Lair of Dreams

“No, he’s not—”

“Now, honey blossom. Let’s not hide our love. Not anymore.”

“I’d like to hide my fist inside your gut,” Evie whispered low near his ear.

“You trying to keep the lid on this romance, Miss O’Neill? More important, you holding out on me?” Woodhouse pressed, trying to sniff out a scoop.

“Miss! Your taxi!” The doorman held the taxi door open for Evie.

The first thin, spitting drops of rain hit the sidewalk. Sam practically pushed Evie into the backseat of the waiting automobile. “You run along, sweetheart! Can’t have my little radio star catching a cold.”

Evie rolled down the back window a smidge. “They’ll be dragging the river for your body tomorrow, Sam Lloyd,” she hissed just before the taxi lurched down the street.

“Did she just say they’d drag the river for your body?” T. S. Woodhouse asked, his pencil poised above his open notebook.

Sam sighed like a man deeply in love. “She did, the little bearcat. It’s the only defense that poor, helpless girl’s got against the animal pull of our love. Uh, you can quote me on that.”

“Animal… pull… of our… love…” Woodhouse was still scribbling as the skies opened suddenly, unleashing a gully washer.

Down the street, the slim man in the dark suit kept his head down and slipped through the anonymous New York horde as if he had no shadow, angling himself at last into the passenger seat of the unremarkable sedan. He handed the autograph to the driver. “There you are. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”

The driver glanced at Evie’s signature before tucking it into his breast pocket. “Fitzgerald’s niece, huh? Interesting.”

“The world is an interesting and dangerous place, Mr. Jefferson. Ghosts and Diviners. People claiming to see a man in a tall hat. Threats from within and without. Security is the cornerstone of our freedom. And we’re entrusted with ensuring that security.”

“From sea to shining sea, Mr. Adams.” The driver started the car. “Is she the real McCoy?”

“Difficult to say,” the passenger said, opening a bag of pistachios. “I suppose we’ll have to arrange a small test.”

Henry sat in his chair waiting for the clock to strike three and thought about the first time he’d laid eyes on Louis Rene Bernard.

It was May 1924. Henry was fifteen and home from his boarding school in New Hampshire. He’d suffered a bout of measles that had frightened everyone, and so his parents had allowed him to spend the summer at home to regain his strength. Henry’s father had business that kept him in Atlanta for weeks at a time. His fragile mother spent her days in the family cemetery, offering private prayers to stone saints with painted faces made porous by the relentless New Orleans humidity. For the first time in his life, Henry was free to do as he wished.

He decided to take a day trip on one of the excursion riverboats that churned up and down the muddy Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Paul. Most people came to dance. Henry came to listen. Some of the best bands in New Orleans honed their chops on board the boats; it was a floating master class in Dixieland jazz.

The band aboard the SS Elysian was terrific—nearly as good as Fate Marable’s. The sweet swoop of a clarinet rose and fell against the suggestive allure of a trumpet while sparkly-eyed passengers bounced shoulder to shoulder on the boat’s enormous dance floor under ceiling fans that did little to battle the Delta heat or the mosquitoes. But it was the fiddle player who captured Henry’s attention. He’d never seen a boy so beautiful in his life: He had thick, nearly black hair swept back from a face marked by strong brows, dark brown eyes, and a square jaw. When he smiled, his eyes crinkled into crescents; his eyeteeth were slightly longer than his front teeth, and crooked. And he had a name like a stride piano roll—Louis Rene Bernard. By the end of the third song, Henry was utterly smitten.

Louis had apparently noticed Henry, too. When the Elysian docked in New Orleans for the evening, Louis ran after Henry as he disembarked.

“’Scuse me. I believe you may’ve lost your hat?” Louis said, pointing to the straw boater perched atop his head.

“I’m afraid that isn’t mine,” Henry said.

“Well, it surely can’t be mine. Looks terrible on me.”

“Oh, no! I can’t agree. It’s very…” Too late, Henry realized that Louis was right; the hat was far too small on him. He searched for a word to save the moment. “Boaty.”