Death Notes

to run. Then a second voice spoke, a man’s, familiar and young, with a hint of an accent. Finally I realized the sound came from the tape.
    Dickie said, ‘That was great, Match. Do you like that one?’
    ‘Beautiful, man.Bee-u-tee-ful.’
    Match sounded like he was still blissed out over the music he’d just played.
    ‘I’m glad you like it. Do you want to play it?’
    ‘Opening night, man. We’ll do it opening night.’
    ‘All riiight!’ Now it was Dickie who sounded ecstatic.
    ‘What else have you got for me?’
    The sound of shuffling papers on the tape, then, ‘Here, Match. Try this one. I wrote it last night.’
    Slowly I shut the drawer I’d been rifling through and crossed over to stand in front of the machine and listen.
    ‘All right,’ Dickie’s voice said, ‘for this one we need to scale things down. It’s a little simpler in the melody. Listen.’
    Piano notes sprinkled into the room, little crystals of sound that seemed trite after what Match had done with his sax.
    While I listened, my eyes drifted around the room, to the piano, with its notebook of half pencilled-in sheet music on the rack; to the saxophone, gleaming simple and gold and upright against the piano; to the two trumpets, recumbent in open, velvet-lined cases atop the stacks of sheet music on the piano; and finally to a comer of a stained spiral-edged notebook jutting out from under the mass of single sheets on the table.
    I pulled it out, opened it, and read what was written inside the cover: Match Margolis. The name wasn’t written in the same bold, back-slanted hand he’d used to sign his marriage certificate, but in the flowery letters his wife had used.
    The piano stopped.
    ‘Try it,’ Dickie’s voice said, and the sax took over, playing the same tune that had sounded mediocre at best and turning it into a masterpiece of feeling and soul with perfect phrasing and timing.
    I paged through the spiral-bound notebook and read the titles to Match’s earlier compositions. All of it was written in the flowery script of his first wife’s hand.
    Then at the end of the notebook, in the back, a new style of handwriting had taken over. I read the titles. Single Love. Home at Last. Turn it Off.
    They were all songs Match introduced Saturday night. He’d introduced them as his own.
    Match finished playing the song. They went through the same fevered congratulatory exercise as before, then Match said, ‘Here.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘For the songs, kid.Ten songs, twenty grand. Pretty good, huh? What do you say? You keep ’em comin’ and there’ll be plenty more.’
    ‘No, Match.’ Dickie sounded truly injured. ‘You don’t understand. For you to play Dickie Almaviva’s songs, to announce that to the world, is a miracle. It’s honor enough. More than I can ask for.’
    ‘Take the money, kid.’
    ‘And make my debt to you even greater? No, Match. I can’t. Here, listen. Here’s another song I wrote.’
    The lilting piano filled the room, then Match interrupted. ‘Kid. Dickie. I’ve gotta have my name on those songs, you know what I mean? Twenty grand isn’t anything to sneeze at. And there’ll be plenty more.’
    ‘My compositions are not for sale,’ Dickie said. ‘Use them, use them as much and as often as you want. But they are mine, they came from me, from my heart.’
    The sound of paper crackling, probably Match stashing the package back into his pocket or valise.
    After a moment, Match asked, ‘What’s it gonna take?’
    ‘You can tell the band whatever you want. All I ask is that you announce, at the end of the show, that I, Dickie Almaviva, wrote this music. That will be worth more to me than any amount of money in the world.’
    Match’s voice became tense. ‘Fine. That’s what I’ll do, then.’ I switched off the tape and searched frantically for the rewind button, but just when I found it, the room went dark. The hissing on the tape droned to a dead silence and I froze.
    I held my breath, cocked my head to one side, and listened. Heart pounding, blood roaring in my ears, I couldn’t hear a thing.
    I blinked, tried to see into the sudden blackness, but it was like I’d fallen into a bottle of ink. It would take my eyes too long to adjust. Time was something I didn’t have. Without thinking, I reached out to the reel-to-reel unit and traced its surface until my hand found the spools. I fumbled and twisted and tugged until I managed to get the reels off. As soon as they were free, I