Lost River (15 page)

He had given up on going to the hospital after the first few visits. It was too heartbreaking to see Bolden that way, and it served no purpose. Buddy no longer recognized him as his childhood friend from their days on the streets around First and Liberty. Or as the Creole detective who had followed his elusive trail during the Black Rose murders. They had become strangers.

Now, after all that, his long-suffering wife had come to announce that from some cranny of his crazy mind, he had pulled Valentin's name.

The detective understood that whatever was happening with Buddy was most likely a passing event, lightning flashing inside a dark cloud, sharp and random and signifying nothing. He was relieved that Nora hadn't pleaded with him to make the trip. She had simply delivered the information as a duty to the man who had been her husband, shared her bed, and fathered her child.

Valentin looked up to find that instead of heading for Spain Street, his footsteps had delivered him back at Mangetta's.

The saloonkeeper poured two more cups of coffee, these laced with
anisetta.
"Some week you're having," he commented as they returned to the table.

Valentin agreed.

"Ora
che cosa?
Are you back to work over here?"

The detective shrugged tiredly. In a few short days, his life had taken a hard turn. Two men were dead, he had placed himself in the middle of the mess, and Justine was ready to kill
him.
Before he could catch a breath, the wife of the childhood friend he had lost to madness had appeared to tell him that there was unfinished business there, too.

He stopped to consider that Justine had been right all along: They should have moved farther away, certainly beyond Spain Street. She was also correct that he didn't have any promises to honor in the District. He could turn his back on it anytime.

So why, he wondered, did he feel an urge to climb the steps to his old room on the second floor and drop into the iron-framed bed with its thin gray mattress? He felt as if he could sleep for days, not rising until the fragrances from Frank's kitchen seeped through the floorboards and awakened him to find that the drama had ended, the killer put away or dead, Justine over being angry, and Buddy back where he belonged, standing still and silent as he gazed out a window at the world that he had left behind.

"So what now?" Frank repeated, this time in English.

Valentin lifted his cup. "Now I finish this and go home."

The Sicilian considered for a few seconds. "Are you going to go see him, Tino?"

Tino.
That's what Buddy had always called him. "I don't know."

Mangetta eyed him wisely. "You will," he said. "You have to."

It didn't take long for the news about Valentin's return to Storyville to revive a whole history. From one end of Basin Street to the other, the stories were taken down and dusted off for fresh readings. The women in the mansions gabbed about how the Creole detective had gone about ridding the District of this villain or that, pickpocket to murderer. They recalled his delicacy in handling affairs between certain harlots and men of position and wealth. And they recounted the convoluted drama between the detective and Justine Mancarre, once a sporting girl herself.

Whatever the tale, the Storyville veterans would finish with a sigh and a murmured
I knew be couldn't stay away.

***

It was Tom Anderson's custom to enjoy a meal at Germaine's on Ursulines after church on Sunday. He would invite three or four important guests from around New Orleans, and these feasts, which began around noon and ended at two or later, had produced some rousing good conversation and the sort of connections that the host believed fortified his business and political interests. He had stolen the idea from an article about salons that he had read in a magazine.

The restaurant kept a special table reserved, a circular affair that was placed in a corner of the main dining room, yet still in sight of anyone who walked in the door. That Anderson was regarded as the devil himself in some quarters hadn't kept some of the most powerful men in the city and beyond away. He had long been too exalted a presence to ignore.

For his part, the King of Storyville found that the dinners invigorated him. A good meal in the company of three or four gentlemen of import seemed to have a magical effect on his constitution, as well as his profile.

When he arrived on this Sunday, however, he found that two of his four companions invited to the weekly meal were absent. A message was waiting from Father O'Rourke, begging off due to a sick parishioner. John Miles, who among other holdings owned one of the three automobile dealerships in the city, simply failed to show. That left only Laurence Deveaux, a pianist who had traveled from Philadelphia for a production at the Opera House and decided to stay to become a fixture at downtown New Orleans social events, and Charles Auberge, a fellow of idle means who, with a partner, owned a stable of horses that ran at the Fair Grounds.

Though Anderson greeted the two men cheerfully, he was dismayed. Once in a while a guest didn't show. Never two. Though neither man seemed to mind the expanse of empty table laid out before them, looking forward to the extra time with the King of Storyville.

Anderson understood that while savvy politicians and businessmen considered him a man of influence, others regarded him more as an exotic, the leading player in a crude pageant. He never minded that role; it fanned his vanity in a different way.

Spying the empty chairs, the headwaiter sprang to the rescue, creating a flurry of activity as he scrounged two businessmen who had been dining together on the other side of the house and installed them at the table. The two were astonished to find themselves in the company of the notorious King of Storyville and delighted to be treated to the best fare the chef had to offer.

Across the room one of the women at a table of society ladies observed all this, from the delicious moment when Tom Anderson realized that he had been jilted until the two befuddled strangers were hustled up to the table and seated. She smiled and dropped her absent gaze.

More eyes flicked and other mouths whispered, and by the end of the afternoon, the word of Anderson's humiliation was making the rounds at tables at other restaurants, in the smoking rooms in men's clubs, and in the quiet parlors of Basin Street mansions like Mahogany Hall and the Arlington.

William Brown had spent a fevered forty-eight hours as crazed as one of the monkeys in the Audubon Zoo that had been locked up for so long that it had lost what little was left of its mind. He knew he could leave his cramped confines at his will, either by taking the steps down to the street or crawling out the window onto the fire escape and descending to the alley. He wouldn't, though, not without his instructions.

