Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) Read online

  Morton looked unhappy, but he nodded. "All right, then. I guess it don't matter. I'm leaving out in a few weeks. Going to Chicago." He glanced at Valentin. "What about you?"

  "I'm getting on a train in an hour." He settled back. "So, if you don't mind..."

  "I don't mind at all," Morton said, and went to playing, a march of notes to a hot rhythm, so bright that it drew the doves from upstairs and from the other rooms to listen.

  When Valentin stepped out onto Basin Street, he found Beansoup waiting for him. Without a word, they crossed over and went into the station. They walked through the terminal to the platform where his train was waiting. Valentin went into his pocket and handed over a ten-dollar gold piece. The kid studied it for a long moment, cupping it in his dirty palm.

  "I'll keep an eye on Miss Justine for you," he said.

  "I'd appreciate it."

  "What if she asks where you went?"

  "Tell her I'm traveling. She'll understand."

  "And what if she asks when you're comin' back?" There was an odd catch in his voice.

  "I don't know. I can send a letter now and then. In care of Miss Antonia." He smiled. "For you, too."

  Beansoup grinned. He stuck out his hand, all manly. Then he turned and sauntered away.

  A few minutes later, they called for boarding. The cars weren't very full at that hour. He found a seat that was away from other passengers and watched out the window as they chugged away from the lights of Storyville and then turned north into the Louisiana darkness.

  Prince John sat up half the night, smoking hop and tippling a bottle of moonshine whiskey from those he kept under the floor. He lay down on his pallet for his usual raw and fitful sleep, invaded by bad dreams. He kept on thinking that someone was coming to his door. He imagined a body rustling through the bamboo, footsteps creeping closer, a shape looming. When he forced his eyes open, though, there was nothing there.

  At least, nothing he could see. He knew that the dark of the night could host all kinds of creatures. Before, voodoo was just something he used, like the music, to play his game and get what he wanted. Then he came to believe in the power and believe that he had it.

  He needed it now. Something was creeping closer. That Creole detective had found him. Who knew who else might be appearing? It was time to move. His voodoo skills could not make him invisible. He should have quit New Orleans back when he was having all that trouble.

  Now the sound came to him again, the padding of footsteps on the sand outside his door.

  "Who's out there?" he called, hearing the dry creak of his own voice. A breeze came up, rattling the strings of gourds that hung from the eaves. For some reason, the sound frightened him. He wished he had another piece of the good Chinatown hop to calm his nerves.

  Now he heard a voice, someone murmuring. There was no mistake about it. His fear turned to anger and he stood up, stretching his creaking bones, and slipped to the corner where his makeshift washstand stood. He found his straight razor, opened it, and stepped along the thin wall of the shack toward the doorway.

  He stopped there, listening. He heard nothing now, no voices or steps, just the wind through the bamboo. He stood still for a minute, two, three. Nothing. He licked his dry lips and reached for the block of wood that served as a latch. He turned it with the care of a safecracker, then grabbed the leather handle with his free hand. He raised the razor and jerked the door open.

  He heard a rustle in the bamboo, the occasional lap of water down on the bank of the lake. He stared into the darkness. Nothing moved. He dropped the razor to his side and let out a long breath. He was just about to close the door again when he got a sudden sensation. Someone was in the shack. He wondered how that could be and then he thought of the back window, covered with nothing but burlap. He heard a sharp breath and the thump of a footstep and turned just in time to see the dark shape close in on him.

  Early that morning, in the pearly mist of dawn, a fisherman who had just pushed off from the shore of the lake spotted something in the water that he first took to be a rolling log with branches attached. Then he thought it might be a dead nutria. When he passed closer, he saw that it was the body of a man, in a gentle slump, like he was sleeping on the quiet current. The green eyes were open and piercing, even in death.

  The fisherman, a superstitious sort, thought to paddle on as if he hadn't seen it. But he was also a Catholic who believed in proper attendance to a body. He still didn't want it in his boat, so he hooked the shirt with one of his tenders, tied it off, and rowed back to shore. There he dragged the body up onto the bank and went to call for help.

