  Adele held up Devon’s note. “So you want to write about Buddy Bolden.”

  “Yes.”

  “A big subject. What else have you written?”

  “Reviews, criticism. For magazines. I want to do something more. An important story.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A story that has yet to be told fully. Bolden’s story.” She hesitated. “And the story of the cylinder he recorded.”

  Adele looked at her more closely. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “I want to write about Bolden and Willie Cornish and Leonard Bechet. And Sammy LeMond. I’d like to know more about Mr. LeMond’s relationship with Leonard Bechet.”

  For the first time, Leon’s eyes strayed from Devon to Adele.

  “How did you find your way here?” Adele asked.

  Devon had been expecting this. “There is a letter of Leonard Bechet’s in the musical archives at LSU in which he says he gave Sammy LeMond an Edison recording of Buddy Bolden. I’d like to meet Joan Neptune to ask her about this recording.”

  “What makes you think she knows anything about it?”

  “How could she not?”

  “Even if that’s the case, why would she want to discuss it with you?”

  “It’s important musical history. I’m going to write about it. I hoped she would be interested in telling me what she knows.”

  Adele did not seem impressed by this answer.

  Suddenly Devon had the feeling there was another person in the room, behind Adele, beyond that wall of darkness. She thought she’d heard a rustling of clothing, a breath. Leon was watching Devon again, but he never said a word.

  “I will pass along your request to Mrs. LeMond,” Adele said.

  “Thank you. That’s it?”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Devon hesitated. “Yes, that’s what I wanted.”

  “Then good night, Miss Sheresky.”

  Back at the Pierre, Devon found Ruby working on her laptop at the desk in the sitting room. The screen cast a pale green light onto her face. She was wearing a lavender silk bathrobe—when had she bought that?—and her hair was still damp from the shower. Traces of her perfume were in the air. There was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. A room service dinner on the coffee table, the dish still covered, the silverware unused, a half-eaten roll on the bread plate. The television was turned on to the Weather Channel with the sound muted. Footage of a typhoon in Malaysia, followed by a mudslide in Peru.

  Ruby heard Devon enter the room behind her, and without turning, said, “Give me a minute.”

  Devon put her hands on Ruby’s shoulders. The muscles were tight. Her skin felt cold beneath the silk. Devon saw that she was writing in an emerald font.

  “I’m changing my speech,” Ruby said simply.

  “All of it?”

  “Just the middle. You’ll see.”

  Devon massaged her lightly. “That was pretty rough this afternoon.”

  Ruby highlighted and deleted two pages of text, then looked up at Devon and assumed her clinical voice. “I never heard of anyone committing suicide like that. Medically speaking, it would be excruciating. As your temperature drops, your organs shut down, one by one, last of all your brain. You’re aware of what’s happening until you begin hallucinating, and by then you’ve lost all mobility. Amnesia sets in. You may not know who you are or where you are. Depending on his clothing, it may have taken him four or five hours to die. That’s more than killing yourself: it’s looking to suffer. It doesn’t add up for me.”

  “I’m sorry you had to find out about it like that, Mom.”

  Ruby turned back to her laptop, and her tone again shifted. “I barely knew him, and he was a horrible man. For god’s sake, this happened when I was your age. Younger.” She started typing. “How was your walk?”

  “Fine. I had some dinner, too. I see you haven’t touched yours.”

  Ruby glanced over at the coffee table. “I’m working on it.”

  Devon drew herself a hot bath and soaked, sipping tea. She took two aspirins and stretched out on her bed. Her eyes were half closed when she heard a text message beep in on her cellphone. It was the first message she’d received in weeks. There weren’t exactly a lot of people in her life just then besides her mother. It was an unfamiliar number with a New York area code.

  CAN YOU VISIT JOAN NEPTUNE T’MW NIGHT AT HER APT @ 9:00? 2 EAST 111TH ST.—ADELE

  Devon was surprised by the prompt response. She didn’t think the meeting with Adele had gone well. Certainly not enough to elicit an invitation to Joan Neptune’s home.

  She texted back:

  I’LL BE THERE. THANK YOU.

  Lying awake for the next hour, she went over everything Browne had told them, but she kept coming back to Buddy Bolden alone on the asylum bandstand, blowing a battered horn. She drifted off to that image, lulled by what she thought was the whir of the ventilation ducts until, in her last waking moments, she realized it was Ruby, down the hall, humming to the music on her earphones.

  NEW YORK CITY—DECEMBER 23, 10:00 A.M.

  In the morning, Devon found her mother at the desk in front of her laptop, still wearing the lavender robe, as if time had stopped. Maybe for her it has, Devon thought. Ruby didn’t look tired or anxious. Her expression was blank, remote, when she turned to Devon, as if she was laboring to register her presence. Devon was alarmed. The dinner tray had been replaced by a breakfast tray. Again the plate was covered, the silverware wrapped inside a clean napkin, the juice glass sealed. There was a half-eaten croissant in the bread basket.

  “You didn’t sleep at all, Mom?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Your speech—”

  “Is finished. And we have two hours before I have to deliver it.”

  After showering, Ruby blow-dried her hair and applied her makeup. When she emerged from her bedroom, she was wearing the purple pantsuit, shoes, and every single purple accessory she had purchased the previous day, including her sunglasses and a pair of purple kid gloves Devon had not seen before.

  My god, Devon thought.

  “Well?” Ruby said.
>
  “You’ll knock them out, Mom.”

  “I plan to.”

  Devon had slipped on a black sweater and black slacks. She was curled up on the couch with the laptop. “Come and see this.”

  Online she had been reading whatever she could find about Buddy Bolden. She had just pulled up a Times-Picayune photograph taken on September 6, 1996. The caption read: A CROWD OF TWO THOUSAND WITNESSES THE UNVEILING OF THE BOLDEN MONUMENT AT HOLT CEMETERY.

  “You’re really taken with this guy,” Ruby said.

  “I want to write about him. Dig deeper. Start with a short piece and see what happens. I liked writing. It was something I could’ve done a lot better.”

  The article in the Times-Picayune described the ceremony on the 119th anniversary of Bolden’s birth. The exact location of his grave was unknown, so they celebrated in a relatively open space that could accommodate the crowd. The Olympia Brass Band performed. The finest young trumpeters in the city alternated as soloists. The mayor gave a speech. At the banquet that evening, several old jazz musicians delivered testimonials. The last was the singer Blue Lu Barker, who made her debut the year Bolden died, when she was eighteen. She said King Bolden had finally received the funeral he deserved. “I only wish I could have sung by his grave in 1931.”

  “Then, in 2002,” Devon said, “the City Council renamed the street next to the cemetery Buddy Bolden Place.”

  Ruby’s mind was elsewhere now. “Honey, you’d better get dressed, too.”

  “I am dressed.”

  “I mean, for the luncheon. I bought you a dress. A surprise. It’s hanging in my room.”

  “That is a surprise,” Devon said warily.

  “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to wear it. But I’d like you to wear it.”

  Devon expected something over the top, but the dress was sleek and stylish, a deep blue silk with puffed sleeves, from Armani.

  “I didn’t see you buy this yesterday.”

  “I did it on the sly. The color matches your eyes.”

  “Yours, too.”

  When Devon put it on, Ruby zipped up the back and clapped softly. “Fits perfectly, in all the right places.”