Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (22 page)

"That's right." She gave him a glance of bemused affection. "I'm making market," she said. "Will you walk with me for a while?"

"Oh, sure, that'll be just fine," he said, and they started off.

She asked how things were at St. Mary's and if he was paying attention to the nuns. After a few minutes of idle banter, she sensed him growing impatient and gave him what he had come for. "How is Mr. Valentin?" she inquired.

Beansoup slowed his steps. "Who? Oh, him? Oh, yeah, I guess he's all right. You know he's working again." He nodded knowingly. "Some musicians died and it looks like something's wrong about it. So he's working on that now."

They walked on for a few paces more. She sensed something more on the tip of the boy's tongue, so she said, "And what else?"

"Ummm ... I don't know if I should say."

"What is it?" She saw the way Beansoup's gaze wandered away. "What? Does he have company over there?"

The kid shrugged. "I seen him with a girl. Real black-skinned lady. They was at his rooms."

Justine felt her mind go into a dizzy tilt. "How well for him," she said, with a catch in her voice.

"Sorry," Beansoup said. "Maybe I shouldn't have said nothin'. She just showed up after ... you know..." He jammed his hands in his pockets, and they walked on without speaking for a minute. "What about you?" he said presently.

"What about me?"

"You doin' all right with yourself?"

"I'm doing well, yes."

That brought another look of pouty displeasure as Beansoup saw his short career as a cupid coming to an end. This wasn't going at all the way he'd expected. They stopped across from the French Market. Justine was touched by the hurt look on his face. He was taking this all to heart. She was about to say something comforting when he suddenly turned around and said, "I believe there's going to be some trouble."

"What trouble?" she said. "When?"

"I don't know. Soon. I just got a feeling." He threw a hand up in farewell and ran away.

Valentin knocked on the door of the house on Robertson Street. Across the street was that whitewashed wall of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.

The door was opened by a thin woman with red hair and splotched cheeks on her pale, puffy face.

She looked ill, but then many of the women in that part of town were walking germ colonies. He stated his business and she invited him inside.

He stepped over the threshold with an effort. He didn't want to be there. It was particularly irksome because he thought this business was over and done. The word was on the street. Who would be so foolish as to defy Tom Anderson?

The madam of the house appeared, interrupting his brooding. She was a white woman with a face that, except for the split lip, was flat and wooden, defining one of those types who came off hardscrabble land and into the city to find a different kind of slavery. She might have been fairly attractive as a young sporting girl. Now she was growing old and mean. Valentin had seen them by the dozen, and at some point, they all looked the same: dry, grim, and pinched, like the witches in fairy tales.

He listened to her story. It sounded much like the incident of the week before. He did not bother to question the two doves who were on the scene that day. Because what had happened there followed the pattern too closely: The two characters had come to the door, made a demand, then got rough when the victim didn't snap to. It didn't make sense. It felt like someone had gone to the trouble of putting on a crude farce.

He thanked the madam, told her he would be looking into the matter, and left her with her pinched and crabby sneer in place. On the way back to St. Louis Street, he glanced around, but saw no sign of Picot's tail. Either he'd lost him or this one was better at his job. He hoped it was the latter, because he'd decided that it was time to stop fooling around and bait a trap.

A half hour later, he was stepping down before City Hall. He went around to the alleyway in back, passed through the door, down the steps, and along the dank corridor.

The mulatto attendant was in the tiny office that adjoined the autopsy room, dozing in his chair. He came awake with a start when Valentin rapped his knuckles on the desk. His eyes fluttered and he used one hand to wipe a dribble of saliva from his chin.

He recognized the visitor. "What the fuck's this?" he gurgled. "Whatchu doin' here?"

"I need some information," Valentin said.

"Need what?" The man was still half asleep.

"Information," the detective said in a harder voice.

Now the attendant began to come around. "What are you talkin' about?" There was stale liquor on his breath. "What information?"

"From your files."

"Them's all confidential. It's city business."

Valentin took a casual look around. "Where do you keep the records?"

"You need to leave," the mulatto said, swaying to his feet. "And I got to go back to work." He made a shooing gesture with one hand.

"I could tell your superiors that you've been stealing from the corpses," Valentin said.

The hand stopped its motion. The mulatto blinked quickly three times and he swallowed. "I ... what?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

The attendant twisted nervous fingers. "I said you need to leave. Who the fuck are you, anyway?"

"Don't play coy. You know who I am." He cocked his head. "I'm betting that if I go out on the street and find the closest pawnshop, they'll tell me that you do business there all the time. They probably have some of your most recent pieces on hand. The kind that could be traced back to their original owners. And I'll bet I can find the jeweler who buys the gold teeth you bring around. At best, you'd be out of a job and out of business. You might even end up in a cell across the street. And if they find out you stole from anyone important, you'll be there for a long goddamn time. Understand?"

As Valentin wound his way through this speech, the mulatto sagged back down into his chair. Now he looked sick, his face going paler by degrees. When the detective finished, he croaked, "What do you want?"

"I want to know if any other musicians have turned up here in the past month."

"Any other what?"

"You go through the records," the detective explained patiently. "Pick out the ones with 'musician' on the line next to Occupation. Copy their names down. I'll be back tomorrow to see them."

"Tomorrow!"

"In the morning. So have the information ready."

"I can't do it!" the attendant moaned. "If I get caught, I lose the job."

Valentin said, "Then don't get caught."

