Joplin's Ghost (29 page)

He showed her a longer score, which began with a florid introduction over a two-step tempo. He had at least fifteen pages of it, continuous.

“Yeah, that one’s different,” Phoenix said. “Some of it looks like ragtime, some doesn’t.”

“It’s an opera,” Milton said quietly. The hum of the equipment almost swallowed him.

“Didn’t Joplin’s opera go to Broadway in the seventies?” Carlos said. “
Treemonisha
?”

“This isn’t
Treemonisha,
” Milton said. He hesitated, begging Phoenix with his eyes to confess it now if she was trying to scam him.

“I didn’t even know he wrote operas,” Phoenix said. “All I know about Scott Joplin is what you told me on the tour. I heard about his wife named Freddie, and that’s it.”

Milton sighed, going on reluctantly. “Volumes of Joplin’s manuscripts have been lost. Before she died, his widow said he had more songs unpublished than published, but it’s all vanished over the years, the kind of thing that drives music historians crazy. One loss is especially sad, given its significance. In fact, one time we found a trunk in the attic of the Joplin House and we got excited, thinking maybe it was
the
trunk. But it wasn’t.”

“What trunk?” Phoenix said.

“Joplin lost a trunk in 1903. Supposedly, every copy of his first opera,
A Guest of Honor,
was in that trunk, and it was never retrieved, so it’s lost. No one has laid eyes on it in more than a century, yet I might have a copy of the first pages in my hand.”

“Is there a recording of it?” Phoenix said, her heart skipping.

“No, unfortunately,” Milton said.

“Then what makes you think this is it?” Carlos said.

“I don’t know how I know it, but I do. It’s vintage Joplin, start to finish. If it’s not
A Guest of Honor,
what’s the point of all this?
A Guest of Honor
is the one scholars have been bedeviled by, and I assume that’s why you’ve just given it to me.” Milton waited, watching their faces. Phoenix thought her eyes must be blank, because her thoughts were a cacophony.

Carlos came closer, staring at the music in Milton’s hand.
“Dios mio,”
Carlos said. “If you’re so sure it’s Joplin, why don’t you believe what we’ve told you?”

“Why? Why
would
I?” Milton said with a sarcastic chuckle. “All these years, there’s been a storm of speculation about Joplin’s missing music, especially his lost opera. And here you come sending it to me over a fax machine? If it’s authentic, you got this music somehow. Maybe you’re brokers. That I understand. But why tell me it came to you in a dream? That you were sleepwalking? You must think I’m a special kind of fool.”

“You’re the one who told me about the ghost,” Phoenix said.

Milton’s eyes spilled a hidden pool of anger. “Yes, and I’ve worked there for
ten years,
and I’ve played the piano in that building night and day, and nothing like you described has ever happened to me.” He sounded as envious as Heather Larrabee, and Phoenix felt sorry for him.

“He didn’t choose you,” Carlos said evenly. “He chose Phoenix.”

There was a knock at the studio door. Felicha stuck her head in, apologetic, saying something about Jamal Lewis being there early, and how he wanted to know if Phoenix could go with him for coffee down the street so they could talk about the video.

At that instant, it was excruciating to think of sitting at the cafe to discuss the finer points of the “Party Patrol” music video, or whatever else might be on her director’s mind. Phoenix didn’t look over her shoulder at Felicha, keeping her eyes on Milton. “I can’t,” she said. “Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I’ll be out as soon as I can.”

As soon as the door closed again, Milton spoke rapidly, knowing their time was almost finished: “Please tell me you have the originals of the pages you faxed to me?”

Carlos held up his satchel. “As original as they can be, from a Mac. It’s 188 pages in all. Your copy is probably sitting on your desk back at the Joplin House.”

Milton looked alarmed, reaching into his back pocket for his cell phone. “I’ll want to see those you have, of course. But I’ll call my office and tell them to guard that package like gold. I’ve already faxed my pages to a ragtime scholar in New York named Edward A. Berlin. He’s likely to have a different idea about it—he’ll assume it’s a fraud, since he’s seen others—but I want his opinion. And I didn’t want it lost again, no matter what our outcome here today.”

