Honky-Tonk Girl (17 page)

Johnny settled back and blew the notes big and round with his bruised lips. He was playing better tonight. A cloud that had been hanging over him for six months was gone now. He was going to lick the curse of the
Ghost Album
. For the first time in months, the tension left him. He played in his old relaxed way and he was sure of the notes he reached for. His horn wasn't double-crossing him tonight. It spilled out warm golden butter, cut through by flashes of lightning. He was too tired and winded to do anything spectacular. But what he played was sure and affirmative. There was no fumbling around, no cracking tones, no uncertainty. He caught the rest of them up in the power of his driving horn and marshaled them into the groove.

“Listen to the sonuvabitch blow!” somebody said in awe.

Some of the tension left the room. It began to rock now to the solid music of Johnny's great horn. The old Johnny Nickles, come back again.

For Johnny, the nightmare was over. He could look forward to music again, and a woman's young, golden arms....

Then J. W. Richey took his chorus, playing it the way he did on the record, like Big Gate himself.

After that, Link Rayl took up his clarinet and blew the chorus that was so much like the style of the late Charlie Teegerstrom that jazz critics had said the Teeg's ghost came back into Link's horn that night and fingered the keys.

And Johnny watched him play the chorus and he said, “That's good, Charlie Teegerstrom. That's as good as I ever heard you play it in Chicago, ten years ago.”

The clarinet player didn't get lost. His fingers slipped over a couple of notes, but he caught himself and kept right on. But now his eyes were open and there were thin rivulets of perspiration trickling down his face. The fog of smoke swirled around them. The fast, excited beat of the hot jazz tune hammered at them.

Johnny again, “Why did you kill Tizzy Mole, Charlie? I can figure about Miff Smith. I guess he found out who you really were and blackmailed you. But why Tizzy? Did he find out, too?”

The clarinet player ended his chorus. He lowered the horn, sweat pouring from his face. He kept looking straight ahead. No one heard him speak but Johnny.

“So you know,” he said, the breath slipping between his teeth. “And I thought I was safe at last!” His hands gripped the clarinet, the long sensitive fingers white with pressure. “Yeah, I had to kill Tizzy, too. When he went through Miff's things, he found old original manuscript paper with the idea for
Teegerstrom Struts His Stuff
that I wrote back in Chicago fifteen years ago. It was in ink and it had some of my finger prints on it. Miff Smith was playing on a band with me then. I guess that was how he got it.

“I followed Tizzy up there Wednesday night. He tore off part of that manuscript and left. I went into Miff's room after he'd gone and found the part he'd left on the floor. I knew then that I had to stop him. So I went to the place where I always rent cars....”

“Then,” Johnny said, “it wasn't Zack Turner's idea for that tune on the
Ghost Album
record?”

Teegerstrom shook his head. “I whistled the riff idea for him. I'd forgotten about that damned sheet of manuscript paper. I thought it was just an idea that had been kicking around in my mind for fifteen years.”

“Zack,” Johnny said, “must have been the first one to guess who you were.” He stopped tensely, waiting for the clarinetist's answer.

Link nodded. “I had my face changed by a plastic surgeon, but he couldn't change the way I played. It was like a trademark. The night we recorded the
Ghost Album
in Chicago, Zack put two and two together and came up with the right answer. Teegerstrom hadn't ever died. He was still alive and playing in this band.”

Johnny remembered the scandal over Charlie Teegerstrom's supposed “death” ten years ago. The great Chicago clarinet player had been “killed” in an automobile accident after a shooting over another guy's wife—or so everybody, including the police, believed. Teegerstrom had shot the girl's husband and sped away in a car. The car was found later, wrecked and burned, in another part of town. They'd pulled a roasted corpse out of the wreck, too far gone to recognize, but they'd identified it by jewelry belonging to the great clarinet player. There had never been much question raised, since it had been his car.

“What did you do that night in Chicago, ten years ago, Charlie? Pick up a bum from Skid Row, plant him in the car, knock him unconscious, put your jewelry on him and then wreck and burn the car?” Johnny asked.

Teegerstrom nodded. “If I could only have stayed out of the music business! Every guy has his own certain style of playing, just like the way he talks or wears his clothes. I had my face changed by a plastic surgeon and I tried to get out of the music business. But I couldn't. It was in my blood. I was always afraid sooner or later that my style would give me away.”

“That was what finally gave me my answer,” Johnny told him. “I found part of that manuscript paper. I was listening to the
Ghost Album
record. I couldn't see how anybody could play so much like Teegerstrom. Then it finally hit me—it was Teegerstrom!”

“Miff figured it out soon after we left Chicago. He was bleeding me white, blackmailing me. Finally, I couldn't scrape up any more money. He was threatening to turn me in to the cops. I was desperate....”

“How did you kill Zack? We all thought it was heart failure.”

“I knew he had a bum ticker that might stop any minute. I had a handful of benzedrine pills. I slipped them into a drink of his when he wasn't looking. The jolt was more than his heart could take and he keeled over.”

Charlie Teegerstrom laid down his clarinet.

“Don't try to stop me, Johnny,” he said softly. “I have a gun in my pocket, you know.”

“I'll bet it isn't a Luger,” Johnny said. You planted that in my room for the cops to find.”

The clarinet player smiled, a forced grin that skinned the lips back from his teeth. But he remained eloquently silent.

He got up and moved off the stand.

