Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) (6 page)

She felt Valentin's warm breath on her back and rolled on her side to look at him. She could not count the mornings when she had lain beside him in the bed, wishing they could hide there like sleepy children while the world went on without them. She knew it was silly, a schoolgirl's daydream, and of course she never mentioned it to him. She studied his profile, now unguarded in repose, his olive skin bloodless with sleep, wondering if she watched long enough, she'd be able to read something in his face. Then she thought about shaking him roughly awake to catch him unaware and ask him exactly what was on his mind.

There was a time when she didn't have to puzzle over it. He would tell her about his days and nights, about the part of his life that she didn't see. He described the cases he worked and she giggled over the gossip he brought home. He had even told her about his past, about the tragedies that had rained down on his world as a young boy.

There was more. He had listened to her stories, too, intrigued by her tales of the life she'd led before she landed in New Orleans. Unlike most rounders, who cared nothing for a girl other than to serve their basest needs, Valentin had shown true concern for her. He had taken her out of Miss Antonia's to protect her. He had stayed by her bedside while she recovered from her injuries. When it was all over, he didn't exactly invite her to stay, but he didn't put her out, either, and so there she remained.

She had a sudden memory of the moment she realized something had gone askew. He had come back from his last visit to the hospital in Jackson and there was a look on his face that she had never seen before. He wouldn't—or couldn't—tell her what was wrong. He just sat across the table from her and didn't say a thing. At one point he reached over and ran gentle fingers along her unhealed scar. His gray eyes were stricken, wounded, as if he was the one who had put it there. She never forgot that look, because it had lain so heavily on that moment.

She came to understand in the months since that he was carrying a terrible burden of guilt over what had happened to his friend Bolden—and to her. It started small, then grew to a presence between them, like a third person in their rooms, an intruder who wouldn't leave. Or so she imagined. She didn't even understand what went through her mind some days. Whatever it was, real or imagined, he had let it get the best of him.

As the time passed, they spoke less and of less important things. He didn't bring much of himself home anymore. They frolicked less often, and so she had to wonder frankly what she was doing there.

She thought of waking him up at that moment with a rough shake and asking him just that. Before she got foolish and actually did it, she slipped out of bed, maneuvering over him delicately until her feet touched the floor. She took the silk kimono that was draped at the end of the bed and pulled it on over her thin nightshirt. As she reached the door, she heard the springs squeak and looked back. He had turned on his stomach and sprawled his arms wide, as if reclaiming the bed for his own. She went into the bathroom to start the water in the iron tub, then went into the kitchen to put the coffee on.

The street was busy with hacks, motorcars, and the occasional streetcar milling up and down as the banquettes filled with pedestrians on Saturday morning errands. Bechamin's front door was standing open and from behind its counter the Frenchman waved a greeting as Justine walked by. She stole a glance across the street toward the Banks' Arcade, recalling the quadroon stepping into the fine carriage, and the way she'd held herself, all stately, a lady in charge of her affairs. Or at least as much as any woman in her world could be.

A breeze off the river greeted her as she crossed Canal Street. Slipping into the shadows of the Quarter was entering another place, quiet and still at this early hour. She walked more slowly now, meandering up one narrow street, turning a corner, and turning down another. It was pleasant there, shaded from the sun, and as she passed under the colonnades with their wrought-iron railings, she lost track of time.

Her thoughts again went wandering along with her, drifting away from the narrow streets of the Vieux Carré, out of the city of New Orleans, back along country roads, around the outskirts of little towns, and into the deep green shadows of the bayou. It was a familiar path. Sometimes the memories seeped in like slow water; other times, they leaped in with sudden and jarring focus. At regular intervals lately, she got an overpowering sense of something reaching out of that dark, lush tangle to clutch at her, all but making her heart stop. Then the feelings would pass and she would think she was just plain crazy.

It had not been so long ago that she was looking out the cracked window of the collapsing shack at the black water that crawled along beneath the ancient trees. No one who saw her parading through the city of New Orleans in her fine dress could guess how far she had traveled. She thought of her brothers and her sisters, wondering where they were now, and if they ever thought of her. It made her heart sink to realize that she might not ever see them again, not after what had happened that one awful August day.

The brakes of a steam engine shrieked and she all but jumped out of her skin. She looked around, blinking in the late morning sun. The bayou was gone. She was standing on the corner of Basin Street and Iberville, directly across from Anderson's Café. Behind her was Union Station, the trains chugging in from the south and chugging out to the north and west in a long half loop around the border of the District.

Somehow her absentminded wandering had brought her all the way through the Vieux Carré and to the main line of the red-light district. Basin Street was a noisy jumble of metal, the odd harsh music of the infant century. A hack went by, then a streetcar, the wires crackling overhead. She smelled ozone, burning coal, horse manure, the dirty smoke from the motorcars. Delivery boys hurried along the banquettes, sweating as they pulled wagons of goods for the sporting houses. It was the start of another busy Saturday in Storyville.

Justine peered up and down and across the street to see if anyone had noticed her. Then she realized that none of the people she knew would be out at that hour. Her eyes came to rest on the facade of Antonia Gonzales's mansion, across the street and a half block down. She knew it well. It had been her home for a year and she still thought of it fondly. She had been the fairest of the sporting girls there, and only gentlemen of class and sports who stayed flush won the pleasure of her company. Miss Antonia had been sorry to see her go.

She heard the faraway bells of St. Ignatius tolling three-quarters. She could make it to noon Mass on time if she hurried along Basin Street and then turned east on St. Ann. Once she stepped inside the chapel, the scent of the incense, the whispered prayers in sonorous Latin rising to the vaulted ceiling, and the pale tinted light through the stained glass windows would combine like a special potion to calm her mind. Her body would unwind, too, as the jumble of thoughts and images inside her head wound down, like a top at the end of its spin. It never failed; though just to make sure, she would stop at the apothecary on her way home and have her prescription filled.

