Mignon (10 page)

She had photographs, water colors, and plats, and they both seemed to take a delight in pointing everything out—the four wharves the town had, ramps up the riverbank, with railed platforms up top, “nice, well-built structures,” as he put it, “not like those Teche wharfboats, all full of bugs and rats, or those Mississippi levees, with their rum holes, gambling dives, and cathouses”; the “cistrens,” as they called them, just visible through the trees, “as there’s no wells in Alexandria—it’s all rainwater, which we run off the roofs and valve to our various cisterns, these big ones that you see, which stand on trusties so they warm in the light of the sun, and the drinking ones underground, where the water keeps fresh and cool”; the big, new hotel, a three-story, brick affair, “one of the finest in the land, except just as it was getting finished the dayum war hit, and their furniture never came”; most lovingly noticed of all, the line of stores on Front Street, looking out on the river, as the bank itself had no structures on it, with of course the Landry store, near the corner down from the hotel, so it faced the lower end of Biossat’s, or the upper wharf, and its twin next door, the Schmidt van, pipe and kettle house; Mrs. Landry’s grave, in Pineville, which seemed to be a little town across the river. When I’d got so I thought I knew Alexandria better than I knew Annapolis, he closed the album and mused: “What I miss most, living here in New Orleans, is the cleanliness of it—but of course that’s a natural thing. Alexandria’s where the Southwest begins.”

“Southwest’s cleaner than other places?” I asked.

“Mr. Cresap, I have to say—”

“Call him Bill,” she cut in.

“Bill, I have to say it is. Texas may be dry. It may be dusty and poor. A Texas ranchhouse is just six skinned poles in front, holding up the porch, and no poles at all behind, as there’s nothing back there to hold up—but it’s big. And it’s clean.”

“I’ll have to go there some time.”

“You could do a lot worse.”

Perhaps to draw me in it again, she recalled more points about the morning, and that was when she said what she did, about hoping they’d hang Burke. And then he downright astonished me. “I certainly hope they don’t,” he said, almost in the tone of a prayer.

“But why?” she asked him, bewildered.

“Daughter, he’s still my partner.”

“You’d still call him that? After what he did—”

“For sixty thousand bucks? I certainly would.”

“But Father, how can you? How—”

“Mignon, we’re chained! We’re articled to one another! Everything’s in his name, and if he doesn’t claim my cotton, once the Army seizes it, I lose everything! All he need do is nothing, and that sinks me!”

“But he turned on you! He—”

“And what am I supposed to do? Turn on myself?”

“
You could kill him!
”

His face darkened, and his hands, still on the table, closed into two big fists. He said: “I could, that’s true. He deserves it, and I imagine I’m able. But that would get me hung, and it would not file a claim for my cotton when it gets seized. And if they do something to him, saving me the trouble—like hanging him, or holding him in jail so he can’t be present up there to take receipt for the seizure, that wrecks our claim too. Yes, I’d like nothing better than to see him swing from a gallows, but not—not,
not
,
NOT
—to the tune of sixty thousand bucks.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“I? Nothing. It’s not up to me to do.”

“You’re certainly talking funny. And that explains something else: why you acted so meek when you saw him up there today. The least you could have done was punch him, and all you did was say hello.”

“That’s right. Very friendly.”

“To that
rat!
”

“Daughter, once again: To that
partner
.”

It was a twist I hadn’t thought of, and though I could see his point, walking back to the hotel I found myself upset. And I wasn’t much surprised to see Dan there in the lobby, apparently waiting for me, beckoning me to come over. I sat down with him on the same sofa I’d sat on to start things off with Olsen. When I asked “What’s the good word?” he paid no attention, but piled in at once: “Bill, be in my office tomorrow morning eleven o’clock, to answer questions about Burke, these things you’ve accused him of. Have Mr. Landry with you, and also Mrs. Fournet.”

“Well I guess I can make it—fine.”

“Don’t do any guessing, Bill. You make it, or wish you had. My reason for coming tonight is to preclude a soldiers’ visit to the Landry flat tomorrow, and a trip on foot for those two up here, under guard. This way, if it’s known you all three will be there, no order will be issued.”

“I thank you, Dan. I’m really grateful.”

