Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) Page 2

  It was that exact posture that St. Cyr assumed as he stepped into the doorway. Anderson put on his best innocent gaze, all the while watching Badel's face out of the side of one eye and allowing himself a small smile. He glanced at the detective and tilted his head in the direction of his guest. "This is Alderman Badel," he announced.

  Valentin looked at the Frenchman who was wedged into the Queen Anne chair and murmured something that sounded like "sir," though Badel couldn't be sure. He knew of the detective only by reputation and frankly had been expecting someone less ... puzzling.

  "He has a problem and he'd like our help," Anderson explained. "Having to do with a murder that happened on Rampart Street on Sunday night."

  When St. Cyr didn't respond directly, Badel took it for modesty before superiors and spoke up. "The victim of this terrible crime was one of my constituents. He was shot down in the middle of the street."

  "Rampart Street," Anderson repeated. Valentin gave a blank nod. "Out beyond Third." Still there was no response from the Creole detective. "I told the alderman we might extend him the courtesy of looking into it," he finished.

  "That would be police business," St. Cyr said.

  "They investigated and came up with nothing," Badel said. "We need another opinion on the matter."

  Though the detective's gaze was fixed on the alderman, it was blank, as if he was actually listening to the noise from the Café below. Badel frowned, annoyed at the indifference.

  Tom Anderson was watching Valentin and trying to fathom what was going on behind that stony visage. This former New Orleans police officer and sharp-minded private detective had to be bored doing nothing but working the floor of the Café four or five nights a week. Why wouldn't he be curious about a well-to-do white man shot down so far back-of-town? It was an odd matter, just as the alderman described it, the sort of puzzle that St. Cyr would jump to untangle. Or at least would have, before the troubles that had driven him away.

  No matter; he was back, and it was high time that Tom Anderson found out what he was worth, if anything at all. "So perhaps you can help our guest," he prodded him.

  Valentin nodded again slightly and returned his attention to the alderman. After a quiet moment, he asked, "What was the man's name?"

  Badel leaned back and his chair creaked. "Mr. John Benedict," he said.

  Anderson had dismissed St. Cyr, and he and the alderman waited until the footsteps had moved along the short hallway and receded down the stairs.

  Badel said, "He didn't seem all that interested."

  "He's quiet," Anderson said. "Discreet. It's what you want in a situation like this."

  "Well, you know best, Tom." The alderman huffed brusquely, then with some difficulty pushed himself out of the chair. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment." Having done his duty, he was eager to be on his way.

  "Of course." Anderson stood up. He happened to know that Badel was on his way to visit a certain octoroon girl three doors down at Josie Arlington's. It did not strike him as the least bit odd that the alderman would pose as his sworn enemy by day, railing up and down the Crescent City about the terrible malady that festered in uptown, and then, since he was already in that den of iniquity anyway, help himself to those same delightful pleasures of the flesh by night. The man was not a priest, after all; he was a politician, and a New Orleans politician at that.

  Anderson escorted him through the door, along the short corridor, and down the steep staircase. Once he had ushered him safely out the side door, he went back through the kitchen, nodding good-evenings to the sweating cooks and rushing waiters, and peered out through the round window in the door and into the big room.

  It was thrumming like a happy machine. Anderson's Café and Annex was an elegantly appointed palace of its proprietor's personal crafting, the best address south and west of New York City for the diversion of gentlemen. The proprietor's deft hand was in evidence at every turn, from the cut glass in the doors, to the ornate crystal chandeliers, to the floor of Italian marble crisscrossed with dark carpeting, to the bloodred brocade above the wainscoting that ran along the walls. The bar with a constellation of colorful bottles and a long mirror held up one wall. The floor was filled with tables for drinking, fine dining, gambling, and political conniving. There was a small salon in the back for the ladies, their eyes shielded from the men and their diversions by drawn curtains.

