by David Fulmer
After a leisurely bath and a half hour dressing before her mirror, Evelyne Dallencort called down for Malvina to tell her eldest boy, Thomas, to fetch the automobile and bring it around front. As she descended the stairs, she stopped to listen to the son snickering as he told his mother about a body found on the floor of a bordello in the red-light district. From the sound of his voice, Thomas was taking a giddy delight in recounting the details.
"Woke up and there he was lying dead on the floor," he was saying. "And ain't nobody got no idea how he got there."
She heard Malvina mutter something in response.
"How the hell you manage somethin' like that?" Thomas went on. "I mean, what a goddamn lark!"
Malvina snapped back at the cursing. Thomas produced another blunt laugh as he let himself out.
After a light lunch, Evelyne put on a Floradora hat with a veil attached and went out the front door, throwing back something breezy about shopping and then being expected for tea. She would telephone when it was time for Thomas to come carry her home. From behind his Picayune, her husband coughed, dabbed his dry lips, and nodded gravely. Malvina stood by with the blank face of a woman who knows much and says little.
Outside, the Winton, nicely turned in deep burgundy with brass and wood appointments and black leather seats, rolled up to the curb. The sixteen cylinders chattered gaily, and Thomas squeezed the horn bulb for a merry honk.
He was slow about climbing down to offer Evelyne a hand up, just shy of insolent. She knew this was because he was in livery, which he hated. It annoyed her. The young sport got to drive a fine automobile, one of the first touring cars to feature an electric starter. This meant that unlike other chauffeurs who had to bend down clumsily to turn a crank, Thomas merely closed the choke and slipped a switch on the dashboard to bring the engine to life. A body would think he'd appreciate that.
Though his attitude could use some work, he was an able driver, and his touch was sure as he pushed the automobile around the corner and down St. Charles at a good twenty miles an hour. When they reached the corner of St. James Street, she returned his discourtesy, snapping out an order to take the car back to the house and wait for her call. She knew when he was on his own, he liked to race around the Negro parts of town, showing off for the girls, and she was letting him know there wouldn't be any of that today. She stepped down from the Winton without his help and, lifting her skirts, crossed the banquette. An attendant leaped from behind the glass to push wide Mayer Israel's heavy double doors.
The store clerks would recognize her as one of the Garden District wives who spent their days shopping and socializing while the colored help did the housework and raised the children. These women all appeared to have been cut from a mold, hair swirled and pinned in Parisian style, and dressed in the latest fashions from the Continent by way of Mayer Israel's racks.
Most of the ladies had enjoyed a privileged upbringing that had led to a privileged marriage. Evelyne was the wife of Benoit Dallencort, a scion of one of the city's best families, with a lineage of wealth and prominence going back over a hundred years to the time when New Orleans was still a French city. Claiming this pedigree, she had assumed her wifely duties with a placid grace. She bore her aging husband two children and managed their Perrier Street mansion. She arranged social events and made appearances at the charities at the Opera House. Indeed, she performed with such skill that no one considered that a serpent lay coiled in her breast.
As she began the transformation from common girl to woman in her Mississippi hometown, she realized that she had a special gift for changing shape to suit her environment. First it was a matter of survival; later a way to serve her pleasures. She had turned being "ruined" to her advantage by blackmailing the rich older gentleman who had deflowered her. She used his money to escape her lowly origins for the city of New Orleans, where she promptly remade herself into a woman of class.
Possessing a patrician face, admirable figure, and the brazen confidence to match both, Evelyne slipped smoothly into her new role as a society woman, using the secret that fine trees sometimes had crooked roots to her advantage.
She could demur when asked about her people, knowing that immense fortunes had begun with horrors like trafficking in slaves. Other families had betrayed their own by dealing in criminal schemes such as trading with Yankees during the blockade. And some others were descended from characters like the pirate Jean Lafitte.
