Chasing the Devil's Tail (13 page)

At four o'clock the next afternoon, he mounted the rickety steps of Cassie Maples' brick house at the corner of South Franklin and Perdido. The door opened and the maid Sally stood there, her eyes twitching in perpetual confusion. She didn't seem to know what to do, and even took a startled step back when Valentin smiled at her. "Is Miss Maples in?" he inquired. Sally stared at him, didn't move. "Tell her it's Valentin St. Cyr," he said gently.

Sally found her senses, bobbed her head up and down and stood back so he could step inside. She closed the door and all but ran to the back of the house.

Valentin stepped into the parlor to find two fat black-skinned girls, both in worn day dresses, slouched at a Café table, smoking and talking quietly. They looked up and stretched their mouths into smiles, but he shook his head and they went back to their conversation.

Cassie Maples hurried from the kitchen, and though she nodded politely in welcome, her eyes did a nervous flicker. Sally stood to one side of the kitchen doorway, watching as visitor and host exchanged greetings. "Mr. St. Cyr," the madam said. "Pleasure to see you again."

"I'm sorry to bother you," he said. "May we speak privately?"

She led him into a small office that was little more than a closet off the dining room. A curtain-top desk took up one wall, with a swivel chair facing it. Two café chairs were placed opposite, just inside the door. A ceiling fan whispered overhead, barely stirring the thick air. Miss Maples sat down at the desk and gestured to one of the café chairs. "So you heard about that damn King Bolden, eh?" she stated directly. The startled detective had to hide his surprise. "He was here, all right," she went on. "Last night."

"What time was it?" Valentin said carefully.

"Musta been eight o'clock. It was already dark out."

"What happened?"

The madam drew herself up, all indignant. "He come up on the gallery, tried to come inside like somebody invited him." She crossed her fleshy arms. "I wouldn't allow it. Not after hearin' what happened on Saturday night. I told him don't come round no more. And I closed the door right in his face."

"Did he say what he wanted?"

Miss Maples snorted angrily. "He was mumblin' about Annie, said somethin' about wantin' to talk to her." Her eyes hardened. "That man is crazy. I had my Derringer pistol in my hand and I tell you, I was ready to use it."

Valentin sat back. "What did you say about Saturday night?"

She gave him a sly look, like she'd caught him trying to fool her. "Oh, I heard. How he knowed that poor girl got cut up," she said. "Just like he knowed Annie and Gran."

Valentin nodded slowly, reached for a thread. "That's something I did want to ask you about." He leaned forward,
his hands on his knees. "Your maid out there told me about Bolden being here with Annie the night she died."

The madam's eyes flicked again. "I believe that's right."

"Did you see him leave?"

"Nossir, I didn't."

"Could somebody else have come in without you noticing?"

"That ain't likely," Miss Maples said. "Sally would have said so." The chair squeaked as she shifted her weight.

"Perhaps I could have a word with her," Valentin said.

"What? With who?"

"With Sally."

The madam's laugh had a rough edge. "What for? That girl can't remember what happened this morning, let alone back weeks ago."

"Please," Valentin insisted.

The madam kept her gaze on him. "All right, then," she said. She stood up and went to the door. She returned a few moments later with Sally at her heels. So close at her heels, in fact, that when the madam stopped inside the doorway, the girl bumped into her, bouncing like a pea off a pillow. Miss Maples glared in annoyance. Sally stepped back, now almost tripping over her own clumsy feet. It looked like a skit in a minstrel show. Valentin stood up.

"Sally, you remember Mr. St. Cyr?" Sally nodded. "He'd like to have a word with you." Valentin pulled the second Café chair from the wall and placed it a few feet from his. Sally looked to Miss Maples, who nodded. The girl sat. Valentin turned to the madam and waited. Cassie Maples' mouth opened, then closed. "Excuse me," she said and stepped to the door. "If you need anything..."

"We'll be fine," Valentin said.

The madam made her exit, glancing back once, her face twisted up with concern.

