by David Fulmer
"And then?" Justine prompted him.
"Well, I figured I was going to be an A-1 criminal, a real Chicago crook, and then this one pal of mine went and crossed the wrong people. They caught him and cut him till he was dead. But before he died he started telling names."
"Your name?"
"I didn't wait to find out. I packed a satchel and got on the first train heading south."
"You came back?" He nodded. "How long were you away?"
"Two and a half years," he said. "I was eighteen."
He remembered walking up to the house on Liberty Street and finding a Negro family in residence. No, they said, they didn't know nothing about a Creole woman living there. He found the landlord of the property, who told him that one day a year or so ago, he went by the house and found it deserted, every bit of furniture still in place, food molding in the icebox, but empty of its tenant. He had waited a month and then rented the place to new boarders. He sold the furniture to the junkman.
Valentin walked up and down Liberty Street and finally happened on an old neighborhood crone who told him how one morning his mother had just up and gone away. She was wearing black and muttering prayers, another neighbor chimed in, as she wandered off in the direction of the river. He searched up and down the neighborhood, then the streets from the Quarter north and east. There was no trace of her. He checked the hospitals, the morgue, even the women's prison. There was no word and no record of her.
The next day, he went round to find Buddy, but he was off in Biloxi playing music. He visited St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, found the graves of his brother and sister and father. The flowers had long since wilted to dry ribbons.
"And that's how I knew she was either gone for good or dead," he murmured.
She watched his face. "So, what'd you do?"
"I left New Orleans. Went off, all over Louisiana, into East Texas, all around."
"And what did you do?"
"Just about everything," he said. "I worked in the fields a little bit, I was a teamster ... and I helped out with a traveling show for a while." He glanced at her. "I stole a lot, too."
"You didn't rob no banks, did you?"
He gave her a thin smile and shook his head. "No. People get shot dead robbing banks. That wasn't for me. I broke into some rich folks' houses, stole jewelry, that sort of thing."
She leaned on one elbow. "Then how'd you end up being a copper?"
He was surprised. "You know about that?"
She nodded. "'Bout the first thing I heard. 'That's Mr. St. Cyr. He used to be a copper, you know.'"
"Well, I came back here and I needed work," he said. "It was a job and it wasn't the docks." He let out a small sigh. "And the truth is I thought maybe I could find out about those men killed my father. That's what I thought."
His police training included the rudiments of the law, investigative technique, the rights of the accused, practice with firearms. On the street he learned a different set of rules, such as the proper collection and distribution of money from the brothels, the apprehension of suspects without killing them on the spot. The goal in all situations was to maintain the give-and-take of the streets while leaving nary a bruise. He listened and learned. He became a good cop and he put his skills to trying to locate his father's murderers through official files.
"But there wasn't even a record of it," he said. "Nothing. Like it never happened."
He was a good cop, but he didn't last. He was on the force less than two years when he had to resign after drawing his gun on his sergeant. The man, half-drunk at mid-morning, was beating a whore who had refused to go down on her knees at his command. He knocked the unfortunate harlot unconscious in an alley off Robertson Street, then started to kick the helpless body in a drunken fury. Patrolman St. Cyr asked the sergeant to stop, but the older cop ignored him. When Valentin heard one of the girl's ribs snap, he drew out his police revolver, placed the muzzle inside the Irish ear, and pulled back the hammer.
If the whore, a pale, consumptive girl of seventeen, had survived, Valentin would have been brought up on charges. But she died and he was cleared. The sergeant was put behind a desk after a short suspension. Valentin's police career was over. He endured the cold stares, the turned backs and dark whispers for six weeks, then handed in his resignation. Three months later, the place they called Storyville was legally mandated.
"I heard about that, too," Justine told him when he finished. "About that girl that died."
It figured; he had never told anyone about the incident, but the news went down the line from house to house, and after he left the force, offers came for work around the District, enough to sustain him, which led to small jobs for Tom Anderson, the best friend the New Orleans Police Department could claim.
Anderson, like the others, found that he could be trusted with anything and he kept his fears so well hidden that he appeared fearless. He wished to be left alone, so he bothered only those he was paid to bother, and generally it was justified. He had occasion to knock a few misbehaving louts cold, cut several more and shoot one dead, that being Eddie McTier, a decent guitar player but poor card cheat and terrible shot with a Colt .44 pistol. He had left the Georgia fancy man on the floor of the Algiers saloon, bleeding his life out through a hole in his chest the size of a Liberty half.
"Was it hard?" Justine whispered. "Killing that fellow like that?"
"Not nearly as hard as I thought," he admitted. "Good thing, too, 'cause if I hadn't done it, I'd be the dead one." He paused. "I don't care much to gamble anymore, though."
He had reached the end. She continued to study him as if she was expecting more. Finally, he said, "What? What is it?"
"I want to ask did you grieve?" He gave her a curious look and she said, "Over your family, I mean. You lost all your family. Didn't you grieve over it?"
He had not expected the question, and he didn't know what to say, so he just gave a slight shake of his head. Justine watched his face go behind the blank wall she now knew well. She sighed and nestled her head against his chest.
