Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg Read Free Book Online

Musicians. I said I was a freelance journalist working on assignment for Look and I wanted to interview the surviving members of the Spider Simpson orchestra.
    They connected me with the girl in charge of membership records. I gift-wrapped it by promising to plug the union in my article and gave her the names of the band members on the photo, together with the instruments they played.
    I held the line for ten minutes while she looked it up. Of the original fifteen musicians four were deceased and six had been dropped from the union membership rolls. She gave me the addresses and telephone numbers of the others. Diffendorf, the trombonist with Lawrence Welk, lived in Hollywood. Spider Simpson also had a place in the L.A. area, over in the Valley in Studio City. The others were here in town.
    There was an alto player named Vernon Hyde in the “Tonight” show house band, address c/o NBC Studios; and two hornmen, Ben Hogarth, trumpet, with an address on Lexington Avenue, and another trombone, Carl Walinski, who lived in Brooklyn.
    I got it all down in my notebook, thanked the girl from the bottom of my heart, and called the local numbers without success. The hornmen weren’t home, and the best I could do with the switchboard at NBC was leave my office number.
    I was beginning to feel like the sucker in a snipe hunt. The guy who waits all night in the woods holding the empty sack. There was less than one chance in a million that any of Johnny Favorite’s former bandmates had run across him since he went away to war. These were the only odds in town, and I was stuck with them.
    Back at the bar, I ate my sandwich and nibbled a few wilted french fries. “It’s a great life, ain’t it, Harry,” Kenny Pomeroy said, rattling the ice in his empty glass.
    “The best and only.”
    “Some poor stiffs’ve got to work for their living.”
    I scooped my change off the bar. “Don’t drum me out of the club if I start working for mine.”
    “You ain’t leaving, are you Harry?”
    “Got to do it, old friend, much as I’d like to stay and poison my liver with you.”
    “Next thing I know, you’ll be punching a timeclock. You know where to find me, should you have further need of my expertise.”
    “Thanks, Kenny.” I pulled on my overcoat. “Does the name Edward Kelley mean anything to you?”
    Kenny corrugated his Vista-Dome forehead in concentration. “There was a Horace Kelly back in K.C.,” he said. “About the time Pretty Boy Floyd bumped off those G-men at Union Station. Horace played piano at the Reno Club on 12th and Cherry. Made a little book on the side. This any relation of his?”
    “I hope not,” I said. “See you around.”
    “Make that a promise and I’ll frame it.”

TEN
    I rode the Seventh Avenue IRT one stop to Times Square to save shoe leather and let myself into the office as the phone was ringing. I grabbed it mid-ring. It was Vernon Hyde, Spider Simpson’s sax player.
    “Very good of you to call,” I said, unreeling the Look assignment line. He swallowed it all, and I suggested we get together for a drink at his convenience.
    “I’m at the studio now,” he said. “We start rehearsal in twenty minutes. I won’t be free until four-thirty.”
    “That would be fine with me. If you can spare a half-hour, why don’t we get together then. What street is your studio on?”
    “On 45th Street. The Hudson Theater.”
    “Okay. The Hickory House is only a couple blocks away. How about meeting me at quarter to five?”
    “Sounds boss. I’ll have my axe along so you won’t have any trouble spotting me.”
    “A man with an axe stands out in a crowd,” I said.
    “No, man, no, you don’t get it. An axe is like an instrument, you dig?”
    I dug and said so, and we both hung up. After struggling out of my overcoat, I sat down behind the desk and took a look at the photos and clippings I’d been lugging around. I arranged them on the blotter like a museum exhibit and stared at Johnny Favorite’s