Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (21 page)

He had just reached the door when Delouche called his name. He stopped and waited.

"We have no further business," the attorney said. "Don't come here anymore."

At that, Valentin realized he was getting somewhere.

***

When he got back to his room, he found a note that someone had tacked to his door. Solomon the jeweler wanted to see him at his convenience. After a visit to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, he hitched his suspenders and headed out once more.

Just as he reached Basin Street, a new Maxwell cabriolet whipped by, stitching like a sewing machine, a driver in livery at the wheel and a heavyset citizen bouncing in the backseat. He watched the automobile chatter along the street and then slide to a sharp stop in front of Antonia Gonzales's mansion. The stout fellow lurched down and climbed the steps to the gallery.

Valentin crossed over and turned west for Canal Street.

Justine was summoned and she greeted Mr. George in the foyer. The man was getting to be a pain. Still, she knew Miss Antonia wouldn't stand for her sending him away, so she led him up the stairs to her room. Along the way, she called to one of the maids to bring a tray of coffee.

Once she had him in her room, she took his coat, undid the buttons on his vest, and settled him on the love seat. The maid came and Justine took the tray and poured for him.

"Could I have something else in there?" he asked. "I think I need it."

She took a decanter of whiskey from the corner table and dropped a healthy slug in his cup. She fixed an attentive gaze on his face, all part of the act.

He started muttering about the fellow who had disappeared again. "Do you know that two police detectives were at my door at noon today? They asked all kinds of questions. Made me go through what happened again. I know they thought I was an idiot. Or making the whole thing up."

Justine kept her face bland. She had been thinking exactly the same thing.

"They even gave me the eye, like I was the one who had snatched him like that!" The thought of it made his face turn pale. He took another swallow of his fortified coffee and went back to his tale.

She pretended to listen as he babbled away. She had already heard the story and thought it was silly for a grown man to be going on so. She was beginning to think maybe he had gotten drunk and the whole thing was a product of his addled mind. Bodies were fished out of those murky waters every day of the week.

She was nodding with feigned sympathy and gazing longingly at the book on her bedside table when something he said caught her ear. She snapped out of her daze. "What was that?"

"What?" He stopped. "I said that ... that Benedict's daughter hired herself a detective. She's got this—"

"And who is Benedict?"

He gave her an exasperated look, as if he wondered if she'd been listening to him. "John Benedict," he repeated. "The first one who died. It was just a week before Kane did. I said Benedict's daughter hired a detective, some sharp from back-of-town, to look into it."

"Did she say his name?" Justine said.

"All I know is that he isn't a Pinkerton. Why?"

She waved a hand. "It's nothing. I know a few of those fellows, that's all." She took a deliberate moment, then composed her face into a mask of studied interest. "Can you tell me again from the start what happened?"

He frowned. "Again?"

"I'm just a little slow sometimes," she said demurely. "I really would like to hear it." She moved closer, laying one hand on the back of his neck and the other on his heavy thigh. "It's like a ghost story. And you tell it so well."

He swallowed, and then smiled thinly, putting on a brave front. "All right, my dear."

***

Beansoup walked along St. Louis Street, keeping an eye out for Charley Johnson, though there was no telling where the Negro might be. Anywhere from Canal Street to the edge of town, standing on some street corner and singing for enough money to buy himself a pint of Raleigh Rye or hunched in some doorway if he had one. Beansoup didn't mind. It was only because of his drinking that Charley allowed a young white boy to dog his steps and sometimes play a tune with him.

Beansoup was glad he did, though. He felt like he had finally found something he could hang his hat on. Up until a year ago, he had traveled the streets with Louis, a Negro boy out of the Colored Waif's Home. Then they split up. Louis rode the junk wagon and pounded a drum and blew a horn in the Colored Waif's marching band. Stung by what he saw as the younger boy's betrayal, Beansoup had started following Charley Johnson, who had come to town from the Delta to earn some dollars with his six-string banjo.

Even as a kid, Beansoup had been known to bawl out a raw and bawdy Negro song at a moment's notice. He had purchased a rusted, spit-encrusted harmonica at a pawnshop and tootled along with Charley whenever the singer was too drunk to care, and on his own whenever the fancy took him. After the used harmonica fell apart, he got the sisters at St. Mary's to order him a good one out of the Sears, Roebuck catalog, and he occasionally surprised those within earshot by playing something that was not a form of torture. Other than that, he roamed around Storyville in his seedy clothes, always on the lookout for a bit of action.

Now, as he walked along, blowing a song called "Country Blues" and clapping his free hand against his thigh for rhythm, a young colored girl stepped into his path. He stopped.

"You the one they call Beansoup?" the girl asked.

He nodded and winced; he had to get rid of the silly moniker. It made him sound like a little kid or a grown-up clown.

"I got message from Miss Justine Mancarre over at Miss Antonia Gon—"

"I know who she is," Beansoup said. "What's the message?"

"She want to see you whenever you can come along."

Beansoup digested the news. "Tell her I'll be there in a little bit," he said. He gave the girl a broad wink and dropped a quarter of his own in her palm, just like a regular rounder.

Valentin turned down Poydras Street and then three blocks east on Peters. Solomon had two customers, so he lolled about for a few minutes, examining the fine pieces of jewelry and the horns, guitars, and mandolins that were hanging on the walls. For a brief moment, he conjured a vision of a Sicilian with a broad mustache, some cousin of his father's, standing in their living room, plucking a
mandolinu
and singing a lament in a minor key. The door opened and closed as one of the customers made an exit, and the vision went away.

