Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) Page 13

  Then came the moment it all ended, a nightmare of drink and hop and wet flesh that was drawn out hour after hour, through one night, the next day, and then another night. When that second dawn came around, Treau reeled out onto First Street and, like Paul on the road to Damascus, fell under a light that struck him deaf, dumb, and blind. He knew in that instant that he was evil, the worst kind of sinner, bound for hell unless he found salvation.

  He stumbled into the nearest church and went down on bended knees. Later that day, he took an axe and smashed his bass fiddle to pieces. Then he found another church and stayed there, praying, until the preacher put him out. From that moment on, he never took another drink, never again touched pill or powder. He went about turning his life around completely. Though he had been born and raised a Catholic, he found the Baptists harsher on evil, and one fine morning he got himself dunked in the muddy Mississippi and so was saved.

  It didn't mean he didn't face temptation. The devil was a busy fellow, especially jealous of those who were snatched from his malignant clutches. Treau saw painted faces smiling at him from the windows of French houses, saw the thumbs sucked in a crude mimic of the girls' specialty. He smelled rye whiskey wafting out the open doors of the saloons and sweet smoke drifting from opium dens. Most of all, he heard the siren call of jass, the horns echoing inside his head as the rhythms shook his guts. He remembered all the crazy nights and could almost taste those wicked pleasures again. Now and then, when a girl recognized him and called out his nickname, he would feel the blood stirring below his belt.

  It was Satan, of course, tempting him. The devil, always there to test his resolve, had lately grown more insistent. Like this evening, walking down a quiet Fourth Street, he sensed something dark and ominous dogging his steps, peering out from shadows, breathing down his neck. Though when he turned his head, there was of course no one there; clever fellow.

  No matter; he was saved. Whatever it was, and whenever it came for him, "Treau" Martin stood ready.

  NINE

  "Mr. St. Cyr! Hello! Mr. Valentin!" It was a woman's voice, foreign to his ear, yet somehow familiar, coming from the street. "Mr. Valentin?"

  He opened his eyes. The sun coming over the rooftops told him it was around eight o'clock. It took him a few seconds to come awake enough to sit up and swing his legs over the side of the couch. He was still in the clothes that he'd worn to the Café the evening before. A book lay on the floor, splayed open, the spine broken.

  When the voice called again, he got up, stumbled to the French doors, and stepped out on the balcony. Dominique was standing on the banquette, looking up at him, wearing a shy white smile.

  "Good morning, suh," she said.

  Valentin stared down at her, still dazed with sleep and befuddlement.

  "May I come in, please?"

  She was wearing a day dress, plain blue with a pinafore that was stark white against her dark skin, and a brimmed hat that she took off and placed next to her on the couch. She had twisted her hair into two long braids that draped over her dress in front, making her look even younger.

  "I'm sorry," she said once she was settled. "I didn't mean to be disturbing you."

  Valentin rested one hand on the back of the morris chair as he worked to chase away the cobwebs. His brain wouldn't quite engage and he still didn't understand what she was doing there.

  "I don't want to be botherin' anybody," she said. "I needed to come see you, suh. I got me a problem."

  "A problem..."

  "Yes, suh. The landlord come around last evening. He asked for back rent. But I don't know nothin' about it. Jeff paid all the bills."

  He nodded, trying to fathom what all this had to do with him.

  She came up with a tight smile. "He said I could work it off. You want to know what kind of work he wants me to do?"

  "I can guess," Valentin said, beginning to catch up. He'd seen this sort of low-down swindle before. Most likely, there was no back rent owed at all; and even if there was, the tally would be beyond what the helpless woman could afford. At the same time, she might be flattered to be considered worth so much, and the combination of fear and flattery might just get her out of her bloomers.

  "He wants twenty-two dollars," she told him. "I ain't got but three or four left. He say I got to pay up one way or another or leave right now. Today."

  "I thought you wanted to go home anyway."

  "I do, yessuh. I just ain't got the money yet. Jeff didn't leave me nothin'. I don't know what I'm gonna do."

  "Do you want me to talk to this fellow?"

  "Thank you, but no," she said. "I don't want to have nothin' to do with him. I know men like that. You talk to him and as soon as you go away, he's gonna be back after me again."

  She was probably right about that. Of course, he could do more than talk to her landlord, but that was another matter. Why would he? He didn't know the girl at all.

  "Is there someone here who can help you?" he asked her.

  "They all back home," she said. "I come up alone. I been alone, except for Jeff Mumford."

  Her eyes wandered past him and around the rooms, as if she was looking for something or someone. Valentin watched her, entertaining a sudden notion of what she might be up to. Then he decided that his mind was playing tricks and shoved the thought aside. Still, he could tell that she was waiting for something.

  He considered for another moment. "Maybe I can help you," he said.

  She gave him a hopeful look. "Yessuh?"

  "Suppose I give you enough money to get a room."

  "Oh ... well..." Her gaze slipped away and her mouth dipped. "For how long would that be?"

  "For a couple days. Then we'll see. Maybe I can find you a situation."

  She hesitated, then nodded. "All right, suh. Only 'cause I don't know what else to do." She gave him her shy, pretty smile. "I appreciate your kindness."

