Prologue

The candy-apple red Caddy drifted into the lot like a whaler on a high tide. The road surrendered to the weight of Detroit steel, gripping the vibrating rubber like a frightened child. The prettiest man Cloverville, Tennessee, had ever seen at the wheel, his eyes glistening in the dashboard lights, making the dreamboat in the land yacht all the more dreamy.

The door swung open slow and heavy. And all the grandmothers in Cloverville still swear the temperature rose twenty degrees when the heel of Bubellé Reinholdt’s mauve-and-cream spats stabbed into the melting tar of a lost highway.

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Chapter 1: Gypsy Jake

Gypsy Jake knew he was fucking everything up again, but watching his mistress admire her own perfectly sculpted abdomen in the mirror pushed everything else out of his mind. Maybe his whole life was nothing more than giving in to the wrong impulse at the wrong time, and here he was again. Could he really leave Susan? His faithful, beautiful, old wife? How were they the same age, he wondered. Surely he wasn’t that old.

In truth, Gypsy Jake was two years older than the woman who had carried him through twenty years of rocky marriage and an even rockier career. Jake pushed thoughts of his beautiful old wife out of his mind, took another bump, and sank another shot. As he sealed out the last light of Logos, he was again lost in the pheromones of his daughter’s best friend. A girl he had known since she was eight. She had never stood out until the swimming party for his daughter’s fifteenth birthday. Since then, her presence had given him a strange blend of anxiety, hope, shame, and excitement all at the same time.

So one inappropriate thought gave way to another, and that, in turn, led to an inappropriate action. To specify would be altogether inappropriate.

The sharp blast of a van horn outside snapped his mind off Kimberly’s perfect body and back onto what was really inappropriate: the pitiful state of his once brilliant career.

Kimberly slipped the little book into his inside jacket pocket when the roadie van pulled up to collect him like so much luggage. He hadn’t even noticed her do it. She hugged him goodbye, told him to “be safe,” and before he could answer, the roadies were honking and waving him in. By the time he climbed into the back next to the coils of filthy cables and relentless road cases that abused him with every turn and touch of the brakes and press of the gas, the book was already pressing against his ribs like a secret he didn’t want to hear.

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Chapter 2: The Little Book

What was far more inappropriate than his harmless relationship with his daughter’s best friend was his current assignment. Gypsy Jake felt he truly understood the saying “to add insult to injury.” And if that saying ever meant anything, it meant something now, as he sat in the back of the roadie van like a carny.

He had been assured he’d be on the road with The Eagles this year. Assured because that’s where he belonged. That’s what he had earned. That’s what people expected of him. Even with the piling missed deadlines and his last stint in rehab. Surely, The Eagles would be just as offended as he was by the gaudy prose spewing writing hack SinHouse sent to review the last leg of their enormously successful world tour.

Nothing made sense to Gypsy Jake anymore. The music business didn’t make sense. Editors didn’t make sense. The public didn’t make sense. The guilt he couldn’t seem to choke down didn’t make sense. And Susan, his wife, had been little more than a glorified roommate for the last decade.

His daughter’s best friend was an adult. She was every bit of eighteen years old. Why should he feel so guilty? Why was he the bad guy? Who was he hurting? It didn’t make sense.

Just like him riding in the back of this van with a bunch of reeking roadies following a has-been, once-great soul singer turned buffoon on what was surely his final tour. No one believed Red could keep it together for another year, let alone for the rest of the tour. And even if he could, no one whose livelihood didn’t depend on Sonny Ray Redding would care enough to watch.

Jake reached into his inside jacket pocket. The brown corduroy one with the patched elbows, the one Kimberly got him for his fifty-fifth birthday with Susan’s money. They’d had an ongoing joke that he was her handsome college professor and she his star pupil. Jake would usually laugh at that, at least chuckle. Instead, he felt a bolt of cringe crawl down his spine as he fumbled with the little book he pulled from his pocket.

The cover said: Boys’ Names 1979–1980.

He opened it. His eyes scanned the list. And he heard himself say out loud, to no one: “It just doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense anymore.”

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Chapter 3: Monsieur Rambah

Gypsy Jake slipped the book back into his pocket and scanned the van to see if any of the roadies were watching him. They weren’t. They were busy applying their trade to the various cords. Stripping them, replacing metal jacks, testing connections.

