Gunsmoke Blues

by Balogun Ojetade

  Robert knew he should feel guilt for what he’d done. Those people had been innocent. Not one of them had deserved to die. He and Virginia hadn’t even eaten all their meat. They had killed for the sake of killing itself.

  He should feel guilt.

  And yet…

  All that savagery had seemed as natural as breathing. He couldn’t regret it.

  Who could blame a predator for killing its prey?

  Does God feel guilty for causing earthquakes and floods? Robert pondered. If not, how can I feel guilty about what I’ve done?

  “God, I’m sorry for my sins,” he began, looking skyward. He stopped. The words no longer rang true.

  Everything he had done the previous night was wrong. He knew that. He had eaten human flesh and drunk human blood. But it had felt so right. Hell, didn’t Jesus himself commanded his followers to consume the bread of his body and the wine of his blood during the Eucharist?

  Robert had been seeking meaning all of his life, and now, together with Virginia, he seemed to have found some at last. He wasn’t going to allow guilt to rob him of that.

  He dropped to his knees and prayed again for guidance, but God remained silent.

  Whatever.

  Robert had found a new family. He no longer needed God, Jesus the Angels or the Saints.

  Reverend Clark had once told him that Hell was nothing more nor less than separation from God. If that was true, then Robert was in Hell right then. He’d had no idea it could feel so good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Bourbon Street, French Quarter.

  “Let me tell you about Jack L’éventreur—Jack, the Ripper,” the man said.

  Freda Brigitte lay sprawled on the bed, her hands and feet bound tightly to the bed posts with ropes. She wasn’t averse to being tied up now and then, in fact she expected it in her line of work, sometimes even enjoyed it, but this client was taking things too far. Much too far. Erica had warned her that something like it might happen, but of course she never heeded warnings.

  She tried to recall the details of what had happened. Details could be vital, especially in a life-or-death situation. But thinking was so hard. Her head throbbed like a train had run across it.

  It had been a fancy restaurant, she remembered that. They usually were, but this one had been particularly expensive. The man obviously liked to impress a woman by flashing his coin. And Freda had always been a sucker for a good-looking man with money.

  The warning signs had been there from the beginning. She should have bailed out after the soup course, certainly before dessert. But she had stupidly stayed to the end, and even gone home with the man afterward, so who could she blame but herself?

  The man was a talker. Her sister had warned her about talkers. Men who talked about themselves all the time—it was one of the primary indicators of a madman. Erica read a lot of books about psychology. Or was it psychiatry? Freda would have to ask her when she got out of that mess. If she ever got out.

  Madmen didn’t scare Freda. Half the men she dated displayed strong tendencies toward madness—glib charm, an inflated sense of self-importance, pathological lying. Erica liked to point out that Freda shared many of those attributes herself.

  Whatever the psychological theories, Freda had known there was something wrong with the man right from the start. He’d spent most of their dinner telling her about his ex-wife and why that bitch would never get a penny out of him, no matter how many fancy lawyers she hired to do her dirty work. By the time the waiter brought the bill, Freda had a pretty clear idea why his wife had left him, but she made sure to smile prettily and keep her opinions to herself.

  He was still talking then, telling her something about Jack the Ripper, but it was very much a one-way conversation. With a gag in her mouth, she wasn’t able to contribute anything beyond the occasional grunt or nod of the head.

  They’d ridden back in a carriage to his mini-mansion in the French Quarter—a posh house on Bourbon Street.

  He’d hit her with something—a stick, or a cane. She’d blacked out immediately after that. And then he must have tied her to the bed posts. He didn’t seem to have undressed her, though. So this wasn’t about sex.

  She looked up at him through her stinging eyes, her bound tongue unable to form words. Her left eye had swollen up and was half-closed. That half of her vision was painted red.

  Focus, Freda, listen to what he’s saying.

  He seemed to be working up to some kind of point at last, after what seemed like hours of disjointed rambling. “Do you know what Jack L’éventreur did to his victims?” the man asked. “He eviscerated them.” He articulated the word with care, in five distinct syllables, as if he had been rehearsing it—ee-VIS-er-a-ted. “That means that he cut their insides out of them,” he explained, just in case she wasn’t already familiar with the word.

  “Do you know how many women he murdered?” he asked. “Do you?” Freda moved her head from side to side as much as she could. The movement triggered a fresh bout of intense pain. “Five, at least five. Maybe eleven. Possibly even more. Nobody knows for certain. It might have been dozens. Dozens of dead women. Eviscerated. Filthy prostitutes, all of them. Just like you.” His eyes flicked over her body, and then around the room.

  A prostitute? She didn’t recall having entered into any kind of contractual arrangement with this man, nor accepting payment for any services rendered. In fact, no services had been rendered. She was a thief, yes. A liar, certainly. But a prostitute? Technically not. She said nothing, however. The gag saw to that.

  “They never caught him, though. Do you know why?” Freda shook her head again. “He was too clever for them. Too clever, by far.”

  The man suddenly produced a knife and held it up to the light. “See how it glints,” he said, twisting it one way, then the other.

