Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (10 page)

The attendant spoke up. "Investigation's over. They're done with him."

"What investigation?" Valentin said.

The mulatto gave a greasy smile. "That's what I said." He looked between the visitors. "Is one of you gentlemen claiming the body?"

Valentin said, "No, I..." He glanced at Morton, who shrugged his indecision. "We'll see about it, I suppose."

"Because if he ain't claimed in another forty-eight hours, they take and bury him outside the city," the mulatto said.

"A pauper's grave," Valentin murmured.

"That's right." The attendant's yellow smile was ghastly in the light of the bare lamp. "Hell, he don't care. I swear I ain't ever heard a one of them complain."

They walked out into a midday that was under a bank of low clouds. Valentin half expected Morton to shake a finger and start railing about how he had warned him that this was going to happen. He didn't, though, and Valentin saw that his face had gone gray with melancholy that made him look years older. The piano man had known Mumford well, and there was real grief in those green eyes.

Valentin was anguished, too. Though he hadn't known Mumford as well as Morton had, he liked him, admired his talent, thought him a young man with much promise. He was a good-natured sort, not at all troublesome. And yet he'd been brutally murdered in a back-of-town alley.

"Maybe that woman of his will claim the body," Morton murmured absently.

"What?" Valentin said, coming out of his reflections. "What woman?"

"He had a woman living with him," the piano man said. "I can find out about his family. Cornish or one of those other fellows will know. If someone don't come collect his body, I'll take care of it."

"And do what?"

"Give him a proper place." He sighed and shook his head. "Poor Jeff," he said. "It never should have happened." There was no recrimination, only weariness. He walked away. The Creole detective watched vaguely as he ambled a dozen paces in the direction of the street, then stopped and came back to stand before him.

The piano man's brow furrowed. "They played together," he said in an odd, distant voice.

"What's that?"

"Mumford and Noiret. They played together a few years back. In the Union Hall Brass Band. I thought you'd want to know that." He turned around and walked away again, and this time he kept going, passing by Beansoup and Louis, who stood waiting on the corner of the street.

Valentin dropped his gaze to the dusty cobbles, his thoughts in a jumble. He had discounted Morton's claim that there was something amiss, brushing Antoine Noiret's murder aside as everyday violence. From all accounts, the man had been a no-good rounder who'd probably gotten what he deserved. Now it didn't seem so clear. Seeing Mumford had rattled Valentin to his bones. The news that Morton had delivered sent another tremor up his spine.

Standing there in the narrow alley, Valentin felt something stirring. For eighteen months, beginning in the wake of the Black Rose murders, he had managed to muffle his instincts, his sixth sense, his detective's eye, or whatever it was that defined his skill.

Now, the combination of looking upon Mumford's dead face and hearing Jelly Roll Morton's muttered words was shattering the wall he had constructed, piece by piece.

Two musicians, both Negro, both playing in Storyville, both of whom had played together at one time, had died by violence within days of each other. There was no suspect in either case. Maybe it was a coincidence, and maybe it wasn't. It didn't signify. The murders deserved attention, if only because Mumford had died in Storyville. That made it Valentin St. Cyr's business. He needed to go to work.

He called to Beansoup and Louis to wait and went back to the side door and down to the basement.

The mulatto attendant was leaning against the doorjamb, puffing a cigarette. He cocked his head in lazy surprise when the Creole came down the corridor. "Forget somethin'?" he said.

"There was another Negro murdered, out on Philip Street, on Wednesday night," Valentin said. "Antoine Noiret."

"What about him?"

"Is the body still here?"

The attendant spat out a shred of tobacco. "What was that name?"

Valentin didn't have the time to waste. He went into his vest pocket for a Liberty half and shot it off with a snap of his thumb.

The mulatto flinched and snatched it out of the air before it hit him in the face. He sniffed, and then his smile returned. "Noiret? Yessir. I believe that citizen is still with us."

"I want to see him."

The attendant pursed his lips and examined the coin, holding it up before his eyes and flipping it around.

"There's another one when I see the body," the detective said. The attendant winked, tossed what was left of the cigarette, and jerked his head. Valentin followed him inside and to the cooler on the back wall. The mulatto grabbed an empty gurney and swung the heavy door open. "He can't walk out, so you're gonna have to come on in."

Valentin stepped into the cold room, lit only by four bare electric lamps that hung from the ceiling. There was an aisle down the middle and shelves on both sides, six feet deep and stacked with corpses that were wrapped in broad swaths of linen. Each shelf was no more than sixteen inches high, enough to accommodate all but the fattest of the departed. Those ladies and gentlemen were on the middle shelves, where they could be handled most easily. The lower shelves were the more average individuals.

It was a macabre collection that made Valentin's skin crawl a little. He couldn't wait to leave. The attendant seemed quite at home, a worm who spent his days underground with the rotting dead.

The worm went through a few more toe tags. "Noiret," he said. "Here he is." He pulled a gurney over and let out a loud grunt as he dragged the body on to the cooling board. In a quick minute and a flurry of busy dirty hands, the linens were gone and everything from the sternum up was exposed. Valentin stepped closer.

Noiret's face, a broad triangular affair, was like black wax in death. He was thick bodied, heavy in the shoulders, a brawler. His mouth was slightly open in a rictus smile. Below it, on the neck, was the fatal wound, trussed crudely.

Valentin reached up to grab the nearest electric lamp and swung it to one side so he could see better. From the look of the gash, Noiret's final moments had been about as horrid as Mumford's. The knife wound hadn't come from some fight in the heat of passion. It was too precisely placed. Someone had planned it, catching the victim sleeping, just as someone had gone to the trouble of poisoning the guitar player. Which meant, hard as it was to admit, Jelly Roll Morton could be right. Though Valentin couldn't believe it was over some Negroes playing with white men. So the question remained: What was it all about?

