Dave,” I said. “Who’s Flip?”
“He’s pushing buttons to get me the loan of an axe till mine comes back,” Dave said. “Flip Bochner.”
We reached the Volks. Dave groaned a little when he stooped to sit in the passenger seat.
“You in shape to play?” I asked.
It was still and quiet inside the car. The bandage on Dave’s head looked more ominous than it had in the hospital waiting room.
“Man,” Dave said. He was facing straight ahead. “How about you drive me to Long & McQuade’s? Be okay?”
Long & McQuade’s is a music store on Bloor somewhere beyond Bathurst. The parking-lot attendant said I owed him three dollars. I paid and turned left out of the lot and drove west on Dundas.
“The doctor said it’s cool to blow long’s I take it easy,” Dave said. “I told him, man, I usually do.”
Dave almost smiled.
I said, “The guy who did the number on your head is named Raymond Fenk.”
Dave was silent.
I said, “He’s in the Hollywood movie business.”
Nothing from Dave’s side of the car.
I said, “You were working a club in his neck of the woods two or three weeks ago.”
Dave came to life.
“Catch this, man,” he said. “The club you’re talking about’s in a shopping mall. Dude that owns it, he tells me, you get to the shoe store, right next to it’s the club. I’m thinking to myself, later for this, man. But I go inside, the place’s groovy.”
Dundas narrows where it bisects old Chinatown. The cars had jammed up, and the drivers were looking desperate. It’d be worse farther west where the newer, expanded Chinatown is as dense as Hong Kong. Dundas was a lousy choice of route unless I was scouting for dim sum.
“Whole gang of cats sat in with my band,” Dave said. He was heating up on the subject of the Alley Cat Bistro in Culver City, California. “These cats got the studio gigs, you dig. Play for the TV shows, the movies. But nights, for a change, get a taste of jazz, they came out to blow at the club.”
I was three cars and a dump truck back of the red light at University Avenue.
“Jack Sheldon did a couple sets with my band.”
The light turned green, and the dump truck stalled. Nobody moved.
“Snooky Young fell by twice.”
I let Dave run through his catalogue of happy California memories. The traffic was on my mind. Some rich guy with marginal taste donated a sculpture for the boulevard that splits University on the south side of Dundas. It’s scrawny and metal, and at the top, maybe twenty-five feet high, there are parts like emaciated arms lifting straight up. People who question the sculpture’s merit have a nickname for it. Gumby Goes to Heaven.
“Med Flory also,” Dave said.
I turned right at University. Everybody was driving like Mario Andretti. I joined the race.
“Somebody brought around, probably Jack Sheldon brought around an alto player by the name of Joe Romano. Real hot player.”
I asked, “What about Raymond Fenk, Dave?”
“Tell me his horn.”
“Not a musician, Dave. Raymond Fenk was the guy I said handled the two-by-four.”
“Don’t know of the dude from anywhere.”
I pushed gently at Dave. I prodded and probed, and made the effort at thinking laterally. I discovered for my pains that, according to Dave, his stay in Los Angeles had been monastic. He frequented the Alley Cat and a Holiday Inn, and rode cabs in between. No concerts on the side, no movie contacts, no freelancing.
“How about an all-day excursion to Disneyland?” I asked.
“I knew a cat once worked there. Steady bread but the cat freaked. You believe it, man. ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’ fifteen goes a day?”
I found a space on a side street south of Bloor, and we walked back up to Long & McQuade’s. Dave went to the counter. I browsed. There were rows of plastic guitars in the contours and colours of rocket ships from old Flash Gordon comics. I stopped in front of an IVL 7000 Pitchrider Guitar MIDI Interface with Pickup and Footswitch. Dave bought some saxophone reeds. Lucky for Dave. The Pitchrider Interface cost two thousand dollars.
Back in the car, Dave asked a question.
“How’d you find out this name—Fenk, you said’s the dude?—is the name of the guy boffed me?”
“Luck,” I said. “A little footwork, and help from a lady friend. Those three.”
“I never saw the dude till I looked over my shoulder five days ago.”
“Now he’s got your saxophone and case, and you want them back.”
“My axe anyway, man.”
“The case looks new and shiny,” I said. “Must be worth something.”
“New isn’t shit. I liked my old one.”
“It wore out?”
“Some motherfucker swiped it.”
“Too bad.”
“From the club beside the shoe store.”
I hadn’t started the car engine. We were parked under a well-established city maple, and on the sidewalk beside us two girls about nine years old had a piece of chalk and were marking out squares for hopscotch.
“And where’d you get the new case?” I asked Dave.
“Same place.”
“The original case was stolen the week you were playing at the Alley Cat?”
“I bought that case the day I bought my horn,” Dave said. “Like forty years back, man.”
“Concentrate on the present, Dave.”
“One night the case’s gone. You get used to a case, man. I must’ve carried it on a hundred thousand jobs. I felt like crying.”
“What do you mean you got the new case at the Alley Cat?”
“You want to hear the truth, man?” Dave faced toward me. “I did cry. Back at the hotel, I bawled my eyes out for a couple of minutes. It was nice later when the dude gave me the new case. But . . .”
Dave turned back to the scene in front of the car. One of the little girls was bouncing through the hopscotch squares. She was using an acorn as a marker.
“Which
