Chasing the Devil's Tail (22 page)

But, truth be told, voodoo held sway in the District every day and night except for Sunday. The queens employed charms and amulets, black cat bones and mojo hands, all to help the women that came to them and to harm their enemies. French Emma Johnson, that black-hearted witch, was said to be able to seal up a sporting girl so that she couldn't carry on her trade, to cause syphilis using the scrotum of a
goat and the gleet with the blood of a wasp. The faithful claimed her curses could cause crippled, idiot babies and that she could drop a man in his tracks with one look of her crossed eyes. Valentin knew none of it was true, but it didn't matter. She and another dozen like her cast spells back and forth, vicious harpies fighting like cats. There were far fewer good voodoo queens like Eulalie Echo, who applied spells to protect the girls from the wicked spirits that haunted the air. People believed; even the most devout Catholics remembered to mutter prayers to Yaya, the snake god, and often those who practiced
voudun
daily were also the first to Mass come Sunday morning.

So Justine prudently clutched the cross that hung around her neck as the train rolled along Bayou St. John toward the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

The ride took less than thirty minutes, and he spent the time telling her about the extra car that ran only on weekends, designated for drunks and rough-housers returning from their day on the lake, too rowdy for decent company. Railroad guards would drag the offending characters into the car like so much baggage and when they got back to Terminal Station, a mule-drawn Black Maria would be waiting to carry them off to Parish Prison.

As he was relating this tale, he saw out of the corner of his eye the man who sat at the back of their car, watching and listening a bit too intently. Since he had been on the case, Valentin had the feeling of someone lurking about, but he had written it off to the whole jittery mess with the murders.

Now he knew his instinct had been correct. He moved his head a few degrees and caught the round shape of a derby hat. He glanced casually at Justine for a few seconds, then turned to stare at the man. Their eyes locked for an instant and the
fellow got up abruptly from his seat and made his way to the other end of the car.

At Milneburg, they stepped off the train and right into the middle of a mid-afternoon shower. They waited under the station eaves, eating ham sandwiches and drinking from bottles of Chero-Cola that he bought at the kiosk. He watched the crowd. The man from the train was nowhere in sight.

The storm passed, the sun peeked out and they walked along a gravel road that followed the edge of the lake for a little over a mile until they came upon a tidy bungalow propped up on pilings, just as Morton had described it. A woman was fussing about with potted herbs laid out along the banister of her gallery. She straightened and watched as Valentin and Justine started up the walkway. When they moved out of the glare of the sun and into the shade, she smiled and gestured for them to come onto the gallery, then fixed the Creole detective with a look of mock severity. "You should have come sooner," Eulalie Echo said.

He sat at her kitchen table, watching through the open side door as Justine walked across a narrow strip of gray sand, took off her shoes, hiked up her petticoats and waded into the water. The brilliance of the sun on the lake gave her form a shimmery, dreamy quality as she kicked with her feet and splashed with her hands.

Valentin turned to regard Eulalie Echo, godmother to Mr. Jelly Roll Morton, as she poured them both a glass of lemonade. She was a willowy woman in her fifties, dark-skinned, with high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and kind green eyes. She was wearing a white Mother Hubbard and though her head was wrapped in a
tignon,
a rainbow of African dyes, he could see her long hair, going to gray, was braided Indian-style.
Huge earrings, hoops of silver, dangled along her neck. She padded around a kitchen that was large and homey, with more pots of herbs covering every surface and filling the air with a rich, exotic aroma.

"How's that godson of mine?" she inquired, as if she hadn't spoken to him recently, probably within the hour.

"He's doing well, Miss Echo."

"Calling himself by another name, ain't he?" Her smile was impish.

"He is, yes," Valentin said.

There was a silence while the voodoo woman regarded her visitor thoughtfully. "If you want something, Valentin, go ahead and ask for it," she said. She put the pitcher back in the icebox and sat down across the table from him.

Valentin gazed out: the open door. "I want to put a stop to these murders," he said.

"How many now?" Miss Echo asked him.

"Four."

The voodoo woman muttered something under her breath, then said, "What makes you think I can help you?"

