Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (3 page)

On other nights, like this one, he would travel only as far as the banks of the river, where he would stand watching the ships and barges ruttle past, one after another, carrying their heavy cargoes, with spectral lights and wet metallic groans and clanks, out onto the dark waters of the Gulf.

He climbed the long slope of the levee and looked over to the other side and the little constellation that was Algiers. As he stood there, the glittering pinpoints melted into the vision of a smoky saloon, a table scattered with dirty playing cards, and the body of a good-for-nothing rounder named Eddie McTier stretched out on the sawdust floor, blood bubbling from the angry hole in his chest, a hole that had been blown open by Valentin's own Iver Johnson revolver. That had been what, two years ago? And the picture was as clear in his mind as if it had happened yesterday.

His thoughts wandered from the dead gambler to a dead prostitute named Annie Robie, and from her to Buddy Bolden, the jass-playing madman. Valentin knew if he didn't stop right there, the whole sad tale would play out in his mind and he would once again end up judging himself guilty of something.

Just then he caught a wisp of motion and looked over his shoulder, but it was just another vagrant shadow. He sometimes imagined that one night he would turn around and see Buddy standing there, the silver cornet dangling loose from his hand, wearing the wide, white, wicked grin that announced he was ready to claim the city streets for his own. It had never happened, of course, and it never would.

Out on the river, a freighter blew one low, mournful note, an echo of Bolden's down-and-dirty jass, rising and then fading into the night.

***

By the time he started back, the first muted streaks of dawn were edging over the flat horizon. The earliest birds in this corner of New Orleans were beginning a new day, and here and there piles of rags, some of whom Valentin knew by name, stood up and walked. The air smelled of the rolling river and the closer and more pungent odor of gutters filled with animal and human sewage.

He opened and closed the door and crept into the bedroom. He could make out Justine's form through the thin silk netting. She was curled around her pillow as if it was keeping her afloat on a stormy sea. She didn't move or make a sound when he slipped in beside her. He let out a long, tired breath as he felt his bones sag into the mattress. It wasn't long before day. He could sleep now.

Valentin heard music from somewhere, a soft tune, sweetly sung, rising and falling like a bird trilling on a far-off branch. It was such a pleasant sound that the corners of his mouth bowed in a drowsy smile as he followed the tune, up and down and around the lilting path of its melody. Then it faded, as if the bird had flown off, and he tumbled back into sleep.

He came fully awake an hour later to the smells of coffee beans and chicory brewing. By the patterns the sunlight had cast on the wall, reaching almost to the wainscoting, it was after ten o'clock. He had slept five hours, maybe a little more. Not a bad night for him.

He pulled on the linen trousers that were draped over the bedside chair and sat there for a moment, looking at nothing. Then he got up and ambled out the front room to stand in the kitchen doorway, his feet bare, his thumbs hooked over his waistband, his undershirt hanging loose on his lank frame.

Justine was at the table with her head bent over one of the books he had bought for a penny at the street market. Aside from the scar at her temple, she appeared the same sporting girl he had first met two years ago. Her milk-coffee skin, long, textured hair, and small, tight body made her look younger than her twenty-four years, as pretty a dove as had ever graced Antonia Gonzales's mansion, and Valentin knew that the madam had been sorry to see her go.

He had taken her out of the sporting house and brought her to his rooms on Magazine Street in the middle of the string of killings of prostitutes they called "the Black Rose murders." When that nightmare ended and the case had been laid to rest, she stayed on. It had been over a year and a half.

He went to the spindly old cast-iron stove to pour a cup of coffee out of the blue enameled pot warming there.

"What were you singing this morning?" he asked her.

She raised her head and gave him a puzzled look.

"I thought I heard you singing," he said. "Earlier, I mean. I was still asleep."

"Oh, that." She blushed and smiled slightly.

"What was it?"

"Just something I heard somewhere. I couldn't remember the words."

Her smile lingered for a moment, then dwindled by slow degrees into something wan and distant. She closed the book and asked him if he was hungry.

By the time he returned from the privy and had finished in the bathroom, she had fresh coffee brewing. He sat down and she put a plate in front of him, with a buttermilk biscuit split open and topped with two eggs, sunny-side up. She took the opposite chair and picked up some sewing.

He broke the first yolk, musing for a moment on how normal it would appear, the two of them sitting there, him quietly enjoying his breakfast while she mended socks like a dutiful wife. It had been like that for some months, and he had just begun to wonder how long it was going to go on when he noticed that there was something amiss with her.

At first it was nothing much: odd looks, curious slips of the tongue, sudden laughter over nothing. One day she would be the woman he knew: quiet, quick to smile, busy with her days, content with her life with him, always eager to frolic on the bed. The next day she would be acting like another person, all agitated about something that he couldn't see or name. She got impatient over small things, her dark eyes flashing annoyance. She had always been on the quiet side, but sometimes she would go for the better part of a day without saying more than a few words. He studied her more closely and saw tensions hiding beneath her placid facade. When he asked her if there was something wrong, she would first look startled, then frown absently, as if the question irritated her, and so he didn't ask anymore.

Valentin's successes as a detective had come less from his powers of deduction than from his ability to see behind masks and divine what drove people this way or that. It seemed he had a sixth sense that allowed him to untangle the sordid webs that miscreants wove. Such was the reputation he had built; though it was true that there hadn't been anything to test it in a good while.

Justine had him bewildered. Though she had long since re-covered from her injuries, she still complained of headaches, a leftover effect from a blow to her head. Her doctor prescribed paregoric, and Valentin noticed that as the months passed, she was employing the medication more and more. That wasn't like her, either. She had never been one to drink too much whiskey or smoke hop, like so many of the sporting girls; and yet she seemed to have acquired a yen for her prescription and filled it religiously every Saturday on her way home from Mass.