He clung to the missives that were pushed under his door by an unseen hand, as if they were messages in bottles washing up on the shore of a desert island. They gave him purpose and direction, the map by which he charted his days. Otherwise, he would wander aimlessly until he did something wrong and then end up back in a true cage, trapped in an unending nightmare, complete with bars and populated by a mad gaggle of screeching, howling, pissing, shitting, fucking creatures that could be called human only by the kindest definition. He would never be free.

So he waited. He had his bed, his window, his dark, cracked mirror. He had a bag of apples and a loaf of heavy bread to fill his stomach. In an hour or a day, another envelope would appear, and he would have someplace to go and something important to do.

As he began to shift his feet this way and that, the thought suddenly crossed his mind that soon he would perform the final task and then could escape for good. He had a promise.

Valentin went to bed while Justine was at afternoon Mass. When he woke up, he found that she had changed from her Sunday dress to a frock and was reclining on the end of the couch with her bare feet curled beneath her, reading a book. She sat very still, and in the misty light filtering through the curtains, made Valentin think of an old painting.

There was no gleam of anger in her eyes as she raised them from the page. He settled on the opposite end of the couch. She regarded him for a quiet moment, as if trying to read something in his face, then closed her book and said, "I'll fix you something to eat." She stopped to kiss his forehead before moving away.

The package arrived later in the afternoon. William had been dozing and heard neither the footsteps nor the whisper of the envelope under his door, and he turned his head to catch sight of the square of bright white. He swung his legs off the bed to retrieve it.

Once he deposited the coin in a pocket, he drew out the sheet of paper and read the simple words printed there. Closing his eyes, he whispered a prayer of thanks that he would be one step closer to the end.

The sun was long down over the roof of the house on St. Louis Street. The shutters were closed, so that from inside it was impossible to know when daylight was actually gone, and the front door was shut and bolted, presenting a sober and silent facade. Visitors entered by way of the side entrance that led down three concrete steps, through a dimly lit basement, and up wooden stairs to a first-floor hallway. Deliveries were left on the back gallery. The vendors had their instructions and were paid extra to heed them.

Behind the shuttered windows was another world entirely. The downstairs rooms were adorned with fine French furniture and Persian rugs. Good works of art, or at least good copies, hung on the walls. By day and night, men of means lounged in the golden glow of light from tasseled lamps and crystal chandeliers. The linen in the bedrooms was changed after every visit.

There were no women on the premises: not in the parlor, nor in the kitchen, nor in any of the upstairs rooms. For this was a secret society, reserved for citizens with special appetites. There were other such houses in the District, in the Quarter, and beyond, but they were slipshod affairs that popped up and then closed down when something went awry. Most denizens of Storyville knew about the address, and yet no one gave it much thought. Like the French houses in the District that were, curiously, staffed by lesbians, it was just one of those things.

The St. Louis Street quarters were quiet and elegant, a sanctuary that was left to its own devices, mainly because important persons paid visits at one time or another, and the two partners who kept the house in operation had the goods on these individuals. It so happened that the owner of the house, Honore Jacob, cared not a whit who did what on his properties, as long as the rent was paid on time.

After sharing a Sunday dinner in the company of a deflated Tom Anderson, Laurence Deveaux spent the afternoon entertaining a group of ladies at a mansion in the Garden District. They lauded him like a prince, fawning at his every word and movement, treating him with coffee and sweets from the best patisserie in the neighborhood. He delighted them with a few chamber pieces on the piano.

At seven o'clock he called for an automobile to carry him uptown to a Basin Street that was quiet under a passing shower. The driver gave him a chum's wink when he stepped down from the touring car at the corner of Bienville.

Laurence strolled along, the brass tip of his walking cane clicking on the banquette, as the automobile swung about in the middle of the street and rattled back toward Union Station. He stopped when he reached St. Louis Street, took a thin cigarette from a silver case, and lit it, glancing about to make sure there wasn't some miscreant following him. Turning north, he moved at an even pace, enjoying his smoke and thinking about poor Tom Anderson with only him, a greasy racetrack maven, and two nervous strangers to keep him company at Sunday dinner.

He stopped in front of the solid brick house that was just past Villere Street. As he tossed what was left of his cigarette into the gutter, he glanced around again and saw only one solitary soul far down the block. The muted tinkle of piano keys from inside the dark house caught his ear, and he quickly ducked into the walkway alongside the house and hurried to the doorway that was cast in the glow of a pale electric light. He rang the bell and a few seconds later was ushered inside.

After dinner Valentin and Justine took an evening stroll south to the river and sat on the levee over the Port Street wharf, gazing at the silhouettes of ships and barges out on the water. Justine wore a plain shirtwaist and skirt, which she hiked up over her knees once they were settled. Valentin smiled, knowing how much she despised the fashions of the day: skirts that brushed the floor, collars drawn tight at the neck, and all the accoutrements underneath. She wore the absolute minimum, choosing to dress more like a servant girl than a lady. Valentin guessed that she would go through the world naked if she could.

For his part, he had donned a pair of worn gray trousers that were held by suspenders over a white cotton shirt that he left col-larless. They both removed their shoes, and he his socks and she her stockings, and they relaxed under the starry sky.

He never talked much, but he fell even quieter whenever they visited the levee overlooking the Mississippi. Justine had learned to respect these silences. She didn't understand what he drew from these interludes, though she guessed he was stirred in some fashion by the river's mystery. He was the same way about trains and about roads that led to nowhere.

Or maybe, she reflected in wry moments, he was thinking about all the ways he could escape her.