IWA Ghost Writer: Son of a Gun
Dec 20, 2013 11:35:10 GMT -8
Barnaby Cuthbert and NOMNOMNOM like this
Post by F. B. Nightingale on Dec 20, 2013 11:35:10 GMT -8
A Morris Tobias Interlude
By
Ross S.
Morris Tobias, Ltd.
Smith Tower, Seattle
Early Fall, 2013
Morris considered his options carefully, his eyes sliding from left to right and back again, considering each item in turn. It would not be the most important decision he made in the course of this evening – he was certain – but details mattered; a philosophy his vocation demanded.
"I believe I shall make use of...you."
Reaching out with a smile, Morris’ fingers passed over his newer Chapeau Claque and instead fell upon the antique Gibus, at the exclusion of the other nine varieties of top hats that populated the hallway-long hat rack. Had each of them been possessed of a consciousness – and Morris knew that, in their own way, each of them did – he wondered absently if the hats enjoyed the view when perched upon his scalp, and whether the others were now disappointed at not being chosen to accompany him on his nightly constitutional.
Taking up the Gibus, Morris took a moment to test its most famous feature: slamming it down flat and then, with a practiced flick of the wrist, triggering the mechanism to 'pop' it back into its full and regal stature; an original Antoine Gibus, circa 1840. After much time, research, and money spent, Morris had both acquired and verified the genuineness of this hat as being one of the first made; perhaps by Gibus himself, though that could never be known for certain.
Setting the hat at its appropriate angle on his brow, Morris strolled back into the clock shop’s main showcase area, resplendent with time pieces of all sorts on the walls, the display cases, and more than a few free-standing grandfather clocks. The atmosphere practically hummed with the combined and gentle staccato of clicking and ticking flywheels and mainsprings; a warm and constant buzz that marked the incremental passing of the ages.
With practiced and rote motions, Morris went through the rituals of closing shop for his nightly break from work: dimming the lights on the main floor, exchanging the ‘Open’ sign with ‘Be back in 30 min,’ and pausing at the door for that last moment, attuning his ear to the chorus sung by each of his children.
Morris Tobias knew each of them by heart; every movement, every tock, and could discern each one from the crowd with but a small flex of his senses. He always took a second before departing to make sure – just to make sure – that they all sounded healthy. Satisfied, and with a small nod to himself, he exited into the night.
Morris simply adored Pioneer Square. With its turn-of-the-century façades interspersed with modern constructs, to its cultural mix of the downtrodden and well-off, he always felt his neighborhood was the true heart of the city; the fulcrum of all Seattle had been, all it would be, and representing what it really was.
Clothed in his Victorian regalia with walking stick in hand, Morris set-out on what was his usual strolling route: West on Yesler Way to 1st Avenue and Pioneer Square itself; then North to Columbia Street; Northeast to 5th Avenue; South to Jefferson; and then Southwest back to Smith Tower. But for the entire circuit, it was the first leg he looked forward to so much, it being where he crossed through Pioneer Square itself, ever radiating a sense of history, darkness, and mystery.
As he made his way down Yesler, Morris habitually tipped his hat to the errant passerby, and certainly to the ladies he encountered as a matter of custom. Some would nod back, some would say hello, but many were not sure what to make of the odd man in the top hat at that hour, and in that place. But Morris did not mind, for eccentricity was not simply a suit he wore, but what he was made of.
Nearing 1st Avenue, Morris decided to deviate from routine slightly, and rounded past Brother’s Bail Bonds, entering Pioneer Square Park instead of merely passing it by. He was feeling adventurous this evening. Inhuman eyes absorbed and adjusted to the sodium gold of the streetlights, while the leaves and branches stretched spindly shadows across the brick-tile courtyard.
