Winston Marcus’s renown as a musician rivaled that of Louis Armstrong himself. There could be no better choice to play Satchmo’s trumpet on this tour. And his three younger siblings, the Tungsten Paradox Jazz and Blues Band, had several gold and platinum hits of their own. Jake and Lou were dressed, like Winston, in fine navy suits, and Ellie Marcus-Black wore a formal gown of midnight blue with a subtle spray of sequins across it, like the Milky Way on a clear dark night. The crowd swamped them, and they stopped to shake hands and sign autographs.
“Here come our star performers. You’re relieved!” John told Arry. “Go get some shut-eye.”
His mention of sleep triggered the yawn Arry had been trying to stifle, which emerged as a muffled roar. Silence swept through the room and all eyes went to her. Arry’s dimples appeared. She covered her mouth. “Well, pardon me, folks!”
She dropped to all fours with a thump that made the room sway. People scooted chairs back and crowded out of her way as she lumbered through the room. “Pardon me,” she repeated. “Excuse me.” A mother shrieked and snatched her child up as Arry’s enormous head passed near. “Your child is safe, ma’am,” Arry told her. “I’m vegan.”
John hid a smile behind a cough as the Beef eased her way through the double doors at the back of the bar. The ship rocked and water sloshed against the hull outside as she made her way down to her sleeping space in the hold.
Meanwhile, Ellie, Jake, and Lou approached the stage. Marcus came over to join them at the display. People were crowding around.
“Security detail, on alert,” John said quietly. “Eyes on the audience.” They confirmed.
Captain Leemans lifted her handheld mic. “Folks, please step away from the case and clear the aisles! Thank you. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to see Mr. Marcus with the trumpet.”
The room grew quiet; everybody onboard knew the routine by now.
“Rashida, you present,” John murmured. “I’ll guard.”
“Copy that.”
He scanned his badge at the panel in the back of the display case, and keyed in his code at the back of the display case. Rashida followed suit. Then she stepped around front, and he stepped back.
The sphere had two glass layers, which opened in reverse directions to allow access in a widening wedge. Rashida used a rouge polishing cloth to remove the trumpet from its glass mounting. She carried the horn over and handed it to Winston. He wiped the horn down with practiced ease, swept it to his mouth, and blew a few notes as mellow as whipped cream on mousse. The crowd burst into wild applause. He lifted his arms wide with a smile.
Winston headed to the stage, and stepped up onto it, horn in hand. “Thank you! Shall we get this party started?” Cheers, screams, stomping. It was the fifth night of this, and John still couldn’t get over it, the love the audience felt for this man and his music. Winston gestured to the other band, now standing off to the side. “Let’s hear it for Beauteous Maximus, and their bee-you-teous blues!”
The crowd clapped and whistled, and they departed. Winston went on, “Performing with me are my family. Ellie, on the flute and voice!” She played a few notes like a swirl of sprites. “Jake on bass sax!” A low, smooth progression. “Lou on keyboards and mouth harps!” Syncopated chords and percussion.
“Now, this is our last night aboard the Queen Margaret. A callout to the captain and crew!” Whistles and shouts. “And you’ve been a great audience. We dock tomorrow for one day and two nights in New York City. Tomorrow evening, we wrap up our Golden Jazz tour with a big, blowout charity event on New Liberty Island, beneath the Golden Lady herself. You are all invited! I hope you’ve already bought your tickets, because it’s sold out. All proceeds will go to help refugees escaping the horrors in Kazakhstan. So drink up! Eat up! Open up your wallets for a good cause! And enjoy the show.” With that, he lifted the horn and played the opening notes of their first song.
“Off to a good start,” Rashida said in John’s ear. He had started his evening rounds checking the room’s passive security systems. They’d tricked out the liner with the latest anti-ace-power detection and security tech. The company had a contract with Royal Flush, LLC, Clara van Renssaeler’s security software company, which had reverse-engineered Takisian science to detect different kinds of abilities. Readouts showed nominal conditions here: no unusual gravitational fluctuations, no unexpected or abnormal electromagnetic or psionic or sonic patterns detected; no megafauna or -flora or animated non-living matter showing up on radar in the vicinity. Nothing behaving outside standard parameters.