“You needn’t thank me—I’m not doing it for you. I wouldn’t mind a bit seeing you marched through the streets. But
she
seemed like a very nice girl.”

“Then she’ll thank you, I’m sure.”

“How’d you like to go to hell?”

“I ignore your remark. I’ll have her there.”

“See that you do.
And don
’
t bring Olsen
.”

I
HAD HER THERE, WITH HER
father, and promptly at eleven o’clock we were all in the selfsame places we’d been in the day before—Dan, Jenkins, Burke, Mignon, Dan’s orderly, and I. But in addition, Mr. Landry was there, as well as a lieutenant colonel named Rogers, from the Judge Advocate’s office, a belted guard in charge of Burke, and Pierre, Burke’s gippo, in his reefer, his sailor hat in his hand. The lieutenant colonel was senior, so everyone waited for him to begin, which he did after taking his time and shuffling papers around. He was a smallish man who looked like a lawyer, and presently he said: “All right, let’s take up first this money which William Cresap alleges to have been paid by the prisoner Burke to Major Jenkins of this staff. Mr. Cresap, do you still have the hundred-dollar bill which you say was passed?”

“I do.” I took it out and showed it.

“You saw this bill passed?”

“No sir, I didn’t.”

“Then how do you know it was passed?”

“I saw it first when Burke offered it to me in payment for services and then an hour later, when Major Jenkins paid it out to a man for a case of champagne. To have it as evidence in the Landry case, I bought it for a hundred and one dollars.”

“You’re sure it’s the same bill?”

“I am, definitely.”

“By what means of identification?”

“This jag torn in one end.”

“Mr. Cresap, since neither Burke nor Major Jenkins makes any admission regarding this bill, do you have any further identification?”

“No, Colonel Rogers, I have not.”

“You realize any bill could have a jag?”

“No two would be jagged the same way.”

“They could be! They could be—couldn’t they?”

“Not so as to set up a
reasonable
doubt.”

“Mr. Cresap, a jag is no identification at all.”

“Nothing is—under a coat of whitewash.”

“Whitewash, did you say? What do you mean by that?”

“You heard me, and you know what I mean.”

My hackles were rising as I saw the drift of his questions, and I got up from my chair, but Mr. Landry came over and pushed me back, trying to keep me quiet. Colonel Rogers started to roar about people who made “wild, reckless charges, without a scintilla of proof,” but I cut in to tell him: “Talk louder, Colonel—so maybe you’ll believe what you’re saying!” Then she got in it, screaming at him furiously: “You think he didn’t take it, this money Burke paid him? Then why weren’t you here yesterday, as I was, to see the look on his face when Mr. Cresap showed him that bill? Why was it he turned white as a sheet? What was he scared of, Colonel, if it wasn’t the truth catching up?”

“Daughter! Please!” said Mr. Landry.

“Are you trying to shut me up?”

But he did shut her up, by putting his hand to her mouth and pushing her back in her chair, the way he’d pushed me. Colonel Rogers walked around, his face purple, trying to get control. At last he whispered: “Bribery charge dismissed.”

“My, I’m surprised,” I said.

“That’ll be all!” he yelled at me.

It was five minutes before he calmed down, shuffled his papers some more, and started over. Then he asked for the trial draft of the informer’s note, the one pasted together from scraps, and I got it out, laying it down in front of him. He studied it, then announced: “There can be no doubt at all, in any fair person’s mind, that the last informer’s note and this trial draft are by one and the same hand.” He was pretty solemn about it, and his tone was cold, so it suddenly dawned on me that with his brother officer whitewashed, he wouldn’t be so lenient as he had been. Or in other words, Jenkins-and-Burke was one thing, Burke alone a different kettle of fish. I caught her eye, and motioned she should keep quiet. She nodded and stared at him. He went on: “The next question is: Whose hand?”

“His!” said Burke, pointing at me.

“Quiet! ... Mr. Cresap, you pasted up these scraps?”

“I did, yes sir.”

“Where did you get them, please?”

“From Burke’s room at the City Hotel.”