Valentin sat down. Sally had folded her hands in her lap so tightly that her knuckles almost showed. A trickle of sour white sweat ran down the inside of her upper arm and dripped onto the thin cotton of her dress. Valentin noticed that her smell was not so strong; she had bathed at least once since he saw her last, and the dirty dress had gone through the wash. Even her hair appeared neater, done up in little bows, pickanniny style. But she was the same startled mouse he had encountered the night of Annie Robie's death.

He knew the type, backwoods girls who were the runts of the litter, judged too slow for school and too ugly for courting. They always looked the same, homely in the face and with bony bodies all askew, but with a sinewy muscle under tough hides. The only thing they knew how to do was work, and work they did. Back in the country, Sally would have carried firewood on her back, chopped cotton from dawn until dark, helped to slaughter the hogs. She had escaped that for the city, but here Miss Maples would drive her like a mule. She'd sling hot pots in the kitchen, tote huge baskets of laundry on her head and haul the occasional dead-drunk sport down the stairs and out the door. Valentin felt a twinge of pity for her. Such was her life, not so much above her grandparents' slavery. She would go through her days waiting for the next snap of anger or the next striking hand.

He gave her what he hoped was a calming smile. "I want to ask you about that night Annie died," he said, keeping his voice low so as not to give her a fright. She nodded and even seemed to relax a bit. "You told me that King Bolden was the last man to visit Annie."

She frowned, thinking hard. "Yessir, I did," she whispered.

"The last man you saw with her," he said. Sally blinked, not understanding. "I mean, if someone were to get in without you noticing..."

Now she understood. "Oh, I watch out, 'specially late," she blurted. For the briefest instant, there was something moving about behind her eyes, but then her face closed again.

"So there is nothing else you saw or heard that night? No one else about?"

Sally shook her head, whispered, "Nossir. Nothin. No one." And she dropped her gaze to the floor. After a moment, Valentin sat back, then stood up. She rolled her fearful eyes at him, cowering as if she had failed him and now awaited her punishment.

"Thank you for talking to me," he said quietly. Sally's mouth opened and she sighed her relief. "It's all right, you can go back to your chores," he told her.

She went to the door. She had just laid her hand on the knob when he said, "By the way, does a black rose have any meaning to you?"

She blinked slowly, looking as befuddled as before. "What kinda rose?"

"Black," he said. "Like was left with Annie when she died."

"Oh. I believe I seen ones like that at funerals," she said.

"That's all right, then," he said and motioned for her to leave.

Miss Maples was standing just outside the door. She treated Sally to a narrow-eyed stare, then turned to the detective, smiled too sweetly and said, "Will that be all for you, Mr. St. Cyr?"

"No," he said and watched the smile fade. "I'd like to see the back of the house."

"The back of the house," the madam repeated.

"Please," he said.

He followed her out of the office, through the dining room and into the kitchen, all under the silent eyes of the two sporting girls and the maid. Miss Maples opened the back door
onto a wide gallery and lie stepped outside. There was a small narrow yard that backed into an alleyway off Perdido Street. It was an easy egress. He knew the arrangement, of course; most houses in these neighborhoods had the same small yards, the same pattern of dirt alleyways. This far back-of-town was a blind maze where anyone could get lost.

He nodded to Miss Maples and went back inside. She followed him through the rooms toward the front door, looking more relieved at each step. Valentin understood. This was not Storyville, and the madam stayed in business at the whim of the precinct captain. Attention hinted at trouble and trouble could close her down. So she was at ease only when they had exchanged courtesies at her front door and he had walked out into the cloudy afternoon.

While he was waiting at the corner of Perdido and Gravier, he looked around and caught a flash of dark motion to his left. Sally was standing not fifty feet away, half-obscured in a recess of the corner building, waving a skittish arm at him. Valentin glanced back along the street in the direction of Miss Maples' house, then walked over to the maid.

"I don't want to get inta no trouble...," she mumbled.

"What is it?"

Her eyes bounced around the busy intersection. "Someone coulda maybe got in. That night Annie died. I don't think so, though. I was up, 'cept..."

"What?"

"There wa'nt no one in the kitchen," Sally said. "So I spose somebody coulda come in through the back ... I was up, though ... I don't know for sure..." The stuttered speech had taken all of ten seconds and she was ready to bolt.

"All right, then," Valentin said. "Thank you for the information."

