The King of Ragtime Read online

  Tabor thought Waterson was sorer about missing the early races than losing the money to Berlin, but fine, all the better. He clapped a hand on Waterson’s shoulder. “Sorry, Henry. We can’t win ‘em all, can we?”

  Both men looked around at the sound of raised voices coming from Reception. Tabor laughed. “Another genius composer, sore that we don’t think his crap is gonna sell a million copies.”

  Waterson snickered, folded his racing form, and walked out.

  Tabor marched down the hall, and into Bookkeeping. Birdie, the assistant bookkeeper, went red and looked away; five’d get you ten she and Niederhoffer had been paying attention to the wrong figures before they heard him coming. “Miss Kuminsky!” he snapped.

  Birdie jumped to her feet; her pen rolled off her desk onto the floor.

  “Go up front and ask Fannie if she’s heard from Sam Goodman today.”

  As the girl flew through the doorway, Tabor strode up to Niederhoffer’s desk and turned a humorless smile on the bookkeeper. “You got it?”

  Without a word, Niederhoffer grabbed a folder, opened it, and handed Tabor several sheets of paper with columns of numbers. Tabor scanned them, chortled, then choked off the sound. “Good work, Niederhoffer—but hear me now, and hear me clear. Not a word of this, not to anyone. That includes your girlfriend.”

  Niederhoffer bit on his upper lip, then looked back to the ledger he’d been working on, but Tabor interrupted him. “Niederhoffer!”

  The bookkeeper looked up.

  “Do you understand me?”

  Niederhoffer set down his pencil with exaggerated care. “Yes, sir, I understand. I speak pretty good English for a greeny. What’s on those papers is none of my business.”

  Tabor smirked. “Boy, one day that temper is going to get you into some real trouble. Listen—you’re going to have to stay after hours tonight to get the monthly sales figures caught up. I’ll see that you get overtime.” Tabor waved the papers. “I appreciate this.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Niederhoffer’s words lacked enthusiasm, but he did feel some considerable satisfaction, and why not? It was no secret in the office that Mr. Waterson had a lot more interest in cards and ponies than in music, and Niederhoffer had just given Tabor solid evidence that Waterson was regularly raking money off the top, probably to pay gambling debts. That should be worth something, somewhere, to someone. He’d keep his ears open.

  ***

  By five o’clock, Scott Joplin’s locked room was a pressure cooker. The composer pushed away from the piano, wiped his face with a handkerchief, filled a dirty glass from a pitcher of luke-warm water, took a long swallow. He gazed at the music rack on his piano, ground his teeth. This symphony was harder going than he’d anticipated. He’d learned symphonic music, form and structure, first from Mr. Weiss in Texarkana, then at General Smith’s College in Sedalia, but the minute he sat at the piano and tried to write down his Symphony Number One, his knowledge seemed to drain out of his head. The notes he put down on paper didn’t hang together the way he wanted. He walked to the window, stared into the street, where a bunch of kids had opened a hydrant and were running around, screaming and laughing, under the cascades of water. “The Cascades”…St. Louis World’s Fair. That rag came to him so easily, it practically wrote itself. They all did back then, but no more. The composer felt panic grip his heart as he remembered his friend, Louis Chauvin, shortly before he died, when his disease had filled his mind with garbage.

  He forced himself back to the piano, played a few notes, but then heard Lottie’s voice. “Scott…Scott! Come on, now, Scott, open up. He ain’t gonna wait forever.”

  Who’s not gonna wait forever? Then he realized he’d only thought it, hadn’t said it out loud. “Who’s not gonna wait forever, Lottie?”

  “Irving Berlin. He’s on the phone for you. Now, would you come on out of there and talk to the man.”

  Joplin was through the doorway in a flash, up the stairs, into the hall. The telephone receiver hung from its cord like a lifeless thing. The composer snatched it up. “Hello, yes. Mr. Berlin?”

  “That’s right. How you doing, Scott?”

  “Fine, just fine. I’m working at my Symphony Number One. It’s going to be good. Really good.”

  “Glad to hear that. Look, I’m calling about your musical.”

  Joplin couldn’t talk. His muscles froze; he couldn’t draw breath.

  “You there, Scott?”

  He managed a choked, “Yes.”

