Aachoo Voo Private Eye 2024 : 07/18/24

Thursday, July 18, 2024

Aachoo Voo Private Eye Episode Seventeen Playboy Thiese, Jack Knife James and the lovely Zelma Lee

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode-sixteen.html Link to Episode 16

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 17

Playboy Thiese, Jack Knife James

and the lovely Zelma Lee

Jack Knife James had loved many women in his time but none as much as he loved Zelma Lee, the most gorgeous dame he'd ever laid eyes on. She was the dream girl you only saw in magazines kept hidden under mattresses. She was the broad you drooled over in movie theaters, the chorus girl dancer you paid all your hard earned money to see dance on stage only to be ignored until you waved your last dollar at her with your phone number scrawled on it only to see her buy a hot dog with it later as you followed her out of the club. She raised you up with a fleeting glance and let you down like a bucket in a well as her pretty eyes swept over your hopeful face and over to the movie star or millionaire standing beside you. Your lonely bedroom was plastered with her photographs and newspaper clippings and programs and ticket stubs and souvenirs and the crushed red roses and pearl earring you had seen her drop.

And there in the place of honor on the wall that held your Honorable Discharge certificate from the Army, the hometown newspaper article about how you had saved a drowning feral hog from a half frozen pond, your Little Orphan Annie Decoder ring, your autographed 8x10 of the guy who played Tarzan but you could never pronounce his last name, was the gold frame that held the pristine white napkin with the lipstick imprint of Zelma Lee's lips on it that you gave $15.00 to a waiter for one cold December night as you stood outside the little cafe freezing your butt off while watching the love of your life eating a slice of cherry pie and drinking coffee with some schnook through a frosted over window pane.

It was like a Christmas present to yourself, that napkin. Her lips. Her luscious lips. There on your wall just looking at you as you slept and dreamed of her. You, a full grown man with the good fortune to be a mobster/trumpet player both feared and admired by hundreds if not thousands. You had a great comic book collection and a drawer full of poetry and short stories you had written yourself. You were pitiful but you didn't care. You knew that one day, one sweet day, you were going to make that fine haughty woman Mrs. Jack Knife James and nobody was going to stop you!

Except there was one fly in the ointment of your plans. A fly named C. Loc Thiese, otherwise known as Playboy, the lucky dog currently on the arm of the lovely Zelma Lee out there in Hollywood where she had gone to break into the movies two long years ago. And she had and had done it well. Now she was coming back to New York City for the premiere of a new movie with her co-star and current lover boy or so the movie magazines and Hedda Hopper and the other professional talking mouths said. He was an actor, singer, hoofer, former boxer, who was said to play a mean alto sax and knew his way around both the streets and the bedrooms of debutantes. Just thinking about him made Jack Knife grit his teeth and go write torch songs all night long.

Jack Knife aimed to see for himself what it was all about and he aimed to get the imprint of those lips on his lovelorn face again just like he had back in junior high. He had been in love with that girl since first grade and finally by their junior year he had persuaded her to wear his ring and go steady for at least three months. She was his first love and always would be. And you know what they say about first loves: You never forget them and they're usually the reason you end up in an asylum twenty-five years later. As for Jack Knife, she was the reason he had become a cold-blooded gangster and the reason why he played a trumpet that moaned like nobody's business. She was his inspiration and muse. His trumpet moaned for Zelma Lee and only for Zelma Lee.

She had sidestepped his ardent advances from New York to New Rochelle to New Jersey to New Zealand (a story for another time) but yeah, he had pursued that girl in every way he could think of and nothing had worked. Oh, there were nights when it seemed his dreams were coming true but the next morning she'd always left him with a cold splash of reality and a typed out note that had been duplicated many times and stamped with her signature Always, Zelma Lee and a little kissy face doodle. He hated those doodles! But he had kept every last one of them, dammit! If he could just get his hands around that Thiese guy's throat, he'd show that woman how much he loved her! He'd kill for her! Beg, borrow and steal for her! No, no, he wouldn't borrow for her. He had standards. His mama had taught him standards. He wouldn't borrow anything from anybody.

