Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (18 page)

Cora Jarrell had her bags packed and sitting by the door, ready to go. She wanted to make one more round to see if there was anything of value that she hadn't already carried off and pawned. She checked her own room first. All that was left were the bare sticks of her furniture and the white envelope that was propped against a candleholder on her mantelpiece. In it was a single sheet of paper with a message that she had composed in a labored hand after the detective St. Cyr had walked away from her door. As soon as she got to Union Station, she would find a street urchin and have him locate the detective and turn it over to him. Let him do what he could with it. She didn't want another murder and the hoodoo that went with it hanging over her, and she wasn't about to tell the coppers, because then she'd have them all in her business and she'd never get out of town. She planned to take the Southern Crescent running east, leaving everything behind for more profitable points. She'd heard that there were chickens to be plucked in Mobile.

She went down the hall, pushing the room doors open and taking a quick glance inside each, avoiding only the one where that son of a bitch Noiret had gone and got himself murdered. There was nothing left in that haunted space anyway.

She had just finished her inspection and was heading back to her room when she heard a creak. It was nothing, the slightest squeak, and at any other time it wouldn't have caught her ear. It was most likely one of the horde of rats that scrabbled about beneath the floors, day and night. That's what she told herself as she hurried along, feeling a cold shiver on the back of her neck, as if one of those filthy critters was crawling on her.

She was all too glad to be quitting those premises for good. She was especially pleased to be escaping from the owner of the house. She had kept the man at bay and out of her business only by giving him French once a week, a regular part of his visit to collect the room rents. And him a married man.

As she stepped through her room door for the last time, she heard another creak, this one louder and closer, and she was just turning her head in surprise when an explosion went off at the soft point just below the back of her skull. She felt a hot blast of pain as her legs buckled and she tumbled to the floor.

Her eyes rolled up as the bits of her life scattered like startled birds and came to rest on the ivory envelope that was propped on the mantelpiece.

***

It was just before noon when Valentin walked into Frank Mangetta's Saloon and Grocery on the north end of Marais Street.

The saloon, with its bar, tables, booths, and low stage all crowded together, took up the front half of the building. Through an archway halfway back and accessible from Bienville Street was a grocery in the best Italian fashion, with imported meats, cheeses, and other specialties so dear to the palates of New Orleans' southern Italian community, large and growing larger.

Frank Mangetta was a padrone to the musicians in uptown New Orleans. An artiste himself (though he admitted that he played a poor violin), his establishment offered regular entertainment at night and was a second home to the uptown's floating population of musicians at all hours.

When Valentin asked to see the proprietor, the bartender told him that he had stepped out but would be back directly. He ordered a short beer and spent a few idle moments considering the morning visit from Dominique. It puzzled him; she was like some marvel of nature, an exotic jungle creature, and he didn't quite know what to make of her, especially her showing up so close in the wake of Jeff's passing and Justine's leaving. He was actually relieved when he put her on the streetcar and could go back to his day. Maybe it was all a game to cadge ten dollars, but he didn't think so.

He sipped his beer and took a look around the room. There were only a half-dozen early customers on the premises, two at the bar and another four at a booth in the far corner, among them one mulatto and two Negroes, and for once the dark-skinned men weren't serving the light. A strange sight, anywhere but there; Mangetta had been the first to ignore the color line when it came to music. Anyone who could blow a decent horn or pound the ivories with some skill was welcome. The Sicilian just did it and no one had thought to stop him. Things were different, any way he looked at it.

So, Mangetta was helping to change Storyville's chemistry. And it wasn't just the makeup of bands that was changing; it was their music, too. Was it only three years ago that Buddy Bolden's horn was considered a scurrilous plague on New Orleans' tender youth? They called what he played
jass
and claimed it was the Devil's music to be sure, a gumbo of raucous noise that was so loud and fast that the proper reading musicians and their polite white audiences didn't know what to make of it, except to throw up their hands in horror and call for someone to stamp it out before it spread.

It did spread, though, and the sedate waltzes and precise rags were shoved rudely aside by crazy inventions in rollicking 4/4 time, a rhythm that made people want to dance, and not in the stilted, precise postures of schottisches and cakewalks, either. The lyrics that went with the music were dirty and sinful and should rightly have been made illegal, except that almost nothing was illegal in this bizarre corner of the world. As the bands played on, then it was the audiences that were changing.

Negroes, Creoles of every stripe, then Italian and Irish workers, and finally Americans from the Garden District came carousing down dark and dangerous back-of-town streets, all wild to hear Bolden and the others that he and his crazy horn dragged along. For a short while, he was the maniac Pied Piper of New Orleans. Then it was over, and when he went away he took the best and the worst of it with him.

It happened so fast that even some of those who were there weren't sure what they saw and heard; and within an even shorter span of time, jass was being played all over uptown New Orleans.

Then Mangetta's and Nancy Hanks's saloon, both on the north side of Canal Street, opened their doors. Crowds flocked and more music halls sprang up, a half dozen in the past year, most of them along Villere and Marais streets, though wide-awake Basin Street madams like Lulu White saw a coming thing and were talking about hiring jass bands, too.

At the same time, it dawned on musicians who had worked all the low-rent dives along Rampart Street what the hard life did to Bolden and the others and they gave up their wild ways and began to behave themselves. The days were over when jass player equaled drunk, hophead, or whoremonger. Things were calmer now.

Or maybe not, Valentin mused as he stared bleakly out the window onto Marais Street.

After all the bloody drama of the Black Rose murders, he had been grateful for the long dry spell. It couldn't last, though, and now he had a case that was all smoke and paid nothing to boot. He had gone traipsing into his old neighborhood, kicking up the dust from memories that were best left buried. People were lying to him and he found himself standing over dead bodies. It was familiar terrain that he had vaguely hoped to escape for a while longer.

