Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (38 page)

She sighed and said, "My John was a weak man. He was weak to get involved in the first place. And he was weak at the end. He wanted to make it right for Anne Marie. But he just wasn't man enough for it. You can't fix something like that, can you? Not after all this time."

"No, ma'am," Valentin said. "I don't think you can."

She shook her head slowly. "No ... you can't." She fell into another musing silence. "They were
thieves,
" she repeated. "If it had just been money ... That damned Harris didn't care. He had to have it all." She smiled coquettishly, her attention shifting. "Everyone assumed that John was in that terrible place because he was after some low-class whore, when all the time he was trying to do something good."

She sighed as her thoughts turned inward. Momentarily, her eyes wandered to the leather kit on the side table. She reached over to open it with one hand. Inside there was a brass syringe and a small vial of liquid.

"You'll have to excuse me," she said. "It's time for my medicine." She looked up at him. "Please stay if you like."

He shook his head. "Thank you, ma'am," he said. "I'll be going now." He went to the door and let himself out.

He was halfway down the steps when Betsy bustled into the foyer. The maid glanced up to see him standing there, shoes in hand, looking like a boy caught in mischief. She stopped, her mouth dropping in surprise and eyes going bright with delight. She let out a hiccup of a laugh, then put a hand over her giggling mouth. Valentin put a finger to his lips to shush her.

"You can't speak to anyone about this," he told her. "You know what happens if she decides she made a mistake."

Betsy sobered, though just slightly. "I ain't gonna say nothing to nobody," she said.

The detective made a shooing gesture, and she scurried away to the back of the house. He sat down on the steps to put on his shoes, then slipped out the door into the cloudy afternoon.

He started back up Rendon to catch the Esplanade Line streetcar back to town. Then he realized that there was nothing in Storyville that needed his attention. He had nowhere in particular to go and nothing to do for now.

So he turned and walked to Dumaine, then turned west toward Bayou St. John, thinking about the case. He now knew Benedict had been murdered to silence him about what had transpired in the 1890s. It was likely that Nelson did the killing of Benedict and Charles Kane. It fit. Snatching Kane, knocking him cold, and dumping him in the river was a slick ploy. He could have easily gone down as a drunken man drowning.

The puzzle remained of why Benedict had been murdered on Rampart Street, of all places. Why there, where gentlemen of class rarely strayed? And when there were so many easier possibilities? It had to be intentional.

He stopped on the other side of the bayou. It was a long hike to Lake Pontchartrain from Esplanade, at least five miles. The rain had let up, though, and he had nothing but time and much to consider: what had just happened in the fine house on St. Philip Street; what would be waiting when he got back to Storyville; how the story would wind its way to a conclusion and who would still be standing when it did.

No one was stirring when Betsy got back from making market. She hurried into the kitchen to start preparing lunch. As she went about her chores, she heard someone pacing about upstairs.

Anne Marie had avoided her after Mr. St. Cyr had left in the afternoon and then through the rest of the evening. When Betsy came knocking with dinner on a tray, she called out that she wasn't hungry. The maid left the tray with a note that she was taking the evening out. So not a word had been spoken about what had happened in the bedroom.

In the hours since Anne Marie had awoken, she felt by turns despondent and delirious. She had been
ruined
and her body trembled with a giddy joy beyond anything she had imagined. The memories, flashing images, swirled around her: his face, his body, his mouth and hands. Though she guessed that the other women he'd taken had been more enjoyable.

It was a shock to realize that she hadn't lost her innocence in a proper seduction, but in the fashion of a common slattern. Like some ignorant peasant girl, she had let him undress and mount her without a word of protest. She hadn't made him court her for a single second and hadn't resisted another second longer. Along the way, she had risked what they called a "trick baby" and who-knew-what diseases. All that was missing was the money.

So she couldn't be incensed with him for sneaking away without performing whatever gentlemanly duties were part of deflowering. She was actually relieved that he had slipped off and she hadn't had to face him right away.

The mattress was a mess, and as soon as she got up, she turned it over to hide the evidence of her sin. Not that Betsy would be fooled. She cringed, imagining the gleam in those black eyes. Of course, she would know.

She had heard stories of girls from good families who had been taken before marriage and ended up for the worse. Most often, the father would cast the girl out onto the street as too wanton for a decent family. A mother would be shamed to her grave. Proper neighbor ladies would trade whispers over the humiliation. There was also the option of suicide. It was all ten times worse when there was a colored man involved. The poor girl would never outlive her dishonor. If he didn't escape, the man would be castrated and murdered, and whoever made him pay for his wanton pleasure would be hailed as a hero.

Anne Marie had long ago judged such dramatics to be completely insane. Even more so, now that she had satisfied her own dark desire. She had done it, she liked it, and she wasn't about to throw her life away over it. She stopped for a few idle seconds to let the crude word for the act she'd performed cross her mind, then quivered with chagrin and put a giddy hand over her eyes, even though she was alone in the room.

A moment later, she sighed, thinking about the way he had taken her, hard and tender at the same time. He obviously knew his way around a woman's body. This came as no surprise.

For a moment the sky got darker. Now she heaved a long breath of regret, remembering how she had confessed to him, though she couldn't recall exactly what she'd said and how much she had just been thinking.

She wondered if she would ever see him again and what would happen when she did. He might well have decided what he'd done was too dangerous and already packed his bags and left the city. If that happened, she would be aggrieved. Worse than that, the case would be finished, and no one would ever know why her father had died on that lonely street.

