But none of it, not the bandage or the strange horn, got in the way of Dave’s playing. Harp Manley gave Dave a featured solo on “What Is There To Say”, and he made gorgeous music. His sound was more tart than usual, lemony, and his improvisation, subdued and reaching into French impressionist territory, packed little mysteries in the melody line. It was a few minutes of unrepeatable beauty, and the audience in the club, even the Saturday-night people on their night to howl, knew it. Patrons kept the silence, waiters stayed at their stations, nobody hit the cash register. And at the end, after the last phrase of Dave’s music, there were five seconds of hush before the cheers came.
The quintet played a semi-fast “Rhythm-a-ning” to wind up the set. It was the final set of the night and of the week, and I slid away from the bar and pushed through the crowd to head off Dave. I wanted to tell him about the magic of his solo, but I knew Dave wasn’t a guy for a complimentary word. I’d settle for letting him know I had a surprise at home he’d like.
Dave was at the musician’s table, standing, holding the Flip Bochner saxophone and listening, impatiently I judged, to a trio of fans who were heaping on him the kind of praise I had in mind.
“Happening, man?” Dave said to me, mostly a mumble, talking against the eager fans.
“You want to come by my place, Dave? It’ll be worth the detour, I promise.”
“I don’t know, man. My head’s beating like a bitch.”
“Ten minutes, Dave.”
He left the club with me, not precisely kicking and screaming but not as if he were on the way to a banquet in his honour either. Dave was tired and down, and conversation on the walk up Beverley was desultory.
“You get to Raymond—what’s his name, Fenk?” Dave asked.
“Me, among others, I got to him.”
“What about my axe, man?”
“Hold your horses, Dave.”
I led the way up the stairs to my apartment. It was quiet downstairs. Ian and Alex’s custom was to go a little crazy on Friday nights and settle in with a couple of rented movies and early to bed Saturdays. I switched on the lamp in the living room and got Dave’s saxophone case from the closet.
Dave reached out, not quite believing, for the case. The fatigue dropped away from his face. He put the case on the sofa and lifted out the saxophone. He cradled it. His baby’d come home.
“Can you dig it, man? It’s been like the last couple nights, only half me was on the job.”
Dave raised the mouthpiece to his lips and blew a dozen quick, light notes.
“Man, you saved my life.”
“Well, there’s a little story that goes with the recovery, Dave.”
Dave turned back to the case on the sofa and ran his hand around its interior.
“I don’t want to come on I’m not grateful, man,” he said, “but something’s missing.”
“That, the rip in the lining, is probably part of the story.”
“Rip doesn’t matter, man. My strap’s nowhere’s here.”
“Dave, let me get to the story.”
“Man, remember I told you the axe and the old case, the one before this one, I bought them the same time, sort of a package deal? The strap came too.”
“Of the three, saxophone, case, strap,” I said, impatience in my voice, “the strap’s the easiest to replace. Must be. One strap’s like another.”
“Not exactly.”
“Dave, the sooner I tell you my story, the sooner—” I stopped. “What do you mean, not exactly?”
“I lost the old case already, so okay, I cooled out about that. But the strap, well, man, if it’s possible, you know where it’s at? The cat at the store I bought everything from, like forty years ago, he really cared, that cat. He cut my name into the strap, the metal part, in the clip. It’s still there like he did it yesterday.”
I straightened the magazines on the table in front of me. Vanity Fair was on the top of the pile. It had Tom Hanks on the cover.
“Dave, you want to sit down.”
“Not really, man. The whack on the head, I feel wonky on account of it still. I’m gonna split.”
“This isn’t an invitation, Dave. More like an order. Sit down, I’m serious.”
I went into the kitchen and made a drink, a big Wyborowa and one small ice cube.
In the living room, Dave was still on his feet, beside the sofa, holding his saxophone.
“Whatever way you want, standing up, sitting down,” I said to Dave, and I told him the whole story. I thought I was particularly vivid in the passages that described the manner in which the saxophone strap with Dave’s name on it cut into Fenk’s neck.
“Down there at the police station, Dave, they got computers, all that state-of-the-art crap. The cops who called on you at the hospital, maybe they looked like they didn’t give a damn, they still punched the facts into the computer. Man named Dave Goddard, David no doubt, reports he was assaulted and had his saxophone stolen.” I walked around the living room, to the window and back, talking, working on the drink. “This afternoon, tonight, tomorrow, whenever the chambermaid or somebody finds Raymond Fenk’s body, pretty ugly by then I imagine, another cop is going to punch into the computer. This cop, homicide division, he’ll punch in a long report, take him an hour, and at the end, he’ll punch cause of death. A saxophone strap with a name on the clip. Dave Goddard. The computer’ll go nuts. It’s got the same name twice, it’s got saxophone, it’s practically solved the case.”
“Man, I’m fucked,” Dave said.
He sat on the sofa. I sat in a wing chair that was positioned kitty-corner to the sofa. Annie took charge of my furniture and its arrangement a year earlier. The wing chair was in a pattern of pale-green and brown stripes.
“You got a driver’s licence, Dave?”
“Where you at, man? Driver’s licence got nothing to do here. This’s murder I’m in shit about.”
“You got one?”
“I been driving since I was, like, sixteen.”
“You can borrow my car. A place to stay, you got that? Quiet, out in the country, a place like that?”
“Ralph’s cottage. But, man, I didn’t kill anybody. I had the strap, I said already, forty years. You think I’d leave it around the dude’s neck?”
“Where’s Ralph’s cottage?”
“Muskoka. Well, not exactly Muskoka. It isn’t on the water or anything. Kind of back in the woods. I hate it, man.”
“Borrow my car, okay? Drive up there, to Ralph’s Muskoka cottage, but don’t tell Ralph. Can you get into it otherwise, without Ralph knowing?”
“There’s a key, Ralph leaves it in this shed. But, man, you don’t know, owls, crickets, it’s noisy. All those birds, the kind of animals they are, they’re out of tune.”
“Take my car. Never mind the musical judgments about the owls. Just drive up there. There’s a phone?”
Dave nodded.
“Car’s out back, the white Beetle,” I said. “Pick up your stuff at the Cameron and call me from Ralph’s place so I know you got there. It’ll take you, go up the 400, cut over at 11, how long, three hours?”
“Less. Except, man, what am