The Kingdom of Bones (31 page)

FORTY-SIX

O
ut on Bourbon Street, at the corner where it met Toulouse, Sebastian Becker stepped into a saloon for a schooner of beer and to listen to some piano, and very soon realized that the place he’d chosen was not a respectable one. The restaurant section for unescorted ladies was little more than a showroom for the bordello that seemed to be operating upstairs. He fended off a couple of approaches, declined a street hawker who tried to sell him a booklet, finished his beer quickly, and departed, leaving a nickel on the bar.

The day had been a washout, frankly. A public holiday was not the best time to be rolling into town. He’d found offices closed, and no explanation given. Given the scale of tonight’s celebrations, he rather feared that the next morning would be no better.

Elisabeth had once voiced an interest in visiting New Orleans, but he reckoned he’d be reluctant to bring her here. It had all the color and romance that she imagined, but it was a disconcerting town. The areas she’d probably enjoy most were the very ones a woman needed to be kept away from. The Creole heritage of the Vieux Carré was fading fast, and a strange, new kind of immorality had taken its place. It was like a better world, but turned entirely upside down. Sinful deeds were conducted with the strictest courtesy. The finest mansions and parlor houses advertised themselves, not as brothels, but as “sporting palaces” their madames were “entertainers” and the girls were their “boarders,” and their trade was carried on openly and with the most elaborate decorum.

Outside of the old quarter, the greater Crescent City ran its business like anywhere else. Department stores had opened and skyscraper-style buildings were beginning to rise. But Sebastian found that it was this part of town, this continuous unmasked ball of discarded inhibitions, that commanded the attention. He’d been told that they held a Carnival on these streets, every Mardi Gras. But how would one ever know it? Making his way through the nighttime crowds, hearing different music from every bar and dance hall that he passed, it was as if Carnival ran all through the year.

It might have been tailor-made for Louise Porter: a place where a flogging, strangling, and choking whore could engage in her perverted endeavors alongside the regular trade, and draw no attention to herself at all.

The biggest gathering was outside the French Opera House. A floating collection of people, constantly losing numbers into the taverns and being replenished with new faces from the same source. They were here to watch society go by, to spot the prominent citizens and marvel at the expensive gowns. Those who passed before them were people they’d never know, leading lives they could only imagine. Imagining those lives was their evening’s entertainment. A large number had packed the sidewalk to watch the arrivals, and a lesser number now stayed around to catch the departures.

He’d gone to the telegraph office that afternoon. He’d sent a wire home so that Elisabeth would at least know that he was well. But he’d said nothing of setbacks, or the increasing bleakness of their situation.

The crowd around him showed a sudden interest when a uniformed footman opened one of the entrance doors to the opera house. Some people were coming out. That was all.

But in having his attention drawn, Sebastian saw something that he otherwise would have missed. Or rather, he saw some
one.

Striding along on the raised wooden banquette at the fringe of the watching crowd, fists balled by his side, pacing like an ape and with his anxious gaze fixed on the doors for his mistress, was a man whose appearance he remembered only too well. Last seen in Maskelyne’s, many years before, letting rip with a revolver with which, fortunately, he’d shown no great proficiency. Shaven of head, bony of skull, and not much changed at all. Whitlock’s so-called Silent Man.

He seemed to sense that he was being watched, because he looked and saw Sebastian in that same moment. Sebastian turned away. Was he too late? He doubted that the Silent Man would know him after all this time. But to be stared at always arouses a man’s suspicions.

He risked a glance back. The Silent Man was watching him now. Damn! Sebastian broke the eye contact again quickly, but it was probably too late. That second look would have given him away.

So he abandoned any attempt to conceal his intentions, and started toward the Silent Man.

The Silent Man broke from the crowd and started to cross the street. Sebastian tried to change direction to intercept him, but that wasn’t going to work. The man was too far away and too far ahead of him. Now he was at the doors and going in.

Sebastian didn’t see what happened then, but when he entered the foyer he saw a uniformed man down on the floor and a well-dressed group of people gabbling in shock, as if a banshee had just ripped through them. Of the Silent Man, he saw no sign; up at the top of the carpeted stairs, the doors to the auditorium were still swinging.

Or maybe that was just his imagination, and the way he’d remember it later.

Sebastian grabbed the nearest usher and had him call for the house manager. When the manager appeared, Sebastian showed his Pinkerton credentials and told him that he was in pursuit of the man who’d just entered the building. When one of their private policemen had tried to get in his way, he’d come to violent grief.