He stepped to a jewelry case and looked over a collection of diamond stickpins that would have done any uptown sport proud. Somewhere along the line, they had been pawned, always a sign of trouble. He wondered idly if any of them had been taken off a dead man and which—

"Mr. Valentin." The bell over the door tinkled as the second customer left, and Solomon was regarding him over the tops of his spectacles. "You got my message."

Valentin's first glance told him something was wrong. Solomon looked neither his cheerful nor somber self, but agitated, as if unnerved by something. It seemed odd for this gentle man. He was about to ask if there was some problem when the pawnbroker said, "I've got something to show you. Over here, please." Valentin caught the tiny slide in his voice.

He waved the Creole detective to the glass-topped counter and then went rummaging into one of the cabinets behind him. He turned back to place a tiny felt sachet on the counter and plucked out John Benedict's ring. He had to steady his hands before he could hold it up and direct a magnifying glass at it. Valentin gave him another curious glance.

"I showed your piece around," Solomon said. "I wasn't able to find out where it came from. It's not a local piece. Then I took a closer look, and it seems you have a
partikler
item here. I'm going to show you why." He handed over the glass and ring. "If you look into the stone and turn it to the light, you can see, there in the setting, some letters engraved. You see?"

Valentin held the glass over the stone and turned the ring until he saw a tiny impression emerge as if it was under dark water. Some sort of design. He drew the glass farther away to try and enlarge it, but the design only blurred.

"Never mind, you won't be able to read it without a loupe," Solomon said. "They're letters. Three of them, with a line underneath. Here..." He went into his vest pocket and retrieved a stub of a pencil. He found his receipt pad, licked the point of the pencil, and started drawing with a careful hand. When he finished, he turned the pad so Valentin could see.

V V V

"Is that supposed to be three V's?" he said. "Does it mean something?"

Solomon waggled some fingers. "I asked around about that, too. No one knows. It might be a fraternity of some kind."

"A college fraternity?"

"No, not like that. There's no V in the Greek alphabet. It's something else. Right now, I don't know what. The other question is why would you want to hide the letters in the first place. You only see them if you know they're in there. I think it's maybe a code. Something secret. Anyway, it's a first-class piece. Worth, I don't know, maybe four, five hundred dollars. A lot of money for a ring."

He dropped it in the little sack, tied it up, and handed it back to Valentin with a nervous motion.

"Maybe I should leave it here," the detective said.

The pawnbroker's eyes shifted worriedly. "Is that necessary?"

Now Valentin said, "What's wrong, Solomon?"

A few seconds went by, and Solomon sighed and related the visit from the tall man. When he finished, the detective said, "I know who he is."

"What's this about?"

Valentin held up the ring. "This."

"He ... he said something about Sophie. About visiting her. How does he know?"

"I don't know," Valentin lied. The truth was a few simple questions would lead to the poor man's daughter.

"I'm afraid for her," Solomon said. "You think you could maybe take a moment and go see ... just to make sure she's..." His voice cracked a little and he stopped.

"I'll do it today or tomorrow," Valentin promised.

"I'd be grateful." Solomon coughed. "Tell her ... Tell her that her father says the door is still open here."

As Valentin left, the jeweler managed a wan smile and said, "I'll find out about those three V's for you."

Justine was sitting at the big oak table in the kitchen, drinking chicoried coffee and looking at a charcoal sketch that had been slipped into her hand.

It belied a secret. Thanks to her comely figure, she had gained an extra vocation. Once a week, she made her way out of the District and rode a St. Charles Line streetcar to Tulane University, then walked across the campus to a room in the basement of one of the austere buildings, where she stripped off her dress and posed naked before a dozen young men, art students all.

She never looked at the earnest fellows with their scratching pencils. They were only a few years younger than she, and yet seemed like such children to her. She did what the professor asked, collected her money, and went back to her life as a Storyville prostitute. She would have preferred that she was the one seated in a classroom, but that was of course impossible. Women weren't permitted as students in those halls. Still, it was a far step away from Basin Street and important to her because it meant she was something other than just a receptacle for a man's yancy. What she held in her hand was proof.

Though her eye was not practiced, the sketch seemed to her clumsy but heartfelt. It wasn't an accurate rendition, either; her breasts were not quite so heavy nor her hips that wide. Her face was not clear in the drawing, just a few rough scratches that were meant to suggest her features idealized in the young fellow's mind.

She couldn't remember much about him, just that he had bright eyes and red cheeks. None of the other young men had ever bothered to give her a drawing; and of course she'd not had any before. The one photograph she'd had taken years back had been lost. Valentin had never expressed an interest in having pictures of any kind. Which was strange, because he was friends with the cripple Bellocq, who was famous for his photographs of Storyville doves.

She put the drawing aside, and her thoughts shifted. It was no surprise that Mr. George had a connection to the case Valentin was working. Storyville was a small town in a small city and odd threads entwined. It was that simple. So she decided to contact him, to break down the wall that had risen between them.

She had been going through a terrible time just before he left, with a yen for paregoric that she couldn't put down. He had saved her from a dire fate when a deep secret had come to light right in the middle of the bloody case he was working. When it was over, he went away. When he didn't come back, she returned to the life of a sporting girl, to selling her charms and affections to the highest bidder. It was the only profession she had ever known; and a woman of her looks and skills earned well. From what she could surmise, Valentin considered this a final betrayal.

Her heart started to race. He had disappeared without so much as a good-bye and now had the nerve to be rankled because she had gone back to what she had been when he first found her? She was good enough for him then, wasn't she? What had he expected her to do? Become a nun? Go to work in a shop? Clean toilets? Just to protect his wounded feelings? Probably so; a man whose pride was offended would expect exactly that.