Looking for Chet Baker (16 page)

Chet shrugs, gives him a sheepish smile, knowing he’s not fooling him. “Yeah, I’m fine.” But he’s not fine, not even okay. He feels the gnawing inside him, the awful pain beginning to eat away at him. He just wants this gig to be over now.

Later, back inside the club, it isn’t happening, but it has nothing to do with the small crowd. He tries, struggles through tunes he’s played hundreds of times, but tonight he doesn’t make it. His playing is lackluster, the solos short. He leaves it mostly to the rhythm section to carry him through the evening. He’s not aware of the wave of disappointment from the audience, and worse, the disillusion of the rhythm section. There’s nothing he can do about it. It just isn’t happening, not tonight. Not like this.

Finally, after an even worse second set, he gives up. There are fewer people now, and the ones that stick around are more interested in themselves than the music. Chet nods to the rhythm section, packs up his horn, and leaves them to work it out with the promoter. He knows he won’t even get paid.

Outside in the Rotterdam night, he walks the streets, looking for his car. He circles around, aimlessly searching, but he can’t remember where he parked it. After an hour of this, he finds himself in front of the police station. He goes inside to report it stolen, and calls his agent.

“I can’t find my car,” Chet tells him.

“Do you have the keys?” It’s happened before. Chet always loses his car keys.

Chet pats his pockets. “No, guess I lost them too.”

He hears the agent’s audible sigh. “All right, I will take care of it,” the agent says. “What about the gig?”

“It didn’t go too well, not many people,” Chet says quietly. “I’m not feeling too good.”

The agent already knows. “What are you going to do?”

Chet looks around the police station. “Think I’ll run up to Amsterdam.”

The agent knows what that means. “Very well, call me, Chet. Don’t forget, the date with Archie Shepp is on the twelfth.”

Chet says, “Sure.” He hangs up the phone.

Outside, he walks the streets again, but even if he found the car now, he doesn’t have the keys. He decides what he told the agent is the best thing—take the night train to Amsterdam. Maybe he can get some methadone.

He makes his way to Central Station, pushes through the crowd up to the window, and buys a ticket. He waits on the platform, leaning against a pillar, his trumpet under his arm—a quiet man, older than his age, internationally famous but unrecognized, unnoticed except for the occasional public nod from somebody who meets his eyes. Amsterdam, he thinks. He’ll be all right there. He has people to call, friends to see. He just needs to score, get straight, then get his car back.

He boards the train, slumps in a seat, and hugs the trumpet case to him. His eyes close. He isn’t even aware when the train pulls out of the station.

Chapter Twelve

I’m a pushover for minor keys, minor chords, minor blues. Always have been. When I was a kid, and didn’t yet know the difference between sharp or flat, much less major and minor, I’d hear a song on the radio or television, and if it had that certain sound, I’d feel some kind of shiver, a chill, and I liked the feeling. I began to listen for it, learned to recognize it. Later, when I did know the difference, I devoured minor chords and tunes. As my listening expanded, and I began to discover the nuances and secrets of jazz, I was drawn to those players and composers for whom minor keys and blues-drenched creations were a way of life.

Horace Silver’s “Señor Blues” and “Cape Verdean Blues”; Herbie Hancock’s “Dolphin Dance” and “Maiden Voyage”; Miles’ mournful sound on “All Blues”; and the dark modal lines of “So What.” Those became my theme songs, my life sound track. Then there was Bill Evans, who could make everything he played sound like it was in minor keys, a sound that was so hauntingly sad, it didn’t make any difference whether it was a ballad from a Broadway show or “Milestones.”

Once, walking home from school, I heard music coming from somewhere. I followed the sound until I found the house and stood listening under an open window, mesmerized by the saxophone. When it finished, I knocked on the door and asked a surprised man—he probably thought I was selling magazines—the name of the song. “‘All or Nothing at All.’ John Coltrane,” he said.

That was my musical path. It had chosen me. I accepted it without the slightest doubt, and knew there was no turning back. I was drawn to the minor sound, that quality arising from a particular cluster of notes that could create and sustain a mood, conjure up visions of mist, darkness, deserted streets in predawn light. I was hooked on poignancy, melancholy, haunting sounds, and melodies that struck me not as depressing but rather as tranquil and comforting.

So-called happy music had just the opposite effect, and has always turned me off. Those Broadway shows and old movie musicals like
Oklahoma!
and
Carousel
and
Mame,
or
Hello Dolly!
, made no sense to me at all. I felt embarrassed listening to Howard Keel or Gordon MacRae or Robert Goulet, belting out tunes on mountaintops, everybody smiling, laughing, dancing. They left me totally cold and disconnected, and the sentimental ballads, sung with soulful looks toward the sky, seemed phony, manipulative. They still do. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Burt Bacharach? Well, I won’t even go there.

Chet Baker knew about poignancy, melancholy, especially with ballads. If ever a musician was destined to play in minor keys, it was Chet Baker. Wringing out every last drop of emotion possible with so little effort, he could make you feel what he was revealing was so personal, so secret, you felt guilty for overhearing it. In one of Ace’s articles, I’d read that on a good night, with Chet Baker’s playing, there was no barrier between instrument and emotions. The author was right.