He went out the door and down the hall, leaving the attendant with his mouth hanging open in a half-formed moan of protest.

The evening sun was going down as Treau Martin waited for the ferry to Algiers. It was a glorious sight to see, the sun turning from gold to orange, and the high clouds spreading the rays out like separate pathways to heaven. The warm and gentle breeze was like a caressing hand on his brow.

He looked across the muddy water. On the other side was a small church. He pictured a steepled wood frame, a few benches for congregants, a table that served as an altar, some rough boards nailed together as a pulpit. The flock was small, a mere handful, but they were pious souls and in need of someone to guide them through this world of woe to the other side of Jordan.

Treau's sermon this night would be in the manner of an audition. If he passed, the church would be his. He could leave New Orleans, that sewer of sin. He could forsake his past and with time forget what he had been and what he had done in his darkest hours. As one washed in the blood of the lamb, he would be renewed, reborn.

The ferry was running late and though he could see the dark shape chugging closer, he was anxious to go. There were a dozen other folks waiting. They huddled in little packs, except for one lone character who hung back in a black duster that was too long for the September weather.

The flat-bottomed boat pulled up to the dock with a wet creak and disgorged its few passengers. The waiting dozen filed on. The Reverend Martín—he did like the sound of that—tipped his hat to the ladies and then made his way down the gangplank to board.

The roof of the cabin of the craft had been extended back to provide cover for crossings in bad weather. It was a pleasant evening, though, and the passengers stayed outside to relax along the railing and watch the stirring wake and the city lights recede into twinkling stars.

Treau paid heed as the sun bid a glorious farewell to the day and then sank down over the Gulf of Mexico. He heard the rough churning of the engine and the sloppy splash of the prow cutting the water. He saw the evening's first blinking lights from the other shore. They were halfway there. A small welcoming party of elders and sisters would be waiting for him on the other side.

As he stretched to see, he caught something in the corner of his eyes. Shuffling up the rail toward him was the passenger in the long coat.

Treau sensed something wrong and looked around. All the other passengers were on the port side, watching the sunset. He turned back to greet the stranger with a kind word. Before he got it out, an arm shot out with something that cracked his temple. He let out a grunt as a wild light flashed across his brain. He started to collapse, but before he could tumble to the deck, hands grabbed his shoulders, and with a hard burst of strength, lifted him off his feet. He was toppling over the railing and then the frothing water swallowed him. He sunk into the Mississippi, the wake of the ferry churning him down into the brown darkness.

Justine did her dutiful best to be patient while Paul worked himself into a lather, worrying her pelvis like one of those eager little dogs that got sudden urges and went for the nearest available leg. He didn't seem to get this fucking business at all. His clumsy efforts made her suspicious that he would have preferred another person, maybe one of his own sex. Or maybe he had just never learned what to do. She knew that a taste of a quadroon was something of a ritual for rich white boys coming of age. She had entertained a few herself. She hoped those young men had improved their amorous skills more than the fellow who was currently installed between her thighs.

She stifled a yawn and mused on these things as he banged away at her. Finally, he let out a little hiccup of a gasp, collapsed, and rolled off. He reached immediately for the white hand towel that was draped over the headboard and attended fussily to his private parts, as if to wipe every trace of her from his pink and flaccid self. She noticed the look of relief on his face, as if he had completed an unpleasant task.

When he went to soak in the bathtub, she began pulling on her clothes. When he got out, he would spend an hour or so dressing and drinking coffee and then call for the car to carry him to his family's offices on Carondelet. He had something to do with managing rice plantations that she didn't understand. It really didn't matter what he did, now or later. It had only been two days and she knew that she was not going to be staying with him. She didn't really like him. She thought him a fool and a weakling, and she could not be the mistress of such a man for life. She could not bear his colored children. She could not live in a prison on Girod Street for his pleasure and her wealth. Let someone else accept that sentence.

For the moment, though, there was nowhere else to go. She wasn't about to run back to Magazine Street. So she would stay where she was until she could escape with something other than her satchel of clothes.

It was a generally slow night at the Café. Valentin saw Tom Anderson as he made his usual rounds. When the King of Storyville came down from his office, he didn't have a word to say. He simply glanced, nodded, and moved on. By now, his spies would have told him that the detective had paid a visit to Robertson Street. He would be satisfied with that.

Valentin took a seat at the end of the bar and listened to the band. Later, when they stopped for the night, the detective ambled over to talk to them. He asked if anyone had heard any talk about the jass players who had died recently.

A saxophone player named Raymond DeVille was the only one who had.

"It doesn't bother you?" Valentin said.

The Negro shook his head absently. "Why should it? When your time's up, you're gone."

Valentin left him and the others to pack up for the night. DeVille wasn't finished, though. He called, "Mr. Valentin!" Then gestured for him to wait.

They stood at an empty spot in the middle of the floor and DeVille bent his head confidentially. "I did hear that a copper's been poking around, bracing fellows, asking about Mumford and Noiret and all."

"Picot?"

"That's him." He leaned closer. "He's been askin' about you, too."

Valentin was putting the key into his lock as the bells tolled four. When he got upstairs, he crept into the bedroom, went to the closet to pull down the blanket Beansoup always used, and carried it to the couch. He was aware of Dominique on the bed but didn't look at her. He could sense that she was awake, her eyes open, watching him as he walked in and out.

He went back into the front room and settled on the couch, wrapping the blanket around him. He heard the bedsprings squeak once as she moved and then no more.