Bix’s Angel

by Bob Brill

Chapter 1
Chapter 2, part 2
appear in this issue.

Chapter 2: 1945

part 1 of 2

Duke was walking along Seventh Avenue humming a song when two little white men in bowler hats approached and blocked his path. “Excuse me,” said Duke as he tried to brush past them.

“Duke,” said one of the little men, “we need your help. Would you please come with us?” He indicated a dark blue Packard sedan parked at the curb.

“Sorry,” replied Duke, “but I’m on my way to a rehearsal. Some other time perhaps.”

“This is the time, now is the time,” said the little man, who drew a small revolver from his pocket and pressed it into Duke’s ribs.

“You’re very persuasive,” said Duke. “How could I think of refusing you?”

Duke soon found himself squeezed between the two men in bowler hats in the back seat of the Packard, which then pulled out into the traffic. The driver was likewise a little man in a bowler hat. Kneeling on the seat by the driver, facing Duke, was, yes, another diminutive man in a bowler hat who began to speak.

“Duke, we have been working behind the scenes since 1926 to further your career, paving the way for you, lining up the breaks in your favor and all for a very important reason. Now comes the payoff for all our work.”

“You astonish me,” said Duke. “If this is so, then how come I’ve never seen you before or heard of your benevolent efforts?”

“In your case it was better we work behind the scenes. You didn’t need a nursemaid like that fellow Bix. We knew you could handle the breaks if they came your way.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” said Duke, “but somehow I’m not convinced. And what does this have to do with Bix?”

“Bix is beside the point. Dead you know. But the truth is we set you up in the Cotton Club in ’27. That was just for starters.”

“How do you figure? We auditioned for that job.”

“Joe Oliver was offered the job before you. He turned it down after we put the word in his ear that they weren’t offering him enough money. To his everlasting regret he listened to us. Then Sam Wooding was offered the job. We convinced him that Harlem was not the lucky spot for him, that he should hold out for a Broadway locale.

“Only then did they decide to hold auditions. You may remember that your band was late in arriving. That gave us a real problem since six bands had auditioned before you showed up. But we managed to delay the arrival of Harry Block, the one guy whose word mattered, and the only band he heard was yours. So whether you believe it or not that’s how you got your start at the Cotton Club.”

“And here I always thought that was just my lucky day.”

“Actually, now that I think about it, that wasn’t the first thing we did for you. We brought you together with Irving Mills.”

“Oh, am I supposed to thank you for that?”

“Face it, Duke, he put your career on the fast track. If you had problems with him later on, and you had to dump him, well that doesn’t mean he wasn’t important to you.”

“Touché, old boy.”

“Mills was the only person in your entourage that knew about us. We found it convenient to work through him and it made it easier for us to let him in on the truth. You might say he was one of us.”

“Oh really. They say I have a great sense of humor, but now you’re getting me annoyed. What do you want with me?” Duke saw that they had pulled into the queue of cars waiting to disgorge passengers at Pennsylvania Station.

“Okay, this is not going to be easy. You don’t believe what I’ve told you so far. You’re going to find this even harder to believe. But you are entitled to know.” The speaker paused, trying to choose his words, but there was no way to blunt their effect. “We take human form when we’re here on Earth, but we are members of an ancient civilization from the stars.”

“Oh, that’s cute,” said Duke. “You sure had me fooled. Your costumes are just perfect.”

“Of course,” replied the man, tipping his bowler hat. “Naturally, we can’t afford to stand out.”

“I have to admit you took me by surprise. If I had to guess what you were going to say, I never would have guessed that.”

“It’s like this, Duke. From time to time the mechanism of the universe gets out of alignment. The supreme purpose of my race is to make the necessary adjustments to put the universe back into perfect working order. If the universe should get too far out of alignment it would fall into irremediable chaos. I don’t have time to explain the finer points. I’ll just say that on this occasion you, Edward Kennedy Ellington, need to be at a certain place at a certain time. The energy of your genius, properly leveraged, will put the universe back on track.”

Duke stared at his interlocutor. Finally he said, “You leave me speechless.” What he was thinking was, I have fallen into the hands of a bunch of nutcakes. At the same time he realized that if they believed what they were saying, they were not going to shoot him. Why, the universe might collapse without him.

The car pulled up to the curb. The driver jumped out and ran around the car opening the doors. The three other bowler hats climbed out. Duke just sat there. “Come on, Duke, we’ve got a train to catch.”

“Not me,” said Duke.

“Yes, you,” said the one with the gun.

“You won’t shoot me,” said Duke. “Not when the universe is spinning off course.”

“I wouldn’t think of killing you,” said the gunman, “but I wouldn’t mind shooting off one of your fingers.”

