Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (2 page)

Valentin put down an urge to snicker at the comical facade, keeping his face stern. He said, "What about Morton, now?"

"He told me to fetch you. He's asking could you come by on your way home."

"You wait for me," he said.

Beansoup gave a nod and a wink, once again all full of himself, put a foot up on the brass rail, and leaned his elbow on the bar like a regular rounder.

Miss Burt's mansion was only two doors down from the Café. Even at that hour, when almost everything else in Storyville was closing, electric lamps still blazed from the chandeliers in the front rooms, casting arrows of gay light through the tall windows and onto the banquette.

When Valentin stepped into the foyer with Beansoup at his heels, the two girls who were standing in the archway that led into the parlor turned around and began arranging their smiles. Then they saw who it was, and their thin smiles dissolved. The detective caught Beansoup giving the girls the eye, so he poked the kid's shoulder, pointed to the chair next to the wall mirror, and said, "Sit." Beansoup's face flushed and he huffed angrily. Then he saw the Creole detective's look and did as he was told.

"And take off your hat," Valentin said more gently.

He left Beansoup and went into the parlor. It was a big square room with a high ceiling that held a heavy chandelier of tinkling crystal. The floor was covered with thick Persian carpet, and curtains of heavy brocade hung by the windows. All the furniture was of French design, with rich upholstery in bloodred and gold. Lamps with tasseled shades cast a buttery glow along the walls.

In the opposite corner, three men in evening clothes sat in café chairs, watching the doves cavort before them, their cheeks flushed giddy pink, like they were schoolboys up to some mischief. The girls, all in their evening dresses, looked plenty tired. It was no wonder; in the course of this night, each of them would have serviced as many as a dozen customers. Still, they managed to put on bright faces and make their weary limbs flutter as they performed prancing little dance steps to the music from the piano.

Even angled into a corner, the instrument all but dominated the room: a beautiful concert grand, pearl white, custom-made to Miss Burt's exacting specifications and transported by train from New York City. Though every professor in New Orleans lusted to lay fingers on the perfect ivory keys, that privilege had for two years been accorded to Ferdinand LeMenthe, who went by the moniker Jelly Roll Morton.

As Valentin approached, Morton looked up from the keyboard to treat his visitor to a toothy smile that glinted with gold. He winked and murmured, "'Nother minute, all right?"

Valentin leaned on the sound box to admire the effortless ballet of fingers on keys, thinking about what a complete sport Morton had become in the few years since he had first been hired to play in the parlor of a Basin Street mansion. He had been a gangly kid of sixteen then, a gawky sack of bones who just happened to have sure fingers and a decent voice. So there he was at that tender age, entertaining the sporting women in the finest bordellos in one of the world's most notorious red-light districts and their customers, too, including some very dangerous characters. He played with equal ease the popular tunes of the day, waltzes and ragtime numbers for dancing, the occasional gutbucket blues, and of course a selection of those late-at-night bawdy songs that sent the whores and their sports off shrieking with dirty laughter.

Young Ferdinand had started using the nickname "Jelly Roll" to hide his profession from his maman and because he thought it sounded just right. A common slang that gutbucket singers used for a certain part of the female anatomy, his moniker had been lifted from a professor he heard on a Mississippi riverboat. The fellow, a fine piano player but a falling-down drunkard who was regularly fished out of the muddy water after toppling over the rail, ended up in the bughouse from drinking too much hot whiskey. Ferdinand decided it would be a shame to let a nickname like that go to waste, and so the classically trained scion of a pious and upstanding Creole family became "Jelly Roll Morton," Storyville piano jockey.

He had played in all the high-dollar houses at one time or another, hiding his employment from his mother and grandmother. He didn't quite escape the maternal doting, though, because the madams tried to protect his tender eyes by setting dressing screens between him and the girls and their customers. Ferdinand simply poked holes with his pocketknife and got an education that other young men could only dream about. Once he was eighteen, he was on his own and could drop the ruse. Now, at twenty-one, he was quite the Storyville veteran. He was, in fact, the best-known piano man in the District.

