Killer On A Hot Tin Roof (7 page)

“He said he was going to take a look at the place again,” Gillette continued. “I assume he’s still there.”

I said, “But you don’t know that.”

Gillette frowned. “Well, no, I suppose I can’t be sure he’s there. You could check his room–”

“He’s not there,” Frasier said as he started to turn toward the door. “Where exactly is this club? I have to find him!”

“I’ll show you,” Gillette offered. His manner was brisk as he led us out of his office. I suppose he had realized that Burleson could have wandered off anywhere after visiting Petit Claude’s, and now he was worried again. He said, “You know, if Mr. Burleson is, well, mentally disadvantaged, someone should be with him at all times. I must say, though, he struck me as being fine. He seemed to know exactly where he was and what he was doing.”

“Of course he did,” Frasier said, with a glance at Tamara Paige. “There’s nothing wrong with his memory.”

Even under these strained circumstances, he couldn’t let go of the hostility between him and Dr. Paige, and, judging by her glare, neither could she.

The five of us left the hotel, turning in the other direction from the way Will and I had gone to the theater. It was noisier on the street now, as the evening’s hilarity began to increase. Along with the humidity and the smells of Cajun cooking, the air was full of loud talk, laughter, and music from various outdoor restaurants and clubs. Most of it was Dixieland jazz or blues, but I heard a little zydeco mixed in, too. It made for a discordant but somehow pleasing blend.

When we turned the corner, I saw the neon sign for Petit Claude’s. It was a little place, not much more than a hole-in-the-wall that was crowded between a sports bar and a bakerythat was closed for the night. The place had an air of age about it. Maybe it was the way the sign buzzed and flickered from time to time, or maybe it was the patina of softness that the years had worn onto the bricks of the building’s façade. A green awning extended over the sidewalk at the entrance, and it looked like it had been there since the Truman administration. Maybe even since FDR.

“There it is,” Gillette said. “I’m sure he’s in there.”

“He had better be,” Frasier said, not bothering to keep the anger and menace out of his voice. “From now on, he’s not to leave the hotel without me.”

“I’m afraid we can’t be held responsible for enforcing something like that, Dr. Frasier. That’s up to you.”

“You can spread the word among your people that he shouldn’t be wandering around by himself, can’t you?”

Gillette shrugged. “I suppose I can do that.”

We had reached the club. A black doorman who also looked like he’d been there since the Truman administration gave us a toothless grin and said, “How you folks doin’ this fine night? Come to listen to some good hot jazz, have you?”

“Have you seen an old man?” Frasier asked sharply.

“Besides in the mirror, you mean? I’ve seen lots o’ elderly gentlemen come an’ go through this here door, sir. Just ‘cause a man gettin’ on up in years don’t mean he stops lovin’ that hot music.”

“Oh, just step aside,” Frasier snapped. He caught hold of the door’s handle and pulled it open, jerking it out of the old man’s hand.

“Hey!” Gillette said, beating me to it. “There’s no need to act like that.”

Frasier wasn’t listening, though. He stalked into the club with the rest of us trailing behind him. As I passed the doorman, I said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t you worry your head ‘bout it, miss,” he said. “One thing ain’t never been in short supply in the Quarter is jackasses.” He grinned. “They used to pull wagons ‘long these very streets. Now they go inside.”

I couldn’t help but grin back at him. Then I followed the others into the club.

Packed into its narrow, dimly lit confines were a bar along the left-hand wall, shadowy booths on the right-hand wall, and a few tables in between. At the back of the room was a postage-stamp-size bandstand where a man was playing a trumpet, backed up by a piano and bass in a classic trio. The music was hot, all right, fast and sweaty, the sort where the notes reached right inside your guts and jangled them all around. Just listening to it made your feet want to move.

Or in the case of Howard Burleson, instead of tapping his feet, he patted the table as he sat in one of the booths. There was a glass of clear liquid in front of him, but I would have bet it wasn’t water. His hat sat on the table beside the glass. His bald head gleamed, even in this place, where there wasn’t much light.

“Thank God!” Frasier exclaimed, loud enough so that some of the club’s patrons turned to glance at him disapprovingly. The place was almost but not quite full.

