The Music Lovers, page 11
That was when Leon dropped the bombshell.
“Most people would be happy with one hundred and seventy thousand dollars,” he wrote.
“One hundred and seventy?” I said, feeling sick. “I only found three bricks in the freezer. Thirty thousand.”
Leon dropped his pencil on the floor and stared at me with a stunned look on his face. “Wha’ happ’n?”
“You got me,” I said.
******
So we searched the house again. Leon and I. Mostly I.
Sifting through the rubble for aluminum foil, like a couple of bag ladies wheeling a shopping cart down Central Parkway. I knew when we started it was going to be a waste of time. I also knew that it had to be done, on the off-chance that Bob Adams had been so stoned on stolen pharmaceuticals that he’d overlooked one hundred and forty thousand bucks. I spent over two hours on my knees, peering under cabinets, inside the wreckage of closets, behind overturned desks and tipped-over dressers. I sifted through the twenty-three thousand records Bob Adams had dumped on Leon’s basement floor. I checked the bathroom pipes like a plumber, the kitchen sink like a repairman—looking for a glint of aluminum or the gray-green corner of a hundred-dollar bill.
And I came up with nothing but a sore back and ruinous stains on the knees of my pants.
“Does Sheila have a legitimate bank account?” I asked Leon when, dusty and sweating, we’d finally given up the hunt. “Maybe some other hidey-hole in the house or the yard?”
Leon shook his head. A lively terror had begun to creep over him, making his eyes bug and his hands shake. He had reason to be scared. Bob Adams wasn’t going to like being short-changed by one hundred and forty grand.
“I better talk to Al Foster at the CPD,” I said, feeling some of the same terror creeping up my spine.
I picked up the phone, which was sitting on the floor by the couch—probably where Hank Diamond had left it, after charging a few long distance calls to Leon’s number. As I started to dial, Leon lunged off the couch and tried to pull the receiver out of my hand.
“N’cop,” he said hysterically.
I put a hand on his head and pushed him down gently on the sofa.
“Take it easy, for chrissake,” I said. “I’m not going to tell him about Sheila.”
He eyed me uncertainly. “Pro’ms?”
“I promise.”
Folding his hands at his chest Leon sat back against the lone cushion and watched me nervously as I dialed the phone.
A desk sergeant answered. I asked him for Al Foster and got transferred to his extension. It was eight o’clock by then, and there was a chance that Al had left for the day—or for a fresh pack of Tareytons. But he was in.
“Tried to get you at your office,” he said.
“I’ve been out.”
“I ran the LEADS request and here’s what I got. You have a pencil?”
I grabbed the one Leon had dropped on the floor and the pad he was holding.
“Bob Adams, a.k.a. Bobby Joe Bluenote, a.k.a Robert E. Lee Bernstein, a.k.a. Bobby Detroit.”
“Bobby Detroit?”
“That was a stage name he used in ‘78,” Al said. “He sang and played piano with a group called Bobby Detroit and the Motor City Music Lovers. They played clubs in L.A. and Reno until Bobby was busted for the sale and distribution of heroin in late ‘79. He did a two-year rehab in Lexington. When he got out he started another band, Robert E. Lee Bernstein and the Dixie Crusaders.”
“You’re kidding.”
“That’s what it says,” Al said. “He was arrested again in ‘82 for armed robbery—a drugstore in Cleveland, Harry. The charge was dismissed because of some Miranda shit. He was busted yet again in ‘83 in Akron—same charge. This time he got shocked out after six months—some court mix-up in his record. According to the parole report he went back into the music biz briefly in ‘85, before catching on as a rep with Atlantis Records in ‘86. In ‘88 he had another band, called Bobby Joe Bluenote’s Southern Comfort. They were playing a two-week stint across the river at the Quality Court motel in Covington, when Adams was busted for possession of heroin. This time he served a four-year stint in Lex, before being released on parole six and one half weeks ago. According to a report filed by his P.O. he was given permission to come to Cincinnati about three weeks ago, because of a job offer he’d received.”
