Chasing the Devil's Tail (12 page)

Valentin watched the crowd on the dance floor part like the Red Sea, and more people got to their feet to stomp the boards and Buddy took it as a signal to shift his gears, and went stalking up and down in front of the bandstand, his fingers punching out an electric code on the valves. The horn wailed louder and faster and then he went up the scale, up the scale to the B-flat octave, and the others grabbed on for dear life as he took off.

The wooden floor was rumbling and the street windows were rattling and the women were yelling out his name, so Buddy jumped on stage, weaving in and out and around the other players, smiling through his horn, dropping it for one beat to shout out something and they shifted the key up to C
and halfway through the chorus, he ran over to the open window and jammed the bell of the cornet outside into the black, steamy New Orleans night. Valentin could barely hear Mumford shout out, "Man, whatchu doin'? What the hell you doin'?"

Buddy reeled around, his face all aglow, his eyes crazy with joy, his voice taking up where his horn left off. "I'm callin' my children," he shouted back, "I'm callin' my children home!"

Valentin never forgot that night. The band stayed on the stage for two hours, barely drawing breaths between songs. About halfway through, a woman who had worked herself into a lather began to undo the hooks on her dress and then walked right out of it and careened about the dance floor in her camisole. Then a voluptuous Creole girl went one better and threw everything off, stepping naked as the day she was born in the middle of the floor. Her body was so slick with sweat she looked like she was covered in oil and when Bolden saw he began to play to her, like a snake charmer, as she shimmied up to stand below the bell of his horn, her eyes closed, shiny flesh rippling in the low, hot lights.

Valentin watched as everyone else in the room disappeared and Buddy's stare fastened onto the girl, moving up her long legs, over her wide hips and heavy breasts to the face, the mouth open and nostrils flaring, framed by dark hair that whipped about in long wet strands. He saw the two of them entwine over five feet of air that was thick with sound, saw them wrap around each other in a hungry, invisible embrace.

The crowd fell deeper into the frenzy of motion and color and shouts and laughter, all to the rise and fall of King Bolden's music. Valentin looked from one side of the room to the other, stunned by the power of the hands and lungs of this
one-man Louisiana hurricane. It was then that he saw, through a gap between two dancing bodies, the form of J. Picot standing in the doorway, regarding the scene with a cold sneer of an expression. Some bodies came together, blocking Valentin's view and when they split apart again, Picot was gone. After that, the night dissolved into a noisy, drunken revelry that ended sometime after four o'clock with Valentin St. Cyr and his old friend Buddy Bolden staggering out the door and onto the street.

They made their way to the banks of the river and found a place to sit and share the bottle of Raleigh Rye that Nancy Hanks herself had shoved into Buddy's hands as they'd left the saloon. The first streaks of dawn were painting the sky out beyond Arabi as they flopped down on the rotting remains of the old riverboat dock at the bottom of Poydras Street. The noise and motion were gone, leaving an empty space around them.

Buddy swilled from the bottle, then waved it in the air. "Goddamn, what a night. What a
night
." He chortled weakly, took another long pull, then handed the whiskey to Valentin.

They drank in silence, passing the bottle and watching the colors where day and night combined in the mist that hung over the water. Minutes passed and Valentin sensed that Buddy was slipping away somewhere, but then he turned abruptly, closed one eye and gave a quizzical look.

"So, what I want to know is, why the hell you been followin' me around?" he said. "I see you everywhere I go. What is it that's so damn important?"

"You know Martha Devereaux?" Valentin said. It came out louder and sharper than he'd intended.

Bolden stopped in the middle of raising the bottle. "What about her?"

"She was murdered last night." The bottle went up the rest of the way and an inch of it disappeared. "That's three girls killed now," Valentin went on, holding up fingers. "First Annie Robie. Then Gran Tillman. Now this one."

Bolden handed the bottle over. "I don't want to hear no more about it, thank you."

Valentin shook his head and turned away to watch an early-rising pelican's silent swooping glide over the green waters. He thought to begin snapping out the questions that were buzzing about his head, but instead he said, "I went to see Nora."

Buddy turned slowly to regard his friend. "What for?"