Jake looked back down at his lap and unfolded the piece of paper. It was an offer to research and write the foreword for a new remaster of Bubellé Reinholdt’s last session, and update a definitive bio on the lost and forgotten Gypsy Jazz great, Bubellé Reinholdt.

The job was even more beneath him than his current assignment, but Harry had sent it a week after Jake accepted the Sonny Ray tour knowing Jake would always use the extra cash. This would have been no big deal if Jake were a freelancer. But he wasn’t a freelancer. He was under contract. A generous contract, with SinHouse Pulp. Using the time they were paying him to follow around the buffoon with the roadies, only to write a story for a competitor’s release… Might be just as inappropriate as his current situation.

But he needed the money. He always needed the money. Susan had paid all their bills since his last stint in rehab. Jake wouldn’t even know his own bank account number. He didn’t know which bank they used. He couldn’t possibly ask Susan for, well, the unthinkable. Even if Susan had known about Kimberly and her condition, she wouldn't want any part in that…

Gypsy Jake’s attention snapped back to his surroundings, scanning the van. Nothing but luggage and coils of cable. And besides… he wasn’t even in the bus with Sonny Ray. He had hardly said two words to the man. What was he supposed to do?

There were several stops ahead where old bandmates of Bubellé Reinholdt happened to be playing hotel lounges. Some of them the same hotels the tour was staying in. What harm would it do to go down, have a few drinks, and talk to some legendary jazz musicians? That was what he did. That was his job. That was his career. That was what he was the best at in the world. It was what was expected of him.

Jake folded the paper and tucked it back into his pocket. He watched one of the roadies wrap black tape around a black cord, thick fingers working methodically, breathing through his mouth, and wiping his runny nose on his sleeve. The sight made Jake feel so indignant that he genuinely considered calling his wife, Susan, at the next stop and asking her to wire money so he could fly home from Portland. But she would tell him no. She would make him stay and finish his story. Because that was the right thing to do. And Susan always did the right thing.

Nine uncomfortable hours later, after a bite and a few meditating moments with his bare feet on the carpet, Jake left his room and made his way to the Red Lion Lounge. He walked in, scanning the room for Sonny Ray and the carnies, and thankfully, there was no trace of them. Just a few blue-haired ladies draped in costume jewelry as out of season as their shoes. This entire tour was going to be an insult to good taste and basic human comfort.

Jake sat at a small table directly in front of an elegant older man whose slight frame would mislead anyone unfamiliar with the physical byproducts of hard physical labor into mistaking muscled tendon for frailty. Jake scanned the room again for the roadies. Seeing none, he pulled the book out of his jacket pocket. A finely tailored blazer gifted to him by the late, great soul singer Otis Redding. Jake wore it whenever he wanted to be seen and appreciated for his position.

When the set ended, the elegant older man approached the table. Jake, without standing, extended his hand to the once-celebrated and innovative violinist. Jake flinched when the supposedly frail man took his hand in a shockingly firm grip. The violinist noticed the wince, released his hand, and apologized in broken English.

“Sorry,” he said, pointing at the hand he’d just withdrawn. “Fifty years of gripping wood for hours a day, every day and night.”

After an hour of drinks and the same stories everyone had heard countless times about Reinholdt’s genius and bad behavior, Jake felt he had let the violinist get his best material out. He interrupted.

“What’s there off the books? I’ve heard all these stories before, Monsieur Rambah, and so have my readers. What can you tell me about Bubellé you haven’t told anyone else? What do you think happened to him? You never bought into the mob theory like everyone else. Did he piss off the wrong man? Wrong woman? Did he have to run in fear? Or is he dead?

“No!” the elegant man belted, slamming his hand on the table hard enough that the glasses jumped and shattered on the floor. Gypsy Jake was so taken aback that he couldn’t think of a single word. And sat still as a gravestone.

“Look at me, Mister Taylor,” the violinist said. “Bubellé was an evil man, yes. He could be a wicked man. A violent man. A man who pursued the Devil. He believed he could dominate Satan himself and I think he was correct. Whatever happened to that evil son of a bitch, it had nothing to do with fear. He feared nothing. Not even God.”

He scanned the room again before lowering his voice. “Stick with the… How do you say? Ah yes. Stick to the tropes. They have been good enough for three decades. They are good enough now. You do not want to know what really happened to Bubellé. Whatever his real fucking name was.”

