Looking for Chet Baker by Bill Moody Read Free Book Online Page B

while I start my exploration. Drums and bass are right with us, and during the bass solo I have to marvel at the bassist’s chops. Nothing stiff about the drummer either. We do a couple of choruses of eight-bar exchanges—Fletcher and I alternating—then bring it on home. Fletcher beams at me and steps to the microphone. “How about a warm Amsterdam welcome for Evan Horne.”
    This part at least does feel like home. The rest of the night goes equally well. Nobody asks me about being a detective or calls me Sam Spade. Walter is pleased, and so apparently is the Bimhuis owner. We’re a hit.
    “You want to come by my place?” Fletcher asks as he packs up his horn. A lot of the audience is still lingering, not wanting to give it up yet.
    “I don’t think so tonight. I’m kind of tired, but yeah, some other time, sure.”
    “Cool,” Fletcher says. “Hey, you play chess?”
    “Not in years.”
    “Okay, well, we’ll get you brushed up. I’m going home to read my e-mail.” He laughs hard. “Wonder what Prez would have thought of e-mail. Later, man.”
    That would have been something. Lester Young online.
    Walter drops me at the hotel. I have that wired feeling after a gig—tired but not ready for sleep. I check at the front desk for messages, but there are none. I feel a slight twinge of apprehension that there’s nothing from Ace. It isn’t like him at all to just take off, but maybe he finally got the message and is hot on the trail of his research. Chet Baker lived all over Europe, so Ace could be anywhere. Or maybe Ace didn’t like it that I’d turned him down, and now he is going to show me he can do it on his own. More power to him. Trying to put it out of my mind, I decide to go for a walk.
    I leave the hotel and head around the corner, through a maze of cobblestone alleyways that lead into the Old Quarter—bars, restaurants, sex shops, snack bars with food smells wafting into the street, and lots of people, even at this hour. Turning one corner, I come across a short street of the red-light district.
    It’s impossible not to look at the girls on display in the windows. That’s the only way to describe them. Clad mostly in bras and panties, they smile and beckon from their perches on high stools. Some of them are quite beautiful. I pass a number of coffeehouses, which I know are venues for marijuana smoking, complete with menus, so I’d heard—but not tonight. I head back and come out behind the hotel. I look up toward my room, count over a couple of windows to the room where Chet Baker fell from, the same room Ace stayed in.
    There’s a drainpipe running up the side of the building just past that room. It looks big enough to hold a man’s weight and goes right past Chet’s room. Nobody saw him fall? To my left, the alleyway opens onto a canal, but if it was late at night, nobody would probably have noticed a body, and…I shake it off. One day in Amsterdam, and I’m already seduced by the mystery. Enough. I go around to the front entrance and glance once again at the plaque for Chet Baker.
    Hope you’re having some luck, Ace.

Chapter Four
    The train trip from London, the first night of the gig, it’s all caught up with me, but still I’m surprised to see sunlight streaming through the windows. I lie still for a few minutes, listening to the morning sounds of Amsterdam filter through the open window—cars, voices, footsteps on the cobblestone, traffic noise from the end of the street. How many times have I done this in how many cities? In chain hotels, it’s easy to forget where you are, and sometimes I can’t even remember on long road trips.
    I get out of bed and take a look outside. I don’t see any windmills or people in wooden clogs, but those voices are Dutch. Must be Amsterdam. I don’t even look at the cigarettes on the nightstand but just head for the shower. Coffee and some breakfast is much on my mind as I get dressed in jeans, a sweater, and some well-worn running shoes.
    I