Chasing the Devil's Tail (35 page)

It was rainy one day, bright and hot the next. Valentin waited uneasily through the long week, but nothing much happened. It was quiet, as if Bolden's departure had calmed the turgid Uptown waters. No women were assaulted. Indeed, Storyville seemed all too happy to accept that the nightmare was over and move along.

If Valentin held himself to blame, it appeared he was a minority of one. His mistakes had been either forgiven or forgotten. Messages came to his door, offers of a night's work here and there, entreaties from the madams. He ignored them, and instead spent the hours when he wasn't caring for Justine pacing his front room or wandering the nearby streets, turning the case over again and again, searching in vain for the missing piece.

Beansoup was released from the hospital the Wednesday following the incident, and Justine on Friday. The boy went to a Catholic orphanage where the nuns fussed over him day and night. He was a pint-sized hero.

Valentin settled Justine in his bedroom to recover. He was solicitous with her, tending to her every need, feeding and bathing her, barely allowing her to raise her head from the pillow. After a few days, the soreness where she had taken the blows eased, but she still felt weak and often dizzy. A doctor visited every third day to check on her. He said her fractured skull seemed to be healing nicely.

She slept much of the time away and while she slept, he sat by the bed, long hour after long hour. At first, he would simply study her face, then turn to stare out the window, all in brooding silence. Then he found himself at odd moments murmuring to her, as if she was wide-awake and listening to every word.

It began with whispered apologies for not protecting her. She had been attacked while he was playing detective and he was ashamed. He guessed that it was his pride, that he was out to prove that he was right and everyone else was wrong. That he was better than they thought. And that his friend Buddy Bolden was not a murderer. He did not entertain the possibility that Bolden had attacked her and Beansoup—at least not aloud.

Because he didn't believe Buddy was guilty. There was plenty to point to him, but Valentin didn't buy any of it. There were too many pieces missing.

He told her he had always expected that Buddy would go out in a blaze of light, his heart exploding from too much of everything; either that, or shot dead by a jealous rounder or a woman he had wronged. But to see him voided of everything, a tattered, hollow shadow, was one possibility he had never imagined. In his pride, he had betrayed every one of the people he cared about. But, of course, she didn't hear any of this.

The hack pulled to the gate of Jackson State Hospital. Valentin asked the driver to wait and stepped down.

The doctor, a white man about his own age, ushered him through a set of heavy doors. A large room stretched out before them, the ceiling arched like a cathedral, with hallways to the wards running off at right angles. Tall, barred windows made patterns of dusty yellow afternoon sunlight on the white tile floor.

Thirty-odd male patients shuffled aimlessly about or stood as still as stones beneath the domed ceiling, each one seemingly lost in a private world. The doctor touched Valentin's arm and pointed to a gaunt figure in a blue hospital robe who was shuffling absently along the far wall, one hand held out tentatively before him. As he moved along, he laid fingers on the wall
molding, then the windowsill, then the next piece of molding. Valentin watched, feeling a tightening in his throat.

"He has to touch everything," the doctor said in a quiet voice. "He gets very upset if he misses anything."

"That's all?"

"Yes. He's very docile. Never any trouble. He sleeps a lot, of course. They all do."

"Can I speak to him?" Valentin said.

"I doubt he'll recognize you," the doctor said. "He doesn't recognize anyone. His wife came up just last week." He shook his head. "Nothing. He didn't even blink. She was very upset, but..." The two men watched Buddy for a moment.

"Do you know what caused this?" Valentin said.

"We give it the name dementia praecox. The truth is we really don't know. There's too much pressure, and something in the mind bends until it breaks."

"Will he get any better?" Valentin said.

The doctor was about to launch into a well-practiced speech about always keeping hope, but after studying Valentin's face for a few seconds, he said, "Not likely, no." He glanced at the object under the Creole's arm. "Is that a gift?"

"It's his horn. He was a musician, you know and ... I thought he might like to have it." The doctor looked dubious, but he nodded his permission.

Valentin walked across the room and stood by the wall. When the patient's gaze came to rest on the obstruction in his path, his feet stopped moving, his dark brow furrowed as he held his searching hand suspended in mid-air.

