Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (18 page)

He heard the snickers and whispers in the background while he waited for them to roll the gurney out of the vault. In the past he held himself above these cruelties, refusing to give his tormentors the pleasure of a response. Now he looked from one to the next, catching their eyes and glaring until they turned away.

One of the attendants pulled back the sheet. He knew the face, as he knew every face he had ever photographed. He had a complete album in his head. This one was even easier; he had seen it not six months before.

"Charles Kane," he announced. "Runs one of the companies that outfit ships. Or he did. I took his photograph, more than one time."

"You sure?" one of the coppers asked him.

He just looked at the policeman and said, "Am I done here?" He didn't wait for an answer before walking out, clanking down the hall, sounding like a rusty old machine with bad gears.

Valentin found the two men, as arranged, at Fewclothes Cabaret, a noisy Basin Street music hall at night but a more genteel saloon during the afternoon and early evening. From the bar or one of the window tables, a fellow could watch the curious parade that passed up and down the line and get a world of information from a simple posture: the rounders took a slow pace, eyes flicking hawklike; the erring married men scurrying by on nervous feet, their shoulders hunched. The college boys out for a lark strutted along like young cocks. And then there were the dregs: drunks, hopheads, and the cheapest whores, who as often as not staggered about the banquette, making their miserable ways on unsteady legs.

The two men were standing at the curve of the bar, leaning back with one foot up on the rail. Each man had a mug of beer in front of him. The younger fellow, who went by the name of Willis, was portly and dark-haired, sporting a slick mustache, and appeared quite pleased to be there. Witnessing the aftermath of a bloody crime on Rampart Street suited him, and he pumped Valentin's hand with vigor. The older, thinner Mr. Royston had a pinched, bearded, and altogether glum face. It was just as clear that he would rather be elsewhere. When Valentin asked after the third of their party, Willis announced that Mr. Bedford would not be joining them, being the "no-good, damned coward that he was."

"I think he's run off," Valentin said.

Willis stared, then looked at his friend, smiling slightly. Royston gave a shrug, as if this came as no surprise.

"I want to thank you gentlemen for your cooperation," Valentin said.

Royston said, "What is it you want?"

"Just for you to tell me what happened that night."

Willis fell to the task with relish. "We come out of Johnny O's, on the corner of Third Street. They had a jass band there; they were tearing it up, all right. This here trombone player—big nigger must have gone three hundred pounds—he was workin' that thing, had every—"

"After you left," Valentin murmured.

Willis blinked. "Oh, yeah. They run us out of there. It was late. The band was done. We were about the last ones."

"What time?"

"It was..." Willis frowned. "I'm not sure ... Maybe four
A.M.
?"

"It was after," Royston muttered.

Valentin and Willis both turned to stare at him. He kept his mournful eyes fixed on the street beyond the window. "I heard the bells on the quarter hour."

"Well, then," Willis continued momentarily. "We went out there on the banquette and got to talking about what we was going to do next. Bedford and me, we wanted to see if we could find us one more door was still open." He tilted his head and smiled dimly. "This citizen wanted to pack in and go home."

Valentin glanced at Royston. The man didn't comment.

"Well, we wasn't thinking about where we was going, and the next thing I know, I heard something sounded like a shot. There wasn't nothing more, and we didn't give it any thought. Course we'd all had a good bit to drink. Then we got on Rampart Street and..." He took a dramatic pause. "... that's when we saw him." He took a swill from his glass. "First we saw someone bending down, looked like a damn crow on a rat. When we got closer, I saw the blade. I yelled and he jumped up and run away. We come up to the one in the street, and the first thing I saw was that hole in his throat. He was looking up at the sky and his eyes was open. Good Lord, it was awful!" He shuddered. "I run right to the call box. Then we waited around till the coppers come."

Valentin nodded. It was mostly what he had already noted from the police reports. "Outside the saloon ... did you see anyone?"

"What's that?"

"Was there anyone on the street?"

"No, we didn't see a soul out," Willis said. "It was pretty dark out there and nothin' was moving, not a—"

"I did," Royston cut in, as much, it seemed, to get his companion to shut up as to offer the information. Again, Valentin and Willis had cause to stop and gape at him.

"You saw what?" Willis said.

"I saw someone on the street." Royston still refused to pull his gaze from the window.

Valentin studied him. "Someone you recognized?"

Royston shook his head and his eyes made the briefest flinch. "No one I knew," he said.

"Can you describe him?"

"No, I can't," Royston said, sounding short and sour. "All I know is he was wearing one of those long coats. A duster. That's the only reason I noticed. Don't see them much anymore. Not in the city. Couldn't see his face, though."

"When the hell was this?" Willis crabbed, irked at losing his position at center stage.

"It was while we were standing on the corner," Royston said. "He was across the street."

"Then how come I didn't see it?"

"Because you and Bedford was too busy having a spat about where you were going next. And you were stumbling drunk." He paused. "But Bedford saw him, too."

"Can you tell me if he was short or tall?" Valentin said.

"More like tall," Royston said. "I think."

"What happened to this person?"

"Don't know. He was there for a few seconds and then he was gone." His frown deepened. "Hell, maybe I didn't see anyone at all." He looked at Valentin for the first time since they'd walked in. "Are we finished?" he said. "I've got business."

Valentin looked at Willis. "Can you think of anything else?"

"I, uh ... uh..." Willis shook his head, chagrined at having nothing more to tell.

"Thank you both," Valentin said.

Willis issued a cheery good-night. Royston barely nodded, and the two men ambled out into the falling night.

