Lost River (26 page)

French Emma Johnson, the black witch of Basin Street, became so livid at the disruption that she closed up, canceling the evening's performance of the Circus and sending the pony, the girl who performed with him, and all the other attractions away.

Meanwhile Valentin roamed in aimless circles, feeling helpless and wondering which minute would bring word of another victim.

Long about midnight he settled into the doorway of a closed-down apothecary on the corner of Bienville and Liberty. With the whole world shrouded in mist, he drowsed for a few moments, then came awake. For long stretches nothing moved. Though he smoked rarely, he fished into his pockets for a cigarillo wrapped in dark paper and a box of lucifers. Stale as it was, the tobacco calmed him.

Looking out at a barren street that was curtained in fog and shadow, he pondered what he was doing there when he could be lying in a kind bed with his good woman. At best, the night would be wasted in a futile burlesque of police work. The killer he pursued could walk out of the drizzle at any moment and shoot another poor soul—or him, for that matter.

It had been a long while since such a glum mood had come upon him. It was as if one of the clouds overhead had his name on it and had begun weeping with woes that went back thirty years. But who didn't have a sad history? No one he knew. No one, save for the rich who floated above it on their magic carpets of privilege. And in the end even they could not escape fate's icy grip.

Thinking about it, he knew that what had landed him there was a life spent raging against the kind of fearful forces that had destroyed his family. Valentin had never despised evil with any sort of high-blown moral sense; rather, he had seen the misery it caused firsthand. Miseries that echoed down the years. And so he huddled in a doorway, waiting in the dark mist for an evil man who might be anywhere in the city or nowhere at all.

To shake off his funk he fixed his thoughts on something he could sort out.

He had been baffled all along by the killer's lack of a pattern. The fellow stepped out of the night to shoot a man dead, cut his flesh in one thin stroke, and then disappear.

Valentin had come across what seemed pointless killings before. They had all proved one of two things: Either the perpetrator was truly mad and his actions beyond logic or the caprice was intentional, pointing to some unseen hand—real or imagined—pulling the strings.

The detective now let his mind roam over what little he knew, and his thoughts began shifting back and forth between the oddities of the scenes of the crimes and the strange cuts on the bodies. After a few rounds, they began to meld into one.

The silence on the street deepened, and as if forming out of the rain, it came to him. It was so simple that he barked a loud curse, lurched to his feet, and started running.

Three blocks down, a form bolted out of the sheet of rain in such a sudden motion that Valentin snapped out his Iver Johnson, his finger on the trigger.

Each slid to a stop, threw up his hands, and yelled, "Don't!"

The detective forced his hand to stop shaking as he lowered the pistol.

"What the hell?" the kid said.

Valentin grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around, and hustled him into the nearest doorway. "Right back there," he said.

Each brushed away the wet hair on his forehead. "Back there what?"

"That's where he'll take the next one. On that corner."

"How do you know?"

Valentin said, "You have the map?"

Each went digging. The paper he produced was only slightly damp. Valentin laid it flat on his left palm and drew with his right index finger. "That's how I know," he said.

They waited as the hours passed in near silence, coming to attention at every figure that passed in the dark and drizzle.

Valentin said, "We need to get away, in case he's still waiting." Each didn't understand. "He can't know I found him out. So we need to move."

"And what if he takes someone five minutes after we leave?" the kid said.

"Then it's that poor someone's bad luck."

The rain stopped just before dawn, and for the first hour of daylight, the cobblestones fairly glistened. The New Orleans gumbo of the odors of human and animal waste, sour rot, rust, smoke, and sweat had been blessedly washed north. It would all be back by day's end.

The talk of the morning was the night passing without another killing in the red-light district. Chief Reynolds wasted no time in crowing to the newspapers that it showed the kind of results professional police work could produce. His comments accomplished a double swipe at Tom Anderson.

That gentleman rose to the news, his relief tinged with a foreboding that Reynolds would now see fit to install a permanent police presence in the District, with the extra manpower and budget to go with it. It would be a dream come true for the chief and a nightmare for Anderson, who lumbered to the breakfast table in such a foul humor that he barely spoke a word to his wife.

Though his mind wasn't changed about the payments to the police. He made that clear when Lulu White, who was up especially early this day, called to ask what to do when the patrol sergeant came around with his hand out.

"Not a dime," the King of Storyville snapped. When the madam tried to protest, he cut her off. "This isn't over, Miss Lulu. It was just the one night, and it rained from dusk until dawn. A body could still turn up. So, no, ma'am, you don't pay. Nobody pays. Please pass the word."

He wasn't interested in a debate, and before the madam could utter another syllable, he clapped the hand piece into the cradle.

Valentin had dropped into bed and fallen promptly asleep, knowing what Tom Anderson did not, that the killer they all sought hadn't left another body.

He did not disturb Justine with his thrashing, and when she woke two hours later, she understood that the night had passed without disaster. The storm had taken care of that, and he'd be back at it when night fell.

William Brown had been unable to sleep or eat, and could only manage handfuls of the tepid water from the pitcher on the washstand to wet his throat.

He had stumbled in the back door long before dawn with the pelting rain soaking through his clothes and dripping off the brim of his derby. It took what seemed an exhausting hour for him to climb the steps to his third-floor room, where he sat in the dark as blue lightning flashed and thunder bumbled. He got up and paced, and then, hoping for some relief, stretched on the dirty mattress and dropped a hand into his trousers, only to find a limp and cold companion.

