He worked his way forward, one step at a time. He took it slow, but he kept going. Not like he hadn’t done this before. He’s been famous a while now. He knows how. He doesn’t let it swamp him, the way so many do.

  I felt Dora’s eyes on me. When I turned away from watching Bird, I found I was right. “You are not going up to him?” she asked.

  “Not me.” I shook my head. “I’m not stupid. Not that kind of stupid, I mean. Not that kind of greedy, either. Or I hope like hell I’m not.”

  “Well.” She made a complete sentence out of one word. Maybe it was the Wild Turkey, but I felt proud of myself.

  Then Acolyte Adams started clearing a path for Bird. It didn’t work as well as he would’ve wanted. The Acolyte, he’s the kind of guy who can piss you off saying hello. The most I can give him is, he didn’t get punched. And that might’ve disappointed him.

  Bird finally got his drink. He poured it down like he needed it and like he enjoyed it. Why wouldn’t he enjoy it? He wasn’t paying the Deacon’s prices, or I didn’t figure he was. The Deacon knows how to keep the talent wanting to come back.

  Soon as Bird set the empty glass on the bar, he had a full one in his hand. It didn’t stay full long. He waved away whatever the barkeep tried to give him then. Booze is like dope. A little can help. Too much and you think you’re great when you stink.

  He made his way to the stage and took his sax out of its silver case. Before he started to blow, he leaned over the piano and talked to the guy on the stool for a minute or so. The piano player nodded, nodded again, nodded some more. When Bird lays down the law for a sideman, what’s that cat gonna do but nod?

  Then the sax wailed, and even at a place like that people paid attention. You can’t ask for more. You go to Deacon’s to get swept away from the regular world. If Bird can sweep you away from the Arabian Nights … then that man can play a little bit. Yeah, just a little.

  He swept me away. You’d best believe he did. He did, and then after a bit he didn’t. It wasn’t him. It was the fellow behind the piano. No, not the way he tickled the ivories. He wasn’t bad enough or up front enough to be annoying. He rode along behind Bird, which was what he should’ve done.

  Call me stupid. Plenty of people have. A lot of ’em’ve been right, too. Stupid. Tired. Worn out. Bourboned. In company I was enjoying. So I took way too long to realize the piano player looked familiar.

  He should have. I’d seen him, or his picture, just the day before. Jonas Schmitt could brag till the end of his days that he’d backed up Bird.

  Bird even turned and gave him a wave and a nod and let him solo for a little bit. He did it with the air of the boss handing the hired help a Christmas bonus, yeah. That he did it at all, though, showed his class. And Jonas, he played okay, and he had the smarts to cut it short.

  Crazy. I’d come here for, with, one of my clients, and then all of a sudden I found I was working for another one. A writer with any sense wouldn’t stick in a bit like that. It’s not, y’know, believable. But the world doesn’t have to be believable. The world only has to happen.

  “Something is wrong?” Dora asked. No, I don’t know how she knew. Did I smell different? Could she sense my heartbeat change? Any which way, she knew.

  “Not wrong. I don’t think so, anyway. But strange,” I said. More than anything else, I was sore at Schmitt for bringing me back from where Bird had taken me. You don’t get to go to those places often enough.

  But there I was, washed up on reality’s rocky shore, or as close to it as you can get at Deacon’s. I started thinking like a private dick again. A stupid, tired, worn out, bourboned private dick, but that’s part of the job description.

  If Schmitt was at the dive, was Marianne Smalls there, too? If I was playing with Bird, I’d sure as hell want my ladylove to watch me do it. I started looking around. I didn’t want to be too obvious, and the waitress came by with a fresh round, but I was doing what I could.

  Seek and ye shall find. If that wasn’t the Deacon’s motto, I don’t know what would be. If I’d been paying attention, I would’ve spotted her a lot quicker. She sprawled on a mound of cushions between Dora and me and the stage. Bird had walked between her and us on his way to get something cold and strong.