  On this night the tables were crowded and the games at full throttle. The Storyville sharps had descended on the Café, intent on plucking clean some fellow with more cash than skills. St. Cyr had sworn, and Tom Anderson had come to agree, that a fair number of the marks showed up with their fat bankrolls for the express purpose of being cleaned out. It would be something to talk about for years to come over glasses of good whiskey back home in Dallas or St. Louis.

  The King of Storyville took another look around the big room, saw that all was well as could be. St. Cyr had taken up a post on the landing near the front door and his gaze moved over the crowd in a distracted way, as if he wasn't really seeing any of it. Anderson shook his head and muttered under his breath, wondering again if he had made a mistake. The man looked more like one of the derelicts who sometimes wandered in off the street, the same sort of miscreants St. Cyr was hired to keep off the premises.

  Anderson went back upstairs and spent the next hour engaged in business by way of the brass-and-walnut telephone set on his desk. He received two visitors, both with disagreements that were too far wide of the courts. He took the problems under advisement, promised solutions, and accepted payment in the form of some future service. It was a normal night.

  After the last guest departed, he made ready to slip out for his visit with the girl at Gipsy Shafer's mansion. He knew both Hilma Burt and Josie Arlington had their spies watching him. Still, he had his ways: Miss Shafer had a private entrance that led to a private stairwell that led to a private room.

  He didn't leave right away. Instead, he loosened his necktie, unbuttoned his vest, poured a glass of fine brandy from the decanter on the corner table, and carried it to the front window. Though his bones ached with weariness, the mere sight of the boulevard all aglitter with newly installed electric lights cheered him. Standing there, brandy in hand, he let his mind wander back over his day, going from hour to hour and putting all in order in his head. This review was something that he did most nights, the attention to detail one mark of his genius.

  He wound his way through the morning and afternoon to arrive at the evening visit from Alderman Badel and stop there. It was a curious matter that had been laid before him. Of course, there was more to it than Badel had let on; the man had skittish eyes, and schemer was written all over his face. The crime had happened far out on Rampart Street, another world entirely, mean, loud, and bloody. The women and the whiskey along that avenue were dirt cheap, the rounders as low-down as they came, the type to kill a man over a wrong look.

  They all drank Raleigh Rye by the gallon, smoked pills of hop, whiffed cocaine, and stuck needles of morphine sulfate in their craggy veins. Most of the men and half the women carried hideaway pistols, straight razors, or spring knives, which they employed with ill-tempered abandon. And the bands in the saloons and dance halls still played jass in the fast-and-furious style that crazy King Bolden had started.

  By morning light the bodies of niggers, mulattoes, various other kinds of colored, and poor white trash were collected off the street, all good-for-nothings who deserved their sorry fates. This time, though, it had been a well-to-do American from the high-priced neighborhood on Esplanade Ridge.

  Watching the swirl of the crowds on the banquettes below, Anderson pondered Badel's fussy insistence that someone look into the crime, even though it was the sort of shameful mess that most families would want buried along with the victim's remains. Not just someone; Badel was willing to risk the wrath of the police by bringing in Valentin St. Cyr, a fellow that coppers generally despised, instead of a Pinkerton or some other private co
pper.

  It was odd, indeed, that Badel had picked St. Cyr, of all people, and he wondered how much the alderman knew about him. The Creole detective had only recently come back to the city. Where he had gone and what he had done for the fifteen months he was away was anyone's guess. He hadn't said. All Anderson knew was that he showed up at the Café door one chilly Tuesday afternoon after the turn of the New Year to ask humbly, like a stranger, if there might be any suitable employment for him.

  The King of Storyville had been sitting at his usual downstairs table. He masked his surprise, regarding St. Cyr with frank appraisal. The Creole looked the worse for wear. His clothes were hanging loose and dirty. He had lost weight, and there was a certain hungry edge about him, like a stray dog that had been scrapping for food. The King of Storyville thought about it for a moment, then told him that he could work the floor of the Café as needed. The detective had responded to the offer with such an odd, absent look that Anderson had wondered if there was something wrong with him.

