Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

Backroom Boys by Peter Sellers

Copyright © 2006 Peter Sellers

Art by Mark Evan Walker

A former EQMM Readers Award winner, an esteemed editor of mystery anthologies, and a driving force behind several conventions and banquets for Canadian crime writers, Peter Sellers is one of the best known if least prolific of current writers. His rare short stories are always a treat. Over the past year the author’s energy has gone to restoring his 100-year-old home (not to mention his advertising career) but he plans to begin writing more soon.

At one-thirty, after the Backroom had closed, Kevin served us draft beer in coffee cups. We could have swilled from bottles because no cops ever came, but Kevin had been well brought up and liked to break the law discreetly.

The Backroom was a live music club at the rear of a rib-and-burger joint on Bloor Street, across the road from the Royal Conservatory of Music. I didn’t work there myself. I had a job in a bookstore up at Yonge and St. Clair. But I was drinking a fair amount in those days and the Backroom was as good a place as any to do it. The music was okay most of the time. Occasionally Kevin would slip me free food. And it seemed like a good place to meet chicks.

Sometimes, after hours, the musicians would stick around, try out new tunes and tell stories about life on the road. When they talked about the number of girls they’d had I got to wishing I could play an instrument. Unfortunately, I wasn’t musical. In Grade Four, when every kid had to be in the choir, the teacher took me aside and told me just to mouth the words.

The musicians would describe gigs they played, from yacht-club dances to bars in Northern Ontario with screens in front of the stage to protect them from beer bottles and draft glasses. One balladeer, who sang of peace and romantic love, was booked into such a place by an unhappy accident. When the bottles wouldn’t reach him, the locals pressed their faces against the screen and spat.

“Thank you,” he’d say after each booed song. “I’m so glad you liked that one. Here’s another new tune you might enjoy.”

Kevin had been running the Backroom since spring. He had made the leap from waiter to manager on the strength of one stroke of good fortune. His girlfriend had previously gone out with the piano player in a local bar band. This group, Jerry Spoon and the Tectonic Plates, played three nights a week at the Victoria Hotel, a run-down beer joint at Queen and Soho. The residents of the hotel sat at a round table in front of the stage getting drunk. The rest of the crowd was loud and mostly pissed, and the owner, a former CFL fullback, kept in shape by throwing rowdies out. Jerry and the band wanted a better gig. Kevin saw his opportunity.

The Backroom’s budget for music was four hundred bucks a week. For one guy and a guitar, that wasn’t bad. For a five-piece band, it was laughable, even in 1977. But Jerry and the boys were so anxious to get out of the Victoria that they took the offer with little haggling. The usual working week was Tuesday to Saturday, four sets a night, from nine to one. The Plates wouldn’t play Tuesday and they got all the food and beer they could consume. That was sure to add up to more than four hundred dollars, but Kevin figured it was worth it.

From the first Wednesday night, the Backroom was jammed. Spoon and the Plates drew students from University of Toronto residences and from the frat houses of the Annex, all within easy crawling distance. There was no cover, and the beer prices weren’t bad.

That week the owners made more money than they ever had in one week before. They thanked Kevin by telling him to make sure it continued.

The first thing he did was to offer the Plates two more weeks. Over the previous seven days, Jerry had become a much shrewder businessman. The band agreed, for eight hundred a week.

With the success of the Plates, people started paying attention to the Backroom. Singers phoned looking for gigs. Kevin didn’t have to settle for whoever he could get. He was able to hire some of the brightest lights of the Canadian folk scene. Jackie Washington played the Backroom. So did David Wilcox, Willie P. Bennett, and a fourteen-year-old guitar hotshot who had to be smuggled in the back door and who filled the place by word of mouth.

Kevin would bring in the odd classical player from the Conservatory. There was a wicked lutist named Geordie, some impressive violin players, and the occasional classical guitarist who had chops, but none of them was as good a draw as the folk and blues musicians. The classical players didn’t have loyal fans that would come and drink too much.

Someone who did have fans was Tom Lieberman.

Tom had been front man for a legendary local rock band that almost made it big. An excellent guitar player with a powerful, quirky voice, he wrote songs that were too offbeat for AM radio play. But the group got a lot of local club gigs and for a while was the house band at a local strip joint in the days of G-strings and an emcee between peelers.

When the band came apart, Tom took an acoustic guitar and reinvented himself as a folk club and coffeehouse performer. Like the Plates, Tom had a dedicated cult following. He was also newly back in town after eight months in Vancouver. Kevin reasoned that people who hadn’t heard Tom for a while would jump at the chance.