Morris looked around at the park benches as he proceeded; most of them were populated by the city’s homeless and lost. He recalled the brief period in which he – on a dare posed to him by a fellow Kindred – had lived amongst that segment of society for several weeks, under a different name and face. Cut-off from his wealth and luxuries, Morris had been forced to survive as a Vampire in a world of true want and depravity. Just that small taste of a different kind of existence had shifted the Ventrue’s perspective significantly, and the empathy he felt for those inhabiting the park this night practically radiated out from him as he passed.
Pausing at the split between two buildings, Morris absently patted his pockets for any spare change he had available to distribute, but the sudden gun barrel jammed into his side made him freeze in place.
“Wallet and jewelry or you’re fuckin’ dead,” the gun’s owner growled, giving the muzzle a firm and painful twist against Morris’ ribcage. Startled, Morris raised his hands up in supplication as he turned his head towards his would-be assailant. Shrouded in the hood of a sweatshirt, only the man’s lower face was visible; a grizzled clump of goatee and slightly crooked teeth. He was shorter than Morris by at least two feet, but his frame suggested a desperate and wiry strength.
Morris’ eyes then made their way to the weapon and –
“My, but that is an interesting piece you have there.”
The casual and unconcerned tone from his victim caught the man off-guard.
“Th’ hell?”
“Your gun,” Morris clarified, with a twitter of genuine excitement, any sense of threat evaporating. “It is quite interesting to me. May I see it?”
At first the mugger stiffened, his teeth gritting into a snarl and the barrel was pressed even harder into Morris’ side. But then, for no apparent reason, the man’s whole demeanor softened; his body relaxed, his mouth turning downward in shame. He did not want to harm the man in the top hat. How could he have ever thought such a thing? He needed to make things right with this wonderful, wonderful person.
“I…I…yeah, sure.” The gun was withdrawn, and with a small smile Morris reached down to lift it from the surrendering hand.
In the nighttime orange of the streetlights, Morris examined it as best he could, his hands quivering; he always seemed to acquire a slight, nervous palsy when attempting to hold something his temperament considered delicate.
The revolver was an antique, certainly. Its design did not conform to modern firearms that he was familiar with; the handgrip was a single piece of walnut, and slightly asymmetrical in shape, indicating that it had been handcrafted rather than mechanically cut. A telling sign.
“How fascinating. May I ask where you acquired this?”
The mugger, still struck slightly dumb by the casualness of the question, and the sudden unbridled respect he had for the man he had – only moments before – intended to rob, stumbled in his response.
“I…well, it was in a box of stuff at my Grandmother’s place, in the attic over my room. I mean, uh, I’m just living there because I, uh, lost my job and, uhh…”
The man reached back to scratch his head in bewilderment. Why am I telling him all that? The motion partially pulled back the hood of his sweatshirt, and Morris could see he was quite young; perhaps in his late 20’s, the nighttime shadows creating sharp edges around his features.
Suddenly remembering his manners, Morris held out his un-gunned hand.
“My apologies, what is your name?”
The man took and shook the hand on reflex, though his eyes were amazed he was doing so.
“Uh, Neal. Neal Caldwell.”
“Very good to meet you Neal.” Morris was all warmth. “My name is Morris Tobias. I was just out for my nightly walk and…well, you know the rest.” He smiled. Neal simply stared dumbly as Morris continued. “Would it be all right if we went back to my shop? It’s just a block over. I would very much like to examine your pistol in better light, and with the benefit of my reference library. If you would allow me?”
Neal’s lips attempted to form some kind of response, while he nervously looked around, entirely uncertain what was happening or what to do.
“I…I guess?” Neal said, finally.
“Excellent!” Morris grinned. “It’s just this way.”
Neal could only nod as Morris turned on his heel, while sliding the pistol carefully into the deep pocket of his frock coat as he made his way back towards Smith Tower. Like some kind of hapless puppy, Neal followed right behind.
* * *
The small brass bell above the door jangled pleasantly at its opening. Morris motioned Neal inside, shutting and locking the door behind them, not bothering to put the ‘Open’ sign back in place. Not just yet.
