Chapter 6 and 7

The sirens are getting louder. Heading for the fish fry. The cops can’t know about the shooting. Can they?  I get into my stride.

Stride is descended from ragtime, but incorporates a much more elaborate and decorative approach to the music, and is considerably more demanding to play in terms of technique. Its core is found in a standard left hand pattern, the beat-by-beat alternation between the interval of a tenth struck deep in the bass register of the keyboard and a complex, three- or four-pitch chord struck in the tenor or alto range (the center of the keyboard). Simultaneously, the right hand plays a highly embellished and syncopated version of the melody, often so completely altered as to be lost amidst the complex cascade of notes.

Are you still with me? I thought I’d throw that piece of information in to show that I know the theory as well. I tell al lie I couldn’t describe it if I tried. This passage was downloaded from Wikipedia circa 2013 when I was there last.

Well the cops are definitely heading this way I find it difficult to make myself heard over the racket. People are beginning to exit the gaff. The rain has started again but the heat is intensified, or am I in a sweat? Great swathes of water cascade down the side of the building. The neon sign is blurred by the rain making the light from it ethereal. I am tempted to press the return button on my wrist piece, but I would lose some of my fee, and I can’t afford that as I have a very expensive habit called Xeno Jane. A big cop with a red face dripping water on the blood stain aims a look at me meaning stop playing or I’ll arrest you for noise nuisance. I ignore the fat fuck, I’m getting paid to play. I seguay into Sweet Georgia Brown. Maceo Pinkard was a friend of mine, so I can give him a credit.

‘Hey Fatso hold the ivories’, shouts the cop.

‘Name’s Fats’

‘Fatso, Fats, Smats’, hold the noise.

The problem is I don’t know whether this gig is just an extended charade to give some high roller a kick and all will be well in the end. Or a real situation where my life will be ended by a chance bullet aimed at some other sucker.

I hit the last high note on the deck, above the hearing of some, who have sat in front of the drummer and brass section for most of their life.

Two other cops join red face just as wet and just as ugly. The room has more water than the Roman baths on Italiana, a planet I know well. But that is another story.

They block the exit.

‘No one leaves’, says the red face.

It’s a bit late. All have fled except me, the cook, and the fainted broad on the couch. She must be on something. No one except a cat at deaths door is out for that long unless they are on something. A bit of Avir moon dust will be my guess.

‘We had a call from detective Getz that there was some heavy drugs here.’

We who are left look innocent. By that I mean me, ‘cos the fainted broad is still flat out and the cook is still frying fish. I suddenly catch on that that detective Getz is the dead man in the rug. And being dead can’t refute any story I think up.

‘Just me and the wife’. I point to the fainted broad. ‘And my cook. No law against that is there? A happy family having a fish supper.’

Red face looks down and rubs his boot on the blood, stirring it up into tomato soup. Getting a little froth around his toe.

‘I know blood when I see it.

‘Yes officer it is blood’, I offer no more information. Enough is enough.

I play a few quiet chords down the bottom end of the keys.

‘And?’

‘Rabbit’, I answer. ‘The dog killed the pet rabbit’ Ate the lot head an’ all’.

‘Where’s the dog?’

Fuck why did I say that. Now I have to make up more lies. I’m a piano player for God’s sake not an arch criminal. Some gigs are not worth the money. Don’t get me wrong, I like being Fats Waller, he’s fun, a life and soul guy. Usually it’s.

‘High Fats, Great to see you Fats, but this malarkey is a definite downer.

‘Suddenly a fourth cop dashes in.

‘A call from the station, Getz has been washed up in the river by the bridge’.

‘Don’t leave town’, says red face. ‘I’ve got your number.’

I Play them off with a rag from New Orleans.

Just when I think I am in the clear, Red Face returns

‘Fancy a ride Fats? A little cosy ride down to the East side’

‘No thanks officer, I’m quite happy here.’

‘That wasn’t a request. Get off your fat ass and follow me, or shall I use alternative persuasion.’

What the hell I have a get out of jail free card on my wrist. I button up my waistcoat and take my Derby from the piano top.

The car is one of those snub nosed Buick’s with running boards and chrome bumpers. From the outside a monster of a car. But inside it is a crush. I am no skinny snake and Red Face is no midget so we are cheek to cheek on the leather. The two other cops occupy the front bucket seats. We scythe through soaked streets sirens going. The rain is now a persistent drum beat on the roof and the wipers just wave at the rain. I toy with pressing the return button. I could be dry and safe in my own bunk. Admittedly a few thou credits short of a decent bunk up, but alive to play another day. Maybe Oscar Peterson next. He did a session with dead cop Getz’s namesake Stan. Stan Getz Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis and Ray Brown. What a line up.