Tom had surprised Kevin with his phone call. “This is Lieberman.”

Kevin stayed professional. “Uh-huh,” he said.

“I want to play at your establishment,” Tom said. “I understand you pay four hundred dollars. That’s fine. Next week suits me.”

Kevin had a female duo booked for the following week. I was keen on the tambourine player. “I have something lined up,” said Kevin, who was a good friend.

“I’m sure you can be very persuasive,” Tom replied.

Kevin shifted the booking by giving the duo a second week and the promise of more time down the road. When he called Tom back to confirm, the singer said, “Good. I’ll take cash in advance.”

Kevin figured that having Tom on the bill was going to be a good thing, so he said yes. Having the tambourine player around for a second week made me happy, too. Kevin was a good pal.

It was obvious that Tom didn’t want to be a singer anymore. His deal called for four sets of at least thirty minutes each. He timed each set to the second. Sometimes he’d check his watch in the middle of a tune, see that his half-hour was up, and stop playing. “That’s enough of that delightful ditty,” he’d say, and he’d leave the bandstand.

Behind the restaurant was a small employees-only parking lot with a larger public parking lot behind that. A low wooden fence divided the two lots and, on nights when the weather was good, Tom would perch there between sets and talk if someone else was there, or write if he was alone.

While out west Tom had published a collection of delicate poems called Lover Man. Gerald Haney, in the Toronto Star, said the book contained “luminous poems of lust and yearning.” There was a rave in the Globe and Mail and Now claimed it was “a profound work of deep insight that stands with the best of Leonard Cohen and Gwendolyn McEwen.”

Tom did readings whenever he could, selling copies from the stage. But it was hardly a living. The only other marketable skill he had was making music. So he played as infrequently as possible. Kevin was one of the few people who would give Tom work on his terms.

One night, a woman came in and sat at the table in the corner farthest from the bar. Tom was tuning his guitar and did not notice her. But I did. Even though the corner was dimly lit, I could tell she was good-looking. I went over to her table.

“Can I sit here?” I asked.

Her eyes were fixed on Tom. “I’m with the band,” she said. I thought she was joking. Friends of band members always sat near the stage. But Tom never had girlfriends or groupies come out when he was playing. He was strictly business.

I looked at Tom, on his stool with a quart of Old Vienna on the floor beside him, as he plunked and bellowed. I looked at the woman again, but the way she was watching Tom told me my prospects were slim. I left. I doubt she noticed.

After the set, I went out back. “There’s somebody here to see you,” I said to Tom.

“They’re all here to see me.”

“I don’t think she’s just anybody.” I described her.

“Where is she sitting?” As I told him, he took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. I looked at my watch. It was time for Tom to go back on. Scrupulous as he was about ending his sets on the dot, he was just as precise about starting on time.

“Coming in?” I asked.

“I’ll be along,” he said. Ten minutes later, he came in. His next set was subdued, all tender ballads. He hardly spoke. And he kept looking into the far corner of the room, but he wouldn’t have made out much. He’d be able to tell that someone was there, but no more. There was nothing to see by then anyway. When I’d come in from the parking lot, she was gone.

The first two nights he played the Backroom, Tom read poetry during his sets. “This ain’t a goddamn literary salon,” one of the owners said to Kevin. “Tell that goofy bastard to kill the lovey-dovey stuff and sing.”

Surprisingly, Tom obliged. Kevin struck a compromise with him. Other performers sold their homemade cassettes from the stage, so Tom could sell his book. Every night, he’d carve a few minutes out of each short set. “I have copies available for just two dollars and fifty cents. Is it worth it, you ask? Indubitably. This inspiring volume includes words like succulent, evanescent, languid, and voluptuous. In fact, reading aloud from this book is guaranteed to get you laid. If it doesn’t, my friend, then nothing will except cash money. That’s why I’m not permitted to read aloud from my book this evening. The proprietors fear the orgy that is certain to ensue, and the subsequent descent of the morality squad.” He’d go on in that manner for five minutes or more before starting another song. He sold a book or two every time.

The week after Tom played, the female folk duo came in. I was looking forward to watching Pat, the tambourine player, bang and rattle for two weeks. She had long dark hair and wore flowing ankle-length skirts that she made herself out of flamboyant fabrics. She’d sing and shake her head, setting her earrings jingling in time to the music. I was mesmerized. The second night they played, I’d had enough beer to make me relaxed but too much to let me remain cautious. I asked her out. She said no.