He gazed out the window into the silver night, thinking about what she had asked. Had he grieved? He tried to remember.
At first it was a nightmare of tears and wailing, the house full of women from the neighborhood hovering around his mother as she tore at her face and shrieked curses, and then collapsed into helpless, hopeless anguish. There were long hours that she held on to him as if she would never let go.
He recalled the feeling that none of it was happening, from the time the police came to the door to take them to the scene, to the moment he watched his father's casket go into that marble bier, the iron grate closing with a grinding cry of metal against stone.
He held his broken heart together until the worst of it passed and by that time all he felt was a cold hatred at a world that had torn apart everything he had known. He shed few tears, and only in the deep of night when his mother couldn't hear, believing that if he did not stand firm, her mind would come unhinged and the last piece of his world would shatter. She disappeared into silence anyway. She yelled at the neighbors to go away and take their pity with them. She walked through the empty house as if she was blind and deaf. It was in a lucid moment that she put him on that northbound train. She said it was to save his life, but he wondered if it was because she did not want him there to witness what would come next.
Looking back, it was a point on a map. Everywhere he had been, everything he had done, hearkened back to those few terrible weeks sixteen years ago. But for that horrible tragedy, everything would have been different. Everything. He thought back on the question again. The answer was: No, I did not grieve. I couldn't. I wouldn't.
He glanced down at her, wondering how he would ever explain it. The sad drama of his father's murder, the hard nights and days on the cold Chicago streets, and then coming back to find his mother gone, never to return, had all worked to wrap him in hard armor. Armor that he had carried along a maze of flat dirt roads that led to nowhere and back to
New Orleans. He knew now that Storyville's vulgar flesh trade, the way it cheapened life and broke people, had drawn that armor tighter and more rigid. But he had come to believe it was necessary. That way, he could tell himself that it meant nothing that the woman who lay beside him let strangers inside her sweet body. That way, he could shoot a man dead in an Algiers saloon and walk out without a glance back. That way, he could be relieved from caring about anything or anyone. If only it was that simple.
Just look what happened when the walls did come down. Look at Buddy Bolden, falling into pieces, disintegrating by slow degrees, because he had no true defense against a harsh world.
His mind wandered for a few minutes. Justine's breathing deepened against his chest. "There's something else," he said.
"Hmm?"
"Something I'd better tell you." She opened sleepy eyes. "Valentin St. Cyr is not my true name."
She sat up, blinking slowly. "What is it?"
"Valentino Saracena," he said in a low voice, as if there was someone just outside the room who might hear.
She repeated it slowly. "Val-en-ti-no Sa-ra-ce-na. Something wrong with that?"
"No, there's nothing wrong with it," he murmured. "I felt that I had to change it if I was going to stay here. For all I knew, those fellows killed my father were still about." He smiled dimly. "And everybody knows a Dago never forgets an injury."
She watched him, trying to understand. He wanted to tell her the rest of it, to say, truly: I took another name like I was an actor in a play. But now all the others, my sister and brother, my father, my mother, and those murderers have all gone away, as if the show packed up and moved, leaving me behind. But he thought it would sound foolish and so didn't say anything more. She watched his face for a few minutes more, then drifted off to sleep.
From across the square, Justine saw Valentin slouch on the bench, wearing that look that told her he was miles away. But a few seconds passed, his face cleared and he saw her and smiled.
Valentin studied her profile and for a moment tried to imagine how he would feel if the Storyville killer chose her, if she were the one who had turned up smothered with a pillow or strangled with the sash of her own kimono or ripped open by a raw knife. He shook his head, dispelling the pictures he was seeing. Then he wondered if he would grieve over her.
She was now finishing her round of the square, coming toward him with the octoroon girl. He stood up.
On the other side of the street, the tall man watched the Creole stand up to greet the two women. The shorter of the two, and the prettier one, stretched to take his arm and kiss his cheek. St. Cyr smiled at her, his face opening for the briefest instant. The three of them walked off in the direction of Bayou St. John in the still, warm light of the Sunday afternoon. The tall man waited for a minute, then tilted his derby a few degrees and strolled along in their path.
NINE
Fair Lillian (Lulu) White, the diamond queen, says that she doesn't intend to go to the races anymore unless she is allowed on the grandstand. She says some people take her to be colored, but she says there's not a drop of Negro blood in her veins. She says that she is a West Indian and she was born in the West Indies. When a child, she was taken to New York by her father who was a Wall Street broker, and after his death she fell heir to 166 Custom-house.
—THE MASCOT
Jennie Hix loitered in the slate blue shadows of Common Street for three-quarters of an hour and then gave up. He wasn't gonna come ... no surprise. Or maybe he'd already been and gone, got what he wanted and headed back Uptown. It was crazy for her to expect him to do anything on time, or at all, and so she stood there, all out of place, while curious Chinamen gave her curious glances.
She fidgeted at the mouth of the alley for another five minutes, then stepped into the narrow street and crossed to the door with the Chink writing on it. What if they said no? What if they talked Chinee so that she couldn't understand? Goddamn that damn King Bolden, he could get what he wanted anytime, so why should he care about her? She needed a pipe and now. She pushed the door open with a shaking hand, expecting the worst and wondering what she would do, how she would sleep, with nothing to smoke.