“What job offer?”
“We’re trying to check that out. The P.O. isn’t in on Sunday, so it might have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Great,” I said.
“You want to tell me what’s going on, now?”
“I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Sure,” Foster said. “I’ll read about it in the papers, right?”
“Al, give me a break. I’m telling you all I can.”
I sounded like Leon, and the echo made me wince.
“Harry, this guy Adams is a long-time junkie who has a history of armed assault. He just got done murdering a man and he’s on the run in a stolen car full of morphine ampoules. If you have reason to look him up, you sure as hell better let me know.”
“I’ll let you know,” I told him.
He hung up the phone so hard it made my ear ring. I glanced at Leon, who was looking up at me with terror in his eyes.
“Did they find him?”
I shook my head. “We’ll have to do it ourselves.”
15
AMONG OTHER things there was a good deal of newspaper scattered on Leon’s floors. I managed to fish an entertainment page from Friday’s Post out of the jumble.
“What’s that for?” Leon wrote.
“I’m going to try to look for our boy and your girl,” I told him.
It had occurred to me that Bob Adams had gone back into show business after each of his previous busts. I figured there was a good chance that he’d come to Cincinnati to do the same thing—to take a gig in a band or combo. It had also occurred to me that he knew that Sheila Mozkowski lived in Cincinnati or had been living there in ‘88. Which meant there was also a fair chance that the Cincy gig didn’t exist—that it was simply a lie he’d told his P.O. in order to put himself within easy reach of Sheila and her hundred and seventy grand. If it had been a lie—and there were plenty of P.O.’s who would have bought the story without bothering to check it out—I didn’t have a chance of finding Bob Adams. I had to hope that Adams’s parole officer was the diligent type and that the job Bob had claimed to have taken here in town was legit.
I cleared a spot on the living room floor, spread the page out, and went through the weekend calendar listings of the performers playing in the greater Cincinnati area that weekend. I pored over every entry and every ad, looking for the names Bobby Detroit or Bobby Bluenote or Robert E. Lee Bernstein or Bobby Anybody. But I didn’t find a headliner whose name was even remotely close to any of Adams’s known aliases.
Then it dawned on me that if Adams was playing in a group, the chances of him headlining after four years in Lexington prison were pretty slim. It was more likely that he’d be playing backup for some small combo. What I needed to do was talk to a musician who knew the local music scene from the front row to the drum kit.
It was Sunday so calling the local branch of the musicians’ union was out. I’d had a friend named Pete Ruggles, who played piano in a jazz combo at the Blue Wisp, but he’d moved on to New York. However, thinking of the Blue Wisp brought someone else to mind.
I turned to Leon, who was sitting stunned and silent on the couch—the pad and pencil lying in his lap. “Do you know a horn player named Philo Ives?”
Leon picked up the pencil. “Stereophile,” he wrote. “Friend of LeRoy’s.”
Philo had looked like a flake to me, but when I asked Leon what he thought of him he wrote: “He’s a street guy. Not too crazy about honkies. But I like him. He’s a real good musician.”
“You think LeRoy would have his number?” I asked.
Leon nodded, yes.
Picking up the phone I dialed LeRoy Anderson’s house.
“You know that damn Leon went and left Jewish Hospital?” LeRoy said, after I’d said hello.
“I’m sitting next to him right now,” I told him.
“Where’s that?”
“At his house in Saylor Park.”
LeRoy made a tsking noise. “That boy is short on Schlitz. He should be in a hospital bed.”
“He needs to be here, LeRoy,” I said. “And I need a couple of favors from you.”
“Go ahead and tell me what you need,” LeRoy said, as if whatever I wanted was as good as done.
“First I’d like to talk to that musician friend of yours, Philo Ives.”
LeRoy chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do, Harry, but I don’t think Philo much cottoned to you. What else you need?”
“This is asking a lot because it could be dangerous, but I’d like you to come over here and stay with Leon while I talk to Ives.”
He didn’t even hesitate. “I’m on my way.”
