Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (33 page)

"Whatchu want here?" a voice croaked, startling him.

"My name's Valentin St. Cyr. I need to talk to you."

"How'd you find this place?"

"I found it. Now I'm here."

There was a pause, then: "You need to go."

"I'm not going anywhere," Valentin said to the darkness.

"I said get away. I got me a pistol in here, goddamnit!"

"If I leave, I'll come back with the law."

There were sounds of movement. It could have been the man in the shack, some scrabbling rodent, or just the patter of rain. The voice croaked again. "Step inside."

Valentin climbed the two sagging steps. As he stood in the doorway, he was assailed by the pungency of strong herbs, gamy sweat, smoke, and something else all sour and fecund, saturating the close air and deep murk. His eyes adjusted and he began to discern details. The single room was low ceilinged and square, twelve feet by fifteen at the most. A cast-iron stove glowed weakly in one corner. The walls of unpainted wood planks were festooned with leaves and drying flowers and various parts of animals, the tail of a rabbit here, what looked like the skull of a nutria there. He could see gaps in the boards and feel wisps of breeze. The place would be an icebox come wintertime.

Among this clutter, he discerned a small man, copper brown and thin of bone, who was sitting on a pallet that had been pushed up against the back wall with a low table of rough pine boards and stacked bricks before him. The face was feral, like some swamp animal, and his hair stuck out at spiked angles where it wasn't knotted. The eyes, though half-lidded, still glowed a sharp green.

"Prince John," Valentin said by way of introduction.

"How you know my name?" The voice sounded like rattling gravel.

"You're famous."

Prince John let out a dry hack of a laugh. He got quiet then, as his eyes prodded his visitor's face. "You been running wild lately, aintcha?" he said. "Where was you at? Rampart Street?"

Valentin was startled at the man's intuition. "There and other places," he admitted.

Prince John produced a wolfish grin of sharp teeth. "I knowed it," he said. "I can still smell that place." A bony arm came up, pointing. "There's a chair. Sit."

Valentin made out the backless wooden chair against the wall to his right, pulled it out a few feet, and sat down.

Prince John's smile gave way to a blank frown as he fiddled about with something that he held at the tips of his fingers.

Valentin remembered seeing him at work once, years back, playing his horn at some carnival. He recalled the body of a circus acrobat and a handsome, sharp-featured face with those green eyes set against bronze skin, a gift of Cherokee grandparents. What he now beheld was a shrunken shadow of that striking man; the flesh was parched and drawn, the rickety bones jutting. Valentin got a sense of something broken inside, too. Then there was the voice, sounding as if he was being choked with every breath.

"I asked what you want here?"

"I'm conducting a murder investigation," Valentin said.

"Murder?" Prince John's eyes flicked. "You a copper?"

"Private security."

"Private..." The eyes narrowed, brightened. "I know you. You was friends with Bolden."

"That's right."

The man on the pallet gave out with another jagged laugh. "I thought I had me some tricks until he showed up," he said. "Man could play that horn. Goddamn, that's the truth! He had some
voudun
on him, too. Yessir. What happened to him? He dead?"

"He's ... gone," Valentin said.

Prince John shifted on the pallet and the gamy smell from his clothes wafted across the room. Valentin was thankful that the door was open.

"How'd you find me?" Prince John said.

"I'm a detective," Valentin said, and realized that it had been some time since he had mouthed those words.

"Anyone else know you come?"

"No, no one."

"You gonna state your business?"

Valentin paused, letting the drama build. He wanted the man's full attention. "Every member of your band is dead," he said. "Everyone except you."

The Prince grunted. "Well, they was a wild bunch."

"I mean dead in the last three weeks, Prince. I think they were all murdered by the same person. Someone was out to get them."

A moment went by and then the green eyes came alive, blazing from the shadows. The Prince let out a long breath, more like a gasp. "Christ..." He drew back, hunching his thin shoulders.

Valentin said, "Do you know who might be committing the crimes? Or why?"

"There ain't nothin' I can tell you," the Prince said, his voice rising. "Not a goddamn thing. So you can leave now." When Valentin didn't move, he muttered, "I can make you go, if I want to."

The detective laughed shortly. "Go ahead, then."

Prince John stared, then turned away. "I ain't got nothin' to say."

Valentin made a show of digging into his pocket to pull out the pill of opium in its silver paper. Prince John's head came back around and his eyes went wide with hunger. "Talk first," the detective said. "And then it's yours."

Prince John licked his lips noisily. "It coulda been..." He coughed. "I mean, I don't know."

"What?"

"There was this one woman..."

"Is this the one from the Irish Channel?"

"You know about that?"

"I've heard the story."

"No, it wasn't her. This was another one. Later on."

"What was her name?"

"All I know was what she called herself."

"Which was what?"

"Emma. Emma Lee. I think."

"Emily?"

The Prince got snappish. "Not Emily.
Emma Lee.
Two words."

"So her last name was Lee?"

"I don't know no last name. All I remember is Emma Lee. That's what she went by."

"When was this?"

"What, right about two years ago? It was wintertime."

"So that's the winter of oh-six?"

"I believe that's right."

"And what happened?"

"What happened..." He took another raw breath, his vacant gaze fixed on the silver foil package, and Valentin could almost see his mind winding backward in time. "She showed up back-of-town one night," he rasped. "And she had that look."

"What look?"

"Like she was out for trouble, in the saloons like that. But them young gals, they used to love that jass. God almighty! They used to—"

"What about Emma Lee?"

"Oh. We run her off. But she come back the next week. Actin' crazier than before." He kept eyeing the pill of hop as if it might disappear. For a moment, he seemed ready to snatch it away and take his chances.