His mama had told him, "Now Son, if you borrow something, you'll feel obliged to give it back. So don't borrow nothing. Either ask can you have it or go buy it your own durn self!" Quote unquote. And he always listened to his mama. (Except when she told him to stay away from mobsters, jazz clubs, trumpets and Zelma Lee.) Except for that stuff. Otherwise, he was a very obedient son. Ask anybody. He made a mental appointment with the Who- Did -He- Think- He- Was -Playboy, punching a fist into the palm of his other hand and daring him to not show up. Or show up. Show out. Show something. He would mess up that handsome face of his so bad he'd only be starring in "Lips" Lipperson type B Movie monster movies from now on! Just wait!

The night of the big movie premiere, Jack Knife had his entourage all decked out in black tie and tails, even Shrimpy Joe, the gofer who stood all of four feet tall. (In heels.) He'd paraded around like a banty rooster saying, "Look at me! Look at me!" till somebody muzzled him and put him in the trunk of the limousine. The boys were all excited. They wanted to hobnob with movie stars and get a gander at Zelma Lee up close as they had all developed crushes on her over the years but especially now that she had made it big. She'd modeled, sung and danced her way to the top and he was proud of her with all of his tattered heart. It was tough being a hard nosed hood with a tattered heart but he pulled it off. Nobody ever knew that but his Nana and she'd never told.

Nana and Gramps

His grandfather had been as mean as a junkyard dog but she'd loved him to pieces. Literally. (Even Nanas have their limits, I guess.) They'd buried him in three coffins. Four days before the old man's eighty-sixth birthday. No one was ever arrested but everyone knew who had sent him up to the Big House in the Sky. (If indeed he was headed in that direction.) Nana lived out the rest of her years in relative peace and quiet after enduring his chaos for sixty-five years. Jack Knife was glad for her. All his grandfather had ever given anybody was hell. He wished that Nana could be there with him in the limo going to the movie premiere. She'd be so proud. But she was in prison on other charges.

Flash bulbs were popping, people were screaming, it seemed like all of New York City had turned out for this big to-do. He positioned himself in front of a poster of the star of the movie (Some strange thing called "The Girl In The Pearls At The Top Of The World" a new experimental film made in the Alps. Didn't sound like his cup of tea but who cared? He was going to see his doll! And then suddenly there she was. She was getting out of a long black limousine and being escorted down a red carpet by the director of the movie. He was wearing fur. She was wearing fur. And a long slinky silver something or other than he couldn't figure out how she'd gotten into. She looked damned good! Better than good. Falling down and proposing and rushing off to get married good! But he kept his composure. He watched some of his boys fight to take pictures and get autographs. Some of them held back in the crowd looking like shy school boys. He knew how they felt. Then he saw her looking his way and exclaiming "There you are! Where have you been? I've been dying to see your handsome mug again!"

A big smile broke out on his face and he stepped forward to throw his arms around her but grabbed only empty air as she had walked right past him and thrown herself into the arms of....you guessed it....C. Loc 'Playboy' Thiese! He was momentarily stunned but thought fast and hurried to the side of Dorothy Dandridge as she emerged from a white Rolls Royce. "Hello, Darling," he murmured and bent to kiss her hand. She looked confused for a moment but captivated by this well dressed stranger, she played along and said loudly, "Well, Hello Darling to you, too!" Just as she took his arm, he saw Zelma Lee turn at the entrance of the theater and look back at them, wide-eyed. Their eyes locked and he nodded and looked away feeling avenged as he heard Shrimpy Joe somewhere hidden in the crowd shout, "Oh my God! You know Dorothy Dandridge too???!!!" The rest of the night was a blur, a wonderful blur. It was magic and fun and Zelma Lee's eyes shot daggers at him all night but he could honestly say that the movie was crap.

