Mignon (16 page)

“Why doesn’t Cresap talk to Ball?”

That was the boy who had interrupted, and Sandy said: “That’s right, Ball would know. He’s on that duty now, and has all Powell’s notes.”

“Can I see him?”

“He’s asleep, but he’ll be at the hotel tonight.”

“Then—I’ll talk to him there.”

“Now, Bill, let’s get back.”

“... Back? To what?”

“The twenty-five thousand dollars.”

I was in the unfortunate position, I discovered, that he’d swallowed my whole yarn. He took the twenty-five thousand dollars very seriously, feeling he was to blame, not only for our needing it but, still worse, for our not having it. So for an hour I had to fence, while he asked all kinds of questions about who my “parties” were. Finally, when I admitted I had no idea, he looked so utterly baffled I had to do something, quick. I slipped off a bill from the roll I had in my pocket, tore it in two with my fingertips, then came up with one half and said: “All I know is, they’re to present me with identification, the matching half of this. Until they do, I don’t know them from Adam, and can’t even guess who they are. And maybe, from your account of the seizure, or capture as you call it, they won’t even show at all.” It satisfied him, but I went back to my flat more shaken than before, if such a thing was possible. I was no nearer the answer to my riddle, but quite a lot nearer the poorhouse. I had supposed, when I tore the bill, that I was wrecking a twenty, but saw when I looked it was fifty. Perhaps, I told myself, it would be just as good as new if pasted together again, but as I fingered and folded and eyed it, it was one more silly thing in a dreary, complete fiasco.

I’d done better than I knew.

W
HATEVER I HAD OR HADN’T FOUND
out, I still had to eat, so around 6:30 I walked up to the hotel. It was jammed, and I didn’t get a seat until the third or fourth table. But I bought my ticket, and then saw Dan come in and beckon to the newspapermen. When they’d gathered around him, he gave them the latest: the Army was moving up, being now in Natchitoches—“Nackitosh,” he called it; the Navy was having some trouble from low water on the falls, the stretch of rapid water just above the town, but several boats were up, and no serious delay had been caused. In other words, everything was moving according to schedule. But when he’d finished with them and dropped into a chair beside me, he had nothing to say and seemed in a sour humor. I said: “Why all the gloom if the sun is shining so bright?” He said: “It is, in a pig’s eye,” and then, mysterious: “You want to see something, Bill? Meet me out back.”

So I did, slipping out past the desk in under the stairs, through a door between the dining room and a big lounge with a stove in it. In a moment, there he was, in among the hotel’s steam boiler, gas tank, and cistern, pointing. I looked; in the gathering dark, the sky back of town was pink. He said: “That glow is cotton they’re burning out there—from some plantation gin on the Opelousas Road. They’ve been doing it, I’m told, every night since the Navy crossed them. We hear they hate our guts.”

“Yes, but since when did they love us?”

“They were all ready to think things over.”

“You’re hipped on that hoodoo, Dan.”

“I’m telling you, it’s going to dog us.”

“The cotton’s gone—it’s on its way to Cairo for condemnation in Springfield. The rest is a new deal.”

“We haven’t heard the end.”

When I didn’t respond he got sore, and circled the tailor shop at one side to return to the headquarters boat without going back through the hotel. I went in and at last got a place for dinner, which wasn’t too bad: corned beef, cabbage, potato, rice pudding with rum sauce, and real coffee—the first sign of a change when the Union comes to town. When I went out into the lobby again, Ball was back of the stagecoach desk, a grizzled, seamy two-striper who looked like an old river pilot, which is probably what he was. He was talking to a woman about her son who’d been captured, but spotted me and called me over, telling her to wait. He shook hands, saying: “Mr. Cresap, Sandy Gregg said you’d come—I know you by his description.”

“I’m easy described,” I said, waving the stick.

“He never mentioned it. He spoke only about your beauty—
and
that torn fifty-dollar bill you have. Could I see it just once, Mr. Cresap?”