To cap it all, Justine had gone away, and no sooner had she vacated the premises than a black beauty of a girl had shown up to drop her passel of troubles on his doorstep.

He turned his brooding thoughts back to the murders. While he didn't mind so much going after Mumford's killer, it irked him that he was working the death of Antoine Noiret, a man he hadn't known and wouldn't have liked if he had. And now this fellow Terrence Lacombe was gone. There was no way around it. All three men had played in the same jass band, and that made it a mystery.

When Frank Mangetta came in off the street and spied Valentin, he stopped cold and threw out his arms in greeting.

He told the detective to wait and stepped behind the bar to mutter some instructions to his day man and pour himself a quick glass of wine. He waved for Valentin to follow him to the table that was tucked in the little alcove next to the door, right up against the front window.

Frank could have played the part of the Italian peasant at the Opera House. He was short and as broad as a barrel, with oily black hair and a luxurious mustache planted on a round and swarthy face. He was a passionate man, known to cry out in joy or weep like a woman when the feeling came upon him. At the same time, he had a sharp eye when it came to matters of commerce and his scrutiny of the characters who peopled Storyville's strange pageant.

He'd known Valentin's father from the old country and so had kept a paternal eye on the detective in the wake of that tragedy. He was of course delighted when Valentin came back to work in Storyville, first as a copper, then as Anderson's right-hand man. Mangetta had benefited, winning certain business favors.

He always enjoyed a chat in Sicilian dialect, but as the years passed, Valentin came to recall less and less of the language: a greeting, some common words, a few everyday phrases, and little else.

"I haven't seen you in six months," Mangetta said. He frowned and stretched a dramatic hand. "You live ten blocks away, you work four blocks away, and you can't show your face more'n that?
Come va? Tu sei un straniero.
"

Valentin smiled and blushed a little. "
E vero.
" He said haltingly, "
Ma ... ma...
"

"But what?"

"But I've been keeping to myself."

"So what brings you out today?"

"Jeff Mumford."

Mangetta's face would have been comic in its geometry but for the sincere sadness in the eyes. "Poor Jeff. He was a good fellow, eh? I never had any trouble with him. He wasn't a braggart like some of these rascals. And he sure could play that guitar. To end up like that..." He shook his head, as melancholy as Pagliacci.

"I'm investigating his murder." There, he had said it. "His and Noiret's."

The saloon keeper regarded him shrewdly. "Why? Because of Morton and that bunch at the Frenchman's?"

Valentin said, "You know about that?"

Mangetta's eyes went wide with fervor and his black eyebrows hitched. "Morton thinks someone's after musicians who play on this side of Canal? If that was true, I'd be out of business." He snickered richly. "You know as well as me that them fellows died over money or a woman. Ain't it always? I'd put my money on the woman." He lowered his voice. "There's been rumors going round."

"What kind of rumors?"

"Some woman shows up late, picks a fellow, and takes him somewhere to fuck all night, then disappears again like a ghost. And nobody ever sees her again."

Valentin sat back. What Mangetta related was a twist on a story that surfaced every few years. The phantom woman comes out of nowhere to select one lucky candidate, works him until his yancy is about to fall off, then slips back into the night. The tale went around, getting all tangled up with voodoo, and eventually fell apart under the weight of exaggeration. The woman became a gorgeous octoroon; she could wind for six hours, eight, twelve, without missing a beat; she made strong men cry and sent weak men to the infirmary, broken into pieces. In reality, it was just a special Storyville version of a haint, more hoodoo fiction for the gullible. They had been telling the same stories for fifty years, going back to epics about legendary bawds like America Williams and Mary Duffy.

Mangetta saw the expression on the detective's face and raised his hands. "I'm just telling you what I heard," he said. "Anyway, I believe Jeff had a woman. A sweet looker, from what I heard."

"She is."

"You've seen her?" Valentin nodded, working to keep a straight face. Mangetta smiled slyly. "Well, what do you think, maybe it was her? Maybe she caught him with someone else and made him pay for it? She seem like the type that could kill a man?"

"Everybody's the type," the detective said. "So anyone could have done it. It's not going to be that easy." Out of habit, he took a glance around to see if any parties were listening too closely. Then he said, "Do you know Terrence Lacombe?"

Mangetta's brow furrowed. "Plays clarinet?"

"Played," Valentin said. "He's dead. He had an overdose."

The saloon keeper's eyes widened. "And he was in the band with..

"That's right."

Mangetta counted down his fingers, murmuring. "Mumford, Noiret, Lacombe..." Then: "Treau Martín. Played bass fiddle."

"Is he—"

"Yeah, he's still around. Don't play music no more. Got religion and gave it up."

"Who else?"

Mangetta hesitated briefly, then bent his head to whisper a name. Valentin stared at him. The saloon keeper nodded slowly, with much drama.

"Damn!" he said. "And him? Is he...?"

"Alive, as far as I know." Valentin looked troubled by the news and Mangetta eyed him speculatively. "You ain't had a case to work on for a while, eh?"

"Nothing like this."

Mangetta lifted his glass in a small toast. "Well, then,
buona fortuna, paisan
."

Valentin raised his glass as well, though it was only out of courtesy.

He took a car to Philip Street and walked along the dirt path. As soon as he rounded the corner and saw the New Orleans Police wagon standing in the street in front of the rooming house, he knew he was too late. He felt his stomach drop as he realized that it was starting all over again.

There were two coppers leaning against the side of the rig, smoking cigarillos. They were both young rookie patrolmen, their faces shiny with the flush of youth, with wispy mustaches and thin beards. They looked Valentin up and down as he approached, and the taller of the two straightened up from his slouch.