Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (33 page)

When Beansoup got the message, a half hour or so later, he was strolling along Canal Street with the girl, showing her the sights and talking like he owned the place.

He went to work immediately, all ready to show her what a rounder like him could do. But of all the times for it to happen, he couldn't locate the detective anywhere. He went up and down the street, asking all the regulars if anyone had spotted him. He checked some of the watering holes where they played jass. Then he went to Marais Street, left the girl on the banquette, and went inside. No one had seen St. Cyr at Mangetta's, either. He went up to the second floor, just in case. He knocked on Valentin's door, got no answer. In his desperation, he went down the hall and knocked on the neighbor's door. He was turning away when the door cracked open, startling him. A rough-looking Italian stood staring at him, his eyes shining like opals.

"I'm looking for..." Beansoup made a vague gesture toward St. Cyr's room. He started to ask if the Italian had seen his neighbor, but the door closed as abruptly as it had opened.

When he came back outside, the girl took one look at him and said, "What's wrong?"

After another hour making rounds, Beansoup decided that if the Creole detective wasn't around, it was because he didn't want to be found.

They went back to Miss Antonia's mansion. They wouldn't let him in to see Miss Justine, so he told the girl at the door to pass the message that Mr. St. Cyr couldn't be found this night. After that, he walked his companion down Basin Street so she could catch a car home.

Walking away from the corner, he threw up his hands in exasperation, thinking about how his night might have ended if he had found the Creole detective.

Cole and Smiley spent the last hour of their lives arguing over whose fault it was that St. Cyr had gotten away clean. Smiley said Cole should have moved in sooner, and Cole told Smiley that it wasn't his idea to taunt the detective instead of just doing the job. Smiley suspected that his partner had put him there, expecting the Creole detective to pull a trick. He had been the goat, in other words, though there was no way he could prove it. The pair had pulled other jobs before, and it occurred to Smiley that he was always the one getting hurt. Though he could never quite figure out how it happened that way. He guessed it had something to do with Cole going to school as far as the second grade, when he hadn't gone at all.

Cole bemoaned the job and money lost. He said they wouldn't get any more of that kind of work unless they fixed this one. Smiley waited for two days for Cole to come up with another plan. Finally, Cole said they'd take the simple approach and go to Marais Street and hide until St. Cyr appeared. He'd have to show up sooner or later, and they'd jump him, finish what they started, collect the money, and be back in good graces.

Smiley asked if they could add the dago Mangetta while they were at it. He still had a lump where he had been cracked, and with a saxophone of all things. Cole grinned every time he looked at his partner. Smiley didn't see the humor.

They stumbled out of the Robertson Street saloon, cut through the alley between Villere and Marais, and found a darkened warehouse doorway, where they could lurk to see what happened. After an hour had passed, Smiley decided it was another stupid idea. They were fishing in a pond that might be empty. Who knew if the Creole was even going to pass that way? He wanted to go to his room and sleep. The liquor was leaving him, and the music from Mangetta's was giving him a headache.

He was just about to suggest they leave when he heard a click of a pistol hammer being pulled back. He and Cole stared at each other. Cole was opening his mouth to say something when the side of his head came apart to the roar of a shot. He spun around and crumpled to the bricks. Smiley gaped in shock, then turned to see a shape in a dark duster standing ten paces away. He put his hands up and started to explain that it was Cole's idea, it was
always
Cole's goddamn idea, when the pistol barked and he felt the slug slam into his chest. He fell backward and found himself staring up at the stars that blinked over Storyville. After another second his sight went, but he could still hear the footsteps coming closer. He felt the pistol pressing against his temple. There was a second of light and heat brighter and hotter than the sun, and then it all went dark and cold.

Frank Mangetta was closing up, dragging his weary shoes back and forth across the floor, when he was startled by a police wagon racing up Marais Street from the direction of Canal, the team's hooves clattering in crazy staccato on the cobblestones and the siren in full wail. The shrieking got louder, and the wagon appeared suddenly outside his window. The driver pulled the nags to a halt and jerked the reins to drive them into the alley alongside the saloon. The copper who was turning the crank on the siren let it drop, and the alarm wound down to a sob and fell silent. The hooves clopped and the wheels creaked along the alleyway. Momentarily, he heard gruff voices calling back and forth.

After a minute went by, the saloon keeper heard the chugging of a gasoline engine. One of the police department's automobiles came to a skid on its tall balloon tires out front, then followed the wagon into the alley.

Frank unlocked the door and stepped outside. Buttoning his jacket against the predawn chill, he walked around the side of the building to see what all the commotion was about.

Halfway along the alley to Claiborne Avenue, the police were setting up portable gas lanterns. Keeping to the shadows, Frank stepped around the parked motorcar and the wagon and team. One of the horses had just dropped a small mountain of wet manure, and he went around that, too.

When he got up close, he saw two bodies sprawled out on the gravel, each one floating in a pool of dark blood. He stared grimly. He couldn't mistake the two dead faces, like wax in the pale yellow glow of the lamps. The one he had hit with the horn—Smiley, as he recalled—lay with arms flung wide, a hole the size of a Liberty quarter in his chest. His shirt was soaked maroon as if it had been made that way. The other one, the one who had done the talking, was missing a chunk of his head on one side. He would carry his startled stare into eternity.

There were three coppers in uniform and two detectives milling around, muttering and shining lamps about, looking for evidence. None of the coppers had noticed him, and before one of them did, he slipped off the way he had come.

He went back into the saloon and, despite the hour, poured himself a quick glass of grappa. He drank it down, gazing fretfully at the ceiling and wondering if he should wake Valentin to tell him. He finished the drink and stepped through the archway, through the back room of the grocery, and up the narrow staircase that was lit by a single gas jet. He went down the hall and knocked lightly on Valentin's door. A second passed. Then the detective said, "Come in, Frank."

