Honky-Tonk Girl by Charles Beckman Jr. & Jr

Author:Charles Beckman, Jr. & Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: noir, crime, hardboiled, mystery, pulp fiction
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2011-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CROSSROADS

Thursday Afternoon, 3:00 P.M.

Earlier that day, Eddie Howard, the pianist in Johnny Nickles band, had stood thoughtfully in the doorway of his room, a thick wad of money in his hand and a puzzled look on his thin, anemic face. He watched Johnny Nickles’ broad, chunky back disappearing down the stairway. Then he went back inside and hunted up a pill and swallowed it thoughtfully. He didn’t understand why the band had been fired so suddenly. Things had seemed to be going along pretty well at the Sho-Tune. The crowds were building every week. Johnny Nickles was still a drawing card, even if he did play sloppily these days.

Eddie stood in the bathroom in his pajamas and studied his face in the mirror. He usually slept daily until mid-afternoon. Even then, he always seemed to be tired. He had been in the band business for twenty years and he had been tired for twenty years. He put the wad of money on the edge of the lavatory and leaned over, gazing more intently into the mirror. He pulled at his cheek to get a better view of his eyeball. Then he stuck out his tongue and felt his pulse. He opened the medicine cabinet, studied the array of bottles there, selected one, unscrewed the top and shook out two small, pink pills into the palm of his hand. These he popped into his mouth and then turned on the tap, half-filling a glass tumbler with water which he drank down with the pills.

He picked up his thick-lensed, horn-rimmed glasses that had been lying on the toilet seat, and put them on. Then he closed the medicine cabinet, gathered up the money and walked back into the bedroom. He was not wearing his pajama tops and his rib cage showed through his skinny chest like latticework. The bedroom was strewn with clothes. Neckties hung from doorknobs, over chairs and over the foot and head of the bed. He shoved a pile of shirts fresh from the laundry off a chair and sat down. Maybe it was on account of Johnny’s drinking that Norman Norman canned them? But Johnny never got sloppy on the stand. It just made him play worse. Or maybe it was on account of Miff Smith’s murder? Maybe Norman Norman didn’t like that kind of publicity.

Or maybe, Eddie Howard thought wryly, it was simply because the band was playing lousy music these days. It was coming apart at the seams.

He hunted under the pile of shirts and found a pair of brown socks rolled up. He put them on and stepped into a pair of shoes. Then he searched around until he discovered a pair of slacks with a fair crease. Further search rewarded him with clean underwear and a long-sleeved tan sport shirt. These articles of clothing he assembled on his thin body. Then he stopped in the kitchen for a glass of milk and walked out of the apartment, locking the door after him.

The rest of the guys, he knew, would be over at Tizzy Mole’s place.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.