Drumsticks Read Online Free PDF Page A

spotted Ida talking to the coat check lady, who was helping her with her wrap.
    Go on, Ida! Wow, what a dress. Classic chic-lady-out-cabareting threads. I wondered if she had found it in one of the expensive antique clothing stores in town, or if it was a number she’d been keeping in mothballs since the fifties. Understated nubby wool, clinging in all the right places, too. As Justin would say, not a sequin in sight. Plus, she had done her hair up in a fabulous finger wave.
    I broke into a grin and waved hello, but she was too far away. She didn’t see me. The small table near the bandstand was all arranged for her, and I was just about to step down to thank her for coming and find out what she wanted to drink. But that never happened.
    The room suddenly exploded.
    Gunfire and shrieks of terror.
    Customers and staff alike went diving for the floor. I felt Hank’s fingers around my wrist. He snatched me under the piano seat and my saxophone went bumping off the bandstand.
    It was all over in a few seconds. There was confused disbelief on every face in the room: no, the sky wasn’t falling; no, we weren’t being robbed of our jewels by a band of masked brigands; no, the lunatic terrorists were not herding us into the back room. None of that.
    Then what the fuck had just happened?
    Roamer and Hank were on their feet again, brushing off their suits and exchanging confounded looks.
    I remembered then. Ida!
    I hoped she hadn’t been trampled in all the confusion.
    I ran to the maître d’s station, where a knot of people were staring down at the floor in horror, all the women in the group with their hands at their mouths.
    Ida.
    One perfect hole in the middle of her face. A pool of bloody goo under her head.
    I dropped to the floor and began a frantic check for any signs of life. Useless. I let out a dreadful deep moan that soon shot up into the high register. After that, I must’ve spaced out completely—gone somewhere deep in my own head. I went into some sort of trance and I didn’t come out of it until I felt Roamer and Hank leading me to a chair.
    â€œOh no,” I wailed, over and over. “Not again.”

CHAPTER 4
    Black Coffee
    The cops detained us for an eternity at Omega while they dusted and photographed, yammered on their walkie-talkies, conducted their interviews, took witness statements, such as they were, and oversaw the removal of Ida’s body.
    Of course I came in for a particular grilling, because I was the only one on the premises who knew the murder victim—however vaguely. A uniformed officer plopped me down at a table for four near the kitchen, separating me from Roamer and Hank.
    Ida had thirty bucks or so in her small handbag, a lipstick, mirror, comb, cigarettes, coin purse. But no wallet—no identification. The detective in charge, Loveless, for some reason found it difficult to believe I had no idea what Ida’s address was, whether she had family in the area, children, how old she was, and so on. After all, he pointed out, Ida was there at my invitation.
    I told him I knew her only as a neighborhood street vendor who had been nice to me and from whom I’d purchased a “rag doll.” Because she had been so pleasant, I explained, I had on the spur of the moment invited her to hear me play. I was damned if I’d tell that overweight, phony macho NYPD Blue wannabe about Ida’s dizzy superstitions, not to mention my own.
    The futile questions went on and on, as did the promises that it would only be another few minutes. And the minutes ticked by and turned into hours. For a while there, I really thought I was going to lose it. Even the gruff Lieutenant Loveless could see that I was ready to pull my hair out by the roots.
    I’m sure he thought I was just another in the long line of women with the vapors, freaking out about what had happened. He was wrong.
    True, poor Ida lying in that bloody mess was a horror. The thing was,