While I was talking to LeRoy, Leon had been looking over the notes I’d taken of my conversation with Al Foster. As soon as I hung up he said, “Mus’ L’rs,” and pointed to the words “Bobby Detroit and the Motor City Music Lovers” on the notepad.
I nodded. “That’s probably how Adams first met Sheila, when she was playing backup for his act in ‘78.”
It was obvious that the Music Lovers had slid a long way downhill since they’d first come to L.A. in ‘72. By ‘78, when they’d joined up with Bobby Detroit, I figured that Sheila Mozkowski might have grown hard enough and desperate enough to do anything for a buck—including grand theft. Maybe with Bobby Adams-Bernstein-Bluenote-Detroit as her partner. It would explain how Adams had known about the money she was holding. It would also explain what Sheila meant when she talked about the bad company she was keeping before Leon saved her from disaster.
I didn’t mention it to Leon but there was another item on the note sheet that was even more interesting than the one about the Music Lovers: the bust in ‘88 at the Quality Court motel, where Pavel Fleischer had gone to buy records from Adams and discovered Sheila Mozkowski in the room. I was thinking it was a damn convenient little bust—from Sheila’s point of view.
I couldn’t imagine that Adams had been any less greedy for money in ‘88 than he was in ‘92. In fact if I was right about him having a stake in the dough, he’d probably been hunting for Sheila Mozkowski for quite some time before he finally caught up with her in that Covington motel room. Luckily for Sheila, Adams was practically busted on the spot and shipped away to Lexington for four long years. The timing might have been the work of fate—Adams was a recidivist who was bound to end up in prison on his own hook sooner or later. But in this instance I couldn’t help wondering whether fate had been given a nudge.
If Bob Adams had been set up by Sheila Mozkowski in 1988, I couldn’t see him letting her walk away from the kidnapping. Even if he did get the entire one-hundred-and-seventy-grand ransom, he’d want to pay her back for those four years in prison—not to mention the years he’d spent looking for her. It made it that much more imperative to find the son-of-a-bitch as quickly as possible.
******
LeRoy Anderson arrived at Leon’s house around nine-thirty. I saw him pull up through the living room window. There was someone else sitting in the car with him. I thought it might be Philo Ives until the guy got out and stretched in the street light, all six feet eight of him. Sherwood Loeffler.
Leon couldn’t see Loeffler from the couch—which was probably a good thing.
I watched LeRoy come up the front stairs to the stoop.
“What in the world happened here?” he said as he came through the door.
I said, “The guy that snatched Sheila paid Leon’s house a visit.”
“What the hell was he looking for—termites?”
LeRoy spotted the overturned stereo and clutched at his heart. “Oh, my Lord.” He actually staggered for a moment.
“The bastard trashed Leon’s system,” he said as if a man could do no worse to another man.
But I knew better. “He may try to trash Leon. And you, too. The guy who did this is a desperate character, LeRoy, very crazy and very dangerous.”
“You figurin’ he might come back here?” he asked.
“It’s possible.”
I described Bobby Adams to LeRoy, then told him to call the police if Adams showed up at the door. However LeRoy had his own plan of defense.
“I’ll blow the motherfucker’s nuts off,” he said, pulling a long-barreled .44 Ruger out of his coat.
“Just don’t blow your own nuts off,” I said. “And under no circumstances are you to leave this house until I get back. Either of you.”
I gave Leon a pointed look.
“Now about Philo?” I asked LeRoy.
The old man raised a hand. “That’s all taken care of.”
Grabbing my coat sleeve he pulled me away from the couch, out of Leon’s earshot.
“I called Philo after you called me,” he whispered. “He didn’t much want to talk to you, just like I thought. He don’t like strangers. Especially white ones. But he does know that tall drink of water outside there. And halfway trusts him. So I drug him along.”
“Sherwood knows Philo?” I said with surprise.
Leon started just a bit on the sofa. “Sher’d?”
“Keep your voice down, Harry,” LeRoy whispered. “You gonna give Leon a heart attack. Sure, Sherwood knows Philo. He’s been to Philo’s house a coupla times.”