To be continued in Episode 18.......................

👇

Special mentions to......

Loc Thiese

James Ray

Louise Beavers

Anonymous fellow

Aunt Zelma Lee

Dona Drake

Dorothy Dandridge

Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller

and other movie stars

who showed up.....

And of course... Shrimpy Joe

TARZAN......Johnny Weissmuller

C Loc Thiese and the actor who plays him in the story.

Aachoo Voo Private Eye, Episode Sixteen Charm Schools and Crime Scenes All Over the Place

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode_18.html

link to Episode 15

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 16

Charm Schools And Crime Scenes All Over The Place

Mademoiselle Fi Fi (Felicia)

It was a clear bright moonlit night. No, it wasn't. What was I thinking? Was I thinking? Let's start this again, shall we? Just ignore what I previously wrote. I'm much too lazy and tired to erase anything at this hour so just bear with me. At this point, you should know me pretty well or at least you think you do so you should be well acquainted with my various and sundry ...um...eccentricities. (Whatever a sundry is.) I have no idea. I skipped school the day they covered "S" words. I do however know a lot of unusual "Q" words. Like quintessential and Quebec. That's in Canada, I think. Or France. I forget which. It sounds frenchy. Quite frenchy. (Another "Q" word I know.) Along with that other cute "Q" word ....um...qu’est-ce que c’est ? What is it? Oh, yes! C'est...it's.. um.. quadruple. (Which means four ruples, I think). I'm not good in math. I napped in that class. (And doodled in English.)

Like MiMi, I have been known to break out into French on occasion. Not the Cajun-French she espouses though I do that too sometimes but the French-French that they taught us to speak at "the hoity toity ooh la la" (as MiMi called it) Mademoiselle Fi Fi's Charm School For The Charm Impaired where we learned to say things like Enchante and Oui Oui. (And Sacrebleu and Merde when the Lady Fi Fi wasn't within earshot.) Well, I did anyway. I was a baaad little girl. Mon Dieu! A tres mauvaise fille! Or as MiMi would proudly say, "Petite bebette!" Coo-wee! That was moi!

I also taught the more adventurous students all I knew of the creative Cajun language on our breaks from class. They paid me handsomely and quite enjoyed our little extra-curricular lessons until the day of the big surprise test when several of the girls got their proper French and MiMi Voo's Cajun mixed up and were sent home with big red F's on their papers and the sternest looks you ever saw on a human face. Not one of them pointed a finger at me but I think the culprit was made obvious the day MiMi came to pick me up from Charm School due to some unforeseen delay and the two ladies met and exchanged words while I stood behind Miss Fi Fi's back shaking my head and making terrified motions at my Grand'Mere to stop talking. (She ignored me.)

The cost of my lessons went up after that much to my mother's dismay and I was forced to only speak French at home for an entire month as punishment. Fortunately, my mother's French was not that good so I frequently just made up french sounding words that seemed to satisfy her though occasionally she did raise an eyebrow and my father would clap his hand across his mouth to keep from laughing. I think he enjoyed having a naughty child. It was his way of rebelling without actually doing the rebelling. But then, he didn't get the spankings I endured. Nor did he have to walk around the house with a heavy book balanced on his head for good posture training or extend his pinkie finger while drinking liquids. ( I've actually seen baby pictures of myself holding a bottle with my little pinkie extended just like a little princess.) (And wearing a tiara no less.)

My mother didn't actually crack a whip but everyone heard the cracking just the same and complied with her wishes most of the time. Except for MiMi of course. She marched to the beat of her own drum and cracked her own whip. Between the two of them I think they made me into the dizzy and dangerous dame I am today. They rewired my brain or something. Maybe I do these things to myself and others deliberately, just sub-consciously. Hmmm. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Now back to whatever it was I was trying to relate before I got sidetracked by memories of my wayward youth.