Then, as he questioned me, I told of seeing the scraps by accident, of signing on as William Crandall, of having the skeleton key made, of searching the room that night, and of returning to the St. Charles, where I pasted up my exhibit. At first I spilled it freely, being just as annoyed as she was at Mr. Landry’s strange behavior in shushing things up for Burke, and feeling exactly as she did that the point had already been reached where partnership had to end. But little by little, I smelled I was heading for trouble, and that the colonel probably knew I’d had help that night, and what kind. That’s where I began to fence, to protect Marie; after what I’d done to her, I felt I couldn’t involve her. Maybe, as a gambling-house proprietor, she didn’t have much reputation, but I had made the point that to me she was a lady. Yet the questions kept boring in, and at last the colonel said: “Mr. Cresap, here’s what we’re driving at: Burke’s man, Pierre Legrand, who sits here, insists he never left that room, that you couldn’t have made a search, as he was there all the time to stop you. Now please search your memory well, as to whether you can prove he left the room that night. Have you a witness to it?”

“... I have to say I have not.”

“The hotel clerk has informed us that William Crandall, that day, took a room for one Eloise Brisson, and that a veiled woman checked in. Is this true?”

“I prefer not to say.”

“You have to say, Mr. Cresap.”

“I was seeking evidence as counsel, and as such my actions were privileged. I don’t have to say.”

“You do, to sustain your charge.”

“Then consider my charge withdrawn.”

“Mr. Cresap, charges aren’t debts, to be canceled at one man’s caprice—they allege crimes, in this case fabrication of false information, and once made they have to be gone into. Now
your
charge, if true, which we incline to believe, can be substantiated, we think, only by this woman, who was seen by the night maid whispering to Legrand at his door, and who may, as your decoy, have lured him out of that room. It’s essential we question her—but neither police, provost guard, nor city directory has any record of an Eloise Brisson. Was this a false name, Mr. Cresap?”

“On that I have nothing to say.”

“You don’t deny it, then?”

“I make no statement of any kind.”

“What’s her true name, Mr. Cresap?”

“I wouldn’t say if I knew.”

“Can you bring her incog, for interrogation?”

“Whether I can or not, I won’t.”

Mignon, by now, had become her stone nymph in a garden, or at least had turned to marble, and I dared not meet her eye as she stared unwinking at me. But who got into it now was Mr. Landry, as he interrupted to say: “Colonel, could I put in a word? In behalf of getting this straightened out?” And as the colonel didn’t stop him, he went on: “No one who knows Mr. Cresap could doubt his word, and the same goes for whoever knows Frank Burke.
But
, if those scraps were found in that basket, it doesn’t say Frank put ’em there! Think, sir, how many people had passkeys on that floor, and could have planted this evidence, as a way of throwing the blame on Frank for the injury done to me! Think how many people wish me ill—not to go any further with it, the ones that owe me money, right here in New Orleans! I strongly urge on you, that all this could be true that’s been spoken of here today, and at the same time prove nothing at all!”

“You’re defending this man here?”

“Frank Burke is my friend.”

“And your godpappy, no?”

“He’s my trusted partner.”

Burke, who had stared in astonishment, got the point at last and put out his hand, to squeeze Mr. Landry’s arm. Then she got in it: “And another thing, Colonel Rogers,” she said, very sweetly: “Frank leads a decent life—he wouldn’t bring some woman in, a honey off the streets, to help with some sneaky search. How could he? Keeping this man in his rooms all the time?”

“God bless you, lass.”

Burke put out his hand to her, and she took it, kissing it, then patting him on the cheek. The colonel watched, then turned again to me, asking: “You still refuse to name this woman?”

“I’ve already told you I won’t.”

“You spoke of a whitewash just now?”

“... I thought I detected one.”

“Of one of our officers here?”

“Of that officer there, Major Jenkins.”

“But when it comes to someone else, like the godpappy of your client, you don’t mind a whitewash, do you? You’re perfectly willing to withhold the information we need to proceed against him?”

“That’s not the idea, Colonel.”

“
What is the idea
,
then?
”

That was Mignon, who jumped up, ran over, leaned close, and screamed: “
Who was this woman?
WHO WAS SHE
?”

“Daughter, that’ll be all.”

Mr. Landry came over, took her by the arm, and led her back to her chair. The colonel, still disregarding them, said to me: “Whitewash is whitewash.”

“Could depend on what’s aimed at.”