Chasing the Devil's Tail (32 page)

Buddy lunged off the steel steps and grabbed a handful of Valentin's shirt in his fist. "You shut your goddamn mouth right now!" he snarled. Their feet went sliding on gravel and Valentin saw Buddy's black eyes were swimming with rage.

He clamped his left hand on Bolden's trembling wrist. "You knew every damn one of them!" he seethed. "You were seen at those houses. You got no alibis. That adds up to guilty!"

Buddy looked stunned for a moment and his grip weakened. He gaped at Valentin with some kind of terrible wonder. "They think ... But I didn't ... I didn't hurt nobody." Sudden blades of light shot from his eyes and his grip tightened again, choking now. "You goddamn son of a whore!" His voice almost broke. "I didn't hurt
nobody!
" He leaned close and Valentin could smell his breath, hot whiskey and yen pox and something bloody. "I didn't do none of that, you fucking dago fucking bastard!"

There was a second's frigid pause as Buddy wavered and Valentin took the second to slam him hard in the chest. He heard a hiss of breath and he slammed him again, knocking him sprawling into the side of the car. He thought it would stop then, that the shock would fix him where he stood. But Buddy came raging back, and clamped both his hands on Valentin's
throat. He tried to wrench loose, but Bolden was bearing down with the same iron fingers that had worked that loud horn.

He couldn't breathe and he was standing outside of it, thinking:
he'll let go ... he'll stop
... But Buddy didn't stop. He was trying to choke the life out of him. Valentin's brain was going blank as the Storyville lights began to dance like flames.

It happened with no thought at all. He dropped his right hand to his back pocket and came up with the whalebone sap, snapping it around to crack Buddy full force behind the ear. The iron clamp on his windpipe flinched. He swung again and Buddy staggered, grabbing for a hold on the side of the car, a sudden gush of blood down his collar. His black eyes went wild, and he rushed forward again. But Valentin saw him coming, dropped the sap and snatched the Iver Johnson from his pocket. He took one fast step back, stuck out his arm at full length, and shoved the short barrel into the flesh of Buddy's cheek, freezing him.

"I'll kill you, goddamn it!" he yelled, and his voice broke.

It lasted only seconds, but it seemed to go on forever. Valentin felt a cold rage and a colder fear, just like the moment before he shot a hole right through Eddie McTier's chest. His brain unlocked and a voice was whispering:
one pull and it will all be over.
He caught the harsh, knowing look on Bolden's face and he felt his heart begin to break apart. The finger on the trigger relaxed.

Buddy jerked away from the barrel of the pistol and stumbled back. "You're gonna be sorry." His stare was hateful, and his wounded voice was full of venom. "I'm tellin' you you're gonna be
sorry
for what you done to me."

His crazy gaze shifted and he stalked off around the back of the car, stumbling over the first rail. He lurched out of sight and his curses were lost in the rumble of a train rolling through the back of the yard.

Valentin's hand shook as he lowered the pistol, put it back in his pocket and bent down to pick up the sap. He leaned a hand against the side of the car to catch his breath and try to keep his stomach from coming up. A minute passed. He went around to the back of the car, stopping to collect the cornet. Bolden was not in sight. Valentin crossed over the tracks. "Buddy?" he called. He looked all around the yard, expecting to see the stark figure staggering about on the rough gravel. But there was nothing but long blue shadows and the clacking of the train moving off into the black Louisiana night.

He tucked the horn under his arm and began walking at a quicker pace. He crossed the next set of tracks, heading out of the yard in the direction of Storyville, calling, "Buddy! Buddy Bolden!"

The flat was quiet. Beansoup was curled in a ball on the couch, deep in sleep. In the bedroom, Justine dozed beneath the baire. The bells of St. John's had just tolled two times when the street door opened and closed. A figure stood motionless in the dark foyer at the bottom of the stairwell, poised, listening. One step up, then a second. The third step creaked, and the figure froze for five seconds. Then it was a few more swift silent steps to the second floor landing.

Beansoup heard a tapping on the door and opened one sleepy eye. Another tap-tap-tap and he sat up, blinking groggily in the dark. There was one more soft tap, and somebody whispering something. It was Mr. St. Cyr, home from his rounds. He untangled the sheet from around his legs, stumbled groggily to the door, and threw back the bolt.