But in two minutes, she was back on the banquette, pulling her shawl over her shoulders, the package stashed snugly on her person. Now she could go home and sleep and to hell with King Bolden. She turned into an alleyway running off Common to Fulton Street. It was quicker that way and she'd be out of sight, though it wasn't but ten feet across and dark as a tomb.
She heard the footsteps behind her and thought it was Bolden come at last. She was about to turn around and cuss him out when an explosion went off in her head, a crushing blow that slammed a black veil over her eyes. She barely felt her knees hit the alley bricks when another blow came. There was a second of raging pain as her head shattered into pieces and then the blackness was all over her. The third blow was not needed. She was already dead when it landed.
A shaking hand dropped the single black rose into one of the tiny pools of blood that seeped onto the cobblestones.
Picot made damned sure that this time, by God, no St. Cyr got as much as a crack at it. He didn't like private security men, Pinkertons and whatnot. They made it look like the police department couldn't keep order. So St. Cyr was already on his list. Then he heard that the Creole had been a copper and someone at the precinct told him the story about how he pulled his weapon on his own sergeant over some crib whore, some piece of dirty white trash. It was not like the slut had any sort of a decent life. Unlike the sergeant, a fifteen-year veteran whose career was nearly ruined.
Now their paths crossed far too often. Which meant J. Picot was too often reminded of their shared secret. There was no doubt either way; the first time they ran up on each other, he knew. One of those things, like a sixth sense; and of all people, it had to be St. Cyr. The private detective had the advantage, though: he wasn't exactly hiding his Negro blood, he just didn't announce it to the world. People looking at him would think he was a Dago or a Spanish Creole. But the truth was that St. Cyr's mother was part African and that made him one, too.
This same part-African had served on the New Orleans Police force and now worked private security for some of the high-dollar houses around the District and had even got hired on by Tom Anderson, the King of Storyville himself.
When Picot first heard that bit of news, he had been sorely tempted to push a note under the door of the Café, exposing the deceit. Then he decided that Anderson probably knew, like he knew most everything else, but had gone on and employed the dago-nigger or whatever he was anyway. Also, Picot realized that if the Creole detective was as good as people said, he'd find the culprit who had turned rat and expose him. Which meant Lieutenant Picot was holding cards he couldn't play. So St. Cyr was the King of Storyville's pet snake, and a maniac like King Bolden walked the streets like he owned them, an affront to the New Orleans Police Department in general and J. Picot in particular.
Well, some things were going to change, Lieutenant Picot vowed, no matter who employed the services of that Creole reptile.
The jabbering fool of a Chink had come rushing into the station house on Canal Street a little after ten o'clock. The call came into the Precinct at the Criminal Courts Building at 10:15. Picot rushed his men to the scene, turning the corner onto Common Street at a quarter to eleven. He commandeered the alleyway and by quarter past the hour, the body had been wrapped and thrown in the back of the nearest wagon. Once the scene was swept clean, Picot strode through the crowd of Chink faces, hopped into one of the two police automobiles in the city and sped off.
By the time Valentin got word and arrived at the alleyway, it was almost three o'clock. The blood on the bricks had dried and whatever might have remained by way of evidence was long gone. Picot's work, he had no doubt. He walked the alleyway for ten minutes anyway, as sleepy Asian eyes watched him from dark doorways. Then he went home.
He tossed about on his bed with such agitation that Justine final
ly sent him to the divan in the front room. It felt like he had just fallen asleep when he heard the voice calling from the street. He looked at his pocket watch; it was eight o'clock. He stood up and stumbled to his balcony in his nightshirt.
Beansoup was looking back up at him, his shirt and trousers ragged and his pallid face scrunched up with the gravity of his errand. He surely didn't resemble any fancy man Valentin had ever seen. "What now?" Valentin said, though he figured he already knew.
"Mr. Anderson wants you," Beansoup announced solemnly.
Valentin rubbed his face and said, "Yes. Within the hour." The boy waited until he went inside then reappeared to toss a Liberty quarter over the railing. The coin tumbled through the air, shiny-bright in the morning light. Beansoup caught it with an expert snap of dirty fingers and ran away.
The two Mississippi roughnecks studied Valentin up and down as he stood by the front door waiting for Anderson to finish his business. The King of Storyville was at his regular table, whispering to a man whose shiny pate and drooping mustache identified him as William O'Connor, the Chief of Police himself. The two men stopped once to look across the room in the direction of the Creole detective, then went back to their whispers. Momentarily, Anderson stood up and walked to the bar. The two roughnecks moved aside to let Valentin join him.
As soon as Valentin got within earshot, the white man muttered, "Four dead." His voice was frigid. "Four weeks. Four dead bodies. Jesus Christ Almighty." He shook his head grimly. "So, tell me," Anderson said, now coldly deliberate, "Where was your friend King Bolden last night?"
"I don't know," Valentin said. "Playing with his band, I suppose."
Anderson's eyes flashed. "You suppose? The one suspect in this awful business and you don't know where he was at the time of the crime? Why is that? Do you have someone else in mind?"