  “All right then, listen. I think it’s got some possibilities, I want to talk to you about it. Can you come on down?”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, now. Is that a problem?”

  “No. No problem at all. I’ll be right there.”

  “Good. See you soon. Just come on in, I’ll keep an ear out for you.”

  Joplin hung up the receiver, dashed back into the apartment. Lottie gave him a curious look. He took hold of her by the shoulders.

  “Hey, easy, Scott, you hurtin’ me.”

  He let go, then grasped her again, this time as if she might have been made of glass. “Berlin likes it, Lottie. He says he thinks it’s got real possibilities, and he wants to talk to me about it.”

  Lottie’s smile was cautious. “Well, that does sound good, all right. When you goin’?”

  “Now. He says come on down right now.”

  “Now? You sure that what he say?”

  “Lottie, my ears still work all right. He says he wants to see me now.”

  “It’s past five. Don’t you think maybe you ought to wait till tomorrow, so Martin’ll be there? Or maybe—”

  “What am I supposed to do, woman? Tell Irving Berlin I can’t come and talk to him without having his bookkeeper there in the room? Now, let me be. Time’s wasting.”

  She sighed, then took him by the arm, motioned him toward the bathroom. “All right, Scott, if that’s what you want. But you’re not going down there looking like a colored beggar off the street. You are going to let me give you a shave, and put a clean court plaster on your forehead, and then you’re going to wash up and change into your good suit. Won’t take but fifteen minutes, if you don’t argue. Come on.”

  ***

  Bartlett Tabor stepped lively up from the subway station, and across Seventy-second Street. Not a woman under sixty failed to give him the eye as he went past, but he was used to that. What could he say, the ladies loved him, with his wide shoulders, dark eyes, long lashes and heavy eyebrows. They couldn’t seem to keep their fingers out of the dimple in his chin—not that he ever tried to stop them. He glanced at the manila folder in his left hand, and smiled as he thought how well his plan was working out. ‘Berlin, Snyder, and Tabor’ had a nice ring. As he looked up, still smiling, he caught the eye of a delicious little thing in a pretty white summer dress, then chuckled as he watched her blush. If he weren’t otherwise engaged…but he was. The girlies would have to wait.

  He crossed West End Avenue and hurried on along Seventy-second to the end of the block. There, he turned left under the awning at the doorway to the Chatsworth Apartments. The doorman, a slightly-built Negro in a red uniform with gold trim, and a little circular hat to match, grinned, bowed, then opened the glass door. “’Afternoon, sir. Goin’ up to see Mr. Berlin?”

  Tabor nodded.

  Less than two minutes later, he was on the fifth floor, knocking at Berlin’s door. Practically before his hand was off the brass lion’s-head, the door opened and there stood Robert Miras, Berlin’s valet, looking down his long, slim nose at Tabor in that infuriating way of his. Too bad the lousy bum-sucker was Berlin’s property. Tabor would’ve loved to give him a good what-for.

  “I’m sorry,” Miras said through his nose. “Mr. Berlin is not available at the moment.”

  Tabor narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘he’s not available at the moment?’ This is the ‘moment’ he told me to come. I’ve got to talk to him, it’s importan
t.” Tabor brandished the folder. “He’s not going to like it if he finds out you’re the reason I couldn’t show him this.”

  “I’m sure it really is very important, Mr. Tabor. But Mr. Ziegfeld needed to see Mr. Berlin urgently, about The Century Girl. You know, the musical he’s working—”

  “Yes, I know about The Century Girl. I’m his office manager.”

  Miras’ face suggested that Tabor might have just said it was a nice day. The valet extended a hand. “I’ll be glad to give it to Mr. Berlin as soon as he returns.”

  Tabor pulled the folder away, started to step inside. “I’ll wait.”

  Miras glided a step to the left, blocking Tabor’s path. “He has an interview scheduled for when he gets back, and then he and Mr. Hess are going to dinner and a show. If you wish to leave the material with me, he should be able to look it over later and get back to you in the morning. But if you’d rather make an appointment for tomorrow, I’ll be glad to consult his calendar.”

  Tabor fought an intense desire to punch the supercilious bastard square on the snoot. Miras’ faint smile said he knew exactly what Tabor would like to do, and more, knew he never would. Finally, Tabor thrust the folder at Miras, who gathered it up and slipped it under an arm. Tabor jabbed a finger. “Be careful. Make sure you don’t drop any of those papers.”

