Looking for Chet Baker (18 page)

I sit, smoking, drinking coffee, just people-watching, for an hour or so. The pamphlet was interesting but not much help. This is now. I’m more interested in then—the 1980s, when, also according to the pamphlet, Amsterdam was a magnet for foreign drug users, Chet Baker among them.

I’m convinced now it was a dealer, Chet’s dealer, that Ace stumbled onto. Knowing Ace, he jumped in with both feet and is finding it difficult to get out once he is in. I know I have to resolve this, and soon, both for Ace’s sake and my own. I should know my pattern by now. I get distracted from music, then have to resolve the distraction to get back to music. Same old circle, like the cycle of fifths chord progressions. Time now for the turnaround chords.

I don’t really have much faith in Darren turning up anything. Nobody, even Fletcher, seems to know exactly what Darren does. For more definite information, I’ll have to call somebody else, and he probably won’t be any happier to hear from me than Dekker was.

***

Detective Engels is at home when I call from the American Express office, but when I ask him about Zeedijk, he sounds like a travel brochure.

“It’s Chinatown, Mr. Horne. There is even a Buddhist Temple. Restored buidings, shops, restaurants, and one of two timbered houses left in the city.”

“Thanks, Mr. Engels, but I’m more interested in how it was in, let’s say, 1988.”

“Yes, I thought so. I imagine our Mr. Baker was a frequent visitor then.”

“I’m sure. Was there one particular well-known dealer, someone the police were familiar with? Maybe he had a nickname, you know, a special name.”

“There were many, and most are gone now, thankfully. I don’t recall any name, and they were not all Dutch. Some were Moroccan or from the Caribbean or South America. Why do you ask?”

I pause to think of an appropriate answer. “Oh, someone I just met is doing a documentary film. She heard of it and asked me if I knew. No other reason really.”

“I’m sorry I can’t be more help.”

So am I, I think. Finding Chet’s connection, even if he was owed money, is going to be trickier than I thought.

“Go carefully, Mr. Horne. Zeedijk has improved considerably, but there are still places and people just as dangerous as before.”

***

Back at the flat, I find Fletcher and Darren at the computer, arguing about something.

“What’s happening?”

Fletcher glances at Darren. “Shaft here thinks he knows about computers. I’m trying to look up something, and he’s trying to tell me how to do it.”

“Well, I do,” Darren says. The jacket and glasses are off now. “Just let me try, okay?”

Fletcher rolls his eyes and stands up. “Okay, but if you fuck up my computer, you’re going to pay for it.”

“Step aside,” Darren says. He sits down and looks at the screen, then begins typing. “Got to find another search engine for what you want,” he says. He types some more, clicks the mouse a few times, and Fletcher and I both watch openmouthed as Darren makes the screen change faster than we can keep up. Finally, he arrives on a jazz site home page. “There,” he says, standing up. “You should bookmark places you go back to a lot. It’s much easier.”

Fletcher stares at the screen for a minute, then at Darren, then at me. “How’d you learn to do that?” he asks Darren.

Darren grins, enjoying the moment. “Just something I picked up,” he says.

Fletcher looks at Darren as if he’s somebody he doesn’t know. He sits down and clicks the menu button.

“What are you looking for, anyway?” I ask.

“I heard Art Farmer was sick,” he says. “Just wanted to check to see if there was anything on it.”

Fletcher clicks on the news button, and I read over his shoulder. There are some items about upcoming jazz festivals, some new CD releases, and a couple of reviews, but nothing about Art Farmer.

“Whew,” Fletcher says. “We’re old friends, but I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“Do me a favor, will you,” I say. “Send an e-mail to Margo. Ask her if Ace has been there.”

He closes the screen and opens his mail site. Typing slowly with two fingers, he writes a brief message to Margo, then closes down everything and stands up.

“Thanks,” I say.

“What are you going to do?”

“Go to San Francisco. I’ll try to get a flight out Monday morning.”

“Could be tough,” Darren says. “Let me try it online, might find something.”

“Great, please do.”

Darren nods. “No problem. I’ll do it at home.” He looks at Fletcher. Something passes between them I can’t read.

“Come on, Darren,” Fletcher says. “I want to talk to you.”