“I believe he’s trying to reach and warn his mistress,” Sebastian said, “who herself is a dangerous woman. For the security of your guests and their property, give me two of your best men and let me go inside. I will promise you the minimum of disruption.”

With one man down and bleeding, he was met with no argument. Before they went in, he switched coats with one of the ushers in order to be less conspicuous when he was out on the floor.

Two of the biggest employees were assigned to Sebastian. The rest of the staff dispersed throughout the house to look for signs of trouble.

The tableaux and the speeches were all done with, and the dancing had resumed. As he emerged onto the outskirts of the horseshoe-shaped arena and looked up at the vast interior of the building, Sebastian realized that a search here would be no small task.

It was hot. The dancing men and women were all as flushed as they were eager, and it was as if a red haze hung in the air around all the lights. Sebastian eased his way through the people around the outside of the dance floor, ignoring the dancers but looking closely at the watching faces. The two theater employees followed him, waiting for instructions.

After he’d scanned the watching crowd, he looked up at the Dress Circle. The temporary dance floor had raised the ground level of the theater so that the proscenium boxes were at a walk-in level, and the lower edge of the Dress Circle ran just above them.

One of the ushers was signaling for attention. Others in different parts of the house had seen him and were moving his way. The man pointed across the Dress Circle to where one of the loges was curtained off. No other was.

Sebastian turned to the man behind him.

“Are boxes supposed to be closed up like that?”

The man said not usually, no.

It was as well that Sebastian had his two guides. Otherwise, he’d have been lost within a minute. They led him to the staircases and to the narrow corridor that ran behind the boxes. The passageway ran in a curve, following the line of the Dress Circle. Three ushers were there already, but the house manager had yet to arrive.

The back wall of the boxes was flimsy, and the numbered doors in it were flimsier still. They got to the one they wanted and then Sebastian kicked it open.

It wasn’t secured. It flew back and bounced off the wall with a bang like a gunshot. There was feeble light from the passageway, and it fell across disarranged chairs and a heap of old clothing. Out from under the clothing, there stuck a bare arm.

Sebastian dropped to one knee and drew the tailcoat aside. It had been laid over the unclothed body on the floor, draped with some care like a blanket.

“Sayers!”

Sayers was lying on his back. His body was pale, his face was dark. On one side of his bared chest there was a tattooed heart with the word
Louse
woven through it.

There were some other surprising details as well, but for the moment Sebastian didn’t take them in.

For the moment, all that he could register was a length of silk rope with tassels on its ends, wound twice around Tom Sayers’ neck and twisted tight.

FORTY-SEVEN

O
n Tulane Avenue, at the corner of Johnson Street, stood the Hotel Dieu. As often had to be explained to tourists, this was not a hotel at all, but a private hospital run by the Daughters of Charity. Begun with only five patients and growing until it occupied most of a city square, it had been the only institution of its kind to stay in operation throughout the Civil War. After a few more years of running it as a hospital for seamen, the Sisters had decided to expand the building further and had accomplished this by means of having the entire structure raised up on jackscrews with the patients still inside. It was a hospital used both by visitors to the city, and by citizens without homes. Charges for those who could pay ranged up to five dollars a day, but that included meals, medicines, and the price of medical care.

One of the city’s most eminent doctors had been present at the Centennial Ball and had been summoned to the fallen man’s aid. Sebastian had the cord off the fighter’s neck by the time the doctor had been located, but he was unable to find a pulse.

The doctor had served as a contract surgeon with the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. He’d once saved a man after a summary hanging. He checked Sayers’ windpipe for any crushing injury and got him upright. Sayers’ color immediately began to improve. The physician determined that a pulse was there, but it was weak. Pressure on the jugular veins had caused blood to back up in Sayers’ brain, causing rapid unconsciousness and then a slow decrease in respiration. Fatal asphyxia had been only minutes away. Already the damage might be too great.

A horse ambulance was sent for. Sayers was transferred to the Hotel Dieu and the doctor returned to the ball. Sebastian followed the ambulance to the hospital and waited around for a while, but it was late and the sisters made it clear they didn’t want him there.

He’d been through Sayers’ pockets and knew where he was staying. He went over to the furnished room and spent an hour going through Sayers’ clothes and luggage.

He found little there to guide him. And there was nothing left of his money, of course. But at least he now had somewhere to spend what remained of the night.

