The Throat (49 page)

Two
tenor saxophone cases sat on the floor like suitcases, and a baritone
saxophone and a clarinet capped with mouthpieces stood upright on a
stand beside them. The room smelted faintly of cigarette smoke only
partially masked by incense.

I turned
around to find Glenroy Breakstone smiling at me and knew that he had
seen my surprise. "I didn't know you played clarinet and baritone," I
said.

"I don't
play them anywhere but in this room," he said. "About 1970, I bought a
soprano in Paris, but I got so frustrated with the thing I gave it
away. Now I'm thinking of getting another one, so I can get frustrated
all over again."

"I love
Blue Rose
," I said. "I was
just listening to it last night."

"Yeah,
people go for those ballad albums." He looked at me a second,
half-amused. "People like you, you ought to go out and get new records
instead of playing the old ones over and over. I made one with Tommy
Flanagan in Italy last year. We used Tommy's trio—I like that one." He
moved toward the bedroom door. "You want fruit juice or something? I
got a lot of good juice in here, mango, papaya, passion fruit, all
kinds of stuff."

I said
I'd have whatever he was having, and he went into the bedroom. I began
inspecting the posters and photographs.

He came
back carrying two tall glasses and handed me one. He gestured with his
own glass toward what I had been looking at. "See, this is how it goes.
Everything's overseas. In a week, I go to France for the festivals.
When I'm there I'm gonna make a record with Warren Vache, that's all
set up, then I spend the rest of the summer in England and Scotland. If
I'm lucky, I get on a cruise and do a couple of the jazz parties. It
sounds like a lot, but it ain't. I spend a lot of time in this place,
practicing my horns and listening to the people I like. Tell you the
truth." He smiled again. "I almost always listen to old records, too.
You like that juice?" He was waiting for me to tell him what it was.

I sipped
it. I had no idea what it was. "Is it mango?"

He gave
me a disgusted look. "You don't know much about fruit juice, I guess.
What you have there is papaya. See how sweet that is? That's a natural
sweetness."

"How
long have you been living at the St. Alwyn?"

He
nodded. "Long time. First year I moved in here, in '45, I had a room on
the third floor.
Little
tiny
room. I was with Basie in those years,
hardly ever got home. When I quit to form my own group, they moved me
up to the fifth floor, way at the back, because I wanted be able to
have rehearsals in my room. In '61, Ralph Ransom said I could have one
of the big rooms on the seventh floor, same rent, after the guy who
lived there died. Ralph was being good to me, because right around then
the music business went to hell, and sometimes I couldn't make the
rent. After Ralph sold out, I made a deal with the new people and moved
up here and made the place safe."

I asked
him what he meant.

"I got
the only rooms in the place with new locks."

I
remembered someone telling me that the locks in the St. Alwyn were no
good. "So someone could keep his key when he checked out, come back a
year later and get back into the same room?"

"All I
know is, I lost my Balanced Action tenor and a new clarinet, and that
ain't gonna happen
any
more.
The way things are now, you have one of
those locks, you can come home, find a body parked in your bed. And if
you're a cop in Millhaven, maybe you're even dumb enough to think a boy
called Walter Dragonette put her there." He stepped away from the wall
and gestured toward the chairs. "I been doing a lot of talking, but I
think it's your turn now, Mr. Underhill."

We sat
down on two sides of a low square table with an ashtray, a lighter, a
pack of Luckies, and a flat black object that looked like a mirror
folded into a case. A picture of Krazy Kat was stamped onto the case.
Beside it was a flat wooden box with decorative inserts. Breakstone set
his glass beside the box and lit a cigarette. "You think you can tell
me something new about the Blue Rose murders? I'd be interested in
hearing what that would be." He looked at me without a trace of humor.
"For James Treadwell's sake."

I told
him about Glendenning Upshaw and Buzz Laing and how I thought William
Damrosch had died. Breakstone got more excited as I went along.

"I know
damn well everybody was tellin' themselves a lie about Bill Damrosch,"
he said. "For one thing, Bill used to come to see us now and then, when
we were playing in that club on Second Street, the Black and Tan Review
Bar. He used to get out there, you know, he'd have blackouts, but I
never saw any of that. He just liked our music."