  When he asked where he would be staying, St. Cyr muttered something about a room on Clio Street. The King of Storyville knew in an instant that there was no such room, and that the poor fellow would be sleeping that night in a flophouse, in the park, or in some doorway. So he offered an advance on the first week's pay, five Liberty dollars. St. Cyr had stared at the coins for a long time before picking them up. Then he thanked Anderson quietly and took his leave. A few days later, he announced that he had taken a room over Frank Mangetta's Saloon and Grocery on Marais Street.

  The Creole detective who carried a history that had taken on aspects of legend had come back, and yet there was no fanfare at all, only whispers in the saloons and the parlors of the sporting houses. Of course, fifteen months was a long time to be gone, and memories in this part of the world tended to be short.

  Except for working late nights at Anderson's Café, he stayed out of sight. If he was visiting any sporting girls, no one talked about it. Everyone assumed he was just finding his way and left him alone. That couldn't last, though; indeed, there were already rumors floating about that Tom Anderson was already losing patience with him.

  In fact, after just a few days, the King of Storyville had discovered that he was dealing with a different Valentin St. Cyr altogether. Though the detective had never been able to afford the best clothes, he had at least taken some care with what he did own. Not anymore; he appeared at the Café in the same dingy suit every night. He had been known to keep a sharp eye and a firm hand on the nightly crowds, respecting those customers who behaved and dispatching those who didn't. In fact, the blunt way he'd dealt with the miscreants had been a source of some entertainment for the patrons. Now he barely paid attention, and there were complaints that some of the local pickpockets had been having a field day right under his nose.

  Anderson sighed and brought his thoughts back to the business of the murder on Rampart Street. A case this simple would either get the Creole detective back on his horse or prove that he truly had lost his once-extraordinary skills. If that was so, he would no longer be of any use to the King of Storyville.

  There was no trouble that night. Valentin left at 4 A.M., after the stragglers with nowhere else to go had shuffled out the door and into the last shadows of the New Orleans night.

  He wandered down Basin Street, turned the corner at Iberville, and walked three blocks to Marais Street. At this hour even Mangetta's Saloon, the noisiest music hall in Storyville, was as silent as a bier. As he stepped into the alley that ran alongside the building, he looked in through the wide front window to see two drunks sprawled unconscious over tables while a bartender swept the sawdust across the floor in a weary rhythm.

  He climbed the creaking metal stairs and let himself into his room, a cramped and dingy affair, as uncluttered as a cell, with a sagging iron-framed bed, a closet, a chest of drawers, and a night table. The walls were bare except for a 1909 calendar and a crucifix that had been hung there by the former tenant. Valentin had left both where they were. Two suits hung on the back of the door. The tools of his former trade—an Iver Johnson pistol, a stiletto in an ankle sheath, and a whalebone sap—were tucked far in a corner of the top drawer.

  No one else but the cleaning girl entered the room. His landlord, respecting his privacy, was still waiting for an invitation. Anyone else who might have visited him was gone: Bolden, long lost in Jackson; Jelly Roll Morton in St. Louis and Chicago, playing music for the high rollers; the few others scattered far and wide. Justine, the dove who had shared his rooms on Magazine Street for the better part of two years, hadn't come calling, though she had to know that he was back in town. He'd taken pains to avoid her, and he guessed that she was doing the same. Though he now had the money for a sporting woman, it didn't occur to him to visit one.

  On the nights that he wasn't working, he walked the streets of the city from one end to the other, often with his head bent as if searching for something that he had lost. It was an old habit. If the weather was poor or he was just worn out, he would stay in and listen to the music and shouts and laughter from the saloon downstairs. The jass—muted by the building's heavy beams, plaster ceilings, and hardwood floors—sounded like a faraway echo of the crazy gumbo that the Kid Bolden Band had created back in 1901. He still heard echoes of the way Bolden had played, and liked to listen even when it kept him awake. He didn't have anything better to do. There was a stack of books under his bed for when it got too quiet.

