He worked the old man’s bellows for him and spun once again the tale of Michie Plug-Hat and Michie Curly, who might or might not still be watching his house, who might or might not have followed him that morning … who might or might not have anything to do with anything, looked at in the brass light of mid-morning.
‘They remind you of anyone you once knew?’ asked the blacksmith, and he drew the square rod from the coals of the forge, locked it in the grip of his vise and bent it, with a single sure move, into the precise shape of the other four already-bent iron rods that stood ranged along the wall. ‘Men take trouble like this for money, or for vengeance, or to protect themselves or those they love from harm.’
‘Or because someone is paying them,’ said January. ‘And if that’s the case, it could mean anyone or anything.’
With the noon sun grilling hot overhead, he left the blacksmith’s and began a systematic round of the gambling parlors and taverns of the waterfront, knowing this to be the time and the route of Lieutenant Abishag Shaw of the New Orleans City Guards. Ti-Jon, or Olympe – or any of his old cronies at the Chatte Blanche back in Paris – would have smacked him upside the head at the mere suggestion of asking a policeman what the hell might be going on, and in his darker moments January had doubts about the matter himself. Am I crazy, to let the police know that I’m aware of it, if the watchers are the police themselves?
But something about the cab and the Verrandah Hotel caught like a burr on his reasoning: Hannibal was perfectly correct. The New Orleans City Council was simply too stingy to authorize observation like that, even if someone had suggested that Ben January was harboring runaways under his house.
LePas certainly hadn’t observed anyone – with or without a plug-hat – watching his shop, and as a runaway himself the old blacksmith had an even keener nose for danger than January did.
It’s something else.
He simply couldn’t imagine what.
Shaw wasn’t in any of the taverns along Gallatin Street behind the market, or along Rue de la Levée. For about three streets back from the wharves, every thoroughfare in New Orleans was thick with cafés, taverns, and grog shops large and small. Even at this slack period, during a bad year, these were crowded with sailors from the deep-water ships which docked below Rue Dumaine or the steamboats tied up all the way along the river to the Second Municipality. It would be the work of all afternoon to track the policeman down as he loafed from tavern to tavern, picking up gossip and listening to what people said.
Thus January cut short his search and, with the afternoon rainstorm gathering sullenly overhead, crossed the Place des Armes to the Cabildo. The grayish stucco block that stood next to the Cathedral housed the headquarters of the City Guard and up until recently had served as the Parish Prison as well. In the stone-floored watch-room he left a note for Shaw with the sergeant at the desk, then went next door to the Cathedral, to confess his sins and to pray for some desperately-needed guidance.
He prayed, too, as he had all summer, for the soul of the man he’d killed in Washington in the spring – a thoroughly despicable kidnapper of free blacks who sold them into slavery – and when that was done, he made his way back to Rue Esplanade, aware as he walked of an uneasy prickling sensation on the back of his neck, a tightening behind his sternum.
Neither LePas nor Ti-Jon nor Olympe had heard anything of surveillance on those who harbored runaway slaves.
Yet the house was being watched. Of that he was certain.
What Shaw might be able to tell him he had not the slightest idea, but he trusted the policeman’s experience and judgement. Officially, the City Guards were supposed to watch over the possessions of the librés as tenderly as those of their white neighbors, though in fact most of the Guards probably wouldn’t have lifted a finger to keep a black man’s house from being broken into (those who were sober enough to ascertain that a crime was being committed … or weren’t in the pay of the robbers themselves).
But if anything so organized as surveillance were afoot, Shaw would have heard of it.
Like January himself, Abishag Shaw could feel danger through his skin, even without knowing where it was coming from, or why.
And of course, reflected January dourly, at this hour of the day – nearly two o’clock, now – there was sufficient traffic on Rue Esplanade, drays and wagons and owl-hoot river-rats on their way to the taverns of the Swamp at the back of town, to conceal any specific watcher. He only hoped Gabriel, who had a venturesome streak and the confidence of a young man born in freedom, wouldn’t do anything silly …
January was almost to the foot of the gallery steps of his house when Rose emerged on to the gallery, speaking to someone in the house behind her. She turned, saw him—
—and as January put his foot on the first step, Abishag Shaw stepped out of the French door of January’s own room.
