Author's Note: this one is shorter than my norm. I concieved of it as an introductory piece that will lead to future stories. I'd like to thank Hugo, SSS and others for their crash corse in Horn nomenclature and development. Thanks also to Kendo for the roughdraft edit.
Sam Gatwin was a hell of a Jazz man. He was also one hell of a ladies man, which is what got him killed. His final act wasn't played out on a stage, it was played out between the legs of a pretty society lady. The fact that she was white and Sam was black might have been enough to do him in. No one will ever know how a Jim Crow court would have reacted, because her husband owned a Montgomery Ward single barrel shotgun and that was all she wrote for poor Sam and his lady.
Now some people said Sam's magic with the ladies had more to do with the horn in his hand than the one in his trousers. When deep in his cups he was prone to bragging that a voodoo priestess had blessed it and if you knew how to play it, you could have any woman you wanted.
Sam's horn survived him, but no one was interested in memorabilia of a small time Jazz man back then. It was sold with his few other effects and passed into history. It would be almost sixty full years after his death that people rediscovered his music, thanks to an old aluminum disk recording he made while serving time at Angola. It was nearly ten full years after that, when music major Kerri Towland managed to locate his horn and purchase it.
***
"That's it?" Sasha said sceptically.
"On yeah, this is it. See the initials stamped into the bell?"
"S.O.W.G.?"
"Samuel Oliver Wendell Gatwin."
"Look, I know you're a little nutty about music and stuff, but you can't even play the trumpet. Five hundred bucks is a hell of a lot of partying you're going to miss out on."
Kerri looked up from her prize and shook her head. Sash was a great friend, but she was definitely a here and now kind of girl. To her it was just a horn, but to Kerri it was history. It had significance to her, not unlike that of a gun owned by Cole Younger or Al Capone did to a gun collector. It was far more than just an antique horn, because Sam Gatwin had once played it.
The horn was unspectacular in most ways. An old Constellation model in nickel silver. The silver had tarnished and the green felt of the case was threadbare. There were two spare mouthpieces, but she had no idea if those were original or something added by a dealer in years past in order to sell the instrument. She had read many of the first hand accounts of how Sam played and of the instrument's purported special powers.
She credited those to clever PR on Sam's part and to "respectable" men looking for an explanation for seemingly "respectable" women taking up with a vagabond Jazz musician. She pursed her lips and gave an experimental buzz and then tried the trumpet. She was by no means a player, but she satisfied herself it was a standard Bb.
"Stop it!" Sash shouted, clamping her hands over her ears.
"What?"
"If you're going to make those awful noises, at least let me get out of the room," she replied, hurrying upstairs.
Kerri laughed and began the long, slow, tedious process of polishing the horn up. Some of the tarnish came away with a little elbow grease, but a strange, kind of veined pattern remained despite all the effort she expended. It looked almost like a network of capillaries just under someone's skin. Kerri resisted the temptation to take an abrasive to it. She hadn't spent months of research and five hundred bucks to damage it. The tarnish was odd, not something she had ever seen or read about, but she wasn't really an expert in old horns. She decided to take it to Dr. Pitt-Martin.
***
"Hello Kerri," the tall, professor said when Kerri entered her office.
"Hey Doc, thanks for seeing me," Kerri replied.
Dr. Pitt-Martin was a tall woman, with a decidedly rubesesque figure. On a shorter woman, she would have seemed plump, but thanks to the Dr.'s tall frame, she never lacked for admirers. Kerri had only taken one class from her, a kind of overview of the development of the various modern horns. The professor was more often teaching people to play, than teaching history. Still, they had hit it off from the start and Kerri counted the tall professor as one of her favourite teachers.
"Not at all. My office hours are usually filled with sour notes, it's good to get someone who won't attempt to damage my ear drums or sensibilities, every once in a while," she said with a smile.
Kerri returned it and placed the battered case on the professor's desk. The blonde eyed her curiously as Kerri sank into the deeply padded chair in front of the desk.
"What's this?"
"Just take a look at it, I don't want to prejudice your opinion," Kerri said.
"Well, let's see," she said, opening the case.
"It's an old Conn Constellation. I haven't seen one of these in years. I guess you'd like an appraisal of it?"
"Kinda."
"Well, let's see. It's a real Conn, I'd say twenties vintage. Bb. Small bore and..." she paused when she got to the stamp on the bell.
"I'm going to assume you are well aware of what those letters are purported to mean?"
"I am."
"God, I hope you didn't spend a lot. Sam Gatwin's lost, magic horn is one of the oldest running scams in the business."
"I know, but that's it."
"How can you be sure?"
"I traced it, through several owners, back to Percival Marcy. You'll see his stamp on the inside of the case. Records show he purchased it after Sam was murdered."
"Could be a forgery."
"It could, but it's not."
"How much did you pay for this?"
"Five hundred bucks."
"That cheap? For Sam Gatwin's horn? That doesn't sound right."
"The owner had never heard of Sam Gatwin. To him it was just another instrument in his pawnshop he couldn't move. Look, I spent two years fighting with Majors over this. I'm sure."
"Majors? The memorabilia company?"
"The same."
"If they knew of it, they would never have let you get to it before they did. A verifiable Sam Gatwin horn would fetch a pretty penny. This one would likely bring close to a quarter million, if it's the real McCoy."
"They didn't know they had the key to finding it. If they had, they would have refused me access to their archives. In fact they did, twice. As it was, I got a boost from the state, because I was doing research on a historically significant time period. Majors caved when the Historical Preservation folks threatened them with a suit."
"So what did you find there, that no one else has been able to?"
"Everyone knew Majors has the Marcy files, they bought 'em at auction several years ago. They went over them with a fine-tooth comb, but came up empty and, as far as I can tell, they just left them to collect dust. But that stamp has the key to why no one could find it. Mr. Marcy wasn't a musician; he was just an estate dealer. So he bought the horn as part of a lot. The sales receipt from the auction house lists it as a trumpet. So you have it coming into his possession, seemingly never to leave. But look closely at the stamp. He identified it as a Cornet."
The professor pulled out a magnifying glass and carefully examined the faded black lettering of the stamp.
"To us, they're different. As they were to the experts Majors hired, but to Mr. Marcy, they were the same thing. So the sale of a cornet, to J.J. Errington & Sons, in a lot with other instruments, wasn't noticed. They were zoned in on finding the sale of a trumpet. On a hunch, I followed that cornet and ended up with the horn you see before you. Mr. Marcy's stamp proves it was misidentified and I have the paper trail, all the way back to when J.J. Errington took possession."
"Well, I'll be damned."
"My only problems now, are the discoloration on it and proving it really is the same instrument and not another stored in the case. I tried everything but sandpaper to get the stain out. I was hoping there was some kind of test that could verify it was his? Or at least some way to restore it to pristine condition?
"Well," she said slowly, "the discoloration is consistent with descriptions actually. People often said the horn seemed alive, with what looked like veins and arteries. It's always been discounted as part of the voodoo priestess legend. It's probably nothing more than a curious impurity in the metal. Making it a big deal would have been a smart self-promotion move on Gatwin's part, though. You needed to stand out back then to even hope to make a living as a musician. Frankly, most scholars don't believe it had any "veins", so that tarnish you tried so hard to remove may actually be your best evidence, beyond the paper trail."
"Cool! I was thinking maybe a DNA test might work? I know people leave traces in their saliva. So I bagged up the original mouth pieces and took scrapings from inside the spit valve."