He had paid a quiet visit to her doctor, the same young Creole who had treated her at the hospital. He described her symptoms and asked if there might be any lingering effects from her injury. The doctor had at first looked dubious, as if he thought Valentin was exaggerating, then listened with growing impatience to the description of her shifting moods and odd behaviors.

With a brusque shrug he said, "These matters of the mind are still a mystery. Most likely, it's something that will pass in time. Let's stay with the paregoric for her pain and we'll see how she progresses." Then he excused himself and hurried off.

Nothing had passed in time. She was still behaving in such strange—

"How were things at the Café?" she inquired, breaking into his thoughts. She was often eager for news from the circus that was Storyville.

"The usual," he said. "Couple fellows decided to have a knife fight right in the middle of the floor, but that was all."

She nodded toward the front room where Beansoup was sawing logs. "Where did you collect him?"

"He was hanging around Hilma Burt's."

She cocked a curious eyebrow. "What were you doing there?" She knew he never went into a sporting house unless he was on business.

"Morton wanted to see me about something."

"About what?"

He didn't really want to go into it, so he gave her a short version of the conversation. In the light of day, it sounded all the more foolish. "This Noiret character was a bad sort," he told her. "Someone was bound to stick him with a knife or shoot him dead sooner or later. And it happened way out on the other side of Canal Street." He shrugged. "There's nothing to it, no matter what Morton thinks."

Her blank look told him she wasn't listening anymore. He went back to his eggs. "How did you spend your evening?" he inquired presently.

Now her eyes cut at him before she spoke. "I stayed here," she said. "Did the wash and read some. Then I went to bed." There was no mistaking the edge in her voice. He was about to say something about it, but her face closed again as she peered myopically at a stitch.

"You aren't going to eat?" she said after a moment, her tone softening. He picked up his knife and cut into the biscuit.

When he finished his breakfast, he put his plate in the sink and carried his coffee cup to the bedroom to dress. Some minutes passed and he heard her singing again, the same song, a sweet melody without words.

When it was time for him to leave, he called to Justine. If she answered back, he didn't hear it.

Friday was payday. In addition to the regular salary he earned working five or six nights a week at the Café, Valentin received a stipend from three of the finer sporting houses on Basin Street, the mansions of Antonia Gonzales, Countess Willie Piazza, and Lulu White. He had become something of an unpaid security man at Hilma Burt's mansion as well, due to her liaison with Tom Anderson. With the King of Storyville's most recent amours, he wondered if he would be taking on duties at Josie Arlington's, too.

He had a ritual. After his bath and shave, he would put on a light cotton shirt and dark linen trousers, attach his suspenders, lace up his brown leather walking shoes, and head out the door. He was one of the few gentlemen of the day who went on the street without a hat.

Downstairs at Gaspare's Tobacco Store, he'd purchase a copy of the
Sun
and a cigarillo that had been imported from Cuba. If the weather was good, he would cross Canal Street and spend an hour smoking and reading in Jackson Square. If it was cold or raining, he'd take his paper four doors down to Bechamin's Café and grab a table there. Afterward, he would catch a Canal Belt car north to the District.

Justine stepped out onto the balcony in time to catch Valentin as he came out of Gaspare's and sauntered toward Common Street, his newspaper tucked under his arm. He didn't look back and so he didn't see her watching him. He always used to turn around and wave, leaving her with a small smile as he went off to begin his day. He hadn't done that in some time. She tried to recall when he had stopped.

As she stood there, with the stream of pedestrians, the bicycles, wagons, streetcars, and the occasional motorcar busying Magazine Street, thoughts that had been lurking in the corners of her mind stirred once again.

Another night had gone by, another day had begun, and she had missed it all. The world had turned in a cascade of color and sound while she stayed home, passing the hours with chores, a bath, and a book. She had taken a small dose of her medicine after the sun went down and it made her feel a little better.

She hadn't stirred when Valentin came to bed, and she woke up just after the first light of day with a small headache. She helped herself to the other half of her dose. The tincture, a red darker than blood, went swimming in the glass of water. She had hummed a song she had heard somewhere while she waited for it to take hold.

She had lost herself in a book until Valentin woke up. She served him his breakfast and they chatted like strangers. When he got up and left, she was visited by a familiar emptiness. Now the day stretched out before her. She had to concentrate to remember what she was supposed to do first.

Valentin found a quiet corner of the square, sat down, lit his cigarillo, and opened his copy of the
Sun.

A presidential election was in the offing, and the paper suggested that Mr. William Jennings Bryan had such a clear lead over Mr. William Howard Taft that the result was a foregone conclusion.

He saw that two local stories that had been the source of much chatter had come to a close. Daniel Roche, the scion of a respectable Garden District family, had pleaded guilty to embezzling nearly thirty thousand dollars from his employer, blaming his erring on a cursed addiction to opium.

The other story was far more grim. The Lamana kidnapping had come to an end with the hanging of Antone Scalisi. The Sicilian, in a feud with the Lamana family, had kidnapped seven-year-old Carlo. The boy had died, though whether by accident or intention was never clearly established. It would have been cold comfort to Scalisi as he went to the gallows that it was the state and not the Lamana clan extracting justice.

Valentin knew that he could have settled the dispute before it wound to its tragic conclusion. But he hadn't even been asked; yet another indication of how far he had slipped, in what little account he was held these days. With that doleful thought, he folded the newspaper, stood up, walked out of the square and down Decatur Street to catch a Canal Line car heading north.