The next morning, Sebastian began his inquiries. In the afternoon, he returned to the hospital, jumping onto a Tulane car when he saw it coming to a stop on Canal Street. The car was full, and he had to stand next to a man in a grimy ice-cream–colored suit who lurched into him every time the car started out. Each time he begged Sebastian’s pardon, and every time the car moved he stumbled into him again.

As Sebastian climbed the public stairs to the male ward, two men were coming down. One had a gun in his belt and they seemed to have somewhere else to go. They were talking about horse racing.

Sayers was in a bed at the far end of the ward. He was propped up on pillows and looked as if he’d been exhausted by some enormous struggle that had left him unmarked, but almost drained of life. He showed no surprise when he saw Sebastian approaching.

One of the nurses explained his condition to Sebastian. He could drink, but not eat. He’d been given medicines to thin his blood and had been forbidden to speak above a whisper.

As soon as the nurse was out of earshot, Sebastian said, “I saw two men leaving. They looked like detectives. Were they here? Did they speak to you?”

Sayers nodded.

Sebastian pulled over an empty chair from beside the next bed and seated himself upon it. “What could you tell them?” he said.

Sayers shook his head, and raised his hand to make a flat-out gesture.
Nothing.

Sebastian said, “She tried to throttle you and then left you for dead. Don’t protect her. It’s gone beyond that now. I realize there’s more to this than I can ever know. But you can’t draw it out any longer.”

Sayers looked down.

Sebastian said, “Last night. At the opera house. When we sat you up, I saw those old scars you’ve been keeping covered. I saw new ones that have barely healed. Were those things that were done to you? Or am I right in thinking that you inflicted them on yourself?”

Sayers didn’t look up.

“And then back at the room,” Sebastian said. “I looked in your bag. I’m sorry, but it seemed as if you might not survive. I found the razors.”

Sayers did not move.

“Tom,” Sebastian said. “Your business is your own. I can see that this is dark country. I will not pretend that I understand the half of what I’ve seen. But nor will I try to stand in judgment over you. Yours has been a hard road. I cannot begin to imagine what it must have taken to sustain you in your journey. What I am saying is that every road needs to reach its end.”

Now Sayers raised his head, and looked at him steadily. His were the eyes of a man who’d looked into darkness, and seen a place for himself out there.

“She checked out of the St. Charles Hotel this morning,” Sebastian said. “But I know where she’ll be going. She’s buying back furniture for the plantation house on the Patenotre estate.”

Sebastian got to his feet and looked down at Sayers.

“You had your shot with her,” he said. “Now she’s mine.”

FORTY-EIGHT

I
n this old part of town, every one of the houses had been built over a street-level shop. Many of the shops had been boarded up, and even the occupied apartments looked empty. The furniture store was easy to spot by the rocking chairs standing out on the banquette and the dusty shapes behind its windows. Its doors had been thrown open to the street, like a saloon’s.

Louise climbed down from her rented carriage.

“You can leave me here,” she told the Silent Man. “Go back to the hotel for the rest of the bags. Come and get me when you’re all loaded up. I should be done with business by then.”

He’d not yet acquired the skill to turn a horse and rig in the street using only the reins, so he climbed down and began to lead the animal by its bridle. It was a dapple gray, and it seemed to dislike him. As far as the Silent Man was concerned, the feeling was mutual.

Some of her New Orleans acquaintances had suggested that if she planned to settle in the town, she could get rid of the Silent Man and his wife and hire colored help with more skills for less money.

How little they understood.

She had no idea of how Edmund Whitlock had come to acquire the two of them, or when. Nor did she know what now bound them to her, or why. She’d once tried to draw the Silent Man on the subject. She knew that he could speak English almost as well as he understood it. Both of them could. But when she attempted to quiz him, his grasp on the language mysteriously became less firm.

She walked in through the doors and found herself in a long room that carried on deep into the building. There was a narrow way down the middle of it, between barricades of desks and tables piled high on either side. Every few feet along the ceiling hung a different style of chandelier, some of them tied up in sacks. There was a glassed-in office halfway down and, just alongside that, an open staircase winding up to other floors.

It was a very spare-looking office—a desk, ledgers, bills on a spike, and a wall clock so big that it had probably come from a railroad station. There was no one in charge, but there was a brass counter bell on the desk, which she rang. Then she waited.

She’d paid her hotel bill that morning. She always paid when she had the money, and only skipped when she had to. Where they’d give her credit, she stayed in the best places. Otherwise, she camped in the meanest, and took care that no one got to know about it. Appearance was all to the circles in which she’d moved.

