Out of the Blues Page 8

  She lit the cigarette.

  “You found out I just happened to be coming through Atlanta with the band?”

  Salt inhaled once and put the cigarette in the ashtray. “The Internet is a wonderful thing. Brings the whole world a little closer.”

  “I thought detectives had partners.” He shook out another smoke, turning it over and over through his fingers.

  The dim bar was empty now except for the two of them, the waitress, and the bartender. “I don’t have a partner because they assigned me to a cold case.” She took off her jacket. “And my sergeant probably doubts there’s any truth in what this perp alleges anyway.”

  “Nice gun. How’d you get the scar?”

  “Which one?”

  “The only one I can see.” He pointed to her scalp.

  “I got it when words didn’t work. Thanks.” She patted the gun, then touched the scar. “Gunshot.”

  The doors from the lobby swung open, the dark bar briefly brightening and suddenly seeming a lot smaller as the other members of the band ambled in and came over. “Dan, our man,” Bailey said as if to claim him.

  The big, tall guy put a hand on Dan’s shoulder. “You in trouble?” he said, looking at Salt and her gun.

  “Detective Alt, these guys are the Old Smoke Band.” He pointed to them one by one. “Bailey, Pops, Blackbird, Goldie, and Mustafa.” Each offered his hand.

  “I’m Sarah. Nice to meet you. I’m a fan,” she said with a broad smile, taking each hand in turn.

  The men pulled up another tiny table and some chairs, hunkered down, and called to the sad waitress for whiskey.

  “Sarah?” Dan looked at her.

  Goldie scooted his chair closest to the detective. “What’s that you’ve got there?” He winked at the rest of the guys. “Thirty-eight special?” he pointed his thumb at her chest.

  She met him tooth for grinning tooth. “Why, with all your experience, Goldie, I would think your guess would be better than that.”

  “She got you, Goldie. She got you.” Blackbird laughed loud and slapped his knee. “Time out, foul on the play.”

  “Shut up, Goldie. Mind your manners. Why you think you God’s gift to every woman?” Bailey frowned.

  “Why, because I could be. There’s plenty of me to go ’round.”

  “Mr. Brown,” she said, “I especially like ‘Time Is Not on My Side.’”

  The heavy man beamed. “Now, that ol’ stuff—I didn’t think anybody listened to that anymore.” He kept on smiling.

  Blackbird again cut to the chase. “So what’s Dan in trouble for? What do the poleese want with him?” He looked over the room, not at her, as if trouble could come from anywhere.

  “I was just explaining to Dan. I’m trying to clear up some loose ends on Mike Anderson’s death.”

  “Now, that’s something else that was a long time ago,” Bailey Brown said, dragging out the last three words. “I played some of the same gigs Mike played. He made the managers and producers hire the old guys.”

  “Have things changed much since then?” Salt asked.

  “Blues ain’t changed in fifty years,” Bailey answered. “Not since B.B. came out of Memphis, not since Muddy ’n them, Wolf, out of Chicago. A’ course them British guys took it to rock and got it famous thataway, but the actual blues, well, just a few young folks, like Mike, kept to the ol’ blues.” Bailey sipped some of his whiskey, smacking his lips with an “Ah.” “Boy could play the blues, but he had some nasty characters he sometimes played with and some people around him that I wouldn’t have trusted. Goldie, didn’t you know some of them south side guys?”

  Goldie, holding up his glass to get the waitress for a refill, said, “That’s a long time ago. I didn’t keep up with any of them. But that reminds me.” Goldie pulled his phone, started punching at it, then left the bar.

  Bailey stared into his glass. “Always been rough in the blues, and now days most of these kids don’t realize all that hip-hop and rap come out of the blues. They think they first to invent rough. They tellin’ they stories, and them’s some scary stories all right. But underneath is the blues. They was rappin’ in Africa. James Brown was rappin’. Ain’t nothin’ new.”

  “Mustafa, didn’t I see you when you played with the Morehouse group at the blues festival last year?” Salt said, turning to the young man.