  About the time they were collecting the body from the water, Valentin was waking up to a gray north Mississippi morning. The conductor passed by to say that they'd be in St. Louis in just a few hours.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to those who have made and make me better than I am: my editor Jen Charat, Kati Hesford, Jenna Johnson, Liz Parker, Marissa Riccio, Sara Branch, Jodie Hockensmith, Erin DeWitt, and others at Harcourt unnamed but dedicated all the same; and to my agents Kim Goldstein and Laura Langlie.

  To Bill Ferris, Don Marquis, Bill Meneray at the Tulane Library, and the staffs of the New Orleans Public Library and the Historic New Orleans Collection, for helping me steep it in history. The errors are mine only.

  Finally, deep thanks are due the members of my jass band, sterling performers all: Joanne Arbogast, Barbara Bent, Nancy Bent, Wendy Bosley, Katie Bourne, Larry Cohn, Anna Copello, Allison Davis, Ilene Dyer, Jack Dyer, Jennifer French Echols, Barbara Eister, Joe Hynes, Lynn Johnson, Karin Koser, Steve Loehrer, Terri Lubaroff, Joanne Mei, Suzanne Mercier, Mary Anne Mitchell, Heidi Nietert, Shelly Paul, Michael Riley, Barbara Saunders, Ebbie Sekulski, Leo Sekulski, James Taylor, Lynn Taylor, Virginia Velleca, Rob Walker, Cindy Wallace, Rebecca Wallace, Richard Wallace, John Weatherford ... and Trudel Leonhardt, lost and found.

  * * *

  Turn the page to read an excerpt from

  the next Valentin St. Cyr mystery,

  Rampart Street

  Available at bookstores everywhere.

  * * *

  ONE

  The moment he turned the corner onto Rampart Street, he knew he was a dead man.

  A shadow was moving directly in his path, a phantom in a dark duster, one arm outstretched and pointing a Navy .45. He started to say, Not me! But he only got as far as the first word when the other hand came up, the palm out, shushing him.

  From down past Second Street, he heard a trumpet blowing, a slow run of dirty brass. Jass they called it. He fixed on that odd word for a moment, seeking escape. Then he was back facing the pistol, feeling its ghostly touch over twelve feet of space.

  He had lived for years with the fear that someone would come for him. He had paid in sleepless nights. He had seen a shady figure in his dreams, stepping out of a darkness just like this one. It wasn't fair. He wasn't the villain; he was the one who wanted to set things right.

  He was blurting "Damn your—" when the pistol shouted and the .45 slug caught him under the chin, snapping his head back and choking off the words in a bloody cough. The shot echoed down Rampart Street as he staggered and toppled over, clutching at his throat, his life bleeding out to seep around the cobblestones.

  The shadow faded back into the inky New Orleans night. Across the narrow street, a curtain opened, hung suspended for a moment, and then closed.

  One minute passed in silence. It lingered into a second, then a third. The stream of blood ran to the gutter, a feast for the flies at the first light of day.

  There was a patter of footsteps, rat quick, from the far side of the street. A crabbed figure bent over the body, rustling through pockets, pulling the heavy piece from the right-hand ring finger. When the wedding band wouldn't budge from the left hand, a blade flashed on its way to dismembering the digit and the ring that wrapped it above the knuckle.

  But before the job could be done, a trio of men appeared, the last dregs flushed
out onto the street from Johnny O's Saloon, hooting drunkenly as they staggered up to the corner. In the one-two-three order of a vaudeville routine, they came to a stop. Their mouths dropped and six bleary eyes swam over to the body lying in the street and the other form that was bending over it.

  One of the drunks, finding his voice, yelled, "Hey, now!"

  The crabbed figure jerked back and scurried away just as fast as he'd come. The three fellows slowed to a series of nervous baby steps as they drew up on the body. The first one saw the ugly hole in the victim's throat and said, "Sweet Jesus! Look at that!"