The door burst open, hitting him full on, and a blow came hard across his forehead. He stumbled back blindly, tripping on the braided rug. He was already on the floor when the second blow came with a flash of light and a sharp pain that sent his head spinning in black circles. He cried out and slumped over on his side. Feet scrambled past his face and he tried to open his mouth, but he couldn't make any noise. He lifted his head, but the spinning made him dizzier and he fell back, unconscious.

Justine heard a noise from out in the front room that brought her half-awake. The apartment door opened with a bang, and then there was a thump, a strange heavy sound, followed by a muffled cry. It wasn't right at all, and she wondered if she was dreaming. She pulled herself up from her sleep and was reaching for the baire just as the bedroom door was flung wide.

She saw the shadow and knew it wasn't him. Then she thought it was the kid, but before that had crossed her mind the shadow came at her. In a blur, the baire was ripped down and pulled around her. She caught the motion of something swinging round in an arc and tried to move away, but the blow caught her high on the head and knocked her back across the bed in a flash of red pain that made her ears ring. Another glancing blow on the shoulder knocked her the other way.

A sudden spike of rage came out of her belly, a blood-red wave that drove her up off the bed, the baire still twisted around her. She threw herself against the shadow and her weight forced the body into the wall. She heard a sharp grunt and they tumbled down to the floor, arms, legs, and baire in a tangle. She was trying to fight, but the arm with the weapon came free and she couldn't cover up and there was another blast of bright pain on the back of her head and suddenly she couldn't move. She knew there was another blow coming, the one that would finish it. But before it landed, the shadowy form jerked away and there was a scrabbling of steps across
the wood floor. Then the door slammed, and the only sound was a low moaning from the front room.

What seemed like hours passed before she got one hand to move, then the other. It took more hours for her to tug the ends of the baire from around her head and shoulders. She crawled to the doorway on all fours and saw the boy's body all crumpled into the corner. She heard his groans and tried to call out to him, but couldn't make her mouth work for all the blood. There was a terrible, numbing throb in her head, but she forced herself to stay up on her trembling hands and knees and crawl.

A mulatto workman, passing by just before dawn on his way to work at the French Market, found her body sprawled halfway out the street door. He ran to a call box, and in ten minutes, a horse-drawn police wagon came pounding down Magazine Street.

Wearied to the bone, Valentin gave up on trying to find Buddy sometime after three o'clock and made his way down Common Street to the river. He sat on a pier, watching the stars through the mist, trying to decide what to do next. Maybe nothing at all; the story would play out with or without him. Let Buddy lose what was left of his mind, let Picot have him, and he could go home to Justine and forget all of it.

He stopped, rubbing his forehead. It was too late for that; he was part of the story, too. He had been part of it all along.

It wasn't until the first deep purple shades of dawn were tainting the black sky over the Gulf that he started home. He turned up Magazine and was almost to Gaspare's when he noticed that his street door was standing open. He took a step closer, saw the blood on the threshold and went racing up the stairs. He opened the door on the front room, ran through the
bedroom and then rushed back down the stairwell and onto the street.

The copper behind the desk glanced up at the sweating, shaking, Dago-looking fellow. "What happened on Magazine Street?" the Dago demanded.

The officer examined him up and down for a moment, then said, "Two people was attacked. Young octoroon girl and that kid, what'd they call him ... Beansoup." He cocked an eye at Valentin. "Do you know something—"

"What happened to them?"

"I believe they was carried over to Charity."

He swallowed, steadied himself. "Are they dead?"

The copper shrugged. "That I don't know."

He ran into the lobby of the colored ward of Charity Hospital at seven o'clock and had to pace up and down for twenty minutes before the doctor, a thin, serious-looking Creole, stepped up. "Sir?" he said politely.

"Justine Mancarre," Valentin said.

The doctor said, "She was the victim of an assault. She has some very serious injuries. Traumas to the head."

"But she's alive," Valentin said.

The doctor's eyes shifted away. Picot stepped up, looked at Valentin and said, without preamble, "Well, he's back at it, eh?" He turned to the doctor. "Either one of them die yet?" He said roughly.