Sitting in the darkness now, listening to Chet wrap his voice around “My Funny Valentine,” I could picture him ambling up to the microphone in that German studio, two weeks before he died, and casually plucking nerve endings, then stepping back, putting the horn to his lips, and playing life. Then, just as casually, he would get in his Alfa and drive to Paris without a second thought.

“You listening to that junkie music again?” Fletcher says. I’m so lost in the music, I didn’t even hear him come in. He turns on a light and stands peering at me. “You all right?” His face is creased in a frown, and he looks tired as he drops in a chair near me.

“Yeah, just in one of my minor moods, I guess. Been listening to these records.” I look at my watch and realize it’s been over three hours since I first sat down. I’d started with some of Fletcher’s own recordings. Some were vinyl, some CDs, mostly from European companies. He sees the covers and cases on the floor.

“You been checking me out, huh?”

“Yeah, some great stuff, Fletch. Found another tune we need to do. ‘Chelsea Bridge.’”

“Oh yeah, almost forgot about that one. I did that in Copenhagen. Too bad, though. Can’t get most of these in the States. That’s why everybody thinks I’m dead.” He laughs, but there’s sadness on his face.

I wonder how Fletcher seems to handle it so well. Here is an important tenor player in jazz with the best credentials, a dozen or more recordings that American audiences know nothing about. Fletcher Paige, living, working, and recording and going unnoticed in his native land.

“Where you been?” After the afternoon’s filming with Elaine and Kevin, they’d all gone off to do some shooting at the Bimhuis. I stayed home.

“Dinner with Elaine and Kevin. He left early, but I talked a lot with her. Nice lady.” Fletcher smiles broadly and shakes his head. “Man, if I was twenty-five years younger.”

“Uh-huh.” I can see the twinkle in his eyes.

He shrugs. “Don’t matter anyway. I think she’s interested in you.”

I get up and stretch. “Yeah, I bet. She wants to hear about me being a detective.”

“Well, hell, nothing wrong with that, is there?” Fletcher asks. “Makes you more mysterious. Hey, thanks for the book.”

“You’re welcome. Thank you for the temporary home.”

“Well, she’ll be in town for a few days. Pretty lady like that might get your mind off this other shit.” Fletcher takes off his coat and sits down opposite me. He folds his hands and looks at me. “You’re letting this get to you, man. I can see that look.”

I’ve known Fletcher for less than a month, and he already knows me so well. It doesn’t happen often, for some people maybe never. But once in a while you meet someone, connect so well and so quickly it’s scary. I feel that with Fletcher, musically and personally.

“Well, I have been doing a lot of thinking.” I get up, switch off the stereo, and sit down again. “What if that
was
Ace on the trolley the other day? Why would he do that, still be here and avoid me, not make any contact at all? While we were playing at the Bimhuis, I think Ace was right here in Amsterdam all the time.”

Fletcher shakes his head. “First, maybe that wasn’t Ace, maybe you just wanted it to be.”

“I know, I know, but I’ve been thinking about something else.”

“Oh shit, here we go,” Fletcher says. He takes out cigarettes and lights one. “Well, let’s hear it, but make it quick. I’m tired, man. I want to go to bed.”

I get up and walk around the room. “You’ve never met Ace. He’s a major fan, a collector, but he’s also an academic, a historian. He’s naive about a lot of the jazz scene, the musicians. He’s a big, blustery guy. Subtlety is not his strength. So he comes to Amsterdam and announces to one and all he’s researching Chet Baker, visiting the archives, talking to anyone he can, making himself very visible.”

“Well, no reason he shouldn’t, is there? He isn’t doing anything wrong.”

“No, but suppose with all this visibility, he attracts the wrong kind of attention?”

“Wrong people? What do you mean?”

“Besides music, what was the only other important thing in Chet Baker’s life? Drugs, right? And I don’t imagine drug dealers in Amsterdam are any different than anywhere else.”

Fletcher leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. “No. Maybe worse. There’s an underground scene here that’s pretty bad.”

“Exactly. Suppose Chet got on the wrong side of this element. He did in San Francisco when he was beaten up. Look what happened then.”

Fletcher’s eyes blink open. “Yeah, man, but that was years ago. We’re talkin’, what, eleven years since he died. That’s old news.”

I keep pacing, fitting pieces together in my mind. There’s only one reason Ace would avoid me, not make any contact. I think someone was keeping him from doing it. “What goes with drugs? Money. No matter who the buyer is, right?”

Fletcher chuckles. “Yeah, a dealer wouldn’t care if it was Chet Baker or Chet Atkins or Chet whoever. They might run a tab for a regular customer like Chet, but eventually they always want their bread.”

“Of course.” I stop pacing now and sit down. “What if Chet owed one of these dealers money, maybe a lot of money?”

Fletcher looks at me. “And when he didn’t pay up, they killed him? Pushed him out of the window? Set an example?”

“I’m not saying that, not yet. What if he did fall? What if it was an accident, just like the police said, but it happened before this dealer could do anything about collecting his money?” I let the question hang there while Fletcher thinks it through. Then it’s his turn to get up and pace around.