He paused, then added, “He came to France in ’32. He was no more French than you, Mister Taylor. He talked in his sleep sometimes. The first time was when we were hitchhiking from Paris to Rome. He spoke in a perfect American accent. I leaned closer. Curiosity, you understand? And before I could cough, I was on my back with a knife to my throat.”

He scanned the room again. “His eyes were wild. I never slept near him again. I saw him do things no man could do. Fight through seven or eight men. Talk any woman into anything. Here is my advice: see the old faces still breathing, enjoy the music, and reprint the tried-and-true tales. They are all true. And they will not get you or me killed… Or worse.”

With that, the elegant old violinist stood, bowed, and walked out the stage door.

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Chapter 4: Sonny Ray Redding

Gypsy Jake jumped at the cracking sound that followed. Sonny Ray Redding sitting at the bar, slow-clapping. “Hell, brother, that went well,” Sonny said. “You really got that old timer to open up.” He laughed. Then his face fell into a perfected proper hippie grin. No matter what was happening, how much you were humiliating yourself, Red always made you feel he was laughing with you when he was obviously laughing at you.

Jake walked over and bellied up at the bar next to Sonny. “Sorry Jake,” Sonny said. His happy eyes changed to the perfect mixture of concern and regret for just a moment. “Levi shouldn’t have put you in the van with the crew. He’s new. Still has a lot to learn. I’m giving you the bottom left bunk on the bus. Statistically the safest place.”

Sonny held up a long, thick joint. “How ‘bout we smoke this and try our damnedest not to talk about anything too real; and get you your story so you can move on to the next one.”

Gypsy Jake smiled, made a dramatic show, and stretched out the stiffness of the van ride, and Sonny Ray grinned at him.

“You like scotch?” Sonny asked.

“As a matter of fact,” Jake said, “I happen to adore scotch.”

“Well,” Sonny said, “it’s only thirty-six years old… but that’s almost twice as old as my new fiancée.”

Both men laughed. They walked across the hotel parking lot. Sonny lit the joint and offered the greens to Gypsy Jake; his guest of honor. Sonny knew how to get journalists on his side. Hell, he knew how to get everyone on his side. He cultivated his voice, his charm, his persona — the mythical-old-soul routine.

Jake studied him. The salt and pepper hair and matching beard, the kind, wise eyes. Sonny’s slow, easy smile could pull the cold out of a corpse. Everything about Red was rehearsed to perfection; he came off as the most authentic man alive. You have to respect that level of commitment and artistry.

And it reminded Jake of something Reinholdt’s old drummer had said: “The only person who ever matched Reinholdt’s presence was a kid in Memphis in ’51. A white boy in a sea of black faces. A face as beautiful as Bubellé’s, maybe more. For the first time, someone else commanded the room. And Reinholdt felt it.”

It was Elvis Presley. Elvis walked out of that night changed, and Bubellé walked into legend.

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Chapter 5: Reflections

Gypsy Jake drank his scotch down and puffed off the girthy joint, reflecting, doing his best Jack Kerouac. “You know,” he said, “I didn’t believe anything when I wrote that piece on Elvis… until I saw him walk across that truck-bed stage. Seeing him, younger than me, did something to me. When he opened his mouth… Words flooded my mind that had never been there before.”

He paused. “Whatever he did to musicians… he did the same to me. But it came out as words. That was the first thing I ever wrote. Maybe the best thing I ever wrote. I didn’t know what he meant. But I knew the world had changed.”

Jake’s voice cracked. The weight of Elvis… For both men, hung between them. Sonny wasn’t just kissing his ass. Jake could feel that. And God… It had been a long time since anyone tried.

Just as Sonny Ray was putting the bookends on the right words, something slipped. He began speaking freely, maybe for the first time in his life. Everything he’d said to Jake that night was meant to soften him… but it was also true. Jake had changed his life with that Elvis story.

“It’s a son of a bitch, isn’t it, Jake?” Sonny said quietly. “To live your life in the open for the entertainment of people who judge things they can’t possibly understand. They don’t know what it’s like to be me… or to be you. I’m so goddamn sick of it all.”

Gone was Sonny’s aw-shucks Southern drawl. In its place: a crisp Northeastern blue-blood accent. Then, as quickly as it came it vanished. Sonny’s easy Southern charm returned when the waitresses giggled their way over.

“We’ll catch up tomorrow, brother,” Sonny said, walking away with them.