It was a dark and stormy night. The kind of night they created for Bela Lugosi movies. The wind was howling. Lightning flashed around my nine story brownstone apartment and office complex. The broken rollup fire escape ladder had been replaced with an Aachoo Voo-proof contraption or so I was told. I hadn't attempted to go near it yet. And God knows Nick never would again even after he had completely healed and forgiven me for his near fatal (but let's face it, hilariously funny accident.) One of the cops had given me a photograph of the scene later on even though we weren't aware one had been taken at the time. He said it was just too freakishly funny to pass up and the 8x10 now hung in one of the precincts alongside several of my mugshots. Poor Nick. The look in his terrified brown eyes as he lay rolled up in that metal thing with his head sticking out on one side and his legs on the other like some kind of cartoon character. The cops kept asking me to get him to autograph it but I didn't dare. But I digress as usual.

At some point after midnight, I heard a scream. Couldn't tell where it was coming from. Didn't really want to know because, well, you know...me and my tripping over bodies and running into buildings and all that. I was still trying to solve six mysteries that I'd had no involvement with yet had still been fingerprinted and taken in for questioning over. I had just about given up on being a good Samaritan and reporting anything to anybody about anything ever again. It just didn't pay. I determined to let sleeping dogs lie and dead mobsters rest in peace and let somebody else make the discoveries. Of course that was hard to do being a detective and all. It was kind of pertinent to the job.

Another scream tore a hole in the night. Then a gunshot. Then I heard the screeching of tires and looked out the window to see two guys throwing what looked like a body out of a car in front of the brownstone across the street. Then they screeched away again. Another scream. Another gunshot. Thunder. The sound of Lena Horne's "Stormy Weather" wafting down the street. A different kind of scream and I beheld a tiny woman in a gray bathrobe chasing a huge man down the street with a rolling pin in her hand and murder in her eyes. It was him screaming. She was gaining on him but he was doing okay until he tripped. I didn't want to be an eyewitness to what came next so I closed my eyes and the window. What was going on out there?!

Maybe there was a full werewolf moon up there behind those dark clouds that night. I didn't know. I just knew I was sleepy and chilled and wishing I had Lance there breathing down my neck. I missed the big palooka. I missed his black curly hair and his big dark eyes and his sweet smile and his outrageous stories and especially ripping his clothes to shreds. I wondered if he missed me too. He had sent me a postcard from Rome saying he did. So romantic. So exotic. I was envious of his latest get-a-way to Italy on some mysterious errand for whatever government he worked for. He never said. Then one day I noticed that the postmark said Rome, Georgia. Georgia!? For crying out loud!

The next day the papers were full of crimes, unspeakable crimes. Crimes that made no sense. Crimes that defied human reasoning and gravity. Crimes that made infamous people famous and famous people wish they had left town the day before because they had been the victims of some of those crimes. I looked to see if the big man being chased by the rolling pin had been found in a trash bin or city park with a goose egg sized knot on his bald head but found nothing. The man in the rug thrown from the car that night turned out to be Big david's brother-in-law, Prudence's runaway husband, Ricky. Evidently he had not met his demise in Mexico as I had been told but had sneaked home to beg for forgiveness when his wife's best friend had left him for a sexy matador. (Who had ended up buying the ocean front property in his stead.) I was glad he had not expired away from home and because of me. Or maybe he did. Possibly he did. Probably he did. No, definitely he did. I had tracked him down and reported his whereabouts. So, yeah, definitely. That realization ruined my day. But Prudence sent me a bottle of champagne and I felt better when the bottle was empty.

Reporters were all over the place for days covering the late night crime spree and interviewing people and possible witnesses. I refused to talk to anyone though several detectives just automatically showed up at my door assuming I had seen everything. Which was partially true. I had seen a lot. But I kept my mouth shut. I was tired of having my picture taken at three in the morning. I wanted no part of it. I was playing it safe. But all that ended while I was sitting in a booth down at Clapsaddles reading the paper, drinking coffee and eating a ham and peanut butter sandwich (Harold had a very unique menu as earlier related) when the aforementioned tiny woman sans rolling pin came walking up to me with big tears in her eyes saying, "They tell me maybe you can help me. Something has happened to my husband, Howard Nelson. Can you please help me find him?"

