Concerning the Meeting and the Arrival

     In the last days, Nicholas spent his time in wait, as though he knew the sands were almost gone. He would read leather books softly in the candlelight, and occasionally stroll through the shafts of moonlight from the conservatory and breezeway. He rarely went outside. He remained fastidious about his appearance, maybe more so, and spent most of his time in the study wrapped in a crimson smoking coat. When the knock tolled at his door, he greeted it with complete un-surprise. "It's you," he said, and his guest nodded slowly and solemnly. And then pulled out the blade.



   The circus rolled out of the fog like river driftwood, a rattletrap of Ford trucks and Nash sedans having seen better days before the Dust Bowl blew in, engines and suspensions gasping labor pains and vesper prayers to St. Christopher. They set up on the edge of Drywood Creek as night melted over the dry grass, the dust covered side of the caravan proudly announcing the arrival of Dr. E.G. Rhodius And His Sixteen Penny Circus. Fergus the Strong Man, and Tiny Kelly, Queen of Knives, trailing a slender stream of cigarette smoke and Cab Calloway from the door, a road worn and eldritch assortment of tumblers, fire eaters, freaks, carnies and hucksters. The scents and sounds of exotic animals drifted into the town, a pull toward the field as palpable as the arrival of the motor gypsies themselves.
   Beneath the sick glow of a hurricane lamp strung on a pole stood the man himself, in a tuxedo from the last century and a top hat that looked to be dusted with magic and mysteries from the darkest Congo to the haunted hovels of New Orleans. He pulled on a black cigar lit on the oil lamp, and set a pocket watch. Then he glanced up, twirled a moustache around a cruel smile, and strode into the black tent.

Concerning Whitechapel

    He called himself Whitechapel Fred, and dressed like a sadistic, demented carnival barker pedophile, a used car salesman hawking scurrilous and suspect attractions. His top hat might have been silk, or felt, but was crushed and stained to the point of molting velvety ochre fabric. He wore a grey checked three piece without a tie and a sardonic smirk. Hoell didn't have time to run before Whitechapel had grasped the lapels of his raincoat.
  "We meet at last! I've been looking for you, you see."
  Hoell's fingers arpeggioed an unconscious Memphis Minnie. "I was, uh, thinking I might find you here."
  "Of course you were, of course you were. Tell me, why do you think I might want to find you?" If he'd had a moustache, he would have twisted it in eagerness.
  Hoell pulled a crumpled cigarette and struggled to light it with an even more crumpled matchbook. "Haven't a clue," he answered.
  Whitechapel jerked him closer, shaking the cigarette from his lips. "I want it, jazz man. I NEED it. He's back, and he will want it."
  "I don't have it!"
  "Then GET it. Or did you miss it when I said HE was back?"
  Hoell fingered the bullet still in his coat pocket. He felt the presence of someone softly moving up behind him, another one of Whitechapel's soulless acolytes. Fred released him, brushed out a wholly imaginary crease from Hoell's coat. "Come back when you have it, old boy," he said, adjusting the feral top hat at an angle. "I think you know where to find me."
  He nodded to the creature behind, and disappeared into the lights and sounds.

Concerning The Pier

  The pier was a yellow brick road flanked by the gaudy, the garish, the gauche. Huts, trailers, flashing colors, shameless hucksters and empty promises racing amid tin ear ragtime, diesel exhaust muddying the smells of fry oil. Hoell shuffled through the pieces and people of the night, brain assembling the notes from each standard bleating anemically over the jeers and cajoles. Like sectors on a map, navigating by Hoagy Carmicheal here, Scott Joplin there, Stephan Foster by the Coney Dog stand.

 Occasionally the Houngan haunted this decrepit piece of the city as well, turning hand at shadowy tarot reading to hustle up a handful of dollar bills. Sometimes he did it just because. Hoell knew at times a man has to grift just to keep a hand in.

 The closer to the waterfront, to the tip of the pier, the hubris faded back, as though nervous of the darkness murmuring moonless below. Soft noises and shadows swallowed the gurgle of generators and safety. Even Hoell was reluctant to be there after dark. The pier was run by someone Hoell had no desire to bump into tonight. But he needed answers; things were changing, shifting with the wind and fog.

  He dodged the blind advance of a pink giraffe carted by teenage lovers, past the gunfire of a dart throwing booth, and then spied a figure lurking just off the coruscating lights and a vagabond trumpet. Pale, dusty white skin showing hard against dark ambiguous clothing from an earlier century. Eyes were black and empty, glittering in the light. It could have been the ghost boy from the club, or another fallen creature equally afflicted and employed. It hadn’t appeared to have seen him, but you couldn’t tell. Hoell ducked around a photo op cut out and a manic clown juggling drunkenly. It wasn’t paranoia. They knew he would be here tonight.

  He tried to slip behind the trailers, camouflaging himself behind towers of balloon animals, keeping an eye on the specter lurking in the shadow. Confident he remained unseen, he rounded the warm strobe of a love tester and walked into the corrugated face of Mephistopheles.

