Murder at Union Station - Margaret Truman [93]
The apartment consisted of a large living room, two tiny bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen. Photographs and posters of jazz giants idolized by the young musician covered the walls. A Yamaha electric piano sat in one corner of the living room; Jackson used this to work out new chord changes to old tunes. There was a couch and two easy chairs, a TV, a small table off the kitchen that served as a dining table, and a state-of-the-art sound system for hundreds of CDs housed in tall, free-standing racks.
It was to this basement haven that Richard Marienthal had fled.
Jackson had been playing a job when Rich arrived at the apartment; he’d left a key with the landlady. When he returned from his job at four the next morning, he found his writer friend asleep on the couch.
“The bed in that other room is yours, Rich,” he said after his noisy entrance had awakened Marienthal.
“I wasn’t sure which bedroom to use,” Marienthal said. “I can’t thank you enough for letting me crash here.”
Jackson’s laugh was easy and frequent. “It works out great, man,” he said, pointing to a suitcase and two saxophone cases near the door. “The place is yours ’cause I won’t be around for a while.”
“You said when I called that you were heading out of town on a gig. What’s it all about?”
“It’s like a gift from heaven, man. When Charlie called me—Charlie Young, the alto player—and said Buck had recommended me for a band Charlie’s taking on the road, I almost fell over. We’ve got seven weeks in some good clubs around the country.”
“I know who Charlie Young is,” Marienthal said.
“Right. We caught him together, what, a month, two months ago? He’s a monster. Anyway, we’ve been rehearsing for the past two weeks and leave tomorrow morning for the tour, so the joint is yours, man, for as long as you want. But you’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I catch the news on the tube and see that you’re, like, at the center of a big storm.”
“Afraid so,” Marienthal said.
Jackson brewed herbal tea in the tiny kitchen and brought two cups to the living room, along with fresh blueberry scones. He raised his cup to Marienthal and said, “Okay, man, lay it on me.”
“I don’t know where to begin,” Marienthal said. “You know how when you’re improvising on some song and get lost?”
“Moi?” Jackson said, laughing, hand to his heart.
“You know what I mean. If you hadn’t started in that direction, had stuck closer to the chords—”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s the situation I’m in. It’s like you taking gigs strictly for the money. Bad music, but the pay is good. Making a living as a writer can be as tough as being a jazz musician. I did all kinds of writing I didn’t enjoy and kept thinking that if I stuck to my goals and didn’t sell out—at least not in the long run—I’d make it.”
“I know what you mean,” said Jackson.
“So, anyway, my father—he’s a big-shot lawyer, represents Mafia types, or at least he did—he represented a mobster named Louis Russo. Russo was nailed on a drug charge and accepted a deal my father choreographed: testify against his mob friends in exchange for immunity and a new life in the witness protection program.”
“Russo. The old dude who got shot in Union Station.”
“One and the same. At any rate, after Russo went into the program and moved to Israel—”
“Israel?”
“Yeah. He was in Mexico for a year, then headed for the Middle East. Some sort of deal we have with the government there. My father told me stories about Russo, his days with the mob, the murders he was supposed to have committed. The more he told me, the more I wanted to meet Russo and use his life as a basis for a novel I wanted to write. The public seems to have