I got one half of it out, and when he loved it as though it was alive I realized I had a pass, by just a crazy accident, to a lodge I’d never heard of. He said: “It’s the old smuggler’s talisman, and my, how that carries me back. Mr. Cresap, before annexation, and the tariff changes of Forty-six, everything was protected—from jumping jacks to sewing machines—and the smuggling that went on, especially here in the South, had to be seen to be believed. Jefferson, Texas, was the Lone-Star port of entry, and Shreveport of course was ours. We had, and still have, the long, narrow steamers, and what they took through the bayous—Twelve-Mile Bayou to Lake Caddo, and Big Bayou to Red River—ran into the millions, sir. And with every dummy manifest, I’d be given this same bill—a fifty torn once, to match a piece I had in my wallet. Well, when you show me this I know you have real friends, and I may as well tell you the truth—or they will.
So
: Our orders, here in the Navy, are to receipt for
loyal
cotton, whether
captured
or not. But which Red River cotton
is
loyal? As we hear, there’s
none
. It’s all been impressed, we’ve been told, by the Confederate bureau at Shreveport, for export—you know how they do? Haul to Texas, then ship through Mexico?”

I said I knew about it, and he went on: “So much for what we heard. There’s also the element of confusion. Did Sandy speak of the stencil?”

“... Stencil? I don’t think so.”

“When we capture a bale we stencil it
USN
to keep things straight. And the boys—no order was given, it was strictly a fo’c’sle idea—they put an extra stencil on,
CSA
—all perfectly honest, since it meant Cotton Stealing Association, U.S. Navy. But a court could easy conclude it meant Confederate States of America. Well now, couldn’t it? But why, you may ask, couldn’t a court open its mouth and
inquire
what the stencil meant? All right, since you ask, I’ll say. Under the law of prize, if the prize bears any marks, ‘sufficient to its adjudification’—that’s what he said,
adjudification
—that closes the case, no more evidence can be heard. So the court
can
’
t
inquire, the law don’t permit it! So you, Mr. Cresap, are sitting in the soup, so far as cotton’s concerned that was stored in Rachal’s Warehouse, and that’s offered you for sale. Am I making the point clear?”

“I think I get it, yes.”

“CSA—CSA, they’re one and the same.”

“We could say, like
Black Hawk
—
Black Hawk
.”

“That’s it! War is war!”

Then, leaning close: “I ask you right out, Mr. Cresap: Have you bought in on this cotton or haven’t you?”

“Not actually, Lieutenant Ball.”

“Then don’t! Save your tin!”

“I’ll remember what you say. Thanks.”

He called the woman over, took the name of her son, and said he’d do what he could to get the boy released. Then he leaned back and started in again about the old days of the smugglers, in the time of the Texas Republic, when all of a sudden he stopped, as a man in moleskins, jackboots, and felt hat leaned over toward him. We were seated facing each other, he behind the desk, I beside it, my back to the lobby. He looked up, said: “Mr. Burke, I’m sorry I have no news—we’re taking nobody upriver until the occupation is complete.”

“But I
must
get to Shreveport,” said the familiar voice, “
before
I leave for Springfield, to see to me interests there. I’ve a tremenjous opportunity to buy a parcel of cotton on the Sabine, back of the town—”

“The Pulaski dump?”

“Aye, a cache of five thousand bales,
no less!
”

“But the Army has boats too. Why not see them?”

“The Army and I have our differences.”

“Well with this Army, who wouldn’t have differences—we have a few ourselves. But for two million in cotton,
I
wouldn’t be too damned proud. Why don’t you hop a wagon? You don’t need a pass for that.”

“ ’Tis an idea; I’ll think it over.”

They batted it back and forth, and perhaps to change the subject, Ball suddenly asked: “Did the little lady cross? To visit that grave in Pineville? Her mother’s, I think you said?”

“She’s—been a bit under the weather.”

“She still has Powell’s pass?”

“Aye—she remembers’m in her prayers.”

“Whenever she’s ready, any cutter’ll take her.”

“And she’s grateful, have no doubt of it.”

“Funny, Mr. Burke, I’ve often thought about it: How could they lay out this town so neat, with no place to bury people? No cemeteries here, you know. What’s the idea? Do they figure to live forever?”

“As they tell it, many of’m do.”

“Not Powell, unfortunately.”

“Have you word of the wretch who killed’m?”

“Not yet. But God help him when we catch up.”

“To that a brace of amens.”

