Lost River (29 page)

And there were many who spoke not at all, among them the lank-bodied black man in a loose, off-white shirt and black trousers who seemed to be searching for something. He traveled in a circle about the entire room, running his hand over every surface as if blind. Valentin remembered that, too.

A doctor had explained that it was not uncommon behavior for a man whose mind was unhinged.

"They want to touch something solid, something familiar," the doctor had explained in a quiet voice. "Otherwise..." He had shrugged, letting the words fade in the air.

Now Valentin and the attendant stood watching this meandering performance, one that the patient had repeated thousands of times. Presently, the mulatto said, "Good luck with him," and moved away.

Valentin crossed the floor, careful not to wander too close to any of the men. The attendant had warned him that some of them could snap into violence or dissolve into weeping hysterics if threatened. So he made a wide loop, but one that put him in his old friend's path.

Buddy approached and then moved around him with only the tiniest hitch, running water yielding to a rock. Valentin let him pass, turning halfway to watch his back as he padded off.

"Buddy," he said. "It's Tino."

Buddy hesitated, then stopped. He was still for a few seconds. Then he turned around. He didn't look at Valentin's face, instead directing his dark gaze somewhere over the detective's shoulder. He blinked hard three or four times, as if concentrating on a troublesome question. With his next breath, a sound rose from his throat and stopped, and Valentin realized that he had tried to speak, only to find his voice too rusty.

He swallowed and tried again. "Tino." His lips pursed as if tasting the name.

Valentin saw the nervous blink and shifted his own stare away, and in that moment they were back in their First and Liberty neighborhood, two shy kids meeting for the first time. The detective remained quiet because he didn't want to unsettle Buddy and because he didn't know what to say. He spent the moment musing on how much his old friend had changed, his back curling over and face going gaunt, so that he resembled the rendition of a saint in a stained-glass church window. Though he was only thirty-six, his wiry hair was tinged with new strands of gray. Yet he was still handsome, and Valentin could see shadows of the character who used to have back-of-town women fighting over him.

That was history. "Who would believe, if they saw him now, that he had once set night after night ablaze with his riotous horn? That he had all but healed the sick and raised the dead with what came out of the bell of that silver cornet? That his delirious music and manic antics had gotten him worshipped and cursed from one end of the city to the other?

If he hadn't created jass all by himself, he had been the leader of the lunatic parade. But now that almost everyone was playing in that vein—and calling it
jazz
—he was mostly forgotten. The wild electricity that had animated him when he was Kid Bolden and then King Bolden, the shooting star of New Orleans music, was gone, like a tenant who had vacated the premises, leaving no forwarding address.

The years had eroded much, including secrets from their childhoods. When Buddy went away, the Creole detective lost one of his last connections to his past, and now and then he wondered if the reason he lingered in New Orleans was a furtive hope that some magic or voodoo would bring at least a few precious pieces back to him.

He doubted the poor fellow before him could brew such magic. Buddy looked like nothing so much as a poor soul who had been left along a road in some foreign land. Valentin could see him now struggling toward something and waited.

When he started to turn away, the detective thought he had lost him. But Buddy caught himself and his head came back around. Momentarily, he cleared his throat again and said, "Thought you were gone."

Valentin spent a moment startled at hearing the voice again. Along with the gravel was a faint echo of music. Then he felt his face redden, thinking his friend was making a comment on his record of visits.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But when I did come out, you didn't—"

"No, no," Buddy cut him off, looking at and through him at the same time. "They said you were
gone.
Away from that place."

Valentin was puzzled. "What place? Storyville?"

Buddy's face pinched in frustration. Valentin, glancing about for someplace away from the other patients, noticed a vacant window alcove.

"Can we get over there?" he said, and began edging in that direction.

Buddy considered for a moment and then followed at a creeping pace. His eyes flitted as he reached out to touch the surfaces around him. Though now his fingers brushed the walls and moldings in an absent way.

They stood in the alcove, facing each other. To put his friend at ease, the detective made a point of leaning against the wall and crossing his arms languidly.

It seemed to work. Buddy relaxed enough to fix his own gaze out the window. Beyond the rice fields and the dirt ribbon of Highway 61 lay the houses of the dusty hamlet of St. Francisville and, farther on, the bright thread that was the Mississippi River buckled in a sharp curve. It was too far to see, ten miles or more, and yet he stared as if the whole landscape was laid out before him.

Valentin waited a few more seconds, then said, "This is about Storyville?"

Buddy was quiet for so long that the detective thought he might have lost him. Then he shifted his position and said, "They were talking. The two of them. And they said your name."

"The two of who?"

"The white fellow was in here. Him, and the one who come to visit him."

"A patient?"

Buddy's eyes, black and deep, moved to fix on Valentin's. "I heard someone say he went crazy and killed a man, so they put him in here. That one day, he was talking to the other one, and I heard. Then he went away again."

"What was his name?" There was no response, and Valentin sensed Buddy beginning to drift off. "Buddy?"

"What's that?"

"What was his name?"

The response came slower. "Whose name?"

"The white man," Valentin said, trying to hold his friend's attention. "The crazy one."

A sudden impish grin cracked Buddy's face. "Everybody's crazy in here," he said. "You see that sign outside? Says
insane
on it."

Valentin stopped to smile, then made another stab. "What did you say his name was?"

"It was..." Buddy hesitated, shrugged. "I don't remember that."

The detective thought for a few seconds, then said, "So he had a visitor?" Buddy nodded again. "And they were talking about me?"

The taller man nodded. "Said your name."

"You hear anything else?"

