Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (11 page)

Valentin worked the Café that night. Before he went out on the floor, Anderson appeared and took him aside to ask for a report. The detective kept his voice low as he related Anne Marie Benedict's request that he conduct a proper investigation. The King of Storyville frowned, but didn't comment. Valentin then told him about going to see Picot and the lieutenant's reaction. He shared what he had gathered from Joe Kimball. When he got to the part about Benedict's position in Henry Harris's shipping empire, Anderson's brow stitched further.

"What else?" he asked in a terse voice.

The detective described his visit to the crime scene and the hour or so he had spent going from door to door. He described Caroline West and the red-haired Negro customer who had run out onto the street and come back after filching goods off the dying or dead John Benedict. He drew this last part out, knowing how much Anderson enjoyed talk of the street, and the more wicked, the better.

"It wasn't the Negro who killed him," Valentin said. "Whoever it was shot him down, then just walked away and left him there to die."

The King of Storyville said, "So if it wasn't a robbery..." His silver eyebrows arched. "You think it was a trap? Somebody lured him out there to—"

"I don't know that," Valentin cut in quickly. "Maybe it was just a dispute that got settled with a pistol."

The white man caught the retreat and eyed him narrowly. "On Rampart Street?" Valentin shrugged and he let it go. He considered for a few moments, then said, "Benedict was in cahoots with Henry Harris?"

"They did business. Benedict's company supplied Harris's shipbuilders." He noticed that Anderson looked troubled by the news and said, "Why?"

"I was just wondering," said Anderson, who never "just wondered" about anything. "So what about this nigger that robbed the body? Did you find him?"

"I'll track him down. He won't have much to say, though."

"Do it anyway," Anderson said. "Give the daughter what she wants and finish this so the poor man can rest in peace."

Anderson now seemed vaguely irritated, and Valentin considered reminding him that it was his idea to get involved in it in the first place. He decided that wouldn't be received well at all and went back to work.

Picot's officers had it all wrapped up by nine o'clock that night. First they canvassed the neighborhood until they found Caroline West, then shut her down and braced her until she told them about the red-haired Negro. They fanned out up and down the saloons along Rampart Street, asking after anyone who fit the description. They soon narrowed it down to two suspects. The first one, who went by the moniker Little Chink because of the Asian cast of his features, proved to be elsewhere. That left a half-breed Cherokee who called himself Ten Penny due to the copper tinge of his skin. His true name was Thomas Lee, and he was known as one of those ne'er-do-wells who lived off petty thefts and would sell a friend for a Liberty dollar, if he'd had a friend to sell. Some time back he had earned pocket money by snitching to the police, until it was discovered that at least half the information he was selling was false. Now he made his way by begging, stealing, and scavenging. He was so ragged, dirty, and foul smelling that he was no longer permitted in even the lowest dives on Rampart Street.

The coppers found Ten Penny in an alley off Willow Street where he had built a lean-to of discarded packing crates. He was cooking hot whiskey over an open fire when they kicked the boards of the shack apart and dragged him out by his kinky hair. Within the hour he had been carried downtown to Parish Prison and duly charged with the murder of John Louis Benedict.

It was late morning and Valentin was just settling down with his coffee when Frank came in from the store, a cup in one hand and a copy of Saturday's
Daily Picayune
in the other.

"What was the name of that fellow got murdered on Rampart Street?" he said.

Valentin lowered his own cup. "John Benedict. Why?"

Mangetta dropped the newspaper onto the table. "It says here they caught the fellow that killed him."

When Valentin got to the end of the piece, he put the paper aside and said, "I need to use the telephone."

A phone call interrupted Lieutenant Picot's lunch, but what he heard destroyed his appetite, anyway.

He made it from his house on Bell Street to Parish Prison in twenty furious minutes and raced down the two flights of steps to the basement, moving as fast as his thick legs would propel him without him breaking his neck. He came blustering along the hallway that led to the colored section. At the anteroom where the jailer had his desk, he found St. Cyr slouched against the wall in an insolent posture that set his blood to stewing.

"What's this?" he demanded of the jailer.

"He's got permission."

"Permission from who?"

The jailer held out a sheet of paper. Picot snatched it away and read down, his mouth settling into a hard line. His muddy eyes flicked at St. Cyr. "Jesus Christ!" he muttered. "What are you doing here?"

Valentin said, "I'm working this case, Lieutenant. And you made an arrest."

"That's right, we did!" Picot barked. "It's what we do when we find guilty parties. And this one's guilty as hell."

"Has he confessed?"

"He will soon enough."

"Did you find the weapon?"

"It's likely at the bottom of the damn river. I don't have to explain this to you." Picot gave Valentin a resentful look. "You just can't keep your nose out of our business, can you? You want to know if he did it? He did. We're going to put this one away. You'll be out of a job, but we're doing the family a
favor
here, goddamnit! This one's over and done."

Valentin kept his expression flat, ignoring Picot's bluster. He knew what was going on. When he was a copper, he had heard the same routine a hundred times. Once a suspect had been picked, there was an answer for everything. Ten Penny was their man, and his guilt or innocence was not germane. He might well hang for a crime that he probably didn't commit.

"I'd like to talk to him, anyway," the detective said.

Picot fumed, glared. "I guess I can't say no, can I? You got a note here from O'Connor." He waved the page in the air, making a snapping sound. "How the hell did you manage that?"

"It was Mr. Anderson's doing."

Picot rolled his olive-brown eyes. "Well, he's the boss, isn't he? Even the damned chief of police dances to his tune." He shoved the letter in the direction of the jailer, a splotch-faced old bull. "Make sure you go in there with him," Picot said, then lowered his voice to mutter something else that Valentin couldn't hear. He didn't look at the Creole detective as he stalked off.