She was about to go back into the office and ring the bell again when she heard footsteps from above. A few moments later, a thickset, red-haired man came down the stairs, pulling on a jacket over a long brown apron that he wore over a vest and tie. It was as if he’d forgotten the apron in his hurry to make himself presentable.

Louise said, “I’m Miss D’Alroy. I’m here about the Patenotre furniture.”

“Forgive me, but I wasn’t ready for you,” the store manager said. He was a man of about forty, American-Irish, and with blue eyes paler than a wall-eyed collie’s. His stare was disconcerting, but his manner was friendly enough. He said, “Had you specified a time…”

“It suited me to bring my plans forward. Can I inspect whatever’s still unsold?”

“Of course you can. Excuse me,” the man said, and he turned from her and stuck his fingers in his mouth and gave an ear-splitting whistle down the length of the store. He followed it with an equally wince-making call of “Henry! Get down here.”

Turning back to her as if nothing was amiss, he went on. “Henry will show you. Some of the nicer pieces went early, but I think you’ll find that most of it’s still there. Not many people are looking to open up the big houses these days. Most of the old families are selling up and closing them down. Anything else you need, just look around. You’ll probably find it. Come see me in the office when you’re done.”

Henry was a gray-haired Negro of indeterminate age, and he wore a similar brown apron to that worn by the boss. He led her toward the back of the building, where a few twists and turns revealed further unexpected rooms and yet more antiques, treasures, and plain old dross from a hundred broken-up households of varying scale and prosperity. A courtyard linked to another building, older and even worse-lit and with the furniture stacked even deeper.

But the room they ended up in was much lighter than any of the others and would have been big enough for public meetings in its day. There was even an upper gallery running around it with space for three rows of seating. The seats were gone, and all the broken items from the other rooms seemed to have been dumped up there. Down on the main floor, all the biggest pieces of furniture were stacked high in warehouse rows.

“Which ones?” Louise said.

“Ever’thing wit’ a green ticket,” Henry told her, and waited at a distance while she took a closer look at the unsold Patenotre haul.

The green-ticketed goods took up more than an aisle. Some of the more expensive and vulnerable-looking pieces had been wrapped in burlap before storage. There were long carpets, rolled and bound with twine. Tea chests filled with porcelain all nested in wood shavings and screwed-up old pages from the
Daily Picayune.
Four-poster beds, broken down into their component timbers. There were mirrors and paintings and even family portraits, a ready-made sense of place and history with no survivor to lay claim to it.

She suddenly realized where it was that this place called to her mind. It was the scene dock at the Theatre Royal in Bilston, the properties graveyard of busted companies where Edmund Whitlock had picked up his settings for
The Purple Diamond
at bargain prices.

She looked toward Henry.

“If I were to take it all, could you deliver everything back to the house?”

Henry shifted his position, saying nothing but leaving her with the impression that he was saying yes, they could.

There really wasn’t much more to be done, other than to go back to the owner and work out a price. She knew from the receipts how much he’d paid for everything, and she knew he’d need to profit. He’d probably start out by naming some outrageous figure. But if business was slow, she need not expect to get skinned over it.

She had not dared hope it. But it was all coming together.

With a decent home set up, she could hide out along the River Road and look to her future in a way that she never had before. A nomadic existence of short dates and rented rooms had been bearable for a while, but she was growing weary. A young woman, with no ties and all of time to play around in, could put off thinking about tomorrow. But she no longer thought of herself as a young woman.

She wanted to believe that Tom Sayers was right. That there really were no Wanderers—only those who believed in their damnation, living in their own heads and looking for something to call themselves as the world changed around them.

If it was true, then she might yet leave their company. If it was not too late.

She saw Henry straighten up, as if he’d just seen someone approaching. Before she could look around a voice behind her said, “Miss Porter.”

She didn’t turn quickly. She hesitated first and then turned slowly, as if the name meant nothing to her.

A man stood at the far end of the aisle. He wore a brown suit and his shoulders were set with his hands held out slightly from his sides, giving him a tense and challenging look. He was no one that she could recognize. He was somewhere in his forties, dark and starting to show gray.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I believe you’ve mistaken me.”

“We’ve met before. Through Tom Sayers.”

“Tom who?” she said. “I don’t know him.”

“Then who did you meet at the opera house last night?”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, and turned her back on him. She walked around to the next aisle. He moved along a row and reappeared at the far end of it.