He must have got my note …
He could not possibly have gotten here before me.
Cold in his belly as if he’d been struck, January nearly ran up the stairs.
When he came on to the gallery he saw Rose’s face was ashen. She held her spectacles in her hand; she had been weeping. She came quickly to him, her hands outstretched—
‘What is it?’
‘Jeoffrey.’ She caught him round the waist as he folded her into his arms, pressed her forehead to his shoulder.
‘Dead.’ Shaw held out a piece of folded paper. ‘Stabbed.’
January opened it. It said, in French:
Monsieur Vitrack,
I reconsidered what we said Tuesday night and want to talk to your further about it. Please meet me in the morning at seven, in Trouard’s brickyard next to the hotel.
Benj. January fpc
FIVE
‘That’s ridiculous.’ January spoke, not angrily, but with a sensation as if he had just been punched hard in the solar plexus. ‘Sir,’ he remembered to add, Shaw being, after all, a white man, even if no free colored housewife would have permitted him through her front door.
Shaw spat tobacco over the gallery rail and scratched his greasy, dirt-colored hair. ‘T’ain’t your hand, that’s for sure,’ he observed. Shaw couldn’t spell – as he had himself frequently observed – for sour owl-shit, but he had an eye for the minute differences in handwriting even as he had for such things as patterns of nail-settings when looking at the tracks left by horseshoes, or whether scratches in wood were weathered or not. ‘Nor the paper ain’t like any in your house, nor the ink neither. But the feller was here Tuesday evenin’, accordin’ to Mrs Janvier –’ his nod indicated Rose – ‘an’ he was her brother …’
Thunder crashed suddenly, almost directly overhead. One or two hard spits of rain rattled on the gallery roof, followed – without transition – by silvery torrents that nearly hid the trees of the neutral ground beyond the street.
‘Did she tell you about the house being watched?’
‘She did. Looks like whoever was watchin’ saw her brother come in an’ knew who it was he wanted to talk to.’
Still feeling a little as if he’d fallen down a flight of stairs, January led the way back through into the parlor. ‘I will have that coffee you offered earlier, m’am,’ said Shaw, ‘if’fn the offer’s still open.’
Rose said, ‘Of course.’ She sounded stunned, disoriented.
January handed Shaw back the paper, guided Rose to a chair at the dining-room table, and went to the pantry for the coffee himself. ‘Did Madame Janvier tell you what M’sieu Vitrack wanted?’ he asked Shaw when he returned.
‘She did,’ agreed Shaw. ‘An’ it sounds damn hare-brained to me. I never met a black man yet that was on fire to move back to Africa, though I will say that if every slave in America was to be given his freedom this afternoon there’d be hell to pay for years, an’ no mistake, seein’ that three-fourths of ’em or more can’t read nor write nor have never done nuthin’ but pick crops. Thank you, M’am,’ he added softly to Rose as he and January took chair
s at the other end of the table. ‘So I can see the colonizers’ point, even if I do think it’s a plumb fool way of dealin’ with the problem. An’ Mr Vitrack didn’t say nuthin’ about what he planned to do next, when you turned him down?’
‘He said he was going to wait until Captain Loup de la Mer came back – the smuggler who brought the Loveridge party out of Cuba in exchange for this “old slave-woman’s” pendant of the Crimson Angel … Was the Angel on him when he was found?’
The lieutenant shook his head. ‘They cleaned his wallet out too.’
January’s mouth tightened. ‘Waste not, want not,’ he said, quoting one of America’s Founding Fathers. ‘I think Jeoffrey hoped to find out from Loup de la Mer where this “old slave woman” could be found in Cuba, and to track her down for more information. He did ask me if I knew a man who would serve as a guide or courier to go to Haiti, either with him or in his stead.’
‘An’ did you?’
