Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (17 page)

The older man closed his eyes for a moment. "I haven't, either. She could be dead, for all I know."

Valentin didn't have anything to say to that. To break the mood, he took out John Benedict's ring and placed it on the little rubber mat that was atop the glass case. The jeweler took a breath that was at least half sigh to shake off his melancholy and peered down at it through his thick spectacles.

"What's this?" he asked momentarily. He picked it up and held it to the light, its heavy gold band gleaming bright. "Very nice. Very nice." He looked at Valentin. "What? You want to sell it?"

"No, it's not mine. It has to do with an investigation."

The jeweler came up with a rare smile of small, gray-tinged teeth. "An investigation? In Storyville? I heard you were through with all that."

"I was," Valentin said shortly. "And it's not Storyville."

Solomon looked perplexed.

"What about the ring?" Valentin said.

"The ring ... Oh, yes, fine piece," Solomon pronounced. "First-rate work, a beautiful stone. About perfect." His judicious eye shifted. "Is this evidence in a crime?"

"It turned up among the possessions of a dead man."

Solomon nodded sagely. "Your dead man was wealthy."

"I'd like to know where it might have come from," Valentin said. "Who made it, anything unusual about it, that sort of thing."

The pawnbroker now regarded Valentin deliberately. "Of course, I want to help you," he said. "As kind as you've been to me. I'll have to ask around a little bit. Show it. Without making a lot of noise, of course." He patted Valentin's wrist. "Don't worry. It's not the first time I've handled queer merchandise."

It was true, of course. Who knew how many ill-gotten items were hanging from the walls. The detective could trust Solomon to keep his lips sealed. "I'd appreciate anything you can find out," he said.

"We'll see what we can do," Solomon told him. "I'll send you a message. You're at...?"

"Mangetta's," Valentin told him.

"Mangetta's ... of course. I guess some things don't change."

Valentin took that bit of wisdom out the door with him.

They brought the body into town and deposited it at the city morgue at one o'clock. There was no doctor on duty, and so the corpse, wrapped in linen, was laid out on a cooling board in the vault. Then everyone went to lunch.

When they came back a languid hour later, someone went to check and learned that the police had no reports of a missing person that matched the victim's description. Since the man on the board was obviously no derelict, a kid was sent to the offices of the
Daily Picayune
to collect one of the photographers who made portraits of local gentlemen of influence for the society pages.

While they were waiting, the attendants and coppers on hand eyed the corpse, taking special note of the beautiful pocket watch that was still ticking away despite the soaking in the river and the ring that was on the right hand, a heavy gold affair with a dark blue stone at the center. It was too late, though; sooner or later, the fellow's family would come for him and would want to know what had happened to his fine accessories.

A photographer named Grady showed up an hour later and with some reluctance went inside to view the body. Though he did not personally recall the gentleman, he mentioned a portrait that had appeared in the paper in a story having to do with the christening of a new freight vessel. If that was true, Grady said, then the photograph had likely been taken by the crippled Frenchman, Bellocq, who had made portraits for one or another of the shipbuilders. He offered to go through all the files to try to find a negative if someone was willing to pay.

After a round of discussion, they decided it would be easier just to get the Frenchman to identify the body. A policeman was summoned who knew the narrow back alleys of the Vieux Carré, along one of which Bellocq kept a room and a small studio. The copper was sent off with instructions to roust the photographer and get him downtown by the end of the afternoon.

When Valentin got back to Marais Street, he found Beansoup waiting in the saloon with the news that he had located two of the three characters that were first on the scene of John Benedict's murder, and that they would be waiting at Fewclothes Cabaret at eight o'clock that very evening.

Valentin was astonished. "How did you manage that?" he said.

Beansoup's chest puffed. "'Cause I know what's what, that's how. Turns out the three of them is regulars back-of-town. Two of them work at the same place, too. In the office of a brickworks out toward Metairie." He gave a broad wink and snapped his fingers. "So I run them down."

