Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

“You’re a backwoods rube, Shea. You don’t understand who’s got the juice in this town. You’re backing the wrong Belknap. Mr. R.J.’s offer is still on the table but the clock’s running on it. You’d better take it.”

“What’s that to you?”

“I know construction sites, Shea. How dangerous they can be. And I’m telling you to quit now before somebody gets hurt.”

“You’re threatening me? You two-bit—” I was half a second from clocking him when Puck grabbed my arm.

“Don’t be stupid, Danny,” he whispered. “Look up the street.”

He was right. A patrol car was parked half a block away, two uniforms in it. One had a camera, getting the whole scene on video. Romanik wanted me to deck him. In front of witnesses. The local law would bust me and Mr. R.J. Belknap could use his political juice to keep me in the slammer until I was as old as Guyton’s granddad.

I was so hot I nearly punched Romanik’s lights out anyway.

Didn’t, though. Instead, I dusted off his lapels, waved to the camera, and walked calmly back inside. Then punched my fist through a wall. Brand new drywall, freshly painted. Which Puck made me patch all by myself as a penance for being a moron.

After I finished repairing the wall, I headed upstairs to my office to cool off. But I didn’t make it that far. As I neared the fifth-floor landing, I kept hearing a strange sound. A steady thump. Not hammering. Heavier than that. I could feel it through the stairs, like a giant heartbeat. Coming from the ballroom.

Easing through the door, I froze as the full wall of sound hit me. The room was pitch black, but a big band was playing, hammering out a tune I’d never heard, drums and bass fiddle thumping in my chest like a pulse.

Couldn’t see a damned thing. Fumbled for the light switch. Couldn’t find it.

And somewhere in the dark a soft voice said, “Good evening, sir. Welcome to the Gin Mill. Table for one?”

My heart seized up, frozen solid as an ice block. “Nate?” I managed. “Is that you?”

“Of course, Mr. Shea. Just practicing. Maybe when the place reopens I can get my old job back, waiting tables.”

“Maybe you can. Where the hell is that music coming from?”

“The jukebox, there next to the bandstand... oh. Are the lights off?”

“Yeah, they are. And I can’t seem to find the switch.”

“Hang on a second.” Nate threaded his way between the tables to the switch and the place came to life. “Sorry about that. I forget you handicapped folks need lights to get around. You don’t mind about the jukebox, do you?”

“No, I — to tell you the God’s truth, Nate, you scared the hell out of me. Again.”

“Why? Oh, hearing the music in the dark, you mean? What did you think? Ol’ Coley Barnes came back from hell to play an encore?”

“Something like that,” I admitted.

“Well, that’s the Barnstormers all right. Great band. Misirlou Jackson singing, Coley wailing on that trumpet. Hearin’ them makes me feel like I’m sixteen again. Like somehow them times are comin’ back. Maybe we should call us up a couple foxy ladies, have ourselves a dancin’ party up in here.”

“The way my day’s going, Mr. Crowell, I’d trip over my own feet and break a leg.”

“That bad, huh? Then maybe you can help me out with somethin’. When I was makin’ my way to the jukebox, I found this on the stage.” He placed a small, finely tooled leather case on his worktable. “Know what it is?”

“Looks like an instrument case,” I said, looking it over. “Maybe for a trumpet. It’s got a brass nametag on it... Coleman Barnes.”

“Thought so. The case was beside Coley’s music stand. Funny, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Look here,” he said, flipping open the latches, reversing the case to face me. “It’s empty.”

“Well, considering he’d just robbed the place, I expect he left in a hurry.”

“Maybe. Strange, though, that he took his trumpet but not the case.”

And it was.

It seemed like there were a lot of strange things about this job. One Belknap wanted it built, another wanted it stopped. Stairways were hidden in the walls and a freight elevator almost killed me. The union rep should have been glad to supply me with men; instead, he was trying to shut us down. And after fifty years, men from Idlewild were working in the Gin Mill again. Maybe Nate was right: In a strange way, history was repeating itself.

Compared to all that, an empty trumpet case shouldn’t have mattered much. But it did. Somehow that empty case seemed to symbolize everything that was wrong.

After my run-in with Romanik, I decided to keep a weather eye out for trouble, just in case. That night I set my alarm to go off every two hours. I’d wake and take a quick look around the building. Never saw anyone, but I had the definite sense of... a presence. Of movement. Odd noises.

Nothing I could put my finger on, just an uneasy feeling of evil lurking just around the corner. In another room. Or another time.