Lost River (12 page)

He let out a weary groan. "Now what?"

"It's Billy," Gertrude said. "Something about somebody getting shot."

Anderson threw off the sheets, lurched from the bed, and in his nightshirt padded along the hall and down the staircase to the foyer to snatch up the telephone. "Billy?"

"Fellow got shot dead on Basin Street." Struve's voice was breathless and a little giddy. "Front of Antonia Gonzales's."

"Who was it?"

"One of her customers. Fellow named Bolls."

The name sounded familiar, though Anderson couldn't quite place it. "Who did it?"

"No one knows. Whoever it was ran off." Struve described how the victim had been met by a miscreant with a pistol. The killer had been interrupted before anything valuable could be lifted. What happened after had been a small mob scene on Basin Street. "And listen to this," he continued in a stage whisper. "St. Cyr was up there."

Anderson's brow stitched. "Up where?"

"At Miss Antonia's," Struve said. "She sent for him and he came. Took a look at the body, talked to the madam and the cops on the scene, all that."

"And then what?"

"Then? Well, I suppose he went home. I don't know about that part."

The King of Storyville muttered under his breath, then said, "Is there anything else?"

"That's the news for this night." Struve cackled gaily. "Though I guess I might have—"

"Billy?" Anderson cut him off. "Go to sleep." He dropped the phone in the cradle. His hand rested on it for a moment, then he lifted it and waited for the operator. It was late and took some long moments for her to come on the line.

"Number, please?" the woman said.

Anderson said, "Sorry, never mind," and put the hand piece back. He turned around and started up the steps, then stopped and gripped the banister, assailed by a wave of weakness.

A good citizen had been shot dead in front of a Basin Street mansion. St. Cyr had been summoned and appeared on the scene. A whole drama had played out, and he was the last to know. A moment later he felt his gut sink with the realization that Miss Antonia's landlord was none other than Honore Jacob. So whatever was happening wasn't just a run of bad luck. There was menace afoot.

He stood there, fuming, and didn't snap out of his funk until his wife called to him from the top of the stairs.

"Come back to bed," she said.

"Yes, yes," he said, and began the climb, knowing he wouldn't be able to sleep a wink.

Valentin took his time getting back to Spain Street, stopping along the way to buy a morning
Picayune
from a kid hawking on the corner of St. Claude. He studied the front page, doing his best to pull his mind off the scene on Basin Street. It was no use. If only McKinney hadn't told him about the cut in another victim's flesh. It kept circling back around, the kind of curious thread that in the past had led him to something more sinister. A black rose, for example.

Then he turned the corner from Royal Street and saw Justine. She was standing in profile on the balcony, a coffee cup in her hand, gazing in the direction of the river. Once again, he wondered if he was bug crazy to risk riling her, just so he could play detective.

She caught his approach in the corner of her eye and turned to watch him. From the look on her face as he drew close, he could tell she wanted badly to pour the contents of her cup on his head, and only for the lack of something more lethal. She didn't say a word before stepping back inside.

The official report of the incident on Basin Street was waiting on Captain J. Picot's desk when he arrived at 8:00
A.M.
Reading through the crabbed notations, he learned that Detectives Weeks and McKinney had been at the scene. He called the two officers into his office, then made them wait while he pored over the page one more time.

When he finished, his olive-green eyes flicked between them. "No suspects?"

Weeks shook his head. "He was shot while he was waiting on the banquette for his ride. The perpetrator fled back into the alleys. That kid who drives for the madam came up just after, but he couldn't make much of a description."

Picot peered at the paper again. "What kid?"

"Name's Carter. He goes by 'Each,' I believe. He's—"

"Used to call him 'Beansoup'?" The captain looked up. "That one?"

"I believe so, yes, sir."

Picot frowned absently and rattled the page. "So this wasn't a robbery?"

"Nothing was taken," Weeks said. "But the automobile scared the fellow off before he could have gotten anything."

The captain perused a few more lines of the report. "The one shot did the job?"

Weeks thumped a light fist to his chest. "Right to the heart. He was probably dead by the time he hit the street."

"What about a weapon?"

"Nothing yet. The beat coppers will be looking out for it. We ain't got the report on the slug back from the morgue yet. Looked like a .22, from what I could see."

Picot laid the report on the desk. "Was this Bolls from money?"

Weeks nodded. "He's pretty well-off, yes, sir. Owns two stores."

"Well, that's good news," the captain commented crabbily. "I can expect the chief will be calling any damn minute." He glanced at McKinney, who had kept silent. "Anything else, detective?"

McKinney said, "No, nothing to add, sir."

"I see." Picot studied the junior detective closely. Again, he noticed something just a little too guarded about him.

He found out why that was a moment later when Weeks spoke up. "Oh, yeah, that Pinkerton or whatever he is. What's his name, St. Cyr? He was there."

Picot's ball of a head snapped around. "Was where?"

"At the scene. The madam of that mansion called him." Weeks tilted his chin toward the taller McKinney. "The detective here was talking to him."

Now Picot's cool gaze settled on the junior officer. "Talking about what?"

McKinney felt his ears getting hot. He, like the rest of the department, knew that Picot had always despised St. Cyr. "He just asked if I knew anything about the homicide. That's all."

"And you said what?"

"I said I didn't. Other than what the kid told us."

Picot's ears perked, listening for a kind of hitch in the detective's voice. That he didn't hear one didn't mean there wasn't something wrong. Especially when Valentin St. Cyr was mixed up in police business.