It’s the first time he hasn’t called him Shaft.

***

The Baby Grand is already crowded when we arrive. There’s a poster in the front window that reads, “Fletcher Paige & Evan Horne, 8–11.” There’s some other printing with dates and times and a short paragraph in quotes—some reviewer’s words, I imagine.

The restaurant itself is upscale. White tablecloths, silver, glassware, and waiters in white shirts and bow ties. The piano is at one end of the room, and in front, in the curve of the piano, is a stool for Fletcher. No microphones or sound system. This will be acoustic all the way.

I sit down at the piano and run through some chords. The sound is beautiful, and true to his word, the owner has had it tuned. Elaine must have persuaded him to let her film; Kevin is already set up at a front table with his camera and microphone, doing light meter readings with Elaine hovering nearby.

“This is exciting,” she says as I come up. “We won’t get in your way, I promise.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” I say and let her get back to prepping for the filming. I join Fletcher at the bar, where he’s sipping a cognac. He looks thoughtful but not nervous. He’s played too many gigs for that. It’s something else that’s got him quiet, just looking into his glass.

“Hey, man,” he says. “Nice setup, huh?”

“Uh-huh. I think we’re going to enjoy this. You okay?”

“What? Oh yeah, just thinking.” He looks at me. “I haven’t told you everything about Darren.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s not the grandson of a friend. He’s my grandson.”

“Whoa. Does he know?” This is starting to make sense now.

“He does now. He pretty much had it figured out.” Fletcher sips his drink and stares at himself in the mirror behind the bar.

“That shit he did on the computer today just blew me away. We had a long talk—turns out he works part-time for a computer company here. Can you believe that? Anyway, we talked; I told him the whole story, he broke down and cried. I want to get him off the street, all this Shaft actin’ bullshit. Trying to get him to go back home, get established, before he gets in some real trouble.” Fletcher shakes his head. “I should have done this a long time ago.”

“Maybe he wasn’t ready for it then.”

“I should have made him ready. This little errand for you is going to be the last of these street deals. Damn, the way he handles himself on the computer, he could really do something.”

Eric, the owner, comes over. “So you are both ready?”

“Oh, yeah,” Fletcher says. “Let’s do it.”

We follow him to the piano. I sit down and noodle a bit while Fletcher gets his horn ready and Eric makes an opening announcement. I get a quick smile from Elaine as she bends low behind Kevin.

“So,” Eric says to the audience, “Fletcher Paige and Evan Horne.”

We’d already decided the opening number would be “It Could Happen to You.” There’s no count. Fletcher simply glances at me and raises his horn, then we’re off on an easy medium tempo, playing counterpoint on the melody. Fletcher takes the first solo, moving through the changes smoothly while I feed him chords and marvel at his tone and ideas. I take two choruses. Fletcher, perched on the stool, listens with his horn across his lap.

On the last eight bars, he stands and waits for the next chorus, then begins playing lines against my own. It quickly becomes a question-and-answer, call-and-response, for two more choruses, then we take it out. The Baby Grand has been initiated.

***

We’re just about to have a post-set drink with the owner when Darren comes in. He nods to Fletcher, even takes off his dark glasses, and beams at Elaine. He catches my eye, comes over, and leans in to speak in my ear.

“Okay,” I say. Fletcher watches as Darren goes outside, then turns a questioning face to me.

“Got a little errand to do,” I say. Fletcher looks away and sips his drink. Elaine looks at both of us, trying to read things.

“Can I help? You want some company?” she asks.

“No, thanks,” I say quickly. “I’ll catch up with you guys tomorrow.” I turn to Fletcher. “You’re going home now, right?” He knows it’s not a question and nods.

I head for the door then before anyone can stop me.

Chapter Fourteen

“Van Gogh?” I find Darren standing in front of the Baby Grand, hands in his pockets, looking at the poster in the window. The traffic has lightened now, and the warm afternoon and evening has become only slightly cooler.

He shrugs as if he doesn’t believe it either, but doesn’t look at me, just continues to watch cars cruising by. “Old dude, long hair. Draws pictures in charcoal for the tourists. Not very good either, but got that name hung on him.” When I just look at Darren and don’t say anything, he adds, “Hey, it’s Amsterdam. Art and all that shit.”