Beansoup and Louis both came to attention when Valentin reappeared in the alleyway. When he went digging into his pocket for change, they responded like dogs hearing a whistle, hurrying to stand before him, their eyes and ears perked. Except that Beansoup hung back just a step or two, looking abashed, and Valentin realized that he was upset about Justine and Basin Street. It had to be the reason he had sent Louis to fetch Valentin that morning.

He gave them each a Liberty quarter and said, "Go find Mr. Anderson. He should be back from church by now. He might be at the Café. Or at Miss Burt's or Miss Arlington's. If he's—"

"Okay, okay," Beansoup cut in, now all business. "We'll find him. What then?"

"Tell him I need to speak to him as soon as possible."

"You goin' to be home?"

"Yes, I'll—" He caught himself and looked around. There was a workman's diner across Carondelet. He realized that except for two bites of the egg sandwich from Bechamin's, he hadn't eaten anything since the night before. He pointed. "I'll wait for you over there."

The kid was giving him a searching look that made him appear in that moment wise beyond his years.

"Well?" Valentin said.

The two boys turned and ran away, all full of purpose, leaving the detective standing in the shadow of the building.

An hour later, he had finished a midday breakfast of boudin and eggs and was sitting over coffee and the Sunday
Sun,
staring at the page without absorbing any of the text, when the two boys came through the door and hurried to his table.

"Mr. Anderson's at Miss Burt's," Beansoup reported breathlessly. "He said he'll be there for a while if you want to come around." Valentin folded his paper and went into his pocket for money to pay his check. He glanced up to see that Beansoup had taken a step closer to the table. Louis stood back, his pop-eyed gaze wandering toward the ceiling.

Beansoup regarded the detective with a serious expression. "I didn't want to start no trouble," he said in a pronounced whisper. "Thing is, I don't know for a fact that that was Miss Justine I seen last night."

"Oh ... it's all right," Valentin said.

"It coulda been anyone. There's lots of women on Basin Street. It was dark."

The kid's earnest intent was almost comical, and Valentin nodded seriously in response. "I'll go see Mr. Anderson now," he said.

"You want us to come, too?" Beansoup said, still fretting.

They escorted him down Magazine to Canal Street, where they all climbed on a car, riding in back out of consideration for Louis. It brought stares from some of the passengers, but Valentin was used to it. People assumed that he was one of those odd types who either didn't know any better than to ride behind the Colored line with the niggers or didn't care about the proper order of things. Occasionally, some ill-advised citizen, usually a drunk, would accost him about it. He met these accusers with a hard gaze that sent them back to their seats in the front of the car, muttering about what the world was coming to.

Valentin looked at the two boys. They were a funny pair. Beansoup, all pale faced and gangly, his hair like wheat straw, and Louis, a short little fellow, his eyes and smile wide and white against his chocolate skin. It was still permissible that they were friends, though it couldn't last much longer. Beansoup was getting too old; one day soon he would have to walk away from his small companion, and their days running the streets together would become a hazy memory.

As they pulled away from Burgundy Street, Valentin caught a glimpse of chimney stacks poking up from roofs along Basin Street. The clouds coming around from the southwest were getting darker, more animated. He watched them for a while, thinking about how he was going to present the matter of the deaths of the two jass men to Tom Anderson.

***

When they got off the car, he went into his pocket and dropped another Liberty quarter into each boy's palm. Beansoup gave him a searching look, then shrugged and jerked his head. The two of them sauntered off to find some likely place to spend their rewards.

Valentin crossed the quiet street, climbed the steps to Hilma Burt's gallery, and rang the bell. He was ushered inside by a Negro maid, who then led him to a sitting room with a sofa and two chairs of French design. While she went off to fetch Mr. Tom, Valentin went to the window, pushed the curtain aside, and looked out on Basin Street.

He only had to wait a few minutes before Anderson stepped through the door. The King of Storyville had been to church and was wearing a fine Sunday suit, complete with vest and watch and chain. It was part of his political genius to check his critics with sanctimonious displays, attending a different service every week, plus the occasional temple visit on Saturday. It also provided him an opportunity to spend a few private minutes with the priest, minister, or rabbi and offer assistance with the inevitable problems that came up in a sector where sin rubbed shoulders with piety.

It benefited both sides. On the King of Storyville's orders, Valentin had corralled parishioners who had left their wives and children to chase after a floozy. Or made sure that the erring son of a prominent church elder couldn't buy a card of hop anywhere in the city. Or saw that two young ladies who were developing what the parents thought was an unnatural interest in each other were kept apart. Most importantly, he regularly checked on the churches' real estate holdings in and around the red-light district, of which there were many, including some of the fanciest bordellos.

Anderson waved the Creole detective to one of the chairs and settled himself in the other. He reached into his pocket for one of his favored Cuban cigars, went digging for a lucifer, and blew a mighty plume of smoke. He took another moment to unbutton the pockets of his vest and tug his tight collar away from his florid neck. With a sigh of relief, he sat back and raised his eyebrows, a signal.

"Thank you for taking time to see me," Valentin said.

"Is this about the fellow they found dead last night? What was his name? Mumford?"

The detective was surprised. "That's right."

"He was in Bolden's band, if I recall correctly."

"He was."

"What about it?"

Valentin said, "I think there could be something to it."

Anderson raised a polite eyebrow. "Oh? Why's that?"

"Because another musician was murdered, just a few days ago."

Anderson held his cigar in the air. "Where?"