Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (15 page)

"I think it was Henry Harris."

Frank's cup clattered and some of the coffee spilled out. He gaped at Valentin. "Henry Harris!
Gesù!
" he cried in Italian. "What the hell have you got yourself into?"

"I don't know. That's what I'm wondering. Why did he bother to send those two?"

The saloon keeper sat back, his mouth tight, regarding Valentin critically. "No, the question is why the hell are you doing this?"

"I told you. Because the daughter's paying me."

"Oh? Because she's paying you." Frank gave him a sardonic look. "Is that all?"

"What else?"

"She a peach?"

Valentin smiled slightly. "If you like your women cagey, she'd probably be all right."

"What's that mean?"

"It means she's a sharp one, that's all." He let it go at that.

Frank shook his head in distraction, then drained his cup, got up from his chair, and ambled off to the grocery, leaving Valentin alone with his thoughts.

A half hour later, the Creole detective stepped outside to find Beansoup eyeing the young maids out of the mansions who were passing by on their morning errands, and making comments that would have gotten his face slapped if he did not present such a comical figure. The girls, most of whom knew him and his antics, just laughed and went about their business. He took advantage of the quiet moments to blow some blue notes on his harmonica.

When he spied Valentin, he put the harmonica in his shirt pocket, strolled over, sniffed once, hitched his trousers, and rubbed his hands together. "What you got for me?" he asked, his voice curiously deep.

Valentin gave him his instructions and sent him on his harmonica-tootling way.

The detective climbed the three flights to the
Daily Picayune
newsroom and asked to see Robert Dodge. The reporter appeared after a few moments, a short, thick man in his forties, dressed in a white shirt that was going yellow and the trousers and vest of a three-piece suit. He had mouse-gray hair over a broad face that was fringed by an erratic beard. The eyes behind his tiny wire-rimmed glasses were the bloodshot red of a veteran drinking man. Even as they shook hands, Valentin caught a whiff of something on Dodge's breath and wondered frankly if anyone in the building was sober.

He said, "My name's Valentin St. Cyr, Mr. Dodge. I'd like a few minutes of your time. Joe Kimball told me to come see you."

"Kimball?" Dodge's gaze was wary.

"That's right."

Grudgingly, the reporter ushered him through the swinging gate and then through one of the doors behind the front desk.

The air in the room they entered was thick with smoke from dozens of cigars and cigarettes, and fairly vibrating with sound. Typing machines clattered under the gray cloud as copyboys streaked around the desks like fleet mice while the men at the desks barked commands. Indeed, amid that din, anyone who wanted to speak at all had to yell. It was like a battlefield in there.

The detective trailed Dodge to the back corner of the room, where the noise and the smoke were diminished. The reporter gestured to the chair opposite his desk and sank into the one behind it, a swivel affair with torn leather covering.

Valentin, regarding his host, thought Dodge had about him a look of ruined gentility that he had seen before. Usually, it was scions of families that had lost everything in the war and went about drinking themselves into oblivion as they mourned the Confederacy along with their lost wealth and glory. Dodge had somehow managed to hang on to enough of this former opulence to make an appearance in that company. Though who knew how? Even now, seated in his creaking chair, he displayed a collapsing posture that, along with those watery red eyes, marked a lifelong drinker. There would be a bottle in the desk, and Valentin knew that before the hands on the clock advanced much further, Dodge would go in search of it.

The reporter now regarded him with a wet gaze, as if something had just dawned on him. "I know you," he announced abruptly. "You caught the one who committed those Black Rose murders in the District in '07."

Valentin's mouth barely tilted. "I believe someone here at the paper made up that name."

"And the business with those jass players." It sounded like an accusation.

"That, too," Valentin said, shifting his chair.

Dodge regarded him vaguely, his brow in an absent furrow, as if his thoughts had gone elsewhere. The detective wondered for an idle moment if this scribbler might be the one who used the byline "Bas Bleu" for the
Picayune
columns he wrote excoriating the high and mighty uptown and down-, an anonymous thorn in the side of the city's hoi polloi. As far as Valentin knew, the man's (or woman's) identity was still a secret. As for Robert Dodge, he looked too flaccid to excoriate anyone.

The detective went directly to the subject at hand. "I'm interested in information that you might be able to provide."

Dodge stared fixedly at his guest. "About John Benedict?"

Valentin kept his face impassive, wondering how the besotted Dodge knew this. "That's right," he said.

"And you want information?"

"Yes."

"For which I would get what?" the reporter asked archly.

"A return of the favor someday."

Dodge considered for a moment, then sat up in his chair and drew open the drawer to his right. "You care for a drink?" Now his tone was almost jovial.

"I wouldn't say no," Valentin said. Any other response would likely end the interview right there.

Dodge went about pouring whiskey into two glasses. It was all done one-handed and out of sight in the drawer. He handed Valentin a glass, raised his own in a small toast, then downed its contents in one quick swallow. The glass went back into the drawer. It had taken all of five seconds. Valentin sipped more gently, cupping the glass between his palms. It was only ten o'clock.

"So," Dodge said, leaning back with a quiet smack of his lips.

"Whatever you can tell me about Mr. Benedict would be helpful."

Dodge considered, nodding. "Yes, I suppose it would," he said with sudden irritation. "I suppose it would be very helpful to you if I told you who shot him to death on Rampart Street. That would be pleasant. Except that I don't
know.
"

Valentin, perplexed by the bizarre rant, said, "I didn't think you did."

Dodge now nodded his head with blank melancholy. He seemed to be a man who fell into moods at the drop of a hat. Valentin wondered if he was going to be able to keep him on the subject.

