Chasing the Devil's Tail (6 page)

Valentin shrugged, and on the edge of his vision, saw Bellocq open his mouth. He made the slightest shake of his head and the little Frenchman remained silent. Picot glanced between the two men with narrowed eyes. "The crip says this is how he found her." He smiled lewdly. "Says he was just coming here to make her photograph."

"I've seen his work," Valentin said. "What he says is reasonable."

"Well, I don't think it's
reasonable
," Picot hissed in sudden irritation. "We got nothing but what he says to go on, do we? That ain't enough for me. So we're just going to take him on downtown."

Bellocq's eyes grew wider still, like blue china saucers, and he gaped at St. Cyr in a mute plea. Valentin stepped around the body on the floor and murmured something to Picot. The copper listened and, after a grudging moment, nodded once, curtly. Valentin waved the Frenchman toward the door and Bellocq scuttled out like some frantic metallic crab. The two men waited as he made his noisy way along the hall and down the stairs. After the clattering faded away, Picot said, "Well, Mr. Detective, why don't you have a look and tell me what we got here?" As usual, there was a sneer lurking.

Valentin took the lamp from the policeman's hand and knelt over the body of Gran Tillman. Picot yawned and leaned languidly against the wall, but Valentin could feel the copper's stare boring into his back.

She was a short, plain woman with liverish skin. Her face was round, her mouth full-lipped and filled with crooked teeth, her nose short and squat. Her body was just as round, except for where the flesh was already sagging. At thirty-five or so, Gran Tillman was a senior citizen in Storyville years. Indeed, her dead face looked weary and somehow not ungrateful for the long rest that was now hers.

Picot fidgeted impatiently and muttered as Valentin lifted the black rose from the palm of her hand, noting the absence of the iron grip of death. It slipped away easily, leaving no thorn pricks on her pink palm. He had only half-listened to Picot, but he got the message: though the sash was in plain view and there was a reddish tinge about the woman's neck (not to mention the amber puddle that had soaked into the floorboards), the policeman was going to report it as a death by undetermined causes. After another few minutes and a half-dozen curt words directed at St. Cyr's bent back, Picot called for a wagon to carry the body downtown. He gave the
Creole detective a hard glance. "If you're all through, you can go," he said.

Valentin stood up and turned to leave, stopping to study the purple sateen gown, so out of place in those shoddy digs. He had just reached the doorway when he thought of something. "That other girl," he said.

Picot frowned absently as he stared down at Gran Tillman's body. "What? What girl?"

"From Cassie Maples'."

"Yeah, what about her?"

"Was a cause of death established?"

"Oh. Yeah, it was." Picot sounded bored, '"phyxiated. Probably with a pillow or something like that."

"Then it was murder."

"No tellin'," the copper said, barely listening.

Valentin frowned. "There weren't any signs of a struggle."

"Then it
wasn't
no murder," Picot snapped irritably. Valentin took a step into the hallway, dropping the subject. "But it's funny you should mention it," he heard Picot say. There was a deliberate note in the copper's voice and Valentin stepped back into the doorway. "I found out who was the last man she saw that night." The copper's lips stretched in a smile that the rest of his face didn't join. "It was that horn player Bolden." He laid his cold penny eyes on St. Cyr. "Friend of yours, ain't he?"

Just before the policeman left with the body, Lizzie Taylor, the madam of the house, appeared downstairs. Though she wrung her hands and could barely stifle her wails of grief over the poor woman's death, she was genuinely appalled that Picot wanted the house shut down for the night. "Tonight?" she kept saying between sobs, "The whole house?" But Picot was
firm and, so, in the manner of a wake, Miss Taylor led her girls across Iberville Street to Fewclothes' Cabaret, where they all got properly drunk in Gran Tillman's sainted memory.

Valentin hurried down Conti Street to Antonia Gonzales'. He found Justine dancing in the parlor with another girl while three well-dressed sports watched and whispered amongst themselves. He pulled her into the foyer and she pressed against him, grinning eagerly, a tan imp.

He held her at arm's length. "Listen to me," he said. "Be careful. Please. No strangers."

Justine's eyebrows went up and she smiled a little girl smile. "Are you jealous over me now?"