"To tell her you were in jail," Valentin said.

"You don't need to be upsetting my wife," Bolden snapped.

"She's already upset."

"What'd you go out there for?" The voice was harsh. "I don't go botherin' your little fair brown, what's her name?"

"Justine."

"Well, you don't see me goin' round Antonia Gonzales', makin' trouble with
Justine.
Tell you what. You stay outta my stuff and I'll stay outta yours." He made a rough gesture. "Now drink your whiskey."

Valentin lifted the bottle, then lowered it. "Where were you around midnight?" he said.

Bolden turned to stare at him. "What the goddamn hell is this?"

"Were you anywhere around Basin Street?"

"Ain't none of your damn business where I was. Or what I was doin'."

"The way you been acting, maybe it is."

"What about the way I been acting?" He sounded suddenly weary of the whole exchange.

"There's somethin' affecting you."

Buddy didn't like the sound of that at all. He snatched the bottle back roughly and took a long swig. "Ain't nothin
affecting
me," he muttered.

It was now Valentin's turn to get angry. "Oh, no? All I hear is how you're goin' crazy. And I believe it. Half the time I see you, you're gettin' drunk. You don't show up to play with the band. You got yourself thrown in jail. It ain't good news." Bolden made a harsh gesture. "Goddamnit, what's wrong with you?"

Buddy lurched to his feet and planted an angry thumb in his own chest. "The only thing wrong with me is I happen to be the horn player who went and turned this whole goddamn city upside-down. That's right. 'Cause I don't play like nobody else, not like no John Robichaux, not like no Frankie Dusen, not like nobody. I got black folk, Creoles, white folk comin' out to hear. Comin' to hear King Bolden, and dancin' together like nobody's business." He weaved for a second, frowned darkly. "You want to know what's wrong with me? I scare the hell outta people, that's what."

Valentin shook his head at these dramatics. "The only people you're scaring is your wife. And your friends," he said.

Buddy gave him a cold look, raised the bottle and drained it in one swallow. He let it down, then banged it against his mouth again, in case there was a drop or two left. When he pulled it away, a trickle of red ran from his lip.

Valentin said, "Jesus Christ, Buddy."

Bolden reached with a fingertip, stared at the crimson smear and came up with an empty, lopsided smile. "It's only blood, Tino," he said. "Only blood." Then he smashed the bottle against the top of the nearest piling. He held fast to what remained by the neck, the jagged shards glinting in the
first glimmering light of day. "So, do I scare you, too?" he asked his old friend.

His old friend didn't answer. Bolden laughed softly and tossed the broken bottle into the dirty brown waters of the Mississippi. Without another word, he walked away, going home.

BRUTAL SLAYING
IN THE TENDERLOIN

Martha Devereaux, a colored woman
24
years of age, was brutally murdered on Tuesday night in the mansion of Jessie Brown on Iberville by a party or parties unknown.

Her death is the third homicide of sporting girls in as many weeks without any clue to the identity of the perpetrator of the vile acts.

Chief O'Connor's office was not willing to provide comment in regards to the recent spate of deaths of sporting girls.

Miss Devereaux's body was carried to her home in Lafayette for burial.

KILLER AT WORK IN
STORYVILLE?

The New Orleans Police had no comment on the recent deaths of three sporting girls in as many weeks.

Chief O'Connor's office was not willing to make a statement about the possibility of the same killer at work in all three cases, though it seems obvious.

Mr. Tom Anderson also declined to offer an opinion of the tragic business, except to say that he is watching the situation closely.

Valentin folded the Late Edition of the Sunday
Sun
and laid it on the table. Tom Anderson loomed in his chair, eyes aglitter. "Watching the situation closely," he mimicked, his face going a deeper shade of red. "Now, don't I look like a perfect fool?"

"No one pays attention to these newspaper fellows," Valentin said.

"I pay attention!" Anderson slammed the table with his fist. "People all over this city pay attention! Important people. People I have business with." He glared, measuring the detective. "Now what do you have to report?"