  Miras pulled himself up to his full height. “Mr. Tabor, I do not occupy my position because I’m in the habit of being careless.” Then he shut the door—not gently—in Tabor’s face.

  As he stormed out of the building, past the doorman, the office manager’s mood was 180 degrees from what it had been when he came in. All along Seventy-second Street, people moved aside to let him pass. No admiring looks from women, or anyone else. When he got to Broadway, he stopped short of the subway entrance, and shaded his eyes to look down the street. Three doors down, a bar and grill, praise the Lord. Tabor hustled down the sidewalk and inside, slumped on a stool at the far end of the bar, ordered bourbon and water, knocked it down in one swallow, then ordered another. A man sitting three stools away moved another five seats down.

  ***

  Martin Niederhoffer pushed back from his ledger, rubbed his eyes, pounded a fist onto the account book. From a chair next to the little desk, Sid Altman reached to steady the glass inkwell that Martin had set into a dance. “Jeez, Martin, take it easy, huh? How’s it gonna help if you spill ink on the books and you’ve got to start all over?”

  Martin stood and stretched. He and Sid had been pals all through school, spent as much time in each other’s apartments as in their own. Sid was a chunky towhead, so affable that Martin sometimes wanted to slug him. Like right then. “Sidney, have you ever gotten sore at someone? Just once in your life?”

  Sid chuckled, gave a mild shrug. “I guess so. But not too sore, or for very long.”

  The mildness in his friend’s large brown eyes was like iodine on a cut on Niederhoffer’s finger. “You like to let people walk all over you? You like it when your boss screws you around?”

  Another shrug. “That’s what bosses do, Martin. Dogs pee on fire hydrants. Cows do their business in a pasture. No point losing sleep over it.”

  Martin shook his head. “Damn Mr. Tabor! He’s a trash can with legs. I spent most of the day getting him his evidence that Mr. Waterson’s raking off profits from the business, so what was my reward? I get to stay late to catch up the monthly sales numbers. Tabor’ll give me overtime, big deal. When he comes by to check me out, he’ll make sure he doesn’t overpay by a nickel.”

  Altman smiled. “Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

  Martin winced. “I’m talking to a wall. Maybe that’d be fine for you, Sid, but I’m not going to spend my life being grateful I didn’t get poked in the eye. Give me a few years and see if I’m still sitting here, adding up columns of numbers and saying, ‘Thank you, sir,’ for every piece of crap Tabor pushes in my face. I’m learning this business from the inside…matter of fact, I got something in the works right now.” Martin paused, glanced around. “My piano teacher, Mr. Joplin? Wrote ‘Maple Leaf Rag?’ Well, he just finished a musical play, and I talked him into letting me help him sell it to Mr. Berlin, ’cause Mr. Berlin’s getting into the theater in a big way. He wrote scores for two Broadway shows in the last two years, and right now he’s working on one for Florenz Ziegfeld. And, he just opened up a new office, his own place, for show-tune music. So, I got to thinking about what Mr. Berlin could do for a Scott Joplin musical, and what a production of a Scott Joplin musical could do for Mr. Berlin’s new company.”

  Sid’s usual bland smile went sly. “And there’s nothing in it for you, right?”

  Martin leaned toward him as if spies might be outside, ears against the wall. “I’ll tell you what’s in it for me. Part of the deal’s got to be that I’m an assistant to the producer, and then I’ll put what I learn about the theater together with what I’m learning about publishing, and who knows? Sid, for crying out loud, this is America. You gotta be a go-getter. When people see how sharp you are, then they want you on their team. And then…” Martin poked a finger into his friend’s chest. “Then, Sid, you get enough money and enough know-how, you get your own team. Niederhoffer Music. That’s for me.”

  Through Martin’s little speech, Sid nodded and smiled, smiled and nodded. Then he said, “Well, okay. What’s this big musical about?”

  “What’s any musical about? They sing, they dance, lots of pretty girls wearing not a whole lot of costumes. What do you mean, ‘about’?”

  “Is it any good?”

