Free The Ragtime Fool by Larry Karp Page B

and ragtime, because it all came from Sedalia. Yes! In fact I’m right now in some tough negotiations, trying to get Scott Joplin’s own personal journal from Mrs. Joplin, who lives in Harlem, New York. The reason why it’s tough is that Rudi Blesh is hot to get his hands on it so he can publish it, but I don’t trust him to do it right. He’d put in a whole bunch of his own comments and push Mr. Joplin right off the stage. Now if I can get that journal which tells all about Sedalia and announce at the ceremonies how I’m going to see it gets published, then I think people who make things happen in that city would understand, and get a statue and a museum built to honor Scott Joplin. I need to raise five thousand dollars this week, which I got no idea how I’m going to do it. But if I don’t I figure to die trying, because I owe that to Scott Joplin. Well, Alan, like I said, I was very glad to hear from you, and make sure you practize your piano all you can and keep your nose clean and you will some day be a great ragtime player. Will say so long for now. With my best wishes.
    Sincerly yours
    Brun Campbell
    The old barber dropped the pencil into his lap, then looked over what he’d written, all the while absently massaging the fingers of his right hand. Then he nodded sharp satisfaction, and folded the three sheets of paper into the return envelope with the air mail stamp.
    ***
    At five o’clock, Brun locked the shop, walked to the corner, and dropped his letter into the mailbox. Then he backtracked along Venice Boulevard to the police station, paused a moment outside the door, set his chin, and walked inside.
    Across the lobby, the ruddy-faced desk sergeant looked up from a ledger. Brun walked over to the man. “Detective Bob Magnus in?”
    “What’s the problem?”
    Brun pulled a business card from his shirt pocket, laid it on the desk in front of the sergeant. “He said I should come by today. About a murder.”
    “Okay. What’d you say was your name?”
    “Brun Campbell.”
    The sergeant lifted himself out of his chair, and waddled off down a hall to the left. A couple of minutes later, he was back with the detective, who nodded hello to Brun. “What can I do for you, Mr. Campbell?”
    “You said come by today and you might have some information about Roscoe Spanner.”
    Magnus motioned for Brun to follow him. They walked silently along the hall to the detective’s office, a small room with an institutionally-gray metal desk and chair, and two matching file cabinets. The walls were painted bile-green. On the detective’s desk was a framed photo of a pretty, dark-haired woman with a little girl on her right, a boy on the left. The woman and the girl were smiling, but the boy’s face said he wasn’t giving anything away, smiles included. Brun glanced at Detective Magnus. Chip and block.
    The detective gestured with his head toward the chairs across the desk. Brun lit a cigarette, then blew a cloud of smoke as he sat.
    Magnus pushed an ashtray across the desk, and cleared his throat. “Not a lot I can tell you so far, Mr. Campbell. Your friend broke his neck, not to mention his shoulder and a leg, going down those stairs. He probably died instantly. Nothing anybody could have done for him.”
    “What about your tests for booze?” Brun asked. “In his blood and his stomach?”
    Magnus shrugged. “They don’t do those toxicology tests overnight. Probably be several more days.”
    Brun wondered whether the detective was feeding him a line, but couldn’t think of any way to ask that wouldn’t get him tossed out on his ear.
    “But I do have one thing to tell you.” Magnus leaned across the desk. “We’re trained to do our work, Mr. Campbell, and everything considered, I think we do a decent job. But it usually gets tougher when an amateur tries to give us some help. We got a complaint from a Mr. Horace Randall that you were snooping around there, asking questions. Bothering him.”
    “All I did