  “What were you doing there? Bustin’ guys for smoking ganja?” Mustafa seemed to work at tough.

  “Damn, I missed my big chance to arrest some musicians for smoking weed! At the blues festival!” she kidded the drummer.

  “So would you lock me up for practicing my religion, smoking the sacred herb?” The young man raised his chin. He was wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

  “And what religion would that be, Sweet Meat?’ Goldie said, arriving back at the table. “You grew up Presbypalian or some shit in a suburb.”

  “I’m into roots religion, voodoo, from the Islands.”

  “Don’t get him started, Goldie. Leave him alone,” Dan mediated.

  Bailey began to sag, growing darker circles under his eyes. “Come on, kid. Help me and Pops get tucked in.” He threw back the last smack of whiskey and got up from the table. Mustafa rose with the old men. Before following them out of the bar, he pointed at Dan and lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t wake the dog when you come in.”

  Goldie, on his fourth whiskey, barked.

  Blackbird stuck out his tongue and panted. After the old men and Mustafa were through the door, he pulled a cigar that matched his size from his jacket and lit it. “I think I’m gonna take this stogie over to the bar and have one more whiskey. Goldie, you might as well come with me. You wearing that waitress out.”

  The two men moved across the room and left a space of silence between Dan and Salt. “How did you get to be the dog’s guardian?” She leaned forward again.

  “On every tour the guys find something they keep going, joking around. I like dogs, pet ’em when I see them. I wanted to adopt this old stray that showed up at the bus in Albuquerque. But, well—I’m not home much.” Dan looked sideways and lifted his shoulders, resigned.

  Then, almost like after she was shot, Salt caught something in her peripheral vision. “I remember an imaginary dog. I hadn’t thought of him since . . .”

  “Since?”

  She turned back to Dan. “Since I lost him,” she said, looking down, smoothing the coat across her lap. She cleared her throat. “So the band gave you a dog, of sorts, a dog-away-from-home dog. Home. We were just getting to Melissa when your guys came in. I saw some magazine pieces, some interviews. You and she have been together for a long time.”

  “Look, I’m dead tired and I’ve got to make sure these guys turn in, and then I’ve got to get up tomorrow and oversee the setup for the gig.”

  “Of course.”

  He hesitated. “If you want you can come to the gig. We’ll be at the Notelling tomorrow and Saturday.”

  She stood and fished bills from a pocket of the coat. “See you then.” She put money under the candle, picked up her jacket, and folded the old coat over her arm.

  She thought she heard Dan humming the theme music from an old TV cop show as he followed her out of the bar.

  CRIMINAL RECORDS

  Criminal Records was an anchor business in Little Five Points, a destination hang for suburban kids looking for edgy. They’d put a blue streak in their hair and come sit on the plaza with other suburban kids with streaks in their hair or a new nose ring or tat, shop at the vintage clothing boutique and the shoe place that carried the most current radical shoe styles. As Salt pushed the door inward, an over-the-door bell jangled but didn’t seem to have much significance for the fortyish guy behind the counter, his elbow propped on one of the glass display cases. He was in conversation with his blond counterpart, who was wearing the same plaid knee shorts, except the
blond guy’s pants were torn at the right hem instead of the left. The store was wall to wall and floor to ceiling with bins of CDs, cassette tapes, and vinyl, and had a pleasant dry-vanilla and old-glue odor.

  Eventually, the clerk glanced down the counter at Salt but continued his bent-arm talk with the dude. It seemed a little heavy-handed to have to display her badge just to get sales service. “Excuse me.” She held up a finger. The guy said something out of the side of his mouth before he unpropped and ambled over. “I’m looking for some CDs of Mike Anderson.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Do you have any?”

  “Maybe.” He nodded at the blond guy who was leaving. “Dude.”

  “‘Maybe,’” she repeated. “Can you show me what you have of his?”

  “Tapes, CDs, vinyl?”

  “I’d like to take a look at them all.”

