This one also is short, and the last (as far as I can tell) of the original ones.

CHAPTER EIGHT
THREE GOOD MEN

By the side of the highway, in the shadow of yet another Colgate hoarding, there lay a clown. He had been there for some time now, and “dusty, ragged and limp” about summed it up. The motorists that passed mostly didn’t notice him, or noticed him for just long enough to realise that he fell into that particular class of highway detritus that was to be Left Well Alone.
Until now.
The car that pulled up was, although on the surface just the kind of piece of crap that nobody would look twice at, actually, beneath the build-up of dusty neglect and wilful misuse, a pretty nice machine, with a definite middle-class air about it. The sort of car that would be owned by an aspiring middle manager with an eye for a deal. Somebody, in all, who had recently experienced an abrupt change of priorities.
A silhouette stepped out of the car and approached the clown, briefly checking for broken bones before bundling him into the trunk and driving home.
The silhouette was a man named Evans, and “home” was a dead man’s mansion.

***
Some months previously, a flower died, a white rose. This fact was noted, with due sorrow, by a white-bearded man. He went outside for a smoke. This required thought.

***
Jack King awoke. He was lying on an ancient leather couch, in an unfamiliar room that smelt of old man, sweat and not enough housekeeping. He felt like shit, and announced this fact.
“Oh, you’re up,” said a voice. “Coffee?”
King turned his head, grimacing with the pain this caused, to identify his questioner.
There stood before him a dirty, unshaven apparition, a skeleton in a soiled shirt. Evans was once a reasonably successful nonentity- he had a nondescript white-collar job, a gym membership that he never used, a series of so-so love affairs. He exuded anonymity. That life ended the day he discovered Knobel’s works. When he realised what he’d been missing.
He started by hunting for more of Knobel’s intricate, physics-defying devices, firstly at weekends and in the evening, then, after he’d lost his job, all day. And then, the orrey entered his life. The discovery of Heinrich Knobel’s final work had opened Evans’ eyes to a whole new world. He could now perceive the hidden order of things, the tight mesh of synchronicity that binds all things. He could predict the outcome of a war from the flight of a bird, detect the scent of a lie long before it had ever been spoken and feel events that were happening whole continents away. And, towering above it all, were the colossal beings, birthed from a global unconscious, that both controlled and were controlled by the whole cosmos. He’d never looked back since.
“Would you like coffee? Or tea? He’ll be here soon.” King noticed Evans wringing his hands nervously as he spoke, in a way that said “junkie”.
King opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out. He was in a bad way.
“I tried to patch you up, but, well, there’s only so much I can do. I’m not a miracle worker. Anyway, once he gets here, it’ll all become clear.”
King raised his eyebrows quizzically.
“I mean, the king.”

***
The white-bearded man stood outside, looking for trouble. He had enough of an eye for the omens and portents that bobbed in the wake of great matters to know that events had been set in motion that would threaten his people and, at some point, require his personal attention.
Lionel Wintergreen thought back to his youth. Things were very different back then. And, of course, exactly the same. He had first got involved in the network of shady deals, personal favours, and ill-advised vendettas that constitutes the occult underground when he was a boy of thirteen, in the spring of 1947. He took regular violin lessons in those days with an Italian named Rosata. He and his friends used to call Rosata a wop, and make jokes about the Mafia. That particular world came to an abrupt end when Rosata was shot in the back by a man who walked through walls. The man gave him a strongly worded warning against “following in his teacher’s footsteps”, and disappeared. It made the young Wintergreen wonder just what it was that he was supposed to have been learning.
He spent the next year hunting around, asking people if they knew Rosata. Kids can be surprisingly pushy. He tried neighbours, other musicians, the police, all to no avail. Then one day, after a fruitless conversation attempting to track down a debt collector (he had heard that Rosata had had problems with money), he was approached by a beggar, a filthy old man who sat on a street corner exhorting passersby to “Give Generously to a Wounded War Veteran”. His name was Tommy, and he had heard Wintergreen’s enquiries. He taught the young man all he knew.
Years later, Wintergreen heard stories of Rosata. The people killed, the terror sown. He discovered the secret life of his violin teacher. Rosata the tutor became Rosata the hero.
Wintergreen emerged from Tommy’s tutelage a new man. He knew the prizes that were available for those strong enough to grasp them, and he knew that he was strong. He went far, eventually making the big time- he claimed the mystic kingship of the whole of Pittsburgh.
That was some time ago. Wintergreen was still king, and was still strong, although nowadays his strength was a more subtle one, lying in his reputation and knowledge of his turf. He was no longer the man who had single-handedly defied the Brothers of Mercy and freed the New Congregational Church from the shade of Frederic Greenberg. He had seen his peers, his trusty lieutenants and vicious foes, slowly succumb to time, and had come to realise the price of getting what you once wanted. There were new dukes in town, a new generation of fucked-up little pricks who had what it took. His sway over the far borders of the city were now beginning to weaken, and more and more of his power lay in the centre, in the florist’s shop.
He was beginning to realize Rosata’s other secret- that, for all the mystical power and understanding the World Beyond the Veil he possessed, a miserable old man is a miserable old man.
Still, if there was one other thing that his life had taught him, it was that a king has his responsibilities, and they must be fulfilled. His mind was made up.
Inside the florist’s shop, more petals began to fade.