“He’s still here,” Gillette said, sounding very relieved. “If you don’t need me anymore, I’ll get back to the hotel.”

Frasier ignored him and headed for the booth where Burleson sat. Gillette nodded to the rest of us and went back out the door.

A waitress started to ask Frasier if he wanted a drink, but he waved her away. The rest of us followed him over to the booth where Burleson sat. Along the way, Will caught the waitress’s eye, made a little motion with his hand, and shook his head.

As Frasier came to a stop beside the booth, he said, “Howard, what are you doing here?”

Burleson evidently hadn’t noticed us until now. He looked up with a dreamy smile on his weathered face and said, “There you are, Michael. I came to listen to some music. You and your friends should sit down. Those boys are really good.”

“We don’t have time for music,” Frasier said. “We need to get back to the hotel. Come on, Howard.”

Burleson kept patting the table softly in time with the music. “Not just yet, not just yet. I’m havin’ a good time. So many memories in this place. So many wonderful memories. Tom and I used to come here, you know.”

I glanced at Tamara Paige, thinking that she might make some disparaging comment, but for once she kept her mouth shut about the subject of Howard Burleson and Tennessee Williams. Maybe she felt a little sorry for the old man. Her face seemed a little softer than it had been earlier.

Frasier insisted, “You can tell everybody all about that tomorrow, Howard. Right now, we need to go back to the hotel.” He reached out and closed his hand around Burleson’s skinny arm. “Come on.” It was an order now, issued in a hard, angry voice.

“Take it easy, Michael,” Tamara said. “Mr. Burleson wants to listen to some music. I don’t see any harm in it, especially when it’s as good as that song they’re playing now.”

Burleson beamed up at her. “You like Dixieland, my dear?”

“Sure,” she said with a shrug. “I like all sorts of music.”

“So do I, so do I.” With his free hand, Burleson waved toward the seat on the other side of the booth. “Why don’t you sit down and join me? Why don’t all of you?” He lowered his voice a little and added, “Michael, you’re hurtin’ me.”

With what sounded like a muttered curse, Frasier let go ofthe old man’s arm. In a strangled voice, he said, “All right, we’ll all sit down for a little while. But then we have to go back to the hotel, all right, Howard?”

Burleson had started nodding along with the music. “That’ll be fine.” His skinny body swayed a little from side to side. He smiled at Tamara and said, “You sit down here next to me, honey.”

I could tell that Frasier didn’t like that idea at all. He would have preferred to keep Dr. Paige as far away from Burleson as he possibly could. But for now, he was trying to play along with the old man in hopes of cajoling him out of there that much sooner. I could see that cold calculation on his face.

Burleson slid over enough for Tamara to sit down beside him. Meanwhile, Will, Frasier, and I crowded into the other side of the booth. I was between the two men and didn’t like it. Sitting next to Michael Frasier was sort of like cuddling up with a badger.

“Y’all need somethin’ to drink now,” Burleson said. He started to raise a hand to signal the waitress, but Frasier shook his head.

“We’re fine, Howard. We won’t be here very long, remember? We have to get back to the hotel.”

“It’s a nice hotel,” Burleson said. “I remember it, although I don’t think I ever stayed there before. I had a place on the Vieux Carré, a little apartment where Tom sometimes visited me. Mostly, though, we came here to listen to the music and sip on cordials. It was a wonderful time, just wonderful. The light had more colors in it then, and when the breeze blew, it was like warm fingers caressin’ your face. If only things could have stayed like that, instead of the years ravagin’ us all with those horrible appetites of theirs. If only time wouldn’t rip those moments of happiness away from us like it was jealous and couldn’t stand to see us that way …”

Despite his age, Howard Burleson still had a warm, rich voice, and when he started talking that way, I enjoyed listening to him. Maybe he really had known Tennessee Williams. The reminiscences reminded me of the voice that permeated Williams’s plays.

“It was right here,” Burleson went on. “Right here at this very table.” He patted its scarred surface again, not keeping time with the music now but more of a tender gesture, like a man touching the head of an old and beloved pet.

“What was right here, Mr. Burleson?” I asked.

Before he could answer, Frasier leaned forward and practically snarled, “Not one word, Howard, you hear me? Not … one … word.”