Frank used his passkey and found the detective sitting on the dark windowsill, watching the scene in the alley. The saloon keeper came around the foot of the bed to lean against the jamb.

"Hell of a way to end a night," he said.

"Did you hear the shots?" Valentin said.

"We had a band playin'."

They watched in silence for a few moments. Then Frank told him that the kid Beansoup—the Sicilian called him
fagiol'
from the popular bean dish—had been around last night before and all in a fit.

"What did he want?"

Frank said, "He had a message for you. From Miss Justine. He wouldn't say what it was."

Valentin kept reading. "That's all?"

"No, that ain't all." Valentin heard something in the Sicilian's voice and glanced up to see him grinning, his teeth white below the black mustache. "He come upstairs to look for you. And the damned
ragazzo
went and knocked on Angelo's door."

The detective turned his head, half smiling.

"I thought he knew better," Frank said, chortling. "You wasn't there, so he knocked on the door. And he was in there."

"What happened?"

"All I know is when he came back down, he was whiter than he was when he went up. And that's pretty white."

Valentin shared a laugh with the saloon keeper. Then he said, "He wouldn't tell you what Justine wanted?"

"No," Frank said. "He was acting the big cheese." He winked. "He had a young lady with him. I saw her standing outside, peeking in through the window. She was waiting for him."

"Was this a Negro girl, short, kind of pretty?"

"That sounds right. Why, you know her?"

"I do," Valentin said. A moment passed and his mouth tilted into another slow smile. "He knocked on Angelo's door?"

Frank shook his head, bemused. "Poor kid. I thought he knew."

Valentin was quiet for another moment. "You think he might want to talk?"

"Who,
fagiol'?
"

"Angelo."

Mangetta chuckled. "The
paisan
barely speaks English. Talk about what?"

"I don't know. You don't think he's..." "What?"

"Kind of lonely in there?"

"No, I don't think so. Not that one." He paused for a thoughtful moment. "You ain't never been to Sicily. So you wouldn't understand a fellow like that. He don't get lonely."

"Someday you'll have to tell me the story, Frank."

"What story?"

Valentin tilted his head slightly in the direction of the doorway down the hall.

"Oh...," the Sicilian said. "Yeah, someday I will."

Valentin watched the scene in the alley some more. Momentarily, he let out a snicker.

"What is it?" Frank said.

Valentin pointed. "Picot."

Lieutenant Picot had looked up to see what could only be St. Cyr's form folded in the open window. Another dark shape lurked there with him—his dago friend Mangetta.

He muttered a quiet curse. Once again he had been dragged from a soft bed to an alley in the predawn to stand over cooling corpses. Staring at the two dead men, he was completely convinced that it was all somehow St. Cyr's doing, even if the Creole hadn't pulled the trigger.

Picot knew the victims; another couple worthless tramps of the army of dirt white rodents who infested the city, living by stealing most of the time, though always available for other kinds of vile work. Now they were dead—no loss. The lieutenant wondered if the slugs were of the .32-caliber variety, like those that nestled in the chamber of St. Cyr's Iver Johnson revolver. He peered closer. The gaping holes in the victims' bodies announced a heavy caliber, probably a .44 or .45. The same as the one that had felled John Benedict.

He glanced up at the second-story window and saw that the dark figures were now gone. With a grunt of annoyance, he took out his leather-bound notebook and a pencil and went about the useless task of collecting information on the homicides of Messrs. Cole and Smiley.

Frank had left Valentin sitting in the window, watching the proceedings in the alley. Out in the hall, he glanced at Angelo's door, saw a light underneath, and wondered what the
signore
was doing in there. The noise outside may have woken him. Or perhaps he was just saying his morning prayers.

Frank went down the stairwell, thinking about what had happened, with an odd sense that the last act in the story had just begun.

Reporters for the
Daily Picayune,
the
Sun,
and the
Mascot
had made it to the scene of the crime just in time, each with a photographer in tow, though only the
Mascot
would eventually publish the pictures of the murdered men. When the reporters tried to interview Lieutenant Picot, he told them he'd have nothing to say until his investigation was complete, and then had one of his officers run them off.

The last of the coppers were gone by first light. Before they left, every patrolman who worked the streets of Storyville was taken aside and given orders to find anyone who might have seen the Creole detective St. Cyr around the time of the shootings and pass the information along to Lieutenant J. Picot immediately. The lieutenant had gone off to his office to busy himself with paperwork and wait, and was not surprised that the rest of the morning passed with no reports. Maybe someone would come forward, though he doubted it. The Creole detective had once again gone invisible. This time he appeared out of the shadows to perch on his windowsill and enjoy the follies in the alley below.

By noon everyone who was awake had heard the news that two men had been shot dead in the alley alongside Mangetta's Saloon and Grocery. Though few details were available, there were nods and winks aplenty. Whispers followed, to the effect that they were the same pair who had gone after Valentin St. Cyr two nights before.

The madams down the line found out about it, thanks to the busy network of spies and gossips. That St. Cyr was in the middle of something surprised no one; he had always drawn trouble like a magnet. That much hadn't changed. Though not a few of the madams entertained the private thought that he wouldn't be in such a fix if he had paid them the respect they were due and stayed where he belonged.

Beansoup heard about it shortly before breakfast when he passed a couple sharps who were talking in front of a Franklin Street café. By the time he arrived in the alleyway, the coppers had left, taking the bodies with them. All that remained of the crime scene were the dried puddles of blood, now turning into black stains. A handful of curious citizens were lolling about, and Beansoup paced around like he had business there, feeling the eyes of the bystanders on him. He was the one who then went on down the line spreading the word, tootling his harmonica along the way.