Suddenly I get an elbow in the ribs. Red Face is trying to get my attention.

‘What I don’t get is how you can be in two places at once.’

‘How come’

‘You tell me. I have a cousin over in the Fith Precinct, a Sergeant. He tells me that you are appearing at the Reno night club there all month. Unlike me he is a jazz lover and he has been to see you every night this week. In fact he is there tonight and when I find a pay phone that works I will call him to see if you are sitting at the piano putting out the shit you play.’

What can I say I am  doppleganger, an exact double, who does not in fact exist outside the little playlet that the agency have set up. How have I escaped into reality?

How have I been placed into the time when Fats actually lived? There by goes madness. It is all a mistake and time to take my leave. I press the return button. I expect the nano second of mind boggling expansion, before I materialize into the white room.

Nothing.

Red Face is still digging me in the ribs. The rain is still drumming on the roof. I press the button again with the same result. I can feel panic. Did I stand exactly on the black spot, this can not be a black hole.

The Buick stops and the headlights beam lights up the slanting rods of rain hitting the pavement with multiple splashes, and Detective Doil

I realize what has happened I am really on Earth in 1937 not Mars 40037, someone in the agency has cocked up. Or deliberately sent me on a failed mission.

                                                ******************

Doil beckons  me over, and whispers to me out of the side of his mouth.

‘Stum.’

I have no intension of spilling the beans. Doil is my only hope without the transporter working. Red face waddles over. ‘Are you sure it’s Getz? He puts a thin cheroot into his mouth but it is too wet to light, and throws it into the river. He should follow it.

‘Yeh it’s him alright’, says Doil. There is only one in the force who dresses like a grease ball, and he has his shield on him. Doil hands the shield to Red face.

‘His face is a bit of a mess, but he wasn’t that pretty in the foist place.

‘Why did you bring Fats all the way out here?’

‘I think he had something to do with the murder’ Red face thought about it for a moment. Or maybe he has the best alibi ever’

‘How come?’ If he was at the Reno club, over on Fith, at the time of death, then he is in the clear’.

Doil looked at Red Face, ‘and that is why you brought him all the way over to the East River, just in case he wasn’t at the Reno Club two hours ago. How long do you think in a, yellow, can you get from the top of 5^th Ave to Harlem? Have a think shmuck. Red Face shrugged.

‘OK Fats you can go.’

‘How about some cab fare?’

‘Don’t push it Fats, or I’ll run you in for possession.’

Doil gave me the get out of here stare, and I hailed a passing Yellow, which was a miracle in itself considering the location and the rain. 

Chapter 5

In contrast to the waiting room the WMD room is a brilliant white. White walls, white ceiling, white floor, white surfaces. There is no sign of a machine. The room is the machine. The only blemish on this whiteness is a black spot on the floor. It is important to stand on this spot I have been told. In fact the instructions have been engraved on my brain by the powers that be. ‘On no circumstances do you not stand on the spot. If you are a milli off it you will be sent to a black hole from which there is no escape.’

‘How do you know?’ I ask.

‘Let me put it this way’, said the power that be. ‘Nobody has ever come back to tell.’ Which is good enough for me. Mind you for all I know, and they know, a black hole might be a nice place, which is why no one has come back.

I place my thumb on the reader and half my fee is instantly  removed from the bank of  Uranus, where all my credits are deposited. The booking agency has already sent the details of my trip to the machine so after it recognises my thumbprint, it knows where to send me. I stand on the spot. The anticipation is overwhelming. The sensation of having all your molecules deconstructed to be reassembled in another time is ecstatic. Like being reborn with all former knowledge intact. For a split nano second you are part of the cosmos. A star, a planet, a universe. God.

Suddenly it is all over and I am sitting at the piano playing, my fingers miraculously intact. 

Chapter 4

The neon sign keeps flashing and the rain has stopped. The Veronica Lake look-a like shouts over.

‘Hey Fats, play something for a funeral, there’s a dead man in here.’

‘Dead cop’, I think and straighten my Derby.  I pull it down on my forehead, and oblige with a New Orleans slow march. My fingers flow lightly over the keys. I hope the prosthetics dept. have built a bullet shield into Fats’s force field.

The dancing cop looks Veronica in the eye. ‘Are you gonna shoot all the witnesses? It’s 120 years to life for cop shooting in this state’.

‘Listen Honey, your partner, or should I say ex partner, was as crooked as a tyre wrench, and got what was coming to him. If it wasn’t me it would have any of the honest citizens he was ripping off.’

‘But he was still a cop.’

I up the tempo a bit, this is getting interesting. When you are given an assignment, you don’t know what is going to happen. Some gigs are as boring as a temperance meeting and it’s a relief when it is time to depart. This one is warming up nicely.

