Chasing the Devil's Tail (16 page)

He had heard plenty about the big room that had been created by tearing down the wall to incorporate part of the house next door. He had heard talk about what went on there and still had a hard time believing some of it, though the witnesses swore it was all true. But he had never had cause to venture there, nor any wish to.

Though he had visited the madam's former address ten years earlier, when he was a copper walking a beat. A local newspaperman had picked up a rumor that French Emma was offering a virgin for sale and, fancying himself a crusader, went to her Gasquet Street mansion, posing as an eager customer. Once in the room with the young girl, the reporter pressed her into revealing that she had come to the house on the promise of five dollars, that she had no idea what the madam had planned for her. When the fellow started to leave without taking advantage of the child, French Emma was livid. "You're a fool!" she cried. "The girl's a virgin! You'll never get another chance like this!"

The reporter left, then returned with Officer St. Cyr at his side. Valentin took in the whole tableau in a glance: the room with a fancy bed all made up, the girl, thirteen at best, shaking with fright, the madam standing by in an indignant rage, like a miser watching a bag of gold being snatched away. He did his duty and made an arrest, but within a few hours the madam was back at the house. Her punishment was a tepid lecture from a local magistrate. Soon after, Valentin heard that the reporter had lost his job and taken to drink.

It was an early lesson in Storyville's homegrown code of law. Emma Johnson continued trafficking in virgins and whatever other diversions turned her a profit. Of course, since
she had for years claimed, powers, half the District swore that it was her voodoo that allowed her to flaunt the law. It was actually the money she stuffed into official pockets all over New Orleans.

The madam expanded her trade, moving into one Basin Street address, and then taking over the house next door, so that she now operated one of the largest palaces on the infamous street. She needed the room, as it turned out, to accommodate a new kind of entertainment.

Valentin wondered why Anderson let her stay in business, as she drew the wrath of do-gooders and was regularly held up as a symbol of the hopeless depravity of the District. When he posed the question, he was treated to a cool glance.

"Let's just say she has her value," Tom Anderson told him.

Valentin came to understand that there were wealthy men with a pronounced taste for Emma Johnson's bill of fare. More to the point, the King of Storyville regarded her as a sacrificial goat. If he ever saw a need to placate the moralizers, he would close her down and chase her out of Storyville without a second thought—and, of course, with much self-righteous fanfare.

Valentin lingered in the foyer for another fifteen minutes. A dozen men, all well dressed, stepped inside from the broad gallery and slipped through the oak doors, letting out gurgles of rough laughter and clouds of cigar smoke each time.

By now, the madam knew he was on the premises, but was making him wait. He thought again about leaving, but after hesitating for another moment, he pulled open one of the double doors and stepped through.

The room was large, almost fifty feet wide and twenty feet deep, with high ceilings. There were chairs placed along three sides of the room and against the fourth, the back wall, was a low stage, framed in brocade draperies. All the shutters were
closed tight and the lights turned off, except for a heavy electric lamp that cast a cone of light on the stage. Still, he could make out the shapes and smell the glowing cigars of dozens of men. Young girls, not one of them wearing a stitch of clothing, moved though the crowd, carrying trays of drinks. There was a murmuring of voices and laughter with an edge of excitement.

He wandered around, but the madam was nowhere in sight. He was making ready to leave when the light on the stage suddenly went out, throwing the room into total darkness and a jittery hush. Just as abruptly, the light flared again and all eyes turned to the low stage.

Then the crowd parted and a Negro girl of no more than fifteen, naked head-to-toe, came out a door on the back wall and led a spotted pony and dragged a wooden crate onto the stage. She looked like a child playing with toys as she brought the pony around sideways to the crowd and then shoved the box under his plump belly. She stepped away and there was a spattering of clapping hands and a buzz of voices, but the chatter died when a thin, black-haired whore, also stark naked, sidled from the shadows and onto the stage.

Hands on her thin hips, the harlot paraded around the pony for a few moments and then began running her hands over the beast from head to rump, now and then leering sidelong at the crowd. The men began to whistle and clap their hands. Valentin stared. He had heard about this, but he never thought he'd actually see it.