“Let the man talk,” Tamara said with a quick frown at Frasier. Then she turned to the old man and went on, “What was it, Mr. Burleson? What happened here?”

Frasier made a strangled sound, and for a second I thought he was going to leap across the booth and clap a hand over Burleson’s mouth. That was the only way he could have stopped the words that came from Burleson’s lips.

But he held himself in check, and Howard Burleson said, “Why, it was right here at this very table, darlin', that I wrote
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
”

T
hat statement flabbergasted three of us at the table.

Frasier was the only one who wasn’t surprised. He put his elbows on the table, dropped his head into his hands, and let out a low groan. Without looking up, he said, “Howard … Howard, I told you not to say anything about that until the presentation.”

“I can understand why,” Tamara said. “That’s insane!”

For the first time, Burleson looked offended. “You’re just as charmin’ as you can be, my dear, but really, you shouldn’t impugn a creator’s integrity. My authorship of that play means a great deal to me, and I intend to set the record straight.”

Tamara managed to smile as she looked at him and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Burleson. I didn’t mean to offend you, honestly I didn’t. But the authorship of Tennessee Williams’s plays has never been in any doubt. It’s not like, say, Shakespeare, where we don’t really know who wrote them–”

“I wrote
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
I tell you.” Burleson was starting to look and sound a little angry now. “It was an autobiographical play.”

“Well, yes, in that Big Daddy Pollitt is clearly based on Williams’s own father, C. C. Williams–”

Burleson broke in again. “No, you don’t understand. I’m Brick.” He tapped himself on his thin chest. “I’m Brick.”

He looked about as unlike Paul Newman as he possibly could, I thought, but he seemed absolutely sincere.

“That’s … not possible,” Tamara said slowly. “Brick comes from a short story Williams wrote called ‘Three Players of a Summer Game.’ It’s very well known among Williams scholars.”

Burleson nodded as if she had just proved his point. “He was strugglin’ with that story when I met him in Venice. Brick wasn’t even in the first draft. He put Brick in there after I told him about my daddy and my … my wife. And then when we got back here to New Orleans, he said that there wasn’t a play in the story after all. That’s how he did it most of the time, you know. He’d write a story first, to get everything straight in his head about what he wanted to say, and then he would turn it into a play.”

“I know,” Tamara said with a nod. “I’ve read all the short stories.”

“So have I.” Burleson sniffed a little. “The plays are better, but then, they were supposed to be. Tom never cared that much about the stories. Writin’ them was just a tool he used to figure things out.”

“But you’re saying he didn’t base
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
on ‘Three Players of a Summer Game'? Because it’s obvious that he did, even though there are a number of differences.”

“No, ma’am,” Burleson said with an adamant shake of his head. “The play is so much different than the story because I wrote it after Tom decided not to, basin’ it on my own family and my life.”

Frasier slapped his hands against his temples and said, “Why don’t you just tell them everything, you … you …” He couldn’t finish.

“All right, I will,” Burleson said. He tapped the table this time, harder, with one fingertip. “I sat right here at this very table and wrote that play with my own hand. You see, even though I hadn’t known Tom for very long, I had learned a great deal from him in that time. And I’d always been a follower of his work, even before I knew him. He was quite a favorite of mine.”

Will leaned forward, clasped his hands together on the table, and asked, “Did you give the manuscript to him to read?”

“Dr. Burke!” Tamara said. “Don’t tell me you’re taking this seriously?”

“I’d like to hear whatever Mr. Burleson has to say,” Will replied, and at that moment I liked him more than I ever had before, which was considerable. He smiled, nodded across the table at the old man, and said, “Go on, Mr. Burleson.”

“Well, of course I gave it to him to read,” Burleson said. “I valued his opinion. After all, he was a highly respected dramatist by that time. He’d already had two big hits on Broadway and in the movies,
The Glass Menagerie
and
A Streetcar Named Desire.
I thought he could tell me if it was any good or not.”

Burleson stroked his fingertips across the table, as if he were searching for memories in the grain of the wood.

“We sat here in this booth while Tom read the pages. I think at first he was doing it just to be kind, you know, because he didn’t want to offend me. And if he had told me that it was bad, I would have believed him. If he had told me I should go and burn it or throw it in the river, I probably would have.