Verwandte Artikel zu Swing: A Mystery

Swing: A Mystery - Hardcover

Holmes, Rupert

 
9781400061587: Swing: A Mystery
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 140006158X ISBN 13: 9781400061587
Verlag: Random House Inc, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

While appearing with Jack Donovan's orchestra at the 1940 World's Fair in San Francisco, jazz musician Ray Sherwood becomes caught up in a seductive mystery involving the death of a mysterious Frenchwoman, who plunges to her death shortly after propositioning him, in a mystery novel accompanied by a CD featuring original music composed by the author. 35,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Twice a recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s coveted Edgar Award, Rupert Holmes is no stranger to the worlds of mystery or music. His first novel, Where The Truth Lies, has been made into a major motion picture by director Atom Egoyan starring Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, and Alison Lohman. For his Broadway musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Holmes became the first person in theatrical history to solely win Tony Awards for Best Book and Best Music and Lyrics, while Drood itself won the Tony Award for Best Musical. His comedy-thrillers for the stage include Broadway’s Accomplice and Solitary Confinement. His most recent work for Broadway, Say Goodnight, Gracie, earned Holmes the 2004 National Broadway Theatre Award and a Tony nomination for Best Play. He also created and wrote all four seasons of the critically acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning television series Remember WENN, set in 1940. Swing's musical milieu is a reflection of another part of Holmes's career: He received a Drama Desk Award for Best Orchestration and arranged and conducted Barbra Streisand’s classic album Lazy Afternoon. The Los Angeles Times has called Rupert Holmes “an American treasure.”

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

The Band Bus

We’d had a miserable drive down from Portland that day. The radio on the bus had been on the fritz since we’d left Spokane the week before, there are only so many hands of penny-ante gin rummy that seventeen men can endure without a card table or drinks, and while from time to time we might professionally be called upon to perform “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” we sure as hell weren’t about to sing it voluntarily. We were grown men. We all had stories to tell, great stories, but after a few years, we’d told and heard them all.

By the time we crossed from Oregon into California, I’d already read the first paragraph of Seven Pillars of Wisdom for several hours, my gaze wandering back and forth between the yellowed pages and the bleached green scenery outside. When you tour the country, you quickly learn that America is a pleasant view through a bus window that is then repeated eight thousand times before it yields to the dim prospect of a small brown city.

Frankie Pompano, tenor sax, first chair, made his way to my padded pew at the back of the bus. “Bored enough?” he asked. “’Cause I’m ready to cut my wrists with a reed trimmer.”

He sat down on my left, just as he did on the bandstand each night, and flopped back so heavily that he caused the bus’s rear door to swing open. It should have been latched and locked, but it wasn’t. I watched his face fill with childish surprise as he began to fall smoothly out of the speeding bus, headfirst.

I instantly swooped after him and grabbed his collar with my left hand, which would have made for a fine rescue if my right hand had been holding on to something other than my Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Now we were both halfway out of the bus, and Frankie was realizing that if we completed the fall, our heads would hit the roadway at a solid fifty miles an hour. He clutched frantically at my belt, pulling me farther out, tipping the seesaw the wrong way. They didn’t teach science at the Juilliard School of Music, but I knew by the laws of physics and simple measurements that it was impossible for my right leg to stretch far enough to hook my foot under the base of the seat in front of me, or for the metatarsal bones in my foot to counterbalance the total weight of two men hanging out of the back of an eight-door Dodge bus. Fortunately for us, Isaac Newton had never factored adrenaline into any of his equations.

Suddenly I was being hoisted back into the bus by the confident arms of two trombonists, Danny Hodges and Harry Weidel, second and third chair respectively. They were well suited to the task, pulling me as if gliding their slides from seventh position to first. I held steadily on to Frankie, who looked up at me like a dangling mountaineer who was fearful I’d cut his tether. With one good yank, I had him inside again. I bolted the hatch and observed that most of the band hadn’t even noticed our small drama, except for Tommy Trego, our band boy and the one responsible for checking the bus’s back door. His complexion was pale as milk glass as he averted his eyes from mine. I made a mental note that once we got to our hotel, I would have to tell him the story about how I once made the exact same mistake myself. I would have told Tommy the story then and there but I hadn’t invented it yet.