Now he watched as the woman began to caress the pony's thick belly with both hands, finally reaching between the heavy hind legs. She took the pink phallus in her fist and began to stroke it slowly. Valentin watched for another astonished moment then began edging away, feeling a skin-crawling sensation. As he reached the door, he glanced back despite
himself and saw the woman had wriggled onto her back atop the wooden box and was wrapping her thin legs around the pony's rump. He turned away. His face felt hot and his stomach was churning.

He had just laid a hand on the brass door handle when he heard a rough voice say, "Where you off to?" He turned to see French Emma Johnson looming behind him in a dressing gown, her crossed-eyes fixed so that she looked like a gargoyle. "You're missing the show," she croaked.

"I'm not interested," Valentin said.

"No? I thought you were interested in all kinds of things." The madam spoke deliberately as she waved a curt hand in the direction of the foyer.

She closed the doors, shutting off the crude noise from the big room. They moved to opposite corners. French Emma fastened one cold eye on the detective while the other wandered over his shoulder. Valentin stood stiffly, his arms crossed before him. When he didn't speak up, she said, "What do you want here?"

"I want to know if you have any information to offer about these recent murders."

French Emma drew back. "And why would I tell you if I did?"

"To maintain your position of respect in the community," Valentin retorted.

A smile almost crossed Emma Johnson's features and then her face settled back into hard planes. "What information?"

"Gran Tillman," Valentin said.

"What about her? She worked for me for a short while. That's all."

"What was her particular specialty?" Valentin said and again Emma Johnson almost smiled at the formality of his language.

"Her particular specialty was the dyke act," she informed him. "She would perform with another woman for the pleasure of our customers. And occasionally she would work with Joe the Whipper." The madam's good eye glistened. "He'd bend her over this here—"

"What else did you know about her?" Valentin broke in.

"Nothing," the madam said flatly. "She was here and then she left. And now she's dead." She grimaced and her face went rigid, as if already regretting what little she had told him. He was about to pose another question when she said abruptly, "I know why you're here. I know what this is all about." She raised her sharp chin. "You're lookin' to save that nigger bastard Bolden."

Valentin was surprised. "What gives you that idea?" This time French Emma did smile, though coldly. He ignored it. "Do you know something about him?"

The madam crossed her arms. "I do. I got a skill." She stood like a statue, her arms stiff, her eyes unmatched black stones.

"He ever come around here?" Valentin said.

French Emma smiled again, a chilling twist of her thin lips. "I don't allow niggers on the premises." Her eyes took him in. "That one, especially. He ever tries to come around here, I'll put somethin' on him he'd never shake loose." She glared. "You understand what I'm sayin'?"

Valentin didn't bother to answer. He wasn't about to play voodoo games. He was finished. He turned away and opened the heavy front door.

"You hear what I'm sayin'?" the madam repeated, her voice rising jaggedly. "You just let him come round here, I'll fix him!" Her shrill bray followed him onto the gallery "I mean to say, I'll fix him
good
this time!"

Valentin turned around and said, "This time?" But the door had slammed shut. He went slowly down the steps to the
banquette. The madam's final words had been delivered with such venom that he felt a chill. My God, he thought as he made his way up the street, next they'll have me putting a dime around my ankle. He stuttered out a laugh at his own foolishness, but the sinister feeling didn't leave him until he turned the corner onto Magazine Street.

Willie Cornish looked up from polishing his horn to see a fellow in a suit that was too tight for his heavy gut coming across the floor in his direction. Cornish knew he'd seen the fellow around somewhere, then suddenly remembered: a copper. He frowned, wondering what Bolden had done now.

The copper sidled up and pulled his lapel open a few inches to let Cornish see the gunmetal badge that was pinned to his suspender. "Lieutenant Picot, New Orleans Police Department," he announced. Cornish raised his eyebrows politely. "Bolden around?"

"No sir, I ain't seen him at all this evenin'," Cornish said in his deep rumble of a voice.

Picot's gaze wandered. "You expect him?"

