Viper’s Dream by Jake Lamar EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Jake Lamar
- Language: English
- Genre: Black & African American Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
“TELL ME, VIPER,” THE BARONESS asked, “what are your three wishes?”
I am speaking now of November 1961. It was ’round midnight at the
Cathouse. There must have been about twenty jazzmen scattered around the
place, talking and laughing, drinking and jiving, eating, smoking, toying
with their instruments. One could hear the distant plucking of a bass coming
from one corner of the house, the errant honk of a saxophone echoing from
another, the playful tickling of piano keys. And one could hear a cacophony
of meowing, of purring, of hissing, of claws scratching at the furniture. The
name Cathouse was a double entendre: a home away from home for the
two-legged black cats of the jazz world and the actual home of more than a
hundred furry felines.
The Cathouse belonged to the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter,
“Nica” to her many friends. She was a Rothschild heiress, a blue-blooded
European who had parachuted into the New York jazz scene and become a
sort of patron, protectress, groupie of the bebop generation. She used to
throw all-night party–jam sessions in various luxury Manhattan hotels. It
was fun times till Charlie Parker dropped dead in the baroness’s suite at the
Stanhope. Management was not pleased. That was six years ago. The
ensuing scandal made it impossible for Nica to find a place in the city that
suited her desire for space and all-night jams. So she bought a Bauhausstyle edifice in Weehawken, New Jersey, just across the bridge from
Manhattan, with huge picture windows offering a spectacular view of the
glittering metropolis. Thelonious Monk more or less lived at the Cathouse.
And the guest list of musicians who passed through, stopped by or stayed a
while included the likes of Duke, Satchmo, Dexter, Dizzy, Mingus, Miles,
Coltrane … I could go on. Lots of folks you’ve heard of. Plenty more you
haven’t. This story is about someone you probably haven’t heard of. He
wasn’t a musician but he was as welcome at the Cathouse as any of the
jazzmen. Clyde Morton was his actual name. But just about everybody
called him The Viper.
You may not have heard of him, but you’ve most likely seen him in
grainy black-and-white photographs going back to the 1930s. He’s often
there, hovering in the shadows, at jazz clubs, recording sessions, impromptu
jams, always deep in the background, dressed in a sharp suit, with a sly
smile, pencil-thin moustache, sleek processed hair. You’ve seen him there at
the after-parties, sitting at the far corner of the table, behind the half-empty
liquor bottles, the overflowing ashtrays, and plates filled with chicken
bones. That look of his. Languid yet dangerous. He sits there, a stillness, a
watchfulness about him. There was indeed something reptilian about this
man. Everybody was scared of Clyde “The Viper” Morton. Except for
maybe the baroness.
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