"Go ahead," Valentin prodded him.

"We was playin', uh ... It was down to Longshoreman's Hall, and there she was again. All drunk and hopped up and wild as could be. You know how them women can get. They chased her out the front door, but she just come around the back. She was out there in the alley when we was done playin', so..." He made a vague wave of his hand.

"So?"

A wicked grin bowed his mouth. "So we took her back to my rooms."

"And?"

"And we all had at her."

"What?"

"I said we all had at her. You know what I mean. We all fucked her. The five of us." He laughed with raw humor. "Hell, she let us do any damn thing we wanted. She couldn't get enough. We just took turns. Sometimes two at onst. Jesus! We was all drunk as hell, and there was some dope around. What's that one fellow's name ... Lacombe, that's it. He took a needle, but the rest of us was just smokin' some hop. We had us a hell of a time. Went on for the rest of the night, all the next day, and the next night, too. We kept her busy all that time. And she never missed a lick."

"Then what?"

"Then the mornin' come and I ran her off. What else?" He laughed again. "She was mad as hell. Said if we didn't let her back in, she was going to..." His eyes fastened on the package. "Now how about it?" he muttered.

"When we're done," Valentin said. "She was going to what?"

Prince John gave him a blank look.

"All right, so you put her on the street. Do you know what happened to her after that?"

His dark brow furrowed. "I think ... I heard later on that she got put away in that hospital."

"What hospital?"

"It's called ... uh ... some retreat? Is that right?"

"You mean the Louisiana Retreat?" Valentin knew the place. "It's in New Orleans. On Henry Clay."

"I believe that's right. That's where they put her. She was crazy as hell..." He looked up at the detective for a moment as if some new thought bad just wound through his brain. "All them fellows was all murdered?"

"I believe so, yes."

"Jesus Christ almighty!" he moaned suddenly. "Then she done got out!"

"I don't know if that's—"

"She's done got
out
!" he repeated, his eyes getting wild. "She done got out and went and murdered all of them!"

"Who says it's her?"

The rasping voice went up. "It's her! It's her! Who else would it be? Jesus and Mary!"

"Why?"

"Why? You got any idea what we did to her? We worked her like some goddamn field whore." His eyes skittered from side to side, then his panting slowed and his hard stare settled on Valentin. "I done what you asked. I need somethin' now, goddamnit. You gonna gimme that pill or do I gotta cut you?"

"You're not going to cut anybody," Valentin said, then tossed the package onto the table.

Prince John dropped the object he had been holding so tightly to snatch it up, and Valentin saw that it was a tiny doll, fashioned of bits of cloth, string, and sticks.

The dirty hands went scrabbling and produced a rough clay pipe. He tore into the silver paper, broke off a piece of the pill, tamped it into the bowl, and struck a light. As the flame bulged, Valentin was startled to see a raw gash that ran from the center of the Prince's throat up to his left ear, where a chunk of the lobe was missing. The black man gave him a shrewd look.

"You see how I am?" he said.

Valentin kept staring at the ghastly wound as the Prince puffed noisily on the pipe. "I should have got away from there, but I was stupid. One night my door got kicked in. There was two of them. They held me down ... and they did this..." He made a rough gesture to the scar. "They thought I was dead. I would have been, too. 'Cept there was a conjure woman in a house back behind me. I got to her and she fixed me until I could get to a doctor. Ain't never been right, though." He stuck the pipe back in his mouth and fixed his eyes on his visitor's face. "But it still ain't over, is it? She's bound to get her revenge for what we did to her. You know she is..."

The pupils began to dilate and he nodded sleepily. Valentin sensed that he was losing him. "Prince?" The green eyes wandered away. "Prince John!"

"I hear you."

"You said the Louisiana Retreat."

"I did ... Louisiana Retreat..."

"That's a white hospital."

Prince John studied the glowing embers in the pipe and a weird smile crept across his face.

Valentin said, "Emma Lee was
white?
"

"White as you," the Prince snickered, with another devilish flash of yellow teeth. Then his smile dropped away and the fearful look returned. "She's gonna be comin' for me?"

"She'd never find you."

"I got myself hid good, that's for sure," Prince John said, and sucked harder on the pipe, the scar rising again in the glow of the tiny fire.

Valentin got up and went to the door, where he stopped and said, "What about that other woman?"

The Prince didn't look up. "What other woman?"

"The first one. The doctor's wife. From the Irish Channel."

"Oh. What about her?"

"Is the story true or not?"

"True enough." He allowed a long sigh and a short silence. "Guess I should have learned my damn lesson, eh?" He struck another lucifer and held it over the bowl of the pipe. He didn't notice when Valentin backed out of the shack and disappeared into what remained of the night.

The detective got to Milneburg Station a half hour before the first train of the day. The platform was dark and silent. Only the faintest lingering mist of rain remained. He stood around the side of the building out of sight, thinking about Prince John and his shack and wondering if he had carried any of that awful stench away. He felt like something other than lake mud and sweat was clinging to him.

A wet, gray dawn crept in behind the starless night. When Valentin walked out of Union Station, he found the avenues eerily quiet. Nothing was moving. Then, as he made his way down Canal Street and onto Magazine, dark shapes wavered like phantoms out of the silver shadows to cross the intersections. The day's first workmen trundled along, on their way to the docks, their lunch pails banging against the predawn silence. It was oddly calming to him, a sound and rhythm he recalled from when he was a young boy. His father had carried just such a lunch pail when he went off to work, and it was that crude music that announced his return home at the end of the long day.