Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (29 page)

Frank Mangetta hadn't seen Valentin all morning. He hadn't come downstairs for breakfast, only the second time that had happened since he'd been back in New Orleans. Frank didn't know if he was still in his room and wasn't about to go knocking on his door. He ate some eggs and peppers, drank his coffee, and read the newspaper alone, wondering idly what might be keeping his boarder.

He got an answer in another hour, after he had helped the cook and the dishwasher get ready for the lunch crowd. He had taken a moment to slouch in the archway between the saloon and the grocery for a few moments' rest. The cook, a thin, quick-tempered Italian, knew his boss enjoyed a smoke now and then, and had offered him a cigarette, hand-rolled with Half-and-Half, or
mezza-mez',
as the Sicilians called the rough tobacco brand. Frank puffed away, nodding greetings to the customers in the grocery.

A police automobile pulled to the curb outside, and a few seconds later Lieutenant J. Picot stepped inside, followed by two patrolmen. Picot ambled over to one of the clerks and asked gruffly for directions to the second floor. The clerk looked at Frank and received a tiny nod.

The lieutenant left one of his men there and took the other one with him into the storeroom. Frank heard their footsteps thumping up the stairs.

***

They stopped at the door. Picot jerked his head and the patrolman rapped his nightstick twice on the jamb.

"St. Cyr!" the lieutenant called. "I want to talk to you about Kimball. I mean now."

A few moments passed, and there was movement from inside. "I'll come downstairs," St. Cyr muttered from the other side of the door.

As they turned to walk back to the stairwell, Picot glanced along the hall at the door of the other room. He remembered hearing that it was a Sicilian who kept it, another of those stone-faced dagos who appeared off a ship one day, worked like mules, then took their savings and disappeared back to their homes in Italy. Maybe, he thought, one day one of them would do him a favor and take St. Cyr with him.

Picot was sitting in one of the booths, his derby on the table and his hands in the pockets of his jacket, when the Creole detective came through the archway from the grocery. Mangetta was wiping down the bar, and the two men exchanged a glance. Instead of sliding into the booth across from the lieutenant, Valentin took a chair down from the closest table. Picot got right to the point.

"You're in trouble," he said. "You were in the morgue at the
Picayune
last night. You didn't report that there had been a felony committed."

Picot hadn't been completely sure that this was true. St. Cyr's silence confirmed it.

"Did you come to arrest me?" Valentin said.

The lieutenant moved his derby three inches to the left and folded his hands before him. "Who murdered Kimball?" he said.

"I don't know."

"You know why, though, don't you?"

Valentin hesitated. He and Picot seemed destined to do some version of this dance. They were bound together by terrible secrets, and it had put them on equal footing. So he wasn't about to waste time in evasion.

"What I know is that I asked him to find some information for me," he said. "Someone didn't want whatever he found getting in my hands."

"Which was what?"

Valentin didn't answer.

"So somebody followed you there. Somebody who knew what was going on." Cold humor danced behind Picot's eyes. "You didn't know you had a tail? After what happened on Marais Street?"

"I ... I missed that," Valentin admitted. He looked at the copper. "But, of course, he wasn't one of yours."

Picot's lips twisted. "No, he wasn't," he said. "This one was a goddamn murderer, and he shot your friend in the head. What I want to know is why."

Valentin said, "I don't know what he found, Lieutenant. I didn't take anything out of there. And you didn't find anything, either."

"Well, I guess it was something pretty damn fresh," the lieutenant snapped back. "Because it cost the man his life." He glowered and dropped his voice another notch. "If you know who did this, you better say."

"Maybe it was Ten Penny," Valentin said. "You should check his whereabouts."

"I'm not playing with you, St. Cyr."

Valentin said, "You don't want to know what this is about."

Picot raised his head, his eyes narrowing. The Creole was doing him a favor, and he didn't like it.

"Oh, is that so?" he said out of sheer annoyance. "Well, then..." He sat back. Maybe St. Cyr had carried something out of Kimball's office and maybe not. For all his bluster, the nervous scribbler Dodge hadn't found a thing after an hour of fumbling around and was sent away. Picot knew the Creole detective wasn't going to give him a thing, no matter how aggrieved he felt over his friend's death. He was wasting his time.

He snatched up his hat and pushed himself out of the booth. Looking down at the detective, he said, "Kimball was a damn drunk, but he wasn't a bad fellow. Now he's dead, because he was helping you. You must feel like shit. You must be feeling like getting the hell out of here and never coming back. I know I would." He centered his derby on his head and walked out of the saloon and into the grocery, his two patrolmen trailing behind him. The street door banged open and closed.

Frank stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at Valentin, who sat unmoving at his lonely table, his eyes fixed on the floor. Within the minute Beansoup came in, spotted him, and walked over to the table to hand him a slip of paper. Valentin didn't look up. Frank ducked into the kitchen, and when he came out with the fresh cup of
caffè anisetta,
the kid and the detective were both gone. So he drank it himself.

Picot's parting words had gouged the wound. Poor Joe; he had only wanted to help, then sit back, satisfied, and drink to a job well done. Look what had happened.

When Beansoup came up to the table to hand him a piece of paper, he didn't look at it and didn't speak, and the kid went away. He heard Frank puttering around in the kitchen and knew that if he stayed there, he'd have to face his kindness. So he put the paper in his pocket, got up, and headed out the door.