Morris turned and watched with no small measure of satisfaction as Neal stood in awe, his ears assaulted by the gentle cacophony of passing time. In the bare light that filtered out from the backroom workshop to the main floor, each clock was a face partially obscured by shadow, each seemingly assessing the new arrival.
“Do you like them?” Morris asked.
Neal turned back to him as though snapped from a daze, though a daze he was very much still experiencing.
“Oh, uh…yeah. They’re…did you make all of these?”
Morris gave a shrug as he made his way across the floor to the main display case, turning on the shop’s main lights and then rounding his way behind the counter.
“Many of them are original pieces of mine, yes. Others are restorations of items I have come across over the years. Still others are reproductions of things lost to, well, ‘time’ so to speak.” Morris allowed himself a snicker and smile which he directed to Neal. For his part, Neal smiled back, but it was one fraught with uncertainty.
“But those,” Morris continued, “I would never take full credit for, and would instead prefer to think of them each as a ‘homage’ to craftsmen far greater than myself.”
Stooping, Morris pulled open a drawer at the base of the counter and withdrew a soft micro-fiber cloth; a standard jeweler’s loupe; a pair of pristine white cotton gloves; and a small set of soft brushes. Setting these on top of the display case, he laid the cloth neatly on the counter and set the brushes and loupe beside it. Pulling-on the cotton gloves, he reached inside his frock coat and carefully extracted the revolver, setting it down centrally on the cloth. Only then did he proceed to remove his coat and hat.
“Is there anything else you can tell me about this revolver? You said it was in your Grandmother’s house?”
“Yes,” Neal responded, finding himself easing a bit into the situation. He pulled back his hood fully, revealing a mess of blonde hair, and a face too gaunt for someone his age. “It was in an old, whatchacallit…steam truck?”
“Steamer trunk, mm hmm,” Morris affirmed absently. He took in the sight of a now fully disclosed Neal as he hung his coat up; the boy reminded him of many of the street-faring unfortunates he had met in his time. And while his curiosity over Neal’s situation was a concern, his excitement over the pistol was overriding.
Morris moved to a tall bookcase behind the counter and against the far wall, and began methodically tapping his cotton fingertip along the spines of the various catalogs and reference books, searching for the proper volume.
“I, uh, I think the truck was my Granddad’s,” Neal went on, pacing around the shop, taking particular interest at the wrist watches within one of the display cases. While the names displayed on the small cards next to each were completely foreign to him, the price tags certainly spoke his language, and he envisioned what he could get for them on the street. The greed and desperation within him clawed its way to the surface, and Neal blinked a few times, rubbing his forehead as though in pain. Something was struggling within him.
“Is this…is this going to take long, man? I mean…”
Morris turned, having found the book he needed, and looked at the boy with a blank expression. “I apologize. Was there somewhere else you needed to be? I don’t mean to inconvenience you.”
Neal looked up with the squinted eyes of confused concentration, but upon seeing Morris’ face once again, any sense of discomfort melted away.
“Oh…no. No, I’ve got nothing going on. Please I, uh…what's the story on my gun?”
“Ah!” Morris said with excitement, fully in his element now. Setting the large book squarely beside the gun and other tools, he tugged his vest firmly into place; made sure his gloves were pulled snugly over his hands, and then opened the book to the section on handguns. With an eager grin that promised revelations, Morris beckoned Neal to come closer, which he did obediently, leaning over the counter to follow along.
“Now I will confess,” Morris began with humility, “that firearms are not quite my area of expertise, though I have constructed one or two in my time for special clients. But yours is very, very interesting. Did you notice the engraving on the ammunition cylinder?”
Neal nodded, tilting his head slightly to consider the gun from his reverse angle. “Yeah. Cowboys and Indians. Like it’s a toy, or something.”