He sniffed with irritation. "That Creole don't work Storyville no more," he said, looking between the two men, but mostly at McKinney. "He ain't Tom Anderson's man, and he don't take care of any of the mansions. I don't know why the hell Miss Antonia called him in the first place. Anyway, don't neither one of you talk to him about anything, especially police business. Understood?"

He dismissed the detectives with a sharp wave of his hand, then swiveled in his chair to stare balefully out his window and over the New Orleans rooftops.

Valentin sat on the edge of the morris chair, keeping his head bent to his newspaper and his mouth shut as Justine banged around their little kitchen, fixing his breakfast. The morning had dawned gray, with an occasional shaft of sunlight breaking through the hanging clouds. Out on the river, the horns of the barges, freight ships, and tugboats played the notes of a mournful dirge.

Rather than call his name, she stood in the kitchen doorway and stared until he felt the sting of her black eyes. He folded his
Picayune,
stood up, and marched forward.

He was relieved to find that she hadn't taken her anger out on his meal. She pushed a plate of eggs scrambled with cheese, with a fat chunk of sugared ham and a heel of French bread that she had toasted over the stove, in front of him, along with a cup of chicory coffee. It smelled wonderful and his stomach yawned. She made up a second plate of smaller portions and sat down across the table. He watched her and waited.

She kept her angry eyes down. "Go ahead," she said. "Tell me why after three years, you've been back in Storyville two days in a row." She speared a piece of ham with such force that it tipped her plate. "Well?"

"Miss Antonia needed me."

It was a weak point and her head rose with a hard look. He knew his only chance to escape that blade of a gaze was to pull her into the story, and so he lurched ahead, drawing a picture of the rich man stepping down from the gallery and meeting the stranger who shot him dead. No one knew who had done the deed or why. Lowering his voice, he described the cut on the victim's face and mentioned what McKinney had said about another body marked the same way.

He felt like a rat taking her in like that, even more so when he told her that Each had been the sole witness and came within seconds of landing right in the middle of the violence. At that, her eyebrows pinched in worry.

It worked. She had barely touched her breakfast, and the acid in her stare dimmed. He closed the story with a dismissive shrug. "But that's all there was to it."

She caught the false note in his voice and peered at him. "Oh? And what if there's another dead man tomorrow? They'll want you back. What then?"

The way she stared at him, he could tell that either she didn't expect an answer or already knew what it would be. They finished breakfast in polite silence. Valentin escaped to the bedroom to catch a few hours of sleep before he had to go to work.

By midmorning the telephone lines were sizzling as word of the shooting on Basin Street made the rounds. The Bolls family, represented by the victim's brother, had gone railing to their alderman, who in turned railed to the mayor and the chief of police. There were closed-door meetings at City Hall and in offices on the floors above Parish Prison. From all of this hushed conversation came yet another loud agreement that something had to be done about the red-light district, though no one stepped forward with any suggestions.

The one place that wasn't in a state of agitation was Storyville itself. The deed was done, the body had been taken away, and Miss Antonia had sent a man out with a bucket and brush to wash the blood off the cobblestones.

The sun had been up for hours, and William Brown hadn't slept at all, no matter how many times he lay down on the greasy mattress. His mind would not stop replaying the scene in front of the house on Basin Street. Everything had been going perfectly, and he had been bending over the dying man to finish his work when he was startled by the racket of an engine and then was caught in the glare of headlamps. At least he'd kept the presence of mind not to look up and instead turned away to scurry into the space between the houses.

How many times had he heard the words
And don't get caught
? And that's exactly what he had almost done. Another few seconds and the driver of the automobile would have been in the middle of it. That would have meant a second shooting, and then what? A third, a fourth, a half dozen? He imagined a frantic run and then being cornered by the police in some lonely alley, feeling their cold cop stares and the colder touch of their pistols pointing at his heart...

If they didn't kill him on the spot, they'd put him back where he came from or someplace worse, a cage that would hold him forever. At the thought of it, his brain went into a jagged tilt, and he rushed to jerk open the window, fighting the urge to throw himself to the cobblestones two floors below and make it all stop.

The raw moment passed and he settled. His heartbeat fell back to normal, and the flush in his face faded away. There was no damage done. He would make up for his one mistake. He would do better next time. It would be clean and quick with no one even close to a witness. The next time it would be perfect, like a design.

He took the pen and pad of paper from the top of the dresser and sat down on the bed to draw. As always, it calmed him, the repetition of the lines soothing his fevered mind.

Late that morning Valentin stepped through the gilded doors of Mansell, Maines, and Velline and into the funereal silence of the reception area.

Sam Ross was waiting in his office at the end of the hall. The attorney waved him to a chair and got right down to business. "What about Storyville?" he said.

It took a moment for Valentin to realize that Ross was referring not to Burton Bolls but to James Beck.

"I found the woman James and his pals assaulted," he said. "She's a crib whore. A poor wretch, wouldn't harm an ant. Couldn't. They played a prank on her. But it wasn't funny."

He related the story simply, keeping to the essential details like the cop he had once been. Still, it was some cruel little tale. When he finished, Ross stared at him for a moment, as if waiting for more, then said, "So the woman wasn't injured?"

"Yes, she was."

"I mean hit or bruised or—"

"Beaten?" Valentin felt his throat tightening. "No, they didn't beat her. What they did was strip her naked, drag her out onto the street, tie her to a lamppost, shove a six-inch firecracker inside her, and light the fuse. When they were done, they dragged her back inside and made her go down on her knees and give them French, one at a time, while the other ones watched."

Ross sighed in impatience at the rehash. "But isn't that all in a day's work for someone like—"