Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (42 page)

"I do," Valentin said.

"All right, then," she said. There was a tiny waver in her voice. "I'll be waiting to hear from you."

He surprised her then, stepping close and kissing her not on the lips and not on the cheek, but somewhere in between, with a tenderness that made her heart thump. After he walked out, the brush of his kiss and the look in his eyes lingered with her.

Valentin caught a streetcar back to Storyville and spent part of the ride musing on what Anne Marie had said. Much to his relief, she remained a levelheaded young lady, even about something as momentous as surrendering her innocence. Not that it was any too soon, in his opinion. In any case, he didn't want to imagine the kind of grief she could have brought down on his head.

He turned his thoughts to the rest of his day. His plan was to spend the afternoon in his room, lying low, doing nothing to alert his prey. Later, he'd go to the grocery and make himself something to eat. Once the sun went down, he'd use the shadows to carry out his plot.

He walked through the District from the north, arriving on Marais Street a little after three o'clock. He let himself in through the back and climbed the steps. When he got to the hallway, he glanced at Angelo's door and saw a light underneath it. The
signore
was on the premises this afternoon. He was usually gone on Sundays.

Valentin locked his door and crossed to open the windows for some air. He poked around in his closet for a worn-out volume of stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe, then stretched on his bed to read. It was something he hadn't done in a long time, and it gave him some peace before whatever commotion might come later.

Halfway through "Gordon Pym," he dozed off. It was a light, dreamless sleep, and he almost woke two or three times, imagining he heard noises and voices from downstairs. He knew that couldn't be, though. It was Sunday, and everyone was gone.

There was a sharp knock on his door that brought him awake with a start.

"Hey, Tino,
paisano mio.
" It was Frank. "Come on out of there."

Valentin sat up, blinking, and swung his legs off the bed. "What are you doing here?" he called.

"Come downstairs," the saloon keeper said. "What for?"

Frank was moving away. "Just come on downstairs," he repeated.

When he stepped into the archway, Valentin was startled to see Reynard Vernel leaning against the bar with his foot on the rail. Then he saw Beansoup, Justine, and Betsy seated around one of the tables. Frank was behind the bar, in the process of opening a bottle of wine. It was such a bizarre tableau that he came to a stop and stared at them.

"What are you all doing here?" he said.

"Having a glass of wine," the saloon keeper said breezily.

"Is that right?" Valentin looked from face to face, and it began to dawn on him what was going on. "So everyone just happened to show up?"

"No, we were invited," Justine said.

"Invited by who?" The detective said, and looked directly at Frank.

"Anyway, they're all here," Frank said.

Valentin leaned on the bar and turned to Reynard Vernel. "And are you recording the proceedings for posterity?"

Vernel said, "I thought I might."

The detective nodded and fixed his attention on Beansoup. "I'm going to guess you're the one who did the running to get them all here." The kid shrugged.

Valentin glanced at Betsy, who was keeping her face pleasantly blank. "Miss James," he said.

"Mr. St. Cyr," she replied.

Justine was watching the maid with some curiosity, as if she wanted to ask her something. Instead, she said, very deliberately, "But since we came, we thought we might keep you from getting yourself killed."

"Do what?"

"You've been doing some fucking stupid things," the saloon keeper said.

Valentin frowned at him. "You couldn't just talk to me? You had to call a meeting?"

"You don't listen to me," Frank said. He gestured to the others. "I thought maybe if they heard. They're your friends. They happen to care if you live or die. So..."

"So?"

"We want to hear what you've got on Mr. Henry Harris. And what you're going to do with it."

"It might be better if you don't know." Frank gave him a severe look, and he felt the expectant eyes of the others on him. He didn't want to do this now. And yet they had come there on a Sunday afternoon...

"All right, then," he said, relenting. "This all started—"

"Hold on," Frank interrupted. "We're waiting for one more."

"Who?" Valentin said, but the saloon keeper had already gone out through the archway.

In the silence that ensued, Justine watched him with such a knowing look that he wondered if Anne Marie had left a mark on him. So he was glad to hear the shuffling of feet from the grocery side. He turned his head in time to see Frank reappear in the archway with Signore Angelo on his heels.

He was so startled by this that he spilled some of his wine. The others gazed with interest at the stranger in their midst. Angelo was dressed like a peasant, in gray trousers and a white shirt, open at the neck. His eyes were round and quietly mournful. Clearing his throat, he said, "
Scusa,
" and took the chair at the table that was against the wall and closest to the archway.

"This is Angelo," Frank explained to everyone. He looked at Valentin. "
Un cugino.
"

Valentin pulled his eyes off Angelo to gaze at Frank in wonder. "He's your
cousin?
"

Frank laughed shortly. "No,
paisan,
he's yours. Kind of distant, but..." He wagged a hand in the air. "
Famiglia,
eh?"

The detective was confounded. "Well, I'll be damned."

Shyly, Angelo dropped his gaze from the scrutiny as Frank fetched him his glass of wine.

"He knows about what happened on the docks," the saloon keeper explained. "He wants to hear what you have to say."

Valentin looked at Angelo. "
Parla inglese?
" he asked. Angelo shrugged, his black eyes animal calm.

"I'll translate what he don't understand," Frank said.

It took Valentin a few moments to regain his place.

"Well, then," he began. "This all started out as a favor for Tom Anderson, who was doing a favor for someone else. Mr. Benedict had been found murdered on Rampart Street. A simple case. Nothing to it. But the victim's daughter..." He felt his face warming. "... she said she wanted to know if there was more to it. And it looked like there was, because within a week a man named Charles Kane was dead. He was connected to Benedict, and to Henry Harris."

