“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll make sure he pays up his dues.”
She rolls her eyes.
I move away toward the door and look at the number, double checking my notebook, but it’s the same number I’d called several times without any luck. At least I know he’s in, or was in New York. I flip open my phone and try it anyway. It rings several times and just when I’m about to hang up, a woman’s voice answers in a frail soft tone.
“Hello.”
“Hello, is Al Beckwood there, please?”
“Who is this?”
“I’m returning his call. We have a mutual friend by the name of Calvin Hughes.”
“Al’s asleep,” she says. “He’s very sick.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Are you Mrs. Beckwood? It’s very important. Could you tell him I called and let me give you my number. I’m in New York for a few days.”
“It’s nobody,” I hear her say as she half muffles the phone. She says something else, then I hear a man’s voice. “I’m awake woman. Who is it?”
“Says he’s Calvin Hughes.”
“No, I’m Evan Horne, a friend of Calvin Hughes.”
“Just a minute,” she says and lays down the phone with a clunk.
A few moments pass then the man picks up the phone. “Hello? Who is this?”
“Al Beckwood? It’s Evan Horne. You left a message for me about Calvin Hughes. I tried to call you back and now I’m in New York and—”
“I been sick.”
“Is it possible we could get together? I need to talk to you about Calvin.”
He pauses, coughs a couple of times. “I’m tired, having this nasty chemotherapy. You have to come here if you want to talk.”
“Where is here?”
I grab a pen from the desk and write down the address. “When, Mr. Beckwood? When is a good time for you?”
“Ain’t none anymore.”
It’s nearly a half hour before Cameron Brody shows up. He’s all smiles, a nylon computer bag slung over his shoulder. “Got it,” he says, patting the bag. “Sorry it took so long. I had to boot up and load my disks at the store, just to make sure things were working right. How’d you do?”
“I found him.”
“Al Beckwood?”
“Yes.” I tell him about the phone call as we walk slowly away from the Musicians Union building. “It’s not good. He’s on chemotherapy.”
“Oh shit,” Brody says.
“Exactly. I need to go over there now.”
Brody nods, looks away, thinking the same thing I imagine. Barging in on somebody in that condition, practically unannounced, isn’t cool. But, Beckwood did call me. “You want to come with me?”
“Definitely, man. I…Jesus Christ, that’s him.”
I turn toward where Brody is looking. He’s already hurrying over to a tall, heavyset, light skinned black man in a Mets baseball cap, dark coveralls, and boots.
“Otis, Otis James,” Brody calls to him.
The man turns at the sound of his name and faces Brody, looking for a moment like he’s about to run. His face tenses as Brody gets closer. “What about it?” he says, as if Brody might be a process server or a cop.
Brody sets his computer bag down and digs in his pocket, hands the man his card and starts talking rapidly. James looks at the card, listens, doubt on his face but gradually, he breaks into a smile. I get there in time to hear him say, “You not jiving me? Cause if you are…”
“No, no,” Brody says excitedly. “I’ve been looking for you. I have the check.”
“What’s going on?” I ask.
Otis James looks at me. “Who are you?”
“This is my friend, Evan Horne,” Brody says quickly. “He’ll tell you. He’s a piano player too.”
“Wait a minute, man,” James says, backing up a step, looking confused, holding his hands out, glancing from Brody to me and back. “Tell me this again.”
Brody looks around. Some of the people walking by are giving us looks, slowing to see what’s going on. “Look, let’s go over there,” he says, and points to a coffee place across the street. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and explain the whole thing.”
Otis James doesn’t look convinced, but I guess decides he has nothing to lose and we don’t look like cops, we haven’t flashed any badges.
“Hey, don’t forget this.” I grab the computer bag and hand it to Brody.
He takes it. “Yeah, I’m always doing that.”
We cross the street and go inside. It’s noisy and crowded with impatient business types after their midmorning lattes. Many of them have briefcases or laptops and a few people are sitting at tables, computers open, sipping coffee. I tell Brody to find a table. I get in line for three coffees while Brody and Otis James push through to the back.
The young guy at the counter seems relieved when I finally reach him and order three regular coffees, not some decaf soy milk latte with light foam. I pay for the coffee, grab some sugar packets, cream containers, stir sticks, and join Brody and Otis James, who sit facing each other. I slide into the booth next to Brody. He has some legal papers on the table, pointing out several places for James to sign he’s marked with an X.
Otis James looks bewildered by the whole thing. He doesn’t touch the coffee I sit in front of him, his eyes jumping from Brody to the paper and back again. “What am I signing for?” he asks.
Brody grins. “For this.” He takes out a certified check and pushes it across to James. The big man looks at it, shakes his head. “Two thousand seven hundred and forty seven dollars,” he mutters to himself then looks up at Brody.
