Free Straight No Chaser by Jack Batten Page B

drown in eyes like hers.
    The Volks was parked in a lot on Dundas Street. Dave’s clothes looked rumpled but not as ingrained with dust and grit as my Cy Mann navy blue. Dave and I walked up Bond Street. His hands were conspicuously empty of the gleaming new saxophone case. I asked Dave what had gone on between him and his assailant outside the entrance to the Cameron.
    Dave said, “Enough of this shit.”
    â€œDave,” I said, “I think it’ll help if we discuss your contact with the guy.”
    â€œThat’s what the dude said.”
    â€œâ€˜Enough of this shit?’”
    â€œThat’s it, man.”
    â€œNext thing he made off with your saxophone?”
    â€œMaybe what the dude said was more like, ‘I got no time for this shit.’”
    â€œWhich shit would that be, Dave?”
    â€œAll I know, man,” Dave said, “the dude wasn’t in a mood for hanging out.”
    â€œHe wanted your saxophone?”
    â€œGrabbed my axe and took off up the street.”
    â€œNo more conversation?”
    â€œI went around the corner at the Cameron,” Dave said, “and here’s the dude with this big mother of a two-by-four raised up in the air.”
    â€œWhat next?”
    â€œTwelve stitches and a concussion.”
    Dave and I crossed Shuter and walked past the St. Michael’s Choir School.
    â€œWe got a gap in time and movement between the alley and the hospital,” I said. “What I’d like, Dave, you fill it.”
    â€œCat was loading a bunch of crates in his truck back of the Cameron,” Dave said. “He dumped a crate on me. Surprised hell out of the cat. It’s middle of the night, and me and the two-by-four’s laid out in his truck.”
    â€œThis truck, it have wheels like on a tractor?”
    â€œI wasn’t doing a size survey, man.”
    We cut off Bond Street and across the parking lot. I needed my daily hit of facts. Lawyers live off facts. Raymond Fenk bashed Dave with the two-by-four. He slung Dave in the back of the truck with the monster tires, and when I showed up, he wielded the two-by-four on me. I could figure out that much. Facts have a consecutive beauty. The consecutive part was my difficulty with Dave. He was a lateral thinker. I was a vertical thinker. Clash of two modes. The owner of the truck found Dave and drove him to the hospital. Or called the cops, who did the hospital run. If I wanted the ration of facts that covered events of the previous thirty-six hours, I’d have to wait Dave out. Brother Ralph was more my kind of thinker, painstaking but vertical.
    â€œI wish you’d phoned me from the hospital, Dave,” I said. “Me or Abner Chase or Ralph.”
    â€œI phoned Flip.”
    â€œGood thinking, Dave,” I said. “Who’s Flip?”
    â€œHe’s pushing buttons to get me the loan of an axe till mine comes back,” Dave said. “Flip Bochner.”
    We reached the Volks. Dave groaned a little when he stooped to sit in the passenger seat.
    â€œYou in shape to play?” I asked.
    It was still and quiet inside the car. The bandage on Dave’s head looked more ominous than it had in the hospital waiting room.
    â€œMan,” Dave said. He was facing straight ahead. “How about you drive me to Long & McQuade’s? Be okay?”
    Long & McQuade’s is a music store on Bloor somewhere beyond Bathurst. The parking-lot attendant said I owed him three dollars. I paid and turned left out of the lot and drove west on Dundas.
    â€œThe doctor said it’s cool to blow long’s I take it easy,” Dave said. “I told him, man, I usually do.”
    Dave almost smiled.
    I said, “The guy who did the number on your head is named Raymond Fenk.”
    Dave was silent.
    I said, “He’s in the Hollywood movie business.”
    Nothing from Dave’s side of the car.
    I said, “You were working a club in his neck