Valentin soon discovered what the lieutenant had told the jailer, because he found himself waiting around for no reason for the better part of an hour. From down the corridor, he heard the occasional rude shout or low groan, and he smelled urine, shit, sour sweat, and the general rot of the damp and filthy place. It reminded him of the coarse air around the cages at the zoo. The only difference was that the animals received better care.

At 1:30 the jailer stood up, hefted his ring of keys, jerked his head, and said, "Come along, then."

Valentin followed him down the corridor. From each of the first six cells, eyes glared out at him. The seventh cell was empty. The eighth held six prisoners, and among them was a short, thin, copper-skinned Negro who sat in the corner with his knees folded before him and his bony arms dangling.

The jailer put the key in the lock and threw the door open with a crack that echoed down the corridor. The half-dozen hopeful faces looked up. The jailer barked, "Lee!" and the fellow who was on the floor got to his feet as the faces of his cell mates went dull again.

The jailer pushed Ten Penny with a rough hand, herding him outside and then into the empty cell next door. He glanced at Valentin. "Go on," he said, and when the detective went in, parked himself in the doorframe and crossed his arms.

Valentin waved the prisoner to one end of the lone steel bunk while he took the other end. He spent a moment studying Ten Penny. Close-up the Negro had a small, feral face, with a hooked nose and close-set eyes. His crooked mouth was missing half its teeth, and the ones that were left were brown with rot. Even though he had gone through the prison's shower and delousing, there was a rank smell coming off him, as if the stench of the streets had settled too deeply into his pores for such curatives to reach. His black eyes flicked like skittering marbles from the Creole detective to the jailer. He put on a street rat's cloying smirk, already trying to figure if his visitor could get him out of the mess.

The detective spoke in a low voice. "My name's St. Cyr. I want to talk to you about what happened Sunday night. Or Monday morning. With that fellow on the street. The one they say you murdered."

"I didn't!" Ten Penny's voice was high and grating. "I didn't kill nobody!"

"Then tell me what happened over there."

The Negro glanced at the jailer, who let out a grunt, then looked away.

"Go ahead," Valentin said.

"I had me a little money and I was lookin' to get some, and I was in there with that crib whore," Ten Penny whispered, and then came up with a grotesque grin. "You know what I'm talkin' about? Anyways, we was just done and I heard this damn shot go off. I runned over and look out the window. I saw that fellow a-lying out there."

"Did you see anyone else?"

"Maybe so." Ten Penny's eyes shifted. "They was still smoke off a pistol in the air. And then I mighta saw somebody in one of them long coats. Walkin' away. Backwards kinda."

"Toward Fourth Street?"

"Thas right. To Fourth Street."

"Did you see this person's face?"

"Naw ... it was too dark for that."

"All right, then what?"

"I waited for a minute. Then I went to see if I could help."

Valentin snickered at Ten Penny's earnest expression. "He was dead when you got out there?"

"He was finished."

"So you went ahead and robbed him."

Ten Penny's eyes did a nervous hop toward the jailer. "Well, somebody was gonna get it."

"You took his purse. What else?"

"That was all."

"No, it wasn't," Valentin said tersely. "You grabbed his watch, but it fell and broke apart. You were about to take his finger to get his wedding band. So I'm asking again. What else?"

Ten Penny shook his head one way and then the other, attempting to appear innocent.

"Was there a ring on his right hand?"

"Naw, nothin' like that."

"What happened to it?"

"I don't know what you—"

"What happened to the fucking ring?" Valentin snarled suddenly.

Ten Penny gave a start. "All right, all right!" He cleared his throat. "I got one, all right. But I want somethin' for it."

"You'll get something for it," Valentin said. "I might be able to save your life. Or I could just go out there and toss the alley and see if I can find it myself. And then let these coppers have at you. You'll be lucky if you last a day."

"No, I'll tell you," Ten Penny said quickly. He described a loose brick next to a doorframe.

Valentin got to his feet. With his back to the jailer, he said, "You better hope it's still there."

"Say, you gonna get me out of this?" Ten Penny called to him. "They like to put a rope round my neck."

Valentin looked through the bars. "I'll do what I can."

"Do what you can? What if that ain't enough?"

"Then they'll notify your next of kin."

He could still hear Ten Penny squawking as he went up the steps to leave the building.

Valentin had stopped gambling the night in Algiers that a game went wrong and he ended up putting a hole in the chest of one Eddie McTier, a backwoods Georgia guitar player and rounder who was an even worse shot than he was a cheater. McTier, caught double-dealing, had snapped his Stevens Tip-Up .22 in Valentin's face. The problem was that the Tip-Up only had one bullet in the chamber, and a second after it whizzed past his ear, his Iver Johnson had dropped McTier onto the sawdust floor and five feet three inches closer to hell.

Though he had sworn off games of chance that night, it was always a good bet that Picot would put a man on him. Since Valentin was too quick to pick up a tail, it seemed that the lieutenant just wanted to let him know that he was being watched. The man would be pulled off if he was needed elsewhere.

This afternoon Picot had sent a character from the shifting cast of part-time Pinkertons and private coppers that roamed downtown and uptown New Orleans. Indeed, pick any saloon and every other fellow at the bar would be carrying some kind of badge. This one was tall and rail thin, on the consumptive side, with a long nose and drooping mustache, dressed in a gray serge suit and black derby hat. He held a handkerchief in one hand that he coughed into repeatedly. That alone was like a bell on a cat.

Valentin thought about losing him just to show Picot that he could still do it, then decided to hold that card. He walked down to Canal Street and waited patiently, letting the next car pass, so that Picot's string bean could keep up.