“Okay. And he’s a musician too?”

“Yeah, was, a drummer. Guess he used to be okay, but the dope fucked him up too bad. Missed gigs, nodded out. People stopped calling him. Now he just, you know, lives.”

Darren sees that I want more. He’s uncomfortable about the whole thing, but he’s going along with it, mainly, I know, because of Fletcher’s insistence. “Look, man, I’m tellin’ you what I’m tellin’ you. I was told he had the same connection as Chet back then. That and where he lives is all I could get out of him.”

“Okay.” I didn’t really expect Darren to have a direct line to Chet’s connection, or to know if he is even still around, so this will have to do for now, and I can’t afford not to see where it goes. “You didn’t scare him?”

“Nah, man. Just told him somebody, an old friend of Chet’s, wanted to talk to him. He wasn’t scared of me.”

That relieves and surprises me. I don’t want van Gogh to go underground. Darren can look intimidating until you get behind those dark glasses. “Okay, show me.”

Darren looks pained. “Go with you, you mean?” He glances over his shoulder, as if he’s checking to see if someone is watching us. He gives a resigned shrug and sigh. “We need a taxi.” He steps off the curb to flag one down and mumbles, “Get this shit over with.”

We get in, and he manages some passable Dutch to the driver for directions. “Zeedijk,” he says, then a street name I couldn’t pronounce if I tried, and a number. The driver frowns and shakes his head but presses the button on the meter.

I look at Darren. “Not a cool place to be goin’ after midnight,” he says. He slumps in the seat, his gloved hands folded, and stares out the window.

The taxi winds through the narrow streets and over canal bridges till we hit a main boulevard in the direction of Central Station. We make a right in front of the station, then filter down through a maze of streets to a brightly lit underpass north of the station. It comes out along the waterfront, onto a two-lane curved road that meanders for a mile or so, then over another short, narrow bridge with room for only one car at a time. I catch a glimpse of the harbor lights on our left, then we’re in a Chinatown section—old buildings, newly restored restaurants, cafés, and shops, wedged between warehouses and drab apartment blocks.

The driver slows the taxi and looks around, trying to read street names. He stops a couple of times, then goes on. After a couple of wrong turns, Darren taps him on the shoulder.

“Here,” Darren says, leaning forward to tell the driver to stop. I pay the fare, and we get out and walk a couple of blocks past rows of apartments and more abandoned warehouses while Darren looks for numbers. The air is chilled from the harbor, and the smell of the sea is strong, fighting for dominance over the odor of Chinese cooking. We walk a little farther, then Darren stops and points. “This one,” he says.

Some of the windows are boarded up, some are broken. The front door has duct tape across the glass in diagonal rows where the glass has been cracked. Inside the tiny lobby is a bank of mailboxes, but I wonder how much is delivered here. Most of the name slots are empty; others are scratched out or unreadable. Darren points up the stairs.

The smell makes me not want to breathe. Cigarette butts litter the dimly lit hallways, and fumes from broken wine bottles and crushed beer cans mix with the odor of urine, and some other smell I can’t make out at all. We walk up to the third floor and pass doors where muffled sounds from televisions and voices, some even children’s, filter through the thin walls.

“Some kind of government housing,” Darren says, wrinkling his nose at the stench. “Got projects everywhere.”

“You sure this is the place?”

“Yeah. Got the address from another guy. Told him van Gogh owes me money.”

“You’ve never been here?”

“Hell, no,” Darren says, like he’s annoyed and offended by the question.

He touches my shoulder, and we stop in front of one door and listen for a moment. The brass number 9 is nailed to the door, but the top nail is missing so that the number hangs upside down. I hear a television turned down low and something else—a kind of rhythmic tapping sound. Darren raps on the door with a gloved hand. Inside, the tapping stops. “Yo, van Gogh,” he says, glancing down the hallway.

There’s nothing but the sound of the TV for a moment, then footsteps, slapping toward the door. “Who is?” the dark, raspy voice says from just behind the door.

“It’s Darren, man. Got that guy I told you about. Open up, man. Stinks out here.”