I put down the paper and stared at her for five full minutes. She looked so lost and guileless. So tiny and harmless. And yet, I had seen......."Oh, merde!" I said and motioned for her to sit down. "Merde!" And other exquisitely bad words I won't repeat. She sat, staring with unreadable and slightly crossed eyes, her arms folded and frowning at me as though she'd understood every single French swear word I'd uttered. Would I take the case or would I tell her I'd witnessed her little one woman war in the dark of night and risk the wrath of that formidable rolling pin on my own noggin? It was like the Jack Benny "Your Money Or Your Life" radio show routine. To which he'd answered after a long hesitation, "I'm thinking it over!"

To be continued in Episode 17.......................

With special mentions going out to....

"Fi Fi" Felicia Purdom Morgan

Howard Nelson (my Uncle)

Lena Horne

Jack Benny

Bela Lugosi

Clappsaddle

Prudence

David "Qzert"

Lance Strait

Tony Curtis

Nick Nack

Canada

and

Rome

(both Italy and Georgia)

C'est Bon!!!!

That's enough....

💖

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye Episode Fifteen..Mobsters, Moola and All That Jazz.....Another point of view

https://aachoovooprivateeye2024.blogspot.com/2024/07/aachoo-voo-private-eye-episode-fourteen.html link to Episode 14

Aachoo Voo, Private Eye

Episode 15

Mobsters, Moola and All That Jazz

Nick was still in rehab. He was going to be in there for quite some time. His body still looked like an accordion just beginning to unfold. His handsome face was unscarred, unblemished. Thank God for that. I felt just about as low as a snake's belly as MiMi would say, for the part I had played in his un-foreseen accident with the folding stairs outside my apartment building. Of all the crazy things that had happened to my dates and love interests, that had been the craziest! If only I could go back to that night and had just waited two hours for the elevator to start running and then given up and walked up the inside stairs to my apartment like I usually did! If only! Nick had been so nice to walk me home in the rain from his pub. It had been romantic and sweet in a mystifying way because he was simply a mystifying man.

I had been semi-infatuated with him for some time as had every woman who'd laid eyes on him or imbibed one of his special concoctions or been the target of his unvoiced seductions. As far as I knew, he had played with the affections of many hopeful young/old/still breathing dames but hadn't walked any of them home but me. I think he wanted to see if my dangerous reputation was half as exciting as he'd heard it was. He was curious. Especially after that historic Saturday night when approximately twenty-eight of my past dates and one day or one night boyfriends had shown up at his place all nursing broken hearts or ribs or whatnots and looking to get sauced.

They were probably also hoping to get a glimpse of me (from afar) as they knew I sometimes ended up there after a case or a perplexing run in with detectives who were always trying to find me guilty of something stupid. Which I was, but I didn't think being stupid was illegal, just stupid. I couldn't help it. For the most part I think they just liked taking and looking at my mugshots. I finally got suspicious after they started asking me to put on fresh lipstick and unbutton my blouse. And I ask you, how many cops did it take to take a side shot and a face forward? Plus, they never asked me to hold a sign in front of me! (Mugshot taking was followed by a doughnut and coffee reception in the precinct meeting room. Invitation only.) Sheesh!

