Extreme Justice by William Bernhardt Read Free Book Online Page A

plays better than that.”
    “It’s nerves,” Scat pronounced, pushing his sunglasses up. “I’ve seen this before. Uncle Earl’s jitters are infectious. S’like some kinda virus.”
    “Now wait just one cotton-pickin’ moment.” Ben looked down and saw Earl, his considerable girth winding its way through the tables on the club floor. “Don’t be pushin’ your load off on me. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that pathetic noise I just heard.”
    “But you’re the bossman,” Scat answered.
    “When you’re good, I’m the bossman,” Earl said. “When you suck gas, you’re on your own.”
    Ben grinned. “Scat thinks you’ve infected us with your anxiety about the anniversary show tonight. The reviewers and TV people and all.”
    “Aw, hell.” Earl made a little hip-hop and parked his rear on the edge of the stage. “I don’t give two good goddamns about no reviewers or TV people.”
    “Then—”
    “I got my own reasons.” He paused, obviously debating whether they needed to know any more. “I’m expectin’ a visitor.”
    “What’s this?” Denny stepped out from behind his drums, pushing his long hair behind his shoulders. “Would this visitor by any chance be … a woo -man?”
    A chorus of oohs and hubba-hubbas drifted across the stage.
    “Calm down, you horny devils.” Earl acted casual, but Ben suspected he was anything but. “It ain’t nothin’ like that. This here’s a special woman. From the old days.”
    “The old days?” Gordo asked.
    “That’s right.” Earl smiled. “The good ol’ days. Back when the jazz scene in Tulsa was really happenin’. Back when Ol’ Uncle Earl still worked his sax. Back when I was tourin’ the wide-open chitlin’ circuit, playin’ juke joints and chicken shacks, roadhouses east to the Carolinas, along the Gulf Coast from Tampa to Galveston, then up to Monroe, Jackson, Shreveport, Texarkana, Dallas, OKC, Tulsa, and of course, that cruelest of all mistresses, New Orleans.”
    This was news to Ben. “How long ago was this?”
    Earl shrugged. “Oh, ’bout a million and five years. Back when I was makin’ magic with the one and only Professor Hoodoo.”
    Professor Hoodoo? Ben had heard the name bandied about before, but he didn’t know anything about him. “Was he a jazz musician?” Ben ventured.
    “Was he a jazz musician?” Earl shot back. “The boy wants to know if Professor Hoodoo was a jazz musician. You tell him, Scat.”
    Scat cleared his throat. “He was the jazz musician. He was the man what put us all to shame. Until the day he laid down his sugar stick for the last time, he was the king.”
    “ ’Fraid I don’t know much about this funksterator myself,” Gordo said. “What’s his story?”
    Earl closed his eyes. “Professor Hoodoo was a giant. He towered over the rest of us, leavin’ us in the wake of his mighty strides. When he played, everybody listened—like they had no choice. His music commanded attention. He could take a two-bit tune by some Tin Pan Alley hack and make it burn like lightnin’! He could make it somethin’ it never was, somethin’ better than anybody’d ever thought it could be, because the music came from inside him. He was one of the special ones, one of the men who’s born with it, one of the chosen few who’s got music burnin’ in their brains and no holes in their souls.” He paused, wiping his brow. “When Professor Hoodoo played, you heard the truth, and you heard it from the man who knew, ’cause he’d been there. He’d lived it.”
    Earl leaned against the stage, his eyes still closed. “ ’Course that was twenty-plus years ago. It’s all jus’ a memory now.”
    “What happened to him?” Ben asked.
    Earl drew in his breath, then released it all at once, in a heavy sigh. “The world happened to him, son. Like it always does to genius. Other people’s petty needs and ambitions came weighin’ down on his shoulders. Some folks didn’t care for a black man doin’ so