“Would you look at the riffraff they’re letting in these days,” Chester Kingsley said as he hauled himself upright.
Shite. Martin knew that sooner or later he would have to settle things with Chester, but he’d been hoping it could happen after he launched the new band and secured a regular spot in one of the city’s best nightclubs. A tall order, but that’s how he’d planned it.
“Martin, my boy. We need to talk—man to man.” Wednesday was Chester’s night off, and he’d apparently been drinking for hours. When drunk, he lost the vaguely British accent he employed on the bandstand to announce each selection—And now, for your dancing pleasure, a little something called “Moonlight in Vermont.” With one hand on the bar, he ambled unsteadily to the stool next to Martin. He leaned in close, his breath clotted with bourbon and grenadine. “So what’s next for the great Martin Dempsey?”
“I’ll land on my feet,” Martin said, half turning his face away from Chester.
Chester drained his highball and traced the glass in a circle over the bar, indicating another round. “Look here, you’re either too cocky or too stupid to see how far you’re going to fall—and how long it’s going to take you to work your way back up.”
“I’d like to make this an amicable parting of ways, Chester.”
“So you don’t like the music I play? You don’t like the way I play it? It’s not hot enough? Well, screw you, kid, you know-nothing sack of shit. I’m a king in this town—hell, in this whole country! Every week, coast to coast, people are listening to my music. My music! But that’s not good enough for you?”
“Look, it’s nothing personal. It’s just not what I want to play.”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re the fella who wrote that song that’s driving the Negro hordes wild up in Harlem. Is that what I hear? Just don’t expect it’s going to lead to anything. You might be black Irish but I’ll tell you this: Those Negroes stick by their own. Maybe you’ll see a few pennies from heaven, but in a week or two, when that colored bandleader—”
“Benny Carter,” Martin said.
“—when that colored bandleader has rearranged some other nobody’s song? You’re in for a long dry spell—unless you’ve got another hit song up your sleeve, something you’ve been hiding from the rest of the world all these years?”
“Like I said, don’t worry about me. I’ve got plans—”
“I’m not worried about you, you dumb shit.” Chester sipped from his fresh drink. “You’re a family man, aren’t you? Got kids? A wife? That’s who I’m worried about. That’s who you should be worried about. You’ve got mouths to feed and you just gave away the best gig of your life.”
Martin bristled. “Don’t tell me how to—”
“Because I’ve been there. I tell you, I’ve been there. And not because I did something as stupid. No, sir. I had the rug yanked out from under me by the goddamn kaiser himself.”
“Okay, Chester. You’ve had enough.”
“Klaus Klemperer,” he said. “Did you know that was my name? My real name? Nobody does, and it’s a good thing, what with the shit that’s about to come raining down in Europe.” Chester swirled the ice in his glass like dice in a cup. “My first band was the biggest thing ever to hit the Jersey Shore. Cape May to the Palisades, Poconos into the Catskills—oh, we were something. Klaus Klemperer and his Royal Bavarian Band. Oompah, waltz, polka, Dixieland—we did it all. This would have been nineteen and thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Sky was the limit, right?” He took another drink. “Wrong. Goddamn Wilson sent the boys over there—‘Over There’!—and in one summer, it was all gone.”
Chester’s eyelids fluttered, and Martin thought for a moment that his brief autobiography would end with a headfirst dive into the darkly polished bar. It was just as well. Hadn’t he been out all day trying to gin up a plan B? He didn’t need life lessons from Chester or Klaus or whoever he was.
“But I got it back,” Chester said, his head snapping to attention. “I got it all back, with interest. You think any of that was easy? Chester Kingsley? The Kensington Hotel? You have no idea what it took to make that happen, you spoiled goddamn brat. You’re marching in the parade at the end of the war but you don’t know the first thing about being a soldier. And now look at you—quitting with no next thing? Tell your wife I’m sorry she married such a Dummkopf.”
“I’m not done yet,” Martin said, more defensively than he’d intended.
“You’re young and you’re stupid,” Chester said, “and you don’t know this, but life will get you. Sooner or later, life will punch you full in the face. It’ll kick you in the balls and clean out your pockets. That’s what life does. So I gotta wonder, why are you doing it to yourself?”
HELL’S KITCHEN
FRANCIS HAD BEEN STEWING in this room for God knows how many hours. It was clear that he wasn’t the first man to be consigned to this ramshackle oubliette: a scuff line along one wall marked where other men had angled their chairs, hoping for a few moments of repose before whatever it was that awaited them. It was equally clear that some men had not bided their time with the composure that Francis sought to affect, or else hadn’t been left alone for quiet contemplation. Another wall was marked with divots in the plaster that roughly matched the circumferences of fists, heels, heads. The concrete floor was spotted with rust-colored drip trails that Francis had at first thought to be paint before realizing their true provenance. The heavy wooden door, which bore no knob on this side, was scratched and scuffed all over with the signs of futile aggression. A single bulb burned overhead.