  He motioned for her to follow him to the far-back counter. Along the way he slid out a foot-long box with cassette tapes. At the rear of the store he plopped the tapes down and then reached above his head and grabbed a handful of CDs. “Back in a minute,” he said, leaving from behind the counter and heading for the bigger bins: the center of the store. Salt took out her new notepad and began to make a list of the musicians Mike had worked with.

  “You going to buy anything or just waste my time?” Record Store Dude was back, two LPs in hand.

  “Your tax dollars at work.” She opened her badge case.

  “Cool,” he said, standing up straighter. “CSI shit, right?”

  “Right.” She slipped the badge back into a pocket. “It has listed on this CD a song with a vocalist, Pretty Pearl. You know anything about her?”

  “Sure, she’s kind of a Little Five fixture, or was. Homeless. She used to hang out around the benches, asking for handouts from the brats. Nastee, nastee, she hit bottom and was in bad shape last time I saw her.”

  “What happened? How long has it been since you saw her?”

  He tapped his forehead with one finger. “Screw loose. She was mental as far back as I can remember. Most people don’t even know she was a singer. Last time I saw her was probably a month or so ago.”

  Salt handed him two of the CDs. “I’ll take these two.”

  They moved back up to the front and the cash register. While the guy was ringing up her CDs, she studied the photos and illustrations on the covers of the LPs. One front cover had a photo of Mike bent over a guitar, his face hidden. The other cover was a stylized ’60s-type black-and-blue silhouette.

  “Fourteen dollars and thirty-two cents.”

  “Anybody around here that might know where I can find Pearl?” She handed him the bills.

  “Cops know her better than anybody, those homeless cops.”

  “The HOPE Team?”

  “Yeah, they been dealing with her.” Then, flipping a quarter, he said, “Heads or tails?”

  “Tails.”

  He gave her the change. “Tails it is.”

  —

  A COUPLE OF BLOCKS from Peachtree Street, at the corner of Auburn Avenue and Fort Street, Salt sat down on the curb beside the old blind man in a wheelchair, missing a leg since she’d last seen him.

  “Officer Salt, last time I saw you, you know I’m sayin’, you were in The Homes.”

  She told him about being promoted and transferred to Homicide. “Why are you out here and not in The Homes?” she asked. Two ambulances, one with the siren full blast, screamed past over some of the old cobblestones, revealed beneath a torn place in the pavement. Salt leaned in closer to hear him. He smelled of urine and the metallic odor of crack.

  “Had to go to the rehab center down there”—he pointed to a yellow brick high-rise a block away—“when they took my leg.” Then he grinned. “’Course you know I’m on the street to get my real medicine.” Someone had parked him on the sidewalk right across the street from the Fort Street and Auburn Avenue viaduct, a concrete-and-iron structure so massive and thick that the traffic sounds from the fourteen lanes overhead barely registered and were only background for the street life of Sweet Auburn. Dark bundles of homeless men and women lay prone in the shadows against the fencing and pylons.

  He planted his dark, gnarled fingers over his stump. “It’s just as troublesome as when it was there. What’s that you’re hummin’? I almost recognize it.” His clouded blue-black eyes twitched.

  “Something I heard recently,” she told him. “I’m looking for Pretty Pearl.”

  “Yeah, that’s ‘Hellhound.’ Pearl do that song real right.”

  “It’s stuck in my head—an earworm. My dad had the Robert Johnson recording.”

  “Long as the hellhound ain’t stuck on your tail. You know what they say: you see a hellhound three times, you gonna die.” He turned his face up, eyes open to the sun. The air smelled of grease and sugar. The big churches, historic Ebenezer and Wheat Street Baptist, were each a block away in opposite directions, but their spires were too tall to be seen from the street where she and the old man were sitting.

  THE NOTELLING

  Salt was already at the Notelling Tavern sitting at the back bar closest to the rear entranceway. Thunder like a runaway boxcar accompanied Dan and Mustafa through the double doors at the back of the cinder-block building as they pushed the gear on a flat dolly. Lightning cracked just as they got inside.

  An albino called Melody met them as they came out of the sparsely lit short hall from the back door. “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.”

