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Chapter One
BLUES GOING UP |
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July 30, 1975
"`T'ain't what you know," Tyrone's
uncle Lonzo was wont to say, "it's what you don'." Sadly so, it's the
single thing that we do not know that so often shapes how things go for us. Tyrone Addison
knew and understood most everything about his true wife Vera, but he didn't know
everything -- couldn't, mustn't know -- and that was more or less fatal.
At this moment in the late afternoon of a summer day in the suburbs
north of Detroit, Tyrone was more or less compelled to believe that they were driving to
Machus' Red Fox Inn for drinks before an early dinner with his old friend, Janney
Jacobsen. It was something that he wanted to do, knew he should do, but in the way of such
things he had to act as if it was all Vera's idea, that it was a terrific bore to him or
even a great nuisance. "The same-o, same-o," as uncle Lonzo liked to say -- and
Tyrone affected to see it that way.
"Everytime things get tight," he said to Vera, speaking
loudly over the noise of the elderly Volkswagen engine, "you think it's time to eat
out. That don't make sense, girl. Shift! Shift the damn gear!"
"That's not fair," Vera said, shifting the laboring engine
into third gear. But it was true: in moments of stress she had a tendency to suggest a
nice dinner, automatically. It had something to do with her childhood, perhaps, she didn't
know. But she felt that eating well would make everything better. This dinner was
different, but she knew that Tyrone wasn't just thinking of that. She knew he was harping
on this to avoid saying something else; something that if said might not be so easy to
unsay. It was much better to complain that when times got tough she was secretly glad,
because she had money and he had none and now she could play the Duchess, which was
a name Tyrone had for her when he was feeling put down, when he felt at a disadvantage.
She was grateful that he didn't say it, that he chose rather to focus on a presumed
tendency of hers to squander money on dining out, or her bad driving.
Here was the problem, simply put: Janney Jacobsen was Tyrone's
friend, his admirer, and his sometime financial backer. If that was all there was to it,
that would be problem enough, but Janney was also in love with Vera. That is too simply
put. In fact, although Vera went by the name of her true husband, Addison, she had married
Jacobsen, a Dutch national, to provide him with American citizenship, and she was still
legally married to him, years later. At the time of the marriage, Tyrone was playing sax
in Phil Woods's band that was touring Europe and he had met Vera in Paris and Janney in
Amsterdam. Janney was rich, he wanted to emigrate but there was some complication that had
to do with a youthful criminal escapade, long forgotten but not by the U.S. Immigration
Service. Janney would be allowed in as the spouse of an American citizen, and then he
could devote himself to promoting his friend and musical idol, Tyrone Addison. So it was
done, at Tyrone's urging.
So this is the complication and it's more complicated than that, but
is not presently germane. The point is that Vera and Tyrone were on their way to meet
Janney, for an early dinner at the Red Fox, to discuss money for a recording project.
Whether it meant that Janney got to sleep with Vera is not important, because the meeting
did not take place.
"Well? Are we going to the restaurant or not? Turn! Damn,
Duchess, can't you watch what you're doing?"
Vera angrily swung the van across the southbound lanes of Telegraph
road into the parking lot of the suburban restaurant and was instantly blinded. She was
driving right into the waning sun and the glare off the filthy windshield of the van badly
obscured her vision. Tyrone, as ever, was wearing dark glasses, so he saw the man who
burst out of the shrubbery.
"Stop!" Tyrone shrieked. "For godssakes, don't hit
him!"
Vera stopped just in time. The man actually bumped against the
bullnose of the Volkswagen van, but she hadn't hit him; it was the man's impetus that
propelled him against the vehicle.
The man looked wild. He was stocky, late middle-age and his eyes
were wide and rolling. He was wearing a black, short-sleeved polo shirt and slacks. He
angrily bashed a hefty leather briefcase at the nose of the van. It thumped solidly.
"Whyncha look where d' hell yer goin'?" he snarled. His
voice was quite audible with the windows open and the engine silent, killed when Vera had
slammed on the brakes.
