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Bobo spent three months in Bellevue, playing silent chords on the wall of his padded cell and confounding his doctors, who could find nothing wrong, so naturally, they diagnosed him as manic depressive and put Bobo back on the street. With all the other loonies in New York, one more wouldn’t make any difference.
Bobo disappeared for nearly a year after that. No one knew or cared how he survived. Most people assumed he was living on record royalties from the dozen or so albums he’d left as a legacy to his many fans. But then, he mysteriously reappeared. There were rumors of a comeback. Devoted fans sought him out in obscure clubs, patiently waiting for the old magic to return. But it seemed gone forever. Gradually, all but the most devout drifted away, until, if the cardboard sign in the window could be believed, Bobo Jones was condemned at last to the Final Bar.
Brew knew that much of the story. If he’d known the why of Bobo’s downfall, he would have gone straight back to the subway, looked up the Puerto Rican kid, and given him his horn. That would have been easier. Instead, he sidestepped a turned over garbage can and pushed through the door of the Final Bar.
A gust of warm air, reeking of stale smoke and warm beer washed over him. Dark, dirty, and foul smelling, the Final Bar is every Hollywood screenwriter’s idea of a Greenwich Village jazz club. To musicians, it means a tiny poorly lit bandstand, an ancient upright piano with broken keys, and never more than a half dozen customers if you count the bartender.
Musicians play at the Final Bar in desperation, on the way up. For Bobo Jones, and now perhaps Brew Daniels as well, the Final Bar is the last stop on the downward spiral to oblivion. But there he was, one of the true legends of jazz. One glance told Brew all he needed to know. Bobo was down, way down.
He sat slumped at the piano, head bent, nearly touching the keyboard and played like a man trying to recall how he used to sound. Lost in the past, his head would occasionally jerk up in response to some dimly remembered phrase that just as quickly snuffed out. His fingers flew over the keys frantically in pursuit of lost magic. A forgotten cigarette burned on top of the piano next to an empty glass.
To Bobo’s right were bassist Deacon Hayes and drummer Juice Wilson, implacable sentinels guarding some now forgotten treasure. They brought to mind a black Laurel and Hardy. Deacon, rail thin and solemn faced, occasionally arched an eyebrow. Juice, dwarfing his drums, stared ahead blankly and languidly stroked his cymbals. They had remained loyal to the end and this was probably it.
Brew was mesmerized by the scene. He watched and listened and slowly shook his head in disbelief. A knife of fear crept into his gut. He recognized with sudden awareness the clear, unmistakable qualities of despair and failure that hovered around the bandstand like a thick fog.
Brew wanted to run. He’d seen enough. Manny’s message was clear, but now, a wave of anger swept over him, forcing him to stay. He spun around toward the bar and saw what could only be Rollo draped over a barstool. A skinny black man in a beret, chin in hand, staring vacantly at the hapless trio.
“You Rollo? I’m Brew Daniels.” Rollo’s only response was to cross his legs. “Manny Klein call you?”
Rollo moved only his eyes, inspected Brew, found him wanting, and shifted his eyes back to the bandstand. “You the tenor player?” he asked contemptuously.
“Who were you expecting, Stan Getz?” Brew shot back. He wanted to leave, just forget the whole thing. He didn’t belong here, but he had to prove it. To Manny and to himself.
“You ain’t funny, man,” Rollo said. “Check with Juice.”
Brew nodded and turned back to the bandstand. The music had stopped, but Brew had no idea what they had played. They probably didn’t know either, he thought. What difference did it make? He tugged at Juice’s left arm that dangled near the floor.
“Okay if I play a couple?”
Juice squinted at Brew suspiciously, took in his horn case, and gave a shrug that Brew took as reluctant permission. He unzipped the leather bag and took out a gleaming tenor saxophone.
He knew why Manny had sent him down here. There was no gig. This was a lesson in humility. It would be like blowing in a graveyard. He put the horn together and blew a couple of tentative phrases. “ ‘Green Dolphin Street’ okay?”
Bobo looked up from the piano and stared at Brew like he was a bug on a windshield. “Whozat?” he asked, pointing a long slim finger. His voice was a gravelly whisper, like Louis Armstrong with a cold.
“I think he’s a sax man,” Juice replied defiantly. “He’s gonna play one.” Bobo had already lost interest.
Brew glared at Juice. He was mad now, and in a hurry. Deacon’s eyebrows arched as Brew snapped his fingers for the tempo. Then Brew was off, on the run from despair.
Knees bent, chest heaving, body rocking slightly, Brew tore into the melody and ripped it apart. The horn, jutting out of his mouth like another limb, spewed fire. Harsh abrasive tones of anger and frustration that washed over the unsuspecting patrons — there were five tonight — like napalm, grabbing them by the throat and saying, “listen to this dammit.”
At the bar, Rollo gulped and nearly fell off the stool. In spite of occasional lapses in judgment, Rollo liked to think of himself as an informed jazz critic. He’d never fully recovered from his Ornette Coleman blunder. For seventeen straight nights, he’d sat sphinx-like at the Five Spot, watching the black man with the white plastic saxophone before finally declaring, “Nothin’, baby. Ornette ain’t playing nothing.” But this time, there was no mistake. In a bursting flash of recognition, Rollo knew.
Brew had taken everybody by surprise. Deacon’s eyebrows were shooting up and down like windshield wipers on high. Juice crouched behind the drums and slashed at the cymbals like a fencer. They heard it too. They knew.
Brew played like a back up quarterback in the final two minutes of the last game of the year with his team behind seventeen to nothing. He ripped off jagged chunks of sound and slung them about the Final Bar, leaving Juice and Deacon to scurry after him in desperate pursuit. During his last scorching chorus, he pointed the bell of his horn at Bobo, prodding, challenging, until he as last backed away.
Bobo reacted like a man under siege. He’d begun as always, staring at the keyboard as if it were a giant puzzle he’d forgotten how to solve. But by Brew’s third chorus, he seized the lifeline offered and struggled to pull himself out of the past. Eyes closed, head thrown back, his fingers flew over the keys, producing a barrage of notes that nearly matched Brew’s.
Deacon and Juice exchanged glances. Where had they heard this before?
Rollo, off the stool now, rocked and grinned in pure joy. “Shee-it,” he yelled.
Bobo was back.
• • •
By the end of the first week, word had gotten around. Something was happening at the Final Bar, and people were dropping in to see if the rumors were true. Bobo Jones had climbed out of his shell and was not only playing again, but presenting a reasonable facsimile of his former talent, inspired apparently by a fiery young tenor saxophonist. It didn’t matter that Brew had been on the scene for some time. He was ironically being heralded as a new discovery. But even that didn’t bother Brew. He was relaxed.
The music and his life were, at least for the moment, under control. Mary Ann was a regular at the club — she hadn’t signed with Manny after all — and by the end of the month, they were sharing her tiny Westside apartment.
But gnawing around the edges were the strange looks Brew caught from Deacon and Juice. They’d look away quickly and mumble to themselves while Rollo showed Brew only the utmost respect. Bobo was the enigma, either remaining totally aloof or smothering Brew with attentive concern, following him around the club like a shadow. If Brew found it stifling or even creepy, he wisely wrote it off as the pianist’s awkward attempt at gratitude and reminded himself that Bobo had spent three months in a mental ward.