Death Notes

1
     
    I t was dark and the stars were out. You couldn’t see them from inside the Riff Club, but you could feel them, twinkling along with the jolting jazz rhythm that moved the crowd.
    When we had stepped inside, a warm wall of air hit us, steamy and smoky, smelling of sweat, perfume, and booze. Blackie headed for the bar but the music held me where I stood, mesmerized just inside the flimsy shack’s door. Match Margolis, the greatest tenor sax player and jazz composer alive, had just started blowing his solo. Nobody in the room so much as breathed.
    He was doing one of his old numbers, a song I’d memorized years ago when I was just a kid. He played it sweet and cool, just like I remembered it, with parts that were clear and so pure you could almost cry over them.
    When he finished and looked up into the sudden silence, the roar and clapping that erupted drowned out whatever it was he started to say. He stood there, tall and rangy, a heroin-ravaged sixty-year-old man with more talent than a king, and drank it all in.
    ‘Some of you probably heard this one before, too,’ he said, when the noise finally died down. Then he turned his back to us and faced his band: trumpet, trombone, bass, drum, and piano.
    ‘One, a-two, a-one and two! ’
    He snapped his fingers and the room exploded with music, then with cheers of recognition. The crowd was standing room only tonight, crammed into every comer and up against the back wall.
    I stood with Blackie Coogan in the back, flagging waitresses for Anchor Steams, breathing in the tight, hot air and feeling cramped and sweaty but not really noticing any of it because the music was all there was.
    Then it ended. Match finished the set, hopped off the stage and headed for the bar with his band trailing after him like so many thirsty Bedouins.
    I lost Blackie about midway through the crowd to a couple of co-eds who didn’t look old enough to drink, much less stay out past ten, but that was okay. I was the one who wanted to talk to Match.
    Weaving through the bodies seemed to take forever, but when I finally reached the bar, Match appeared to be alone. His band had vanished into the sea of glowing faces around us and the fans - cool, aloof jazz fans - were letting the man breathe. Not me. I was connected.
    I told him my name and he squinted at me, blue eyes peering out of the boniest face I’d ever seen. Then he beamed.
    ‘Damn! You’re Cisco Ventana’s girl, aren’t you? Let me take a look at you.’
    Everybody who ever met my father tells me I talk like him, have his brown Latin eyes and the same lopsided smile. I read it all in Match’s look.
    A squat blonde had somehow materialized beside him. ‘Sharon, you ever meet Cisco Ventana? Cat burglar. Remember the guy? He was famous.’
    The blonde pushed somebody else’s back out of the way and stepped into our circle, then eyed me up and down. She was a thick, brassy little number in her forties, loaded down with cheap jewelry and more makeup than a circus clown. She was packed into a low-cut, sequined top over jeans that fit her like sausage casing. All this tottering on a pair of four-inch stiletto heels. If anybody ever deserved to be called a broad, it was her.
    ‘Did you say something, sweetheart?’
    ‘Cisco Ventana, remember him? Famous cat burglar?’
    ‘Uuhmm?’
    She wasn’t paying attention. But then Blackie came up beside me and something flickered in her eyes.
    ‘You remember the guy? He was cool,’ Match persisted.
    ‘Ya gotta remember him, Shar. This is his little girl here, his daughter.’
    She smiled vacantly right through me and fluttered her lashes at Blackie.
    ‘Why don’t you introduce us then, honey?’
    Match set his empty glass down while she draped her thick arm possessively around his skinny mid-section.
    ‘This is my wife, Sharon. Ronnie Ventana. And...’ Blackie offered his hand to Match and ignored Sharon. ‘Blackie Coogan.’
    ‘The boxer ?’
    Match’s bony face opened up with pleasure as he pumped Blackie’s hand and slapped him on the back.
    ‘Man, oh, man, Shar, you know who this guy is? Blackhand Coogan. He took the light-heavy weight title from The Hammer, what - twenty, thirty years ago?’
    ‘Try forty,’ Blackie said.
    ‘Great fight, man. Yeah! I made two C’s on that fight, man. That was a lot of bread back then.’
    Sharon released his waist and glommed on to her husband’s arm.
    ‘I want something to drink, honey.’
    Just then, Lucius the bartender set a