The other gumshoes in my circle of gumshoes thought it was funny that the girl that was only out to solve crimes usually ended up being charged with crimes. At least until they fingerprinted me and took some new photos. They usually let me go after long, tedious interrogations that only ended with them learning new swear words I had picked up from the parrot or MiMi and me learning how loudly their wives could scream on the phone at half past midnight as their pot roasts dried out on the stove. Johnny, (we called him "Ooh, Johnny" because that's how dames usually addressed him, made it his goal in life to tease and torment me about my love life, arrest record and the fact that I had solved every case he'd ever been hired to work on while sitting behind my desk and just putting the facts together while filing my nails and reading notes on his unsolved mysteries. I didn't even have to try. And he couldn't stand it.

He couldn't find a clue if it jumped into his lap. And believe me, lots of them had. He was darkly handsome, suave in a way not easily defined and thought he was God's gift to women. Some thought he was. (I thought he was a toad I'd never kiss.) George usually took my side and defended me the best he could but most of the P.I.s cajoled me cruelly or good-naturedly when we met in bars or Gumshoe Conventions. The mean ones who treated me cruelly were either guys I had not given any kind of chance or were guys I had given a chance and they had taken it. And I refuse to go into detail about that. There were good private dicks and there were lousy private dicks. I just wish they'd come up with a new word for private detectives. I was all grown up and my mother still washed my mouth out with soap if I said that word in her presence. I had never dared date or bring any guy home to meet my parents named Dick for that reason alone. It would have been humiliating for all concerned.

After my experience working for Big david or rather his sister Prudence, word had gotten round that I was "the dame to deal with" in both crime solving and crime commiting circles. Mobsters loved me, which made me nervous and cops loved me, which made me nervous but they kept me busy and employed in between mundane everyday cases like finding lost cats and wayward husbands or wives and solving mysteries that entailed "who did what to whom and who stole what from where." Crimes and mysteries always involved the letter "W." That was just a fact. Like mobsters involved money and the other "M" word, you know the one............ Malarkey.

The thing about detectives and mobsters that I found fascinating was how they tended to dress alike. Sharp suits, fancy hats and trench coats. I don't know who started the trend but the mobsters' suits tended to be sharper and more expensive. They were usually custom made by tailors bought and paid for and petrified to make mistakes like crooked seams and buttonless button holes. I supposed they added in all sorts of hidden pockets and places to hide guns, knives and phone numbers of public officials. I daresay not too many detectives could afford private tailors or found themselves in the good graces of any pubic officials worth knowing or calling.

The police detectives tended to look down upon private detectives for several reasons, none of which I shall go into here. Okay, maybe one. Most of us worked alone. We didn't have angry sergeants or supervisors breathing down our necks, we could sleep till noon and we could wear evening gowns to work if the occasion called for it. Well, I did anyway. There weren't a lot of female private you-know-whats. I had heard rumors about a cop that worked out of Burglary and Stick-em-Ups who wore evening gowns and favored gold lame' but he claimed it was only when he was working undercover in a private club for extremely ugly women. I don't know. Who knows? And I don't care to know.

Mobsters were a special breed of men. They loved their mothers, they went to church and they did reprehensible, despicable things without thinking twice about it. There were all sorts of mobsters or gangsters if you prefer that word. White ones, black ones, Oriental, Italian, you name it. We had them in the Big Apple. They were celebrities of sorts. Like Lipps, the movie monster mobster (say that four times fast) I had found in the alley. People loved him. Well, except for maybe two people. I had never liked him but that's just me. I hated movie monsters. They scared me. Why I went to see them at theaters I'll never know but I did. And I always went straight over to MiMi Voo's to sleep in her guest room for a week with Beulah until I stopped having nightmares. I felt safe with Beulah. A chicken for Pete's Sakes! My deepest, darkest most humiliating secret that no one will ever pry out of me under the hottest lights and the most tortuous long interrogations or threats to call my mother. I would sooner die than reveal that.