When I told Kevin how badly I had fared he said, “It’s those skirts she wears. I bet there’s something wrong with her legs.”

For the next ten days, until Tom was booked in again, I didn’t hang out much at the Backroom. I know when I’m not wanted.

Tom was friendly when he wasn’t onstage. Out back, between sets, he’d talk about politics, literature, and the rise of the philistine.

At that time I wanted to be a writer, too, although not a poet. I saw there wasn’t much money in that. I wanted to be a novelist. Tom was the only published author I knew, so he seemed like a good person to talk to. I worked up the nerve to ask him to look at a manuscript I’d completed.

“I’ll take a gander,” he said. “Scribble a few notes.”

“I’ll bring it tomorrow.” I wanted to ask him how quickly he’d be able to look at it, as I was young and anxious, but that seemed pushy. Instead, I decided to curry favor. “Can you read me one of your poems?”

“What kind of poetry do you like?” he asked.

In school, teachers had read “The Ancient Mariner” and “Prufrock” and “My Last Duchess” by Browning. Each had been exciting, but I had no idea how to answer him. “All kinds,” I said.

He shook his head. “That’s not good enough.”

“But I don’t know.”

“That’s crap. You do know. You just don’t have the guts to say it. You need a definite opinion and you need to be tough enough to stick by it. Here’s a poem for you.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and then spun it away through the darkness. He breathed in, and recited, “If I could take a soft-tipped pen/And gently trace the course of your freckles/From next to next to next/Like numbered dots in a child’s puzzle book/They would reveal to me/Not an image of bird in flight or wind-blown tree/But instead a richer secret/A chart to the center of love.”

Then the clapping started. It was slow and sarcastic, from the darkness of the public parking lot. The woman who’d been at the corner table during Tom’s first week at the Backroom walked towards us. “How lovely,” she said.

“Hello, Debbie,” Tom said.

“That was beautiful, Tom.” She moved past us and through the back door. As she opened it, framed in the light from inside, I thought again how good-looking she was.

I was so used to Tom’s perfectly timed sets that, the next night, I knew instantly something was wrong. At nine thirty-five he was still playing. At ten, too. He played all night, sometimes the same songs two or three times. He didn’t mention his poetry book. He hardly talked at all.

Debbie was sitting in her usual seat. She looked at her watch as often as Tom usually checked his.

“When does he take a break?” she asked me.

“I don’t know.”

“Isn’t he violating his contract if he doesn’t?” That was unlikely. Usually Tom played so little that he owed the place a few extra tunes.

“I want to talk to the manager,” she said.

When I reported this to Kevin he shook his head. “I’m busy,” he said.

Around eleven Debbie slipped out. When I left after midnight, she was across the street, watching the front door, partially obscured by a lamppost.

I bought a copy of Tom’s book and he signed it for me; the first signed book I ever owned. “Someday you’ll know,” he wrote. It wasn’t warm and friendly, but it also wasn’t one of those phony inscriptions you get from authors you’ve met for ten seconds at a bookstore signing. I still have that book, and often I open it at random and read a poem or two. I’ve done that so much that the binding has come loose.

I had been watching a group of girls who had come in together and had been nursing beers slowly and laughing. They’d been in the Backroom before and once one of them had smiled at me. She looked like she appreciated poetry and I wanted to see if the seductive power Tom talked about was true. I picked what seemed the ideal poem, drained my beer, and went to their table. “Hi there,” I said.

The girls seemed surprised that I’d approached them. I still think there was a sense of eager anticipation in the air. But, with all of them looking at me, I was struck dumb. So I started reading.

“In silence/From my seat behind the microphone/I watch you/As you watch/For your friend to return/And if he does not/If there is indeed a God/Is there hope/That those eyes would watch for me?”

I gave the one who’d smiled at me a wistful look, figuring she’d take the cue. Instead, they all laughed and started clapping. Other people turned to see what was going on. Then the girl I was interested in held out her hand. I was thrilled. Tom’s poem had worked. I reached out towards her but, instead of grasping my fingers, she pressed twenty-five cents into my palm.

One night in mid September I was out back thinking about school. I’d just started fourth year and I was having trouble seeing the point of it. My second novel was coming along fine. I was pounding out ten pages a day on my Underwood portable. Once I got feedback from Tom, who’d need school?

