Leavin' Trunk Blues (20 page)

“So you just wanted these clips?” she asked.

“Mmm-hmm.” Nick smiled and leaned forward. His face grown serious.

“What is it? I knew you didn’t take me to dinner for the company.”

“You asked me.”

“Oh.”

“Could you run a driver’s license check for me?”

“An AutoTrack?”

“Yep.”

“On who?”

“Ruby’s best friend,” Nick said as he scooped some salsa with his tortilla chip. “Woman named Florida Thomas. Nothing in the phone book and she hasn’t been seen in Chicago since the murder.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Kate said. “You have an old address or date of birth.”

“She’d be around sixty.”

“She could have gotten married.”

“Or be dead.”

“Who else have you interviewed?”

“I just found the son of one of the dead musicians. After insulting me several times, he finally told me who he thought killed his father.”

“That’s awesome.”

“I’m not so sure. Told me a ghost story about a man named Stagger Lee.”

“So?”

“Stagger Lee is a myth. Old South. And now maybe an urban legend.”

“Could be a street name.”

“That’s true.”

“I’ll run it by some cops I know.”

There was a pleasant hum of conversation around them as the Mexican guitar music played overhead. The Friday night crowd of gawking tourists and burned-out businessmen bustled by on Clark Street. The waitress laid down a plate of chicken enchiladas and catfish tacos. Another margarita, this time with salt. Another Dos Equis.

One drink at the Palmer House, she’d promised herself. One drink. Was it really her idea to have dinner?

“How are JoJo and Loretta?” she asked.

“JoJo just renovated the second floor of the bar into an office,” Nick said. “Took us a few days to clean out all the crap he had up there. Weird shit like mannequins and saxophone parts. But they’re doing fine. You know. Shows at night. Sleep all day. Church on Sunday. I miss ‘em.”

“Me too.”

There was an awkward silence when she couldn’t find the words to fill the dead space. He continued to watch her and she looked away.

“So you going to spill your guts?” Nick said, the taco in his hand.

“What do you want to know?”

Nick smiled and took a bite. “Why Chicago?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Nick took another bite.

“We’re still trying to work it out,” Kate said. “What do you want me to say?”

“You finally realized he looked like a monkey and gave him the boot.”

“He’s a good guy,” she said. “Don’t get all cocky because I’m eating with you. I’d eat with the devil, if he took me out for Mexican.”

“Even if the devil looked like a monkey?” Nick shoved the remainder of the taco into his mouth.

Kate frowned and took a bite of her enchiladas. Hot chipotle salsa and diced tomatoes. She finished her margarita as if it were water and licked the salty rim. They sat in silence for a moment.

“You ever think about fate?” she asked. “That if certain things wouldn’t have happened, we would still be together?”

“You mean if I hadn’t met the woman that night? That you wouldn’t have met Richard?”

“Yeah.”

“So what happened with him?”

“I left.”

“Why?”

“He wanted me to be someone else.”

“A gibbon?”

“See, you can’t be serious for two seconds. The more important the topic the more you want to tear it down. Why is that, Travers?”

“I’m immature,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I have a puppet in my coat right now. Want to see him?”

Kate studied Nick’s face for a moment. All the light had drained from those green eyes. She looked at the deep scar sliced through his eyebrow. The waitress dropped off the check and Nick paid before they walked out onto Clark Street where their breath mixed in the cold air.

Neon lights illuminated rows of trendy restaurants and tourist bars. Irish music. Blues. Clark Street was like a supermarket for nightlife. A dirty taxi rolled by, splattering the sidewalk with filthy snow from the black asphalt.

“What do you want?” Kate asked. No need to bullshit each other. Get it out into the open.

“You up for Rosa’s? Blues? Drinking? A possibility of dancing?”

“No. What do you want from me, Travers?”

“Trouble.” Nick looped his arm around her waist and tried to pull her close. She put a strong arm to his chest and backed up a good five feet. She just stood there for a moment looking into his eyes. A taxi rolled by scattering sludge across his boots.

“You are trouble,” she said. Then she turned and walked away.

Rosa’s Blues Lounge was a bar for black music run by an Italian in an Hispanic neighborhood. Nick had to give its owner, Tony Mangiullo, a lot of credit for his equality. Diversity at its finest, Nick thought, as the cab rolled past storefronts selling hot peppers and Tejano music off Armitage on the West Side.

The West Side is where the second wave, the next generation of blues guitarists, got their start in the late fifties. The blues of Buddy Guy, Magic Sam, Otis Rush, and Elmore King all had roots in these neighborhoods. Billy Lyons was the first to give some of those guys their start.

Inside, Tony ran the pool balls around a green felt table with delicate ease. He was a skinny man with a long face, a thin beard, and mustache. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and a white Panama Jack hat. No matter how cold it was, Tony looked like he’s just stepped off the cruise dock at Ocho Rios. Nick stopped the cue ball in midroll.

“Nick, my friend,” Tony said in a lilting Italian accent, shaking Nick’s hand. “How are you, man?”

“A woman I love just blew me off and I got splattered with slush on Clark Street.”

“You want a beer?”

“It would help,” Nick said, already studying the black-and-white photographs that lined the wall behind the pool table. Great images from old Theresa’s Tavern. Old Ts basement had closed back in the mid-eighties, but Tony had kept the institution’s spirit alive in his place. Little Walter, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, and Sunnyland Slim all played the old venue. It was one of the first South Side clubs frequented by whites back when the audience was shifting in the sixties. Nick never got to journey into Theresa’s smoky sin den to hear the blues, but the stories were legendary.