The door opens a few inches. Van Gogh’s face is deeply lined and gaunt. His long lank hair, shoulder length, flies in all directions off the top of his head. Van Gogh looks at Darren, gives me a quick glance, then breaks into a grim smile. Several teeth are missing, and the remaining ones are yellowish. Cautiously he opens the door wider, sticks his head out to look up and down the hallway, then steps aside to let us in.

He’s wearing a tank-top-style undershirt that was probably white once, and faded torn jeans. His feet are in leather sandals with a couple of the straps broken or ready to tear. In his left hand, he holds two scarred drumsticks; in his right, a cigarette, burned down nearly to his fingers. He inspects me as I pass, drags on the cigarette, and exhales a cloud of smoke.

The room, and that’s all it is, has a small sink, a countertop, a couple of shelves above it with a few dishes and cups. Lying on the counter next to the sink are a two-burner hot plate, a large jar of instant coffee, an open bag of sugar, and two spoons. I don’t see any kind of refrigerator. In one corner is a black iron-framed single bed, a small table, a lamp that barely illuminates the room, and a large white ashtray with the logo of some bar, overflowing with ashes and butts.

Stacked on the floor in a neat pile are several paperback books, the one on top with a garish cover, some kind of horror novel. Propped against the wall is a canvas bag with a couple of framed, smudged charcoal drawings sticking out. A few feet from the side of the bed, a small black-and-white television with a rabbit-ear aerial is tuned low and perched on an old trunk. A movie flickers on the screen. The smell in here is only slightly better than in the hallway.

By the side of the bed is the room’s one unusual item, which explains the tapping sound. On a shiny chrome stand, with a circular piece of black rubber at its center, is a drummer’s practice pad. Van Gogh sits on the bed, drops the cigarette butt in the ashtray to continue smoldering. In the lamplight, I can see that his left hand is misshapen, the fingers crooked. He places one stick in the crook between his thumb and forefinger of his left hand and curls his fingers around the shaft of the stick.

Without thinking, I flex my own hand. Van Gogh’s fingers have been broken at one time and never healed properly, but their movements are long practiced from memory. He cocks his head slightly to the right as I’ve seen countless drummers do, and continues tapping out rhythms from somewhere in his mind, accenting here and there, but all very quietly, very controlled. The sticks never come off the pad more than a couple of inches. Then, as if remembering some tune he played long ago, he begins to play a medium-tempo ride cymbal beat with his right hand, while accenting with his left.

I glance at Darren. He’s taken off the shades, and his eyes flick from me to van Gogh and back again. “You digging this, huh?” he says.

Van Gogh stops the time play then and vamps on a soft press roll. I watch the muscles of his forearms, lined and scarred by a thousand needle marks. He stops the roll then and carefully replaces the sticks on the pad. He looks at me.

“You have one cigarette, please?”

I dig for mine and hand him the pack. He offers me one first, takes one for himself, and lays the pack on the table. He lights us both with a wooden match from a large box next to the ashtray, inhales deeply twice, three times, and exhales clouds of blue smoke. “Ah, menthol,” he says. “Very expensive.” He picks up the pack and examines it.

“Keep them,” I say.

He breaks into another nearly toothless smile and nods. I think of the later pictures of Chet from the portfolio. He and van Gogh could be from the same tribe, some ancient clan for which heroin is the peace pipe. If Chet Baker hadn’t been Chet Baker, and he were still alive, would he be in a room like this, playing on an old trumpet?

Darren walks over to the window and struggles for a moment to get it open and let in some cool air. I sit down on the bed next to van Gogh.

“You play, huh?”

He shakes his head. “No more, but I remember. I like this,” he says, touching the pad with a finger. “I relax.” He turns his palms up and looks at his forearms. “All the money is here,” he says.

“You played with Chet Baker?”

He nods and closes his eyes, remembering. “Yes, two, maybe three times. Long time ago. So beautiful, his horn, and after, together we…” He taps his arm again.

“I’m trying to find a man Chet may have owed money to, his connection—and maybe yours too?”

Van Gogh shakes his head. “No, Chet pays. He has money.” He raises his left hand and tries to close it into a fist but can only manage halfway.

“A dealer did that?” I say, pointing at his hand.

“Yes, to anyone who no pay. Chet, he pay, he knew.” He pauses, looks at me. “And I no tell.”