"The Benedicts are an old-line American family," he began. "The grandfather was in shipping after the war. John, Senior, married into acreage in St. Martin Parish. He had three sons and a daughter. John Louis, the one who was killed, was the eldest. I don't quite recall the others' names. They all went into shipping, except for the daughter, of course. She lives in the Garden District. She married one of the..." He blinked, hesitating. "... the, uh ... uh..."

"Carters," a voice piped up.

Valentin turned to see a young man of perhaps twenty standing by the next desk over, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

"Did someone ask you for that?" Dodge snapped at him.

The young man's face flushed. "Excuse me," he said. He dropped some papers on the desk and hurried off. The reporter watched him go, his brow furrowing with petulance. He paused to open the drawer to pour another quick drink.

"Some people get rich from hard work," he said suddenly, brow furrowing. "Just as many get rich from no work at all. Either way, they learn how to use their money. They don't get harmed by messy business. Embarrassments of a criminal sort never reach a courtroom. Things get fixed. Charges are dismissed. Wounded parties receive a monetary award. And life goes on."

Valentin got the impression that Dodge had strayed off and was waxing philosophical on American New Orleans' particular brand of corruption. He himself preferred Storyville, where the sins were in full view of anyone who bothered to cast an eye about.

"I understand he was an associate of Henry Harris," he said.

Dodge hesitated, then nodded. "I think that's right."

Valentin thought of something and threw it out. "And then he retired at a fairly early age."

Dodge's eyes shifted. "Well, good for him, I suppose." It was an odd thing to say; Dodge seemed to be nursing a vague disdain for the very people he was paid to write about. Maybe he knew them too well.

Valentin said, "Joe said he's been mentioned in the society pages."

Dodge shrugged. "He and his wife were active in the Opera House and some other social events, but that's all. The usual."

"I'd like to—"

"Rampart Street," Dodge interrupted dolefully. "What a place for a man like him to die." Abruptly, he leaned forward, all furtive, his eyes shifting. "Have you asked yourself what the hell was he doing there?"

"I have wondered about that," Valentin said, careful to keep his voice matter-of-fact.

Dodge winked and came up with a devious smile. He was just about to add something, when his eyes shifted and locked on something or someone over Valentin's shoulder. His Adam's apple bobbed, his cheeks paled, and he gave a slight nod. The detective had to make an effort not to turn his head to see who had engaged Dodge's attention at that moment.

Dodge let his gaze slide back to him and straightened in his creaking leather chair. "I won't be a party to this dreadful business!" His voice went up a notch. "If that's what you came for, you wasted your time."

Valentin almost snickered at the haughty pronouncement, delivered as only a drunkard could manage, and for the benefit of anyone listening nearby. He placed his glass with its remaining half inch of whiskey on the desk where anyone who happened to glance their way would see it. It was a deliberate rudeness. Dodge glared, snatched the glass between two fingers, depositing it out of sight in his desk drawer. His eyes batted in annoyance as he pulled a soiled handkerchief from his pocket and began swiping at the whiskey that had sloshed over the rim.

"I'm not here to do your work for you," he said, now all crabby. "You're the damned Pinkerton." He was pouting, his lower lip hanging and his eyes dull with rebuke.

Valentin said, "I'm not a Pink—"

"Maybe you'd have more luck elsewhere." Now Dodge was snappish. "Maybe you should go back down to that damned dungeon and see your friend Kimball."

"Maybe I should." Valentin got to his feet.

"Because you're wasting your time here!" It came out much too loud.

"Thank you for the hospitality," the detective said dryly.

Dodge didn't speak and didn't look up. Valentin turned on his heel and made his way across the room, walking a maze path between the desks. He looked around casually, to see if anyone was taking an interest in him, perhaps the person who had passed Robert Dodge the silent message. No one caught his eye, and he walked out of the room, through the door into the lobby, and down the staircase to the street.

***

He had gone only a half block when he heard his name called. The young man who had blurted the information about the Carters hurried to catch up with him.

"Mr. St. Cyr? My name's Reynard Vernel. I'd like a moment of your time." He took a furtive glance over his shoulder, then pointed farther up the street. "There's a place on the next corner, if you can spare me a few minutes."

The place on the next corner was the Red Bird Café, a drinking establishment with a small dining area in the back. The doors had just opened for the day and the proprietor, an old Frenchman, greeted them with broom in hand. He murmured a welcome and waved to the bar and a platter arrayed with cheese, cold meats, and bread, the typical New Orleans free lunch.

Valentin helped himself. Reynard Vernel didn't take any of the food, but asked the detective if he wanted something to drink. Valentin told him he preferred a cup of coffee.

A minute later they were seated at a small round table in the corner of a back room that the sun through the front windows didn't illuminate. Though there was still enough light for the detective to get a fair look at his companion.

He was slightly tan in the face, with dark hair cut badly and a light mustache on his upper lip. In a suit that was either a hand-me-down or purchased secondhand and worn walking shoes, he was just shy of ragged, though his expression was bright with eager good humor.

He pushed Valentin's cup across the table. He had ordered a mug of beer for himself, and was so nervous that when he drank that, the glass rattled against his front teeth.

Valentin sipped his coffee and began nibbling the food on his plate. "What can I do for you?" he inquired.

"I know who you are, Mr. St. Cyr. I've read about your cases in the paper. And I've heard people talk." Vernel swallowed nervously. "And thought I might ... I want to
write
about you," he blurted.

The detective cocked an eyebrow. "Do what?"

"Write about you," Vernel said. "Follow you on a case and then write about it."

Valentin smiled as if he thought it was a joke. "Write about what? I don't understand."