"Buddy," Valentin said, very softly. There was not the slightest flicker in the patient's expression. "It's Tino, Buddy." He slipped the horn from the coverlet and held it up before the dull eyes.

The black scarecrow before him took a slight, shuffling
step to the side and moved past, his hand already stretching to caress the next piece of polished molding. Valentin felt no difference in the air around him. It was empty, as if no one had been there at all.

The two men shook hands and the doctor went back to the ward. Just before the doors closed behind him, Valentin caught a last glimpse of King Bolden, patiently padding along the blank wall, touching every surface with that gentle hand.

He stopped outside and leaned against the building, his forehead in his hand, trying to grasp what he had just witnessed. Buddy didn't know him anymore. He didn't know anyone. He was gone.

He walked down the hill and back out the gate, ready to leave that place. The hack driver blinked awake, yawned and reached down to give him a hand up. At that moment, Valentin happened to glance back and saw the building that housed the White Wards, the very place where he had delivered Father Dupre. It seemed like it had been a long time ago, but he realized that it had only been a matter of weeks. Back when the whole terrible mess began.

"Sir?" The hack driver was waiting.

Valentin hesitated another moment. "I forgot something," he said and went back through the gate.

He found himself in the lobby, standing on the very spot where he had turned the priest over. Nurses and attendants bustled about on soft-soled shoes. An old Negro was mopping the tiled floor. He walked up to the man and spoke to him in a low voice. The Negro mumbled a name and he tilted his head politely in the direction of the staircase.

On the second floor, Valentin found the attendant named Henry pushing a tiny, enfeebled white man in a wheelchair. He stated his business and was directed to a room with two
beds. On one of them, Father Dupre sat staring out the window. He looked small and lost inside his white hospital gown and his flesh seemed to have retreated from his bones. He blinked slowly and whispered to himself.

At the foot of the other bed was a dapper little Frenchman, dressed nattily in a white shirt and cotton trousers and sporting an impeccable mustache. He sat quite upright in an ornate wooden wheelchair, a book in his lap. He looked at Valentin with bright bird eyes. Valentin nodded a greeting and returned his attention to the priest. "Father Dupre?"

Dupre looked around, his eyes milky blue. After a moment, he said, "I know you," in a calm voice.

"Valentin St. Cyr. I escorted you here from the city." The priest nodded slowly, though he didn't seem to have heard. "How are you feeling, Father?" Valentin said.

The old man made a noncommittal motion with one thin hand. "You come from New Orleans?" he inquired presently.

"Yes, Father."

"You're familiar with St. Ignatius Church?"

"Yessir."

"Could you tell me, is someone tending my flock?" The voice took on a slightly fretful note.

"I'm sure they're in good hands," Valentin said.

Another long silence followed, but Valentin could see something working about behind the priest's eyes. He heard a deep sigh and then, "How I failed them. I pray to God to forgive me." The old eyes roamed beyond the window to the hospital grounds and rolling green fields. "That poor child," he said. "The black one. What happened to her?"

Valentin was startled. "She died, Father."

Dupre closed his eyes and sighed again, a deep, weary echo. "God rest her soul. God forgive her. God forgive us all." The priest's silence lasted a minute, then two. Valentin heard a
low whistle and turned to see the Frenchman in the wheelchair curling a finger at him. Valentin stepped around the foot of Father Dupre's bed.

"He won't say nothin' now," the Frenchman whispered in an accented voice. "That's how he does when the others come by."

"What others?"

"Them nuns and such. People from his church. Some tall fellow wit' a mustache, he come by once a week. It's always the same t'ing. 'God forgive her. God forgive us all.' Then he won't say one more word. I'm tellin' you, he get that look, he's not gon' talk to no one,
comprenez vous?
"

Valentin nodded. He was still fixed on the priest's mention of Annie Robie. He'd been right. There had been a connection. But he didn't know what it meant.