“Oh not at all,” Morris corrected. “That is a very delicate roll-engraving, and if I am not mistaken…”
Morris took off his eyeglasses, setting them on the counter as he then pulled the jeweler’s loupe into place over his right eye. Lifting the revolver off the cloth, he angled the cylinder until the shop’s light struck it just so.
“Ah, yes. The etching on the metal is very precise, and of a uniform depth. And the intricacy of the details – the feathers on the headdress…and even the spurs on the cowboy – reproductions of this sort are usually produced from cheap molds, based off of the original designs. No, someone manufactured this with much care and respect for the medium.”
Morris looked up into Neal’s face, his magnified eye and overexcited look making him appear as some sort of mad scientist.
“This is a very good sign indeed,” Morris said with a grin. Removing the jeweler’s loupe and replacing his spectacles, Morris held the gun in one gloved hand while he began flipping pages in the reference book. Neal watched in doe-eyed and rapt fascination.
“The manufacturer’s stamp on the barrel is,” Morris looked again, squinting at the pistol, “‘ADDRESS SAML COLT NEW-YORK CITY’. Easy enough then; Colt is a very famous manufacturer of firearms, after all.” He flipped further, each turned page whipping with the sound of a razor slice.
“Let’s see…on to the details. The trigger guard is brass; a square guard at that. And…” Morris paused, examining the gun’s backstrap – the back edge of the pistol’s handgrip. “Two-two-seven…Zero.” Morris smiled again at Neal. “That is its serial number, engraved there. And if so…”
Morris released the cylinder catch, allowing it to swing freely outward on its hinge. Neal winced, as this revealed that there were, in fact, no actual bullets in the gun. This caused Morris to pause in his examinations, and he looked up at the now-blushing Neal with a nod and a smile.
“No need to be embarrassed,” he said. Returning his attention to the pistol Morris added under his breath: “Not that it would have mattered, in any case.”
Before Neal could process the comment, Morris turned the backside of the cylinder towards Neal, indicating something on its inner edge.
“And there…again, two-two-seven-zero engraved there as well. It would be a telling clue if the serial numbers did not match or were absent from each of the various components. And the cylinder has…oval stops. So that must mean…”
Setting the gun back down on the cloth, Morris rifled through more pages of the reference book, his fingers shaking in almost violent excitement while his face became a near-lifeless stone of concentration. Neal instinctively stood up straighter, retreating away from this odd and manic stranger, and felt a wave of discomfort and fear wash over him. But once more the confounding impulse to please and impress this man almost fully chased away his doubts. Almost.
“Aha!” Morris cried out just then, his face suddenly the picture of elated triumph, and Neal nearly jumped out of his dirty sneakers.
“The oval stops! They are really the signature feature, here. Had they been rectangular we would have been in an entirely different production run but oval…” Morris squinted at his guest, the happiness faltering. “I’m so very sorry, what was your name again?”
“N-Neal. Caldwell.”
“I am sorry,” Morris said, and he really was. “Mr. Caldwell, I wonder if you have any idea what you have on your hands here?”
“Uhm. No?” The urge to flee as quickly as his legs would carry him was overwhelming, but the total inability to do so was an impenetrable obstacle.
Morris daintily cradled the gun in both of his cottoned palms, lifting it as though offering a sacrifice to some esoteric god of craftsmanship.
“This, as far as the evidence and my research tells me, is a Colt ‘Dragoon’ Revolver. And what is known as a ‘First Model.’ The First Model consisted of only seven-thousand pieces, before they switched from a V-type mainspring to a flat leaf mainspring, and altered the stops from an oval shape to a rectangular one. And yours is number two-two-seven-zero of that series.”
Neal’s eyes remained wide, though his fear was now nearly equally met by his curiosity.
“So…is it valuable?”
“Oh, very much so,” Morris confirmed. Setting the gun down once more with near reverence, he returned to his reference book.
“In this series it was manufactured between 1848 and 1850; nearly as old as my Gibus!”
A question formed on Neal’s face.
“Oh, that’s my top hat, there I mean.” Morris pointed. Neal nodded. Morris continued.