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Chapter 6: The Lost and Forgotten Gypsy Jazz Great

Gypsy Jake checked the front desk for messages. Three items. An envelope from SinHouse with the Reinholdt tape. A letter from Kimberly and a fax: a faded photograph of a 17-year-old Elvis Presley and Bubellé Reinholdt in a small juke joint. Scrawled across the bottom in hurried pen: Liz — up late.

He would rather do anything than open them. So he did. He stood on the balcony, smoking. Listening. Watching Red board the bus with the women. None of it made sense.

Jake drank. Thought. Then dialed the number on the note.

Two rings.

A woman answered. Low. Smoky. A trace of turn-of-the-century French Quarter worn down by northern years. “This is Liza.”

“Jake Taylor. You left a message at the front desk.” Silence. He could hear her breathing. Slow. Measured.

“You’re the one writing about Bubellé.”

“Not officially. Not yet.” Another pause.

“Good,” she said, a tired smile in her voice. “Because the official story is bullshit. And you know it.”

Jake leaned on the railing. “I’ve heard the mob theory. Jealous husband. Rich widow. Even the vampire one. Which are you selling tonight?”

“None of ’em, honey.” Her voice dropped, low and smoky. “I was there the night he disappeared. Memphis. 1952. I was in town on business. Heard he was playing a little juke joint on Beale Street. Pure chance we were in the same city that night. The room was packed. Thick with smoke and heat. Then Bubellé walked in like he owned the Delta… and half the Mississippi besides.”

Jake pulled out his notebook. “Go on.”

“I had known him years before. Back in ’34. We were lovers. He played in my band for a time.” A slow drag. A faint crackle on the line.

“That night, a kid showed up. Seventeen, maybe. White boy. All nerves and hunger. He’d never seen anything like Bubellé. Nobody had. Bubellé was forty-two. Still beautiful. Still dangerous. But when he saw that kid… something shifted. Lord, you could feel it in the air. They were the same. Bubellé knew it right away. He was looking at something bigger than himself. I watched the two of them. Could have been ten minutes. Could have been ten hours. I was transfixed. So was everyone else. They had a table to themselves. The room closed in around them. Quiet. Every ear straining for even a hint of what they were saying. I just happened to be standing closest. I do not know what happened to Bubellé Reinholdt after he left that joint… But I know what happened to him in it. I think he understood something. Truly understood it. That it was not him. It was the boy. The young, beautiful, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy… in a sea of black faces, all there to watch a man who had become more myth than reality. But I think that boy, with the sideburns, is why he left. Bubellé broke character that night. Probably for the first time in his life. He acted with genuine kindness. I almost fell into the table behind me when Bubellé took off his pair of gold cufflinks. Old and heavy from another century. From one perfectly manicured hand to another…”

“‘These are for you… The real you… The one no one believes in. Soon they will. The entire world will. If there were anything I could teach you, I would. The world will try to change you. You will become a living parody if you let them.’”

“Bubellé watched him go. Then he looked at me. I was in the doorway, and he winked.”

“‘See?’ he said. ‘Even the angels doubt themselves from time to time.’”

“So you’re saying Elvis Presley got his persona from Bubellé?”

Liza let out a soft, knowing chuckle. “No, silly. I’m saying Elvis was an organic, authentic echo of Bubellé. As Bubellé must have been an echo of someone before him. Elvis was already fully Elvis that night. He didn’t need to be inspired. Like Bubellé, he was inspiration incarnate.”

Jake rubbed his temple. “So what’s the story here?”

“None of the hypotheses are true,” Liza said, her voice turning serious. “Bubellé scared mob bosses, not the other way around. There was no one for Bubellé to run from or to. No one even heard the boy sing. It was his aura, his presence. The only person to ever draw Bubellé’s attention, or anyone else’s off Bubellé. But I’m trying to tell you, Mr. Taylor, that if he had no one to run from and no one to run to… Then he’s probably still here.” She paused, letting the words settle. “That’s your story.”

Jake stood still, phone pressed tight to his ear. Jake fumbled with one hand, trying to open his fading bottle of scotch, the other holding the phone, but only managed to drop the joint in his lap, making its way clean into the fly of his boxers. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled as he batted at his privates, dropping the phone and the bottle of scotch, which broke the glass table. The cherry had done its work too quickly for Jake to spare himself an absurd situation. On the line, a low, husky, bitter little laugh from Liza.