Indeed, Evelyne believed that bandit blood ran in her veins; or perhaps that she was kin to Marie Laveau, the octoroon woman who had grown rich, famous, and feared by all of downtown New Orleans in the first half of the last century. Like Marie, whose ghost was said to still haunt the city streets, Evelyne possessed a devious, devilish intelligence. Also like that queen, she had grand plans, and this morning's visit to Mayer Israel's, the finest department store in New Orleans, was part of her most audacious design of all.
On the second floor, she was greeted by a quadroon girl named Delia, who escorted her to one of the private changing rooms reserved for special customers. Delia was not only her favored dresser, but a useful spy. In addition to what she overheard from the other rich men's wives, she ran with rounders, keeping up with sordid news from the darker corners of the city, places like Rampart Street and Storyville. The girl never failed to deliver useful information.
Now down to only a camisole of fine silk, Evelyne patted her hips and stomach. It was still a good figure for a woman of thirty-six. The lines and the sagging had only just begun, and her profile was still comely.
Delia rapped on the door and stepped in with three fine dresses draped over her tan arm. She knew what was expected and, before they got to the business at hand, spent languid moments fussing over the older woman, murmuring about her choice of clothes and caressing various parts of her body with a gentle touch, lingering on her breasts and buttocks, until Evelyne's breath came short and her flesh fairly glowed.
Delia helped her into the first of the dresses, and she spent a pleasant quarter hour trying that one and the other two, enjoying the sight of herself done up so. She would be a vision at the Christmas balls. Then she thought, No, no Christmas balls this season, and laughed quietly.
Delia said, "Ma'am?"
"Oh, nothing," Evelyne said.
She took all three dresses, and Delia carried them out to the counter. They'd be delivered at a later hour, proof of her busy day of shopping.
Now the second act of the comedy began. Evelyne remained in the changing room, as giddy as a child playing hide-and-seek. Five minutes went by and Delia reappeared, slinking in with a feline grace and holding a garment bag under her arm, from which she drew a common day dress, along with a slouch hat, white stockings, a pair of brogans, and, for a final touch, a wig of auburn curls.
Delia set to work preparing the older woman, helping her wriggle into the dress and pull on the stockings. She helped her with the shoes, then went to work getting the wig set just so, using pins she plucked from her own braided hair. She ducked out again and came back with a coat, knee length and a size too large. Once the wrap was draped, the wife of a rich and prominent local citizen had been replaced by a washerwoman.
A few more touches here and there and Evelyne was ready. Delia scurried from the dressing room to scout any of the other Garden District ladies who might be lounging about. Any such women would be steered aside by other helpful clerks. It was a service the girls traded, since many of their clients were involved in affairs that required delicate choreographies.
This morning it was clear sailing, and Delia hurried her charge out of the dressing room, along the back wall, and through the set of doors onto the upstairs landing of the back stairs.
Evelyne pushed a gold Liberty dollar into the quadroon's hand, whispered a thank-you, and made her way down the two flights of dark steps to the employees' entrance in back. If she happened to meet one of the Negro stock boys coming up, she would just brush past, and the boy would know to avert his eyes.
>
As usual, Delia had carried out her instructions to the letter, and a yellow Hudson OC was waiting when she stepped out onto Common Street. The driver would have strict instructions to mind his own business and not speak a word to his passenger. So, with her head bent and hat pulled low to avoid any chance of detection, Evelyne Dallencort was whisked away into the New Orleans streets.
Riding along, watching the crowds, she chuckled quietly to herself. If only the peasants knew!
They slowed for an intersection, and the pedestrians stared at the fine automobile, tracing it from the gleaming radiator cap to the spare tire mounted in back. Their gazes passed over her, seeing a poor nothing, a nobody like themselves who happened to have the luck to get a ride across town in some downtown family's touring car. At that moment something bitter rose in her throat that made her want to lurch to her feet and shout for them to turn their eyes away.
