Free Chasing the Devil's Tail by David Fulmer

didn't roughhouse much at all; and when he began with his music, he stayed off the streets and out of trouble altogether.
    But the person he'd left at Parish Prison was not the Buddy Bolden he'd known back those long years ago. That fellow had been replaced by this raw, desperate character who too often had the eyes of a stranger.
    Standing under the dripping eave, he shook his head at his own dramatics. He admitted what his thoughts had been
teasing: that he would love the random pieces to assemble into a mystery, something beside the callow fringes of the flesh trade to engage him. And a chance to tangle with an evil and put something right.
    He pitched the butt of the cigarillo into the gutter, watched the rushing water carry it away, then took out his pocket watch, glanced at it, and put it back. He stood under the overhang for another long minute, pondering what to do next, where to go. The rain was getting lighter. It would move on soon.
    He had said something to Buddy about paying a visit to Nora. But he knew he could just as easily step onto the banquette, walk south, make a few turns and be back at his rooms before darkness fell. Bolden would never know the difference and he could put an end to his day.
    More minutes passed and then he stepped to the corner and climbed aboard the streetcar heading west.

    The car came to a stop and he stepped down. The rain had passed, leaving white tatters that snaked off the cobblestones like thin ghosts. The last rays of evening sun were peeking through the high distant clouds, casting the city streets in a soft mist the color of a seashell.
    He stood on the corner, remembering. Across the way was the shave and barbering parlor at First and Liberty. Now run by Mr. Louis Jones, it was Nate Joseph's when Valentin was a kid, and was known as much as an informal social club and musicians' employment office as a barbering parlor.
    But a barbering parlor it was, of course. He saw himself, a small boy, his tiny hand in his father's thick one, walking up to the double doors early on a Saturday afternoon. Inside, the solemn wink of greeting from Nate to his father. Being lifted onto the child's seat that crossed from arm to arm. The barber
throwing the cape like a matador, the billow a white sail that seemed to fill the tiny room before settling over him, right down to his shoes. Then stopping to pour his father a glass of brandy before he got to the business at hand. His father's face was reflected in the glass, watching with a lazy but critical eye the career of the scissors. And if young Valentin sat still and did not fuss, a piece of caramel candy to enjoy on the way home.
    Later, he and Buddy stood outside, looking through the glass at the fancy men preening for a Saturday night's action, getting their shaves, haircuts, manicures, and shoeshines. It was a ritual as stylized as Mass, and for the two boys, a glance beyond their childhood world into something strange and wild.
    The men: Creoles of every shade, redheads with dark freckles on russet skin, tans and high yellows and black, black, African-looking sports. Now and then, one olive-skinned like Valentin. Their hair was pomaded or oiled shiny. There were diamonds on their fingers and garters and stuck on pins in their ties. Tiny envelopes with cocaine and cards of hop peeked from vest pockets. The shapes of spring knives or straight razors showed in their trousers, but pistols were checked at the door.
    "Here, sir," old Nate would implore, his voice soft, soothing. "Let me take that for you," as if relieving the customer of a tiresome burden. And the oily blue-black weapon nestled with the others in a drawer beneath the mirror.
    They took their turns dropping into a chair with its brass fittings and leather the color of old blood. They watched the world through cool, sleepy eyes like snakes, and like snakes they were always ready to strike. But they relaxed now, as the darkness fell and Nate pampered their heads and faces, one