***
Several hours had passed. Evans sat cross-legged on the floor, playing Patience. He was making notes. Jack King lay on the sofa, staring at the ceiling and trying to work out where he was, who the hell he was with, and whether his life had just been saved or was about to come to an end.
He had attempted to pump Evans for more information about this “king” character, but he had only responded with cryptic hints that he would “find out soon enough”, and what a “great honour” it was to be chosen in this way. Eventually, King had given up, and that was when Evans started with the Patience. The conversation had kind of died at that point, so King just sat and worried.
Eventually, his patience ran out. “Look, I’d be very grateful if the man I’m meeting would turn up, so I can get out of here and… well, get back to my affairs”.
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere,” Evans replied, scrambling to his feet.
This was what King had feared. “Aren’t I?” he growled, leaping to his feet, then crumpling to the floor with a yell, the centre of his own private universe of agony.

“…because you have a broken leg.” Evans looked down. “I ought to have told you that earlier.”

***
Lionel Wintergreen was briefing his lieutenant.
“These are to be watered twice daily, remember to use only the rose-petal mulch on the gladioli and, for God’s sake, don’t let me catch you forgetting to trim the privet out front.”
“Yes, sir,” replied the worried-looking young man. “Sir..?”
“Yes?”
“You won’t be long, will you?”
A pause.
“We’ll see.” And with that, Lionel Wintergreen went forth. To do what must be done.

***
The atmosphere in the Knobel house had settled down to a tense silence. Evans waited with the ease that comes to those whose place in the world is a known quantity, whilst King sulked, his leg bound with a homemade splint.
After a few hours of this, King became aware of a noise, or of the presence of a noise that had been slowly building up for some time. It was the sound of well-oiled gears clacking against each other, of long metallic arms whistling through the air, above all of activity with a purpose. He cocked his head to hear more clearly.
“You’ve heard it, then.” Evans didn’t even look up. “Would you like to see?”
“Uh, my leg…” mumbled King.
“That’s all right,” replied Evans, hopping nimbly to his feet and striding across the room. “I can show you here.”
With that, he pulled back the mouldy, flower-patterned curtain that framed the far end of the room, to reveal…
… it was indescribable. The sheer size of it… A colossal filigree of shining golden arcs and wheels, each gear a thing of beauty, testament to a lifetime’s dedication. Within the buzzing rat’s nest of gilded industry, there sat tiny, painstakingly painted, replicas of the planets, so detailed that King felt certain that, were he to examine the model of Earth closely enough, perhaps using a microscope, he would be able to discern a tiny Jack King, standing in this run-down old mansion, contemplating an even smaller King. And amidst the planets, there were stranger objects, playing cards, a mouse’s skull covered in tiny rubies, a shard of glass, each moving in their own unpredictable orbits. It was a humming, clicking, whirring, calculating, predicting, thinking, living behemoth of gears, wheels and pistons, a monument to rationality gone mad. The plaything of a deity.
“What is it?” King managed to whisper.
“A microcosm. It knows what’s about to happen.”
“Wha-” began King, when he was interrupted by a knock at the door. Evans scurried over to the porch, checked the spyhole, and waited. Another knock. There were formalities to be observed, after all. At the third and final knock, Evans swung the door open, hinges grumbling, to reveal an elderly florist with the bearing of an emperor.
Lionel Wintergreen, the Monarch of Ninth Street, King of West Central Park, Lord High Protector of the news stall by the cinema and the best damn florist on the Eastern Coast, had entered the building.

***
It was later. The three men sat around the room, untouched cups of cold coffee by their sides. Much had been discussed, and Jack King was beginning to understand.
The child that had been stolen, the child that Leonora was looking for. It was vitally important that that child be found.
It was also an indisputable fact that the child was dead. He had seen the orrey, his eyes had been opened, and he knew this to be so.
Nevertheless…
“You say there is still a chance?” asked King.
“Of course,” replied Wintergreen. “The boy was under my protection and, as such, I have certain powers over him.”
“Even now that he has…”
“Expired? When I was young, I studied under a man who, in his own way, was a master. And, eventually, I learned from him. The lessons that I learnt may not have been the same as the lessons that he taught, but I learnt them all the same. Bring me the child’s body, and I will do the rest.”
“Why me?”
“You call yourself Quixote, do you not? You style yourself as a wandering knight-errant, travelling to where you are needed, righting wrongs and making the world a safer, better place. You have spent your life preparing yourself for my service, and you ask why you are called to serve?”
Evans spoke up, “And besides, you’re one of the good guys.”
“Heh. On of the good guys, eh?” It was all Jack King had ever asked for. “So, you and Lionel, you’re the good guys too, are you?”
“Yes.”
“Of course.”
Jack King laughed.
“Three good men. What are the odds? I’ll do it.”