Suddenly the man swiveled his head, peering into the foliage of the
shrubbery that shielded the parking lot from the surrounding terrain, which included a
suburban shopping area on one side, with its large parking lot, and on the other side some
sparsely wooded acreage. It wasn't clear which direction the man had come from, perhaps
from the restaurant itself, which was a modest brick building, in a contemporary low
profile structure but sporting some faux rustic half-timbered effects which licensed this
suburban eatery to proclaim itself an "inn."
Evidently, the man heard something that alarmed him more than being
hit by a vehicle. He scampered around the side of the van and took hold of the sliding
door handle. "Lemme in," he rasped. "Lemme the fuck in!" He slid the
door open and hopped in, crouching on the mattress that covered the floor of the van.
"Get goin!" he demanded. "Go! Go, go, go!" He ducked down.
In a panic, Vera tried to start the car but managed to flood it.
Unfazed, Tyrone leaned over the seat and demanded, in his best jive style: "Hey! What
the fuck you doin'? Who invited you, motherfucker? Get the fuck outta my damn car!"
The starter whizzed but the engine did not catch. Tyrone lifted his
long-suffering eyes to the sky. "Jesus! Give it a rest, Duchess," he said
wearily. He turned back to the man and in a semi-whitey voice of detached calmness, said:
"Listen here, my man ... what the hell you up to? Tell me that."
The man gestured with his briefcase, which he had partly open with
his hand buried within. It was a threatening gesture, Tyrone felt. But he didn't feel like
being threatened in his own car -- or his wife's car -- by some old white man who looked
like a crazy Polack. "Whattayou, some kinda damn lawyer? You gon' sue? She didn't run
into you, you ran into us. Whatchoo got in dere?" he demanded, slipping back into the
spook act. "You tryna tell me you gotta gun in dere? Show me yo' piece,
mothafucka."
"What I got in here," the man rasped, his voice betraying
desperation, "is a goddam good reason for you to get the fuck goin'. So get the fuck
goin'! Help the broad, f'chrissake!"
The car started. Vera looked at Tyrone. He nodded resignedly; she
put it in gear and they coasted forward. They cruised through the parking lot. This lot
surrounded the restaurant, except for the front which faced Telegraph Road, and it was all
but empty at this hour, too early to call evening. There were a couple of flashy cars,
Cadillacs and Lincolns, and toward the remote edges the humble Fords and Chevvies of the
staff. Vera stopped at the edge of neighboring parking lot, but the man spoke up from the
depths of the back.
"No, no, turn right. That's it. Turn. Go on out on
Telegraph."
Vera turned onto Telegraph Road and began to drive south. She looked
at Tyrone. He shrugged. "Man gotta gun, Duchess. Guess we do what he wants. Hey! Old
man! Old-man-with-a-gun! Where you wanta go?" He nodded his head then slightly,
rhythmically, quietly mouthing the phrase, "Oman, Omanwitta, Omanwittagun, wittagun
...."
"Anywheres, just keep goin'." The man scrambled toward the
back and tried to look out, but the rear window was filthy, as always. There was fairly
heavy traffic on Telegraph, particularly the northbound lanes. If the man was concerned
about someone following, and clearly he was, there was no way of determining it. There
were a few cars coming up behind them, but they were hardly identifiable through the dirt
of the back window. "Get off Telegraph," the man rasped. "What's this
comin' up, Thirteen Mile?" He peered through the windshield. "Turn left, turn
left."
Vera turned left and they drove about five hundred yards before
their passenger bade them to pull over. "Get off the friggin' road," he said. He
actually said "friggin'," evidently in deference to the presence of Vera, as if
he had only now realized that a woman was in company. They sat quietly on the side of the
road as several cars turned off Telegraph and cruised past them. Only Tyrone absently
nodded his head and muttered, "Oman, Omanwitta, gunwittagun .... Tha's kinda cool,
got it's own little beat. E, C, B-flat, maybe. Hmmm." |