  Freda watched intently. The knife did, indeed, glint.

  He held it against her throat.

  She tried to hold his gaze steadily, but his eyes darted in all directions. She struggled to move, but he had tied her arms and legs tightly to the bed. In an attempt to distract him, she made a gurgling sound in her throat.

  “Got something you want to say, have you?” he asked, and his face filled with glee. “Some famous last words? Think I care what you have to say? Think anyone cares? You’re just a filthy whore. Nobody cares about you. Nobody.”

  He removed the knife from her throat and began pacing the room in agitation. She listened hard to catch his words. “Do it!” he mumbled to himself. “Just do it!”

  After a minute he returned and sat on the edge of the bed. The blade was on her throat again. She could feel its cold edge.

  His eyes darted everywhere. “What about the new American Ripper? Have you heard of him? I bet you have. Everyone has. He’s all over the news, isn’t he? Famous. Can’t get away from him.” He laughed. “They can’t catch him either, the constables. They keep thinking they’ve caught him, but he’s still out there. Still killing. Do you know what he does to his victims? He doesn’t just cut them up, doesn’t just eviscerate them, oh no.”

  The man leaned in close. The blade pushed hard against her windpipe. Freda held her breath.

  “Eats them, he does. Gobbles them up for his dinner.” He sat back on the bed. The pressure of the blade eased a little. “You thought you were being taken out for dinner, right? You little slut. Turns out, you are dinner.”

  The man laughed again and stood up. He waved the knife in front of her, slashing the blade through the air. The activity seemed to please him. “I’ll be back later,” he said and left the room. She heard the key turn in the lock.

  Freda struggled again with the ropes that bound her, but they refused to loosen. She resigned herself to wait, but he would be back, and then who knew what might happen? Erica might. She knew all about serial killers. She wondered how long it would be before her sister reported her missing, and whether the constables would ever find her.

  She stared up at the p
lain white square of the ceiling. A small crack ran along one edge of its elaborate cornice. She followed the line of the crack to the far corner of the room where it ended in one of the alcoves next to the chimney breast. There, a fat black spider busied itself with a captured fly that had become entangled in its web.

  Eviscerating it, probably.

  She couldn’t help but think of the look of terror that so often haunted Pépé’s eyes these days. Perhaps this was how he felt.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  St. Augustine Church, St. Claude Avenue, the Tremé, quarter moon.

  When Ida arrived at the St. Augustine—the oldest Negro Catholic parish in the nation—events were already starting to spin out of control. A large and angry crowd of white men, women and children had gathered outside. Ida quickly counted at least forty people as her carriage pulled up across the street.

  The arrest of two Black men for the Ripper murders had been followed swiftly by speculation that a sinister gang of Negroes was responsible for the crimes.

  The Ripper murders hadn’t finished either, despite the three arrests. Another gruesome murder had taken place the previous night. The body of a young woman had been found dumped on waste ground in an area frequented by white immigrants from Haiti. The killing had borne all the hallmarks of a particularly violent Ripper murder, the corpse torn to ribbons, limbs ripped from the torso, the body partially eaten. It seemed that one or more murderers was still at large, and the finger was being pointed at the Negro community in the Tremé.

  Now local white people had decided to take the law into their own hands.

  “Damn,” Dabney Espion said, peering out the window of the carriage. “This looks like a powder keg.”

  Ida nodded grimly. Her flu was worse than ever, and the scratch on her arm was hurting like the devil. She had bandaged it up, but the wound kept weeping a yellow liquid. She had stepped up the painkillers from white willow bark to laudanum, but her headache wasn’t getting any better. Dealing with a violent protest was the last thing she needed right now.

  The crowd was pushing up against the door of the church. The protesters held banners and placards and were shouting abuse at the people holed up inside. One of the banners read, Negroes go back to Africa. Another read, Keepmurderers out. A smattering of United States and Confederate flags waved above the heads of the crowd.

  “How many people are in the building?” Dabney asked.

  “As many as twenty. Come on.” Ida pushed open the door of the carriage and stepped into the throng.

  Two constables at the scene were trying to force their way to the door of the church. Dabney elbowed his way after them, pushing through the crowd like a bull. Ida decided to start pulling people away from the back.

  Before she could get started, a woman came up to her and barred her way. “You can’t stop us from protesting, nigger,” the woman said. “We’re entitled to protect our community from these coal-skinned bastards.” She clutched two children close to her side.

  Ida raised her voice above the sound of the chanting crowd. “I’m going to ask you to step away from the church, ma’am. We need to clear a space so that your protest can proceed peacefully and the rights of the people inside the church are protected, too. Now, if you’d just step back, we can allow you to continue your protest in peace.”

  Two more women and some teens had joined the first woman. One of the teens stepped forward. “Ain’t gonna do that,” he said. “Not until we’ve sent these niggers a firm message.”

  “Yeah,” shouted one of the other women, who was carrying a Niggers, go back to Africa placard. “Everyone knows that’s where the murderers are from. They can’t stay here. It ain’t safe.”