  Now I saw her, not a photo. She could pass if she wanted to, you bet. Folks have reasons not to want to. Throwing away everything you and your people ever were, for instance. Of course, if everybody else had been spitting on everything you and your people ever were for lifetime after lifetime, you might think twice about wanting to keep it. Yeah, you just might.

  You might if you’d moved to our fair when it wasn’t smoggy city, too. People come to California to be what they want to be, not to keep on being what they were. If you’d had it up to there with all the crap that comes with being Negro—and it’s more than anybody who isn’t will ever understand—and you can get away with acting white, maybe you will.

  Looked like Marianne Smalls aimed for that. She wouldn’t be the first. I could name some names that’d surprise you. She wouldn’t be the last, either. Not a chance. Not even close.

  I wanted to write down what I was seeing. I didn’t, though. Nothing would’ve got me kicked out faster. Kicked out, roughed up, and on the never-get-in-again list. The Deacon’s bouncers don’t stand around looking mean. That spoils the vibe. But they’re there. Oh, yeah.

  So I remembered. I’m good at remembering. I remember too much I wish I could forget. Don’t we all, friend? Don’t we all?

  Then Bird started blowing again. That made me want to forget everything else, but I couldn’t, dammit. I was working. I kept half an eye on Marianne, the other half on Jonas Schmitt. He did what a backup man needed to do. He rolled with the guy out front and didn’t try to upstage him.

  He was okay. He was good enough. But what Bird had a whole great big jug of, he had two or three drops.

  Bird gave him another little solo. He’s a gent, Bird is. Jonas did what he did, did what he could. Marianne Smalls ate it up. She was proud of her new man. The rest of us waited for Bird to put down his glass and pick up the sax again.

  After he finished the set, you could hear the shouts of “More!” all the way to City Hall. He gave us an encore, but only a short one. Then he put the sax back in the case, set the case on its side, and mimed using it for a pillow. I’m sure Bird’s not poor, but he works for his money.

  “That was the man, Bird his own self!” the Deacon roared. The was let Bird make his getaway. Meanwhile, the Deacon added, “And on piano, our own Mister Jonas!” Marianne squealed and clapped. A few other people clapped, too. Schmitt’s face said he hadn’t expected anything more.

  The lights dimmed. The curtains slid back into place. I thought I saw a clump of curdled air glide through one as it moved forward. So ghosts made the scene at Deacon’s, too? How did he get cover and minimum out of them? If anybody knew a way, he’d be the one.

  “What did you think?” I asked Dora.

  “Bird is gifted. Remarkably gifted. The piano player? Much less,” she answered. The house combo started up again right then, as if to prove her right. Then she asked, “Since this is so, why did you note him more?”

  No, she didn’t miss a thing. “Business,” I said, and not another word.

  “Ah.” She respected that; she didn’t ask me any more. She didn’t ask about Marianne Smalls, either. If she’d spied me eyeing Schmitt, she would’ve seen I’d noticed his ladylove, too. But she didn’t ask. I admired her for that.

  A few minutes later, the Deacon rolled up to us. As usual, Acolyte Adams was a couple of paces behind the big man. “So what’s going on, my friend?” the Deacon asked. I didn’t know that I was his friend, or that I wanted to be, but I liked it better than some of the other things he might’ve called me.

  Dora answered before I could: “Can we speak under the rose? And privately?”

  He didn’t fail to understand her. He didn’t misunderstand her on purpose, either. “What I can hear, the Acolyte can hear. You don’t fancy that, no talk,” he told her. “But we can find somewhere more out of the way.”

  “Agreed.” She wasted no words.

  Deacon Washington led us to one of those dark nooks. I don’t know how he knew it didn’t already have people in it, but he knew. It had had people in it not long before; the air smelled of reefer and sweat and French perfume. You couldn’t see much in there. We found ways to make ourselves comfortable anyhow.

  “Now then …” the Deacon rumbled.

  “What do you know about the last time Rudolf Sebestyen came here?” No, Dora didn’t beat around the bush.

