Evan Hunter - Streets of Gold

“There’s things he’s gonna have to deal with whether he makes it or not. They’re all part of jazz, and you might as well know the whole story, you said you didn’t want no bullshit. He’s gonna be playin’ mostly in clubs. And there’re gonna be whores in lots of those clubs, because that’s where whores hang out. Even if he don’t run with whores, there are gonna be other women, they dig musicians, I don’t know what it is. And he’s gonna be traveling around a lot playing these clubs, and I got to tell you marriage and music don’t go together, I been married and divorced twice myself, though I ain’t even sure the last divorce is legal. And there’s gonna be gangsters in lots of them clubs because gangsters own most of them. And there’s gonna be booze, because like I told you before, booze and the piano do go together. There’s also gonna be dope, because lots of these new musicians comin’ up think dope’s gonna help them play like Bird, an’ even if they didn’t believe that, there’s always been dope around jazz music, I know guys who were usin’ cocaine when I was still playin’ in Kansas City, that’s just the way it is. I already told Iggie I’d break his arm if he ever went near no narcotics, and I think he knows I’m not kiddin’ him.

“But all these bad things in jazz ain’t what should be concernin’ you, Mr. Di Lorenzo. What you should be thinkin’ about are the good things. And they got nothin’ to do with makin’ a lot of gold, or becomin’ famous, or whatever. They got to do with the way playin’ jazz makes you feel . Pee Wee Russell once told somebody — he’s a clarinet player, Mr. Di Lorenzo — he once told somebody the moment of truth comes for him each time he stands up to take his chorus, that’s the most important thing in his life. Well, it is , Mr. Di Lorenzo. It’s jumpin’ in the middle of the ocean. It ain’t swimmin’ out gradually, it’s jumpin’ right out to where you can’t see no land no more, it’s usin’ everything you know to stay afloat and to swim however far out you think you can, and then like magic you get whisked right back there to shore again, and you wrap it all up with a big yellow ribbon, and there you are, and you feel good and clean and happy all over, and there ain’t many things I know that can make you feel that way in life, Mr. Di Lorenzo, there just ain’t many I know of.”

My grandfather has been silent through all this, and he is silent now for several more minutes. Biff lifts his glass again. I sense he is a bit uneasy; perhaps he thinks he’s gone too far. He is not at the piano where he can jump into the middle of that ocean he described, and swim out as far as he dares. My grandfather is, to him, an unknown quantity. He waits.

My grandfather says, “I never talked to a colored man before. I don’t understand why you should care about Ignazio.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Biff answers. “Used to be a nice, friendly feeling in jazz, Mr. Di Lorenzo. Used to be you played . That’s changin’. And maybe I got to change my style to keep up with what’s comin’ in, but, man, I don’t have to change the way I feel. I got to get back on the stand,” he says. “You goan stay for another set?”

“Yes,” my grandfather says.

He orders another glass of wine and listens while the band plays a set that includes “A Dizzy Atmosphere,” “Anthropology,” and “Keen and Peachy.” As they play, I think Yes, I will make between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and yes, I will cut records and I will make sound investments so that when another piano player comes up with the right sound in the right time and place I’ll have enough to tide me over and I’ll still be playing because people will remember my name.

Iggie Di Palermo, I think.

They will know my name, and they will remember it.

I will make it.

I will not be one of those guys who never make it.

“Pffffff,” my grandfather says. “What noise .”

By Christmas of 1945:

1. My mother had been visited on earth by the Virgin Mary, who displayed a worldly wisdom unbecoming to the Mother of God, almost destroying a happy family in the Bronx, and causing an innocent house painter to suffer the lifelong torments of Stella’s silent treatment.

2. My Aunt Victoria, at the age of sixty-four, had finally found herself a husband, a widowed Sicilian pig farmer who lived in New Jersey with five hulking sons, spoke barely a word of English, and reputedly beat her regularly with a sawed-off rake handle.

3. Pino Battatore’s son, Tommy, had either jumped or been pushed to his death on the elevated tracks of the Third Avenue El one black September midnight. The police found four thousand dollars in cash in the inside pocket of his jacket, together with a large collection of policy slips. When the cops told Pino his son had probably been involved in the numbers racket, Pino told them they were lying bastards.

4. My Aunt Bianca’s boyfriend, Rafaelo the butcher, had dashed into her corset shop one bright October day shouting, “Bianca, he caught me, he caught me!” scaring her half out of her wits till she realized he was making reference to the man upstairs, who had just stumbled upon the butcher in bed with his wife. My Aunt Bianca, who’d been working on a brassiere, belatedly stuck her sewing needle into Rafaelo’s left buttock, thereby effectively ending their relationship.

5. My Uncle Dominick’s unmarried, sixteen-year-old daughter had got herself pregnant by a detective in Brooklyn, where Dominick now lived next door to his wife’s parents, who ran a pizzeria on Coney Island Avenue.

Now that , my friends, is the stuff upon which soap operas are built. I made it all up. But only because I wanted to prove I could easily find a job writing for CBS if ever I became arthritic and couldn’t play piano anymore. I’m also about to make up what happened on that Christmas Day in 1945. You’ll know it’s another lie the moment you read it.

My grandfather’s house was abnormally cheerless. We had none of us grown accustomed to Tony’s death; I doubted if we ever would. My Uncle Dominick was spending Christmas Day with his wife’s family in Brooklyn, and Aunt Victoria was in New Jersey with her sadistic pig farmer, and Uncle Joe had canceled (again) his promised trip from Arizona, and Pino was in mourning and would have considered it sacrilege to have played the mandolin. When the telephone rang, my Aunt Bianca rushed to answer it, hoping (I think) that it was the butcher. “Iggie,” she said, “it’s for you.”

I got up from the dining room table. I had been sitting very close to my grandfather, because he’d been oddly silent all through the meal, and I wanted to touch him every so often, just to make sure he was there and all right. I touched him now as I went to the phone, just rested my hand on his shoulder for a moment, and he covered it briefly with his own, and then I went out into the hallway and put one finger in my ear as I picked up the receiver, hoping to drown out the clatter of the women doing dishes in the kitchen.

“Hello?” I said.

“Iggie?” a woman asked. She was black.

“Who’s this?” I said.

“You don’t know me,” she said. “Biff ast me t’call. Said I should try the Bronx first, an’ if you wasn’t there, I should look up Lorenzo, Di Lorenzo in Harlem. Is this Iggie?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Biff’s sick,” she said. “Can you come down here right away? I don’t know whut t’do.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Well, like you know, man.”

“No, I don’t know. What is it?”

“Well, like can you jus’ come down here right away?”