  He wasn't quite ready to sleep this morning, so he opened the window and sat on the sill to take the breeze. As he sat there above the dark and silent streets, his thoughts meandered to the exchange that took place in Anderson's office earlier in the evening.

  He had almost turned around and walked out when he realized what Badel and Anderson wanted. The alderman's gaze had been conniving and his voice shady as he talked about the hapless white man murdered in the dark end of town.

  It was a puzzle why they had summoned him at all. There were Pinkertons and other private police all over the city; a few even had skills. And yet Alderman Badel had come to Anderson, and Anderson had turned to him. He didn't know what the two men were expecting, and it didn't really matter. Valentin hadn't come back to New Orleans to plunge into detective work again. He thought that was understood.

  Anyway, he already knew what had happened. This Benedict fellow had gone to Rampart Street for the wrong pleasures, wandered off in the wrong direction, and crossed paths with the wrong person. The man's family should have wanted it swept from sight. So why insist on an investigation and why call him? Maybe, Valentin reflected with a grim smile, because they weren't looking for a real detective after all. That part, at least, made some sense.

  He pondered for a while longer, until his head began to droop. He couldn't think anymore. He came back inside and closed the window as the first light of day, dark crimson, edged along the northeast horizon. The city would be coming to life soon. He stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes to the creeping dawn.

  THREE

  Justine Mancarre walked her gentleman caller down the stairs and out the door onto the gallery. His company motorcar, a forest green Maxwell with thin gold piping painted along its panels and fenders, idled at the curb, sitting high on bright yellow wheels. It was still early enough that she could step onto the gallery in her nightdress without being a spectacle. The breeze from the east lifted the hem as she watched Mr. George descend the gallery steps and cross the banquette to heave himself into the backseat of the automobile. The driver fixed his goggles over his eyes, engaged the gearshift, and turned his head to check the traffic. Mr. George gave a jaunty wave from the backseat as the automobile jerked forward and chattered away over the cobblestones. She knew he would now race home to the American side of town, change into clean clothes, and hurry off to his good job as president of the shipping business down by the river.

  Her smile, already thin, evaporated. She took a moment to survey the banquette. Basin Street was tranquil,
sleeping off the prior night's revels. It was a quiet and lonely time of day. She turned around and trudged back inside and up the stairs.

  She was halfway to the landing when one of the maids came into the foyer and called up to her. Miss Antonia was requesting a moment of her time. Justine wasn't in the mood and thought about offering an excuse, perhaps claiming a headache. It wasn't worth it. The madam would just pester her all morning. She told the maid she'd be back down in a few minutes and continued up the steps.

  Valentin woke to someone in the store below gabbling excitedly in Sicilian dialect. The voice came down a bit and the singsong lilt brought a memory of his father, who would lapse from his mangled English into Sicilian dialect when he was feeling especially gentle or agitated. His mother knew some words and, with the help of her backwoods Creole French, could talk back to him. He remembered lying in his bed, listening as his younger sister and brother slept. It was like the quiet moments in an opera, sweetly muted. It had been a long time ago, and yet he could still conjure all that at the sound of a single vowel.

  He turned his head to see that the sun was up well over the rooftops. More voices rose, calls back and forth on subjects of mortadella and prosciutto. The grocery was open for business. He lay there for a while longer, listening to the voices and the rough music of the streets and alleys, getting busy with traffic.

  He got up and headed to the bathroom at the far end of the silent hallway. There was only one other boarder on the floor, a serious and mysterious fellow who spoke a few gruff words in Italian when he spoke at all. Whatever his true name, Frank Mangetta referred to him only as "Signore Angelo." He had a peasant body, too, solid muscle. His skin was dark olive, his blue-black hair was oiled and combed, and his mustache waxed.