"Couldn't say. Sometimes he comes, sometimes he don't."

"Oh? So what does he do with himself, out there roamin' about?"

Cornish laid his horn on the table. "I wouldn't have no idea."

The copper cast a lazy eye on the black-skinned man. "I wonder about that," he said. "What with all's been goin' on down in the District."

Cornish blinked slowly. "What ... you mean with them sportin' gals?" Picot hooked a thumb under each lapel and said nothing. Cornish looked troubled. "You sayin' what? Bolden have somethin' to do with all that?"

"I don't know, my friend, but I'd sure be wonderin'," Picot said. He took another long look around the room, then nodded placidly, turned away, and strolled toward the street door.

Willie Cornish watched him go. "Oh, Jesus," he said under his breath. "Oh, my sweet Jesus."

A minute later, Jimmy Johnson came in through the alley door, dragging his bass fiddle in its case, banging everything in his path. He stopped when he saw the look on Willie's face.

"What's wrong with you?" the kid said.

"You ain't gonna believe it," Cornish said.

Just before noon on Sunday, Valentin sat on a bench, watching Justine as she strolled the perimeter of Congo Square, talking happily with an octoroon girl from Grace Lloyd's on Conti Street. In their plain white dresses and high-buttoned shoes and their hair braided and pinned, they looked like daughters of respectable Creole families on an outing. From across the square, Justine caught his eye. She was standing by an Italian ice cart, gesturing.
Want one?
Valentin shook his head, but kept his eyes on her as she turned away and dug into her small purse for a nickel.

She had come from Mass as the tolling of church bells echoed down the streets. He wanted to loll the day away in his bed with her, but she had other ideas. She waited while he washed and dressed and then hurried him outside into the midday light.

It was a beautiful afternoon, the air dry for New Orleans, a breeze from the Gulf wafting the heat and the smell of the city away and a soft yellow sun poking out through high cottony clouds. The gray temper that had bewitched him over the past weeks had faded a bit and the shadows of the three dead women dimmed along with it.

He had waited all Friday and Saturday for a nudge on his arm and the whisper in his ear about another corpse and another black rose. But nothing had happened, and now he found himself basking in the New Orleans Sunday like some lazy dog, idly watching Justine and her friend as they continued their stroll around the square.

He had first met her the summer before, in the heat of August. He had been frolicking upstairs with a quadroon girl at Mary Lee's mansion on Villere Street when a ruckus began in the next room, shouts and shrieks and the sounds of furniture being tossed about. When no one came up to settle the uproar, the girl insisted that he go see to it. She urged him in his ear then pushed him out of her and crossed her legs. She said she couldn't keep her mind on business with all the noise. He pulled on his trousers and undershirt and went out into the hallway. He stood at the next door, listening to a dull, mean, rumbling voice, then shrill syllables shouted back. He knocked.

A heavy-set white man with dark blond hair that stuck out in greasy spikes and a dirty brush mustache opened the door. He glared at Valentin with an inflamed eye. "What do you want?"

"I want the commotion to stop," Valentin said in a reasonable tone.

"Yeah and who the hell are you?" the man demanded.

"I'm the person responsible for keeping the peace around here," he lied and before the fellow could stop him, he stepped inside the room. He saw the night table was overturned and a porcelain lamp had been smashed into pieces. A framed painting and a sampler that had hung on the wall had crashed to the floor. A whiskey bottle lay on its side and the reek of liquor joined the odors of an unwashed male body, a bit of
sweet perfume, and the earthy scent of a woman's sex. Backed into one corner was a short girl, skin the color of latte, with wide dark eyes that had a slight Asian slant, and a small, curved nose. Her loose curls hung down in tangled, sweaty strands. In one hand she gripped a sheet to cover her nakedness and in the other she held a knife. Though her face was streaked with tears and trickles of rouge, she looked grim, angry, and ready to use the blade.

"What's this all about?" Valentin asked, looking between them.

"She owes me," the man growled. "I hired her to work the revue down there at the Flying Horses. She's sposed to pay me back. I get what's between her legs whenever I want it. That's the deal. Now she says no."