Lair of Dreams

Henry and David both grinned.

“Well, thank you,” Henry said, tipping his boater.

“Say, Mr. DuBois. I know of a place that sometimes needs piano players. It’s a club down in the Village, the Dandy Gentleman.” David gave Henry a meaningful look. “You know it?”

Henry nodded. “I do. Swell place for a certain kind of fella.”

“Are you a certain kind of fella?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

“A certain kind of fella. There’s a show there tonight, starting around eleven thirty.”

“What a coincidence.” Henry smiled. “It’s possible I might be there around eleven thirty tonight.”

As Henry bounded down the steps, the first few bars of a song began to take shape in his head. “A certain kind of fella…” he sang, and flicked the jade like a coin, catching it cleanly again and again, feeling like a man whose luck was turning for the good.

Sam grabbed the day’s mail at the museum, grimacing at the scary-looking notice from the New York State Office of Taxation. He stopped when he came to the envelope addressed to Sam Lloyd—no return address, no name, no stamp. Sam found a letter opener and slit through the envelope’s top. An article from the morning’s paper fluttered out. It was a brief notice about a man who’d been found under a small hill of powdery coal waste out at the Corona Ash Dump along the Flushing River. The man, who had been strangled, had nothing on him except for a receipt from a radio shop on Cortlandt Street and a motor vehicle operator’s license for one Mr. Ben Arnold.

Mabel found herself without an umbrella as the rain came down, so she ducked into a basement bookseller’s on Bleecker Street and shook the rain from her arms just as someone else barreled through the front door, hitting her in the back with the doorknob.

“Gee, I’m awfully sorry if I… why, if it isn’t Mabel Rose!” The man removed his cap and stuck out his hand, pumping hers in a firm handshake. “Remember me? Arthur Brown? Golly, but you’re soaked. Heya, Mr. Jenkins!” Arthur called to a small, portly man in a vest reading a book behind the cash register. “Any chance of a towel for my friend?”

Mr. Jenkins offered Mabel a thin dishtowel and she blotted it against her face and hair, trying to preserve what was left of the wash-and-set she’d gotten at the beauty parlor the day before. It was a lost cause, but she had been trained to take on lost causes.

“The others are upstairs, Arthur,” Mr. Jenkins said, taking back the towel. “I let them in.” Mr. Jenkins suddenly looked nervous. “I hope that was all right.”

Arthur nodded. “It’s jake. I’m late.”

“Late for what?” Mabel asked.

Arthur seemed to be weighing his response, and Mabel was afraid she’d been rude. Arthur glanced toward the drapes at the rear of the shop and back to Mabel. He offered his arm. “Would you like to find out?”

As Memphis rounded the corner of Lenox and 135th Street, the crow found him, keeping pace as it fluttered from newel post to street lamp. Memphis sighed. “Good to see you again, Berenice.”

“That bird’s got something to say to you.” Madame Seraphina, the second-most powerful banker in Harlem and the most powerful mambo, stood in the doorway of her Obeah shop, tucked under the stoop of a brownstone. “Birds are messengers from the land of the dead.”

“That’s what my mother used to say.”

Seraphina pointed a long, graceful finger. “There’s a weight on you. I can see it. Come. Let me help you.”

“No weight on me, ma’am. I don’t wear worry,” Memphis said, tipping his hat and turning away.

“Stay your feet!” Seraphina commanded. “Kijan ou rele?”

“Pardon?”

“What is your name?” she said slowly.

Unease twisted in Memphis’s gut. He’d heard mambos could fashion a curse using any bit of personal information, even something as innocent as a name.

“It’s Memphis,” he answered after a pause. “Memphis Campbell.”

“Yes. I already know who you are, Mr. Campbell.” Madame Seraphina raised her chin, appraising him. “The Harlem Healer. The Boy Wonder. Not a boy anymore. You Haitian?”

“On my mother’s side.”

“But you don’t speak Creole?”

“Not much.”

“It’s important to know where you come from, Young Oungan,” she clucked. “Come. Let me talk to the lwas for you.”