Veronica walks over to the cop stepping over his partners body, placing a silver pump onto the boards avoiding the blood. She slips a hand into his pocket and pulls out his shield, and reads his name.

‘Well detective Doil, what now?’ Her hair has fallen over one eye and she looks as sexy as hell. She lowers the gun and drops it to the floor. There will be no prints on the butt as her elbow length gloves won’t leave any, and no powder stains either after the gloves are dumped in the river. Her face is not an inch from his and her body is pushing into him. He steps back but she follows him, I break into a tango.

He pulls her to him with his left arm around her waist, she hooks her left leg around his legs. They tango violently, somehow they stay upright avoiding the bloody bit of the floor.  I finish with a crashing chord. They lean into each other breathing hard.

Then he flings her from him and she falls backwards over the prone cop.

‘Hey missy’, he yells. ‘Bring a cloth and clean this up’ The cook does as he says muttering to herself. Veronica gets up

‘What now?’ she says

‘Now we dump the body. Hey Fats give us a hand to roll him in the rug.’

I place my Derby on the piano and get hold of one end of the rug, Doil the other. We wrap up the dead cop as if we do it every day.

The fainted hooker on the couch groans and sits up, sees the blood and faints again. She wont be no bother, a few greenbacks in her pouch and she’ll stay as stum as a cat with his throat cut.

‘Get him into my car’, says Doil.

I’m paid to play the piano. I don’t want to be mixed up any homicide, no matter how nasty the victim was.

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Nope!’

I do as he says, and he drives off with Veronica riding shot gun. The evening is still young and I’m paid to play for a long night, so I go back up the stoop and sit at the piano. Soon the joint is jumpin’ again. The cook is frying, the punters attracted by my piano through the open window are thirstily glugging at their jugs of red biddy and moonshine and Fats is back.

In the distance is the sound of sirens.

Chapter 3

The time machine, or Material Wormhole Destableizer (MWD) is in the building next door. For convenience the two companies have built a connecting travelator between the two situated in the basement. I decend the 700 floors accompanied by Franz Liszt and a court jester from Henry Vee Three’s court. He smells of pork fat and sweat. I watch the floor numbers clock down at mach 1. The elevator stops smoothly, not even ringing the bells on his hat. Underneath that smell he might be my best friend, or even someone I had sex with sometime. This is the wonder of the prosthetics department.

We step onto the travelator next stop, MWD. Franz Liszt is humming a fugue, I join in syncopating the notes. BooBopDeReBop. He scowls at me down his long nose. He takes the fugue up an octive and increases the tempo. I’m with him all the way. I like this cat. We should do a gig, get Prez in and maybe the Duke. The travelator drops down to walking pace and we step of. Don’t ask me how it does it, being able to have more than one speed at once. We can step of with no mishap and a cat twenty foot back can be travelling at 20k. Henry Vee three’s jester  waves his stick at us, with his replica head on it, and disappears into the room marked 0000-15000. What some people do for a laugh. This is the anti-room, it has many doors all marked with numbers representing the centuries. They have skimped on the décor. It is all a muddy green. I don’t suppose they thought anyone would hang around out here. If you you’ve got to go, then who cares about the colour of the walls. Well kill me for being sensitive. I like a bit of  thought. It costs enough. Half my fee goes on the transport, OK so they get me back in one piece but come on guys show some  respect for the punters. I’ve seen better decor in a washroom on Greece when I went as Demis Rousos. Never again. I was conned into it by double payment. It should have been treble and then some. What a fat prick. I was forced to eat half a sheep before the gig. My religion is forbidden sheep. Mind you, if I’m honest it tasted good. But my priest was not impressed at confession. Good job I was still in  costume to back up my story, other wise I would have been banned from having sex for an Illustrion week and that lasts 20,000 earth years. The 19th and 20^th century is in the same room, so and Franz and me enter together, I wonder what would happen if I was sent to his gig and vice versa. Franz Liszt at a fish fry, and Fats at soiree in Salzberge, or wherever. I can see them bewigged ladies fanning their faces at a fat black guy in a Derby pounding out saucy lyrics to a rolling beat. The cats at the fish fry would dig Mr Liszt,  no doubt he would have a ball too.

I am wondering when to turn up the power to be totally Fats, the chip is controlled from the small computer on my wrist, so I can switch him on and off at will, just now I am me in my zoot suit with a shimmering image surrounding me that is Fats Waller, as I turn up the power I disappear inside a solid outer shell that is Fats Waller or whoever I’ve been booked to be. I might add that I am a piano player of great dexterity in my own right, and might to the unpracticed ear sound like whoever I am impersonating, but the little nuances wont be there and of course I wont look like them, nor think like them. 