A car pulled up just over the fence from me in the public lot. Framed in the headlights, I felt exposed and trapped, like a POW caught slipping under the wire. When the high beams switched on, I held my hand up to shield my eyes. “Jesus.” I moved out of the light, to the driver’s window.

It was a ’68 Parisienne convertible, with its long hood, massive V-8, and a trunk you could use to move a living-room suite. Debbie was at the wheel.

“What are you doing?” I asked, blinking.

“Looking for Tom,” she said.

“He’s not here. Not this week. Not next.”

I don’t think she heard me. She sat staring into the pool of light.

One Saturday, Tom asked me to drive him home. He’d been storing two boxes of books in a Backroom closet and he wanted to take them. “I may want to take off again for a while,” he explained.

“Back out west?”

“Maybe Newfoundland. Maybe the Yukon. I’ve never been and it’s great country for poets.”

Tom lived on the second floor of one of the old mansions along Jarvis Street. Once the homes of the local gentry, these stately buildings had been converted to restaurants or rooming houses. I parked out front. While Tom took his guitar, his harmonica case, a set of bongos, and a small amplifier out of the backseat, I opened the trunk and picked up the books.

Considering how slim the individual volumes were, two boxes of them added up. I perched the boxes on the rear bumper, bracing them with my leg, while I reached up to shut the trunk. Then I hefted the boxes again and turned toward Tom’s house. He was at the front door and had set his guitar and the amplifier down. He was talking to Debbie, who stood to the side of the door, out of the porch light.

“I’ve missed you, Tom,” she said.

“Then you need to work on your aim,” he said, with no humor. He spread his arms, still holding the bongos and the harmonicas. “I’m a big target.”

“Don’t make fun, Tom. Haven’t you done enough already?”

“Look, Debbie,” he said, “whatever you think I did, it was a long time ago. Let’s just get on with who we are and where we’re going.” His voice was soft, the way you talk to a child or someone who’s suicidal.

“You say that, Tom, but you don’t move on. What are those?” She pointed at the boxes I was holding, which were growing steadily heavier.

“Tom’s book,” I said, not realizing it was a rhetorical question.

“You see, Tom, you carry me with you.” I was tempted to point out that I was the one doing the carrying, but let it pass. “You know you want me. That’s why you took so much of me.”

“Look, Debbie,” Tom said, “I’m a poet. I take stuff that happens in my life and use it. It’s nothing personal. I’ve done it with my parents, friends, other lovers.”

“So raping other people’s emotions is okay, as long as you do it often enough? No, Tom. You want me. You need me. Try as hard as you like, you can’t give me up.” She took a step forward. In the light now, I noticed her freckles. “Why else did you come home from Vancouver?”

Tom took a step back and shook his head. “Look, Debbie,” he said again, but added nothing to it.

She took another step forward and this time he stood his ground. “You came back for me.”

“No, Debbie. I didn’t come back for you. I don’t want you. Leave me alone. Please.”

She looked shocked and then angry. It was interesting but I really wanted them to stop talking so I could go inside and put the boxes down. My arms were shaking from the pressure.

“You don’t mean that, Tom,” Debbie said. “Because if you do it means that you betrayed me. You stole from me.” She pointed at the boxes I held. “You stole these from me.” She swung her arm down on top of the boxes with surprising force. I tried to hold on, but my grip had already been slipping and the boxes fell to the ground, bursting open.

I almost thanked Debbie for taking the load off me. Then she picked up one of the books and slapped it sharply across Tom’s face. She walked away, taking the copy with her.

I gathered up the books and Tom took his gear. “She’s had a rough time,” he said. “I feel sorry for her.”

In his apartment, I put the boxes on the table by the window. There was a hole in the glass, covered with clear packing tape, not yet tinged by sunlight. The hole was round, with cracks bleeding out from it — the kind of hole I remembered from childhood, when a ball would go astray.

Tom didn’t play the Backroom for two months. Business stayed pretty good even though Kevin booked the odd lame act. One guy set a Panasonic tape recorder on a wooden chair. He hit play and the machine blared out tinny renditions of Tin Pan Alley tunes. The singer slouched at the microphone with his hands in his pockets and sang along. His audiences were thin and inattentive.

Other weeks were better. Ron Nigrini was there around the time that “I’m Easy” was a hit. Kevin got Spoon and the Plates back a couple of times. He experimented with a female blues singer who had some style, and a rockabilly trio that was fine until Thursday night when the bass player arrived too drunk to stand. He lay at the back of the stage hugging his bass and plucking it erratically. The next night, the place was jammed with the curious, hoping for a repeat performance.

