Return of Lost Bass Proves to Be a Jazzy but Thankless Effort

7/4 · April 18, 2008

April 18, 2008, 3:32 pm

Return of Lost Bass Proves to Be a Jazzy but Thankless Effort

By Corey Kilgannon

The flier posted on Broadway, at 120th Street, that told of the missing musical instrument.

(Photo: Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times)

It seems as if some virtuoso is always leaving a Stradivarius in a yellow cab in this city. Then some good Samaritan returns the irreplaceable instrument and can be seen posing with the grateful musician in front of news cameras. So when I saw fliers pasted along Broadway last weekend — “Found upright bass in black case” — I called the number on the flier to get the story. I got a 64-year-old man named Manny Ramirez, who lives at 108th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.

Mr. Ramirez said that while leaving work on April 9, he saw a “crackhead” dragging a bass up Broadway near 131st Street, where Mr. Ramirez works as a dispatcher for a moving company.

“I say crackhead, but I mean, you know, a homeless dude — he was clearly out of it,” Mr. Ramirez clarified. “He was definitely mistreating the bass, dragging it on its neck. I knew there was a musician somewhere missing his instrument.”

Mr. Ramirez is friendly with a lot of jazz musicians and lives with the legendary pianist Hank Jones, who he helps care for. Mr. Ramirez was recently honored with a humanitarian award from the Jazz Foundation of America for helping Mr. Jones through his triple bypass operation last year.

Manny Ramirez, a recent honoree of the Jazz Foundation of America, found the bass and returned it to its owner.

(Photo: Corey Kilgannon/The New York Times)

Mr. Ramirez said he gave the “crackhead” $50 and took stewardship of the bass. He then pasted fliers along Broadway, hoping the owner was a student perhaps at the nearby Manhattan School of Music or Columbia University.

“I brought a flier to the 26th Precinct but the desk sergeant wouldn’t take it,” he said. “He said, ‘How do we know the instrument is really stolen?’”

I called Mr. Ramirez again on Tuesday and he said the bass had been claimed, but he did not sound happy.

“I shouldn’t have gotten involved,” he said, explaining that the student had called him to claim the instrument and arrived on Monday with two detectives who questioned him. They told him they recorded the phone call with the student, and also ran his name looking for a criminal record. Mr. Ramirez said he refused to let them enter his apartment and was questioned in his hallway instead.

“They asked me why I was in possession of stolen property,” he said. “I said: ‘Are you kidding? Why would I go to all that trouble if I wanted to steal the bass?’ Then the cops said: ‘Nice building. You really live in this apartment?’ I said, ‘I own it.’”

Mr. Ramirez has a three-bedroom coop overlooking Broadway: “I bought it years back for $40,000, and now it’s worth $1.5 million.”

He mentioned Hank Jones to the police, and the bass owner’s ears perked up.

“The whole time, the guy wouldn’t even look at me — all he did was look at the nicks and bruises on his bass and say, ‘Oh, how much is this going to cost to repair?’”

“But when I mention Hank Jones, the guy was like, ‘Man, Hank Jones, that is really something.’ But he was saying it to the cops, not to me.”

A neighbor came out and asked what the fuss was about. The neighbor said she was a lawyer and told Mr. Ramirez to show the detectives his plaque from the Jazz Foundation, which he did. The framed award to Mr. Ramirez from the Jazz Foundation bears an inscription from Hank Jones: “To my good friend Manny, peace and love, Hank Jones.”

Mr. Ramirez said: “Finally, the detectives believed me and treated me a lot better, but the kid just left with the bass, never said a word. He never offered me the $50 I laid out to get the bass back. I really just wanted a thank you.”

Mr. Ramirez still had the bass owner’s number. I copied it and called the man later. It was John Romey, 23, an accomplished soloist with an impressive résumé. He said the bass was stolen from his car parked at 140th Street near City College, where he is completing his bachelor’s degree.

“There were people all around,” he said. “I couldn’t believe someone could take a rock and break my car window in broad daylight and pull a double bass out and run down the block with it.”

The police arrived and began searching for it. Mr. Romey put the word out in the musician community, putting postings on Web sites and sending mass e-mail messages.

“I spent days e-mailing people and posting it online, on bass sites,” he said. “Everyone in the bass community knew about it.”

He said the bassist Ron Carter heard about it and called him.

“Ron Carter, who I’ve never met, called me and said: ‘I’m renting you a bass right now. Go down to David Gage’s bass shop downtown and pick it up.’”

Mr. Romey did. After all, he had concerts on Long Island and at Columbia University that weekend, and he is preparing for a solo bass recital of 20th-century music on May 14 at City College.

The bass was handmade for him by Sam Kolstein, a Long Island bass maker. It cost him $10,000.

“But it’s priceless to me,” Mr. Romey said. “I’ve played it hours every day for five years. It becomes part of you.”

Mr. Romey is from Baltimore and moved to New York at 19 to study the bass after hearing the music of the French double bass virtuoso François Rabbath. He is on scholarship to City College, he said, and has gotten three grants to travel to France and study with Mr. Rabbath, about whom he is writing a book. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches, composes and works music gigs.

After the theft, Mr. Romey and detectives searched for the bass. Mr. Romey said he never saw Mr. Ramirez’s fliers because he did not search south of 125th Street. But he said a woman who had heard about the lost bass saw a flier at 120th and e-mailed him the image of it from her BlackBerry.

Mr. Romey told the police he had Mr. Ramirez’s number and they had him call again from the 26th Precinct detective squad, and recorded the call.

“They warned him that the man could be trying to rip him off, he said.

The evening that Mr. Romey wanted to pick up the instrument, Mr. Ramirez said he had a bicycle race, and they eventually decided on the next evening.

Assistant Chief Michael Collins, a Police Department spokesman, said that detectives grew concerned after Mr. Ramirez said he could not meet Mr. Romey when Mr. Romey first called. “The fact that the finder said he was not immediately available,” Assistant Chief Collins said, “raised some suspicions that detectives to do a through follow-up.”

Mr. Ramirez told Mr. Romey he lived with Hank Jones. Mr. Romey said, “When I heard that, I hung up the phone and was like, ‘Is Hank Jones still alive?’”

“I told the police I would go by myself, but they said, ‘Well, you could get robbed and we don’t want to take that chance of not getting the instrument back.’ They said this could be a grand larceny case, that I should be careful. They said, ‘Maybe he’s telling truth but we want to recover it right now — let us come with you.’ They drove me there in an undercover car with the siren going, and they questioned him in the hallway. I felt kind of bad because he seemed like a good guy doing a good thing, but I was still in shock that the whole thing was happening — I never expected to see the instrument again.”

“I feel bad because Manny seems like a great guy, but I was a wreck the whole week and I just shut down.”

Mr. Romey said on Thursday that he called Mr. Ramirez and thanked him profusely and offered to repay him — or at least take him out to dinner and give him free tickets to his performances.

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