She bit her tongue. It wouldn't be long before her name was on lips from one end of the city to the other. They would all find out soon enough. Once she finished shedding her skin, no one would be able to deny her.
Tom Anderson spent the morning working his way through the stack of papers on the table before him, stopping now and again to refill his coffee cup and talk over minor business matters with various characters who passed in and out of the Café. Just before noon he got up to stretch and to fetch a small shot of grappa to settle his stomach, something he had learned from St. Cyr—or, actually, Saracena, which was the name that was on the Creole's birth certificate.
He used the telephone set behind the bar to call the offices of The Blue Book, the pocket-size guide to the two thousand prostitutes working in the District. Billy Struve, the publisher and a regular source of uptown news and gossip, came on the line. The King of Storyville, an old-fashioned sort who distrusted telephones for private matters, asked Struve to stop by as soon as he had the time to spare. He dropped the hand piece in the cradle, topped his coffee with grappa, and went back to work.
After he made his rounds of the law offices, Valentin bought a boudin sandwich and a cola from a street cart and sat down on a bench in Lafayette Square to eat. He didn't have much of an appetite, and fed the pigeons with what was left of his lunch. He had skipped a visit to Sam Ross. Not that he'd be able to avoid the attorney for long. Ross would already be expecting a report on James Beck Jr. Which would require that a certain Creole detective make a visit to a certain red-light district.
A lucky bird got the last crumb, and the detective decided to go and get it over with. It was still early, and he could be in and out in no time. He'd be less than a minor distraction on those sorry streets, and they'd likely forget about him as soon as he was gone.
Still, he prudently crossed over far up on Canal to reach Claiborne Avenue, stopping for a moment to make way for one of the familiar creaking hacks from the city morgue. The narrow thoroughfare was lined by rows of brownstones in much need of repair, a selection of low-down saloons, a grocery store or two, and the odd Chinese laundry. From what he could see, nothing much had changed in the three years since he had last seen it.
This back boundary of the District was the lowest rung on the scarlet ladder, so far removed from the broad thoroughfare of Basin Street with its grand bordellos, fine dining establishments, high-dollar saloons, and gilded music halls that it might have been in another country.
Though not a few of the women who rented the cribs for a half-dollar a day and served men for a dime a trick had once boarded in those same mansions. Once pretty, with firm bodies and all their teeth, they had fallen victim to drink, narcotics, and evil men. Other trollops were cursed from the start and never rose any higher than these foul corners. No matter how they started out, the lot of them tended to ugly and vicious, as derelict as the city had to offer.
The streets were so bad that the police rarely patrolled after sundown and then only in pairs, and any man who ventured there was on his own. The women—whether drunk, addicted, diseased, or mad—were only the most recent edition of the vicious bawds who had populated the section for decades, the type who considered it sport to lure a man into a hovel, knock him unconscious, and steal everything he carried or wore. They sometimes fought each other in fierce bouts that left puddles of blood in the middle of the cobbled streets and provided an extra bit of Saturday-night entertainment. Many ended up dead in a crib, either murdered or finished by their own hopeless hands.
The two streets should have been closed down years ago, but for all the filth and violence, they still generated plenty of cash. Not to mention that the city fathers preferred the scourge not spread to any other part of New Orleans. Like any sewer, it was better to have it contained.
The earliest-rising birds of the Quarter were up and about, and Valentin stopped every few doors to talk to a girl. It didn't take him long to pick up bits of the story, one more piece at each stop. He had only done it hundreds of times before, and he slipped back into the routine as if he'd never been gone at all.
By the time he reached Bienville Street, he'd heard several versions of a tale of young louts assaulting a woman the previous Saturday evening. There was also some chatter about a fellow carted out of a crib one block over, but that meant nothing to him.
Finding the victim of the malfeasance turned out to be easy; everyone knew Essie Gill. The detective was directed to a decrepit house halfway down the block between Conti and St. Louis, one of the structures that were cracking apart as a bad foundation settled further in the soggy New Orleans earth.