‘Haiti isn’t a place you want to go,’ January said quietly. ‘They’ve been fighting amongst themselves ever since they killed off the whites. First the slaves against the whites, with the mulattos switching sides back and forth, trying to keep their plantations and their wealth. Then Christophe’s ex-slaves against Pétion’s mulattos about who was going to rule; then Christophe’s soldiers against the ex-slaves, when Christophe tried to start up the sugar plantations again so that his government would have something to tax, and everybody taking time off to fight the French …’
‘An’ where’d the ex-slaves think they was gonna get an army an’ weapons from, without taxes? It wasn’t like the Spanish weren’t sittin’ there on the other side of the island waitin’ to take over. Nor like there was a gunpowder factory anyplace on the island—’
‘They weren’t thinking like that, sir. All the former slaves knew was that they were free and that nobody was going to make them work sugar again. Even with an owner who takes care of his hands, they figure a man’ll last only a few years in the cane fields, if the plantation’s going to turn a profit.’
Shaw said nothing, but chewed like a ruminative beast.
‘It was cheaper to work men to death and buy new ones from Africa when they needed them. The hate there runs deep. And killing whoever disobeyed was certainly cheaper than having a revolt on their hands. Later, Boyer took over the whole place and invaded the Spanish side of the island, and for all I know they’re still fighting the Spanish. It’s not anywhere I’d go, and a white man like Vitrack wouldn’t last three hours.’
‘You think there’s treasure there?’
‘I think so, yes.’ January shrugged and glanced down the table at Rose, silent, with her untouched coffee-cup between her hands. ‘Looks like someone else thinks so, too. Someone who knows that the Crimson Angel may have been part of that horde and who didn’t want Vitrack getting there first. I trust you’ll point out to the Coroner’s jury,’ he added, ‘that the handwriting on the note isn’t mine, and that “I’ve reconsidered what we said” works both ways to lure Vitrack out of his hotel: if I’d said no, he’d want to talk me into it; if I’d agreed and might be getting cold feet, he’d come out to keep me committed. Have you looked through his luggage?’
‘Not yet. I wanted to get you – an’ Mrs Janvier, if she’s feeling able for it –’ his eyes followed January’s to Rose – ‘first.’
Rose took a sip of her coffee and put her spectacles back on. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll come.’
The Planters & Strangers Hotel on Rue Chartres was one of the oldest in the French Town. It was barely larger than a good-sized town house, built in the Spanish style around a high-walled courtyard, and – like most town houses of the city – had only one way in or out after the gate of the arched carriageway was locked up for the night.
‘Yes, M’sieu Vitrac –’ Paul Hiboux, who worked the lobby desk and whom January knew from the Faubourg Tremé Free Colored Militia and Burial Society, pronounced the French form of the name that Rose’s brother had abandoned – ‘came through the lobby at about five minutes to seven. The dining room had not yet opened.’ He nodded toward the door to the right of the long mahogany counter. ‘And no other guests had yet come down. He bade me a civil good morning, but spoke no other words.’
‘Do you remember who brought the note for him?’ January asked.
Hiboux shook his head. ‘One of the p’tit drigailles that hang about the wharves, I think, who’ll run errands for a penny. I didn’t know him.’ A trim gentleman of middle age, he had himself, January knew, been born on Saint-Domingue, like so many of the gens de couleur librés of New Orleans; his parents mulattos who had thrown in their lot with their white kinsmen. It was not only the whites at the Café des Refugies who felt themselves to be exiles from their vanished paradise.
‘He brought the note in midway through the afternoon, when M’sieu Vitrac was out. Had I known …’
‘Not your fault.’ January answered the note of genuine distress in the clerk’s voice. ‘How could you have known? May we see his room?’
January didn’t expect to find much in his brother-in-law’s hotel room, and in this he wasn’t disappointed. Rose turned her face aside from the set of brushes laid out on the dressing table and stood for a moment looking out into the rain-drenched courtyard two floors below. January felt a pang of sadness as he looked at the coats and waistcoats in the armoire, the fine linen shirts in the drawer. The creaselessly folded cravats and regimented little oblongs of drawers, socks, handkerchiefs were an echo of the man’s name, a memory of his light, breezy voice …
‘Not a thing, far’s I can tell.’ Shaw closed the drawer of the little desk, reopened it to tuck in a rumpled corner of paper. ‘For a man who keeps his cuff buttons all in one dish an’ his tiepins stuck through their own little bits of cloth, he sure made a mess—’
He broke off, pale glance touching the neat drawer January still had open, the tidily-sorted garments grouped color by color in the armoire, and without a word went to the window. January, in his turn, stepped to look at the desk drawer.