Johnny put his trumpet down. He was afraid to tackle the guy there. Teegerstrom had two murders hanging over him, plus that old Chicago killing. If he started blasting here, he wouldn't stop until all his bullets were used up and a half-dozen people'd be killed or injured. Enough people had died because of the
Ghost Album
.

He pushed through the crowd. He groped for the small automatic he had taken from Ruth Jordon back at the Cowles house. Then he was out on the sidewalk, with his hand in his coat pocket, holding the gun. The night wind came in off the water. He saw Teegerstrom a block away. He was walking frantically, running half a block at a time, his jacket flapping. Then he slowed to a walk, then started running again.

Teegerstrom turned around suddenly and stood straddle-legged on the sidewalk. He lifted his gun and fired at Johnny. Nickles heard the wind of the slug slap past his ear.

Johnny felt terribly old and tired inside. He took careful aim. Then he shot once...twice...three times.

Charlie Teegerstrom just stood there. Then his gun fell out of his hand. He turned and started across the street. He walked in queer, tripping steps. When he reached the far curb he stumbled and fell in the gutter.

Johnny and the musicians who had followed him from Mamie's Place ran to his side. He was lying in the dirty water that was always present in the chug holes and gutters of the narrow, winding street. Johnny lifted him so his head would be up out of the water.

He coughed and looked up at the row of faces around him. “For the record,” he choked, “I killed Miff and Tizzy....”

Johnny leaned closer to him. “You were in your room practicing Monday night when Miff was shot. I heard you.”

“Tape recording...,” he whispered. “...hour's tape—”

Teeg tried to say something. Eddie Howard bent over close to his lips, his thin face pasty and sick-looking. Then he pushed his way out of the crowd, into the nearest bar that had a jukebox. In another minute, music came out of the place. It was the
Ghost Album
record.
Teegerstrom Struts His Stuff
.

The whole street was miraculously hushed now. It was the only music to be heard.

“Listen,” Teegerstrom whispered. “Listen, Johnny. I was good there...wasn't I?”

“Yeah,” Nickles said, his gravel voice hoarse. “You played real fine on that one.”

The twin strains of the tortured clarinet floated out of the place and down the crooked dirty street filled with mud puddles and lined with bars and honky-tonks and neon signs.

CHAPTER TWENTY

STRICTLY DOWNBEAT

Coda

Mamie had a new band in her place. And business had doubled since they came in. She went around beaming and slapping patrons lustily on the back. She was even considering remodeling the place.

One night, George Swenninger came around to hear the band. Mamie sat down at his table.

“They sound fine,” he nodded.

“Hell, yeah they sound fine,” Mamie swore brassily. “Best damned musicians on the Coast!”

They looked up at the stand where six musicians and a blonde girl singer were selling to the crowd. In front of the bandstand, at the microphone, was a stocky guy in a flashy suit, with a huge diamond on his little finger. He was blowing a golden trumpet. He rocked back on his heels when he played, blasting the hot notes straight up at the ceiling.

“Gawd,” she swore admiringly, “some day he's gonna blow a hole clean through the roof with that damn thing!”

When they had finished the tune, Johnny took his trumpet down from his lips. The blonde girl singer winked and grinned at him. She was wearing a blue ribbon in her hair. There was a tiny gold band around the third finger of her left hand. And there was a special light in her wide blue eyes whenever she looked at Johnny.

A young man wearing horn-rimmed glasses and clutching a notebook walked up to the bandstand and tugged at Johnny's trouser leg.

“Mr. Nickles, I'm taking a poll for
DownBeat.
We'd like to know who you think was the greatest trumpet player who ever lived?”

Johnny stared at him in amazement, then turned to his band. “Get this cat! Who the hell do you think, sonny? Johnny Nickles, of course!” He lifted his horn. “Okay, fellas. Let's provide a little tune for the folks. One...two...three—” He put the mouthpiece against his lips and closed his eyes and started to play.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charles Beckman
(the pen name of Charles Boeckman) is a native Texan. He grew up during the Great Depression when there was no money for music lessons. Fortunately, everyone in his family played a musical instrument. Those were the days of the big bands and their sounds were on all the A.M. radio stations. Hearing Bennie Goodman and Artie Shaw, he fell in love with the clarinet. He found a fingering chart for the clarinet and taught himself to play that instrument. To get a job on a big band in those days, a reed man was expected to play both saxophone and clarinet, so he also taught himself to play saxophone. The year he graduated from high school, in 1938, he played his first professional job in a South Texas country dance hall. He continued playing weekend jobs in dance halls all over South Texas until the mid 1940s, when he moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, and played as a sideman in bands in that city. In the 1970s he formed his own New Orleans style Dixieland jazz band, which became quite popular. He still plays in the Texas Jazz Festival every October. In recognition of his many years on the music scene in the area, he was awarded a star in the South Texas Music Walk of Fame in June of 2009.

While music has been a part of his career, his main occupation has been that of a professional writer. He has had dozens of books and hundreds of short stories published all over the world He uses his music background as setting for many of his mystery stories. He sold his first suspense story to
Detective Tales
in 1945. In 1965, he married Patti Kennelly, a school teacher. With Charles's help, she also became a writer. At this writing, they have been happily married for forty-six years. They have a daughter and two grandchildren. In the 1980s they collaborated on a series of twenty-six Harlequin Romance novels that sold worldwide over two million copies.

More about Charles Beckman's career can be found on his web site, charlesboeckman.com.