So why the hell were all the hairs standing up on the back of his neck?
Many of the audience members were older, or parents with young kids, and the crowd thinned around midnight. John and Rashida stood guard at the stage while the band members took a fifteen-minute break. By the time Tungsten Paradox returned for their second set, a younger crowd had wandered in from the casino and dance hall. John checked the readings again, and then had a few words with the guards covering the exits.
Rashida found a seat near the exit while John found an empty stool at the bar. He pulled out his phone and checked the monitor reads one last time, and then allowed himself to relax. He ordered a tonic and lime and leaned back to enjoy the show.
After a bit, the guy sitting next to him leaned close. “Hey, you’re that guy, aren’t you? The Candle, right? The ace from that reality show.”
John glanced over. The man was big—as tall as he was, and broader in the shoulders. Not Hollywood looks, exactly, but he had a rough magnetism. He looked to be about the same age as John, maybe a year or so younger, and in excellent physical shape. He also had a shock of dark blond hair, eyes as green as a cat’s, and a hawklike nose. And he was eyeing John with an intent focus that gave John a delightful shiver. John had always been a sucker for green eyes.
Settle down, there; he may not even be into men.
John muted the mic on his comms—he’d be able to hear the security team, but the team wouldn’t hear him. Rashida looked over and gestured: What gives? He gave her a hand signal: All clear; it’s personal; cover me for a few minutes.
“That’s right,” He set his drink down. “American Hero, season one. That was a long time ago, though; you’ve got a good memory.” He held out his hand. “John Montaño.” The other man gripped it. The touch lingered. As did the eye contact.
“Call me Rip.” He gestured at John’s glass. “Can I buy you another drink?”
“Thanks, but …” John rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “Tonic and lime, buzz not included. I’m on duty. Where are you from?”
“New York. A village in the Hamptons.”
“Long Island, eh?” John hadn’t made this guy out as having a lot of money. He supposed not everyone from the Hamptons was filthy rich.
Let’s see where this goes. John moved his forearm close enough to Rip’s on the bar for the other man’s arm hairs to tickle. Their shoulders were side by side. Both were playing it cool, just two guys sitting next to each other, watching the show, enjoying a casual conversation.
“And you?” Rip asked. “Where are you from?”
“Colorado, originally. Durango.” He had lost every trace of his Boston accent years ago. That had taken a lot of work. “I live in New York now. And you? What brings you to the Queen? Jazz fan? On vacation with the wife and kids? Or husband, or … ?”
“No, I’m single.” A sidelong glance.
“Me, too.”
The other man smiled. “I was in Havana on business. I’m an art collector.”
“Collector? Or dealer?” Art dealer was a job. Art collector was a hobby—and typically meant lots of discretionary income.
“A bit of both,” Rip replied with a shrug. So he did have money.
“Really? Cool! I was a professional artist myself for a while, before I took up the day job full-time.”
“Oh? And what business are you now?”
“Still in the art business—but as a detective.” I’m an investigat
or and security operations lead for an insurance company." John gestured at the stage, where Winston Marcus was playing a sexy jazz solo on the golden trumpet. “Authenticity certifications, fraud and theft investigations, transport security, that sort of thing.”
“Ah, yes. The famed trumpet I read about. Is it truly solid gold?”
“Almost entirely—fourteen carats. Though some of the working parts are ten-carat or brass, of necessity.”
“Even so, twenty million seems a bit on the high side,” Rip replied, referring to its estimated market value.
“It’s more what Armstrong did with it than what it’s made of.” At the other man’s blank look, he stared. “You mean you’ve never heard the story?”
“Wait, you mean—Louis Armstrong was that guy? The Black ace in the sixties who brought a bridge full of jackboots down with his trumpet?”