She thought about it some more. No, he wouldn't stop and he wouldn't run away. He would see it through to the end. There had been something in his bearing, a tension, as if he was going to pounce on something. Something other than her. She sensed that it was accelerating toward a conclusion, and there was nothing she could do about it, even if she wanted to. She had surrendered, putting herself in his hands.

He walked the better part of a mile on the gravel road that ran along the lake until he came upon a line of modest houses, hoisted on pilings. Some were little more than run-down shacks, and a few were nothing but walls and roofs that leaked badly, the windows long broken, the rafters home to nesting birds.

A little farther on, he saw a familiar facade. The house was tidy, the clapboards painted solid white, the trim a deep maroon. The sun, broken by clouds, dappled a gallery that was filled with plants, down on the floorboards, up on the railings, and hanging from the rafters. There were also some strange constructions dangling here and there, voodoo sculptures of African design that were intended to ward off evil.

Valentin was a decent sneak when it came to it, but he'd never caught Miss Eulalie Echo unaware. Somehow, she always seemed to know he was coming before he got close, and he had barely placed a foot on the bottom gallery step when a melodious voice called out, "Who's that at my door?"

Eulalie Echo stepped onto the gallery and looked down at him with her dazzling smile.

She was a "good" voodoo queen who happened to be Jelly Roll Morton's godmother. She was a handsome woman, tall, angular, with smooth copper brown skin. Her eyes were black and piercing with a genial light. Her graying hair was tied back in a braid under a colorful
tignon,
and she wore a blue Mother Hubbard of washed-out cotton. Her feet were bare.

Though Valentin hadn't seen her in almost two years, she had barely aged; indeed, she looked almost exactly the same as she did the day he had met her, some seven years back. As she smiled down at him with her dancing eyes and white teeth, he considered that maybe there was something to this voodoo business after all.

"Come on up, Mr. Valentin," she said. Her voice sounded like a musical instrument, a slow tenor. "Whatchu doin' here? You in trouble again?" The question was delivered with sly reproof; she was clearly delighted with the company.

As was her custom with visitors, she invited him to her kitchen table, a massive affair of rough oak. He sat down, tired and hot from the long walk. Miss Echo poured two cups of black coffee from the enameled pot on the stove, then took a bottle of her homemade whiskey down from a shelf and poured a shot in each cup. Though it was only the middle of the day, it didn't occur to him to refuse. Not to mention that it would help settle his nerves a bit.

Her smile dipped a bit and she eyed him, her brown brow stitching, as if she was hearing an off sound. She sipped her coffee ruminatively and waited.

"Have you heard from Ferdinand?" Valentin asked her, using Morton's given name so as not to offend family sensibilities.

"All I know is he's travelin' up North, playin' in cabarets," she said. "He wrote his
maman
a letter, bragging about how he was doin' so fine."

Valentin smiled at the image of Mr. Jelly Roll, decked out in his finest to entertain the hoi polloi of all those big cities, especially the women.

They chatted for a few minutes more. His host asked after Justine, and he told her that she was in a Basin Street house and seemed to be getting along well enough. Miss Echo didn't comment, though he could see the concern in her eyes.

They came upon a quiet moment, and she said, "You were away for a long time, Valentin."

"I was, yes, ma'am."

He settled back to describe his wandering north and west, through the cities to tiny towns, making his way without plan or direction. He had been the next thing to a tramp for much of the time. She would assume that he had survived by stealing when there was no work around, which of course he had.

"How long did you stay away?"

"About fifteen months."

"That's a long time, all right."

They talked about Storyville a bit more, and she marveled at how Tom Anderson managed to keep order in that crazy place.

Once they had exhausted that subject, she gave him a look that went right through him and said, "You been playin' the rascal with some woman. But not Justine..."

He felt his face getting red. "No, not Justine."

Miss Echo's smile faded away. "And you been to a funeral lately, ain't you?"

He said, "Yes, ma'am, I have. For a friend of mine." He looked away. "And it's my fault he died."

"Ah-ha." The voodoo woman sat back. "So you got yourself mixed up in somethin'. And that's really why you come all the way out here. Ain't that right?" Though her voice was kind, there was steel behind it. He knew there was no escaping those gimlet eyes, so he took another sip of his whiskey-laced coffee and told her the story.

He began with Anderson bringing him in to fix the open-and-shut case of a white man shot down on Rampart Street.

"And right away, it got out of hand. The victim's daughter wasn't about to put up with a sham. Then another man was murdered, the first fellow's partner. Then my friend got caught up in it. He got in the way and somebody shot him dead." He pushed down the catch in his throat. "It was my fault. I should have known he was in danger."

Miss Echo eyed him. "When was the funeral? Last evening?"

"You ought to be the detective," he said.

"Ain't that hard to see. You still got it all on you. What's the rest of it?"

"There were two men came after me, but I got away from them," he went on. "Two nights later they were shot down in the alley off Marais Street."

"My, oh my. So there's ... five people dead?"

"So far."

"And you know who's doing them crimes."

"I'm not sure who pulled the trigger, but I know who's behind it." He paused for effect. "It's Henry Harris."

He saw the look on her face and noted with grim satisfaction that for once he had surprised her.

"Well, good lord, son!" she said. "Henry Harris? The rich man Henry Harris? What's he got to do with it?"

Valentin said, "Everything."

Miss Echo stared, then wagged a long finger at him. "You mess in the wrong people's business, and you see what happens." She took another fast sip of her coffee. "You can't walk away from it?"

"Not now."

"Because that's what I'd tell you to do."

"That's what everybody's telling me to do."

"They're trying to save you from somethin'."

"Well, it's too late. Too far along."