No matter who played, Debbie did not show up. Then Kevin got the next call from Tom saying he was available. By the time Tom took the stage, she was back.

“Do me a favor, buddy,” Kevin said. “Take this money to Tom?”

“Why doesn’t he come get it?” I wasn’t keen. My car was in the shop and Tom’s apartment wasn’t convenient to public transit.

“Don’t know.”

“It can’t wait?”

Kevin knew me. “Be a good chance to ask Tom about your book,” he said.

A hardware-store truck was pulling up as I reached Tom’s building. Maybe they were there to fix the door lock in the lobby. It was broken, so I let myself in.

The staircase had been beautiful once, with intricately carved spindles in the railing. Several were missing now, replaced with unfinished lengths of two-by-two. Still, Tom’s building was in better repair than some in the neighbourhood. The ceiling had ornate plaster flourishes and delicate corner trim and, despite a network of cracks, it was still impressive. The doors were impregnable-looking oak. They had been burnished by time and shone in a way that made me want to let the tips of my fingers linger against the wood, until I came to Tom’s.

Someone had carved words into the smooth surface. The letters were large, jagged, and so deep that it must have taken a lot of strength, and a very sharp blade, to engrave them. “Thief of souls,” it said. I knocked reluctantly, rapping with a single knuckle.

“Who is it?” Tom’s voice was so soft that I thought I had the wrong apartment.

“Tom?” I sounded as tentative as he did.

“Who wants to know?”

“It’s me. Kevin sent your money.”

The door opened a crack. Tom peered out and then opened the door slightly wider, holding out his hand.

I gave him the money. “What the hell is that?”

“A fan letter.”

“You know who did it?”

He nodded as he counted.

“Who?” He didn’t answer, so I tried, “When?”

“This morning.” He started to shut the scarred door.

“It must have taken a long time.”

“It took one hour and nine minutes,” he said.

“This is Tom’s last night,” Kevin told me the next evening.

I was shocked. Tom had just started his second set. He seemed the same as every other night. There were ways in which he was a pain in the ass. But the people came to see him and they spent money. I wondered what had happened to get him fired so abruptly.

“Can’t you let him finish the week?” I asked.

“It’s not my idea,” Kevin said. “He was gonna just take off, but he wanted to warn me. He said not to tell anybody. Keep it under your hat.”

I was out back when Debbie pulled up. She bathed me in her headlights again, but this time shut them off right away. “Is Tom inside?” she asked.

“Not for long,” I said. Kevin’s news had me shaky and sad.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s leaving.” I hadn’t meant to say it aloud. I’m still not convinced that I did. It certainly wasn’t spoken any louder than a whisper, the kind you say to yourself when you’re not quite able to comprehend what you think you’ve just heard.

Debbie stared at me, head tipped to one side. “Leaving,” she said, in that same kind of whisper.

After his third set, I said to Tom, “Have you had a chance to look at my manuscript?”

He snapped his fingers, something he did with authority. “Damn, I’ve been meaning to give that to you.” He opened his guitar case and took out a sheaf of papers held together with an elastic band. “I kinda spilled coffee on it. Sorry. And there’s a little jam about page one seventy, one eighty. It has potential.” He handed it to me. “There’s notes here and there. Let’s discuss it after the show.” He started for the back door.

I took the manuscript to the best-lighted table. His notes were surprisingly thorough. Some were effusive in their praise. Others pointed out redundancies, ugly metaphors, and places where I used too many words. His comments on plot weaknesses and clichéd scenes were lucid and clear. Nothing he said was without support and, although I didn’t agree with all his remarks, I knew that if I followed his guidelines the work would be better. I was so engrossed that I didn’t notice that he was late for the fourth set.

He always started on the dot of twelve. At twelve ten, I went outside to look for him. Debbie’s Parisienne was still there, now backed into its spot against the fence. She was leaning against the car, smoking, and breathing heavily. The cigarettes were taking their toll. Good, I thought.

“Have you seen Tom?” I asked.

“Why?”

“I wanted to thank him.”

“I’ll tell him,” she said, “when I see him again.”

Back inside, Tom’s guitar was still on the stage. I knew he wouldn’t have left it behind. I went out back again. He still wasn’t there, and Debbie’s car was gone.

Maybe Tom had decided to quit singing for good. That didn’t seem like him, though. I took the guitar home, sure that one day he’d return and want it back. I’ve kept it ever since. It’s the least I can do.