Under his self-proclaimed banner, “Mad Marty Goines & His Horn of Plenty,” he’d gigged briefly with Stan Kenton; in 1941, he pulled a tour with Wild Willie Monroe. There were a whole stack of pages detailing pickup band duty in ’42, ’43 and early ’44– one-night stands with six- and eight-man combos playing dives in the San Fernando Valley. Only the bandleaders and/or club managers who did the hiring were listed on the employment sheets–there was no mention of other musicians.
Danny closed the folder; the woman said, “Bubkis, am I right?”
“You’re right. Look, do you think any of these guys around here might have known–I mean know–Marty Goines?”
Side 39
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The
“I can ask.”
“Do it. Would you mind?”
The woman rolled her eyes up to heaven, drew a dollar sign in the air and pointed to her cleavage. Danny felt his hands clenching the edge of the counter and smelled last night’s liquor oozing out of his skin. He was about to come on strong when he remembered he was on City ground and his CO’s shit list.
He fished in his pockets for cash, came up with a five and slapped it down. “Do it now.”
The slattern snapped up the bill and disappeared behind the filing cabinets. Danny saw her out on the sidewalk a few seconds later, talking to the bottle gang, then moving to the doughnut and coffee crowd. She zeroed in on a tall Negro guy holding a bass case, grabbed his arm and led him inside. Danny smelled stale sweat, leaves and mouthwash on the man, like the knee-length overcoat he was wearing was his permanent address. The woman said, “This is Chester Brown. He knows Marty Goines.”
Danny pointed Brown to the nearest row of chairs. Miss Hepcat went back to her counter and the bass man shuffled over, plopped down and whipped out a bottle of Listerine. He said, “Breakfast of champions,” gulped, gargled and swallowed; Danny sat two chairs over, close enough to hear, far away enough to defuse the stink. “Do you know Marty Goines, Chester?”
Brown burped and said, “Why should I tell you?”
Danny handed him a dollar. “Lunch of champions.”
“I feed three times a day, officer. Snitching gives me an appetite.”
Danny forked over another single; Chester Brown palmed it, chugalugged and patted the Listerine bottle. “Helps the memory. And since I ain’t seen Marty since the war, you gonna need that memory.”
Danny got out his pen and notepad. “Shoot.”
The bass man took a deep breath. “I gigged pickup with Marty, back when he called himself the Horn of Plenty. Hunger huts out in the Valley when Ventura Boulevard was a fuckin’ beanfield. Half the boys toked sweet lucy, half took the needle route. Marty was strung like a fuckin’ dog.”
So far, his seven-dollar story was running true–based on Goines’ union jacket and what he knew of his criminal record. “Keep going, Chester.”
“Weeell, Marty pushed reefers–not too good, since I heard he did time for it, and he was a righteous boss mothafuckin’ burglar. All the pickup boys that was strung was doin’ it. They’d grab purses off of barstools and tables, get the people’s addresses and swipe their house keys while the bartender kept them drinkin’. One set you’d have no drummer, one set no trumpet, and so forth,
’cause they was utilizizin’ their inside skinny to be burglarizizin’ the local patrons. Marty did lots of that, solo stuff, steal a car during his break, burglarizize, then be back for his next set. Like I tol’ you, he was a righteous boss mothafuckin’ burglar.”
Righteous new stuff–even to an ex-car thief cop who thought he knew most of the angles. “What years are you talking about, Chester? Think hard.”
Brown consulted his Listerine. “I’d say this was goin’ on from summer of
’43 to maybe sometime in ’44.”
Goines copped his second marijuana beef in April of ’44. “Did he work alone?”
“You mean on the burglarizizin’?”
“Right. And did he have running partners in general?”
Chester Brown said, ” ‘Cept for this one kid, the Horn of Plenty was a righteous loner. He had this sidekick, though–a white blondy kid, tall and shy, loved jazz but couldn’t learn to play no instrument. He’d been in a fire and his face was all covered up in bandages like he was the fuckin’ mummy. Just a fuckin’ kid– maybe nineteen, twenty years old. Him and Marty pulled a righteous fuckin’ fuckload of burglaries together.”