“Your song, ‘Riverwalk Stomp,’ was recorded by several groups and you’re due royalties in this amount. We’ve been looking for you a long time, man.”
“I just can’t believe it,” James says, shaking his head. “I dropped out of things for a long time, had some hard times, you know. Shit, man, I work at Macy’s now.” He keeps staring at the check. “Somebody told me they heard one of my songs on the radio, and I should check it out. That’s why I was at the union. But, but damn…” His voice trails off as he looks at the check again.
Brody hands him a pen. “Just sign and it’s yours free and clear.”
James takes the pen and signs carefully and then a receipt for the check. He folds it neatly and puts it in his coveralls pocket, looking at us both. His face finally relaxes and breaks into a broad grin.
“Damn, feel like I just won the lottery.” He folds his hands in front of him on the table and shakes his head back and forth. He looks at me then holds out his beefy hand. “Sorry, man. Otis James.”
I shake with him. “My pleasure.”
He studies the coffee a moment, then adds cream and sugar, stirring it continuously for a minute.
“You play piano too?”
“Yeah. Jazz mostly.”
“Uh huh,” James says. “He’s good too isn’t he?” He looks at Brody for confirmation.
“Amazing,” Brody says. “He just recorded with Roy Haynes last Friday.”
“Yeah, I bet he’s one slick mother fucker with them deep chords.” He smiles at us both then glances at his watch, and drinks off half of the coffee. “Well, fellas, I gotta go.” He shakes hands again and puts his other hand on top of Brody’s. “Thank you, man. Thank you.”
Brody looks embarrassed. “Hey, it’s my job. One of the best parts is catching up with guys like you.”
“If you ever need anything, you call me okay? This money is going to help me get back to Georgia. I’m tired of this city.” He takes Brody’s pen and writes a number on the back of the receipt.
We watch him get up and almost strut toward the door. We see him pass by a window. He points his finger and smiles big.
“Man,” Brody says. “Otis James. First, I get to go to a Roy Haynes recording session, and today I finally catch up with Otis James. He’s been one of my pet projects, one of those cold case files, you know.”
“He wrote a lot of songs?”
Brody smiles. “You’ve heard of Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf, guys like that?”
“Sure.”
“Well James was almost in the same league. Lot of groups recorded his songs, but ‘Riverwalk Stomp’ really took off.”
“You made his day you know.”
“Yeah I did, didn’t I.” He looks away, shaking his head. “Once in awhile it’s all worth it.”
I glance at my watch. “Come on, let’s get lids for these coffees and we’ll take them with us. I want to get up to Beckwood’s place.”
“Where is he?”
“Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street.”
Brody nods. “Seventh Avenue subway. It’ll be faster than a taxi.”
“Lead the way.”
***
We walk about half a block from the subway up 112th Street, toward the river. The building is old and run down. Probably a rent control place, I think, as we ring the buzzer.
“Yes,” a woman’s voice answers.
“It’s Evan Horne. I talked to you earlier.”
“Third floor,” she says, and buzzes us in.
We jog up the three flights and find her waiting in the doorway. She sees Brody and looks at me. “You didn’t say you were bringing anybody.” She seems wary, frail, light skinned in a floral print dress and house slippers. Her hair almost white.
“I know, I’m sorry. This is my friend, Cameron Brody.”
Brody steps forward and offers his hand, turns on the charm with a big smile. “So nice to meet you.”
She smiles then. “I’m Mavis Beckwood,” she says, and invites us in. The living room is small but comfortably furnished with old pieces probably gathered over the years. She nods toward a large, overstuffed sofa. “Let me see if Al is awake.” She walks down the hall.
I turn to Brody. “Why don’t you keep her company while I talk to Beckwood, see what kind of shape he’s in.”
“Got it,” Brody says as Mavis Beckwood comes back.
“Just you,” she says, pointing to me and takes me back down the hall. “Here he is, honey,” and motions me into the small bedroom.
It has the smell of sickness and medicine and Al Beckwood looks weak and tired lying in the bed, his head propped upon several pillows, a grayish tinge to his dark skin. His cloudy eyes shift from the screen of a small television on a table near the bed. tuned to a soap opera. I sit down in a chair near the bed.
“You can shut that off.” He turns and gazes at me for a long moment.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I say as I click off the television and glance around the room. There’s a tall dresser, night tables by the bed, and a book case crammed with LPs, books, and a few framed pictures.
He continues to look at me, as if he’s trying to recognize something. “So you were a friend of Cal’s?”
I shift in the chair. “Cal was my father,” I begin. “I just found out recently.”
“Yeah,” he says, seemingly not surprised. He coughs and points to a glass of water on the night stand. “Can you hand me that, please?”