Concerning a Rusty Bullet

  Dirty fog blew over like a black blizzard. Hoell stumbled into it from the thicket of streets and alleys profuse with river smells. He navigated by habit, by the little light offered by struggling lamps and grizzled neons skulking in the darkness. He kept to the walls and shadows, coming to a nonagenarian building jutting like the bow of a ship from the swirls of mist. He climbed the steps at the side beneath the ghostly gaze of a black cat placidly lounging on a brick windowsill.
 Inside was dark, quiet, wooden steps creaking and the gentle sigh of pipes. The cat had hopped from the window in a flash and already started up the stairwell. Hoell followed. The loft apartment he sought wasn’t his. Hoell wasn’t sure whose it was, even if the plate said “Cavanaugh.” Any number of a motley assortment moved in and out of the apartment at any given time. Tonight he was hoping to find the Houngan, who frequented the flat to drink stale bourbon mixed with a tincture known only to himself. The Houngan was elusive, impenetrable, unless he was in a bourbon fit.
 The door was unlatched when Hoell reached it, dark within save pale light refracting off the peeling paint chips. He approached slowly, quietly, nudging the door open with his boot. He could tell no one was inside; the atmosphere was cold and empty. Still he fingered the cracked handle of the knife in his pocket, taking cautious steps.

 Pulsing radiator hum. Creak of the building settling. The black cat scampering across the hardwood. Someone hammering nails below. The apartment was only occupied by curtains rippling in the ghosts of wind hissing through the gaps in the window, and a small bauble glinting in the little light on the island countertop. Hoell picked it up gingerly.

&nsbp;A thick bullet of ungainly and striated lead, the casing splotched with rust and black. Hoell turned it under the light, then moved to flick a hole in the curtains. No one was there in the fog, but he knew this card. He dropped the bullet into a pocket, and retreated.

 The wind whipped up when he stepped outside like it had been laying in wait, blustery personal ambush. It moved with purpose, funneled down the street towing portent in its wake. Hoell listened to it for a moment, trying to hear the voice. Then he scuttled off toward the pier.

Concerning The Tin Ear Town

Up the street, along the river, into the neon shadows and fuzzy cacophony of blues clubs stacked upon one another. Hoell made his way up the gutter, past the curious not gone to bed, the intoxicated not gone to ground, and the true inhabitants on this coruscating midnight fantasy land.
True musicians never really sleep. It’s as if the pull of the night, the melody in the blood, and the potential of the next progression gels together to take and sustain them, even when they finally lay to close their eyes.
A sweat-worn combo was still playing through a fog of smoke, seeking the heartbeat of the night, keeping it moving as though the clock of the city would stop if they did. The baton of time passed from one ancient hero to the next, a duty older than life.
The ghost of Chick Webb had possessed the drummer as Hoell sipped in on the alcohol-slick wooden floor, trying to avoid the eyes of the bouncer. His fingers were moving to the tune the pianist, half drunk and bloodshot, was finding in ivory starlight.
At a table in the corner sat a ghost boy, Jean Lafitte bred from Anne Rice stories, languid in an absinthe haze and the slow moving smoke of a black cigar. He was pale, and dirty, eyes unfocused like the undead, never quite managing to look at you. Hoell seated himself with a grin. The blank eyes slid over him without any sign of life, then drifted into the lingering wreaths. “I got it,” Hoell said. He set a small, worn leather book on the table. The ghost boy registered no response. Then white fingers pulled it close, and set a grimy envelope in its place.
“Someone was looking for you.” The words slid sibilantly, a breath of wind in the graveyard. “Someone who wishes to speak with you.”
Hoell’s hand froze upon the packet. “Is he near?”
The eyes flicked over, settling in time for a peal of trumpet to split the air. Hoell staggered from the table and left by the rear entrance.

To Begin With...

But Nicholas was chivalrous, above all else. It was well known, like a birthmark you can’t hide with clothing, or a withered arm. His eyes would betray it, in the dark hours, and he would sit in the darkness and watch the first snow falling outside the latticed study windows. A virtue streaked like a character flaw in his destiny, spoken over dim fires and homemade caves in the secret places, marred like Galahad. In the end, it would be his undoing.


  It was as if the whole world was the back of a clock face on some nights. The moon would set in over the residual night fog, Big Ben in wane, foghorns from the harbor like bass notes and baritone sax from the jazz holes lining the basements of 42nd and South Avenue. Shark-tooth smile nights like these, who could your trust? Hoell made it a simple practice — no one.

 Once, he played the ivory with the best at most of these clubs. Now all he had was the Stetson hat and nicotine stains. Removing your fingers from the keys was like snapping from a deep hypnosis, unsure of what you had revealed, and you take the diluted scotch to cover the disorientation; to keep at bay the bottom of the world falling away.

 His fingers still remembered those spells. They danced on air even now, channeling them to the melody of the waterfront.

 Savannah shuffled from the fog like a lost, sodden teddy-bear; if you could imagine the little girl heartbroken over him. “There’s news about,” Savannah growled preemptively, looking over his shoulder. “They say He has come back. . . .”

 “He isn’t due,” Hoell replied.

 Savannah just shrugged, and Hoell found himself wondering how there could be a topcoat oversized for that frame. His own was cobbled together like a Frankenstein monster, bits and pieces of other coats showing through. His fingers moved in the air. “What else do they say?”

 “The usual. Mentioned your name.”

 Hoell peered. “With Him?”

 “Nah. Whitechapel.”

 Hoell nodded, pushing the fedora back and forth across his scalp. “I see,” he said. Then, as if he had suddenly remembered, he drew a small lozenge tin from his pocket. Savannah snatched it up greedily, but cracked open the lip like an angry cat might be inside and ready to announce the state of its existence.

 He glanced up sharply. “You guarantee it’s real?”

 Hoell nodded. “Miles Davis’s own tooth. I promise.”

 Savannah made the tin disappear into his coat, and passed over something bundled in old newsprint. Hoell took it reverently, and then sidled off into the fog.