Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (7 page)

Anne Marie thought about it some more and realized that she needed both her mulatto maid and the Creole detective, no matter what kind of blood ran in their veins. Though if St. Cyr's history ever got around, she'd have to claim that she'd been deceived, like everyone else, and send him away.

Charles Kane stood on the gallery of his house on Third Street, a tumbler of whiskey in one hand and a Cuban cigar in the other. His wife nagged him so much about the smell that he had finally given up smoking in the house and started taking his pleasure outdoors. This had a benefit of giving him an escape from her and their sons for a while. Lately he found them aggravating, listening endlessly to recordings of coon songs on the Harvard phonograph that he'd so foolishly purchased. His wife had told him that
everyone
had one, and so twelve dollars of his money went out the window. Now the parlor echoed nightly with plinking banjo music and minstrel singers yelping about darkies stealing chickens and other such nonsense.

That's about all the niggers were good for, Charles brooded sourly as he blew a fragrant cloud and watched it swirl away in the night breeze. Stealing and lying and lazing about when they weren't making more useless litters; them and the rest of the intruders.

He was mulling these thoughts, his head down and brow beetling, when he became aware of something moving along the edge of his vision. He gave a start, turned slightly, and then stepped closer to the railing. There had been a shift in the shadows between the two houses across the street. Or maybe not; he kept staring, but nothing else moved.

It gave him pause. He had sensed a shady presence that wasn't the product of the liquor he drank in healthy amounts, and it had started the day after John Benedict had been found dead on Rampart Street.

He stood watching the space across the street, but picturing Benedict in that part of the city in the darkest part of the night. The fool! What he must have thought when he turned the corner to see a figure emerge from the darkness. He had to have known what was coming and that he didn't stand a chance.

It was the last senseless act in a drama that never should have happened. They had all done things in the past that should have been left there. Who hadn't? Benedict wouldn't leave it be, though, and look what had happened. Now Charles knew that if he had ever opened his mouth, it would be him lying dead in some place like Rampart Street.

With that thought chilling him, he tossed the half-smoked Cuban off the porch and into the gutter, and went back inside, just in time to catch the last verse of a song about darkies sewing buttons on their overcoats.

A few moments after the door closed, footsteps padded close to the porch. There was a light thump as a weight landed on the welcome mat. The footsteps padded off again, into the dark of the night.

Valentin was up so early Friday morning that as he went shuffling down the hall to the bathroom, he caught sight of Signore Angelo's hulking figure descending the back stairs.

After his bath and shave, he went back to his room and put on his one good suit, the gray-checked cassimere that he had left with Mangetta when he went away, along with the few other things he wanted to keep, not knowing if he would ever be back to claim any of it. The suit had been an odd vanity in that way; certainly, he had no idea if he would wear such an ensemble again, except maybe in his coffin. It was an expensive purchase, over twenty dollars, a good two weeks' pay. Though it had been fitted expertly by Myers, the tailor on Ursulines, it now hung on him loosely. He had also left one plain bosom with Frank and had donned it as well. The collar was missing, so on his way to catch the Esplanade Line car, he stepped into a haberdasher's and bought one of white linen for a nickel. He decided not to bother with a tie. He wasn't going to his wedding. For all he knew, Miss Benedict was going to slam the door in his face.

While he waited for the streetcar, he stepped into a five-and-dime and spent another six cents on a small notebook and a pencil.

***

When he stepped onto the Benedicts' gallery and knocked on the door, it flew open as if on a spring. The mulatto maid waved him inside, her eyes bright. He had a good memory for faces, and he knew for sure that he'd seen her before in Storyville, though he couldn't place when or where.

"This way, please," she said. "Miss Anne Marie is expecting you."

She led him back to the sitting room, stealing sly glances all the way. He found Miss Benedict seated in one of the high-backed chairs, her spine straight and shoulders back. Still in mourning, she was wearing a dark gray shirtwaist with a Dutch neck and pleats down the front that defined the line of her bust. Her hands were folded in the lap of her black walking skirt. Though she tried to look prim and proper, this modesty had rendered her all the more alluring.

She turned her head when the maid ushered their visitor into the room. "Mr. St. Cyr," she said, speaking the name with the same near-perfect French lilt.

As Valentin stepped closer, she lifted her right hand from her lap and held it out. For an uncertain moment, he wondered if she expected him to kiss it, which he absolutely would not do. He didn't care if it ended the interview, the job, and his life as a citizen of New Orleans right then and there. He had already sunk low enough.

Before it came to that, she turned the hand so he could take it in his own. Something flashed in her aquamarine eyes that told him she had just played a trick on him. She released his hand and gestured to the opposite chair.

"We have tea, if you'd like some," she said.

He shook his head. She let her gaze linger on him for a moment, then glanced at the maid, sending a signal. The mulatto girl went away from the door, though no more than a few steps.

Anne Marie returned her attention to her guest. "Mr. Delouche tells me that you want to continue the investigation."

Valentin tugged at his stiff new collar. "I was impolite during my last visit," he said. "I apologize for that."

Anne Marie regarded him steadily, and he could see something stirring in her gaze. She let him think about it for a few moments, then said, "I'll guess there are more than a few private detectives in New Orleans."

"There are, yes." Valentin, surprised by the utterance, now wondered if she'd allowed him into her home just so she could fire him.

"Are any of them better than you?" she asked.

He watched her with more interest. "No one I can name," he said.

"So, then," she said. "Are you going to investigate what happened to my father or just put on a show?" He had not seen any of this coming. Before he could summon an answer, she said, "Because that's what Mr. Delouche told you to do, isn't it? Come up with a story that will allow us to bury this?"