Buddy's expression turned fretful as he glanced at Valentin, then away again. "He was going to get out. And the other one say when that happened, he needed to go to the city. Said he had him some work to do."

"What work?"

Buddy was quiet for a long moment. "You know how I knew when it was all over?" he said suddenly. "When the hack that brought us here turned off the river road and I couldn't see it no more." He paused and when he resumed, his voice was dreamy. "Long as we were alongside the river, I figured we were fine. But when I couldn't see it no more, I figured I was bound for hell." He stared for a second, then leaned a little closer to the window. "It's out there somewhere, ain't it?"

Valentin looked. "What?"

"The river."

"It's pretty far off," Valentin told him. "But, yeah..."

"I know. I can't see it at all." Buddy pondered for a few seconds. "You know you can take it right down to New Orleans."

"I know."

"I bet that's what he did, then."

It took the detective a moment to realize he had jumped back to the original subject of the two men and their odd exchange.

"They wasn't up to no good." Buddy sounded a little tense. "That one spoke your name said when he got out, he was going to Storyville, and I could tell he wasn't up to no good at all."

He caught a breath, wearied by the speech. He took a step away, then changed his mind, and stepped back, his eyes narrowing into a stare that was almost familiar.

"What'd you do, Tino?" He cocked his head. "You shoot somebody? Another somebody?" He smiled, showing a hint of white teeth. "What was that first one's name? That nigger over in Algiers?"

"McTier," Valentin said. "Eddie McTier."

"You shot him dead." Buddy nodded, agreeing with himself. "And, what, now you done killed another one?"

Valentin didn't bother to question how Buddy remembered Algiers and McTier. Or how he guessed what had transpired with the man he had shot. It was luck or voodoo or some other something that came out of his mad mind. "That's right, I did," he said. "Last night. In Storyville."

"How many's that make?"

It took a moment for Valentin to say, "Three."

Buddy now eyed him wisely. "That why you're here?"

"I'm here because Nora told me that you said my name."

Buddy thought about that, then said, "Well, then, you come for the wrong reason."

Valentin was about to ask why that was when he detected the old Buddy reappearing, the dark eyes dancing as another white smile flashed. He said, "We played some
ragged
damn jass, ain't that right?"

Valentin recovered enough to say, "Yeah, Buddy, you sure did."

"Tore it up."

"All night long."

Buddy held it for a moment. Then his face fell by degrees into melancholy. "Now it's all over."

"People still play it," Valentin said. "Not like you, though. Ain't nobody ever played like you. And they call it
jazz
now."

"
Jazz.
" Buddy tasted the word. His gaze shifted once more, and again he fixed on the detective's eyes. "Don't you forget the way it was," he said. "Don't you forget none of it."

"I won't."

The stare drew away, turned inward, and went blank. Valentin felt that somehow a breeze had blown through the room, carrying his friend away and leaving him alone.

Buddy turned away to resume his travels, laying his hand on every solid surface as he made his silent way around the sunlit room.

Valentin found the attendant near the door and waited until the mulatto finished calming a slightly frantic patient before approaching him. Deftly, he slipped a coin into the pink palm. The attendant just as deftly made it disappear and with an easy smile said, "How can I help you, sir?"

"Did you have someone go missing from the hospital recently?"

"Go missing?" The attendant frowned. "You mean escape?"

"Or just leave."

"Not over here."

"What about in the white ward?"

"Only people I know of left over there was a man named Knox whose people took him home and another one name of Brown. But he died. That's all." He gave Valentin a sly look. "Why? Someone been telling stories?"

Valentin repeated Buddy's description of the patient and his visitor, leaving out most of the details.

"Ain't no murderers 'round here," the mulatto said with a gentle laugh. "They keep them types in the cage. But patients say things like that all the time. So the others'll leave them be. They go and make up all kinds of crazy shit. Say they the president, or Jesus, or something like that." He tilted his head in the general direction of the ward floor. "One time your friend there told me he was the one come up with jazz music. All by himself."

Valentin said, "That's true, he pretty much did that," and with a nod of thanks, he walked off, leaving the mulatto staring.

Valentin stood at the top of the driveway that curved downward from the broad stone veranda of the administration building, watching idly as a wagon filled with produce for the kitchen rambled through the gate. The gate swung closed, and the hack creaked as it rolled around the building.

Seeing Buddy for the first time in years had thrown his thoughts in a jumble. Though his old friend cut a figure that was beyond blue, it was at least a relief to know that his mind still had anchors, however small, and that photographs from a happier time remained in corners of his memory.

Valentin didn't know what to make of the odd tale of the two strangers—one a patient, the other a visitor—talking about him and Storyville. He knew it could be nothing more than a tangle of words, spoken or imagined, that got muddled up in Bolden's broken mind. The detective saw no pattern to it at all and no reason to give it any more thought.

As he started down the incline to catch the wagon to the station, he glanced back over his shoulder and wondered if he'd ever have reason to come back and see Buddy again.

The train pulled out as the autumn sun was falling and rolled to the southwest, picking up speed, then slowing and coming to a huffing stop at the Slaughter station. Two other passengers got on, drummers with their cases, looking worn out after a day's selling door-to-door.

Neither man would have the faintest clue about their fellow rider's last twenty-four hours. It was about this time the prior evening that he had been laying his trap. Before the night was over, his Iver Johnson .32 had claimed another victim, and the killer who had stalked the red-light district was on his way to the city morgue, the expense of a trial and hanging saved by the quick snap of a trigger. If Valentin wasn't a hero, he had at least done the District a service. He had been in jail, then set free, only to face Justine's wrath. He had made a trip to a madhouse to visit his childhood friend, maybe for the last time.