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for Ace to worry about, not me.
    ***
    “So, you are ready to play?” Offen asks me. We’re in the hotel bar. It’s all old wood, carpeted, and very dark. No one is around but the bartender, and he’s busy with the newspaper.
    “Yes, I’m ready. Looking forward to meeting the bassist and drummer too.”
    Walter smiles, pushes his glasses up his nose. “Ah, you will like them, I’m sure. They are very good.” He grins at me sheepishly.
    “What?”
    “I have one small surprise. Do you know Fletcher Paige?”
    Fletcher Paige. The name comes at me from the past, the back of album covers. Great tenor player, long time with Duke Ellington or Count Basie, I think.
    “Yes, I know who he is, but I haven’t heard anything about him in years. I’m not even sure he’s still alive. Is he?”
    “Oh, yes,” Walter says. “Very much so, and right here in Amsterdam. In fact, you will meet him soon. I have taken the liberty of arranging for him to play with you.”
    “Fletcher Paige? Really?” It’s starting to come back. He went to Europe and just kind of disappeared but had a group of his own after leaving the big bands. I wonder, though, how we’ll fit together style-wise. “It’s okay with him?” It’s an unusual arrangement, to say the least, without some prior approval. I wonder if Fletcher Paige had any say in things.
    Walter is nodding his head excitedly. “Yes, yes, he knows of your playing. This will be fantastic.” He looks at his watch. “We should go, yes?”
    “Fine.”
    “Finish your beer. I must get my car, and we will go. I am parked nearby. You wait outside, and I’ll come around in front.” Walter gets up, puts his coat on, still smiling, and taps me on the shoulder. “In five minutes, then.”
    I sit for a minute, thinking about Fletcher Paige. He was something of a legend, like Lester Young or Dexter Gordon. I knew that much at least. He’d played with everybody who was anybody, I’m sure. So he had become one of the expatriates, finding an audience in Europe and liking it, staying over here. No wonder I hadn’t heard anything about him lately.
    I go outside and stand, waiting for Walter, glancing again at the Chet Baker plaque. Walter arrives a few minutes later in a small car and honks. I jump in, and we’re off in a squeal of tires as I get my first taste of Amsterdam driving. Walter careens around corners, over canal bridges, and through a maze of shortcuts and one-way streets, and finally skids to a stop in front of a tall gray brick building.
    “I drive too fast, yes?” Walter asks.
    “No, not at all,” I say, finally letting go of the strap above the door. I get out and follow him inside.
    The Bimhuis Club is upstairs and opens onto a long bar. To the side is a large open room with tiered, amphitheater-type seating and a fairly large stage. I stop for a moment. On the stage, a small black man in slacks and sports coat is seated on a stool, running through some changes on his tenor saxophone. Fletcher Paige.
    “Come,” Walter says. We go down the stairs to the stage. Paige stops playing, looks up, and smiles. He’s short, slim, wears steel-rimmed glasses. His hair is salt and pepper, matched by a well-trimmed beard and mustache.
    “My man Walter.” He gets up and shakes hands, looking over Walter’s shoulder at me trailing behind.
    “So,” Walter says, turning toward me. “This is Evan Horne.” Paige steps up and offers me his hand.
    “How you doin’? Bet you thought I was dead, huh? He did, right, Walter?”
    It had crossed my mind, and Paige knows it. “Well, I…”
    Paige laughs. “See, I told you.” He points at Walter with a long slim finger, then looks back at me. “Don’t worry, man, a lot of people think I’m dead. Mostly record companies.” He laughs hard at his own joke.
    I know we’ve never met, but somehow he looks familiar, as if I’ve just seen him recently. He catches me looking at him and smiles. “I could also double for Jimmy