John. “It was quite a bit more interesting than that. They say Satchmo had the ability to manipulate and amplify sound waves. He was world famous as a jazz and blues musician, as I’m sure you know, and that had nothing to do with his powers. But when his card turned in ‘forty-six, he used his ace to primarily enhance his musical performances. He could make it sound like there were ten of him playing at once. Amazing, if you’ve heard the recordings.
“He wasn’t political early in his career, but in the late fifties he began speaking up to oppose segregation, and in early 1965 civil rights leaders asked him join them the protest marches in Alabama. When the police confronted the protestors on a bridge between Selma and Montgomery and tried to force the marchers to disperse, Old Satchmo whips out his golden trumpet—that very horn, they say”— John jerked his thumb as Winston played a rising note to audience applause—“and drives the police back off the bridge with a blast of music. If you believe the stories, the music actually lifted the cops up in the air and dumped them in the river. But there’s video so we know that part’s apocryphal.
“The police regroup and so do the protestors, on opposite halves of the bridge. Then the cops form up and start to advance. Satchmo has a private word or two with Dr. King and a couple of the other civil rights leaders. They pass the word along for everyone to lock arms and march in place, in rhythm, and Satchmo picks up and amplifies the marchers’ footsteps with his music, amplifying it. It’s as if there are thousands and thousands of feet pounding on that bridge. The Edmund Pettis starts bucking and weaving like it’s in an earthquake, and again the cops are driven back. Every time they come after the protestors, Satchmo blows his horn and the marchers march to make the bridge shake. Eventually he state and local cops finally have to give up and let the protestors through, with Armstrong at the front with King, playing Havana jazz in three-four time.
“They still had to bring the National Guard in to get the state and local governments to back down, but that was a big day for the movement. Pretty soon people were saying that Gabriel himself down came down from Heaven that day with the trumpet for Satchmo to play, in answer to the people’s prayers.
“There was a huge stink over what Satchmo did, of course. He’d been really popular with white audiences before, but whites staged boycotts of Armstrong’s performances after that, and White supremacists firebombed his house in Queens. They nearly drove him out of the music business for several years. But if anything, he ended up selling more records, because Black people spend money too, and a lot of folks were grateful to him. It was a big deal at the time.”
“And now you’re guarding the horn. Quite a responsibility.”
John shrugged. “It pays the bills. And I get paid to spend my time around lots of really cool art pieces and ancient artifacts.”.
“You said you were a professional artist. Why’d you quit?”
“I got tired of having to promote myself.” He tossed back the last of his tonic. “Besides, being broke all the time is a pain in the ass.”
Rip took a swallow of his drink. “What was your medium?”
“I was a sculptor,” John said. “Of sorts.”
“‘Of sorts?’”
John shook his head. “My medium is … was … ephemeral. I finally resorted to holography, to create something that could be put in an exhibit or go out on tour. But it was a huge amount of work to try to capture them, and it was never the same as actually seeing them. So I gave it up.” On impulse, he said, “Here, I’ll show you.”
John twisted into inferno-world and harvested small bursts of the brightest hues he could find. Returning, he fed them in careful, compartmented order through his body, and from there in tiny bursts and flares into the space between his hands.
Fiery shapes blossomed there: an obsidian cliff, dark-bright fire; next, ocean waves of sapphire and seafoam and lavender, which billowed out and surrounded the black, churning at its base. At the center atop the cliff sprouted a burning carnelian lattice: a lighthouse. Yellow flames jetted up inside the lighthouse’s red frame, brightening it from within. Then the outer layers of the outcropping morphed into a mighty black crow, which spread its wings and rose aloft, trailing smoke, and spiraled up around the lighthouse. It landed atop the structure, and from its beak burst lemon-bright flame.
The metaphor was a little on the nose, John thought. Still, he was pleased with it. He held it between his hands a little longer, trickling gouts of different hues to maintain it. Rip was staring at it, rapt, his face lit by its colors.
The other man reached out to touch it, but John slapped his hand away. “Careful!” The fire sculpture dissolved with a shh-whoop! and fizzled out. “It’s not entirely safe.”
