Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (40 page)

"Thomas," she called out. "Do you know anyone by that name? Or with such a history?" Thomas didn't answer. "Maybelle?" she said over her shoulder.

The woman whispered, "No, ma'am."

Mrs. Gerard's voice grew an edge as she addressed the roughnecks stationed at the bottom of the steps: "What about you, Mr. Dawes?" The white man turned his head slightly. "No? Mr. Williams? Is that name familiar to you?" No response was expected and none offered as the pair continued to glower. Throughout the little performance, the woman's brownish eyes never left Valentin's face as they shifted from demure to carnivorous. Now she shrugged and said, "I'm so sorry, sir."

"Well, I must be mistaken, then," he said, and turned around. Thomas was still holding the gate open. As he passed through, Valentin glanced at the Negro and saw the tiniest sign of warning in the dark visage. He nodded slightly as he stepped onto the banquette and walked away without looking back.

He got on a St. Charles Line car and found a place in the back where he could sit alone and think.

There wasn't a lot of time before they would be coming after him. He had smelled it in their sweat, read it in their faces, and he had heard the vicious little shriek that was hidden beneath the white woman's quiet patter, as taut and shrill as a plucked wire. He was the last thing standing between her and the rest of her life as the judge's wife in the lovely house on Prytania.

The raw truth of it was a relief. This was no chess game anymore. He would have to fight it out with the two animals and match wits with a very clever female. If he was going to finish it.

By the time he stepped off the car at Poydras Street, he had settled down enough to have the inklings of a plan. First came an absolute necessity to stay ahead of them. If he got cornered, he'd be dead.

He came up on the intersection at Magazine Street and crossed over where a half-dozen carriages waited for passengers who were having Sunday dinner at the Banks' Arcade. He picked out one of the drivers, a Creole who looked like he knew what he was about. He slipped him a Liberty dollar with instructions to watch the street door at No. 330 and give a whistle if anyone went in.

The driver agreed with a quick grin of gold teeth and then proceeded to demonstrate his whistle, a screech so loud and sharp it gave the horses a start.

Valentin hurried across the street and up to his rooms. He changed clothes, packing his weapons again: the whalebone sap in his back pocket, the stiletto in a sheath strapped to his ankle, his revolver in his coat pocket. The pistol was loaded, but he took no extra cartridges. If six didn't do the trick, he'd be through anyway.

He had been going over the details of his plan in his head and now set it in motion. He went out, locked the doors, and with a wave to the Creole driver, walked down to Bechamin's to use the phone.

He still had one critical weakness: Justine. They might go after her; though that would surely bring Picot's little house of cards down. If they had any sense, they'd leave her alone. The thought gave him no comfort.

He finished his calls and left out of Bechamin's to walk to Girod Street, checking over his shoulder for a tail. He sensed someone lurking, but he couldn't be sure. Most likely, it was one of Picot's people, which suited him fine. He would have left a trail of bread crumbs if he'd had any.

When he got to the Girod Street address, he found Paul Baudel's Oldsmobile parked at the curb. At Valentin's approach, the driver straightened from his slouch against the fender and made a move toward him.

The Creole detective held up a hand and said, "No one's going to be harmed," and waited. The driver studied his face for a few seconds, then shrugged and let him pass.

Valentin went inside, climbed the stairs, and knocked on the door. When Justine opened it, she gave a start, her eyes going wide. He stepped past her.

Baudel was standing in the doorway to the bedroom in a silk dressing jacket. He said, "What is this? Who are you?"

"I'll just require a moment," Valentin said.

Baudel said, "Justine?" in a demanding voice.

She said, "Paul, please," with a tone of familiarity that stung Valentin.

"You need to leave, sir," the Frenchman said.

"I'm going to talk to her first," Valentin said.

Baudel threw up his hands. "Then I'm calling the police," he said, and marched to the corner table that held the telephone set.

