Good Man Friday

Table of Contents

The Benjamin January Series from Barbara Hambly

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Ninteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

A FREE MAN OF COLOR

FEVER SEASON

GRAVEYARD DUST

SOLD DOWN THE RIVER

DIE UPON A KISS

WET GRAVE

DAYS OF THE DEAD

DEAD WATER

DEAD AND BURIED *

THE SHIRT ON HIS BACK *

RAN AWAY*

GOOD MAN FRIDAY *

*
available from Severn House

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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2013 by Barbara Hambly.

The right of Barbara Hambly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hambly, Barbara.

Good man Friday.

1. January, Benjamin (Fictitious character)--Fiction.

2. Free African Americans--Fiction. 3. Private
investigators--Fiction. 4. New Orleans (La.)--Social
conditions--19th century--Fiction. 5. Detective and
mystery stories.

I. Title

813.6-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8255-4 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-393-8 (epub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

For Jasmine

‘I
told you to fetch me a doctor, boy, not some damn nigger!'

The servant who'd brought Benjamin January to the yard behind the Turkey Buzzard saloon started to stammer an explanation, but January bowed to the man who'd sent for him, said politely, ‘I've had training as a surgeon, sir.' And tried to make it sound as if he weren't fighting not to knock the arrogant little feist's teeth through the back of his head.

The arrogant little feist in question was white, as was at least half the crowd that jostled around the scratched ‘stage' at the end of the yard in the brittle winter sunlight. The fights, advertised by word of mouth for weeks, had been going on since noon, and by this time – three o'clock – most were drunk. January knew if he punched Ephriam Norcum, the outcome wouldn't be good.

Aside from the law that said that no black man, slave or free, could strike a white one under any circumstances whatsoever, for three weeks now Norcum had been January's steadiest and best-paying employer. Since Twelfth Night had opened carnival season in New Orleans, Norcum had held lavish balls in honor of his wife's birthday, his mother's wedding anniversary, and the engagement of his sister to a man who owned four steamboats and a cotton press. In a city reeling from the effects of last year's bank crash, six dollars for an evening's work playing the piano wasn't to be sneered at. Most banks in the city were closed, including the one in which January's slender funds had been housed, and a third of the population of New Orleans was either out of work or begging for day-labor on the half-empty wharves.

So when Ephriam Norcum slapped his face and snapped, ‘Don't you fucken lie to me, boy!' January folded his hands, kept his eyes on the man's gold vest-buttons, and tried to ignore the rage that scalded his neck and ears.

‘No, sir.'

For good measure Norcum turned and struck the servant who'd fetched January from the house where he'd been giving a piano lesson: not even Norcum's own servant, but – January recognized him vaguely – the planter Jed Burton's valet, who'd probably come to the fights to hold his master's horse. ‘I send you for a doctor and you get me some damn piano-player—'

‘I was trained in France, sir, begging your pardon,' January explained in his most diffident tones.

Norcum stared at him as if he'd just announced that he'd recently been elected President of the United States.
Even the FRENCH
, his expression shouted,
ain't THAT crazy …

A man yelled, ‘Your boy gonna fight, or ain't he, Eph? I got a hundred-fifty dollars on him—'

‘Hold your goddam bladder!' Norcum yelled back. ‘He'll fight all right!' And to January, ‘Over here.'

The Turkey Buzzard was a two-story barn of a building constructed – like most saloons in the ‘back of town' – from old flatboat planks, unpainted and weathered grimy gray. Along one side, amid scabrous piles of shattered liquor-crates and thigh-deep weeds, a sort of green room had been established for the fighters. Here the men moved about – nearly a dozen, all told – keeping themselves warm between matches, or sat on packing crates, heads back to stanch bloody or broken noses. There was no such thing, here, as real rest.

Not until it was too dark to fight. Even then, January had known such gatherings to prolong themselves into the night by torchlight.

Some had their masters with them, or their masters' overseers: sharp-eyed men with the watchfulness of those who've bet large sums and fear to see it swept away unjustly. The fighters were mostly field hands, men chosen for their size; mostly African-black or close to it. Light-skinned boys were more often taken into house service, and with luck would have too much time put into their training as cooks or valets by the time they got big enough for the master to think,
He'd make a fightin' nigger
. Most were naked – the way they'd fight; a few had put on the cut-down pants that men wore in the cane fields over their regular clothing to protect against the sharp edges of the leaves. Two had blankets over their shoulders, against the bitter, bright February chill.