  “I’m going to ask you again to step aside peacefully,” Ida said. An omnibus filled with constables arrived. Ida was glad. They were going to need at least a dozen uniforms to get the crowd under control. And those white people were much more likely to follow orders from a fellow white person, especially one in law-enforcement.

  “Ain’t gonna do that, Negress,” repeated the teen. The women nodded in agreement behind him.

  “Who’s gonna make us?” demanded another teen who had pushed his way to the front. He wore a derby and had a scarf wrapped around his face.

  “I must warn you that any use of threatening language or behavior toward a Black Dispatch or a constable is a criminal offense,” Ida said. She stepped between the two teens and the women, trying to keep her antagonists apart. “Please step back now and allow me to carry out my job.”

  “No,” the second youth said.

  “You niggers are no longer welcome in New Orleans,” the woman said. “You’re murderers and criminals.”

  Ida glanced behind her. The constables were engaged in stand-offs with protesters across the road. The crowd seemed to be growing as more people came out of side streets. Ida was on her own. She turned back to the teen with the scarf over his mouth.

  “Stand back, now!” she shouted. “Get back!”

  The two teens stepped forward.

  Ida grabbed hold of the one with the scarf. She pulled a set of iron handcuffs from her belt and pushed a cuff against the youth’s right wrist. The cuff snapped shut.

  “Hey!” the youth shouted. “What are you doing?”

  He was fully cuffed behind his back before he realized what had happened. Ida grabbed his arm with both hands and dragged him away from the others.

  Behind her, she heard shouts from protesters and constables alike as the protest started to become violent. A rock sailed over her head and shattered against the wall of the church as she dragged the teen to the constables’ omnibus. She handed him over to a constable then turned back to the fray.

  More constables had arrived, but the protesters greatly outnumbered them. The demonstration had turned ugly, with bricks and bottles being thrown overhead. A constable staggered from the scene with a bloody face. Others followed, bringing their arrests with them, but the crowd had now doubled in size. A large window of the church smashed and fell to the ground, scattering splinters of glass.

  Ida grabbed hold of two of the women carrying Back to Africa placards and shouted at them to go home themselves.

  “Not until the niggers in the Tremé are gone, or dead,” the woman with the children in tow said. “Yeah,” her friend said, defiantly.

  A glass bottle smashed to the ground, scattering glass around the children’s feet, making them scream.

  “Come on,” Ida said urgently. “Get out of here before you get hurt.”

  The women nodded and left then, a look of fear in their eyes.

  More constables arrived. The crowd began to break up in panic, with people running everywhere. Ida looked for Dabney and found him protecting the main entrance to the church. He was in a stand-off with two men. She pushed through the crowd toward him.

  “Step away from the door!” Dabney shouted at the men. “Get back!” Dabney was a burly man, but not as big as those two. One stood a foot taller than Ida. She grabbed hold of him and pushed him up against the wall. As she did so, the other man punched Dabney in the face, giving him a bloody nose. Ida twisted the first man’s arm behind his back until he cried out, and held him there. “Help, over here!” she shouted, hoping for some assistance.

  She felt a stab of pain in her back and let go of her captive, who ran off. Someone had punched her in the kidney. She clutched at her back and turned to see who had done it. She was just in time to see a hooded and masked teen run forward holding a beer bottle with a burning wick sticking out of the top. The teen hurled the bottle through the shattered window of the church then vanished into the melee.

  “Shit!” Dabney said. He had subdued his opponent and had him cuffed on the ground. “Get this bastard out of here. I’ll break down the door.”

  “No,” Ida shouted, rubbing her back. Adrenaline had pushed her pain into the background. “I’ll go in through the window.”

  She stepped up onto the window ledge, avoiding the ja
gged glass around the edge of the frame then jumped into the burning building.

  ***

  Inside the church, fire had already taken hold. A burning pool of oil spilled over the floor, and flames ran up curtains and other soft furnishings. A Christmas tree in the corner was a fiery column, hung with blackening decorations. Smoke was starting to fill the air inside the hall.

  Ida looked around. A couple dozen people cowered toward the back of the main hall, away from the windows and door. One woman was seated, clutching a compress to a wound on her forehead. They gazed at Ida in terror.

  The back wall of the church hall was windowless. Behind the people a door stood open, but looked to be an internal door leading to another room. There was a fire exit to one side, but the burning oil had blocked access to it. Ida scanned the space for alternative exits, but the only way out seemed to be the main door behind her, and the broken window by which she had entered. The fire was spreading quickly along shelves of books, leaping from chairs to curtains to a stack of bibles. Flames already reached up to the ceiling, licking it with bright red tongues.

  “Quickly!” Ida shouted. “Over here.” She gestured to the people to cross over to her, but they remained huddled together in a tight group.

  Ida swore under her breath, and crossed the hall toward them, keeping close to the wall and away from the pool of burning petrol that filled much of the floor. The acrid smoke stung her eyes and made her cough. When she reached the group, she went first to the injured woman. “Can you walk?” she asked.

  The woman said nothing for a moment then nodded.