Valentin dropped his voice. "Don't stay here tonight. It's dangerous."

"What are you talking about?"

"You're in a fix right now. Just don't stay here tonight."

"Where am I going to go?"

"Miss Antonia's. She's got men watching the doors. I've already called her. It's just for tonight."

She watched his face. In the corner, Baudel was griping into his telephone set about an intruder on the premises at 966 Girod Street.

Valentin said, "You'll do it, then?"

Justine sighed and nodded. "All right, yes."

Baudel put down the phone. "The police are on their way."

"I'm leaving," Valentin said.

"No, you are not, sir!" the Frenchman snapped, and reached out with a clumsy hand to snatch his cuff.

Valentin whipped his hand away and let out a blunt laugh that this dandy was playing tough. He wondered what kind of fool Justine had fallen in with. "You'll want to stay out of it. You understand?" His eyes were so hard that Baudel took an involuntary step back, looking like he was about to swallow his Adam's apple whole.

"When the police show up, you can tell them my name is Valentin St. Cyr," the detective said. He looked at Justine, who appeared not to know whether to cry or laugh over this little drama. Then he walked out and closed the door behind him.

When he got to the banquette, he nodded to Baudel's driver and sauntered away. It would be at least another ten minutes before a patrolman would show up, and by that time he would be long gone.

***

One of his telephone calls from Bechamin's was to ask Whaley to find Beansoup and then meet him back-of-town, with or without the automobile. He also told him what was going to transpire and gave him the opportunity to refuse. The man had a family, after all.

"Whaley wouldn't hear of it. Not only did he feel an obligation to Valentin for helping him find a situation; he was still enough of a copper to want to see a couple of murdering miscreants taken down. Valentin didn't miss the edge of excitement in his voice. Doing the bidding of a ward boss had to be boring work.

It was seven o'clock when he turned the corner onto Rampart Street and saw the Ford parked there and Whaley and Beansoup pacing up and down. They shook hands solemnly all around, though Whaley and the kid could barely hide their excitement. When Valentin tapped the bulge under his jacket, Whaley pulled back the lapel to reveal a Colt .38 double-action in a shoulder holster.

Valentin laid out their plan and sent Beansoup on his way. Then the detective jerked his head and he and Whaley left the car and stepped into a saloon two doors from the corner called Johnny's Spot. As they went through the door, Whaley said casually, "You see who's across the way?" He laughed. "Little sot name of Tyler. You know that one?"

Valentin said, "Oh, yes, I've been expecting him."

With Beansoup stoking the fires, the whispered word went ahead of them along Rampart Street.

Valentin St. Cyr, the Creole detective, the one who had not a week ago had a woman murdered in his rooms, was back on Rampart Street with a onetime copper in tow. Those who might not know him from Storyville remembered him from the days when Bolden was roaming the same haunts, blowing jass so hot and loud it could wake the dead.

They started at one end and worked their way west. They hit all the saloons, and at every one there was music playing. Downtown New Orleans and even Storyville might be quiet on a Sunday night, but out on Rampart Street, it just kept going. If there was any day of rest, it was Monday.

Musicians from every corner of back-of-town New Orleans would show up because they could still play whatever they wanted there. There were few whites, some Creoles and Italians, many colored. The music they made was fast, loose, and raw, the way it was supposed to be.

Valentin and Whaley hadn't been on the street more than an hour when Beansoup caught up with them and passed the word that a couple of brutes had showed up and looked to have mayhem in mind. They were tossing saloons, slapping customers, demanding information about a Creole named St. Cyr, who was somewhere on the street, accompanied by an Irish copper.

For the next hour, Valentin and Whaley stayed one step ahead of Dawes and Williams. Beansoup sprinted back and forth, all red faced and sweating as he dropped hints in one direction and delivered reports of the miscreants' progress in the other.

The two had been throwing down whiskey at every stop, getting drunker and meaner as they passed over Jackson Avenue, Freret Street, then First and Second streets.