  Acolyte Adams sucked in a sharp breath of that crowded atmosphere. He knew something, sure as the devil. Deacon Washington answered a question with a question: “Whatever I know, why should I tell you?”

  “I am his half sister,” she said. She didn’t say, I’ll find out what you taste like if you hold out on me, but you could smell that in the air, too.

  Where I’d had to ask, the Deacon got what that meant. “Are you, now?” he said.

  “I am.” She waited. So did I. Was the Deacon going to ask her to prove it? How would she do that? By showing that she and Sebestyen had the same fang marks on their necks?

  But he didn’t ask. He said, “Yeah, he’d come by here every so often. He punched somebody once, laid him out flat, but I didn’t even ask him to leave for that. Guy called him a goddamn lugosi, pardon my French, ma’am.”

  “I am surprised Rudolf did not kill him,” Dora said. Call a black man a nigger, whatever happens to you after that’s your own damn fault. Call a Jew a kike, same deal. Call a vampire a lugosi …. Vampires are a lot stronger than people. I’d seen that on the boardwalk coming to Deacon’s. I was surprised Rudolf Sebestyen didn’t kill the son of a bitch, too.

  “I thought he did,” Acolyte Adams said. “Good thing he didn’t, though. Disposing of a body is such a nuisance.” His fussy exasperation convinced me he knew what he was talking about.

  “The last time,” Dora persisted.

  “Right,” Deacon Washington said. “He was looking for somethin’. That’s why he came here, he said. He heard you could get anything here. I always thought he heard right, too.” He sounded more proud than anything else.

  “What was he after?” I asked the obvious question.

  “He called it vepratoga. You know what that is, either one of you? I never heard of it before then.”

  “I never did, either,” I said.

  “Nor did I.” Dora sounded troubled. “It is not a word I know, not in English and not in Magyar, either.”

  “Whatever it is, Sebestyen wanted it bad. He didn’t stick around real long after I told him I didn’t have it or know where to get it. It was like all the juice leaked out of him at once,” the Deacon said.

  “Before he left, he talked to a couple of people who could get their hands on this and that,” Acolyte Adams added. People who sold dope, he meant, but he was too careful not to say that. “They couldn’t help him, either, if getting him what he craved counts for helping.”

  Dora Urban set a hand on my wrist. Her fingers were cold now, whether from fear or because she’d been drinking her iced Bloody Marys I can’t tell you. “We’d best go,” she said. So we did.

  And I awoke and found me here, in the cold alley off of Central Avenue. That’s what it feels like, coming out of Deacon’s. You have to shake yourself, because it seems like a dream in there. First thing I did was look east. I didn’t see anything past the gray beginning of twilight. We were at that season where you notice how much earlier the sun sets and how much later it rises every day. It worked for Dora.

  Yes, she was still there, reminding me that place was real. “You truly don’t know about this vepratoga, whatever it is?” she asked, sounding worried.

  “Not me.” I shook my head. “I was hoping you did.”

  “No. I wonder if the Deacon knew then. If he did not, I wonder if he does now.”

  “My guess is no. He sounded like it was something he thought he should’ve known.”

  “He did not smell false. The other one, his lover, he was harder to read. He holds everything corked tight inside,” Dora Urban said, and if that didn’t sum up the Acolyte in a sentence, what would?

  “I wish we would’ve found out more,” I said.

  “We found some things we need to learn more about. This has value,” Dora said. “And now I had better go. The other thing I can smell is the coming of the White Fire. Not here yet, but on the way.”

  She leaned toward me for a moment and brushed her lips against mine. Not a kiss. A ghost of a kiss. Then she was gone.

  Or not. Bats don’t fly the way birds do. They go more like moths. Now this way, now that, now the other. No curves in the air, just one straight line after another, each different from the one before in length and direction. Seems that way to me, anyhow. I saw her for a heartbeat or two against the sky—yes, it was starting to lighten—but then I couldn’t any more.

  I walked out to Central. Bright as day there. It always is. I looked at some expensive shoes in a shop window—in a shop window behind steel accordion bars. Those shoes wouldn’t have stayed in the window long without the ironmongery.