Best known though not best. That title went to Professor Tony Jackson. Whatever Morton played, Professor Jackson could render twice as clean and twice as fast. The professor was a regular marvel and everyone in the District knew it. Morton knew it, too, and it gave him no mean distress.

Leaning there and listening to the cascade of ragtime notes, Valentin recalled the story of a young Ferdinand swaggering up to the famously shy professor and offering to show how well he had mastered the older man's "Mississippi Crawl."

As the tale went, Morton sat down on the bench next to Jackson without being invited, then flexed his knuckles and went to it, his fingers fairly dancing over the keys in a slick, near-flawless rendition of the intricate composition. Jackson paid polite attention to the music as his bulbous eyes flicked, taking in Morton's lank frame, tawny skin, and green eyes.

Morton ended the tune with a magnificent crescendo and crossed his arms as if waiting for applause. The room stayed quiet.

"That's fine." The professor spoke softly, in a lisping whisper. "Though if you want to make it right smooth, you need to practice it double time." He proceeded to demonstrate. After twelve bars, Jelly Roll let out a cry, jumped up, and ran out the door.

He had learned his lessons in the years since. He could now double-time the "Mississippi Crawl," too, though he could never quite match the professor's fluid touch. So he contented himself with being the flashiest piano man on Basin Street, a sport and a rounder, as brash and boastful as Tony Jackson was modest and retiring. He was known to play the pimp, with sporting women at his beck and call. He could but snap his fingers and have a pill of hop or a card of cocaine delivered directly into his hand. He dressed in forty-dollar suits, tailored precisely by a Jew on Ursulines. Everyone in the District knew the name Jelly Roll Morton and he liked it that way.

He arrived at the song's final tinkling notes and glanced over his shoulder at one of the dancing girls, who swirled to the Victrola and began to crank the handle. The record disk went around and the ornate horn gurgled out a rendition of "You, Only You." Morton stood up, stretched, and tilted his head for Valentin to follow him. They went through a doorway and into the pantry that was under the back stairwell. The kitchen door stood open and they could see the Negro cook dozing in a straight-backed chair, her arms crossed beneath her heavy bosom, nodding her head up and down as if in silent agreement with whatever dream was swirling through her drowsy mind.

There was a bottle of sherry on the sideboard, and Morton poured a few inches each into two glasses and handed one of them to Valentin. They sipped the sweet wine and listened to the footsteps dragging up the staircase as one of the doves led a gentleman to her room. If the girl was still sharp, they would be hearing the same shoes descending in a matter of minutes. Unless, of course, the fellow had the cash and the vitality for a longer stay.

Though he had been at the piano since early evening, Morton still looked fresh, his light cotton suit a perfect fit, his tie knotted firmly at the neck, his face as bright as if he had just come from a decent nap. He was still a kid, of course, and could do that. On the other hand, Valentin, some thirteen years his senior, was ready to go home and end his day.

Morton eyed the detective. "'Predate you stopping by."

Valentin said, "What's Beansoup doing hanging around here?"

"I don't know," Morton said. "Thinks he's a sport, I guess."

"He told me he has a job."

Morton chuckled softly. "He ain't got no
job.
He won't stay away, so Miss Burt lets him run errands." He smiled wryly. "He spends most of his time trying to sweet-talk the ladies."

"He said you wanted to see me."

Morton nodded slowly, his face falling into a worrisome mask. "You know Antoine Noiret?"

Valentin searched his memory and came up with a horn player, Negro or mulatto, a rough sort, with broad features and hard muscled like a gandy dancer.

"C.C. Ramblers?"

"That's right." Morton raised a cagey eyebrow. "Up until Tuesday night."

"What happened Tuesday night?"

The piano man dropped his voice dramatically. "He was murdered. In a boardinghouse over on Philip Street. He got stabbed in the throat while he was layin' in bed. I heard it was a hell of a mess."