"What about the third one?" Valentin asked.

Beansoup deflated a little. "That son of a bitch ran off."

"Ran off where?"

"I ain't got no idea. He works for a butcher at the French Market. I went in and asked for him. The butcher went in back and come out and said he'd run off. I guess he heard me asking about him."

"He's probably got some trouble with the law."

"Don't worry about it," Beansoup said. "I'll keep at it."

"You did a damn good job," Valentin said, and laid a Liberty dollar in the boy's palm. Beansoup came up with a grin that split his face like a jack-o'-lantern's.

It was midafternoon when E. J. Bellocq was roused from a ragged slumber by a pounding on his door. At first, he thought it was part of the crazy dream he was having, one of the many. But when it went on, he opened his eyes and growled a curse, figuring another gang of street urchins had come to torment him. Then he heard the shouted word "Police!"

At that, his heart went to chugging as he grabbed for one of his metal crutches. With a grunt of pain, he lurched to his feet and clanked his way to the door.

The patrolman, a hard-looking sort, was standing there in his round-topped helmet, just lifting his nightstick to rap the jamb some more. He took a step back from the smell of the rooms, a fetid odor of damp rot and chemicals in a closed space. He regarded the little Frenchman with disgust, then in a rough voice told him that he was wanted at the morgue at Parish Prison. Sooner rather than later.

"The morgue?" Bellocq squawked in a voice that was often compared to a duck's. "What for?"

"Just make sure you go," the patrolman growled. "I damned sure don't want to come back here." He wrinkled his nose. "Christ Almighty!" He turned to stalk off down the alleyway.

"Who wants me down there?" Bellocq cried after him. "What is this?" The copper ignored him and kept going.

The little Frenchman closed the door and locked it tight, then leaned on the wall to catch his breath. The police? What did they want with him? And at the morgue! What had he done?

Indeed, what
could
he do, even if he had an urge? The various ailments that had cursed Ernest J. Bellocq's body since he was a child had grown harsher over the past year. He was only in his late thirties, and yet he looked like an old man, and an old man in ill health at that. His entire body seemed to be clenching into a crabbed fist, ever tighter. He was sure he was growing shorter as his freakish, hydrocephalic head gained weight. His yellow hair was thinning, and his bulbous, pale blue eyes were often bright with pain. It took an effort for him to move ten steps. So what could he have done that demanded the attention of the police?

It couldn't be the paregoric he took for his pain or the opium he used to ease his sleep; those potions could be purchased by a schoolboy at almost every apothecary and chink laundry in the city.

He thought of his collection of photographs of Storyville prostitutes, taken over a period of years. But he didn't do that work anymore. He didn't get around as well, couldn't mount the gallery steps to the houses and the stairs to the second-floor rooms, and failed to persuade the girls to pose for him. They wanted money now, and he couldn't pay. When he insisted in his strange fierce voice that people would be gazing upon their visages on the walls of museums a hundred years in the future, the girls just laughed and sent him away.

Not that his prints could bring trouble in any case. They were chaste by the standards of the day. Far worse fare was offered for sale at various shops around the District. And the Circus at French Emma Johnson's featured live displays of the crudest sorts, involving men, women, even animals. So his photographs could hardly be suspect.

After he ruminated some more, he thought of Valentin St. Cyr and immediately felt a knot in his stomach. The Creole detective had something to do with the summons to the precinct. He didn't know how, only that it was true.

Valentin was one of the few people he had ever considered a friend. Their paths tangled in the middle of the Black Rose murders, and when it was over, Valentin had stopped coming around—as if he didn't want to encounter anyone who had anything to do with that nightmare. Later the Frenchman found out that he had packed up and left New Orleans. That was in the fall of 1908, and now he was back and delivering trouble directly to Ernest Bellocq's door.

With a grunt of displeasure, Bellocq made his way to his back room to begin to dress for the long trip downtown.