The Frenchman gave him a quick smile. "Name's Beauchamp," he said and rapped his knuckles on the arm of his chair. "You take me down the kitchen. Time for my
au lait.
"

They went out of the ward and along the corridor until they reached a set of double doors near the top landing of the stairwell. Beauchamp pointed a finger and Valentin pushed him into the ward kitchen, a sunny room with tall windows. A fat mulatto woman at the sink turned around when she heard the doors swing open.

"Ah, Monsieur Beauchamp," she said with a rich laugh. "It's that time, ain't it? Comin' right up." She splashed milk in a copper pot and threw it on a burner. In two minutes, a steaming
café au lait
was placed in Monsieur Beauchamp's gnarled hands. Valentin declined the offer of a cup for himself.

"Like to get over by the window," Beauchamp said and Valentin started pushing.

"Sun side of the house," the Frenchman said when they reached the destination. The view was the back of the grounds, over the rice fields that stretched to the horizon. The old man sipped his
au lait
with satisfaction and Valentin began working on an excuse to get away. Between seeing Bolden like that and then the old priest talking about Annie Robie, he felt like he had been pushed through a wringer.

"You know what I think?" Beauchamp inquired abruptly. "Dupre's the best kinda priest there is. He don't say much of
nothin.
" He cackled and then gave Valentin a shrewd look. "Whatchu doin' visitin' him? I take you for a sportin' man."

Valentin shrugged. "Not exactly," he said.

"But you got business in the District?" Valentin admitted it with a nod of his head. "I can tell. I spent most of my young years down there."

Valentin wasn't much interested, but he said, "Is that right?"

"I was solicitor for a half dozen them sportin' houses." He smiled smugly. "I was quite the rounder, too."

Valentin slouched against the windowsill. How many times had he listened to Storyville old-timers rant on about the supposed golden years, the middle 1880s, when it was a wide-open town? Now, Valentin guessed, he would hear about how the young fellows these days...

"You young fellows these days, you don't remember the District before they made the law," Beauchamp was saying. "It was better, for sure. Big mansions. Beautiful ladies, but they cut you same as a man if you get outta line." He frowned with distaste. "That was 'fore they made it all
legal.
"

Valentin stood there, getting impatient, wondering if he was expected to push the old man back to the ward, or if he could just leave him there by the window and go back to the waiting hack, back to New Orleans and away from that place.

"Old Dupre, he remind me of all that," Beauchamp told an inattentive Valentin. "Them priests, all them proper American people in the Garden District, all them church folk, no,
'specially
them church folk, they raised holy hell. Actin' like they was all religious and proper, and took offense 'cause it was gon' be a legal District." He laughed again. "Shit! They all owned houses, I mean sportin' houses, in some other part of town. You believe it? It's true. They knew they was gonna lose plenty of money if the houses went illegal everywhere but the District. Mansion full of sportin' girls, that's five hundred dollar a month, just rent." He kissed the tips of his old fingers. "Good-bye to all that. Yessir, they fought the District up and down the line."

Valentin shrugged and said, "Well, they lost."

"You think so, eh?" Beauchamp said. When Valentin didn't respond, the old man gave him a knowing look. "When I was a young sport, I never heeded no one neither," he said and before Valentin could respond, said, "You can take me back now. And you can go on and leave."

Valentin stared blankly out the window as the train rolled south. He saw Buddy pacing along the walls of the ward, patient and unperturbed, a dead man with a heartbeat. Old Father Dupre, another dead man, whispering about poor Annie as he sat stone still on his bed like he was waiting for death to walk in. And the wizened old Frenchman with his stories, entertaining for a few minutes, but then it was the same old saw about the District before Alderman Story and the City Council got to work on it. Back when the whole of New Orleans was a city of sin. A time when...

He straightened in his seat. A thin, almost invisible thread dangled before him. In his mind, he reached out, plucked it between two fingers and gave a gentle tug. The thread was attached to a rope that was fixed to a trapdoor, and he grasped it in both hands and pulled, and in one crashing instant, it sprung wide open.

A rage of pictures and voices came tumbling out and brought him lurching to his feet so suddenly that he scared the wits out of the drummer who was dozing across the aisle. As the other passengers gaped, he stalked up and down the aisle, cursing to himself and making gestures like a madman, all the way to Union Station.