Hob Broun - Odditorium

The end of the story? Maybe not. Says one-time nightclub owner Dixie Diggs, “Chick sank a lot of money into real estate. He was ahead of his time. He had buildings all over Harlem. Sugar Hill, Morningside Heights. There could be a floor safe or a secret room in one of those places that nobody’s stumbled on yet.”

But what are the chances that the treasure ever really existed? Is it only a myth? A relic of that tumultuous period in our history when the nation’s heart beat in Swing time and men and women danced all night to forget their worries? Dixie Diggs thinks not.

“Chick was always pretty tight with a dollar. It would have been just like him to stash his dough where no one could find it.”

Naturally, Webb’s real estate holdings have long since passed into other hands and tracing them would be a difficult task. But then, who ever said treasure hunting was easy! Maybe that floor safe or secret room is still waiting to be discovered. With some careful research and a little luck, the jazzman’s fortune may yet be found.

New York. A city that big must be full of hidden treasures, and Tildy, who wouldn’t know where to look, had gone without him. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize the New York he knew from the movies — blinding neon, overflowing sidewalks. And thousands upon thousands of buildings. It would take a lifetime to search even half of them. Was it really all in the hunting?

Karl went back to the beginning and tracked the story again. He was so absorbed in this second reading that he barely heard the rapping at the door and the rattle of the knob.

“Yo. Yo in there.”

Karl fastened his pants, peeked through the curtains at a man in a polyester suit who turned to one side as he lit a brown cigarette. He straightened, flicking the dead match away, and Karl saw his tense face, with bits of green toilet paper pasted over shaving cuts. He looked too nervous and shaggy to be much of a threat. Probably had the wrong address anyway. Karl puffed himself up and opened the door.

“Karl Gables,” the man said, reading from a slip of paper.

“You’re lookin’ at him.”

“I’d like to speak with your wife, Karl. Is she around?”

“No sir, she ain’t.”

“That is her car parked over there, license number 5Y 213?”

“But she ain’t in it.”

The man smiled abruptly and one of the paper bits dropped off his chin. “What it is, I’m a friend of Tildy’s. I’m associated with her employer, the Seminole Star Corporation of Jacksonville. I’d like to come in and ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. Get a few things cleared up.”

Karl looked at the heavy gold chain around his neck and the grime on his shirt cuffs. “You got a business card or something?”

“Gee, you know I’m fresh out. But I really am a good friend of your wife’s. I know her well enough to tell you she likes mustard on a baked potato.”

“Yeah, okay. That’s good enough,” Karl said, stepping back.

“Fine. Great. Just a few minutes’ conversation, I mean I’m not going to screw up your day, Karl. And I’ll tell you what, I’ve got a bottle of six-year-old bourbon in my car. Good thing to carry when you spend as much time in motels as I do, know what I mean? We’ll have a couple of nips and I’m sure the time will pass quite pleasantly for both of us, okay?”

“Yeah, why not. I’ll get some glasses.”

The visitor was back a minute later with the bottle. He shopped the chairs in the room, chose one, and filled Karl’s glass. “Actually, I think I’ll hold off a couple minutes till I get my breath back. Been humping all around trying to find this place.”

“We like it out here.” Karl sucked bourbon fumes through his nose, upended the glass. “Real mellow. You carry good whiskey…. Say, I don’t even know your name.”

Settling deeper into his chair the visitor removed a leatherette memo book and a mechanical pencil from his breast pocket. “They call me Buck, and so can you.”

“Thanks, Buck. How about a refill?”

“No problem.” The visitor filled Karl’s glass three quarters full this time, still poured nothing for himself. “Is Tildy going to be here later? Are you expecting her at any special time?”

“Nope.”

“We figured to have heard from her by now. She left us in kind of a hurry, you know. Not a word.”

“So you work for the ball team, is that it?”

“The corporation has many different interests.” The visitor looked at his watch. “You think I might be able to talk to her, umm, say tomorrow?”

“Not likely. Tildy, see, she’s on kind of a vacation. Her old man croaked just a while ago and she’s been wound pretty tight over that.”

“Yeah, Tildy’s a sensitive girl.” Scribbling something on the pad. “So maybe this isn’t the best time to bother her, but we do owe her some back pay and we’d like to settle up as soon as possible, no hard feelings. You tell me where she’s staying and I can get that check to her right away.”

Karl tried to speak in mid-gulp and spilled bourbon down inside his shirt. “Damn surprise check, huh? Now you talkin’. And we can use the money, yes sir. I just knew there was somethin’ fine all ready to pop up like that today. You know how every once in a while you’ll wake up with a feelin’? Like maybe you had a dream was meant to show you …”

“Where do I find her.” The pencil hovered.

“Tell you what. Seein’ as how you all’d like to get your paperwork squared away, whyn’t you let me have the check right now and be done with it? I could hold it for her till she gets back.”

The visitor flinched, doodled interlocking circles on his pad. “Well, it’s not … It’s not that simple. Before I can, umm, actually … Before I can write anything up I have to discuss a few minor details with her. Per diem expenses, that kind of thing.” The circles expanding now, moving unevenly across the page. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t trust you in terms of holding the money. But … I think I will have one with you.” He grabbed at the bottle.

“Come on ahead, amigo. I’ll go get the radio from the other room and we can listen to some tunes.”

“No, that’s okay.” Shivering at his first sip.

“No trouble. I’ll just plug her in over there.”

“I’d rather you didn’t. Really.”

“Sure. I was only thinkin’ we might have a little party. Got a ways to go on that bottle yet.”

The visitor looked disconsolately at what remained in his glass. “If you don’t mind an observation on my part, Karl, you seem a little nervous.”

“No shit. Mite keyed up, huh? Probably just lonesome is all, cooped up in here.”

“Have you heard from Tildy at all? A postcard?”

“Nah. We don’t get much in the way of mail around here.”

“I hope you won’t get hot, but I have to ask this: Has your wife left you? Did she take a walk on you, Karl?”

“You’re pissin’ on the wrong hydrant there, Buck.” Karl lurched out of his chair, gestured sloshingly with his glass. “You got business with Tildy, you wanna ask me some questions, I don’t mind. But don’t you go pullin’ my chain. I got as much dignity as the next sucker. Goddamn right. Now both of us on the road, me and Tildy been separated a lot, but we got a solid understandin’ and we got plans. Hell, she called me from New York last night just to hear my voice.”

The visitor leaned back and arranged his hair, catching his reflected profile in the windowpane. “She give you the address of the hotel?”

A vague sense that he had left the door to the lion cage open flapped at the outskirts of Karl’s mind. “Never said she was at no hotel.”

“Didn’t you?” The visitor topped up Karl’s glass.