“What kind of outcome?” Phoenix said.

“You tell me,” Milton said. “What are your plans for this music?”

“I don’t have any plans,” Phoenix said. “You can’t seem to get that straight.”

“What did you hope to gain by faxing this music to me?”

“I just want to know what’s happening to me!”

Phoenix wondered who was shouting so early in the morning, shrieking like a nut in the presence of an elder. Her body trembled, and she realized she was leaning against the console for support. She had an end-of-the-day headache already. Carlos guided her to a swivel chair, and she’d never been happier to surrender her legs and feet.

“This has been hard for Phoenix,” Carlos said. “I need you to lighten up, Mr. Milton.”

As Van Milton looked at Phoenix trembling in her chair, still clinging to herself for warmth, the gentle lines and creases in his dark face began to reshape themselves. His head tilted forward, and his eyes dimmed, then sparked.

“This music came to you in your
sleep
?” the curator said.

As if he was hearing it for the first time.

S
arge, what’s up with your girl?”

“Good morning to you, too, Katrice,” Marcus Smalls said, scanning the headlines of the
Final Call
newspaper he still sometimes bought by his barbershop on Crenshaw, just to see what Farrakhan’s boys were talking about these days. Marcus could have used a few minutes’ reflection before he ran into Katrice Daniels, since the intense, willowy woman reminded him of his ex-wife, a similarity that wasn’t going to do their working relationship any good. TSR’s vice president for marketing and promotion was six feet tall and hard to take in large doses, but he couldn’t afford to piss her off. Katrice would be running her own label in a year. Besides, Katrice told you what she thought, a trait worth the price of the aggravation.

“Look, Sarge, you know how much I love Phoenix’s vision, so I’m an advocate, okay? But she doesn’t have her head wrapped around this process. She’s not engaged. Between you and me, she got jacked in the studio with D’Real, and she’s walking that same road again. Jamal Lewis is here to find out what she’s thinking—which is so rare for Jamal that we should declare today a holiday—but where’s Phoenix? She’s got her own little meeting going on in The Mothership she can’t pull herself away from, Felicha says. Can you please give your client a gentle 4-1-1 that if she wants to have a voice in her career, she better start using it now?”

Katrice had a clear-eyed way of seeing things that always made her sound like an oracle in a designer pantsuit and a bad mood. Phoenix had already complicated his day, and days were getting too short for complication. “Katrice, drink some tea and chill out, little sister,” Marcus said. “Don’t you think she might be a little distracted because she almost got shot yesterday?”

It was a cheat to bring that up, but sometimes Marcus couldn’t pull his claws back.

Katrice pointed her pencil at him.
Touché
. “You hear me,” she said and pivoted away.

Mentioning the shooting was the quickest way to be left alone. Even yesterday, at Ronn’s, they’d all talked around the thing uppermost on their minds, with Ronn sitting there at his conference table like the emperor wearing no clothes. Marcus had let Ronn know he wasn’t going to play the hear-no-evil-see-no-evil game when his daughter was involved. The first time Ronn had laid eyes on Phoenix—when Marcus had seen the light across his face—he’d told Ronn he believed in business being business and only business.
But if it’s ever more than that, young blood, do me a favor and back off if there ever comes a time you can’t be good for Phoenix.
Well, the time had come and left footprints. End of story. Marcus would not pretend that shit away, whether it was Ronn Jenkins or whoever-the-hell-else with a few million dollars.

He had brought his daughter here, and he was going to see her through.

“Stardom equals influence equals power,” Marcus whispered, closing his eyes. On days like this, his mantra kept him from forgetting why he was here. Ronn Jenkins and Katrice Daniels could groom Phoenix and make her a star. Three Strikes knew how to move units, and sales were what Phoenix had always been missing. Stardoms equals influence equals power.

