Murder for the Bride by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

Bourbon or Burgundy or Royal is like standing on the curb while a parade goes by. As one band fades, the next one comes thumping along. As you pass each joint a wave of sound comes out of it with almost enough force to knock you down. The doormen in garish uniforms yelp at you to step right in, the show’s about to begin. B-girls with bad teeth give you the sloe eye. Strippers inside the joints work out routines using balloons, feathers, parrots, lovebirds, snakeskins. In the hot weather they sweat as they work, and it streaks their powder and makes their bodies glisten.
    Sailors and whores, drunken brokers and glassy-eyed schoolmarms, B-girls and pimps and college kids andragged children and Air Force enlisted men drift up and down the sidewalks looking for something that is never there and never will be there. They are the forthright and honest ones. There are the others who infest the Quarter and come out into the lights after dark. Those with the dark and twisted minds, perpetually sneering at all evidences of a lusty normalcy.
    I had pushed through the crowds, and slowly the feeling had come over me that I was being followed. I stopped from time to time and leaned against building walls and waited. I could not pick any specific person out of the crowd. Yet each time I turned and continued on my way there was a prickling feeling at the back of my neck. Once I spun around quickly. Some teen-age girls, arms linked together, laughed at me. I felt like a fool. But still the impression persisted. It was as though the person who followed me could anticipate my movements, could melt into a doorway the moment I began to turn around.
    It was then that I saw the poster outside the Rickrack. Papa Joliet on the piano. Papa Joliet with the Uncle Tom fringe of white hair, the long, sad, unmoving face, the lean dancing black fingers. Old Papa from ’way, ’way back. There’s one phonograph record worth forty dollars a copy. I own one copy, in storage. It’s a little ditty called “Ride on Over.” A pickup group. Satch on the horn, the Kid on the tram, Baby on the drums, of course, and Papa Joliet playing that piano.
    I went in and the place was dim. Conversation was a low rumble. The piano was on a small platform in the far corner, a small spot wired to the ceiling so that it slanted down on the keys. I went through to a table in the back, near the piano, and sat down with my back to the wall. Around me were other tables of people who had come in to hear Papa. They glared up toward the bar, toward the noisy ones. I remembered how I had brought Laura to hear Papa Joliet and how she had got nothing out of it, though she pretended to.
    It was dark back against the wall. I shut my eyes and listened to the piano. It didn’t take long to understand what Papa was doing. He was amusing himself by imitating other pianists. The hard Chicago drive of AlbertAmmons. The bursting originality of Tatum. The dead-sure beat of Fatha Hines. The gutty strut of Fats. He did imitations with good humor, with subtle exaggeration.
    I felt someone close beside me and I gave a grunt of surprise as I opened my eyes. There had been two empty chairs at my table. Now a girl was in one of them. She had her elbows on the table, her chin on her palms. Papa’s spotlight made a reflected luminescence against her face.
    I decided that, for a B-girl, she was very, very nice. A special one. Heavy thrusting cheekbones, dark blonde hair, a Slavic tilt to her eyes, a wide, rather heavy mouth, and a look of utter repose. She wore a pale dress, strapless, and I could not tell the color because of the dimness. It was cut so low that the cleft between her large firm breasts was a dark pocketed shadow.
    “You don’t mind?” she said in a startlingly deep voice. Almost a man’s voice, and yet intensely feminine.
    “I don’t mind. But don’t be too greedy. I’ll pay brandy prices for iced tea if you don’t drink too much tea.”
    The music lovers around us glared at