Chapter 2

The day started off quietly enough. I had shaved and eaten a couple of eggs when my mobile rang. It was the office of ‘All that Jazz’ asking me if I was free that evening to do a gig back on Mars. ‘How much’, I asked. I don’t go out for anything under 10,000K, these days. All that time travel is playing hell with my metabolism, I don’t think the transport people put me back together as I was last time, or am I truly getting old?

The fee was OK and Fats Waller was a sinch. All I had to do was pop in the memory chip and spend 10 minutes in Prosthetics. I do all the piano players from around the 21^st century, plus a few sax’s but the sax is hard work. Oscar Peterson, Earl hinds,  Lennie Tristano, Jnr. Mance, I could go on. Yes I know Fats Waller was born in 1904 and died in 1943 so it is not strictly 21^st century, but the cats around then still dug him.

I took a fast walker down to prosthetics. Always a pleasure as the redhead on the mould had the best ass this side of Pluto. I popped a zoomer for the hell of it and sat  in reception waiting for my turn. Sitting next to me was my sometimes companion Artie. We do the occasional gig together. He specialises in vocalists, or crooners as they were called. He is always well turned out. Today he had on a skin tight mica cat suit with moondog collar. Pointed poon skin boots with spurs. Some sight, hey, you have to admit it. No one else could wear that combination and get away with it. Not me. I am strictly a cool zoot suit man copied from the tailoring of the Big Apple in Harlem some time in the 20th century. It was such a cool time. All those broads in silk short dresses that clung to them like a second skin. Now you know why I specialise in piano players from that era. Them broads like to lean on the piano sucking on cigarettes stuck into long holders. God forbid they should get nicotine stains on their fingers. If I feel like hanging about without pressing the return button on my wrist piece, I can guarantee a lay. I could go on, but the redhead is beckoning me to her booth. I give Artie a high five and follow the best ass in the business to get prossed up.

All the redhead has to do is program in the right numbers and watch that the machine doesn’t throw a tantrum, and then clean up afterwards. I step under the canopy and five minuets later I am Fats Waller. Not even his mother could tell the difference. Right down to the corn on his little toe. I don’t know how they do it, some kind of force field creating an image around my own body. I still feel like me but I don’t look act think or talk like me. I am Fats Waller complete with a chip in my neck relaying all his memories and personality to may brain. Clever. Yet I still know I am impersonating him. Inside I am still me. A thought just struck me. Maybe the redhead is not a redhead at all, but a brunette with a baggy ass and acne. I paid 200,000K for my licence, where would she get that kind of money, still she does have access to the machine. I’ll have to look for the chip slot under her locks.

Chapter 1

The room is hot and smells of fish. A black man in a sharp suit and correspondence shoes pulls an acid haired blond into his body. His hips grind to the beat and she pushes her hips in turn into his. A white man leans languidly on the wall next to the window looking out onto a rain soaked street, neon signs reflecting on the wet sidewalk. A barbershop sign flashes back into the room alternately lighting the leaning mans face with a bloody hue. On his hip is a Smith and Western, which he wears with the confidence of a man who knows no one will try to make him use it. He is smoking a cheroot. Above his head is a sign that reads in bold capitals.

FISH FRY 30c.

A very fat woman with a tied head scarf, the two knots at the front, holds a tray of newly cooked cat fish. Her skin glistens with sweat and her mouth is a glorious beam of red and white. Around her body is a cotton apron with curly fluted edges and a front pocket, into which she has stuffed the night’s takings.

From the upright piano in the corner Fats Waller’s ‘The Joint is Jumpin’ is being banged out by a dead ringer for Fats Waller, he looks over his shoulder, his brown derby cocked to the right, and winks. Just above the collar of his shirt is a small slit, it is so small that it looks like a smudge of soot or maybe a small nick in the skin caused by a barber’s razor. A jug of corn liqueur is perched on the piano lid next to an empty glass. A Veronica Lake look-a-like picks up the bottle and fills the glass, her hair sliding over one side of her face and her long varnished nails clicking on the bottle.

She leans over Fats and wipes his brow with a cream silk handkerchief she has taken from his waistcoat pocket. Then she walks over to the man with the gun and asks him to light her cigarette, the handkerchief still in her hand she removes the gun sticks it into his mouth and pulls the trigger. Fats ducks his head and carries on playing. The dancing couple break apart and the man reaches under his arm for his police special. Veronica Lake turns and says, ‘hold it right there bub’ , pointing the Smith and Western at his head. He freezes. ‘Pull it out slowly and place on the floor, then kick it over here. He does as she says, his dancing partner, swoons onto the sofa. The smell of fish now mixes with the smell of cordite and blood. Fats breaks out into ‘Aint misbehaving’.

Fish Fry

 I am writing a novel called fish fry I will post all chapters on this blog.