He drew
in smoke, exhaled, and looked at me grimly. "So old Upshaw killed Bill.
But who killed James? James grew up around the corner from my folks,
and when I heard how he could play, I put him in my band. That was
forty years ago. Hardly as much as a week goes by without my thinking
about James."

"Murder
injures the survivors," I said.

He
looked up at me, startled, and then nodded. "Yeah. It does that. I was
no good for about two months afterward— couldn't touch my horn." He
went inward for a moment, and the Nat Cole record stopped playing.
Breakstone seemed not to hear it. "Why do you say that the man who
killed him probably knew him to look at?"

"I think
he worked in the hotel," I said, and went over some of what Tom Pasmore
and I had talked about.

He
tilted his head and looked at me almost slyly. "You know Tom? You sit
around with Tom at his nice crib up there on the lake and talk with the
man?"

I
nodded, remembering Tom's wink when he looked up Breakstone's address.

"Why
didn't you say so? Once every blue moon, Tom and I spend a night
hanging out and listening to music. He likes hearing those old Louis
Armstrong records I got." He pronounced the final s in Louis. He
thought for a second, and then grinned at me, astonished by what had
just occurred to him. "Tom's finally going to start thinking about that
Blue Rose business. He must have been waiting for you to come along and
help him."

"No,
it's because of the new murders—the woman left in James's old room, and
the other one, downstairs in the alley."

"I knew
he'd see that," Breakstone said. "I knew it. The police don't see it,
but Tom Pasmore does. And you do."

"And
April Ransom's husband. He's the one who called me first."

Glenroy
Breakstone asked about that, and I told him about John and
The Divided
Man
and wound up telling him about my sister, too.

"So that
little girl was your sister? Then your father was that elevator man,
Al." He looked at me wonderingly.

"Yes, he
was," I said.

"Al was
a nice guy." He wanted to change the subject, and looked toward the
bright windows. "I always thought your sister was part of what happened
afterward. But when Bill wound up dead, they didn't care if it was
right
, as long as it was neat."

"Damrosch
thought so, too?"

"Told
me that right downstairs in the bar." He finished off his juice. "You
want me to think about who got fired way back then? First of all, Ralph
Ransom never fired anybody directly. Bob Bandolier and the night
manager, Dicky Lambert, did that."

So maybe
it had been Blue Rose who had forced Bandolier to change his telephone
number a couple of times.

"Okay. I
remember a bellhop name of Tiny Ruggles, he got fired. Tiny sometimes
used to go into empty rooms, help himself to towels and shit. Bad Bob
caught him at it and fired him. And there was a guy named Lopez, Nando
we used to call him, who worked in the kitchen. Nando was crazy about
Cuban music, and he had a couple Machito records he used to play for me
sometimes. Bob Bandolier got rid of him, said he ate too much. And he
had a friend called Eggs—Eggs Benson, but we called him Eggs Benedict.
Bob axed him too, and him and Nando went to Florida together, I think.
That happened a month or two before James and the others got killed."

"So they
didn't kill anybody."

"Just a
lot of bottles." He frowned at his empty glass. "Drinking and stealing,
that's what most of 'em got fired for." He looked embarrassed for a
moment, then tried to soften it. "Truth is, everybody who works in a
hotel helps themselves to stuff now and then."

"Can you
think of anyone else who would have had a grudge against Ralph Ransom?"

Glenroy
shook his head. "Ralph was okay. The man never had enemies or anything
like that. Dicky and Bob Bandolier, they might have made some enemies,
because of letting people go and playing a few angles here and there. I
think Dicky had a deal going with the laundry, stuff like that."

"What
happened to him?"

"Dropped
dead right at the bar downstairs twenty years ago. A stroke."

"What
about Bandolier?"