“Jesus, you nearly killed yourself, Ray,” said Frankie, brushing the road grit from his jacket. “I guess this makes you my hero.”

I wasn’t a hero, his or anyone’s. To be honest, I didn’t even care that much about Frankie. It’s just that nearly killing yourself for a fellow saxophonist is easy when you’ve been considering doing the same thing for no one in particular.

Prior to that September of 1940, I’d more than once soberly entertained committing the equivalent of what we musicians call a dal segno al coda, this being the written instruction in music that the player should abandon repeating what has gone before and leap forward to the end.

Luckily, that same year, the woman I love (who’s just in the next room as I write these words and who—God help her—has agreed to review these pages when I finish my account of the innocent intrigue that became a personally harrowing mystery that revealed itself to be a deadly puzzle) was able to help me make a most miraculous da capo, which for those of us who play jazz means “take it again from the top.”

2

The Claremont

Less than an hour before we were scheduled to play, our band bus groveled its way up the wooded hillside near the border of Oakland and Berkeley, upon which is enthroned the genially aristocratic Hotel Claremont.

Usually when we had a hotel engagement, our band boy signed in for all of us, but a respectable dowager like the Claremont required each member of the band to register for himself. We hated this, as the trip had left us exhausted and we still faced a four-hour set on the bandstand that evening, entertaining a thin Monday-night crowd.

The hotel’s faultlessly tailored lobby had undergone many changes since I’d first played there in my teens, but all I was interested in was a quick washup in my room before heading to the ballroom.

“Ray Sherwood?” inquired the desk clerk, looking at my entry in the hotel’s registration ledger. He was a pleasant enough young man, although it was clear he had no close relatives who were dentists or cosmeticians.

“That’s me,” I answered, and he advanced me a key attached to a copper tag, which on one side read The Claremont, Berkeley, Calif., below which was my room number. On the other side were the words If carried away, mail unsealed. Postage guaranteed. I tucked the key into my billfold, under the flap where I always keep my room key until I inevitably find myself dropping it into a mailbox one city beyond the one I’ve just left.

The front desk clerk was searching some cubbyholes behind him. “Sherrrrrrrrrrrrr-wood, hold on, I believe there’s a—. Yes. A young lady left this for you late this afternoon.”

He laid down an envelope bearing my name, which I opened. A letter, written in a precise, angular hand, began:

Dear Mr. Sherwood,

I would be honored if you would meet with me to discuss a business proposal that I believe may be of interest to you. Rather than bore you with the details here, I am hoping to bore you in person tomorrow morning at nine-thirty, when I will try my utmost to weaken your resolve over a cup of excellent coffee. Since I make terrible coffee, could you meet me at the Café Lafayette at the Golden Gate Exposition on Treasure Island?

These last six words were as clear as cuneiform to me, but I figured someone at the hotel would be able to direct me to this destination, if I decided to meet her at the heathen hour of nine-thirty, that is a jazzman’s equivalent of the crack of dawn.

“I’m performing in the Tower of the Sun at ten,” her letter continued, still bewilderingly,

so if you can’t make it, it will not be a hardship for me. However, time is of the essence and it is important we meet as soon as possible. I am hoping my proposal will interest you, and if not, please know that three different underclassmen in the last month have told me that I am the cat’s meow, pajamas, and whiskers, in alphabetical order. I am sure they are just being polite, but perhaps you might want to form your own opinion. Be advised that if I don’t see you tomorrow at the Café (where I will know you by...

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Verlag
Random House Inc
Erscheinungsdatum
2005
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
140006158X
ISBN 13 
9781400061587
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
372
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Purmerul LTD
https://strengholt.nl/en/

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