“This was likely used during American Civil War, which was taking place at that time. From the serial number and further research, it might even be possible to determine where it was used, and by whom; though I would assume it would have been an ancestor of yours, Mister…uhm…”
“Caldwell.”
“Caldwell. Yes. I do apologize. Now again, I am no expert, and this would most certainly need to be appraised by an appropriate dealer, but it says here,” Morris looked again into the reference book, “that items such as this, and in such good condition…well, they’ve gone to auction for between one-hundred to one-hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars!”
Neal’s mouth dropped open in shock, all fear and bewilderment replaced with dollar signs and avarice.
“A hundred…thousand?”
Morris nodded at him with a wide grin of both satisfaction and empathic joy.
“That’s…that’s…ohmygod…”
“Quite wonderful, yes.” Morris carefully wrapped the revolver in the micro-fiber cloth, carrying it out from behind the counter and approaching the dumbstruck and giddy Neal. And as he did so, Morris’ face took on a cast of grim resignation, and the temperature in the room seemed to decline. Even the volume of the ticking air could be heard to hush itself.
“Though it is a shame, I suppose, that you’ll not be selling it.” The words left Morris’ lips like a Judge handing down a sentence.
Neal’s joy drained from his face as this man, this wonderful, wonderful man began giving fault to his newfound dreams of wealth.
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“Well, it is not yours to sell, after all. This belongs to your Grandmother. You stole this from her.” Eyes of sincere disappointment, and perhaps even a twinge of sadness met Neal’s.
“Well, yeah, but maybe, maybe I - ”
“I think it would be best,” Morris interrupted firmly, “if this found its way back to its proper owner.” Neal’s eyes grew wide in both fear and the loss of dreams, all contained in the bundled package in Morris’ hands.
“Oh, and Mr. Caldwell?”
Neal looked up from the gun with eyes of sadness and loss.
“Yeah?”
Morris’ face flattened, and he seemed to no longer be standing in front of Neal, but looming over him.
“I have a great love for Pioneer Square, and you will not be stealing from anyone in this neighborhood again.”
“I…I won’t?”
Morris shook his head.
“Nyet.”
* * *
The firm click of the steamer trunk’s lid snapped Neal out of his daze. He blinked, examining his surrounding with the aching slowness of disoriented fear. He was in his Grandmother’s attic. Looking blankly back down at the trunk, he knew what he had just done, but had no memory of having decided to do it.
Neal knelt there, in the dark and dusty air, as the barest rays of morning began seeping their way through the small circular window at the far end of the cramped space. The past few hours were a haze; he remembered getting the old gun, and heading out to try and make some quick cash for a fix but…
“Something about…a Dragon in a top hat, fighting an Indian made of clocks?”
The words hung in the air for a beat, before Neal let out an uncontrollable and slightly unhinged laugh at the image he had just invented for himself. But this faded quickly, and he was left with no other memories but a gray void, and a sense of dread.
Eventually, he turned to crawl back to the trap door that served as an exit from the attic, but as he moved he felt and realized there was something out of place in his right pocket. Reaching inside, he withdrew a thick roll of cash, wound tightly with a pink rubber band. Neal stared at it in disbelief, and then, mechanically, unrolled and began counting the numerous bills out on the floor. Eventually, he found he had five thousand dollars.
“Five grand?” Neal stared off into space in amazement. “Where did I…I…I’m going to use this money to move out of my Grandmother’s house. Find my own place of residence. I will give up drugs. And then I will seek employment of my own, anywhere but in Pioneer Square. And once I have saved enough I will hire an appraiser to examine my Grandmother’s gun and see that she has all the information she needs to decide what is best to do with it.”
The instructions for his future thus recited and subconsciously carved into a certainty, Neal gasped for air, and quickly gathered up his newfound wealth, knowing exactly what he needed to do. And over the following weeks and months, he fulfilled every task.
Like clockwork.