The doctor looked at the two men, the copper with his lazy eyes and the other, the light-skinned Creole, with his face all rigid with fear. "They're both alive," he said and saw the Creole sag. "The young lady sustained the most serious injuries, but I expect they'll recover."

Valentin let out a breath and Picot sniffed and shrugged. "That's just as good," he said. "Means we got witnesses."

When the doctor stepped away, Picot turned around and said, "All right, let's get this over with. You know where he was last night?"

Valentin rubbed his eyes wearily. "I saw him at Longshoreman's Hall ... there was this ... his band—"

"His band ain't no more," Picot said. "I heard all about it."

Valentin nodded; of course, Uptown news traveled fast. "We got into ... into a scuffle ... down in the train yard."

"A scuffle?" Picot smiled dimly.

"Then I lost track of him," Valentin said.

"So you got no idea what he was up to, say after two
A.M.
?" Picot's eyes wandered away. "Where he went? What he mighta been doin'?"

Valentin shook his head.

They stood over Justine's bed. She was all in white, her head bandaged round and round. Her eyes, half-closed, were dark liquid pools in a slow river of morphine. Aware of Picot's surly gaze, Valentin touched her hand, but she didn't respond. The Creole doctor came up behind them.

"When can I question her?" Picot demanded.

"Hard to tell," the doctor said. "Could be as soon as this afternoon. But it could be a few days."

"I'll be around," Picot said. Valentin just stared at her.

The doctor was studying the patient in kind. "Do you know who's responsible?"

Picot answered the doctor easily. "Yessir, I believe we do."

As they stepped up to the nurses' station in the White Ward, it suddenly dawned on Valentin that he didn't know Beansoup's true name. He'd been seeing him on the streets for years, the
boy had slept under his roof and eaten at his table, and he had never bothered to ask his name. He felt a flush of shame.

"That would be Emile Carter," the nurse at the desk told them. "His condition is still serious, but he's stable," she said. "You can go up and look in on him if you want. Second floor."

Valentin climbed the stairs with Picot puffing along behind. They stopped in the doorway and looked inside. Stripped of his ragged street clothes and dirty mug all cleaned up, he looked like a different person. He looked like a child.

The two men stepped out of the hospital as the first hard light of day eased its way into the sky over the Gulf. Without a word, they walked off in opposite directions.

That fast life, it just broke him up.

—P
ETER
B
OCAGE

Sunlight poured through the window in a brilliant fountain. Just beyond the sill, two women murmured, their voices like running water. With the jumbled rhythm of horseshoes on cobbles, the slap and jingle of reins and bridles, the steady roll of wagon wheels, and the cries of the street vendors, it was a band playing a quiet tune.

Buddy turned his head and looked through the gap in the curtains. The morning sun had cast everything on the street with a soft edge of golden yellow. He could smell coffee brewing and bread baking, beignets frying, the deep earth scents of the street vendors' fruits and vegetables and fresh meats, the musky odor of horses, and the exotic New Orleans filé that was in the air all the time but came on strongest the first of the day. He had always loved mornings. Though he couldn't remember the last time he had been up early enough to greet one.

He suddenly remembered waking up on a day like this long ago and knowing that a world filled to bursting with sound and light and motion waited outside. By the afternoon, the wet heat and the green flies would make the streets unbearable, but
mornings stretched on so long that sometimes it seemed they would never end. He grinned, remembering the time ... then, just as suddenly, a tiny blade of white light flashed behind his eyes and the thought fluttered away.

A cloud passed over and for a few moments the streets outside took on a gray cast like the shadows in one of that dwarf fellow's photographs. Then the color returned. He heard the door creak open and turned his head to see Nora standing there, looking wary.

"How you feelin' this mornin'?" It sounded like she was on the other side of a wall.

"Feelin' all right," he told her.

Bernedette's tiny brown face appeared from behind her mother's skirt. She stared at her father, blinking her wide, curious eyes, one small hand clutching the cotton folds of Nora's dress, the other trailing a ragged doll. Buddy was silent, gazing back at his child with a fearful wonder, seeing the face of an angel. He reached out his hand, but she shrunk back. Nora bent to whisper something in her ear. Bernedette entwined her feet and shook her head. Her mother put a hand on her back and sent her out the door and down the hall.