Valentin heard her first, the voice ripping through the early afternoon quiet like a rusty saw blade. She was standing halfway up the rotting steps of the house, dressed in a Mother Hubbard, once white, now stained and mottled. When he called her name, her head came around in a slow glare. Then her eyes went wide with surprise and her gap-tooth mouth stretched.
"Well, goddamn!" she cried out, clapping clumsy hands and then pointing a finger. "Is that Mr. Valentin right there?"
Her cry echoed along the street and Valentin winced. Stopping at the bottom of the steps, he said, "How are you, Essie?"
Essie said, "Whatchu doin' 'round here?"
"I came to see you."
The woman blinked, dazzled by this news. "Issat right?" She hobbled unsteadily down to the banquette, bringing the odor of her unwashed body with her.
Essie was a well-known character around the streets. Once a decent-looking girl, plain featured but with a pleasing smile and good eyes, she had worked in one of the better houses, not a first-rate Basin Street address, but only two blocks back on Liberty. She might have stayed or even moved to a house down the line, save for her unfortunate problem with drink. One sip led to a second, then a third, and continued on from there.
Many was the night she shuffled to a temperance meeting at Deliverance Baptist and swore before God and the other wretches that she would imbibe no more. The pledge lasted until she encountered a bottle that held liquor. And then it would all go 'round again, a slow whirlpool of Raleigh Rye. The more she drank, the more it affected her, and she would go out of her mind on a few short glasses.
The madams tired of her, tired of opening doors on a drunken Essie and a half-dozen men, all taking their turns at her and not one paying a dime. They lost patience with her wild diatribes as she stood at a window, screeching foul curses at the neighbors and innocent bystanders alike. Time and again, she was told to pack her things and go. Each dismissal took her one step farther north and another rung down the ladder. Soon she wouldn't even be able to keep herself in a crib and would end up working on the street, which meant bending over or scraping her knees in whatever alley or entranceway was handy, lucky to earn a nickel for each act.
Her clothes were often torn from falls and spotted with spilled drink and other stains that got laughs from some and disgusted others. She bathed rarely, didn't bother to douse herself with perfume, and so appeared to be just another worthless, falling-down-drunk slut on a fast train for the bughouse
or the cemetery.
Valentin had dealt with her a few times, back when she had first arrived. She had been determined to get into one of the Basin Street houses and wouldn't take no for an answer. Even then she had a wild streak that frightened the madams. They did not want the likes of her around their well-heeled customers and left it up to Valentin to deal with her.
He handled it, directly and to the point, banishing her from any decent house until she learned how to behave. Though furious over the treatment, she still appreciated the Creole's honesty and accorded him a grudging respect. For his part, he soon learned that she had an odd ability to sweep up information from the street and recall it precisely, even when she could remember little else. He had used her talents dozens of times.
She now regarded him with curious, though bleary, red eyes. "Whatchu doin' back 'round here? I thought you was long gone." Her breath reeked of sour whiskey.
"I came to see you," Valentin repeated.
Essie cocked her head. "Me?"
"I heard you had some trouble the other night."
"Trouble?" Then: "Oh, you mean with them white boys." She cackled. "Jesus Christ almighty!"
"What happened?"
Essie let out another raw laugh and plunged in. The way she told it, the four young men had come knocking at her door early Saturday evening.
"They come inta my crib and they say, 'We here to have some fun, and we heared you was a good sport.'" She winked, an aside. "Everybody know that. Yes, sir! Then they tole me to take off my dress, and I figgered they was wantin' to take turns, or maybe go two at a time, like that." She took a leering pause that was meant to be dramatic. "But that wa'n't it at all!"
A few stragglers, alerted by her screeching voice, stopped to listen.
"You know what they done?" Her voice swooped. "They dragged me out to the corner without a goddamn stitch on! You believe that shit? In the middle of the fuckin' banquette and in front of the whole goddamn world!"
