Calypso by Ed McBain Page B

less. Like, man, unless you're really outstanding on the guitar, all it's good for is laying down chords for instruments that can run the melody line. You find very few guitar players can do justice to a melody. So here's a band with a flute and a steel drum in it-now what are those two instruments for, huh, man? For melody, am I right? Well, Georgie had us playing riffs behind his half-ass guitar stuff. Whang, whang, whang, and behind him is me doing tootle-ee-oo-doo over and over, and Freddie hitting two-note chords on the steel drum. For the birds, man. We finally had enough of it."
        "When was this? When did the band break up?"
        "A year after Santo split, I guess it was."
        "Tell me what happened that night."
        "That was a long time ago, man. I'm not sure I can remember it all."
        "As much as you can remember," Carella said. "First of all, when was it, exactly? Can you remember the date?"
        "Sometime in September," Barragan said. "A Saturday night the first or second week in September, I'm not sure."
        "All right, go ahead."
        "It was raining, I remember that. The band used to have this VW van we traveled in, maroon and white, we used to take it everywhere we played. The gig that night-"
        "Who owned the van?"
        "We all did. We chipped in for it. When the band broke up, Freddie bought us out."
        "Sorry, go ahead."
        "Like I said, it was raining very hard that night. The gig was at the Hotel Palomar in Isola-downtown, you know the place? Near the Palomar Theater? Very big hotel, very classy affair. We were the relief band, we were playing a lot of Latin shit in those days, rumbas, sambas, cha-chas, the whole bag. This was before Georgie got on his calypso trip. The other band-I forget the name of it-Archie Cooper? Artie Cooper? Something like that. Big band, ten or twelve pieces. This was a big fancy-dress ball-costumes, you know? A benefit of some kind, I forget now what it was-multiple sclerosis or muscular dystrophy, one of the two. Georgie got us the relief gig through a guy playing second trumpet on the Cooper band- Archie was it? Arnie? Georgie'd done the horn man some favors a while back, and when the kid heard they needed a Latin band as relief, he thought of Georgie and gave him a ring. It was a good gig. We used to play some good gigs when we were together. Well, like I told you, I've heard worse bands."
        The rain lashed the living room windows. Carella kept staring at the dissolving panes of glass, listening to Barragan as he told now about the rain on the night seven years ago, rain coming down in buckets as the musicians, the gig over, their instruments packed, ran for the parked VW van at two-thirty in the morning, Freddie Bones with a newspaper tented over his head, his steel drum hanging from a strap on his left shoulder and banging against his hip as he ran through the rain, Georgie cursing and complaining that his new guitar case would get wet, Barragan himself laughing and running, slipping and almost falling, his flute case tucked under his raincoat to protect it. He was the one who slid open the door of the van, he was the one who climbed in first, George getting in behind the wheel and still complaining about the rain. Bones lighted a cigarette. Georgie started the engine, and then wiped off the windshield with his gloved hand, and looked toward the revolving doors at the front of the hotel, where men and women were coming out under the canopy and looking for taxis. "Where's Santo?" Georgie said, and the three of them looked at each other, and Barragan said, "He was right behind me when we came out of the John," and Georgie said, "So where's he now?" and wiped the windshield again, and again looked toward the revolving doors. "He'll be here in a minute," Bones said. "Calm down, why don't you? You're always up there on the ceiling someplace."
        They waited another ten minutes, and then Georgie got out of