Valentin nodded, though he didn't understand why Morton was sharing this information. For that he had to wait for the piano man to drink off his sherry, refill his glass, sit back, and settle a pointed gaze on him.

Valentin all but rolled his eyes to heaven. Now he understood. Lately, whenever some no-good Rampart Street jass player died or disappeared, Morton started muttering about someone hunting down and killing Negro musicians. The murder of this Noiret fellow would be yet another chapter in the grim tale.

While there was no doubt that members of that crowd dropped with an astonishing regularity, it was also true that a good share of them were nothing but low-down rounders who, when they weren't raising a hellacious ruckus in some saloon or dance hall, could be found drinking anything they could put down their throats, smoking hop or whiffing cocaine, throwing away their dirty silver at cards and dice, laying about with the cheapest whores, or engaging in drunken, often bloody brawls. They all packed a pistol or at least a straight razor. It was a wonder more of them didn't end up murdered in dreary rented rooms.

To Morton, it was sinister business. He had somehow gotten it into his head that these particular murders were attacks on those Negroes who had the gall to cross over Canal Street to play in bands, not with coloreds and Italians, but with white men. He saw the work of the Klan, the Regulators, or perhaps a single malcontent, depending on his mood. Valentin, on the other hand, was fairly certain that it was nothing more than band characters meeting cruel, though well-deserved fates.

They'd argued over it before and he really didn't want to do it again this night.

Morton did. "I tell you, there's something goin' on," he said, his whisper so cryptic that Valentin gave out a short laugh. Morton put on a pinched look of frustration and threw up his hands. "All right, forget about it, then," he sulked. "But you're gonna wish you listened to me. Something ain't right about it."

Valentin got to his feet, leaving his drink. "It's late," he said. "I'm going home. I'll take Beansoup with me." He walked out of the pantry.

They ambled south on Iberville Street in the dead of night. Beansoup yammered a blue streak for the first few blocks, then began to wind down as they made their way through the Quarter. By the time they turned the corner onto Magazine Street, his shoes were dragging.

When they got upstairs, he headed for the couch without being invited, and in the time it took Valentin to creep through the bedroom, pull an old blanket from the closet, and get back to the front room, he was fast asleep and snoring like a root hog.

Valentin went back into the bedroom. The rear window that looked out over the narrow alley was open, allowing a breeze to waft in. Justine had pulled the baire up, even though it was too late in the year for mosquitoes. He went to the bed and lifted the netting a few inches to gaze down at her sleeping face. He could just make out the outline of her scar, right above the temple at the hairline.

As he stood watching her, she gave a little start, her eyelids fluttered, and she let out an anxious sigh. Her arm extended a few inches and her palm came out, as if to ward off something that was assailing her. Then the hand drifted down and she was quiet again.

He put the baire back, went to the window. Nothing was moving. From up on Gravier Street, he heard a dray horse snort and the creaking wheels of a hack. As he leaned on the sill, he thought back over his evening, arriving at Morton and his crazy notion that someone was out killing jass players, complete with a hint that Valentin use his skills of detection to ferret out the guilty party. It opened a door to a roomful of thoughts and pictures that made his brain begin a busy circle, and he whispered a silent curse at the piano man for dredging it all up again. Tired as he was, he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep for a while.

He went into the front room, walked softly past the sofa where Beansoup sprawled and snored, and slipped out the door again, locking it behind him.

The fittings for the gaslights on Magazine Street had been removed, but the Public Works Department had yet to begin installing the electric lamps in their place. So there was only a half-moon, hanging low over the Gulf and casting swaths of pale silver amongst the long shadows, to illuminate his path.

He headed south and east along the narrow streets. He often walked the city in the dead of night when he had trouble sleeping, sometimes all the way to the Irish Channel or Esplanade and back. He had covered most of New Orleans one step at a time and could swear he knew every dark corner, every side street and alleyway by heart.