I hand him the water and let him drink, then set the glass back down. “This chemo is kicking my ass,” he says. “How’s your mother?”
The question takes me by surprise but then I remember it was Beckwood who sent the cards, kept at least some contact with my mother.
“She’s fine,” I say. “Living near Boston. I guess you know she remarried.”
Beckwood nods. “That’s good. And you want to know about your daddy, don’t you.”
“Yes, Mr. Beckwood, I really do.”
“Well first thing is you got to stop calling me Mr. Beckwood. It’s Al.”
I smile at him. “Okay, Al it is.”
He settles back against the pillows and looks toward the window where the sun is streaming in, but the view is the side of another building. “How much did your mother tell you?”
“As much as she knew,” I say. “How she and Cal met in Kansas City. Were you in that band?”
Beckwood nods and smiles, remembering. “Yeah we had some good times. So many bands then, so much work, but Cal wanted to go to New York. We were all set to go, leave the band and take off on our own, but then he met your mother.”
“You play too, right?” Beckwood turns his head toward me again.
I nod. “I studied with Cal some these past few years. We became good…friends. I didn’t know he was—”
“No way you could have,” Beckwood says.
I search my mind, trying to remember some clue, some incident, some slip of the tongue during those many visits with Cal that would have tipped me off, but there was nothing. “No, I guess not. What happened when you went to New York?”
“That was the first time, before he met your mother. We hung on trying to stay in the city, picking up gigs here and there, then we got in subbing with Miles’ band. Me not so much. Hell, Miles had J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, and some young white college kid, Mike Zwerin, but there were so many guys coming and going. It was like a different band every week. John Lewis or Al Haig on piano made most of the rehearsals, but sometimes they had other gigs or were out of town, so Cal made a few sessions.”
Beckwood pauses, shaking his head. “Man, that was some band. Miles and Gil Evans and Gerry Mulligan writing charts but everybody brought in things. We just knew something was going to come out of that thing.”
I listen, letting Beckwood take himself and me back to those days in 1949. “When I went through Cal’s things, I found some music, lead sheets, something he’d written out, a couple of those tunes. ‘Boplicity’ was one.”
“Yeah, Cal loved that one. Said it was something like he could have wrote.” Beckwood laughs. “That’s what he called the band. Boplicity. Birth of the Cool was later, just the record company’s name anyway. When they played that one gig at the Royal Roost, it was just the Miles Davis Organization.”
I remember the few live tracks on the CD, the announcer introducing them, “The Miles Davis Organization.”
“Could Cal have written ‘Boplicity’?”
Beckwood shakes his head again and looks at me. “You know who wrote that don’t you?”
“Cleo Henry, right? That’s what it says in the notes.”
“Yeah, but do you know who Cleo Henry was?”
I shake my head.
“Wasn’t nobody. Cleo Henry was Miles’ mother’s name.”
“But why did Cal have the lead sheet? There were a couple of others too.”
“He wrote out all the tunes to practice, hoping John Lewis would drop out, and he sat up late every night writing stuff of his own. Everybody was bringing in things to try, but Miles and Gil and Mulligan were the main writers.”
Beckwood turns toward the window again. “Cal took it hard when the band played the Royal Roost.”
“Did he go down there?”
“Yeah, we both did but Cal didn’t stay long. Soon as they played ‘Boplicity,’ he left.”
I think for a minute, giving Beckwood another drink when he looks toward the glass. “My mother said after she met him, Cal wanted to go back to New York, that he’d missed his chance once and didn’t want to have it happen again.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Even though he made a lot of the rehearsals, he had to gig. He took something out of town with some singer, Philly I think. When he came back, they’d already recorded and didn’t use none of Cal’s tunes either. Man, he went into such a depression. It was terrible. Started really juicin’.”
“Are you sure of all of this?” Finding that music, I was so sure Cal had written one of the tunes at least, and I wanted it to be true so badly.
Beckwood turns his head toward me again. “I’m sure about how down Cal was. You don’t think I’d make this up do you?”
“Well, no, I just, I don’t know, I’m just disappointed.”
Beckwood’s eyes close then as he drifts off. I turn and see Mavis Beckwood standing in the doorway watching. She moves over to the bed. Al’s eyes flutter open. She leans down and he whispers something to her. She nods, straightens up and looks at me.
“Al say he’s tired. You come back tomorrow.”
“Of course.” I get to my feet and follow her back to the living room where Cameron has the new laptop open and he’s tapping on the keys.
“Hey,” he says. “How’s it going? I’ve been showing Mavis how to send e-mails.”
She smiles sheepishly. “I’m learning,” she says.
“We have to go,” I say. “Al’s asleep. I don’t want to press him.”
“Sure,” Cameron says, closing the case and putting the computer back in the bag. He stands up and smiles at Mavis.