He shrugged. "Lulu White claims it's a voodoo matter."

"She would," Eulalie said. "Matter-of-fact, most people uptown and half of them downtown would say so, too. But you, you don't believe any of it, Valentin." Her voice was gentle. "So, tell me, whatchu doin' here?"

He hesitated. He wanted to say:
I'm humoring a madam who takes all this foolishness as if it's gospel truth. To remain in her good graces. To remain in her employ.
Miss Echo was watching him with a half-smile, as if she could read these thoughts. "Maybe if..."

"Maybe if what?"

"If this person, the killer, is a believer in it, then—"

"Then I can offer you some kind of a clue?" She gave him
a coy look. "Or you want me to just make a spell and get him to stop?"

Valentin thought about it. "The clue would do just fine."

Eulalie Echo let out a delighted laugh. She shook her head and turned to watch Justine, now up to her knees in the cool green water. "She's a pretty girl," she said, and then brought her attention back to Valentin. "You think it's silly, eh? Like things we say to scare little children." He started to reply, but she held up a hand. "You didn't come all this way to talk," she said sharply. "So you listen now. I'm going to give you a little lesson. I believe maybe you need it."

Valentin slouched back in his chair, making an effort to hide his irritation at having to sit still for a long-winded recitation of the virtues of voodoo. Miss Echo seemed to understand this and smiled again, knowingly.

"This thing came over from Africa, by way of the islands in the Caribbean," she began. "People there, including one of your
great-grandperes
believed it, just like the Baptists believe in Jesus. Back there, they believe everything has a spirit. People, animals, plants, everything." She rapped her knuckles on the wooden table.

Valentin fidgeted in his chair and made a little sound of exasperation. Eulalie Echo drew back, crossed her arms and arched her eyebrows at this rudeness. "All right, then, Mr. Valentin, you want to tell me about voodoo? Or how them back-of-town people say it now?
Hoodoo?
Go on. You tell me everything you know. Maybe I'll learn something myself."

She waited until he said, "I apologize," then clapped her hands together. "
Bon.
You're not so stupid after all. So I'll tell you now. And you see if maybe it can help you put a stop to that evil over there."

She got up and made a slow show of taking a bottle of rye
whiskey down from a shelf and pouring two short glasses. One she placed in front of Valentin. The other she held between her thumb and forefinger, turning it round and round before her eyes, staring through the amber liquid. "So, you know how it all started?" she said. "You know who was the first? The original voodoo queen?"

"Marie Laveau," Justine said from the doorway. She was standing there in bare feet, the bottom six inches of her cotton dress soaked gray with lake water, her shoes and stockings dangling from her right hand.

Miss Echo smiled. "Come in, child," she said.

Justine crossed to the table, sat down, laid her shoes on the floor near her chair and placed her stockings inside. Eulalie Echo watched the younger woman with a smile.

"Who doesn't know Marie Laveau?" Valentin said with the same edge of impatience.

"Well, then, you know her true name?" Justine said. "Do you?" Valentin opened his mouth, closed it. He looked at Miss Echo, who was smiling, then back at Justine.

"Her given name was Marie Glampion," Justine told him. "She was a colored Creole woman and she did the hair of all the rich French ladies. She'd hear them talkin', about their husbands, about their back-door men, about the other rich ladies. And Marie, she listened until she knew everything them folks was doin' and with who and when and where. She came up to the big houses to work and she met their husbands, too. And she started makin' arrangements for the real pretty octoroon girls to go meet the men. So she had all their secrets. And she'd tell them she'd keep their business to herself, but they had to pay her. And they did."

Valentin listened, not a little astonished. How did this country girl know all this New Orleans history, harking back to the days of the Octoroon Balls, where the young French
aristocrats made market for comely mistresses that they'd keep for the rest of their lives?

"But Miss Glampion, she was voodoo, except they called it
voudun,
the French way," Justine was saying. "And pretty soon everybody knew, whatever you want, you go see Marie Laveau. She really was a queen. She had power over about all of New Orleans. The rich French people and the downtown Creoles. The madams in the mansions all up and down Basin Street and all the girls and the sports from way back-of-town, too. Everybody." She lowered her voice dramatically. "People say she could lay on a curse just by looking at you one way. Or she could give protection so nobody could harm you. And some people say she could heal the sick and raise the dead."