He said, "I mean it!" and the smile disappeared. "And tell the other girls. They ought not to be careless." He turned for the door.

"Valentin?" She was watching him, waiting. He moved a hand and she ran to get her shawl.

To tell a landlady from a boarder, their names have been printed in capital letters.
The star on the side of a landlady's name indicates a first-class house where the finest of women and nothing but wine is sold.
The No. 69 is the sign of a French house. The Jew will be known by a "J."
Wishing you a good time while you are making your rounds,

—T
HE
B
LUE
B
OOK

Valentin was drinking his second cup of coffee when he heard a whistle from the street. He stepped out onto the balcony and leaned over the railing. Looking up at him from the shadow of the building was the same kid who had fetched him the night before, a pug nosed, pale-eyed, dirt-white product of one of the church orphanages and everyone on the street, where he spent his days, called him Beansoup.

"Mr. St. Cyr?" Beansoup called up. "Mr. Anderson says can you please come to see him at the Café."

"When?" Valentin said.

Beansoup wiped the back of his dirty hand across his
mouth. "He says now. He's says for me to wait and bring you along."

He walked a step or two behind Beansoup, who moved at a rapid, pitched-forward pace, his too-large, cracked leather shoes just skimming the banquette. An empty cloth newspaper sack hung from one of his bony shoulders and the pockets of his dirty white shirt and baggy britches bulged with a collection of litter. They passed by a green grocer and Beansoup, seeing the merchant turn his back, snatched two fat purple plums from the stand. He flipped one to Valentin as he bit into the other.

"How's the newspaper trade?" Valentin asked, polishing the plum on his vest.

Beansoup shot him a look. "It's for kids, is what."

"Yes, but you know that's how Mr. Anderson got his start," Valentin said. "Hawking papers on the street. Look where he is now."

Beansoup's eyes flashed with a sudden cunning. "Anderson got his start ratting to the po-lice," he corrected the detective, chewing noisily. "And he still got all them copper friends. And that's how he operates. I'm gonna do better'n'at. I got my own damn plan."

"What kind of plan?" Valentin said.

The kid wiped a bead of snot from his lip. "I'm goin' to be a fancy man," he announced.

Valentin stifled a laugh. "A fancy man?"

Beansoup nodded busily as they turned onto Basin Street. "I know all them fellows. I run their errands. Go to the apothecary when they need somethin'. Deliver their confident'al messages around town, whatever else." He looked up at the detective and closed one eye. "You seen 'em in them fine suits, all them rings and such?"

"I have, yes," Valentin said.

"All of 'em wear them fine new suits," Beansoup went on earnestly. "New derby hats. Diamonds in their garters. They always got plenty money. But not one of 'em got a proper position."

Valentin played his part. "They all have women taking care of them."

Beansoup winked and pointed a finger. "That's right. That's what I'm gonna do. Get a woman take care of me."

Valentin nodded soberly. "I see."

The boy spat the plum pit into the gutter. Then he reached into a grimy pocket and pulled out a handful of printed cards. "See this here?" Valentin looked. "Grace O'Leary" was inscribed across the top card in flowery script. "I stand on the corner. Fellow lookin' for a girl, I send him round to Grace. She been payin' me twenty-five cents every time."

"Sounds like a fair shake," Valentin said.

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna raise my price," Beansoup confided. "Pretty soon, she'll be buying me clothes and smokes, whatever I want."

"And she'll agree to that?"

The boy sniffed. "She'll agree or I'll give her a slap or two." He smacked a flat palm on his scrawny chest. "I know how to handle a goddamn whore."

Valentin was about to warn him against raising a hand to any Storyville woman when the kid suddenly began bawling out a song about his "big fat mama wit' d'meat shakin' off d'bone," screeched away in a flat, nasal gutbucket voice. People passing on the banquette turned to stare and some of them started laughing. Beansoup stopped just as suddenly as he had started and said, "Honeyboy."

Valentin felt his hearing return. "What?"

Beansoup was all earnest again. "Honeyboy. That's my moniker." He peered at the detective. "Whatcha think?"