Big david was at the top of the mobster heap. He and an equally scary but equally smooth talker with the un-pronounceable moniker of (you might want to sit down and take a drink of something while I prepare my brain and tongue for this.) Giovanni Alphonso LaMacho Giancarlo Genovia Luciano Bonnano de Flippi, Jr. (I think I spelled that correctly.) Aka Uncle Alph. He was nobody's uncle but everybody called him that because when Giovanni Alphonso LaMacho...etc etc etc told you to do something, you just did it. He thought it was cute so everybody thought it was cute. And you could continue with your breathing and so forth. In fact, in order to become a bonafide member of Uncle Alph's gang, you had to either be born into the family or go through an extensive initiation that included saying and spelling Uncle Alph's full name as written on his abnormally long birth certificate. He came from a very large family and his parents didn't want to leave anyone out when they named their first born son. Both maternal and paternal sides of the family were known to hold centuries old grudges and they didn't settle feuds with fist fights or name calling.

One of the toughest gangsters in New York City was a darker skinned fellow called Jack Knife James otherwise known in various circles as Evil Genius and The Horn Man. He was sharper than the blade he carried in style and dress and smarter than Einstein on his best day. He also played jazz trumpet and could disguise himself and sneak in and play in any club with any band in the world. Benny Goodman's, for example. Once for kicks, he'd played the annual Policemen's Ball with an all policeman jazz ensemble even though he had approximately thirty-six current warrants against him at the time. As per his name: Genius. He could make a trumpet cry, they said of him. He could make a big man cry. He could make a big man cry while playing the trumpet. He could make a...well, you get the picture. He was big and bad but he loved kids and kittens and a pretty brunette named Zelma Lee. Word was that she didn't love him back and that's what made him mean but he never gave up pursuing her or rescuing kittens or let that interfere with his mobstering.

Which brings me back around to....wherever I was when I started this whole thing. Nick's Pub! Poor Nick had been lying in bed worrying about his famous/infamous watering hole and what to do about it while he recovered. He was at his wit's end when an old friend named Clyde Miraculous showed up with a solution. Clyde had retired... er ..been fired from running a famous club up in Harlem for a few months on a trial basis and was on his way to sunnier shores when he'd heard about Nick's accident. Wanting to help out his old army buddy, he agreed to run Nick's place until he got back on his feet. Nick was delighted. Clyde was one of those people that you never could tell where he hailed from....... Alabama, Argentina or Africa. He was multi-cultural and multi-talented. He could do anything, fit in anywhere and he loved smoky blue jazz music more than anything in the world. Except for his favorite cousin who was the sole supporter and pride of the whole Miraculous family and all of it's branches. His cousin was Jack Knife James.

Nick was laid up for months. I sent him flowers and cheese sandwiches but I kept my distance. I tried to visit once but the look on his handsome face stopped me in my tracks so I blew him a kiss and left the gifts with a nurse. In the long interim, strange things happened to him that he never foresaw. He lost his magical abilities and propensities. He lost his power to seduce women with his thoughts. He lost his mind reading and mind controlling and he also lost his grandfather's pocket watch. The one young Grandpa Resko had used in his vaudeville magic show to hypnotize his wife, Joy into marrying him and grown men into believing they were cows in the Foreign Legion. The name of the act was The Riveting Reskos. (After his sudden marriage to the lovely audience member.) Before that, it was just Resko. His grandparents had vanished on stage one evening in the old Vanishing Cabinet act the day after Nick turned 21, never to be seen again. Nick cherished the watch and kept it with him always. But somewhere between the ambulance and the emergency hospital, it had disappeared just like his mother's amazing parents.

That vanishing act had made headlines all around the world and the mystery had never been solved. Nick kept his grandfather's tools of the magic trade in a secure location and studied the tricks and illusions in his spare time, mastering most of them. However, he had yet to learn the secret of and to the Vanishing Cabinet. That one appeared to be true magic.