Strips of pickled leather wrapped their hands, bloody from earlier matches. Their faces – scarred from years of battle, sometimes – wore the blank look of those who dare think of nothing but keeping strong for the next fight.

A bench stood against the saloon wall, where, by the smell of it, customers pissed when they were too drunk to find their way to the privy in the nearby trees. Two men in the threadbare coats and coarse ‘quantier' shoes of field hands knelt beside it, but got quickly to their feet at Eph Norcum's approach.

January read bad news in their faces before he knelt by the bench himself.

Shit.
He touched the prostrate man's icy hand.
Shit
.

‘Get the fuck up, Gun.' Norcum stood over the man on the bench. ‘Look alive. You, Mr French-Ass Nigger Doctor – you put my boy back into shape for his bout and be quick about it. There's a lot ridin' on it.'

January felt the glance the two field-hands traded. Gun – a man as ebony-black as himself, with ‘country marks' scarred into his face such as January recalled his African father had borne – was drenched in clammy sweat, his eyes shut and an ashy pallor to his flesh. His lips were swollen and bleeding, his puffed nose crusted with gore.

There's a man been hurt in the fights
, Jed Burton's valet had said to him, when he'd knocked at the kitchen door of James Thorley's house.
Needs a doctor right away
.

January had known then that it could be anything.

He hated nigger fights and stayed as far away from them as he could.

But since long before he'd taken his first training, at the age of fifteen, from a free colored surgeon named Gomez, he'd never been able to turn away from someone who needed help.

‘Does this hurt?' Even the slightest brush of his fingers on the fighter's rigid abdomen brought a hissing intake of breath, and the swollen lips squashed tight to suppress a sob. The man Gun was a few inches shorter than January's massive six foot three but heavy-muscled as a bull. By the scars on his shaven head, and the thickened flesh of his ears, January guessed he'd been a fighter in these slave-on-slave bouts – staged for the masters to bet on – since puberty.

‘'Course it hurts,' Norcum answered for the slave, and spat a line of tobacco into the weeds. ‘That nigger Ulee of old man Peralta's got a kick like a goddam mule. I thought Gun was never gonna get up from that one. But Gun beat him in the end.' He grinned with savage pride. ‘Gun's tough as a jack bull. Once you get him on his feet—'

From the yard, a man shouted in anger: ‘You callin' me a liar, you pussified French pimp?'

‘I call you a dog, and an Irishman, and a thief, who stole money from every man in town when that whorehouse bank of yours closed—'

As he'd passed through the yard, January had noted that as usual the crowd was divided, Frenchmen with Frenchmen, Americans with Americans, a representation in miniature of the vicious animosity that had, not quite two years previously, resulted in the whole town splitting itself into three ‘municipalities'. By the storm of curses that now broke, he wondered how long it would be before the spectators who'd come to bet on black men fighting started in on each other with canes, boots, and bowie-knives.

The man Gun's eyelids creased.

As if he knew it was time for him to get up …

‘This man is in no shape to fight.' January rose and faced Norcum. ‘He's bleeding internally. He needs—'

Norcum gaped at January, incredulous. ‘I didn't send for you to ask your goddam opinion, boy! I sent for you to get my boy ready for his next fight!' He spat again. ‘I got ten thousand dollars ridin' on him layin' out Bourrège's Pedro –' he pronounced the French planter's name
Boo-reg
– ‘and I ain't pullin' him out of it on the word of some nigger witch-doctor!'

‘Then I strongly urge you send for a white physician, sir. I'm sure he'll come to the same conclusion when he's seen this man. I saw Dr Barnard in the yard there—'

‘Barnard?' Norcum jeered. ‘That French nancy's got five thousand dollars on Pedro! You bet he's gonna come to the same goddam conclusion as you do, boy!'

‘Norcum!' A group of men appeared around the corner of the saloon. January recognized them, from having played at their balls, parties, musicales in years past, when everyone in town still had money to entertain lavishly in the carnival season. The Lafrènniére brothers owned four sugar plantations between them, mortgaged to the eaves to cover operating costs when buyers had offered half of last year's prices for this year's crop; Francois Delaup owned the
New Orleans Bee
, the largest French newspaper in the city. Armand Roffignac – with a hotel and a cotton-press – would have been a rich man, in any times but these. Among them was the planter Louis Bourrège and, with him, a tall young man naked to the waist and sheened with sweat despite the day's sharp cold.