The face that peered back at him from the mirror looked like a victim's: drawn and grayish, the eyes a bleak green. The rain had cooled the streets outside, and yet he could not stop sweating. He found a stub of pencil and worked it until the lead was gone. After that he drew frantic designs in the air as he paced some more in the same pattern over and over.

Morning had arrived. At that very moment, he should have been on a train heading east, leaving New Orleans behind like a bad memory. Instead, he would have to wait out the day in that dank cell until it was dark again and then venture out and hope for better hunting.

Because he couldn't leave until he got the money he was promised and wouldn't get it until the last deed was done. That was the deal, and if he tried to run away, they'd catch him and put him back in that awful place, this time for good. He'd spend his years gazing out a window toward a river that would be beyond his reach forever. Such were the wages of selling his soul to the devil.

At that moment he decided that he would rather die than greet that fate, and be free, one way or another. The decision calmed him enough that he could close his eyes against the torments of the empty day and imagine another place far away.

Valentin didn't wake up until after two o'clock. Justine was out, and he rambled about their rooms, dazed after his first good sleep in days. Once his brain cleared, he began to wish the hours away so he could get back to Storyville and the one particular corner.

The morning and afternoon passed in a tense sort of truce. Chief Reynolds and Tom Anderson were at a standoff, and everyone seemed content to let their tempers cool. Instead of heeding Anderson's wishes that she spread the word, Lulu White prudently kept her own counsel and her mouth closed. Business up and down Basin Street was slow, even for the middle of the week, but that had been going on for some time. The men who happened by tried to pry gossip from girls who knew no more than they did.

The sky over the gulf was clear as far as the eye could see, and ship-to-shore and inland transmissions reported no approaching storms.

Afternoon trekked toward evening. This was the customary time for the professors to arrive at the better houses. These gentlemen, all Creole or Negro, would be treated to a bite of dinner in the kitchens before beginning a long night at the parlor pianos. But there was not enough money to pay them, either, so instead of donning their best suits for the Basin Street crowd, they threw on whatever was hanging and headed for various back-of-town saloons, where they pounded out rough jass and gutbucket tunes for nickels.

Justine arrived home at four o'clock to find Valentin picking over a cold plate of cheese, ham, and black olives. A glass of red wine was at his elbow. She didn't say where she'd been, and something about the distant set of her dark eyes told him not to inquire. It reminded him vaguely of those times in the wake of the Black Rose murders when she seemed to be another person, a stranger, in fact. That had been a result of her injury, and she always came around.

She did stop to ask him if he was going to want dinner, and when he told her he was fine with nibbling, she replied with such an absent nod that he wasn't sure she'd heard his answer before wandering into the bedroom.

He was distracted, too. After he finished eating, he stepped out on the balcony for the fifth time to scour the horizon for anything like a storm cloud. It appeared it would be clear into the evening, and he felt butterflies in his stomach, as if he was going at this for the first time. Some of this was the tension of knowing he could corner his prey at a particular place and time. The man was coming with a map laid out and a clock ticking in his crazy head.

From the bedroom he heard the springs let out a soft squeak and moved quietly back inside with mischief on his mind. When he got to the doorway, he found her asleep and curled away from him, and he let her be.

He'd had more than enough practice moving about without making a sound, and now he prepared in silence, careful not to wake her. Once he finished dressing, he collected his weapons. It was then that he sensed that she had woken up. She kept her back turned as she waited for him to leave.

Pushing the top drawer of the dresser closed, he made his quiet way out of the room. At that moment the police would be assembling for the ride to the red-light district. Each and Whaley and the other men would be heading that way as well, gathering before the next act.

Looking out his office window as the sun began to dissolve into twilight, Tom Anderson was surprised to see that Chief Reynolds had assigned less than half the number of officers that he had sent the night before. It gave him a worried start, and he shuffled through reasons for the change. Was the chief sending a message? Or did he decide not to push back at the King of Storyville? Perhaps he meant the smaller contingent as an insult of some sort. Or a signal that he could do whatever he wanted: big force, smaller force, no force at all.

Anderson's puzzling was interrupted when St. Cyr appeared in his doorway. He hadn't heard him on the stairs or in the hall. The Creole detective stepped inside.

Anderson rapped a knuckle on the window. "The coppers are back. But not as many this time."

"I guess you should have gotten them paid." When the older man snickered, Valentin said, "It's better for me this way."

Anderson studied him for a moment. "Can you finish it?"

Valentin said, "Yes, sir, I think so."

They met at Mangetta's. Over glasses of brandy, Valentin told Each and Whaley exactly what to expect. The kid and the ex-cop looked dubious.

"You sure he's going to be there?" Whaley said.

"Enough to bank on it."

"And he'll give up if he's cornered?"

"I hope he will. I want him alive."

"And I hope you shoot first," Frank said.

As hard as it was, Valentin decided to trust his instincts and keep out of sight. He sent Each and Whaley to their assigned places, one block down Conti, the kid to the west and the cop to the east. From there they would manage the men on the corners north and south. These last four would be able to see the remaining two men in the middle. So eight men could cover a mere four blocks. If Valentin was correct, the killer could not avoid being spotted.

He found a familiar hiding spot in a walkway between two buildings on Villere Street, just off the corner of Iberville. He picked the lock with ease, left the gate hanging open on its hinges, and settled just far enough into the shadows to be invisible to anyone happening by, as the minutes began their slow crawl.

William Brown approached from along the river, then turned north on Common Street. For two blocks he bobbed through the motion and chatter of New Orleans' Chinatown, and he felt the chink eyes watching him until he came out the other side of the odd cloud of sounds and scents.