“No. Not Jesus. Just two legends passing in the night. One who stepped into the shadows. The other stepping into the light.” The line went quiet. Jake was frantic now as the cherry of the joint did its worst to the boxers and the crown of his penis. He was hopping like a flea to the bathroom and into the shower.

“Write it if you want, Jake. But be careful. Some legends don’t like being dragged back into the light. Some legends are dangerous. Oh, and if I had to guess where Bubellé was, I’d wager too close for comfort. So take heed, Mister Taylor. There’s no more dangerous legend than the legend of Bubellé Reinholdt.”

Jake stood shivering in the shower, cigarette burning at his lips, and the freezing water sprayed him from the chest to the knees. Jake regained his composure and remembered Liza, then ran to the phone. He could still make out her low, husky voice, then the dial tone. He put the phone back in the hanger and decided against calling her back. She didn’t know where he was or if he was alive, but could he be alive? He hobbled to the chair and sat at the broken desk, rubbing a cube of ice along his member. He could be alive. There’s no death certificate. There’s no funeral. No obituary. There was no word of his death besides absurd stories like he became a vampire hunter for the Vatican. That one made Jake laugh, but there were more disturbing stories that worked like myths. Like him leaving France in 1933 with what was believed to be a stolen masterpiece after he was the last person to see the owner alive, who happened to be tortured and slaughtered in a satanic ritual. Or the knife fights and razor fights. If there’s one thing besides his ability to play guitar that was objectively true, it was his capacity for violence. He was not a man any man would trifle with, vampire hunter or not. Jake laughed at the thought again. The story became forward-resting, and Jake started to feel that old hunger build and push everything else out of his mind. The same way Kimberly’s beautiful body did.

Kimberly.

Jake looked at the envelope and decided they could wait. His wife could wait. SinHouse could wait. Everyone could wait. Pages were going to pour out of him like blood from an open wound.

Gypsy Jake Taylor was back.

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Chapter Seven: The Lost Highway

When Sonny was ready, everyone was ready, and Sonny was ready to go! Gypsy boarded the bus and found Sonny Ray behind the wheel, drunk and stoned.

“Hey, Red! Let’s crack another bottle and talk the exposé in the back lounge. I could use a little more of that scotch.” Gypsy was trying to coax Sonny out of the driver’s seat, but it wasn’t working. Sonny leaned on the horn like a teenager on prom night.

“We sure as hell will! Once I get this big bastard on the highway!”

Gypsy retreated to his bunk, knowing it was a wasted effort trying to protest or reason with rock stars. The bunk was as cozy as a coffin, and Gypsy was exhausted. He was on fire to write and needed some rest. Jake stretched out in the bunk. He thought to himself and laughed. Jake was so tired he nodded off, fumbling for the book Kimberly had given him: The Book of Boys’ Names, 1979 to 1980. The Reinholdt Story was going to take all of his time, all his effort, all of his attention. It was time to let the poor girl down easy, but firm. She would understand this was going to be a book not just article. It was his ticket back, better than back. He was coming to be a property writer. No more schlepping along in the rear with the gear. In two years he could be a best seller. Anything was possible now. The low drone of the wheels on the highway calmed Jake into a comfortable slumber. He dreamt of impossibly long purple Cadillacs and switch blades, poodle skirts and Perry Como. A world he had just missed if it ever truly existed at all.

Gypsy Jake woke lying on an empty desert freeway with a lame rattlesnake with no rattle flickering a foot in front of him. That snake looks confused, Jake thought then giggled at the absurdity of the concept. The world was spinning, and the pressure pushing against his skull made the motion sickness worse, which made him chuckle and wince at the same time again. His vision cleared. His big toe came into focus, then the others. It was his foot. He’d know it anywhere. Then he understood what had happened. Sonny Ray had finally done it. The top of the bus where Jake had been resting in the bottom-left bunk was cleaved clean off like a tuna fish can.

He found his Winstons. There is a God, he thought. He lit one. Scanned the wreckage. Pain built behind his eyes. He searched his pockets… there, the book, Boys’ Names 1979–1980. He had no pen, so he dipped his finger in the blood leaking from his ear and circled a name. Then he kissed the book and placed it back in his jacket, where it would be found and returned to his wife. She would do the right thing. She always had.

Relief, the first in decades, washed over him. Then, as if an invisible hand guided him, he slumped sideways until his cheek rested in the melting tar of a lost highway.

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