"I don't want to be gettin' inta no trouble." Her voice was thin, shaking.

"You won't," Valentin said.

Sally tried a smile as she backed away, then turned and hurried up Gravier toward the alleyway, thin arms and legs milling, a tottery spider. She disappeared from the day-lit avenue and into the shadows, but he could feel the eyes in that black skittish face following him as he strolled away to Tulane Street where he could catch a streetcar back downtown.

She peeked once more around the fence at the end of the alleyway to make sure the detective went on his way. Then she scurried off toward the back of the house. Miss Maples would be in a fit if she caught her, maybe even mad enough to hit her with the switch, but she had gone ahead and done it anyway. She wanted to tell him something. He was polite. Nobody ever talked to her like that. So she wanted to tell him something.

He stepped off the car at Canal Street on the stroke of five and started off down Dauphine, along the back end of the Vieux Carre. It took another ten minutes to reach the milliner's storefront. He walked into the narrow, shadowed path that led around to the back of the building and knocked on the door. He waited, listening to the sounds of labored movement from inside. A muted voice squawked irritably.

"It's me, Papá," Valentin said.

The door opened. E.J. Bellocq glared at Valentin, rapped his cane on the floorboards and made another guttural noise that passed for a greeting. Valentin stepped inside and the Frenchman closed the door and locked it.

There was a library table in the center of the large, square, low-ceilinged room, and a roll-top desk shoved against one
wall. Both were cluttered with camera gear, stacks of photographic plates, files and papers, an array of books and odd paraphernalia. A few chairs had haphazardly settled here and there and a selection of crutches and canes leaned into corners. Acrid chemicals had left their stains and their pungencies soaking into every surface.

The windows at the sides of the room were shaded with an opaque red fabric that kept out the light (along with the rest of the world, Valentin guessed). A small kitchen with a sink filled with dirty dishes and a sideboard lined with ambercolored bottles extended off this main room. The door to the toilet, which also served as the photographer's laboratory, stood open. A second door, leading to a bedroom, was closed. The air was thick with the smells of chemical potions, mildew, unwashed clothes, and the stale, dead scent of old candles.

He heard the arrhythmic shuffling of feet behind him and the little man moved to lean against the table and then wheeled around like a broken toy.

He had stopped staring at Ernest Bellocq years ago, and he now took in the globe of a head and the back curling under its weight, the spindled arms and legs, the huge, milky white eyes, the bowl of yellow hair that hung in a fringe over the forehead, the turtle mouth twisted-up in a more or less constant sulking grimace, without a second glance.

He fixed instead on the walls around him. Dozens of Bellocq's photographs, most of Storyville prostitutes, hung framed in open spaces and lay flat on every available surface. The Frenchman had created a haphazard museum of his images.

Valentin moved slowly along the perimeter of the room. Bellocq listed to one side as he settled on his metal cane, his wide, pale eyes blinking as he watched the detective review the collection. Valentin recognized some of the women in the photographs, but he often had to look twice because they appeared such different creatures when viewed through Bellocq's lens. He was at a loss to understand how the choleric little man could make his camera peer backward through the eyes of his subjects and look down into their empty souls. Even to a cynical type like Valentin, it was magic, a special kind of voodoo.

He happened upon a new print and stared at it for a long time. The girl—she looked vaguely familiar—was stretched on a divan for a camera that framed her from overhead. Her legs were scissored and her arms flowed away from her body like a ballerina's. She was naked, of course, the thighs and bosom plump, long hair in a single braid, the face young but the eyes blank, age-worn. She reminded Valentin of nothing so much as a bird plummeting from the sky, just as the arc of her flight was broken.

Bellocq watched Valentin closely. "So?"

"I do like this one," Valentin said and the French made a small sigh.

He pulled his eyes from the print. "You heard about this girl Martha Devereaux?" Bellocq muttered something, nodded. "You know her?"

The photographer glanced at him sideways. "No. I didn't know her at all. Poor miss."

"Terrible business, eh?"

The photographer allowed that it was as he turned away and began arranging a stack of photographs on his table. Valentin resumed his inspection of the prints on the wall. "I wanted to talk to you about the night you went to see Gran Tillman," he said over his shoulder.