Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (4 page)

In another ten minutes, when the car came to a stop at Basin Street, he was greeted by a familiar—and now famous—tableau.

The
Sun
and the politicians called it "Storyville." To everyone else in the city, it was "the District." The former moniker was the namesake of Sidney Story, the alderman who wrote the ordinance that had created it. Though this particular garden of earthly delights had been in full bloom long before Alderman Story arrived upon the scene.

Since the battalion of prostitutes swarmed to New Orleans in the wake of Andrew Jackson's ragtag army of 1812, red lanterns had been hung in the windows of the shacks of wanton women as a sign of invitation to pleasures of the flesh. The harlots in the rough hovels and the bordellos that came later were consigned by righteous citizens to the dirt streets "back-of-town," which meant beyond the basin that had been dug over the decades by city dwellers claiming dirt upon which to more securely found their French Quarter homes.

Through the better part of the century, the neighborhood bordered by Basin Street was a stage upon which a tawdry carnival was staged. In grand mansions along the main thoroughfares, champagne brought fifty dollars a bottle and beautiful octoroons entertained the sons of Crescent City high society and the royalty of foreign lands; while just around the corner, along the line of filthy Gallatin Street cribs they called "Smoky Row," drunken whores would lure hapless customers, spit tobacco juice in their eyes, knock them cold with bats, and steal everything of value that they carried or wore, leaving them to crawl away with their lives, if they were lucky.

Though it was a vicious, sinful, disease-plagued slough that evolved beyond the basin, there were no efforts to stamp out the scarlet trade. It was a gold mine, after all, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of some of the city's most respectable coffers, including those of the churches that owned certain parcels of real estate. It took almost ninety years to devise Storyville, a twenty-block square attached like an afterthought to "downtown" New Orleans, beginning at Basin Street and running northeast between Canal and St. Louis streets to St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.

This year, 1908, marked the eleventh anniversary of Storyville as the only red-light quarter ever legally chartered in the United States, its forty-odd bordellos officially licensed as "Residences for Lewd and Abandoned Women." In fact, the District was created by the kind of delicious dance at which politicians were, then as now, so cunningly adept. According to the law that Alderman Story authored, prostitution was declared illegal everywhere but the streets of the District. So that by the turn of the century, at least two thousand "soiled doves" were dropping their bloomers and spreading their thighs in houses that were confined by design to that single neighborhood.

Valentin crossed over to the corner of Iberville Street, stepped under the colonnade of Anderson's Café and Annex, and rapped a knuckle on one of the cut-glass diamonds that were set into the polished wood. After a few seconds, the lock slid back with a crack and a Negro holding a mop held the door open for him.

Tom Anderson was seated at his regular table at the far end of the bar. He liked to do business there, reserving his office upstairs for his more confidential and delicate matters. He had papers spread out before him, a gold fountain pen in his hand, and a fine china cup at his elbow. As usual, he wore a silk dress shirt from Mayerof's, the collar removed and top button undone at his fleshy neck. Suspenders hung down on either side of the chair. His round face was adorned by a well-maintained handlebar mustache that had, along with his eyebrows and oiled hair, turned a stately gray.

At Valentin's approach, he looked over the tops of the wire-framed glasses that perched on his thick and regal nose. "There's coffee," he said, gesturing with his pen.

The Creole detective helped himself from the copper urn that sat atop the marble bar. He brought his cup to the table and they got down to business, Anderson inquiring about any hints of trouble, any whispers going around the streets that might bear attention. Valentin knew that he employed a small army of spies to feed him information from the District's narrowest nooks and crannies. He himself had nothing to offer on this particular morning.

It didn't seem to surprise the King of Storyville, though it did seem to annoy him. He pursed his lips and his bushy eyebrows dipped. "So you haven't heard about this trouble on St. Louis Street?"

"What about St. Louis Street?"

"I got word that some coppers have been trying to get extra payments from houses up there."

"Who are they?"

Anderson gave him a hard glance. "Well, if I knew that, it would have been handled by now." He went poking through his papers and came up with a slip with some names and addresses scrawled on it and passed it across the table. "Those are the madams who complained. Pay them a visit."

Valentin glanced at the paper. The addresses were on the fringe of the District, low-class houses that employed low-class women. Anderson read his thoughts, and said, "I know. But if we let them get away with this, they'll be knocking on Lulu White's door. Then we'll never hear the end of it."

They both paused to picture the scene, then shared a quiet laugh that faded soon enough.

"Very well," the King of Storyville said, and handed over the white envelope that had been resting near his elbow.

It contained Valentin's pay for the week in gold Liberty dollars, and the King of Storyville always passed it across the table when their business was finished. In the past, the pair might have sat at the table for an hour, drinking coffee and discussing the latest news and gossip from the District, chuckling about some recent drunken buffoonery, winking over a fine dove, muttering about a bad actor who needed a lesson in manners. Only when they were done would Anderson offer the envelope, sighing with reluctance at having to return to more mundane business.

That was before. Things had changed and these days they were ill at ease with each other. Now, by unspoken agreement, the moment they finished with the matters of the day, Valentin was paid and sent on his way, to the relief of both men.

The detective made his exit now, leaving his half-empty cup on the bar. He could feel Anderson's gaze following him as he walked across the tiled and carpeted floor and out into the midday sun.

The King of Storyville spent a long minute staring fixedly at the empty chair. St. Cyr had been his man for almost eight years now, and though he made it his business to know everyone else's, after all that time the Creole detective's shifting and cryptic presence still vexed him.