“He survived your attentions,” the man said. “In case you’re interested.”

“Why?” she said. “What happened to him?”

He was worrying her now. Sayers had mentioned a Pinkerton man. The Silent Man had spoken of a stranger, showing interest. Could this be the one?

This man said, “You left him in too much of a hurry. I got to him just in time. He’d started choking on the cord.”

She stopped and looked at him. Hard. She couldn’t place him at all.

She gave one last try at brazening it out.

“I tell you, you’ve mistaken me. My name is Mary D’Alroy.”

“Sayers may live. But there are others who didn’t. Why don’t you make this easier for both of us?”

Was that a British accent? Or was it New England? She’d spent so long here, and moved around so much, that she could no longer say with certainty.

She said, “I don’t know any Tom Sayers. I don’t know you. My name is Mary D’Alroy. I’m here to furnish my house. Now
go. Away.
”

She set off back toward the office. The stranger was following. She was beginning to feel angry and hunted. Louise was strong, and might surprise him if he tried to restrain her. But she wished that the Silent Man or his wife were here. Normally, she found their close supervision oppressive, and seized any opportunity to be alone. Who would have expected trouble in a furniture store?

As before, the little office was empty. She hit the bell so hard that her hand stopped it from ringing. She hit it again and stayed at the counter, her hands braced against it, looking down.

He was there behind her again, and he wasn’t giving up.

He said, “Were you planning to settle? You know you can’t do it. Aren’t you the Wanderer? You can’t ever stop.”

That was it. That was the limit. She whirled around and angrily faced him. He’d stepped up behind her and she stopped him in his tracks.

His face registered astonishment, and he looked down.

After a moment, she followed his gaze. The base of the bill spike from the counter had somehow fixed itself to his chest, right in the center of it above his stomach.

He looked up at her. Then down again.

She realized that she’d put it there.

The speed and the drastic nature of her response had surprised even her.

“There, now…,” she said, haltingly and without conviction. “See what you did?”

Still disbelieving, he reached for the wooden base and, taking hold of it, pulled. The spike seemed to come out as easily and as painlessly as it had gone in. Bloodstained sales dockets rained down onto the floor, where they scattered around his feet.

He looked her in the eyes. She didn’t know what to say. This was not something she’d consciously intended. But there was no denying that she’d done it.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He staggered and fell.

Upstairs and over her head, someone was crossing the floor. The owner would be here at any moment, expecting to close their deal.

Down before her, the stranger was slowly curling in around his wound, as if to protect it from the air. His knees were drawing up, his shoulders hunching in. Blood was spreading out underneath him. He coughed once, and the pool rapidly doubled in size.

There was no point in her staying. The spike had pierced something vital and he was done for. She might regret it, but there was nothing she could do for him now. Pinkerton man. Or whoever he might be.

The furniture in the warehouse, the Patenotre house on the River Road, the home and the future on which she’d been setting her sights…all that was lost to her now. She felt almost no disappointment. It was as if she’d known all along that it could never be, and that it had only been a matter of time. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else. Perhaps sooner, maybe later. But it surely would have come.

She looked around for the man called Henry. Had he seen what had taken place? Had he run to tell someone? It hardly mattered if he had. All that was left for her now was to dump her dreams and go.

Someone was descending the stairs. She had to step over the man on the floor to get out of the office before he arrived.

It was true what they said, Sebastian was thinking. Your mind stays clear, and everything else grows cold. He could only wonder how they knew.

It didn’t hurt.

Ice becomes ashes.

He was vaguely aware of the woman leaving, of someone else arriving, and then of others arriving as well. But only vaguely. Someone leaned right over him and shouted something at him, but he paid them no attention. His attention was an increasingly precious thing, and he had none of it to spare.

He felt himself being pushed back and forth. Someone was going through his pockets. They seemed to find what they were looking for, because then everyone started shouting a name. It might have been his own. It was hard to be certain.

Sebastian wasn’t listening. He needed his attention for the important things. The things he had to take with him. The wife that he’d never felt he deserved. The life they’d made together. The way dust motes danced in the sunlight in their bedroom on a summer Sunday morning. The smell of books. The taste of cold water.

He’d often wondered what this would be like. He needn’t have worried. The final priorities took care of themselves.

Down on the office floor, with people shouting over him and the light slowly fading, Sebastian Becker was remembering the rare look of awe in his boy’s eyes, shaking the hand that once shook the hand of Buffalo Bill.