The King of Ragtime (7 page)

“Lester Walton!”

Everyone turned to Joplin.

“Lester Walton wrote me up for years, and in a most complimentary fashion. But now he says what I write isn’t worth wasting space in the trash can.” The composer rose from the sofa, stumbled, regained his footing, and walked across the little hooked rug to stand over Nell. “I’m the King of Ragtime, but they’re all against me now, all of them out to deny my name…”

Joplin sounded like a phonograph running low on spring power. Nell sprang out of her chair, took him by the arm, and helped him back to the sofa. He sat, then turned his head and gazed toward the window. Nell heard him start to hum a soft, syncopated melody. She looked to Martin, and with a motion of her head, told him to go on.

Martin shifted to sit a little farther from the composer. “Well, Mrs. Joplin tried calming him down, but he wouldn’t have any of it. He told me he couldn’t give me a lesson then, I’d have to come back some other time, and that’s when I got my idea. I told him I thought maybe I could help him, and why didn’t we talk about it. He stopped yelling, and said, ‘You are serious?’ ‘Darn right,’ I told him. ‘Maybe the Lafayette Theater is the tops in Harlem, but there have been colored revues and musicals on Broadway for more than fifteen years already, and I think that’s where you’re gonna get the most attention
and
the most money. I work at Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder, and I’ve met Mr. Ber—’”

Martin paused mid-sentence to look at Joplin; when there was no reaction from the composer, he turned back to face Nell and Lamb. “Well, when I said…that name, Mr. Joplin jumped up on his feet, and leaned all the way across the table, right in my face. ‘Boy, have you lost your mind?’ he yelled at me. ‘Or are you in thick with that thief? Trying to help him steal more of my music to make his fortune and reputation.’ ‘Please, Mr. Joplin,’ I said. ‘I want to help
you
. Just listen to me a minute. Mr. Berlin’s opened up another office, just for show-tune music, and all the talk at W, B, and S is about how he wants to make it big on Broadway. Think about what a splash he could make with a Scott Joplin musical play. Especially if he thought the Shuberts were interested.”

“The Shuberts?” The look on Nell’s face sent Martin’s Adam’s apple into a quick up-and-down. “The Shuberts wouldn’t even let Scott into their waiting room. Or you, for that matter.”

Martin’s voice went up half an octave. “I thought we could just
tell
Mr. Berlin the Shuberts were interested. He’d never check it out. He hates them.”

Joe Lamb burst into a full-throated laugh. Nell couldn’t decide whether to be amused by the young man’s nervy hot air, or wake him up with a good smack on the cheek.

Martin scrambled back to safer conversational ground. “Well, never mind about the Shuberts. Mainly, I thought if I went with Mr. Joplin to see Mr. Berlin, then Mr. Berlin would know he couldn’t steal the music. And I’d be right there in the office, watching. I’d pick up on any funny stuff the minute it started to happen.”

Joe Lamb cleared his throat. “Does there happen to be anything in this for you?”

“Me? Well, yeah. Besides helping Mr. Joplin, if Mr. Berlin thinks I’m a go-getter, maybe then I’d get to be more than a bookkeeper. What’s wrong with that? There’s a girl—”

“
Cherchez la femme.
” Now, Nell smiled.

Lamb laughed. “Happens in the best of families. But go on, Martin. What happened when you and Mr. Joplin talked to Berlin?”

Nell rested a hand on Lamb’s arm. “That’s not the way it went, Joe. Lottie told me Scott took it into his head yesterday to go talk to Berlin by himself.”

Lamb pressed his lips together, and nodded.

“Then, today, about five o’clock, Berlin called and asked Scott to come right down and talk about the play.”

“That’s odd.” Lamb scratched his cheek. “To call at the very end of the business day.”

Martin broke in. “No, actually it’s not odd, not if you know Mr. Berlin. He mostly comes in when nobody’s around to bother him, goes right to his office, and locks the door. I usually don’t know if he’s there or not. I didn’t see him all day yesterday, which doesn’t mean a lot, but I never saw Mr. Joplin either. If he did come down, wouldn’t he have come and gotten me to talk to Mr. Berlin with him?”

“Scott told Lottie you were out to lunch,” Nell said.

Martin smacked his open palm against his forehead. “Lunchtime, sure. Mr. Berlin writes his music all night, then he goes to bed and doesn’t get up till about noontime. And then he sometimes comes down to the office, while all the help is at lunch.”

