I had a vodka on the rocks and a seat at the bar. Chase’s was as crowded as it had been the night before, except two of the principal characters weren’t centre stage. Raymond Fenk was probably at the Silverdore practising push and shove. It was Dave Goddard’s no-show that bothered me. Not half as much as it seemed to be bothering Harp Manley.
He ended the first set early and abruptly, and ignored his adoring fans all the way to the bar. Manley pushed past a waiter into the bar’s service area and spoke to the bartender. The bartender picked up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label with a jigger on the end and held it over a tall glass until the jigger filled and emptied three times. The bartender didn’t add water. I got out of my seat and carried my vodka with me.
“You mind we talk about Dave Goddard?” I said to Manley.
He was wrapping a small white cocktail napkin around the bottom of the glass. He finished the job and had a long pull from the drink. I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
“Dave Goddard?” I said. Alistair Cooke couldn’t have enunciated more clearly.
“Damn,” Manley said, “where’s that kiddie at?”
His question was aimed at his drink.
“Let’s discuss it,” I said.
Manley swallowed more Scotch and used the swallowing time to give me a look of close inspection over his glass.
“Kiddie plays real pretty,” he said. He spoke circumspectly.
“It’s not Dave’s musicianship I had in mind,” I said.
“Thought you was a critic.”
“A lawyer.”
“Dress like a critic.”
I followed Manley to the table beside the door into the kitchen. On the way, he drank the Johnnie Walker down to the middle of the glass.
“A lawyer, huh?” he said across the table. He had abandoned the circumspection. What I heard in his voice was the sound of a disgruntled boss.
“Yeah, and if you’ll let me explain, I’ve got reason to think Dave Goddard may be in a piece of trouble.”
“Trouble’s the only time a lawyer comes round,” Manley said. “Been my experience.”
“Lot of people’s experience, but okay with you we stick to Dave?”
“Trouble, huh?” Manley had a little ridge of tough hair under his lower lip. “That kiddie ain’t seen trouble he don’t get his sorry ass in here real fast. You understand what I’m saying, Mr. Lawyer. I need two horns, man my age. I can’t do all the damn solos. Ain’t got the lip like when I was young.”
“Good point,” I said. What should I call him? Harp seemed presumptuous, Mr. Manley too formal. Abner Chase had an exclusive on Harper.
“Does Raymond Fenk mean anything to you?” I said. “That name?” Manley stared at me with an expression I read as incomprehension. His eyes were bloodshot, but apart from them and the patch of hair under the lip, Manley’s face had a round and contained look. Symmetrical. No wonder the camera loved it. He had on a single-breasted suit jacket with three buttons. All three buttons were buttoned up. He wore a crisp blue shirt and a black knit tie that was knotted precisely dead centre of the shirt’s wide collar. Short and rotund men don’t always achieve the neat look. Harp Manley did. It was combined with an uncomprehending look.
I said to him, “Raymond Fenk was on stage same time as you at the Park Plaza this afternoon.”
“You talking about the show for the TV people and the writers?” Manley said. “That was no Fenk. That was my man Cameron.”
“He was in the group, Fenk was, with the rest of you behind Cam Charles.”
“Nobody much back there except some fool slapping on another fool.”
“I was the fool on the floor,” I said. “Fenk was the fool on his feet.”
Manley left his chair and walked to the bar. When he came back, his glass was full and darker than amber. He had a fresh cocktail napkin wrapped around the bottom. My glass could stand a recharge, but I didn’t want to risk losing the audience with Manley.
“You’re a lawyer for damn sure,” he said to me. “First you say, hey, Harp, what about this kiddie plays in the band? Now you say, Harp, what about this other kiddie here? That’s a lawyer’s way of getting what you really got on your mind for Harp.”
Was this an invitation to call him Harp?
“You’re going to have to take my word on this, Harp,” I said. “Some of it’s conjecture. But I think the man I asked you about, Raymond Fenk, he’s the heavy. He banged Dave over the head or something as bad, and that’s why Dave isn’t up there on the stand tonight.”
“Conjecture, huh?” Manley said. “The kiddie send you down here with this conjecture?”
“My point, Harp, I’m trying to tell you I don’t know where Dave is. Hurt some place. Worse maybe.”
“Laying up with some woman more likely.”
As skeptics went, Manley was making H. L. Mencken sound like a true believer.
He said, “The kiddies always got the stories when they don’t make the job on time.”
“Harp,” I said, “the thing may be a story about Dave, but I’m an eyewitness, partly anyway. It happened.”
“This the first time I remember a kiddie hired a lawyer to save his ass.”
It seemed the moment for a switch in tactics.
I said, “May I ask how come you were the surprise package at Cam Charles’s press conference?”
“You a movie man, Mr. Lawyer?” Manley asked.
“You should’ve won the Oscar, Harp.”
“Saw me, huh?” Manley said.“Gonna see me again. What’s it today? Thursday? All right, Mr. Lawyer, Sunday night, there’s gonna be them long black stretch limousines, spotlights looking up in the sky, me in my tuxedo, all that fine shit. You hear what I’m saying? A world premiere.”
He gave premiere the French pronunciation. Harp Manley hadn’t come back from his years on the continent an unlettered man.
“Cam Charles?” I said. “He’s got first dibs on your new movie?”
“You see that skinny little grey-haired kiddie beside me?” Manley asked.
“Where? At the press conference? Can’t say I did.”
“My man Cam and that kiddie did the deal,” Manley said. “The skinny little kiddie owns the movie. Listen to this, Mr. Lawyer, he paid me cash money in my pocket. None of that, hey, Harp, we gonna be rich some day. He say, Harp, you take the cash money right now.”
“Back up a couple of steps, Harp. You’re talking about the producer of your new movie, and he’s given Cam Charles rights to a first screening at the Alternate Festival. I’m with you?”
Manley nodded and drank some Scotch.
“The skinny kiddie wrote the movie,” he said. “Then he got the cash money from the bank and he told me on the phone, Harp, you make this movie, you gonna be big as Clint Eastwood. Damn, I think that kiddie’s right.”
“Has he got a name? This paragon of a writer-producer?”
“Bobby.”
I waited. Manley added no more names.
“Well, I asked, didn’t I,” I said.
“Huh?”