He walked up one street and down the other, leaving a scrambled trail that he dared anyone to follow. After an hour, he had circled and crossed the District two times over. Near the end of this amble, he had the abrupt feeling of stepping out of a fog, the kind that filled the streets when a warm day was dawning. He saw a pattern appear like a pale sketch in the air before his eyes, lines that led from the evil fuck who had put a .22-caliber bullet in the brilliant brain of his friend—for nothing but what was printed on a piece of paper—to Nelson, then to William Little or some other callous underling, and finally to Mr. Henry Harris himself. On the periphery stood Anne Marie Benedict. His gut told him that she was no innocent with a simple desire to have her father's murder investigated.

Piece by piece, his detective's sixth sense was coming back, and he was now almost certain that she was in deeper than that.

Why was John Benedict killed? Maybe Anne Marie knew. Maybe Joe Kimball had known, but now he was dead. Whatever either of them were holding didn't signify; it was Valentin who had put Joe on his last fatal road. Case or no case, no one else would seek redress for the loss. It was on him now.

He crossed over Basin Street into the north end of the Quarter. Another ten minutes brought him to the door in a back alley. He rapped a knuckle and waited. Sensing a presence on the other side of the door, he said, "It's Valentin, Papá."

The door scraped open. Bellocq's figure, looking to Valentin's eye more hunched and crabbed than before, moved away, placing a stilted arm on the wall for support. The detective stepped inside.

Bellocq eyed him. "Did I hear right? Joe Kimball got shot dead?"

"He did," Valentin said.

The little man said something the detective didn't catch. He went silent for a few seconds, and then said abruptly, "He had a lump behind his ear."

Valentin stared at him. "Who did?"

"The one they pulled from out of the river," Bellocq said. "Kane. He had a lump behind his ear. I saw it."

"How did you know that's what I came for?"

Bellocq almost smiled. "What else?" he said. "Nobody pays me no mind for six months. Maybe more. Then a copper comes round, says I got to go downtown and look at a body. Mr. Kimball's dead. And now you're at my door. After, what, two years?"

Valentin heard the cranky note of recrimination in the Frenchman's weird voice. "It's been eighteen months," he said.

"Don't matter." Bellocq raised a hand and tapped a crooked finger on his skull. "He had a lump. He got hit there."

"That could have happened when he went into the water."

"Maybe so," the Frenchman said. "That's probably what everybody think." There was a cunning glimmer in his eye.

"But you don't."

Bellocq came up with one of his weird smiles. "You carry one of them saps, non? You want to take someone down, where you hit them at?"

"The back of the head."

"This here one was above," the Frenchman said. "Close enough."

"So someone knocked him cold and then dumped him in the river?"

"Why you ask me? Ain't you the detec
tive
?" He put the emphasis on the last syllable, a rare display of humor from the little man.

"You knew Kane from the docks?"

"That's right."

"Do you remember anything about him?"

"He was one of them loud, stupid men," Bellocq said. "The kind you wonder how they got to be where they at. Go ordering people around, then start yelling if they don't move fast enough." One china blue eye flashed. "After I was done with his picture, he told the man next time get someone else do this. 'This cripple's too goddamn slow.' He said that while I was still in the room. 'This cripple's too goddamn slow.' That's what I remember about him." He smiled, displaying a row of small yellow teeth. "But he didn't look like such a
boss
laying there on that cooling board,
non.
He just look like another dead man to me."

Valentin thought it over for a moment. "I want to show you something," he said. Bellocq waited while the detective took a pen from his pocket and drew the three V's with the underline on a piece of scrap paper. He held it up.

Bellocq peered. "What's that?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to find out. Any ideas?"

The Frenchman studied the letters, then gave a Gallic shrug.

"Three men have died now, and it has something to do with this right here." Valentin rattled the paper.

"That don't make me know what it means," Bellocq retorted. "I can't help you."

The detective put the paper away. There was a silence between them. Bellocq kept his eyes averted.

Valentin noticed and sighed quietly. "Papá, I'm sorry I haven't come round to see you."

"You just did," Bellocq said.

The detective understood that his apology had been accepted. He made ready to leave.

"I'm sorry that happened to Kimball," the Frenchman said. "He was a good fellow."

"Yeah, he was."

Bellocq lifted his chin and smiled inquisitively. "So what's her name? The American girl on Esplanade."

"Jesus, you know about it, too?"

"It ain't a very big town, is it?"

Valentin shook his head, confounded. "Anne Marie. Benedict."

"So what now?" Bellocq said.

"Now I have to finish it. Whatever that means."

"It means you gonna be knockin' on the devil's door."

"That's funny," Valentin said. "It sounds like..."

"Like what?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter."

"You askin' for a lot of trouble, Valentin."

"I'll keep you out of it."

Bellocq's eyes widened. "Oh, you will?"

The detective shrugged and waved a hand at a disbelieving Bellocq, went to the door, and let himself out into the air of the spring afternoon.

One of Miss Antonia's girls led Valentin through the house to the kitchen. Justine was sitting at the big table. A man in his forties was leaning against the counter near the door, folding and unfolding his arms as he tried to appear at ease. He was pink-faced, a once-sturdy sort now going to flab, and well-attired, though there was something a little coarse about him. He sported a trimmed beard and his brown hair was slicked. This was Justine's gentleman friend, George Reynolds.

After a first tense glance, Reynolds wouldn't meet Valentin's eyes. He kept casting furtive glimpses Justine's way. If the man had any sense, he would have been alert to signs that there was much unsaid between the Creole detective and the sporting girl. He seemed too agitated to pick up on anything.

She introduced him as "
Mr.
Reynolds" and said he might have something of value in regard to the murders of John Benedict and Charles Kane. Valentin did not fail to note the more formal appellation, rather than the casual "Mr. George" that she no doubt used when they were alone. It was a small gesture toward sparing his feelings.