“What? You didn’t tell what?”

Van Gogh just shakes his head, remembering something, but it’s not for me.

“Is that man still in Amsterdam?”

Van Gogh regards me with his version of a perplexed expression. “You want?” he says, looking at my clothes, my face. “I don’t think so.”

“No, not drugs. I just want to talk to him. I’m trying to find my friend.”

He glances at Darren, then back to me. “You are not police?”

“No, no, piano player. I’m…I’m just trying to do something for Chet, for a friend.” But even as I say the words, I know I’m here in this junkie crash pad talking to an old drummer as much for myself as for Ace or Chet Baker. I can’t shut it off.

“Ah, piano.” He inhales the cigarette deeply again, then puts it out in a mountain of ash. He picks up the sticks and begins tapping on the pad, his eyes going to the TV screen. “Listen,” he says. “You know this tune?” The tapping begins again, but in a jagged, repeated pattern. He plays it several times. I look at Darren. He checks his watch and rolls his eyes, impatient to go.

Van Gogh moves his head from side to side. His lined face pinches into a deeper frown. He looks up at me, gives me that weird grin. I listen, the rhythm pattern repeating, distinctly. He slows it down for me.

It sounds like, da-da-duh, duh-da-duh-da-di-duh, dada-dadaduh-duh da di.

Then he plays a cymbal pattern with his right hand, accents with his left, and repeats the first pattern again. I sing it in my head, try to put it together; then something clicks—the drummer Roy Haynes doing the same thing. I think it’s an old bebop tune, Sonny Rollins.

“Oleo?” I say, making a stab at it. This sends van Gogh into spasms of ecstasy, head back, a low moan coming from somewhere deep inside him, playing hard now, remembering some night on a bandstand somewhere, another time for him. Then silence. He stops, and carefully replaces the sticks on the pad for another time.

I think of something else then and take out the photo I have of Ace.

“Have you ever seen this man?” I ask van Gogh.

He looks at the photo, shakes his head, no, then stands up.

“Come, I show you,” he says.

Darren looks at me and shakes his head. “I don’t understand this shit at all, man.”

Van Gogh ignores Darren. He flicks off the TV and shrugs into an old coat hanging on a hook by the door. Downstairs, back out on the street, it’s chilly now. We follow him as he cuts between buildings, down alleyways, until the lights of Central Station are visible.

“We need a taxi?” I call to him. He shakes his head no and keeps walking ahead of us, occasionally looking back over his shoulder to see if we’re with him, headed now, I’m sure, for the Old Quarter.

“‘Oleo’ was the name of that shit he was tapping out?” Darren asks me.

“Yes,” I say, keeping van Gogh in sight. He walks ahead of us, sandals slapping on the pavement, head turning side to side, scanning faces, but I don’t think he’s looking for anyone. He’s just looking.

“Damn,” Darren says. “How’d you do that?”

“Remind me. I’ll show you with Fletcher.”

We finally round a corner and stop in front of one of the coffee shops. I know where we are now. Darren and I both look at each other. “Shit, I didn’t know,” he says.

It’s the same one I was in the night I hallucinated. Van Gogh motions that Darren is to stay outside. I start to follow him in, but quickly whisper to Darren first, “Call Fletcher. If he’s home, tell him to come over.”

“Right,” Darren says and reaches for his cell phone.

Van Gogh is waiting just inside the door for me. He motions for me to follow him. We walk toward the back, past tables full of customers sampling, laughing, having a good time, the pungent aroma of several grades of marijuana everywhere. At the far end of the bar, a room juts off in a kind of alcove, two men are seated in a circular booth, as if they’ve been waiting for me. They both look up at van Gogh.

One of them I recognize immediately. He doesn’t have his raincoat or umbrella or satchel, and the glasses are gone, but there’s no mistake. This is the same man who gave me directions to the hotel the day I arrived in Amsterdam. He’s probably the one who switched my order in this very coffee shop. The other man I take to be the connection. He’s late sixties, I would guess, with thick, bushy eyebrows, very dark eyes, and thinning black hair, streaked with gray. Dressed in an expensive suit, he could be a banker. There’s a long line, a scar of some kind, down the right side of his face.