The detective managed to cover his surprise at her frankness. "He thinks it's better for all concerned if it's settled as soon as possible," he said.

"I'm sure he does," she retorted. "But he's not the one paying you. I am. So I want to know what
you
think."

She was being forthright and he returned the favor. "There are some things that don't fit at all. Some questions that need to be answered."

She nodded, and her shoulders came down from their stiff angles. "Then I want a proper investigation. Nothing less and nothing more. If you find that this was some random crime, so be it. If it was something else"—again she faltered for a moment—"then I want to know that, too. Do we have an understanding?"

It was the second time in two days that the question had been posed. This one canceled the other.

"Yes, ma'am," he said.

He met her gaze, saw an odd light that was there and gone in an instant. "What's the fee for your services?" she inquired.

"Five dollars a day," he told her. It was at least twice his normal rate, but he saw no reason to be cheap. Not in this part of town. And not when he was stirring a hornet's nest.

Anne Marie shrugged absently. "Betsy will see that you're paid." She pondered for a moment, then drew herself up. "Well, then..."

As Valentin got to his feet, she offered her hand again. He turned to find the maid standing in the doorway, wearing her curious smile.

Walking along St. Philip Street, he mused on what had transpired in those few quick minutes in the sitting room of the fine house, and wondered what had happened to the fellow who had sworn off the life of a private detective. If he did what Miss Benedict asked and started digging, there would be hell to pay from several quarters, beginning with the New Orleans Police Department. What bothered him more was the shrewd look in her eyes, as if she already knew things about him. He could thank the maid Betsy for that. A small voice in the back of his mind told him to turn around, go back, and quit before it went any further. He didn't, though, and as he arrived on Esplanade, he managed a smile as he imagined the look on the dry, pink face of the attorney Delouche when he learned of what Miss Anne Marie Benedict had started.

Anne Marie waited until she heard Betsy murmur a saucy goodbye to the Creole detective and close the door to sag back into the chair. She sat for a moment to catch her breath, then got up and went to the window. Pulling the curtain aside a few inches, she watched St. Cyr walk away. With his head up and watchful and his careful stride, he looked like he was stalking something.

She watched his figure grow smaller. She knew that there was still time to send Betsy running after him to explain that she'd had a change of heart and she wouldn't require his services after all. Instead, she let her gaze rest on his back until he turned the far corner.

She sensed the maid stepping to the doorway. Without turning around, she said, "Look in on Mother, please, Betsy. And then fetch the brandy, if you would."

Eleven o'clock found Valentin climbing the stone steps to the doorway of Parish Prison, the cube of grim gray stone that took up the better part of the block between Conti and St. Louis streets. He laid a hand on the brass door handle and hesitated for a moment. The place held some bad memories that took a moment to push aside before he went in.

A cavernous lobby with a marble floor occupied the street level, with six courtrooms. One floor up were offices for a police precinct and for the criminal administration. In the basement was a cold, damp, and lightless jail with white and colored sections splitting the lower level in two. Though he had never had the misfortune to be locked away in one of the dank underground cells, the very sight and smell of the place was quite enough.

Police Lieutenant J. Picot looked up from his paperwork and stared, startled to see St. Cyr walk in the door and speak to the desk sergeant. Picot had neither seen nor heard anything from the Creole detective since he'd arrived back in New Orleans. As the weeks went by, he began to relax, thinking that the gossip about a weak copy of the former St. Cyr was true. But now here he was, back at his door, so he was about to find out for himself.

The desk sergeant appeared in the doorway of his office. "Fellow out there says he wants to talk to you," he stated.

Picot looked past the sergeant and at the visitor at the front desk. "Yeah? Talk to me about what?"

"That homicide out on Rampart Street."

"Is that so?" The lieutenant drummed his thick fingers on his desk blotter in an absent rhythm. Then he pushed his chair back and stood up.

Valentin had to wait while Picot made his gradual way across the room, stopping at most of the desks and several file cabinets. He understood it was the copper's lumpish way of reminding him where he was. Whatever business had brought St. Cyr to his door would have to wait until Lieutenant J. Picot was good and ready. The crude little maneuver was a feature of the uneasy truce between the two men.

They had already spent years crossing swords. Picot regarded the detective St. Cyr as a meddler and walking embarrassment for the New Orleans Police Department. For his part, Valentin thought Picot a bumbler at best, a cruel bully and sneak in his worst moments. Neither man cared for the other, though they had stopped shooting daggers from their eyes each time their paths crossed—which had been just often enough to keep their feud alive.

Theirs was an odder standoff with much at stake, because both men had African blood and yet managed to pass for white. The difference was that Valentin did not engage in convolutions to hide his black and Sicilian bloodlines, while Picot, if cornered, would deny the colored side of his family to his grave. Beyond that, though, they were bound together by darker secrets that neither one dared divulge.

Though they hadn't met in a year and a half, they didn't bother with a greeting. "What's this?" Picot inquired in a clipped voice, his face already pinched in sour petulance.

"I'm looking into the murder of John Benedict," Valentin said.

Picot took an idle moment to eye St. Cyr up and down. There was something different about him, like he wasn't all there. "Says who?" he asked.

"The family, by way of an alderman named Badel and their attorney, Mr. Delouche. And with Mr. Anderson's permission."

Picot let out a grunt of annoyance. He wouldn't dare defy such an array of authority, and they both knew it. "It's not our case," he said. "That's nigger town. Sixth Precinct."

"The victim was from Esplanade Ridge."

"That's right, he was!" The copper threw out his hands. "Does this look like that part of town to you?"