The Right To Sing the Blues Read Online Free PDF

do a set with the clarinet here some Saturday night?”
    Fat Jack beamed, then threw back his head and let out a roaring laugh that drew stares and seemed to rattle the bottles on the backbar. “Agreed! You’re a find, Nudger! First you trust me to pay you without a contract, then you lower your fee and ask for a clarinet solo instead of money. Hey, there’s no place you can spend a clarinet solo! I like you, but you’re not much of a businessman.”
    Nudger kept a straight face and sipped his beer. Fat Jack hadn’t bothered to find out the amount of Nudger’s usual fee, so all this talk about percentages meant nothing. If detectives weren’t good businessmen, neither were jazz musicians. He handed Fat Jack a pen and a club matchbook. “How about those addresses?”
    Still smiling expansively, Fat Jack flipped back the matchbook cover and wrote.
    I V
    eulah Street was narrow and crooked, lined with low houses of French-Spanish architecture. It was an array of arches, ornate shutters, pastel stucco, and ornamental wrought iron and wood scrollwork. The houses long ago had been divided into apartments, each with a separate entrance. Behind each apartment was a small courtyard. A behemoth street-cleaning machine was roar ing and hissing along the opposite curb at about three miles per hour, laboring as if its bulk were being dragged forward only by the rotating motion of its heavy-bristled disk brush digging against the curb. Nudger moved well over on the sidewalk so he wouldn’t catch any of the spray from the water jetted out in front of the determinedly rotating brush.
    He found Ineida Collins’ address in the middle of the block. It belonged to a pale yellow structure with a weathered tile roof and a riot of multicolored bougainvillea blooming wild halfway up one cracked and much-patched stucco wall. Harsh sunlight washed half the wall in purifying brilliance; the other half was in deep shadow.
    Nudger glanced at his wristwatch. Ten o’clock. Ineida might still be in bed. If the street-cleaning machine hadn’t awakened her, he would. He stepped up onto the small red brick front porch and worked the lion’s-head knocker on a plank door supported by huge black iron hinges pocked with rust. A fat honeybee buzzed lazily over from the bougainvil lea to see what all the fuss was about.
    Ineida came to the door without much delay, fully dressed in black slacks and a peach-colored silky blouse. She didn’t appear at all sleepy after her late-night stint at Fat Jack’s. Her dark hair was tied back in a French braid. Even the cruel sunlight was kind to her; she looked young, and as innocent and naive as Fat Jack said she was. A Brothers Grimm princess with the money to live the fairy tale.
    Nudger smiled and told her he was a writer doing a piece on Fat Jack’s club. “I heard you sing last night,” he said, before she could question his identification. “It really was something to see. I thought it might be a good idea if we talked.”
    It was impossible for her to turn down what in her mind was a celebrity interview. The Big Break might arrive anytime from any source. She lit up brightly, even in the brilliant sunlight, and invited Nudger inside.
    Her apartment was tastefully but inexpensively furnished; she really was living independently away from Daddy. There was an imitation oriental rug on the hardwood floor, lots of rattan furniture, a Casablanca ceiling fan rotating its wide flat blades slowly, not moving air but casting soothing flickering shadows. Through sheer beige curtains the apartment’s courtyard was visible, well tended and colorful. A subtle sweet scent hung in the still air, either a trace of incense or from something growing in the courtyard garden. Some pale blue stationery and a pen lay on a small
    desk; Ineida had been preparing to write a letter.
    “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Nudger?” she asked.
    Nudger told her yes, thanks, then watched the sway of her trim hips as she walked into