For a moment, everyone sat silent. Then, Lamb said, “I guess it really doesn’t matter whether or not Berlin was in his office at five o’clock today. He could have called Mr. Joplin from somewhere else, his other office, his home, then gone to meet him. He looked at the composer. “Mr. Joplin.”

No response.

Nell walked over, leaned into Joplin’s face, smiled. “Scott…
Scott
.”

Joplin blinked once, twice.

“Scott, Joe wants to ask you something.”

“Well, all right. Let him ask. He doesn’t need permission.” As if he’d been listening, heard every word.

“Mr. Joplin, I’m trying to figure out what happened this afternoon. Irving Berlin called you—”

“That’s right. Irving Berlin called me up on the phone and said to come down, he needed to talk to me about
If
. My musical. But he wasn’t there.”

Lamb gave the persistent cowlick another finger-combing. “You walked right in to the office? The door was unlocked?”

Martin waved a hand like a third-grader who knows he’s got the answer to the teacher’s question. “I never thought about that. They always lock the office door after hours. You can get out, but you can’t get back in. When I went to the mens’ room, I left the door open a crack so I wouldn’t be locked out, but when I came back, it was wide open. I didn’t think anything about it, but I should have.”

As Martin spoke, Joplin studied his face as if the key to an enigma were written across the young man’s forehead. “Yes…yes. That’s right. I forgot…”

Everyone leaned toward him.

“I forgot all about it till just now. The door
was
open. And while I was coming down the hall on my way to the office, a man ran past me, nearly knocked me over, and then went running on down the hall. Maybe he came out of Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder, and didn’t shut the door behind him.”

“What did he look like, Scott? That man?” Nell’s voice was gentle, a mother talking to a hesitant child.

Joplin shook his head. “He was out and by me before I could even think about it.”

“You can’t remember anything? Was he old? Young? Big? Small? White? Colored?
Anything
?”

Joplin kept shaking his head. “No…I just didn’t notice anything. I was looking in a window…” The image of the colored janitor came back to his mind like a pain somewhere deep inside his brain. “And he caught me on the shoulder and threw me into the wall. He was gone down the stairs before I could get any kind of look at him. But I guess he was pretty big—it felt like I got hit by a horse.”

Nell smiled encouragement at Joplin. “All right. What happened next?”

“I went inside, and I saw Martin there…well, I thought it was Martin, asleep on his desk. I wondered if Berlin had talked to him, and he was going to be at our meeting. So I went to wake him up. But then I saw it wasn’t Martin—he was a blond man.” Joplin paused to let that bitter recollection pass. “And I saw he had his throat cut, there was blood everywhere. I saw a razor on the floor, and I picked it up. Then, Martin came in.” Joplin turned suddenly to Lamb. “Joe, you got any music paper?” As if that were a perfectly logical next remark.

“Well, yes, of course. It’s in the bench.”

“Good. Thank you.” Joplin pulled himself to his feet, and walked slowly across the room to the upright piano against the wall. “Got to write down the music I had in my head when Nell broke in there.” He lifted the bench lid, pulled out a couple of sheets of lined paper, set them on the piano rack. Then he leaned forward, struck a few keys, scribbled on the paper.

“I thought your play was done, Scott,” said Nell.

“It is.” Over his shoulder. “Now, I’m working on my
Symphony Number One
. I got to get it finished while I still can.” He turned back to his work.

Nell thought Lamb might be about to shed tears, and if he did, she certainly would.

“What about you, Martin?” Lamb’s voice was husky. “Where were you when Mr. Joplin came in?”

“Bathroom, like I said. I needed a break.”

“You were there how long?”

“Ten, maybe twelve, minutes.” The expression on Lamb’s face brought an embarrassed little laugh from the young man. “I was goofing off ’cause I was sore about Mr. Tabor making me stay to get those figures ready for morning. I figured he could just pay me a little more overtime.”

“But when you saw what had happened, why
didn’t
you call the police? They’re going to make a lot out of the fact that you both ran away.”

Martin glanced at Joplin, now seated on the piano bench, composing in earnest. The young man crab-walked past the coffee table to squat between Nell and Lamb. “When I came in that room, there was Mr. Joplin, standing over Sid’s body, holding a bloody razor in his hand, blood all over
him
.” A hoarse whisper. “I didn’t want to have to explain
that
to the cops.” Martin jerked a thumb in Joplin’s direction. “I was afraid the cops’d get him upset and if he started yelling, they might’ve hurt him, maybe even killed him. Besides, Sid was a big guy, strong like an ox. He hauled fruit around the market all day. The way Mr. Joplin shakes, and sometimes stumbles around when he walks? I can’t see any way Mr. Joplin could’ve killed Sid.