  She waited while he went into the kitchen, opened the icebox, and dipped into the coffee can where he kept his money. He came back into the front room to find her standing at the balcony door with her eyes closed and the sun on her face, an image as pretty as a painting.

  When he spoke her name, she turned around and smiled. He handed her a Liberty ten-dollar gold piece. She looked at the coin. "This is too much."

  "You can pay me back later," he said.

  She murmured another thank-you that was followed by an awkward silence. "I guess I need to go ahead and go," she said.

  "I do have some business to attend to," he told her.

  "Is it about Jeff?"

  "That's right."

  She stopped, her brow furrowing. "Why you doin' that?"

  "Because, some of his friends, I mean those fellows he played with, they asked me to look into it. They just want to know what happened to him."

  She gave a vague shrug. "What happened was somebody didn't like him poisoned him and he died."

  She took a little shuddering breath. Valentin allowed a pause, then said, "You can catch the Canal Line car at the corner. Take it to the corner of Commerce Street. There's a hotel there that accepts unescorted women. It's called the Savoy. You can tell them I sent you."

  "And then what?"

  "Then ... I'll come and check in on you."

  "When?"

  "This afternoon or tomorrow, I suppose. As soon as I can."

  That seemed to satisfy her. She picked up her hat, put it on, and tied the ribbon in a bow beneath her chin. He escorted her out the door, down the steps to the street, and along the two blocks to the corner of Canal. He waited with her until the streetcar arrived and helped her aboard. She waved good-bye and kept her eyes on him as the car rolled away.

  Cora Jarrell had her bags packed and sitting by the door, ready to go. She wanted to make one more round to see if there was anything of value that she hadn't already carried off and pawned. She checked her own room first. All that was left were the bare sticks of her furniture and the white envelope that was propped against a candleholder on
her mantelpiece. In it was a single sheet of paper with a message that she had composed in a labored hand after the detective St. Cyr had walked away from her door. As soon as she got to Union Station, she would find a street urchin and have him locate the detective and turn it over to him. Let him do what he could with it. She didn't want another murder and the hoodoo that went with it hanging over her, and she wasn't about to tell the coppers, because then she'd have them all in her business and she'd never get out of town. She planned to take the Southern Crescent running east, leaving everything behind for more profitable points. She'd heard that there were chickens to be plucked in Mobile.

  She went down the hall, pushing the room doors open and taking a quick glance inside each, avoiding only the one where that son of a bitch Noiret had gone and got himself murdered. There was nothing left in that haunted space anyway.

  She had just finished her inspection and was heading back to her room when she heard a creak. It was nothing, the slightest squeak, and at any other time it wouldn't have caught her ear. It was most likely one of the horde of rats that scrabbled about beneath the floors, day and night. That's what she told herself as she hurried along, feeling a cold shiver on the back of her neck, as if one of those filthy critters was crawling on her.

  She was all too glad to be quitting those premises for good. She was especially pleased to be escaping from the owner of the house. She had kept the man at bay and out of her business only by giving him French once a week, a regular part of his visit to collect the room rents. And him a married man.

  As she stepped through her room door for the last time, she heard another creak, this one louder and closer, and she was just turning her head in surprise when an explosion went off at the soft point just below the back of her skull. She felt a hot blast of pain as her legs buckled and she tumbled to the floor.

  Her eyes rolled up as the bits of her life scattered like startled birds and came to rest on the ivory envelope that was propped on the mantelpiece.

  ***

  It was just before noon when Valentin walked into Frank Mangetta's Saloon and Grocery on the north end of Marais Street.

  The saloon, with its bar, tables, booths, and low stage all crowded together, took up the front half of the building. Through an archway halfway back and accessible from Bienville Street was a grocery in the best Italian fashion, with imported meats, cheeses, and other specialties so dear to the palates of New Orleans' southern Italian community, large and growing larger.

  Frank Mangetta was a padrone to the musicians in uptown New Orleans. An artiste himself (though he admitted that he played a poor violin), his establishment offered regular entertainment at night and was a second home to the uptown's floating population of musicians at all hours.

  When Valentin asked to see the proprietor, the bartender told him that he had stepped out but would be back directly. He ordered a short beer and spent a few idle moments considering the morning visit from Dominique. It puzzled him; she was like some marvel of nature, an exotic jungle creature, and he didn't quite know what to make of her, especially her showing up so close in the wake of Jeff's passing and Justine's leaving. He was actually relieved when he put her on the streetcar and could go back to his day. Maybe it was all a game to cadge ten dollars, but he didn't think so.

  He sipped his beer and took a look around the room. There were only a half-dozen early customers on the premises, two at the bar and another four at a booth in the far corner, among them one mulatto and two Negroes, and for once the dark-skinned men weren't serving the light. A strange sight, anywhere but there; Mangetta had been the first to ignore the color line when it came to music. Anyone who could blow a decent horn or pound the ivories with some skill was welcome. The Sicilian just did it and no one had thought to stop him. Things were different, any way he looked at it.