Now it seemed that the detective and his partner had turned into ghosts. Everywhere Dawes and Williams went, the word was "just missed them" or "just left out." Some street Arab kept chattering that St. Cyr and his partner were only one door ahead.

They could never quite catch up, and so by the time they reached the saloon on the corner of Rampart and Fourth, they were so drunk and angry that they were ready to either kill the next person who crossed them or turn around, go home, and forget about this rich people's mess.

Then they stepped back out onto the corner, looked across the street and saw the prey they'd been stalking, standing on the opposite banquette with his hands in his pockets. The other one, the red-faced Irishman, was nowhere in sight.

The two criminals exchanged a greedy leer. The mulatto Williams moved a few paces to his right to cut off an escape. Though they all knew if St. Cyr ran now, he'd never live it down.

A few doors back, a jass band started up with the merry tootle of a clarinet over a rattling drum and a thudding bass and then, like a call to battle, a braying trumpet. When Valentin heard the raucous music and realized that they were going to perform their bloody ballet to horns and drums, he couldn't help but smile.

"What's funny, you?" Dawes called over. A half second later a hammer cracked and he jerked his head around to see Whaley standing to one side of Williams with his Colt pistol pointing directly at the mulatto's temple.

"I think that right there is amusing," Valentin said.

The saloon door opened and two fellows stepped onto the banquette, saw what was happening, and dove back through the door. Five seconds later it banged again, and a dozen men came tumbling out to watch the action.

Williams croaked, "Dawes? What the hell?" Sweat was running down his face.

"Go ahead and shoot him then," Dawes muttered with a bloodshot glare. "You think I give a good fuck?"

Williams cried, "Shut up, goddamnit!"

"Go ahead," Dawes repeated. "He ain't nothin' but a no-good nig—"

The word was cut in half as Valentin stepped up in a blur that Dawes barely caught out of the side of his drunken eye to crack him on the jaw with his whalebone sap, a sweeping uppercut that fractured the bone as it tore it out of the socket and knocked him off his feet and onto his back. Then, in a motion that had both Whaley and the man he held at gunpoint in open-mouthed gapes, Valentin switched the sap to his left hand and drew his pistol with his right, leveling it at the middle of the broad forehead.

Dawes grunted through his shattered jaw, a harsh animal sound. Valentin stared down into his eyes, saw the same hollow darkness that Dominique must have met in her last moments, without a spark of pity, indeed nothing human at all. Even now, Dawes was too stupid to be afraid, lying there and looking up with the blank gaze of an idiot.

Now heads were poking out of saloon doors all around the intersection, and pedestrians stopped to point and stare. They were gathering a crowd. The next five seconds hung suspended, as the raging, crazy, faraway sound of jass played on. Valentin had a gripping urge to pull the trigger feel the percussion, hear the roar and see the hole explode in Dawes's brain, then watch the cold light in those eyes die.

Instead he said something, one word that no one quite caught, and abruptly backed away. From far off came the winding wail of a police siren. He was out of time. He looked over at Whaley. "Can you hold them?"

"I've got them," Whaley said. "And it would be my pleasure to shoot either one or both."

A few seconds later Valentin had disappeared, evaporating into the darkness in such a sudden moment that no one on the scene could testify as to which way he had gone.

The rain had started falling again, the sort of cool and silky drizzle that visited New Orleans in those days just beyond the end of summer's tail, but before the cold of winter set in. It fell from the night sky in thin, lazy drops, drenching the Crescent City from the Irish Channel to Metairie. Everything that was moving slowed. At any given window, a silhouette might appear as someone looked up at the misty moon. It was that kind of rain.

Anyone who happened to be at a window near the corner of St. Charles Avenue and Fifth Street would have seen one citizen who appeared to be in a hurry, a Creole-looking fellow in a gray suit, his shoulders hunched, as he strode along the banquette in the direction of Prytania Street.