Lamb nodded. “So you were the only person still in the office? Except for your friend?”

“Far as I know. Mr. Tabor went out with everybody else at five o’clock. He told me to leave the work on his desk, he was gonna come back some time to check it so he’d know before tomorrow where we stood on the month’s numbers. He didn’t want to get caught short if Mr. Berlin came by.”

“But you just said Berlin doesn’t come in till noontime at the earliest,” said Nell. “That would have given Tabor all morning.”

“Mr. Tabor always checks the numbers before he goes home at night. He says he likes to run a tight ship.”

Lamb grunted. “Well, I guess that’s really not here or there. You didn’t happen to hear anyone coming into the office?”

Martin shook his head. “I wish.”

“All right.” Lamb paused, tapped a finger several times on the arm of his chair. “Martin, I’m sorry to bring this up, but what about the idea that
you
might have killed your friend—”

“And then I just went to the bathroom and hung around a little?”

“You could have gone to wash off blood.”

“I didn’t have any on my clothes. Besides, there was that razor.”

“What do you shave with?”

“Jesus Christ, what are you saying?” Martin jumped to his feet, fists clenched, eyes sizzling. “Sure, I use a razor, but it’s at my place—”

Nell moved between the furious young man and Lamb. “Calm down, Martin. Joe’s not accusing you.”

“I’m just trying to think about every possibility that will occur to the police,” Lamb said. “Martin, your friend Sid wasn’t interested in your girlfriend, was he? Or she in him?”

Martin’s face flushed to the color of a ripe plum. “Sid wasn’t interested in girls…any girls.” Then, louder, “And Birdie’s only interested in me, she never even looks at any other guys. Come on. You don’t really think I did it, do you.”

Lamb and Nell said, “No” in unison. Everyone smiled, if the smiles were just a bit tight. Again, Lamb brushed back the cowlick. Except for the sounds from Joplin at the piano, the room was silent.

Finally, Nell said, “It’s all right with you, then, Joe? You don’t mind having Scott and Martin stay here while we try to sort this out?”

“Not at all. Etty and the baby are off with her sister to the mountains, and they won’t be back till next week. There’s plenty of room. Even a small house like this one has a lot more space than most apartments in Manhattan. If one of them doesn’t mind sleeping on a couch—”

“I don’t mind,” Martin chirped. “And I really appreciate you helping, Mr. Lamb. I’m sorry I got sore at you.”

Lamb smiled. “That’s all right.” Then, to Nell, “I wish your father were here. When there’s a problem, that man is like a bulldog with a bone.”

“Careful what you wish for,” said Nell. “He’s on his way. I called him yesterday, after Scott came back from Berlin’s with a big cut on his forehead—”

“I noticed. What happened.”

Nell coughed. “He says he walked into a door. In any case, Dad should be here tomorrow. He thinks he just has to deal with Irving Berlin about Scott’s music.”

“He doesn’t know about the murder.” Lamb whistled.

Nell smiled through clenched teeth. “He’ll find out soon enough.”

***

John Stark, in his three-piece blue summer-worsted suit, straw hat in his lap, looked out the window of the railroad car, then checked his watch. All windows were wide open but the smell of perspiring humanity filled the crowded car. Can’t complain, Stark thought, I’m sure I’m doing my share. He wiped at his face with an already-soggy handkerchief. A lovely girl, dark-haired and slender, carried a light cardboard suitcase down the aisle toward him, and the old man’s stomach lurched. She wasn’t a great deal older than Meggy, and what was a seventy-five year old man doing, staring like that? The girl reminded him of Sarah, not yet seventeen when he married her, and for the next forty-five years, never mind the wrinkles, the gray hair, or the thirty extra pounds, Stark never stopped seeing her the way she’d looked at sixteen. The girl caught Stark’s eye, and smiled, a benediction. Stark smiled back. He and Sarah would’ve been married fifty-one years now.

The conductor leaned out the window, shouted something Stark couldn’t make out. Two boys ran off, away from the car. The woman sitting across the aisle from Stark harrumphed. “Tryin’a hitch a ride,” she said. “Serve ’em right if they fell under the wheels and lost a leg or an arm. That’d teach ’em.”