Death Notes

strained.
    ‘Rochelle can’t decide whether she wants to love me or hate me.’
    ‘I decided all right, pretty boy. You sorry—’
    ‘Ahem!’
    Clark appeared at my elbow and said, ‘I’d better introduce you to the others before they get away. Rochelle, Dickie, if you’ll excuse us.’
    Firmly, he steered me around them to where the rest of the band were stepping down off a platform behind the bandstand. Dickie followed us, but Rochelle took off toward the bar, her stately figure parting the crowd gracefully like an ocean liner slicing through the Atlantic.
    ‘Les Barton,’ Clark said, introducing me to the curly-haired, gold-chained piano player.
    I’d seen him before, away from the band, but I couldn’t remember where. The hand Les offered me was limp and his smile lukewarm. I couldn’t help but wonder how he could pound out such great rhythm with such weak wrists.
    ‘Pretty good turnout,’ Les mumbled. I had to strain to hear over the noise behind me. He said more, but I didn’t catch it.
    ‘And here,’ Clark continued. ‘This is Cheese Herman.’
    I remembered the trombone player, a pinched-faced old man who’d played with Match twenty years ago. He somehow managed to look morose even when he smiled.
    ‘Ain’t it a damn shame about poor old Match? I’m gonna miss him. I know you will, Clark. Why, I remember when you were just a button and Match used to show up at rehearsal with a batch of new numbers. Then he’d—’
    Clark pulled me away.
    ‘Hank! Over here!’
    The drummer was trying to slip away behind Cheese, but Clark called him back. Hank was blond, fortyish, and seemed eminently satisfied with himself.
    ‘Hank, this is Ronnie Ventana.’
    Hank smiled at Clark, dismissed Dickie with a contemptuous glance and started to offer me his hand, then froze.
    ‘Wait a minute. You’re that private investigator Sharon told me about. Are you investigating Match’s murder?’
    At that, they all stared at me with a new interest. Les Barton and Herman looked both surprised and annoyed. Hank seemed curious and Dickie appeared detached but amused, like he was above it all.
    ‘Investigatin’?’ Rochelle was back, a frothy pink drink in her hand. ‘Shit, Match done fell right on top of her sorry little ass and she didn’t see nothin’ or hear nothin’. What she gonna investigate?’
    My guess was I hadn’t made much of an impression on Rochelle.
    ‘I’m...’ I began.
    Hank made a big show of retreating. ‘We already talked to the police.’
    They all looked at one another and nodded.
    ‘Do you think one of us killed Match?’ Dickie asked. He was playing the bad boy and he knew it.
    The whole group recoiled. I could have clobbered him. If there’d been any rapport at all to salvage, it vanished with his question.
    I studied their faces: alarmed, angry, tense. Each and every one of them seemed worried. Did somebody have something to hide? I tried to picture each one of them behind a Richard Nixon mask, or stabbing Match in the dark.
    ‘Don’t be lookin’ this way, girl,’ Rochelle said. ‘We done talked all we gonna talk.’
    She steamed away again without another word.
    Cheese Herman came into the circle and they sort of spread out to let him in. His thumbs were hitched inside his belt and his chest stuck out. He looked a little like Gary Cooper in High Noon. He acted like he had something important to say.
    ‘I wasn’t lookin’,’ he announced with a significant nod to me and the others. ‘I wish to God I was, but I wasn’t lookin’ when it happened.’
    ‘Me, neither,’ Les piped in.
    Dickie and Hank just stonewalled. I focused on Cheese.
    ‘How about beforehand? Where were you before he fell?’
    Cheese shook his head without answering. Nobody else volunteered anything, either. I pressed on but I knew the ship was sinking fast.
    ‘Was Match different on Saturday? Did he seem nervous to any of you?’
    Cheese set his jaw and glowered at me, still without answering. Dickie opened his mouth, but Cheese cut in before he could speak.
    ‘Shut up, Dick.’
    Cheese Herman’s old eyes had turned wily.
    Dickie looked surprised. ‘All I was going to say was, we don’t have anything to hide.’
    ‘That’s just the point,’ Cheese said. ‘We don’t need to be talking to her. This is eating into our break. Come on, boys. You, too, Dick. See you later, Clark.’
    I let them go. It was obvious I wasn’t going to get anything out of them as a group. But before they left