“And all this time, this dealer who got stiffed still wants his bread? Is that what you’re saying?”

“If it was a lot of money, why not? One of the stories about Wardell Gray’s death was that a dealer followed him to Las Vegas and killed him for $900.”

“Damn,” Fletcher says, shaking his head. “I hate the way you make sense sometimes.”

“Maybe this dealer’s got a long memory. Maybe Ace’s poking around triggered some new interest in old things.” Fletcher’s pained expression is something I want to avoid. He’s shaking his head like I’m crazy. He stops and sits down again while I continue. “I know Ace. If he thought he could talk to Chet’s drug connection, he would, get something extra for his book. He wouldn’t know what he was walking into.”

“But why would this dealer think Ace knows anything about money owed by Chet Baker from eleven years ago? And that’s if Chet owed money. We don’t know that he did.”

“Chet spent money on cars and dope, and this dealer, whoever he is, had to know that, especially if he was Chet’s main connection. In one of those articles in Ace’s portfolio, somebody talked about Chet’s income the last year or so before he died.”

I have Fletcher’s full attention now. “Yeah?”

“They said it was probably over $200,000 a year.”

“Damn!”

“Exactly. So what happened to it? What about the years before? And that’s the same question the dealer would want answered if he were owed money. Maybe with Ace dredging up things again, he thought there might be a connection, maybe that Ace knew something about it.” Fletcher is thinking about it now, stroking his chin. It worked for me, but I wanted to hear it from Fletcher. “C’mon, Hoke, talk to me. What do you think?”

“So Ace walks into this all innocent, thinking he’s getting an exclusive interview with Chet Baker’s connection, and the dealer forces him to really go after it, thinking his money might be around someplace, and after all this time he might still get it?”

“Well, I admit there are some flaws in this theory, but according to several accounts, the two days before Chet was found dead, he just disappeared. No one even knew he was at the Prins Hendrik Hotel. He was supposed to be picked up at another hotel to play a concert with Archie Shepp the night of the twelfth, but he never showed. The dealer might have let him run up his tab, thinking he would collect after the concerts.”

“And then Chet went and got himself dead,” Fletcher says. He leans back and considers some more. “That would explain why you haven’t seen Ace. He got more than he bargained for, and the dealer is using him to make sure he covers all the bases looking for that money.” Fletcher pauses again. “I don’t know, man, it all sounds kind of crazy, and there are a lot of holes in this. Maybe Chet did just spend all that money.”

“Yeah, I know, but if the dealer was that upset, he’d want to make sure. I’m betting this dealer held a grudge for a long time. There is something else, though. Two things actually.”

“What?”

“I went back to the archives, showed the girl there Ace’s photo. She said there was a second man. She described a man that I met at the train station the day I arrived. He was very helpful in finding the Prins Hendrik Hotel. Too helpful. It was almost like he knew I was coming.”

Fletcher is shaking his head, not believing what he’s hearing.

“And on that plaque at the hotel, there’s a list of donors. One of the biggest contributors was anonymous. I checked that at the archives. Now, it might have been just some major fan who preferred not to be listed. But what if it was someone who had access to Chet’s money, somebody he really trusted, somebody who held money for him till he needed it, and—”

“Oh, Lord,” Fletcher says. He rubs his hands over his face.

“What?”

“I forgot to tell you. I got hold of that trumpet player that sold Chet a car, the one Chet stayed with a lot when he was in Amsterdam. He didn’t talk to Ace, but he told me once, Chet came by and left a shopping bag with over $15,000 in it. Just wanted him to hold it for a few days.” I sit down and watch Fletcher, see there’s something else. “I know somebody else like that.”

“Who, Fletcher?”

“You’re sitting in her apartment.”

***

For the next two hours I pump Fletcher about Margo Highland. According to what she told Fletcher, she was never romantically involved with Chet, but they went way back, to Margo’s time as a singer. She might have made it big, but she got into booze, and by the time that was over, so was her chance. Chet had helped her, encouraged her, even recorded with her once. She had a small studio in her home in California, but that’s one recording that had never turned up anywhere. A number of times when Chet was in the Bay Area, playing the major jazz spots, or visiting his mother in San Jose, he’d roam north of San Francisco, stay at Margo’s, and work small clubs near Guerneville, or play the Russian River Jazz Festival.

When Margo came to Europe and settled in Amsterdam, they renewed their friendship. “Margo kind of took care of him sometimes,” Fletcher tells me. He shakes his head. “At least that’s what she said. She was another one who tried to save him, but he didn’t want to be saved. She took his death very hard, but it was more than just a grieving friend, now that I think about it. She wouldn’t talk about it, though. All she said was, ‘If only I’d been there,’ like she could have done something about it. She was out of town when it happened, called me, asked me all about it. She didn’t come back, though, just stayed in California. I think she might have even gone to the funeral.”

I remember Russ Freeman talking about the service in the film, and there was another account in Gene Lee’s
Jazzletter.
It was held in Inglewood, where Chet had spent so much time. I wonder if Margo Highland was among the mourners.