  A stunned few seconds passed, and then the fellow who had spoken up went stumbling back to the call box that was mounted on the light post, just down Rampart Street.

  * * *

  TWO

  Earlier on, in the last week of January of that same year of 1910, the New Orleans City Council allotted municipal funds to hire a balloonist to float aloft and carry along a photographer to record a series of aerial views of the city. It was a windy late winter, and it was only on their fourth attempt that they could lift to a decent altitude without the risk of being blown halfway to Cuba.

  The brave photographer came back down with two full cases of exposed glass negatives. When the negatives were developed, printed into positive images, and put on display, local residents and visitors from outside New Orleans Parish alike marveled to see panoramas of the Crescent City stretching out in mile-wide swaths, as a bird might view them.

  Among the photographs was one that detailed those blocks that extended northwest from the French Quarter. For twelve years this section of the city had gone by the sobriquet "Storyville." For all of those twelve years and, in fact, for most of the eighty prior, it had come to be known as one of the most infamous red-light districts in the world. At its busy height, thousands of carnal acts were purchased and performed within one sweep of the clock. This went on day after day and week upon month, as efficiently as the assembly lines that Henry Ford was adapting to produce the vehicles that were mobilizing America. This astonishing activity, along with the more pedestrian diversions provided by the restaurants, saloons, and music halls, made Storyville—or "the District," as it was more commonly known—quite the destination.

  So the photograph that included those twenty blocks, displayed with the others in the rotunda of City Hall, got more attention than any other. Gentlemen lingered there, snickering and employing broad winks as they pointed out the landmarks: the grandest sporting houses of Basin Street, the fine dining rooms, the classy cabarets, and the best-known drinking establishments. Those with sharp eyes could also pick out the rows of tiny pale squares on the back end of the District, the outlines of the cribs that the lowest class of scarlet women rented for ten cents a day. Two large plots of white, one at the northwest and another at the southeast corner—St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and No. 2—provided foursquare reminders of a certain grim fate that awaited one and all.

  Figuring most prominently in this photograph was the building on the corner of Basin and Iberville streets that took up a fair portion of the block. It had a broad, swooping roof that was dappled with gables and fairly bristled with chimney stacks from the fireplaces that were only now being replaced by coal-burning furnaces.

  This was Anderson's Café and Annex, the keystone of the District and its magnetic core. Those who were most familiar with the location could peer at the photograph and point out the window of the King of Storyville's office, on the second floor and with a view all the way along Basin Street.

  It was there, on a quiet Wednesday evening in the late spring, that Tom Anderson, the king himself, was settling back to wait out the eternity being defined by the babbling tongue of his guest, Alderman Alphonse Badel.

  Anderson, seated at his heavy oak desk, gazed blankly at the alderman, taking in the flabbering jowls, heavy, wet lips, thick spike of a nose, black hair slicked oily, and small, pale green eyes, all perched upon a body that was barely stuffed into the Queen Anne chair. Anderson shifted in his own chair, a regal affair of dark oak and oxblood leather, tapping thick fingers on the top of his desk as he waited.

  He had no idea why the alderman was going on and on, since he had gathered all the information he needed within the first minute of the visit: a certain resident from Badel's Esplanade Ridge ward had been discovered lying dead in a gutter, far out on Rampart Street. It was a sad and sordid affair, true; and yet Anderson still did not understand what it had to do with him.

  Of course, he could have bullied the monologue to a halt at any point. As impressive as his guest's bulk, he was the larger man by any measure, tall, broad, and growing ever heavier around the middle, as if his girth was the gauge of his wealth and influence. A wide forehead, round cheeks, and noble ball of a chin proclaimed the pride of power. His silverish hair was parted down the middle in the fashion of the day, and he kept a thick but tidy handlebar mustache, steel gray and lightly waxed. His brow was like cut stone over blue eyes that could shine kindly or glitter fiercely, depending on the moment's mood. When he wore his metal-framed spectacles, he much resembled the man who had left the White House the year before.