Valentin took a table at Mangetta's front window. A manila envelope had been waiting for him when he got back, and he now opened it and drew out a one-page duplicate of the autopsy report. Whoever had done the work had been careless by intent or habit, because it was a scribbled mess.

His brow knit as he tried to decipher the pen scratches; after a few minutes, he could pick out enough to make some headway. It was all very simple. The victim John Benedict had received a fatal gunshot wound to the throat. The shot had been neatly placed, just chipping the top of Benedict's sternum and entering the soft part beneath his Adam's apple. The trauma was critical and the victim expired within seconds from blood loss and asphyxiation. It didn't say which came first. Not that it mattered. The slug that was recovered was a .45 caliber, not a marksman's pistol by any means. There was no mention of powder burns on the victim's flesh or clothing, either. Taken together, the facts confirmed Valentin's initial judgment that the shot had come from a short distance away, twelve paces at the outside.

He closed his eyes, revisiting the scene on Rampart Street. He could picture the two figures, Benedict and his assailant, meeting on the cobblestones in the dead of night. Since no one had heard any voices raised in argument, it was probably finished quickly. An arm came up and a finger squeezed a trigger. There was an explosion, and Benedict went toppling over, dead within seconds. The killer slipped away into shadows before the echo had died.

Valentin opened his eyes. What had happened on Rampart Street was no robbery, nor was it some spat that got out of hand. It was a planned murder. If he'd had any doubt before, it was gone now.

He viewed the report for another minute, found nothing more, and laid it aside. He picked up the copy of the
Sun
that had been left on the next table over. On page 5, near the bottom, he read that the arraignment of one Thomas Lee, a Negro, aka Ten Penny, had been held on Saturday afternoon, and that sufficient grounds were found to indict the suspect for the murder of John Benedict. The farce was going forward, even though there was more than enough evidence that Ten Penny didn't commit the crime. Valentin wondered if they had gotten a confession out of him. The article didn't say.

They were going ahead with their case against the suspect, which meant that someone downtown was pushing to have it closed in a hurry. Someone else had to be pushing that someone.

Valentin mused for a moment on what Lieutenant Picot must be thinking now. Even as this bit of fraud went forward and powers above bore down on him, he would be aware of a certain Creole detective circling like an alligator in a Louisiana swamp, moving closer to chewing the case to bits. He'd take the blame if that happened; his superiors would make sure of it. He had jumped to arrest Ten Penny for the killing before he had any real evidence. The Negro had already been sitting in jail without a shred of evidence against him and none in sight. Picot had to be sweating.

Valentin folded the paper and pushed it aside. Too bad for him, too.

He got up from the table and went through the saloon and grocery and upstairs to rest for a little while. Just as he put the key in his lock, something moved on the periphery of his vision. He turned his head slightly, casually, and saw Signore Angelo's door in the process of closing. Angelo's dark gaze rested on him for a moment, like the calm stare of an animal. It was rare that the Sicilian was at home during the day, and Valentin wondered if he might be ill. He almost greeted his neighbor but instinct told him to let it be. Angelo's door closed and the lock clacked.

Papá Bellocq could not clamber into a hack without help and he couldn't handle a bicycle, so he walked wherever he went. Though "walk" didn't truly describe his gait, a wheedling, staggering business that he managed only with the aid of steel crutches that banged like castanets on the boards of the banquettes. He drew looks of pity, pointed fingers, rude catcalls. Other pedestrians just looked away from him. No one offered even the smallest word of greeting. He responded to one and all with an inflamed eye.

In this manner he made his way out of the old town and west on Burgundy Street, a tortuous journey. He was thankful that New Orleans was so flat or it would have been impossible for him to get anywhere. Still, it was after five o'clock before he rounded the building and made his creaking way along the alley to the steps that led down to the morgue. He negotiated the stairs like a windup toy in constant danger of collapsing into a broken heap. Red, sweating, and cursing in his native tongue, he crept along the long hallway to the room where they kept the bodies.