Before his release to leave, Nick had been hearing things about the "hot new jazz club" in town. The-Place-To-Be. The bar everyone wanted to be caught dead in. He was worried because it sounded like it was in his small pub's neighborhood. He didn't need the competition. He couldn't wait to get the run down from Clyde. Clyde had promised to pick him up the afternoon the doctors had determined he had recovered enough to walk again and chew gum. He was cautioned sternly to stay away from stairs and to keep off his feet for a while. That wouldn't be too difficult since he mostly just sat on a stool behind the bar and had stimulating mental conversations with attractive women. But there would be no more of that. He'd tried his best mind control and silent seduction on all the nurses at the various facilities he'd been recuperating in to no avail. No avail at all!!! It was frustrating and a little bit horrifying.

Few people knew how extremely shy and introverted Nick really was and what had led him to learn his grandfather's magic tricks and mental manipulations in his awkward teenage years. He had become so adept at it that it frightened him sometimes but he kept a cool exterior. His grandfather had seen him in action before he'd entered that cabinet and dematerialized for the last time and he'd been amazed, amused and a little bit jealous. Nick wondered if it were possible to one day find a girlfriend without resorting to mentalism and magic beans. He didn't know. He could only hope. Women seemed to find him boring when he tried to talk to them verbally. Except for Aachoo Voo. But that woman scared the living daylights out of him! She was the reason for all of this. Losing his health, job, tan, paranormal powers and very nearly, his will to live. Did he dare go near her again? That had been an incredible kiss and she fascinated him but was she worth dying for?

Clyde was late. It was getting dark and Nick was getting impatient and about to go back inside and attempt to call him when he saw that flashy car Clyde loved to brag about pull up to the curb. "My man!" Clyde greeted him as he hopped out, opened the passenger side door and hurried to help Nick into the car. It was slow going. His bones were still crunchy. "So sorry I'm running late." he said, "But I had some last minute things to take care of." "That's okay." Nick assured him and cleared his throat to begin asking questions about the pub and the new place everyone was buzzing about but Clyde waved them off and said in a low voice, "Listen, Nick. I got some things I need to tell you, man. I don't know how you're gonna take 'em but man, things have been happening!" Nick held his breath and steeled himself for some bad news. Like, the pub had burned down bad news. Like, the pub had been quarantined because of Black Plague bad news. Clyde kept quiet like he was trying to find the words to spill the bad news but couldn't find any so they drove on in silence. There didn't seem to be any thoughts in Clyde's mind to read so Nick just leaned back and fell asleep, fearing the worst.

He was awakened by bright lights, the sound of loud music and the giggles of happy women. He rubbed his eyes and tried to get his bearings but the scene seemed a little bit too surreal to be real. Still dreaming, evidently. "Nick, my friend, welcome home!" Clyde beamed, throwing open the car door and helping Nick to his hesitant feet. There was a red carpet there for him to walk on, lined on both sides by excited people of all shapes, sizes and colors. There was a doorman in uniform holding the door open to a freshly painted and newly remodeled building that boasted flashing NICK'S signs all over it. But that was nothing! When he stumbled inside in total disbelief, there was a stage and a packed house and the best bluesy jazz band he'd ever heard in his life, fronted by none other than the man himself, Jack Knife James, The Horn Man, Evil Genius and second cousin to Clyde Miraculous, up there making grown men cry with his moaning trumpet! He couldn't believe it! It was too much to handle for a crumpled man. But it appeared to be true! The Hottest New Place In Town was his own former lowly, lonely little pub! Nick had no idea what to do or say so he just folded up and fainted.

It was one of the happiest moments of Clyde's life even though he had no idea what Nick was going to say when he came to. He had certainly been surprised at all the changes. Whether he was thrilled or not was another matter. Maybe he should have prepared his friend but he'd just been so excited to be given responsibility for something again. Like the Cotton Club. Up in Harlem. Oh, my Lord, the changes he had made to that place! The absolutely unappreciated changes he had made to that place!!!! Threatened and beaten to within an inch of his life by angry owners and investors! And fired like a dishwasher with a mound of broken plates! (That he had previously been.) He wondered if he should wait for Nick to wake up or just go get in his car and leave town right then.