Others at the bar near them were looking over. Murmurs rose at the nearby tables, above the blues song Ellie was singing.
OK, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. The security teams at both doors were looking at him, and Rashida spread her hands with a what the fuck, John?! look.
“Impressive,” Rip said. “Quite evocative.” Their gazes locked, and John got a sudden erection. It lodged at a painful angle. He stood, trying not to grimace or squirm.
“Listen … I need to get back to work. Uh … I’m on deck five, cabin four. Why don’t you come by later? The performance should be wrapping up in a half hour or so. I have a fifth of Glenlivet single malt that needs some attention. And we can talk about”—he smiled—“art.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Rip glanced at his watch. “Say one thirty, then?”
“It’s a date.”
After Rip left, Rashida asked in John’s ear, “Care to elaborate?”
He turned his mic back on. “On what? You mean him? Just some guy. Wanted to know the story of the horn.” He got another tonic and lime and between songs, joined her at her table. She was side-eyeing him. “All right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have let myself get distracted.”
“‘Mmm hmm. Just some guy.” He felt his face warm up. She muted her own mic. “You know … I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do that.”
He muted his mic too. “What? Flirt with a cute guy while on duty?”
“Not that. You do that plenty. I’m talking about your flames.”
He felt his hackles going up. “What about them?”
“Well—” She bit her lip. “Don’t take this personally, but—”
“Go on. I won’t get angry.”
“You already are.” She gestured with her chin, and he followed her gaze down to his hands. Which were leaking dribbles of yellow flame from the knuckles down. Shit! He shook off the flames and shoved the yellow energy away, back in inferno-world. Then he installed a placid smile on his face and lifted his palms toward her. “I’m all good. See?”
She propped her chin on her interlaced fingers. “If you pinkie swear you won’t yell at me, or write me a bad performance review.” She crooked her pinkie at him, eyebrows raised.
He hooked her pinkie with his. “Of course not! No reprisals.” Then he sat back. “So hit me, Doc. What’s your analysis?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “When was the last time you actuall
y had fun with your flames?”
He flung a hand back toward the bar counter. “Um, just now?”
“Before tonight.”
“What was American Hero?’ Liver pâté?”
“A, that was for money. And B, that was a decade ago.”
“I’m always using my powers! ‘Hey John, could you light the barbecue for me? My battery’s dead; could you give it a quick jump?’” He snapped his fingers. “‘Hey John, let’s get high! Gimme some of that purple stuff.’ ‘Hey Candle, my knee injury’s been giving me trouble. Could you throw some of that green fire at my MCL?’”
She shook her head. “But that’s exactly my point! You only use your ace when other people ask you for a favor. Or for the job. Oops. ‘Scuse me.” She transformed to a cloud of beads that swooped under the table, and when she returned she had her napkin back in hand.
“But—but—what about my flame sculptures? The MoMA still has one of my holograms on display … ”
“That’s cool. I’ve seen some of your sculptures. They were great. But you know—” The musicians finished a song as she spoke, and people burst into applause, drowning her out.
“Well, that’s it for tonight, folks!” Winston said into the standing mic. “You’ve been a great audience! We hope to see you tomorrow night at the Golden Lady!” He held up the golden trumpet. “It’ll be a big show—we have some surprise guests who will join us there. And who knows?” He blew a tune. “Maybe Satchmo’s ghost will return and bring the house down!”
John approached the stage as the musicians took a bow amid raucous applause. Winston sat down to clean the horn while his siblings cleaned and put away their own instruments. “Give us five to clean up,” he said.
“Whenever you’re ready.”
John returned to the table. Ras was sucking the last of her soda through her straw, watching him over the rim of her glass. John sat back down. “It looks like you have more to say.”
“I do. Do you know what the art dealers I’ve met say about you? Practically every professional of standing has told me that you have enough talent for ten other artists, but that just when you were starting to build up a name for yourself, you bailed. Your output dropped into the toilet. You missed deadlines. Blew people off. So don’t try to tell me nothing’s going on with your ace.”
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