“To his house?”
LeRoy grinned. “Philo’s a stereophile, Harry. And a new system’s better’n a steak dinner to Sherwood. He just cain’t wait to dig in and start cutting. Anyway that big, tall ass may come in handy. Large as he is he scares most people just from looking at him. And the way Philo acts sometimes, you might need to do some scaring.”
I felt a little miffed that LeRoy Anderson hadn’t thought I was smart enough or tough enough to tackle Philo Ives on my own. But then I hadn’t been doing a particularly impressive job of detecting up till then. And when it came down to it I didn’t think LeRoy had much faith in the native wit of white people, especially non-stereophile white people.
I told Leon I’d be back as soon as I could manage, and he said something indecipherable, which I took to be a plea to rescue Sheila. As I walked out the door LeRoy Anderson shut and locked it behind me.
Out on the street Loeffler was pacing the sidewalk like a beat cop.
“Hey, there, Har’,” he said in, what was for him, a moderated boom.
“Sherwood,” I said, shaking my head. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Why, didn’t LeRoy tell ya?” he said, drawing himself up to his full six eight. “I speak fluent Negro.”
******
Philo Ives lived in English Woods, a rent-controlled housing project at the top of Fairmount hill. It was a notoriously dangerous place for residents and visitors alike, although Sherwood Loeffler didn’t seem to be daunted.
“Now don’t get your hopes up,” he said as I pulled onto the drive that wound through the rundown brick apartment houses, “we aren’t likely to see any shootings tonight. Sundays are a day of rest among the colored peoples.”
“Can it, will you, Sherwood? It isn’t funny.”
“Certainly, Har’.” He pointed to a street on the left. “Turn down here.”
I followed his finger down a short side street. Philo’s apartment building was at the end of the block, just another four-unit brick hut set in another dark, treeless plot. There was a Ford Fairlane parked in front of it, tricked out with gold-rimmed hubcaps, a tuxedo trunk, sidelights, and a beaver tail on the cellular phone antenna.
“Makes you want to buy American, don’t it?” Sherwood said.
I parked behind the Fairlane and we got out into the cold night air.
“As I recall Philo’s on the first floor, to the right. Course I could be wrong. Last time I was here he had the blinds open and you could see that saxophone on the rug.”
Philo did have a sax on his living room rug—a tenor sax sparkling on a stand between two columnar loudspeakers. There were also a couple of playbills on the walls, with his name prominently displayed as featured performer. It gave me hope that he could help out with Adams.
Ives was dressed for bed when he answered the door—a long black robe cinched loosely at his waist by a belt with a pager hanging from it. Without the sunglasses on he was a good-looking guy, mid-thirties, surprisingly muscular, with a nervous, street-smart, coal-black face. Most of the musicians I had known—black and white—were fairly laid-back men, with personalities that suited their instruments. This guy was wired so tight he could have played bedsprings.
Running a hand over his fade, Philo scowled at me. His expression softened a little when he saw Sherwood looming in the hall. At that point I was beginning to think that it probably had been a good idea to bring Loeffler along. But the night was young yet.
“Hey, homes,” Ives said to Sherwood. He didn’t say anything to me.
Sherwood pushed past me into the living room.
“How’s the system, Philo?”
Philo shook his head. “Almost blew a woofer last night. It’s that damn amp LeRoy sold me. That old man done cheated me for the last time.”
“You sure you weren’t playing a tad too loud?” Sherwood said, settling on a sofa across from the stereo rig. “You folks do tend to play your music rather loudly.”
Philo shook his head as if he’d been down this particular road before with Sherwood. It amazed me that people seemed to put up as well as they did with Sherwood Loeffler’s shenanigans.
“My folks, huh?” Philo said disgustedly. “At least I can play loud.”
Sherwood flushed as if Philo had insulted his race—the race of electrostats. “My speakers will play every bit as loudly as these paper-coned numbers,” he said with umbrage. “Besides the kind of music I listen to isn’t meant for a boom box.”