  “Melody, how are you, dude?” Dan grabbed the little man’s shoulder. In the humidity Dan’s T-shirt stuck to his back and chest.

  “From glen to glen and down the mountainside,” Melody sang, smiling and holding the doors as they pulled the gear dolly inside.

  “Mustafa, this is Melody, the sound man. Melody, meet Mustafa, our new drummer.”

  Melody cocked his head, taking the measure of Mustafa. “What’s your name? What’s your name? Young Blood,” he sang, arms thrown wide. Mustafa, puzzled, lifted an eyebrow. Dan glanced at Salt then, quickly digging his legs back to get traction for the dolly, stumbling, causing the gear cart to veer off. “Shit.” They got it going and carted the load to the stage, where he then stopped and nodded to her from the distance, his hands on his hips.

  Salt took a sip from the glass in front of her, set it down, and unhooked her heels from the stool. As she stood, Dan reached down to grab a guitar case and began setting the cases on a foot-high ubiquitous dirty gray-carpeted stage.

  “Storm’s coming.” She came up to his side. “You got here just in time.”

  Melody floated close, singing Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.”

  “I can’t help you,” Dan said, aggressively unzipping a gear case.

  “No one could look as good as you. Mercy.”

  “Hey, Melody. How ’bout you help us out here.” Dan turned to Salt. “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “Mercy,” repeated Melody.

  “Of course,” she said. “When you take a break. I don’t mind waiting.” She walked back to the bar, where beer signs flickered next to a wall-mounted TV, muted, words scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

  The place was dim and had the same stale-beer smell of old bars everywhere. The Notelling was a typical blues bar: dingy, Plexiglas windows, burglar bars, interior supports of paint-chipped concrete. Even still, it was a famous venue for bluesmen. There were twenty or so badly done eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch chalk portraits hanging behind the stage, a who’s who of the blues: B.B. King, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, and so on. A scratchy recording of Albert Collins on guitar, accompanied by a squawky sax, played through the ceiling speakers while Dan and Mustafa set up guitar stands, attached cymbals to drums, and tested the hookups and sound system.

 
Except for a couple of bartenders, one waitress, and Melody, this time of day the place was otherwise empty, at least that’s what Salt thought until a man’s voice came from the far back of the room. “Shh-up,” a guy, working on an early drunk or possibly a late one, slurred at the woman in the shadows beside him, who was leaning away from the light over their table in an otherwise dark corner.

  Salt turned in the couple’s direction.

  “Ask me that one more time, bitch.” The man’s voice got louder.

  Dan was keeping busy hooking up the gear, doing what everyone else in the place was doing, averting their eyes and likely hoping they weren’t going to hear what they were about to hear. Salt put her glass down on the bar and watched the room reflected in the bar mirror.

  The woman stood up, but the drunk grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the light. “You sit your ass down.” Her face was almost totally hidden by straight, thin hair that fell to her shoulders.

  Salt got to her feet and turned again in their direction.

  “I told you.” His hand cracked across the woman’s face, whipping her hair around her head.

  Salt moved quickly toward them.

  “Oh no.” Dan dropped a cable and caught up to Salt. The bartender came from behind the bar. As she walked, Salt moved her jacket to expose the badge on her belt and pulled an ID case from a pocket.

  At the table the tobacco-tan man looked at them with fuzzy eyes. “This ain’t your business,” he said, stroking his mangy beard.

  “Sir,” said Salt, “you are under arrest.” Blood dripped from the woman’s mouth. “Ma’am, if you’ll go to the bar I’m sure they’ll give you some ice to keep that from swelling. Please go now.”

  “Arrest? Just who you think’s gonna arrest me?” He focused on Salt while the bartender moved toward the woman.

  Salt opened the ID case. “I’m Detective Alt with the Atlanta Police Department.” She held it up to the drunk and to the bartender. “Please help the lady to the bar.” She kept her eyes on the guy at the table but turned her face slightly to Dan. “You can help by calling 911 and telling them that an officer needs assistance, and make sure they have the right address.”