Valentin made a show of thinking it over. "I'm sure it suits you," he said. They stepped under the colonnade at Anderson's Café and he laid a hand on Beansoup's shoulder. He dug into his vest pocket with the other hand and produced a silver Liberty quarter, which he pressed into the boy's palm. Then he tilted his head toward the door.

"I suppose this is about the murder last night," he murmured.

Beansoup studied the coin. "Yeah, I spose it is." He yawned and looked away down the street. Valentin dug deeper, produced another quarter. He dropped it into the cupped palm, right next to the first one.

"Some people been talkin' already," Beansoup said, his eyes fixed on the two coins, '"bout how maybe that wa'nt just a lady gettin kilt like usual."

"And?"

"And Mr. Tom's a little vexed about it, that's all," the boy said with an off-handed shrug.

Valentin pondered the information as Beansoup rolled the coins about his palm. Then he reached for the door handle. "What was it?" he said. "Your moniker?"

The boy looked up and smiled with a mouth full of brown crooked teeth. "Honeyboy."

"I'll remember," Valentin said and stepped inside.

The Café was dark, the curtains drawn like it was still the dead of night. The only thing moving was the tall Negro sweeping the floor in a slow rhythm. Tom Anderson looked up from his table and waved a beckoning hand. Valentin walked along the bar and took a seat. Anderson had a thick
sheaf of papers before him, filled with tiny print that was very official looking. He put his pen down, laced his fingers together and furrowed his brow gravely. "Another murder?" he said.

Valentin gave a brief nod. "It was up Bienville at Lizzie Taylor's," he said, though Anderson surely knew all this.

"And another black rose?" The blue eyes rested on Valentin's face.

"That's correct."

Anderson mulled it over, frowning, then said, "What's the word on the street?"

"I've heard nothing at all," Valentin said.

The white man sat back. "Well, what do you think about it?"

"Those black roses are the main thing," Valentin said. "Looks like it's the same one who killed the girl on Perdido Street."

"Is that all?"

Valentin hesitated. "Well, there's the business with Father Dupre."

"That again?" Anderson all but rolled his eyes.

"It happened at the same time," Valentin said. "That girl died early Sunday morning. Come noon Monday, the Father was on a train to the bughouse. And he had a black rose in his possession. And now we have another murder—"

"Yes, yes, and another black rose," Anderson broke in. "So where's the connection?"

"Maybe Dupre knew something," Valentin said. "Maybe he heard something at confession."

The King of Storyville was already shaking his head. "That first girl, she was working way over in darktown, isn't that right?"

"Yes, but all sorts of men visit those houses," Valentin said.

"I know who visits those houses," Anderson retorted sharply, "and I know who doesn't." He picked up his pen, put it down again. "Dupre was retired. He couldn't have heard confession from anyone. This other murder..." He raised his hands, palms up. "Well, how in the world would he know anything about that? He was under lock-and-key at Jackson. You took him there yourself."

Valentin knew better than to push it any further. He nodded briefly and the King of Storyville said, "So someone has murdered two sporting gals. Someone with a crazy notion, these black roses..." He touched his bushy mustache ruminatively and shifted in his chair. "But let's not make something out of nothing here. That first girl wasn't working in the District at all. This other one, well, who knows what kind of business goes on at a house like Lizzie Taylor's?" He tapped a finger on the tabletop. "You keep your eyes and ears open. But most likely there's nothing to it."

"Nobody should say anything about the roses," Valentin said.

"Yes, yes, we'll keep all of it quiet," Anderson said. "God knows, we can't have word getting around there's a killer on the loose. Let's just hope this fellow's adventures are over." With that, he glanced at the papers on the table and said, "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have this awful state business to attend to."

Valentin stood up to leave. He had taken only a few steps when Anderson called out King Bolden's name. He turned around. "What about him?"

"Did you know he was taken to jail last night? Some sort of brawl, as I heard it. At one of those saloons where his band plays, I think maybe it was Mangetta's. I believe they locked
him up." He picked up his pen and returned his attention to his stack of papers.

Valentin walked away from the Café and disappeared around the corner onto Iberville. From the doorway of an abandoned crib across the street, a tall man in a derby hat watched him go. He waited a few moments, then stepped onto the banquette and sauntered up the street, shadowing the Creole detective.