It was chaos. Papers shuffled about – bills interleaved with banknotes and visiting cards, a seal and a couple of pen nibs shoved into the back of the drawer …
‘The room’s been searched.’
‘An’ by somebody who wasn’t after money,’ added Shaw, who had opened the French door on to the gallery and was studying the edge beneath its latch. ‘This’s been scratched recently, an’ you’d need a damn thin blade to slide in here to force the latch.’ He turned back into the room, his gargoyle mouth set. ‘What he was after, we got no way of knowin’ …’
January knelt, pulled Vitrack’s dressing case from beneath the bed and opened it. Empty, without any kind of secret compartment that he could detect. The small leather suitcase was the same. ‘He had a yellow envelope full of notes and clippings.’ He glanced at Rose for corroboration. She nodded. ‘There might have been letters from his father-in-law as well. Ulysses Rauch,’ he added. ‘Representative from Pennsylvania. It contained notes also about his conversation with Mr and Mrs Powderleigh in Philadelphia—’
‘Folks what escaped from Cuba?’ Shaw had clearly read the article as well.
‘He have anything of the kind on him when he was found?’
‘Consarn it.’ Shaw opened the desk drawer again, searched more carefully, unfolding and reading every scrap of paper. Bills for laundry in Philadelphia and New Orleans, gambling vowels – none for over forty dollars – on the stationery of the steam-packet Montezuma, with a few on what looked like pages torn from different memorandum-books, such as a man might accumulate in an evening or two of gambling at the more genteel establishments in New Orleans. A pack of visiting cards still wrapped in the printer’s tissue, and credentials from the American Colonization Society, signed by his father-in-law.
Scribbled receipts for oyster suppers at La Belle Creole on Rue Bourbon, for a cravat and a pair of gloves from At the Sign of the Cotton Blossom, and for
a half-day’s rental on a gig.
Inspection of Jeoffrey Vitrac’s clothing and effects in a small whitewashed room off the First Municipality’s morgue told the same tale. Rose, a handkerchief soaked in vinegar held beneath her nose, viewed her brother’s body in the long chamber at the rear of the Cabildo. Her face was like stone, as if she were viewing the subject of a dissection, and not someone she’d gone crabbing with on warm magic evenings of a shared childhood.
When she, January, and Shaw passed into the smaller room beyond to look at his possessions, she only said in a quiet voice, ‘I’ll have to write his wife. I feel bad,’ she added, ‘for the wives of those other men –’ there had been two, on the other tables, one of whom had very obviously been pulled from a bayou infested with crawfish – ‘if no one identifies them. How horrible, to be waiting and never to know.’
Her brother had been wearing the same gray frock-coat, the same collarless indigo silk waistcoat that he’d had on the previous Tuesday. Rose reached down to touch the breast and shoulder of the coat, as if the young man’s sturdy flesh had still been in them, then drew her fingers back. The holes in both were in the front, slightly to the left of the solar plexus, where they would be if his killer had stepped close, seized him by the shoulder and pulled him into the blow. Judging by the amount of blood on the waistcoat, Vitrack’s heart had been pierced by that single blow and he’d bled out very quickly. There had really been no need to cut his throat afterward, as the killer had then done.
‘He wrote me when I left Chouteau,’ said Rose, ‘and was teaching my first school here in town. He said how much he admired me, for getting out of Grand Isle. For coming to a place where I could better myself. He was nineteen … Then a year later he came through town, on his way to Washington. He spent every penny above his train fare on clothes. He bought them above Canal Street, in the American town. I don’t want to look like some Creole from the sticks, he said … He stayed with me at the school until the tailors had finished. He’d practice his American accent … I want them to see me for who I am, he said. Not for where I come from or who they think my father is.’
Crimson Angel Page 5
