Cockfighter - Charles Ray Willeford [32]
Beyond the bar there was a large square room with a small dance floor, a raised triangular platform in the corner for the musicians and two microphones. There were about thirty-five small circular tables, with twisted wire ice-cream parlor chairs stacked on top of them. The walls of the large room had been painted in navy blue. Silver cardboard stars had been pasted at random upon the wall and ceiling to simulate a night sky. The ceiling was black, and the scattered light fixtures on the ceiling were in various pastel colors.
Between the bar and nightclub section there were two lavatories, with their doors recessed about a foot into the wall. A crude effort at humor had been attempted on the rest-room doors: One was labeled SETTERS and the other POINTERS. After sizing the place up, I sat down at the far end of the bar and made the sign of the tall one. As I reached for the stein with my left hand, I handed the bartender the slip of paper with my right.
“I only work here,” he said indifferently, eyeing my guitar. “The James Boys are supposed to play out the month, but the boss is in the back.” He pointed to a curtain covering an arched doorway near the right corner of the bandstand. “Go ahead and talk to him if you want to.” His face colored slightly as he realized I couldn't talk, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “His name is Mr. Vernon. Lee Vernon.”
As soon as I finished my beer, I picked up my guitar, dropped a half dollar on the bar and headed for the back, pushing the curtain to one side. The hallway was short. There was a door leading to an alley, and two doors on either side. I opened the first door on the right, but it was a small dressing room, I knocked at the door opposite the dressing room and didn't enter until I heard “Come in.”
For a nightclub owner, Lee Vernon was a much younger man than I expected to meet. He was under thirty, with a mass of black curls, a smiling well-tanned face, and gleaming china-blue eyes. There were three open ledgers on his gray metal desk and a few thick Manila folders. He tapped his large white teeth with a pencil and raised his black eyebrows. I removed my guitar from the case before I handed him the slip of paper.
Lee Vernon laughed aloud when he saw the word JOB and shook his head from side to side with genuine amusement. “A nonsinging guitar player!” he exclaimed, still smiling. “I never thought I'd see the day. Go ahead”—he looked at my name burned into the guitar box—“Frank, is it?”
I nodded, and wiped my damp fingers on my jacket so the plastic pick wouldn't slip in my fingers. I put my left foot on a chair, and cradled the instrument over my knee.
“Play anything, Frank,” Vernon smiled. “I don't care. I've never turned down an excuse to quit working in my life.”
I vamped a few chords and then played “Empty Pockets” all the way through. Mr. Vernon listened attentively, tapping his pencil on the desk in time with the music. This was the shortest of my three songs, but it sounded good in the tiny office. The ceiling was low and there was a second listen effect reverberating in the room, especially during the thumping part.
“I like the sound, Frank,” Vernon said. “You're all right. All right. But I don't think I can use you right now. I'm trying to build the Chez Vernon into a popular night spot, and the James Boys pretty well fill the bill. I pay them eight hundred a week and if I pay much more than that for music, I'll be working for them instead of for myself. Do you belong to the union, Frank?”
I shook my head. The idea of any free American male paying gangsters money for the right to work has always struck me as one of the most preposterous customs we have.
“Tell you what,” Vernon said reflectively. “Do you really need a job?”
I nodded seriously.
“Okay, then. The James Boys play a forty-minute set, and then they take a twenty-minute break. They play from nine till midnight, an extra hour if the crowd warrants it, and till two a.m. on Saturday nights.