  Then I blinked a couple-three times, on account of the shoes seemed to blur, as if the air in front of ’em’d curdled. I didn’t hear somebody say something. After a little no-time, I did, only inside my head, not through my ears. “Vepratoga?”

  “What do you know, Eb? Thought I spotted you inside Deacon’s.” I didn’t need to answer loud to make the ghost understand me, either. Moving my lips and thinking about what I was saying, that was plenty. A good thing, too, because Central still had lots of people on it. Even there, they notice if you go around talking to yourself.

  “Vepratoga,” Ebenezer said again, only this time it wasn’t a question.

  “What do you know?” My attention sharpened. “You know something, sure as I’m standing here.”

  “I know something, sure as I’m standing here,” Eb said. And how sure was that? Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle runs home in tears when it tries to cope with ghosts. “I’ve heard the word before.”

  “That puts you one up on me. And on the Deacon. And on a vampire,” I said.

  “It could be. Or else not. I don’t know what it refers to. I don’t know anyone who does know,” the ghost replied.

  “Somebody does. Words point back to things. Rudolf Sebestyen knew, or thought he did.”

  “I wouldn’t trust Rudolf Sebestyen as far as I could throw him,” the ghost said. I had to admit, that wasn’t far.

  “Can I find out about it?” I asked. You’d be surprised how handy the library can be to a private dick.

  “I wish you luck,” he said. “No one in Narcotics has written anything about it. Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve looked through the files. No references to vepratoga. Other things, yes, but not that.”

  “Other things, huh?” What could the LAPD do about a ghost who poked his ectoplasmic snoot in where it didn’t belong? Anything at all? I had my doubts. And what “other things” had Ebenezer seen? Enough for him to blackmail a pile of lieutenants and captains if they tried anything he didn’t care for? Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.

  But if the Narcotics Department wasn’t talking about vepratoga, even the big downtown library was unlikely to have heard of it. Still, you never know till you try. When I got around to it, I would.

  As long as he’d decided to manifest here, I asked him, “Know anything about Jonas Schmitt or Marianne Smalls?”

  “Not a thing,” he said. “I don’t believe either one has ever had anything to do with Missing Individuals.”

  “Ah, well,” I said. “If they’re lucky, it’ll stay that way.”

  “This is a question connected with what you do?” Eb asked. Well, back before he stopped a Minié ball, his line of work wasn’t a whole lot different from mine.

  “That’s right.” When I nodded, I could feel how tired I was. A long day. A long night’s journey into day, because now it was nearing sunrise by the minute.

  “I see.” The curdled air may have nodded back. “If I run across anything interesting, shall I pass it on to you?”

  “If you would. Listen, Eb, I’ve got to grab some shut-eye.”

  “Ah. Sleep. I remember that. All right, since you need it.” All of a sudden, Eb wasn’t there any more. Or wasn’t manifesting, anyway. Who knows anything for sure with ghosts?

  I went back to the office. That was faster than going home. The zombie sweeper was in the alley again, getting started with his slow-motion cleanup. Or maybe he never stopped, just went up and down, back and forth, all day and all night. They could build a machine to do that, but it’d cost more than a zombie.

  I walked right past him. He didn’t look at me. He didn’t notice I was there. The only way he would’ve noticed me was if I stood where he was trying to sweep. Then, after he noticed he wasn’t getting anywhere, he would’ve gone around me. It would’ve taken a while.

  I could have punched him, knocked him down. He would’ve got up—slowly, again—and gone back to work. People do that sometimes, for what they call the fun of it. Some fun. It’s a little like playing Russian roulette. Every once in a while, you do something like that to a zombie, he’ll smash in your skull and feast on your brains. Chance you take.

  Machines aren’t the only things that go haywire. Oh, no.

  Old Man Mose was sleeping on the beat-up couch when I walked into the office. His top lip curled up when he got a whiff of me, the way it would have if I’d been swimming in orange juice. “You smell disgusting,” he said needlessly.