Valentin cleared his throat. "I visited the house again this afternoon. Most of the girls have moved out, but I spoke to the ones who were still around. Nobody saw any suspicious characters. No strangers lurking around the time of the murder. The killer waited to slip in until all the girls were in rooms with customers and..." The King of Storyville's hard stare remained on him. "This fellow is sly," he limped on. "He doesn't leave much behind."

"What? He leaves his signature, doesn't he? Those goddamned black roses."

"Yes, but that's all."

"And that ain't enough, Mr. Private Detective?" Valentin scratched his jaw nervously. "The truth of the matter is—"

"Is what?" Anderson snapped.

"That I made a mistake. I figured those first two murders happened because of some shady business with the victims. Robie and Tillman knew each other and I thought the two of them had crossed the wrong person." He tugged at his collar. "And Annie Robie was on Perdido Street and Tillman worked at Jessie Taylor's, so it didn't seem all so—"

"Important?" The King of Storyville was terse.

Valentin thought to remind the man across the table of his own dismissal of the first two murders, then decided against it.

"What about Bolden?" Anderson asked abruptly. "Have you questioned him?"

"I talked to him, yes."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing worth much of anything."

"Did he have an alibi?"

"He doesn't remember what he's doing from one minute to the next," Valentin said. "I don't believe he's involved in this. He's not the type."

"Not the type?" Anderson's eyebrows arched. "You mean aside from the fact that he's a raving lunatic?" Valentin opened his mouth but the white man charged ahead. "Wait a moment! Isn't it true that during the time he was in jail, no women were assaulted? And the very evening he's released, there's another murder? And that he knew all three of these women?"

It sounded like Picot had been whispering in someone's ear. "You could say the same about another two or three dozen sports around here," Valentin countered.

"And what the hell is he doing with a white woman and an octoroon?" Anderson said. "We have laws against that kind of thing." He tapped rapid fingers on the table.

"I'll be keeping an eye on him," Valentin said. "But I've known him for a long time. He's troublesome, I'll grant th—."

"Troublesome isn't the word for it," Tom Anderson cut in again.

"He acts like a maniac, but he's no murderer," Valentin said. "He didn't kill these women."

The King of Storyville did not look convinced. "Then you damned well better find out who did," he said.

***

Bolden woke up in the white light of the afternoon and tasted blood. He lay still, his eyes on the ceiling, feeling his body come awake. His tongue probed until he found the ridge of the wound.
Cut my damn lip. Cut my goddamn lip.

He looked down and plucked at his white shirt with his fingertips. He saw blood in a little pattern, a crimson Milky Way. He tried to remember what had happened, but nothing came to him. Last night was far away, hidden in a dark haze, like so many of his nights of late. He wondered where did they go? He thought about it some more, but nothing came. Yesterday was as blank as the white ceiling over his head.

He wanted a drink.

Valentin trudged home from Basin Street through quiet afternoon streets. When he got back, he threw himself across his bed and tried to sleep, but the angry buzz in his head went on and on and so he got up, went back outside and starting walking up and down Magazine Street.

He admitted to himself what he had told Anderson. He'd been stupid to toss aside those first two deaths just because one victim plied her trade in the Negro quarter and the other in a house on the District's fringe that employed low-class white women. There was a certain logic to it. Since Annie Robie and Gran Tillman were friends, there could have been some sordid business with the two of them that stirred the killer's wrath. Storyville was a wallow of such treachery. So some fellow who thought himself wronged murders Annie and then her confidante Gran Tillman, and the tale ends right there, the two deaths all but forgotten in the rush to the next weekend's pleasures. The black roses, symbols that had meaning only in the killer's mind, would disappear with the guilty party. The women would go down in the ground and a mystery would remain, for what little anyone cared.

But the homicide of Martha Devereaux had shattered that construction. Whether or not she was connected to the other two victims didn't signify. This was no longer part of the ordinary slaughter, the cost of doing business in a place like Storyville; and if there was any doubt, the murderer had underlined the point in poor Martha's blood.

He glanced at his reflection in a store window and stopped, startled to see that the face in the glass was smiling. The smile lingered and he felt a rush of guilty pleasure as he walked along at a quicker pace. Because now it was his job to bring the murderer down. The game had begun.