“He don’t play nowhere that I know of, not anymore.”
“But he comes around sometimes?” The older man shrugs, cleaning a sticky table with one of the blue rags. “You know where I can find him?”
“Who’s asking?”
“His son’s lawyer,” Jay says, thinking that this might move things along.
Jay had recognized him the second he saw him; the silhouette in the screen door was a near-perfect match for the one on the cover of his one and only album, a shot of the piano player backlit in blue. It’s the ragged expression, the rough, unshaven skin, nearly as gray as the tufts of hair sticking out of the back of his ancient Oilers cap, the deep lines around his eyes that Jay doesn’t recognize, time and circumstance having left a gulf of distance between his face and his older brother’s. He looks a good ten years older than Axel. But it’s A.G. all right, Jay is sure of it, if only because the man is trying so hard to hide it.
“Allan George Hathorne,” Jay says.
A.G. turns slightly, looking up from the janitorial work.
“I owe you money or something?”
“I told you, I’m Neal’s lawyer.”
“And that’s got what exactly to do with me?”
“You read the paper, sir? Your son’s in a lot of trouble.”
“Ain’t seen the boy in twenty years, then all of a sudden you’re the second person in a week to remind me I have a son.” He turns back to his rags.
“That’s right, Neal was here last Tuesday night.”
“So he was.”
“What’d you guys talk about?”
“The weather.”
“What was it, the reason you fell out with Sam? Was it money?”
A.G. points to his bucket of rags, this low-rent gig. “You think I give a shit about money?”
“Must be something, man, to make you disappear like this.”
“Sam’s the one disappeared.”
The words kind of catch Jay funny, filling him with a son’s longing.
“What do you mean?”
He gives a cool shrug. “Nineteen forty-nine was a long time ago.”
Yes, it was, Jay thinks.
Jerome Porter would have been twenty-one years old, if he had lived. Newly married and a young father, he might have made his way to Houston, the big city, hunting one job or another, might have rolled on the tiny hamlet of Pleasantville, a dream on stilts, wood-frame houses going up as fast as savings could be laid down. For a moment, Jay gives in to the fantasy, the boyish wish to rewrite history. He pictures his father scrounging up enough money to put down 10 percent on a future for his wife and child, a glittering city life far from the rural racism that killed him, that left him bleeding on a red-dirt country road.
A.G. dabs at his damp forehead with the back of his hand. “Some part of Sam just never left, those early days, I mean,” he says. “The old way of doing things, with him at the head and everyone else walking two steps behind.”
“Was anyone else here, Tuesday? Anyone else see you and Neal talking?”
“Place don’t open till nine,” A.G. says. “Owner lady, she come to work the bar around ten, sometimes she brings her son. I don’t know no one else to come around. I only been working here a week, won’t be here a week after this.”
“Neal said you had a gig?”
“You’re looking at it.”
Jay watches the man dipping rags in the soapy water, wiping down the tables. “You really don’t play anymore?” he says, finding it hard to believe.
“What you want with me, man?”
“Name’s Jay Porter.”
“Oh, I know who you are. Pleasantville’s savior,” he says mockingly. He stands over the bucket, wringing a stream of gray, steamy water from the rag in his hand. “You ain’t ever gon’ see that money, you know. The chemical company? You ain’t figured it out yet, Mr. Porter, but the game is rigged.”
“This isn’t about me. I’m here for Neal.”
“Murder,” he nods. “I read it.”
“You’re his alibi,” Jay says. “He needs you to vouch for the fact that he was with you last Tuesday night, from sometime after eight until almost nine o’clock, the longer you stretch it the better. I don’t know what you talked about and don’t need to know right now. I just need to know that if asked, you’ll say he was here with you, and that if he was, there was no way he killed that girl.”
“Is Sam paying you?”
“I’m Neal’s lawyer, Mr. Hathorne.”
Taking that for a yes, A.G. says, “Then I don’t want nothing to do with it.”
“This is about your son, not Sam.”
“No, it’s not,” the older man says. “If Sam’s got his hand anywhere in it, then it’s all about him. I can promise you that. Man don’t do nothing if it don’t come back around to helping him. You’re a fool if you think otherwise, a fool to trust a thing out of Sunny’s mouth. I got out, and I’m not looking to go back.”
He dips the rag in the suds again, starts in on another table.
Jay watches the older man, trying to make sense of one of the greatest blues piano players Texas ever created sopping tables, not even fifteen feet from a decent upright. “You know I saw you once, little place down past Edna, right off Highway 59. You played some Wilson ‘Thunder’ Smith, played it hard.”
“Did I now?” A.G. says, showing little interest.
“Belle Blue, that’s one of my all-time favorites.”
“Bring it in, I’ll sign it. Cost you twenty bucks, though.”
“Look, if you don’t want to testify in court, I can get an affidavit at least, get you to sign something saying essentially the same thing about that night.”
A.G. looks up, sighing. “Look, I’m sorry for the boy, I am.”
“Just a time and a place. That’s it. That’s all we need.”
“Huh-uh,” A.G. says, shaking his head.
“We’ll subpoena you either way.”