If she was going to work her ass off regardless, Phoenix deserved some money, not the thirty-thousand-dollar contracts she’d had to split with her band while they slept five to a hotel room so they could afford to go on the road. She’d be better off in law school, but if music was her calling, she’d better get on her feet so she wouldn’t go out like Marvin, Bird and Billie, always broke. Even if she only recorded one CD with Three Strikes, she could save a chunk of cash. Inherited wealth was still the biggest disparity between blacks and whites, and he and Leah wouldn’t have much to leave her. The cash they’d invested in Phoenix’s career aside, Leah had drained them holding on to her father’s club for all those years out of misplaced sentiment.

Marcus had no room for misplaced sentiment. Phoenix might be strong enough to stomach either poverty or obscurity, but he doubted his daughter could stand both. If an artist could find a way to make some money, hallelujah. And at least Three Strikes was black-owned, even if it wasn’t Motown. (Hell, Motown wasn’t Motown anymore either, he reminded himself). Ronn was a sharp kid. He reminded Marcus of his son Malcolm, as bright and hungry as his namesake, except his son had burned so much of his life energy trying to throw off the yoke of crack that he would be lucky to make a good living and have a family, much less excel. Unlike Malcolm, Ronn was one of the moths who’d gotten out of the jar.

But Ronn’s money didn’t come for free. Phoenix must not have been paying attention when Katrice told her Three Strikes expected her to do six months of advance publicity for
Rising,
and up to six months after that if the singles caught fire, like “Party Patrol” was already. Phoenix was lucky as hell to have the tour support, but Katrice was right: Phoenix was still idling at the starting line, and the race had already begun. That had been true before yesterday’s shooting. That had been true for a long time.

Without knocking, Marcus opened the door of The Mothership and walked in.

The person closest to him, standing two strides from the door with his back turned, was Carlos Harris. Beyond Carlos, Marcus saw Phoenix sitting at the console, her head bent over a pile of papers while a man Marcus didn’t know—a man who might be in his sixties, also shaved bald—spoke urgently to her. Katrice hadn’t been exaggerating; Phoenix was in a damn
meeting
while Jamal Lewis was waiting to see her.

Carlos was closest to the door, so Marcus took Carlos by the crook of his arm and invited him outside with a tug that nearly pulled him off his feet. “Let’s talk a minute,” Marcus said with more civility than he’d believed he had in him. He was so quick, it was possible Phoenix hadn’t seen him snatch Carlos before the door closed behind them.

Llamame,
Carlos had said to Phoenix the other day, like a pimp snapping his fingers, but the smug smirk on Carlos’s face was gone now. Instead of trying to yank his arm away, Carlos went limp against the wall. Few men forgot a good ass-kicking, and the empty early-morning hallway must have looked ominous. Sarge leaned on top of Carlos the way he had in the pen when he needed to make a point, his chest pressed to Carlos’s, his face two inches away. This pretty boy was lucky he’d never done time, because he wouldn’t have lasted long behind the wall.

“Mr. Harris.” Marcus breathed down the bridge of Carlos’s nose.

“I think you should calm down, sir.” Carlos’s head lolled, a guilty man’s eye contact.

“You’ve been having a good time hanging with Phee these past couple days, huh? I’ve been meaning to ask you something: Do you have a good memory? I have a
great
goddamned memory. Ask me about something you think I should remember, and I’ll tell you if I do.”

“I’m not trying to fight you, Mr. Smalls,” Carlos said, his hands shoulder high.

“I thought about you a lot back in the day, son. I had a catalog of ugly fantasies with your face attached, but I had to settle for the shit I wouldn’t go to jail for. I sent a long complaint to your editor at the paper, and I spelled it all out. Did you ever hear about that?” Leah had signed the letter, too. Marcus had figured a letter from a white School Board member would get more attention than a black ex-con.

“Actually, you sent it to the publisher,” Carlos said. “That letter almost got me fired.”

“What I
really
wanted was send your ass to jail—and I’ve been locked up, so I know of which I speak. For me to want another nigga in lockup is really saying something, you dig? I never did know if Phoenix told me the truth, but I wish you could have gone to jail
just in case
.”