Short Stories

Satchmo

            The saxophone seemed to pull his body back and forth. It quickened its rhythm and he quickened his step. He didn't seem to notice as his solitary march gradually kept time to the wild beat. Eventually the music faded off into the distance, and he walked in silence. He was left with a strangely empty feeling in his chest, like something important had been ripped away from him.

He felt a buzz in his pocket.

"Hello? This is Detective Wood," he said, his voice like an intruder to the peacefulness of the rain slick street.

There was some muffled talking on the phone, followed by an anxious plea for him to hurry.

"I'll be there soon," he whispered back, as he hung up.

He put his hands in his trench coat pockets and sighed, muttering something under his breath.

As Wood turned the street corner, he heard the sweet melody of a song that he once knew the name to, from a trumpet in an unknown building.

But unlike him, the trumpet seemed like a welcomed guest into the silence of the night. It was odd; New Orleans wasn't supposed to be quiet like this. As Wood reached his destination, an old candy shop with an apartment on top, he couldn't help but be reminded of all those crime novels. The novels that didn't make sense, were the main character always just seemed to be around a murder, he didn't like them, it was so unrealistic. But he couldn't help but be reminded of them, as the night was oddly silent, like the world had been disturbed by a gruesome murder. He snickered to himself; thinking tonight was the perfect set up for a murder mystery.

The door was open when he got there, and a familiar looking man in a police uniform ushered him over to a dark corner of the candy shop, where blood was splattered on the ground, like an abstract artist who'd taken red paint to canvas.

"The lady who owns this candy shop rents out the upstairs apartments. She left around 9:30 this evening, realized she'd forgotten to lock the door, and came back to lock up. She stepped inside to use the restroom before she left, and she noticed this trail of blood here," the man said pointing at the corner. "She followed it down the stairs and there she saw the body of a young woman, covered in blood at the bottom of the stairs. We haven't touched anything, the chief told us to wait until you got here."

Wood hadn't really been listening, the trumpet music he heard early had gotten louder, and the melody was so familiar to him...

"Alright, thanks," the detective said. "By the way, do you hear trumpet music?"

The man looked confused. "Trumpet music sir? I don't think so."
Wood nodded, thought he was probably just tired, and went down the stairs.

The blood was sprayed all over the walls, in an inhumanly grotesque way. And there at the bottom of the stairs was the body of a young woman; she was wearing a short white dress, almost completely red due to the bloodstains on it. It was torn all over the place. Her mouth was open, blood spilling out from it. A knife lay by her side.

No one else was in the basement, just him and the dead woman. They liked to leave him alone, the police. Yet he couldn't focus on the woman...because the trumpet music was so intense. It sounded like it was coming from inside the room.

Suddenly the basement room grew very cold.

And a man appeared about six feet away from Wood, as he lifted a trumpet from off his lips.

"Hey! How ya doing?" the man said, smiling.

The man looked familiar.

"Now who on earth are you? Didn't they clear everyone out by now?" Wood asked, growing annoyed. This must've been were the music had been coming from. But where had the man been hiding before?
"Haha! They can't get rid of me like that. In fact, you're the only one here who can even see me, how about that!" the man said, grinning.

That's when Wood remembered him. He looked like an old poster of Louis Armstrong he'd seen the other day in a jazz bar.

"Uh...then who are you?" Wood asked, very confused. The dead woman just lay next to Wood's feet, oblivious to anything going on.

"I'm Ol' Satchmo, Louis Armstrong if you'd like," he grinned, his voice famously raspy, "And Mr. Wood, I know exactly what happened to this poor woman here."

He must be imagining things, or the man was insane.

"Oh?" Wood asked, playing along, as he put on gloves and bent down to inspect the woman's injuries.

"Yep. If you looking right below her chest you'll see a knife wound, it punctured her lungs it did. She was beaten a whole ton and then she fell down the stairs. I had to look away at that point, the man beating her was too horrible, I couldn't bare it. When she got to the bottom of the stairs he stabbed her one more time in the stomach, dropping the knife, and running through that back door you might've seen as you came down here."

Detective Wood checked these spots, and indeed the horn player was correct.

"Ok, if you knew all this, who killed her then?" Wood asked the man who claimed to be "Louis Armstrong."

There was a shout from upstairs, "Wood who are you talking to?"

Wood ignored it, intrigued by the mysterious man, who was now sitting crossed legged with his trumpet in his hands.

"Oh that's easy. His name is Richard Bogart. This lady was his mistress, Lucy Fitzgerald," the Armstrong said, fingering his trumpet valves. "If you don't believe me, I'm sure one of the people here could identify her, she was around this building a lot. If you check her right hand you'll see a ring with the initials 'R.B.' stands for Richard Bogart. It's so sad honestly. His old pops was Mr. Bogart, who actually owned this candy shop. It's so sad to see his grandson murdering decent people. Mr. Bogart was such a great cat. He actually bought me this horn here. I guess his grandson never left this buildin' after he sold it." He said, holding up his horn and grinning.

Wood was so confused, but he checked out the things that "Louis" said were there, and indeed they were there. Wood thanked "Louis," went back up the stairs and reported his findings. The next day a man by the name of Richard Bogart was found dead in a public park, he'd killed himself, and a letter found in his pocket confirmed everything that the strange man who claimed to be Louis Armstrong had told Wood.

And one night, as Detective Samuel Wood turned on the car radio, a song played. The same song that had haunted him that night of Lucy Fitzgerald's murder, the song that the man who claimed to be Louis Armstrong had been playing on his trumpet, same bright tone and vibrato that he'd heard that night. And sure enough, the song was "Mack the Knife," played by Satchmo himself.

Wood didn't see this, but If he'd looked back right then, he would've seen the faint ghostlike figure of a man grinning in the back of his car, horn in hand.