Valentin was about to leave as well, then decided to sit for a while. The saloon was still quiet, so he ordered a small whiskey and carried it to the table near the window, where he could watch the eddies along Basin Street.

The street traffic picked up, and more souls began drifting through the door. In another two hours, there would be a small crowd on hand. Sunday was often regarded as a day of rest and Monday a day to open quietly. Though Fewclothes would be plenty rowdy the rest of the week, this night they would have only a professor at the piano. The sporting girls and their rounders would come by, taking the night off from the action. Who knew who might walk in? The thought gave Valentin a start, and he drank off his whiskey, left a Liberty quarter on the table, and made his way out the door, heading for home.

The whispers first broke out when the maid who had greeted the policemen at the Kanes' door told the maid at the next address, who told the lady of the house, who told her friend across the street. Soon tongues were wagging like flags in a stiff breeze as the word went over picket and wrought-iron fences, up and down the banquettes, and into the stores, so that hours before the story in the afternoon edition of the
Daily Picayune
and the
Sun
hit the street, it was already old news from one end of the Garden District to the other.

At the stroke of ten, a black carriage pulled up to the Kane home on Third Street, and a man in a tall black hat and a shiny black suit stepped down and went inside. Before he left, his driver carried a wreath of black roses that was in back of the carriage and placed it on the front door.

Anne Marie Benedict heard about what had happened in a telephone call from Mr. Delouche. The attorney first asked after her mother's health, then her own, then took a dramatic pause and proceeded to relate in a few somber sentences that over the weekend Charles Kane had fallen into the river and drowned. A dreadful accident, he explained, and took another of his leaden pauses.

It was all she could do to steady herself. It was a good thing they were speaking on the telephone or he surely would have seen the way the blood drained from her face. She felt her stomach churn, and for a few seconds she thought she was going to be sick.

She knew from the silence that Delouche was waiting for her to say something. She couldn't speak, though, and stared at the wall before her, hoping that the attorney would excuse himself and ring off. He wouldn't, of course, so she made herself breathe deeply and hold on.

She had known Mr. Kane. Like her father, he'd been a major figure in New Orleans' shipping industry. She recalled absently that there had once been talk about one of his sons coming round to court her, which she nipped as soon as she met the young lout. He was too much like his father, a blustering, bullying sort. Finally, Kane's name had been on the letter she had pulled from the desk drawer, the same one she had laid before her father.

She blinked in concentration, trying to grab hold of the thoughts that were tumbling around in her brain. While she had always disliked Kane, she hadn't wished him dead. Not him or anyone else. He was, though, and only a week after her father's murder. The deaths had to be connected. Probably the same person had caused both, and it surely wasn't the poor Negro who was sitting in Parish Prison. Whoever committed the crime, she sensed that she was the one who had set it in motion. Though she didn't understand how. And that, she now realized, was why she needed St. Cyr.

She wanted Mr. Delouche to go away so she could think. No such luck; the lawyer, still unwilling to keep his nose out of the family's affairs, where it had been parked for the better part of two decades, stayed on the line. He went about addressing some minor matters relating to the estate that she couldn't follow. Anne Marie was too distracted and didn't catch a word of it. Then she heard the name "St. Cyr."

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"I was asking if Mr. St. Cyr has come up with any useful information." She could tell by his clipped tone that he was still peeved about her going against his advice and hiring the detective. Though he'd had no better luck dissuading her when she called him on Saturday about the autopsy report, he wasn't giving up.

"Please consider setting a limit on his time," the attorney was saying, the pout still in his voice. "Otherwise, he'll bleed you dry."

Oh, yes, and that's your job,
Anne Marie was thinking. What she said was, "He'll be on the job for a while. He believes this Lee is a scapegoat."

"The police say otherwise," Delouche retorted.

"I don't think the police know a damn thing and I don't think they care, either," she said, too sharply. Abruptly switching to a smooth tone, she added, "But, of course, you'll be my first call if he comes up with any useful information."

The beat of thick silence told her that he didn't believe she'd do anything of the kind. He murmured a sighing good-bye.

Relieved, Anne Marie laid the hand piece back in the cradle. She wasn't about to give the attorney news about St. Cyr. She hadn't told him or the detective about the call she received the day before from a man named George Reynolds. Now it came back to her.

The phone had rung and when she picked it up, Reynolds identified himself, half stuttering over the introduction. She remembered his name in the funeral guest book, though she didn't recall meeting him.

"I was wondering ... has there been any more word about this terrible tragedy?" He sounded like he was gasping for breath.

"What kind of word?"

"Who might have been responsible..."

"We don't know that."

"What do the police have to say?"

She'd had one too many brandies, and without thinking about it, blurted out that the police had made only a halfhearted effort, then arrested a man who wasn't guilty. So she had engaged a private detective to look into it. When Reynolds asked if the detective was a Pinkerton, she told him it was a fellow who knew the back-of-town streets better that any of those operatives out of the Hibernia Bank Building, and that she had confidence that he would do a good job. She heard herself speaking these bleary words and wondered precisely when she had become an expert on the relative worth of New Orleans' private investigators.

Reynolds didn't say why he was so concerned, and before she could ask him, he thanked her and broke the connection.

Thinking about that call, the one from Delouche, and the news about Charles Kane, she conjured an image of a tangled knot of dirty twine, the world of the men who had been her father's associates. And Mr. Henry Harris had his fingers on every strand.

She had known Harris's hovering presence through all the years she was growing up. He was more an institution than a person, the embodiment of an organization that tainted everyone who worked in the industry, from the lowliest colored janitor right up to men like her father, who looked up to him as some kind of deity. Even after her father was dead and done, Harris's hand reached out to touch her.