  Martin paused. “Well, sure it’s good. Didn’t I tell you, Scott Joplin wrote it? How can it not be good? He’s just finishing it up now, and when he’s done, we’ll make an appointment and go pitch it to Mr. Berlin.”

  Sid laughed. “In other words, you haven’t seen it?”

  Martin stomped to the window, stared at the crowds flowing along the sidewalks. Like sheep, he thought. They move this way, then the other, never even think about where they’re going and where they’re gonna end up. He spun around. “I’ll see it soon enough, Sid. And when you’re still stacking fruit and vegetables in a grocery, you’ll come and visit me in my own office, giving orders to other people. I’ll buy you lunch.”

  Sid just smiled. “And I’ll bring you a box of raspberries.” He pushed back his sleeve, checked his watch. “After five-thirty already. Birdie went on home?”

  Martin grimaced. “Yeah, her old man makes sure of that. She left right before you got here.”

  “Hey, Martin, I know it’s none of my business, but you’re really sure about getting married? You’re only twenty-four. And she’s what, seventeen?”

  Martin felt the familiar glow come over his face. Was love at first sight for real? Certainly seemed to be, at least for him. He wasn’t much on going to religious services, but one Friday evening last winter, his mother pleaded hard and long, and he finally gave up, agreed to go. And guess what. God rewarded him. After services, outside the synagogue, he caught sight of this marvelous girl, took two seconds to compose himself, then walked over and said hello. Before they were done talking, he’d invited her to go with him the next night to the New Amsterdam Theatre and see Around the Map, Klaw and Erlanger’s latest. She loved it, hummed “Here Comes Tootsie” all the way home. She was working in a shirtwaist factory, she told him, and hated the job, the boss, the older women, the whole works. Martin couldn’t believe his luck. The assistant bookkeeper at Waterson, Berlin, and Snyder had just gotten herself pregnant and quit. So two days later, Birdie was set up in Martin’s own office, five days a week. Within three months, never mind their parents’ objections, the two had an understanding.

  He knew he had a goofy grin all over his face, couldn’t help it. “Yeah, Sid, I’m sure. I’ve never known a girl like her. She’s smart, she’s pretty, she cooks like an angel. And I can’t figure where somebody only seventeen got such great common sense. If I let h
er get away, I’ll hate myself the rest of my life. What I’ve been telling you about getting my own business, that’s not just for me. She doesn’t deserve to hear for the rest of her life about how my boss said jump and I had to ask him how high and how many times.”

  Sid laughed easily. “Relax, Martin. Okay, you’re in love, it’s wonderful—but come on, it’s getting late. Go finish your columns before your boss gets back. We don’t want to miss the fights, and besides, I’m hungry.”

  Martin fluttered a long breath through his lips, ran fingers through his red hair, squeezed at his scalp. “Yeah…okay. Just gimme a couple of minutes. I got myself so worked up, I need to take a leak. Be right back.”

  Sid sat on Martin’s stool. “Go pee. I’ll check your numbers for you, make sure you didn’t get so worked up you added two and two, and got five.”

  ***

  Martin strolled down the long hallway, past the bosses’ offices, through Reception. Days, you couldn’t hear yourself think in that place, and now, the quiet seemed unnatural. He dragged his feet all the way to the mens’ room, started toward the urinal, but decided he needed a sit-down in a stall. When he finished, he buttoned up, walked to the sink, washed his hands, then bent down and splashed cold water on his face. It felt so good, he kept at it, paid no mind to the water running down inside his shirt. Finally, he wiped his face on his sleeve, took another look down through the opened window at the packed herds, shifting and flowing along the sidewalk. “I’m not gonna be like them,” he muttered.

  Sid’s voice came from within Martin’s head. “So what’re you gonna do? Stand around in a toilet, and then one day, by some kind of magic, you’re gonna be a big shot?”

  Martin closed his eyes. “All right. Okay. I’m gonna have those goddamn numbers done in jig time, you just watch.” He pushed through the doorway, started back to his office.

  ***

  Scott Joplin strode past the Strand Theatre, glanced up at the blank marquee, then remembered the polio epidemic that had closed New York theaters for the summer. Well, that would be over in a few weeks, and maybe after that, some marquee in town was going to read, IF, THE NEW MUSICAL. BY SCOTT JOPLIN. And maybe in just a few minutes, he was going to find out which marquee.