“That’s clever,” said Duke, slowly getting out of the car. “You boys continue to amaze me.”

The driver saluted and climbed back into the Packard. Duke, closely surrounded by the other three, entered the station. They soon found their way to the huge room along whose borders were arrayed the gates to the various train platforms. Duke looked around him, noticing that the great hall was filled with what seemed to be ordinary sane people going about their business. He felt cut off from all that and longed to join them.

Then he noticed that one of the gates was partly closed. By it stood the gatekeeper, a black man in uniform, who was alternately glancing at his watch and looking beyond the gate where Duke could see a train ready for departure, a conductor waving a flag. The gatekeeper seemed anxious to close the gate. Maybe he’s getting ready for his break, thought Duke.

He saw that there were a lot of people moving in all directions between him and the gate. They wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot at him. Suddenly he tore loose from his captors and broke into a run. As he approached the gate, running hard, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and extracted his wallet. The gatekeeper looked up and cried, “Duke Ellington!”

“I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you’ll close this gate behind me.” He fumbled for a bill, two came out, he pressed them both into the astonished gatekeeper’s hand and kept running. “God bless you,” cried Duke without looking back. “Close that gate.” The gatekeeper complied and Duke ran for the train.

“I could wing him now,” said the gunman as Duke’s pursuers reached the gate.

“No,” said the leader. “Too many witnesses. That will delay us, maybe stop us. We’ll go back to HQ and beam onto the train.”

The gunman pointed his weapon at the gatekeeper. “Open the gate.”

“It’s too late,” said the gatekeeper, who had his hand in his pocket, clutching the two hundred dollar bills. Ignoring the gun and deliberately misunderstanding, he added, “You’ve missed the train. There’ll be another train at two forty-five.”

“He’s right,” said the leader. “Let’s go.” And to the astonishment of the gatekeeper, all three of them disappeared.

Duke flagged down the conductor who was just then closing the door. “Wait for me,” cried Duke. The conductor reopened the door and Duke hustled aboard. He found his way into a compartment and flopped down into a seat with a big sigh as he felt the train start to roll forward.

Only then did he wonder where the train was going.

After a time Duke noticed that a certain rhythm was dancing through his head, inspired by the sound and feel of the train rumbling over the tracks. A melody formed in his mind that rode on that rhythm like a graceful black waiter in a white uniform gliding down the aisle of a rocking dining car, balancing a heavy tray of food and drink in one upraised hand. Duke reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a sheet of music paper, started writing down his new composition.

He had barely sketched it in when a little man in a bowler hat came walking up the aisle.

“Agent Gvedn at your service,” said the little man. “May I join you, Duke?”

“You may as well,” said Duke with a sigh. He patted the seat next to him and Gvedn adroitly swung himself into it. “How did you get here?” asked Duke. “You’re not one of them. You’re another one.”

“No, I’m not one of them. I’m not with them, of them or for them. I’ve come to rescue you, Duke.”

“I don’t get it.”

“We don’t have much time. I’d better begin by disabling the tracking device. Would you mind removing your jacket and passing it to me?”

Duke gave the man a suspicious look. “My jacket?”

“Your jacket, yes. There’s a tiny radio transmitter in there. That’s what enables them to keep tabs on you. Tells them where you are at all times. We get rid of that, we can get rid of them. Hand it over, Duke. I’ll show you.”

Duke stood up, removed his wallet from the inside pocket, slipped off his jacket, and handed it to the little man. He sat back down and watched as Gvedn pulled out a small sewing kit and quickly, skillfully opened a seam in the lining of the jacket and withdrew a metal disk about the size of a nickel. “This is it,” he said.

He placed it on the floor and smashed it with the butt of a revolver. Then to Duke’s surprise he quickly sewed up the seam and returned the jacket to Duke. Duke saw that it was beautifully repaired.

“How can a radio transmitter fit inside a thing that size?”

“Off world technology. Way in advance of Earth radio.”

“To tell the truth, my friend, if you are my friend, I don’t understand anything that’s happened to me since this morning when two little thugs dressed just like you forced me into a car.”

“Didn’t they tell you anything?”

“Oh sure they did. Said they were straightening out the kinks in the universe, needed my help. Oh yes and all about how they set me up in the music business. Got me my big break at the Cotton Club.”

“It’s all more or less the truth, Duke. Except they left out a few things, mainly that once your energy is tapped for the adjustment it’s going to leave you rather drained. You’ll still be alive, maybe, but your creativity will be totally dried up, your career finished. All that creative juice that makes you special will have been siphoned into pushing the universe back on course. I look at your face and I see that I’m going to have to tell you a whole lot more. We don’t have much time, so I’ll try to be brief.”

Proceed to chapter 2, part 2...