Songs in the Key of Death by William Bankier Page B

said.
    “I have the cure. Think of you touching me, and then Alvin walking in.”
    The blind jazz pianist was at the keyboard when Dolan entered the lounge. His dog lay at his feet, head down, barely tolerant of what was going on. Jack Danforth, owner of the Coronet, sat at the end of the bar. Dolan placed himself at a corner table, distributed a few waves, and ordered a large brandy-and-soda. He was halfway through it when Carmen appeared, spotted him, hugged the wall on her way to the table, and slipped furtively onto a chair.
    “Are you all right?” he asked her.
    “Do I look all right?”
    He studied her face. It might have been called a swelling on the jaw. “There’s no light in here. Have you been hit?”
    The music climaxed, lots of applause, end of set. Pianist and seeing-eye dog filed out behind Danforth to sit in his office. Carmen was at her most rebellious, a sailor on leave. “I came so close to putting a knife in him, Casey—”
    “Tell me.”
    “It’s one thing when he nags me. That’s what a big brother is for. But when he started in on Peter, I went for him.”
    “Calm down.”
    “All right. All right. Get me a beer.”
    He ordered a Molson and another brandy. The drinks came and they started in on them but she was still taking deep breaths through her nostrils. In this mood, she was more attractive than ever to Dolan.
    “Did he know you were coming out to meet me?”
    “No. I don’t know. I don’t care. Do you care?”
    “I don’t care.”
    “Stop worrying about my brother. I’m over eighteen, I can do whatever I want. There’s not a damn thing Alvin can do about it.”
    Dolan tried to put from his mind thoughts of Alvin Hopkins doing something about it and then being punished for it by a life sentence, with Dolan no longer around to appreciate justice being done. “What made you so mad?” he asked.
    “He said I’m not a responsible person. Without him to look after me, I’d go down the drain. He thinks I should still be at university.”
    Dolan thought so, too, but knew better than to tell the headstrong girl. She was a classic under-achiever. Born with brains to spare and limitless energy, she refused ever to do more than just enough to get by. In Baytown High School, she got top grades while hardly cracking a book. Her brother Alvin, with no encouragement from Carmen, borrowed the money to pay for her first year in an arts course at Queen’s University in Kingston, sixty miles down the road, past Centralia. He bullied her into registering and moving there and attending some lectures. But she only stayed three weeks, arriving back home on the bus, her trunk showing up, rail freight, a few days later.
    The debacle cost Alvin a good part of the money he paid. And when his clever little sister got a job selling dresses at Artistic Ladies Wear, it was almost more than he could bear. The new job writing continuity (whatever that was) at CBAY was an improvement. But still she seemed more interested in going through the motions and having fun than in getting ahead. For a man who used all his limited ability to work his way up through the yards to a job behind a ticket window at the CN station, Carmen’s behavior was calculated to drive him up the wall.
    Dolan said to her, “What did he say about Pete?” Carmen Hopkins’ other brother Peter, known to his friends as Hophead, had killed himself two years ago in a road accident involving his pickup truck and a steel power pylon.
    “He said I’m not just bad for myself, I’m a bad influence on other people. That’s a laugh. Pete was drunk when he showed up that night.”
    “I know.”
    “I couldn’t ask him to stay. It was a girls’ party. And he kept grabbing hold of people, it wasn’t funny. Vera didn’t like him and he kept grabbing hold of Vera.”
    Dolan had heard the story before. “So you ordered him out,” he said gloomily.
    “I whacked him and pushed him out the door and locked it. Then when I went after him, it