Glenroy
smiled. "Well, that's the one who should have had the stroke. Dicky was
easygoing, but old Bob never relaxed a day in his life. Most uptight
guy I ever knew. Heart attack and Vine! Bad Bob, that's right. He had
the wrong job—they should of put Bad Bob in charge of the toilets, man,
he would of made them sparkle and shine like Christmas lights. He never
should of been in charge of people, 'cause people are never gonna be as
neat as Bob Bandolier wanted them to be." He shook his head and lit a
fresh cigarette. "Bob kept his cool in front of the guests, but he sure
raised hell with the staff. The man acted like a little god. He never
really saw you, the man never really saw other people, he just saw if
you were going to mess him up or not. And once he got going on
religion—"

"Ralph
told me he was religious."

"Well,
there's different ways of being religious, you know. Church I went to
when I was a little boy was about being happy. Everybody sang all the
time, sang that gospel music. Bob, Bob thought religion was about
punishment. The world was nothing but wickedness, according to Bob. He
came up with some crazy shit, once he got going."

He
laughed, genuinely amused by some memory. "One time, Bad Bob thought
everybody on days ought to get together for a prayer meeting at the
start of the shift. They had to get together in the kitchen five
minutes before work started. I guess most showed up, too, but Bob
Bandolier started off telling how God was always watching, and if you
didn't do your job right, God was gonna make you spend eternity having
your fingernails pulled out. He got so wound up, the shift started ten
minutes late, and Ralph told him there wouldn't be any more prayer
meetings."

"Is he
still alive?"

"Far as
I know, the man was too nasty to die. He finally retired in nineteen
seventy-one or 'two, sometime around there. 'Seventy-one, I think.
Probably went somewhere he could make a whole new lot of people feel
miserable."

Bandolier
had retired a year before he had vanished and left his house to the
Dumkys. "Do you have any idea where I could find him?"

"Travel
around until you find a place where you hear the sound of everybody
grinding their teeth at once, that's all I can say." He laughed again.
"Let's put on some more music. Anything you'd like to hear?"

I asked
if he would play his new CD with Tommy Flanagan.

"I can
take it if you can." He jumped up and pulled a disc from the shelf, put
it in the player, and punched a couple of buttons. That broad, glowing
sound floated out of the speakers, playing a Charlie Parker song called
"Bluebird." Glenroy Breakstone was playing with all of his old
passionate invention, and he could still turn long, flowing phrases
over in midair.

I asked
him why he had always lived in Millhaven, instead of moving to New York.

"I can
travel anywhere from here. I park my car at O'Hare and get to New York
in less than two hours, if I have something to do there. But
Millhaven's a lot cheaper than New York. And by now I know most of
what's going on, you see? I know what to stay away from—like Bob
Bandolier. Just from my window I see about half the action in
Millhaven."

That
reminded me of what I had seen in the restaurant downstairs, and I
asked him about it.

"Those
guys at the back table? That's what I was talking about, the stuff you
want to stay away from."

"Are
they criminals?"

He
narrowed his eyes and smiled at me. "Let's say, those are guys who know
things. They talk to Billy Ritz. He might help them or not, but they
all know one thing. Billy Ritz can make sure their lives'll take a turn
for the worse, if they hold out on him."

"He's a
gangster? Mafia?"

He
grinned and shook his head. "Nothing like that. He's in the middle.
He's a contact. I'm not saying he doesn't do something dirty from time
to time, but mainly he makes certain kinds of deals. And if you don't
talk to Billy Ritz, so he can talk to the people he talks to, you could
wind up taking a lot of weight."

"What
happens if you don't play the game?"

"I guess
you could find out you were playing the game all along, only you didn't
know it."

"Who
does Billy Ritz talk to?"

"You
don't want to know that, if you live in Millhaven."

"Is
Millhaven that corrupt?"

He shook
his head. "Someone in the middle, he helps out both sides. See,
everybody needs someone like Billy." He looked at me, trying to see if
I was as naive as I sounded. Then he checked his watch. "Tell you what,
there's a chance you can get a look at him, you're so curious. Around
this time, Billy generally walks across Widow Street and does a little
business in the Home Plate Lounge."

He stood
up, and I followed him to the window. We both looked down nine stories
to the pavement. The shadow of the St. Alwyn darkened Widow Street and
fell in a harsh diagonal across the brick buildings on the other side.
A dwarf man in a tiny baseball cap walked into the grocery store down
the block, and a dwarf woman pushed a stroller the size of a pea toward
Livermore Avenue.