He knew the basic facts, of course. The man's given name was not Valentin St. Cyr at all, but Valentino Saracena. He was thirty-four years old. His father, a Sicilian dockworker, had been murdered in the midst of the Italian troubles of the 1890s, and his Creole-of-color mother had disappeared not long afterward. Saracena had gone away for a long while, then returned to New Orleans, bearing the fairly common St. Cyr moniker as he covered his tracks and separated from his past. He had become a police officer, of all things, and first came to Tom Anderson's attention when he was assigned the Storyville beat. Anderson took a glance and then fixed an eye on the young patrolman, watching how he worked the District. It took a certain special touch; for there was no place like it on earth.

As it turned out, St. Cyr was a good copper. Too good to last, in fact, and when he left the force over some nasty business with a sergeant, Anderson stepped in to offer him a situation. It infuriated some in the commissioner's office, but he wanted the best man for the job and St. Cyr was it. He was hired to handle matters of security at the Café and around the District in general, and he earned more of his employer's confidence as time went by.

They had an unspoken agreement that he would pass as a Creole on the European side of the line, rather than a Creole of color, which he could truthfully claim on his mother's side. Even so, most citizens took him to be a white man. Those who knew the truth either didn't care or weren't about to challenge Anderson over having a person of color tending to his affairs. The King of Storyville trusted him; any discussion ended right there.

All had been well until the Black Rose murders of the spring of the previous year. It was after that terrible business ended that St. Cyr began to drift. In the months since, he had been going about his duties mechanically, doing what was expected of him and little more, and more often than not it seemed his mind was elsewhere. Lately Anderson had been hearing whispers about his young lady, the café-au-lait dove named Justine, and he wondered how that might be complicating the detective's life.

Too bad, but business was business. St. Cyr was not the asset he had once been. Still, it was with genuine regret that the King of Storyville found himself regularly mulling over who he might find to replace him.

The onset of the weekend always created a jittery buzz up and down Basin Street. Making his way along the banquette, Valentin had a sense of being on the floor of a busy market just before the rush of buying and selling began, or on a stage with the curtain about to rise on a grand, tawdry pageant.

He knocked on Hilma Burt's door and stepped into the same foyer that he had visited not ten hours earlier. The house was still, all the girls upstairs sleeping or just waking up. The Negro cleaning woman straightened when she saw him and nodded in the direction of the sitting room on the far side of the parlor. He exchanged a few words with Miss Burt, collected another envelope weighted with gold coins, signed a receipt in her little book, and went on his way. He was not invited to sit down and the madam kept a cool eye fixed on him the entire time. Valentin understood; with the trouble brewing between her and Tom Anderson, he was suspect. He made a hasty exit before the madam decided to start bracing him.

At Antonia Gonzales's one of the girls was waiting with the envelope and the receipt book. As he descended the steps from the gallery, it occurred to him that for the last few weeks the madam had not been around for his Friday morning visit. It was odd, since she had always been happy to greet him, chat for a minute, and personally hand over his pay. A touchy sort might think he was being avoided.

He got the same treatment next door at Countess Willie Piazza's, but he expected it there. The madam tended toward secrecy and intrigue, and liked to handle her transactions through underlings. It was just as well; he wanted to keep moving. Which was why he made the house on the northwest corner of Bienville Street his last stop. He knew he wouldn't be getting out of there with a simple nod and a thank-you.

A maid ushered him inside and through a parlor known far and wide as the most extravagant in all of Storyville, with dark and heavy furniture imported from France, Persian carpets on the floors, thick curtains of the most luxurious brocade, and a massive crystal chandelier overhead. Polish wood glowed and glass sparkled. There was a mantelpiece adorned with ceramic figurines and two gold candleholders. A grand piano of brown walnut occupied one corner. The smells of fresh flowers from the French Market wafted sweetly over all of it.

The moldings and jambs were all of dark, heavy hardwood, and the house had been dubbed "Mahogany Hall" by its proprietor. The other houses in the District carried the madam's name: Hilma Burt's, Martha Clarke's, and so on. That wouldn't do for Miss Lulu. Her palace required an appellation.

On the far side of the room was an archway that led into a sitting room, and it was there that he found Lulu White waiting for him, posed like a queen on her favorite love seat, an opulent affair of tufted burgundy satin.

Miss Lulu was quite an odd bird, even for Storyville. Short and thick, with brown flesh and distinctly African features, she swore up and down that she was in fact white, donning wigs in various shades of red in hopes of bolstering her claim. She professed to be a native of Jamaica, the progeny of an English father and a Creole mother, even though it was common knowledge that she had been born and raised on an Alabama tenant farm. Though Valentin judged her to be at least half crazy, he also knew that she was a genius at turning a dime into a dollar and was easily the richest of the city's madams.

She greeted him with a smile that was genuinely fond and beckoned him to join her on the love seat. Once he was settled, she leaned back and went into the end table for his envelope and the receipt book. He signed the pad and pocketed the packet of coins.

"Very good," she said, as she put it away. "Can I offer you a cup of tea?" She reached for a little bell.

Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, Valentin accepted politely. He didn't like tea, and the madam's prying drove him mad, but unless she had something pressing, he was obligated to suffer through these sessions once a week. Of late, it was always the same routine: she would launch into her latest gripe about Anderson and Josie Arlington as a way to pry information out of him. He had nothing to offer and wouldn't share it if he did. It never seemed to occur to her that she was barking up the wrong tree. She had convinced herself that the Creole detective had Anderson's ear and was dutifully passing her pronouncements on. That Anderson was hearing her complaints and ignoring them was all the more proof that her suspicions were well-grounded. And so it went, round and round in her mad mind.

As soon as the maid appeared with the service on a tray, she asked how things were at the Café.

"Fine," Valentin told her, also as usual. "Very quiet."