Valentin broke his astonished gaze to glance at Miss Echo. The voodoo woman went on rocking slightly in her chair, her eyes closed, as if she was listening to a student's recitation.

Justine reached out, picked up Valentin's glass of rye and took a small sip. "Then, later on, after Marie died, there was a whole other woman ... she took to callin' herself Marie Laveau, but her true name was ... um..."

"Malvina Latour," Miss Echo said quietly.

"Yes. She was still alive when I was a little girl. Even out in the country we heard about her. Some people say she was Marie's daughter, other people say it was Marie comin' back from the grave and startin' over again with another name. She could do that, that's what they said. She was like a cat. She had nine lives."

Eulalie Echo laughed softly. Valentin and Justine looked around to see her amusement was directed at his slack-jawed gape. He was truly surprised. In the whole time he had known her, Justine had rarely spoken more than a half-dozen words at a time. But now she sat across the table, her dark eyes wide open and her face infused with a strange light, all full of the story.

Miss Echo leaned her head toward the younger woman. "Go on," she said.

Justine chewed her thumbnail for a moment. "That second Marie Laveau, they say she was a real black voodoo woman. She could put a curse on as fast as you could blink. Or take one away, same way." A pause. "She'd have these..."

"...ceremonies," Miss Echo offered.

"In a house," Justine said, barely missing a beat. She looked at Miss Echo. "Somewhere out here, on the lake."

There was a nod of agreement from the older woman. "
Maison Blanche.
And it ain't a stone's throw from where we're sitting."

"She had these here parties," Justine went on. "Hoodoo parties. They'd build a big fire and have a band to play, a man beatin' on a drum and all them African horns and such. The girls, they'd go all crazy and take off their clothes and dance." Her small, tan face seemed to turn older and darker. "The men would come to drink and dance with the girls. And that Marie, she'd make her voodoo. And then they was all on the floor ... or they'd go out the door onto the beach..." Her expression lightened and she giggled. "Everybody was naked, women laughing and screaming and thrashing all around, and that music'd be playing, and it'd go on all night long. And Miz Latour, she'd sit there in a rockin' chair, watchin' it all, like she was ... the queen ... the queen of..."

"...the underworld," Eulalie Echo said through tight lips.

There was a heavy silence; the two women seemed to have gone adrift in the tale. A few moments passed and Valentin said to Justine, "How do you know all this?"

She blinked, and sat back in her chair. "My mama told me some of it," she explained. "And then, after I come here, when it was slow late at night, if it was rainin' and there weren't no men comin' in ... Miss Antonia or one of the old women,
they'd start it up." She smiled. "We'd be like little girls, all in this one room, listenin' to someone tellin' about Marie Laveau." She treated Valentin to a shrewd glance. "You ain't the only one likes stories," she finished.

Valentin drained his glass and Eulalie rose to refill it. She half-filled a third glass and placed it in front of Justine. She sat back down. "What else you want to know, Valentin?" she said, delighting in the scene that had unfolded at her table. Justine was smiling, too, pleased at having astonished him so.

Valentin shook his head, regaining his bearings. "I want to know what all that has to do with someone killing women in Storyville," he said.

Miss Echo shook her head. "So impatient," she said. "So impatient."

It was getting stuffy inside and Miss Echo asked if they'd like to go for a walk along the lake. Justine was pleased to be outdoors again, but Valentin had to hide his irritation at the slow pace of the afternoon. The only reason he had come in the first place was to placate Lulu White; he was the reluctant knight sent off by one dotty queen to pay respects to her dotty sister. The day was all but gone and he had yet to learn one thing he could use.

So they strolled down the shoreline, Justine holding the detective's arm as the voodoo woman walked ahead, poking at shells and stones with a long, twisted stick of oily driftwood.

"You want to tell this impatient man some more of the story?" she called over her shoulder.