They came back to her again, Burke saying how “slimsy” she’d felt today, “especially with the rain.” How long it went on, I don’t know, but more than just a few seconds, as I had my back to the lobby, and Burke couldn’t see who was there—and long enough for stuff to go through my head. I thought: Since when was she “slimsy” today? She hadn’t looked slimsy to me, and in fact was chock full of mean, rotten ginger. Then I thought: If she wasn’t slimsy, why should he say she was? To cover not using her pass, but then I thought: Why hasn’t she used it, for instance? I thought all that without caring too much. But then suddenly it hit me like a sledge: Suppose she’s not going to use it? Suppose it was just a trick to get Powell’s specimen signature, so Burke could forge the receipt the Navy wouldn’t give? And suppose that’s why Powell got killed, so he couldn’t deny his name in court? For one heartbeat, she was guilty as hell to me and one heartbeat again, I felt the same feeling as Booth had had in his eyes. But then, as always, came the excuse I made for her: Suppose, I thought, she knew nothing about the pass? Suppose he’d got it for her so he could forge the receipt, and conveniently forgot to tell her? That would tie in with the way she’d acted with me, bragging about the receipt, and certainly believing he had one. It would also put her, as soon as the Navy caught up—and figured why Powell was shot—right on the gallows step. Because, when they searched Burke’s papers, they’d find the pass in her name, the receipt with identical signature, and nothing to show she hadn’t been in on the trick.

By the time he looked down and saw me, I was well on my way, I knew, to solving two or three mysteries, all in one fell swoop. “Hello, Burke,” I said.

“... What are you doing here, Cresap?”

“
Was
talking to the lieutenant.
Am
talking to you.”

“What business have you with me?”

“You’ll find out. Thanks, Lieutenant Ball.”

As Ball, kind of puzzled, gave me a wary wave, I led to the
DEMOCRAT
desk and took my seat behind it, but then saw that Burke hadn’t moved. “Of course,” I called, “
IF YOU WANT THE NAVY TO HEAR
——”

He’d heard me bellow before, and came in five quick steps, pulling up a chair so he could sit close. But I kicked it out from under him. I said: “Stand when talking to me.

“Talking to you? About what?”

“Couldn’t we say a slight case of murder?”

“Are you out of your mind? Whose?”

“Lieutenant Powell’s, perhaps—whose name you got on a pass, so
she
could cross the river; then used his specimen signature, to forge one on the receipt, the Navy’s receipt for your cotton, as you forged the informer notes last month down in New Orleans; and then
you killed him so he couldn
’
t deny it in court!
”

“Cresap, I think you’re crazy.”

“I don’t, that’s the difference—and the question is, what do we do about it? I wasn’t here, I didn’t see it, I don’t have to turn you in—it all hinges on the other people involved, the ones named in your written agreements, as to whether they’re guilty too. If not, I can’t turn you in, but I can destroy your papers, to cut you out, and them out, of every dime of the hundred-twenty thousand you thought you’d make from this crime. If they are as guilty as you are, I’m turning you all three in—you, your partner, and
her
. I don’t care how pretty she is, or whether you love her or not, or whether anyone does,
she
’
s going to swing!
” I let that soak in as he stood there licking his lips, then went on: “So that’s what we’re doing now—going into it, to see what’s what, and who gets his neck broke. Come on, we’re paying them a call—
now
.”

“ ’Twill suit me very well.”

“Then fine, let’s go.”

“But I’ve a suggestion, me boy—when we’ve explained the thing to Adolphe, and to Mignon Fournet, of course, why don’t we all go to my house—after all, me papers are there. ’Tis quite a decent place I took on Second Street in the block below the market, back of Adolphe’s store—we can make ourselves comfortable there, and I’ll prove to you once and for all how mistaken you are.”

“If they agree, your house sounds fine.”

“Then ’tis settled, and let’s be off!”

It was settled—a little too much. Because I’d worked myself out on a limb and was neatly sawing it off. To own the truth, I’d come without my gun, not supposing I’d need it. And how far I was going to get, walking down the street in the company of this man I was sure had killed the lieutenant, I didn’t like to think. With the stored-up venom I’d had, I had let myself go regardless, but now I had the cold sweaty feeling of someone about to fall. However, that venom saved me, as everyone there stopped talking and turned my way, and the clerk, the same stiff-necked one who had rented the houses out, got so concerned, as my vicious whispering kept on, that he strolled to the door, stepped out, and called: “Corporal of the Guard! Corporal of the Provost Guard!”