Theresa’s. Pepper’s Lounge. The Purple Cat. All of them gone.

Still, Rosa’s had that old blues lounge feel. Long wooden bar and scuffed wooden floors. Darkened room with a few neon beer signs. Thick jackets were piled high on the back of seats with everybody hunkered over beer and mixed drinks. Low red lights illuminated a high stage where instruments sat cold.

There was a different feel to a Chicago blues lounge compared to a Delta juke joint. The Delta was a quart of Colt 45 and a tin roof, where the sound of a harmonica would rattle through your bones. Chicago was the red lipstick on a woman’s cigarette, a double bourbon in a clean glass, saxophones, and driving guitars. So much the same but born from different needs.

Tony handed him a beer and a pool cue like he was giving Nick permission to joust before racking the multicolored balls.

He let Nick break. The balls scattered.

“You know Jimmy Scott?” Nick asked.

“I haven’t seen Dirty Jimmy in years.”

“He could use some work,” Nick said as a solid blue ball went in a pocket. “Interviewed him a few hours ago. Wasn’t doing too well.”

“You tell me where he is and what I can do.”

“He’s just eating cheese and drinking whiskey,” Nick said, taking another shot and missing.

“He likes cheese,” Tony said, sizing up the next shot on a purple- striped ball. The cue ball kissed it on a far edge and pushed it in. “He used to make Kraft singles part of his contract.”

“How’s mama?”

“Very good.”

Mama Rosa was Tony’s partner. When Tony moved to Chicago from Milan, Italy after an invite from the late Junior Wells, she was so worried about him that she soon followed him to America. She opened the bar to make sure her son had a safe place to hang out and hear the blues he loved so much. A great woman. A great bartender.

“How long are you going to be in Chicago?” Tony asked, nailing the yellow-striped ball.

“Till Christmas. Trying to get some information on some old players for King Snake Records. Want to find out about the death of the producer and owner. Guy named Billy Lyons.”

Tony shrugged, missing the next shot.

“You remember the Sweet Black Angel?”

“I remember her records. People would get into fights over them in Italy. The Sweet Black Angel … she was so wonderful.”

“Billy Lyons was the one she supposedly killed,” Nick said, knocking a red ball in the pocket with the sound of a hammer.

“She still alive?”

Nick nodded before he tried to edge a green ball into the corner pocket but it stopped a hair short. “Shit. She’s still in jail.”

Tony knocked in the green striped and then the red striped. Looked like he had a run. Nick took another sip of beer.

“No money,” Nick said. “Don’t you think there should be a limit on punishment?”

“For murder or the way you’re playing?”

“Like cheating on a woman. How long should you be punished for cheating on a woman?”

“Is the woman your wife?” Tony asked, missing a shot.

Nick shook his head and sized up another ball.

“Girlfriend?” Tony asked.

Nick nodded and missed.

“Ooh, tough shot,” Tony said. “You sleep with someone’s sister again?”

“That was a long time ago, man. Long time. And no, that wasn’t it. How do you remember the shit I tell you? I barely remember it myself.”

Tony made a thinking motion with his index finger to his head.

The show crowd started to gather at the door and Tony excused himself to take up the night’s cover charge.

“Oh yeah, man, I see how it is,” Nick said. “I got you on the run.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Next is mama.”

“Don’t talk about my mama,” Tony said, walking away, laughing.

Nick found a stool at the end of the bar, close to the stage, so he could watch Pinetop Perkins work his magic on the keyboard. It was the first time since he’d been in Chicago that he felt like he was home. He missed JoJo’s groveling, Loretta’s cooking, and the quiet rhythms of the Warehouse District. Nick lit a cigarette and watched Perkins take a seat at the piano.

The eighty-six-year-old could find a depth of emotion from a piano like few others. Only Perkins could have taken over the void left by master Otis Spann in Muddy Waters’s band. Perkins was Delta-bred, a seasoned player who traveled up the lonesome blues highway when the music came to the Windy City. His résumé read like some mythic bluesman: traveled with Robert Nighthawk playing around juke joints, then backed up Sonny Boy II on the King Biscuit Time radio show before becoming a session player with Earl Hooker, Albert King, and Little Milton. It was a religious experience just being in the room, watching the man start into a boogie-woogie roll for an old Leroy Carr tune.

“
I can hear that train whistle blowin’

but I can’t see no train.

Deep down in my heart,

it’s like an achin pain.

How long, how long?

Baby, how long?”

Nick draped his jacket over his seat, finished his beer, and ordered a double Jack on the rocks. He could feel the warmness spreading in his chest as he felt the master’s music roll through him. The things he’d seen. The experiences he’d had. Nick had never been a fan of the term living legend. Too often, it applied to a mediocre player grown old. But Perkins was Chicago blues. Great blues. The roll, the feeling, and the depth was like rereading your favorite Langston Hughes poem. An immediate connection with the simplicity.

More faces filled the narrow bar, shaking the snow from their coats and snuggling into the rich blues and a warm drink. Nick could imagine all those black faces, not far removed from places like Belzoni and Natchez, finding a little bit of home in that music. The Delta with an urban edge. Distant cries to Mississippi, to family, lost loves, and places that only existed in their minds.

Mama refilled Nick’s double shot of Jack and gave him a warm pat on his hand. He walked around the bar and gave her a hug.

When he returned, there was a woman sitting on the bar stool. A black girl, looked to be in her twenties, with long black hair and green eyes. Looked like a Paris fashion model in platform heels, tight red leather pants, and a long rabbit coat over a halter top. She had a curvy Sanskrit-looking tattoo on her stomach and a tiger on her breast.