“Well, that’s very nice of you to say, Jack,” I replied, and followed him back into the hotel. The guests greeted him as we stepped through the lobby, and Jack gave each a cordial hello. He really was quite an affable guy.

As he stopped to sign an autograph, he confided to me sotto voce, “I’m not just the band’s leader, Ray, I’m its manager. It behooves me to keep my star happy until such time as I can replace her with someone as good, or better.” It was a strange way to talk about one’s wife. “And should that day ever come,” he added, opening the door to the ballroom for me and laughing lightly as he no doubt pictured such a day, “I’ll just have to have Vera slaughtered, don’t you think?”

Chapter 4

4

The Ballroom

As far as the Claremont’s patrons were concerned, the evening closed out pleasantly, even without Vera’s presence. By the last chord of our signature theme, “A Temptress in Taupe,” I had already disassembled my clarinet, and as I took apart my tenor sax, Jack stepped down from the bandstand to sign dinner menus and shake hands with the last of the dancers. Frankie Pompano asked if he could buy me a drink, but I had in my head the pleasant image of me in a Claremont bed between Claremont linens, with two fingers of rye in a water tumbler at my side, reading a medley of psalms from a Gideon Bible. I nonchalantly told Frankie (concealing as best I could some small amount of masculine pride) that I was meeting a young woman for breakfast the next morning and that I thought I’d call it a night.

I saw Larry Vance, trumpet, third chair, being handed his suitcase by Tommy Trego. When Larry wasn’t touring, he made his home in East Oakland. He’d been counting the days until he could sleep in his own bed for two whole weeks. If you’d ever seen Larry, you’d know that his wife would start counting the days once he’d arrived.

Over the years, I’d learned that I could always rely on Larry to be there whenever he needed me. I asked him if I could borrow his car the next morning. I told him I could take a cab to his house around nine and that the loan of the car could square us for the hundred and six dollars he’d owed me for the last three years. The generosity of my offer was counterpointed by the certainty that I was never going to see that money anyway.

Larry said he wished he could help but had just that moment remembered he didn’t really want to.