Though she knew she need only put one foot ahead of the other and start walking, she didn't move. She kept gazing across at Miss Antonia's as she dropped her hand into her purse and brushed a finger over the three pale pink envelopes that were tucked away there. Inside each was a small card with
Miss Antonia Gonzales
printed on it in fancy script. In the space underneath the name, the madam had penned messages, each one polite, though insistent.
Please visit me at your convenience ... Requesting a visit as soon as possible ... Please contact me at your earliest convenience...

It had started with a chance meeting at the French Market one afternoon a month or so before. Miss Antonia had greeted her kindly, warmly, more like a doting aunt than a former employer. They didn't speak of anything important, just an exchange of pleasantries. The madam must have sensed something, though, because a week later the first of the three messages arrived.

Justine had kept the notes for weeks now, so long that the first one was beginning to fray at the edges. She knew what was happening and first dismissed the idea, then found herself returning to it again and again. She threw the notes away, then went back an hour later to retrieve them from the trash bin. She had even gone so far as to ride to Basin Street, only to turn around and ride home again without crossing over. Now, without thinking about it any further, she waited calmly until another hack and a motor wagon passed by, and stepped into the street.

Valentin woke up to the noon whistle. He rolled over and sat up slowly, feeling the kinks in his bones from sleeping too long in one position. His head was groggy, like he had a hangover.

He dawdled and drowsed for another quarter hour, then stood up and stretched. He pulled on trousers and shuffled into the kitchen. Justine had gone out somewhere and hadn't left him anything, no coffee on the stove, nothing in the oven, no note.

He went out the back door and down the creaky wooden stairs to the privy. When he came back inside, he ran water for a bath and munched on an apple while he waited for the tub to fill. By the time he got out, she still hadn't come back, and he wondered idly if she had stayed so long at church because she had extra sins to confess.

He got dressed and walked over to Poydras Street to find a café where he could linger over breakfast and a newspaper.

With the long overdue bill in hand, the desk clerk knocked and called out Lacombe's name. There was no answer, so he called again, then used his passkey. He found the Negro lying on the floor, his body as rigid as wood, his eyes and mouth open in a ghastly mockery of shock. A telltale scribble of dried blood trailed down his forearm and a syringe hung there in the graying flesh like a brass leech.

The clerk wasn't shocked at all. He'd seen it a dozen times before. He spent a quick half minute going through the musician's pockets; if he didn't, the first copper on the scene surely would. He came up with nothing of value. No surprise there, either. He saw the clarinet case on the end of the bed and decided it would be worth something at a pawnshop. Lacombe wasn't going to need it anymore.

The clerk put the case under his arm, locked the door behind him, and went back downstairs to call the precinct to send a wagon.

Valentin came back to find Justine in the kitchen in one of her cotton frocks, fussing over a simmering pot. When she greeted him, he caught a flicker in her eyes that came and went in the space of a second. She was in one of her distracted moods, acting all nervous and not meeting his gaze.

He sat down in the front room and pretended to be busy reading his
Picayune.
She left her pot to simmer and went into the bedroom to lie down, murmuring of another headache. She left her purse open when she dug out her prescription, and he noticed that the three pink envelopes that had been resting there for so many weeks had disappeared.

He thought over what that might mean, then abruptly decided that he didn't want to be there when she woke up. He had some work to do anyway.

He went down the stairs and along Magazine Street, then walked all the way through the Quarter to the corner of Conti, around the white walls of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and through Eclipse Alley to St. Louis Street. Four blocks north, he found the first address.

The talk of policemen extorting money that Tom Anderson had passed on was odd business. Everyone from the commissioner to the patrolmen on the beat shared in the graft that was collected from the houses. The donations from the madams were made in an organized way, weekly, usually through the precinct sergeant, who then passed the money up and down the line. It had worked that way for decades and few ever bucked it. In the rare instance when someone did, the response was direct. Some lucky souls escaped with a brutal beating. The bodies of others who misbehaved were fished out of the muddy Mississippi days later. So anyone who knew Storyville would understand that it would be insane to step outside the bounds and risk Anderson's ire as these characters had.

Valentin stepped up to the facade of the house, a run-down two-story brick building near the corner of Robertson Street. He wasn't familiar with the address, so along the way, he picked up a copy of
The Blue Book,
the pocket-sized volume that listed almost every sporting girl in the District, by race, by religion in the case of the Jew Quarter, and by certain specialties. The ladies at No. 1604 St. Louis Street were of course billed as graduates of an unnamed academy of amorous arts in Europe—even though it was unlikely that any of them had ever traveled any closer to that continent than the Georgia state line.

He knocked on the door and was greeted by the madam herself, a fat, surly-eyed woman named Carrie Butler. She was in her stocking feet and a worn Mother Hubbard. When he stated his business, she muttered gruffly and waved him inside.

The house was filthy, reeking from one room to the next of mildewed wood, stale cigar smoke, and close sweat. The plaster on the walls showed islands of stain and the floor was buckling on a crumbling foundation. It looked like it hadn't seen a good cleaning in years, and there hadn't even been an effort to mask the grime that had soaked into the carpets and curtains.

Miss Butler led him to the back of the house and into the kitchen. She sat down heavily at the table and grunted for him to take the opposite chair. He told her he preferred to stand.

The women who passed in and out while they talked were a sorry lot. Without the blessings of rouge and mascara, their faces were dry and drawn, like they suffered from unknown ailments. Girls who couldn't have been more than twenty looked twice that age in the hard light. Each one of them appeared hung-over and wrung dry from the night before, and not one even pretended to smile as she checked him up and down with cold fish eyes.