He sipped his wine. "What she didn't tell me at the time, was that she had found a twenty-year-old letter from Harris to these two victims, creating a company called Three V, and stating its purpose."

Vernel said, "What does Three V stand—"

"Wait a minute," the detective said, holding up a hand. "The company's purpose was to run the Italians off the docks. Pure and simple. The Orange Wars hadn't done it. The murder of Chief Hennessy hadn't done it. Harris wanted them gone for good. And so he created this company with Benedict and Kane. Three V."

Angelo shifted in his chair, his eyes fixed on the detective.

"They did it," Valentin continued. "They starved them out. And then they took over." He paused. "When the daughter found the letter and realized what her father had done, she shamed him into promising to fix it somehow. That's when he made his mistake. He talked to Kane, and Kane told Henry Harris, or one of his people. Benedict was killed. And Kane was next."

"Why him?" Justine asked.

"He knew too much. And he was a drunk and a loudmouth. They couldn't trust him to stay quiet." He put his empty glass on the bar and Frank moved to refill it. "It was still white people's business, and all I wanted to do was be done with it. Then Joe Kimball was murdered, because he found something I needed. And that's when everything changed. That's when I decided to go after Henry Harris. Because he was responsible."

"Just to cover up what they did twenty years ago?" Frank asked.

"I wondered about that, too," Valentin said. "There had to be something else to it. And there was." He looked over at Frank. "Can I see your chalkboard?"

Frank gave him a puzzled glance, then bent down behind the bar and reappeared with the chalkboard he used to post special meals and the name of the band slated for the evening. He handed it to Valentin, along with a thick piece of chalk.

The detective stood the board on a table and drew
V V V
on it. "This was engraved into rings that the partners wore," he explained.

"Three V's," Beansoup recited. "Like the company."

"That was their little joke," Valentin said. "Though it wasn't very funny." He stopped for a moment. "The last thing Joe Kimball did was tell me I was looking at it all wrong."

He turned the board so that it was now vertical, then wet a finger and rubbed the chalk between the letters away. "It's not V, V, V, at all," he said. The letters on the board now read:

K

K

K

"K, K, K," Justine said.

"The Ku Klux Klan," Vernel said.

"By the time Harris and the others became proud members of that group, it wasn't just Negroes they were after," Valentin said. "They'd added Italians, Greeks, Turks, and anyone else who wasn't white to their list."

Justine's brow furrowed. "So they did it because they hated Italians?"

"Well, it must have driven Harris mad to see those families prospering right under his nose," Valentin said. "He believed all the money they were making should rightfully have been in American hands. His American hands."

He stopped for a minute to let Frank make the rounds with the wine bottle.

"Harris built his name in politics on his hatred for Negroes and Italians and all the rest," he went on. "He wanted to use that in a campaign for the United States Senate. So why would he care if Benedict exposed it. Enough to have him murdered, I mean. Running a bunch of dirty dagos off the docks wouldn't hurt him all that much. Some people would call him a hero. But a lot wouldn't, so maybe it was the second nail in Benedict's coffin. Still not enough to wreck his plans, though. I thought there had to be one more. And there was."

"What was it?" Betsy asked, speaking up for the first time.

A woman."

"What woman?" Justine said.

"Mr. Benedict had a mistress. An octoroon named Sylvia Cardin. When I spoke to her, she said she hadn't seen him in over a month, that she had ended their affair. And yet there she was, still living in those fine rooms."

"So someone else was paying for it," Justine said.

"Henry Harris?" Vernel said.

Valentin said, "He had stolen her away. He was dallying with a woman of color. I believe Benedict decided that if he couldn't get at him any other way, he'd expose him over that." He shook his head. "It was a terrible mistake. Harris could have withstood being accused of raiding businesses. And his membership in the Ku Klux Klan. That was old news. But he couldn't abide having it exposed that he had been having at a colored woman, too. After all his talk, it would ruin his chances for office. So he got rid of Benedict and Kane. Joe Kimball found the Klan connection and he might have found out about Miss Cardin before I did. So he had to go. Then I got too close and they sent those two bandits after me. They should have just shot me down and left it at that, like they did with Joe. But they wanted to play a game. Which they failed, thanks to Frank. They were both killed before they made a worse mess."

He rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "So," he said, "I had all this, but there was nothing I could do with it." He shifted uncomfortably. "Then
I
made a mistake. I got a message to Harris that I wanted to see him. He sent a car for me, and I went to his home at Nine Mile Point."

Frank shook his head and said, "Why the hell did you go out there alone?"

Valentin evaded the question and the saloon keeper's stare. "I should have known. He's a hateful little man who made himself into an emperor. And I really had nothing to put up against him. I couldn't touch him, and he knew it. So he just sent me on my way. But then..." He paused for effect.

"Then what?" Frank and Justine said at once.

"Then someone whispered something in my ear. Something I can use to get at him. And I will."

He stopped, and his blank expression told them he wasn't going to say any more on that subject. They were all quiet for a few moments, digesting what he'd related.

"I still don't understand how he ended up on Rampart Street," Justine asked presently.

"That bothered me all along, too," Valentin said. "Why not Canal or Marais or any other street in New Orleans? Why not on Esplanade Ridge while he was taking the air one night? I finally figured it out last night."

He drank off some wine, reminding himself to go easy before he got drunk and stupid and said too much.

"There were actually two reasons," he said. "One was to make it look like he went there for some crib girl and got caught in a robbery that went bad. Harris was betting that him dying out there would make such a scandal that the family would want it buried immediately. It was perfect. No witnesses, but plenty of suspects."