  So, Mangetta was helping to change Storyville's chemistry. And it wasn't just the makeup of bands that was changing; it was their music, too. Was it only three years ago that Buddy Bolden's horn was considered a scurrilous plague on New Orleans' tender youth? They called what he played jass and claimed it was the Devil's music to be sure, a gumbo of raucous noise that was so loud and fast that the proper reading musicians and their polite white audiences didn't know what to make of it, except to throw up their hands in horror and call for someone to stamp it out before it spread.

  It did spread, though, and the sedate waltzes and precise rags were shoved rudely aside by crazy inventions in rollicking 4/4 time, a rhythm that made people want to dance, and not in the stilted, precise postures of schottisches and cakewalks, either. The lyrics that went with the music were dirty and sinful and should rightly have been made illegal, except that almost nothing was illegal in this bizarre corner of the world. As the bands played on, then it was the audiences that were changing.

  Negroes, Creoles of every stripe, then Italian and Irish workers, and finally Americans from the Garden District came carousing down dark and dangerous back-of-town streets, all wild to hear Bolden and the others that he and his crazy horn dragged along. For a short while, he was the maniac Pied Piper of New Orleans. Then it was over, and when he went away he took the best and the worst of it with him.

  It happened so fast that even some of those who were there weren't sure what they saw and heard; and within an even shorter span of time, jass was being played all over uptown New Orleans.

  Then Mangetta's and Nancy Hanks's saloon, both on the north side of Canal Street, opened their doors. Crowds flocked and more music halls sprang up, a half dozen in the past year, most of them along Villere and Marais streets, though wide-awake Basin Street madams like Lulu White saw a coming thing and were talking about hiring jass bands, too.

  At the same time, it dawned on musicians who had worked all the low-rent dives along Rampart Street what the hard life did to Bolden and the others and they gave up their wild ways and began to behave themselves. The days were over when jass player equaled drunk, hophead, or whoremonger. Things were calmer now.

  Or maybe not, Valentin mused as he stared bleakly out the window onto Marais Street.

  After all the bloody drama of the Black Rose murders, he had been grateful for the long dry spell. It couldn't last, though, and now he had a case that was all smoke and paid nothing to boot. He had gone traipsing into his old neighborhood, kicking up the dust from memories that were best left buried. People were lying to him and he found himself standing over dead bodies. It was familiar terrain that he had vaguely hoped to escape for a while longer.

  To cap it all, Justine had gone away, and no sooner had she vacated the premises than a black beauty of a girl had shown up to drop her passel of troubles on his doorstep.

  He turned his brooding thoughts back to the murders. While he didn't mind so much going after Mumford's killer, it irked him that he was working the death of Antoine Noiret, a man he hadn't known and wouldn't have liked if he had. And now this fellow Terrence Lacombe was gone. There was no way around it. All three men had played in the same jass band, and that made it a mystery.

  When Frank Mangetta came in off the street and spied Valentin, he stopped cold and threw out his arms in greeting.

  He told the detective to wait and stepped behind the bar to mutter some instructions to his day man and pour himself a quick glass of wine. He waved for Valentin to follow him to the table that was tucked in the little alcove next to the door, right up against the front window.

  Frank could have played the part of the Italian peasant at the Opera House. He was short and as broad as a barrel, with oily black hair and a luxurious mustache planted on a round and swarthy face. He was a passionate man, known to cry out in joy or weep like a woman when the feeling came upon him. At the same time, he had a sharp eye when it came to matters of commerce and his scrutiny of the characters who peopled Storyville's strange pageant.

  He'd known Valentin's father from the old country and so had kept a paternal eye on the detective in the wake of that tragedy. He was of course del
ighted when Valentin came back to work in Storyville, first as a copper, then as Anderson's right-hand man. Mangetta had benefited, winning certain business favors.

  He always enjoyed a chat in Sicilian dialect, but as the years passed, Valentin came to recall less and less of the language: a greeting, some common words, a few everyday phrases, and little else.

  "I haven't seen you in six months," Mangetta said. He frowned and stretched a dramatic hand. "You live ten blocks away, you work four blocks away, and you can't show your face more'n that? Come va? Tu sei un straniero."

  Valentin smiled and blushed a little. "E vero." He said haltingly, "Ma ... ma..."

  "But what?"

  "But I've been keeping to myself."

  "So what brings you out today?"

  "Jeff Mumford."

  Mangetta's face would have been comic in its geometry but for the sincere sadness in the eyes. "Poor Jeff. He was a good fellow, eh? I never had any trouble with him. He wasn't a braggart like some of these rascals. And he sure could play that guitar. To end up like that..." He shook his head, as melancholy as Pagliacci.

  "I'm investigating his murder." There, he had said it. "His and Noiret's."

  The saloon keeper regarded him shrewdly. "Why? Because of Morton and that bunch at the Frenchman's?"

  Valentin said, "You know about that?"

  Mangetta's eyes went wide with fervor and his black eyebrows hitched. "Morton thinks someone's after musicians who play on this side of Canal? If that was true, I'd be out of business." He snickered richly. "You know as well as me that them fellows died over money or a woman. Ain't it always? I'd put my money on the woman." He lowered his voice. "There's been rumors going round."