  He was even more substantial by reputation. Now in his late fifties, he was the red-light district's proud monarch, lording over the madams in their grand mansions, the sporting girls in fine upstairs rooms and dime-a-trick cribs, the rounders and gamblers and sports, the criminals petty and heeled, the saloon keepers who served them, and all the other characters in Storyville's shifting cast. His election to the state senate eight years earlier was his nod to the general concept of democracy; though, of course, he had neither the need nor the desire to practice it with particular vigor. He was now in his second term in the senate and well into his second decade in Storyville, and it had never occurred to anyone to challenge his prominence in either domain.

  He held the respect of a fair share of the city's upstairs and downstairs populations. He was a friend to men of wealth and influence, and Teddy Roosevelt himself had slapped his broad back jovially and called him "Tom." At the same time, he knew most of the harlots, pimps, rounders, drunkards, hopheads, and musicians in his territory by their first names. As an old man, he would come to his Savior and renounce this sinful history; but for now, he took much pleasure in and grew rich from ruling Storyville.

  With all this power and prestige came certain burdens. He was responsible for the welfare and safety of the women who staffed the mansions and cribs as well as their patrons. Matters of crime and punishment that were beyond the purview of the penal system fell to his judgment. He engaged in delicate political dances as stylized as waltzes. Swirling about were the endless and strange details of running a piece of territory that was dedicated to the commerce of sin.

  It was a chore keeping the lid on a cauldron where passions ran loose and could be brought to a boil in the blink of an eye. Jealousies led to bloody violence. Whiskey, opium, and cocaine to fuel the mayhem were there for the asking. Serious amounts of money traded hands, tempting the foolish. It was always worse in the summer, when the New Orleans heat clung to bodies like a net. A hard hand on the wheel was required, lest it all fall into bedlam, a disaster for everyone, since the pyramid of wealth depended on the security of paying customers. Tom Anderson kept the streets generally peaceful and the cash rolling in without pause, and so grew more powerful and wealthier with every tick of the clock.

  Though he was by no means without his failings. Along with his considerable gifts came appetites that now and then led him into trouble. He had launched a torrent of delirious gossip when, right under the nose of his mistress, Hilma Burt, he began a dalliance with Josie Arlington, once a sporting girl of legendary skills and now the youngest and prettiest of the Basin Street madams. The whole bawdy affair had been like some ongoing production at the Opera House, and Storyville was enthralled.

  It didn't last long. Managing the District while these women tried to tear him in two was too much. When his esteemed colleagues in the
state senate began snickering behind his back and he realized what a ridiculous figure he was cutting, he came to his senses and negotiated a truce between the squabbling madams. Chastened, he fixed his attentions on Storyville. His desires were checked, or at least hidden from prying eyes, much to the disappointment of those who had delighted in all the comedy. Once again, he was their sober leader, with responsibilities weighing on his broad shoulders.

  Along with his greater burdens came petty irritations, among them a requirement to suffer fools, which was why he now sat fidgeting at his desk on a warm spring night, listening to the likes of Alphonse Badel prattling on and on as if neither one of them had anything better to do.

  He put up with it for a while longer, then let out a small sigh and glanced at the door. The alderman, sensing his host's impatience, slowed his jabbering and then stopped completely.

  Anderson leaned forward and turned his thick hands palms up. "I don't know how I can help you," he said. "I don't have anything to do with what goes on out there."

  Badel gave him a shrewd look and said, "Don't be so modest, Tom."

  Anderson ignored the compliment. "Have the police investigated?" he asked.

  Badel turned snappish. "Not that you'd know it! They acted like it was just another Rampart Street murder. It was only when they got him downtown and found out who he was that anyone gave a damn about it. By then it was too late. They had a look, but they didn't find anything."

  "Maybe because there was nothing to find."

  Badel blinked. "What, now?"

  "How do you know it wasn't just some spat that went badly?"

  The alderman shook his head. "The coppers asked the same thing. There wasn't no trouble of that sort."