Mortal Sins

by Penn Williamson

  “St. Claire had been dropping gambling markers on every bookie in town,” Fio went on. “And he'd been playing bourré most every night, stuffing the pot like there was no tomorrow. He'd get hopped up on the happy dust, I guess, and start thinking he was invincible. Near as I can figure it, he's gone through over a hundred thousand dollars of her money in the five months since she said ‘I do.’ Paying off old debts and new ones.”

  Rourke tilted his head back, his gaze resting on the cathedral spires. He was hot, aching, and tired, because he'd been run over by a big Lincoln, it was summer in New Orleans, he hadn't slept in years, and he'd spent all day crawling through the city's underbelly trying to find out what had had Vinny McGinty so scared, and what he'd hoped a dragon slayer like Charles St. Claire could do about it.

  And, coming up later this evening, there was Bridey's wake to be endured.

  “Maybe he made Cinderella marry him so he could get his hands on all her dough,” Fio said. “Maybe he had something on her, was putting the bite on her, and then maybe she turned the tables on him, got something on him, and he got scared and saw the annulment as a way out and—hell, I'm making my own self dizzy with this shit.”

  Rourke opened his eyes and leaned forward over his spread knees to bite into his tamale. “You got it wrong, anyway, Fio. She just wanted to come home, and he was being so nice and all. Courting her so sweetly.”

  “She tell you that?”

  “Among other lies.”

  Fio lit a cigar and flicked the spent match at a pigeon that had come begging for crumbs. “She had so many reasons to kill him, makes you wonder what took her so long. The colored lady who does for them, Miss Beulah—she says they had a bad spat that night, lots of wailin' and shoutin'.”

  “That fits with the bruise she's wearing.”

  “Yeah. The happy couple. Oh, and the day before, some kinda owl, a lee-boo—”

  “Le hibou.”

  “Yeah. Well, it was out there hooting in broad daylight, which is a sign someone's gonna die.” Fio made his eyes go wide. “And goldarned if that didn't just happen.”

  Rourke laughed and shook his head, then winced as the movement knocked loose the scotch-and-rye hangover that had settled behind his eyes. He might have stopped last night one drink short of being drunk, but he was still suffering.

  A hard white sun beat down on the square. The hot, wet air vibrated with the blaring of horns, the clatter of streetcars, drovers' whistles, and hawkers' shouts. Rourke watched a pair of street dips boost the wallet of a man in a striped jacket, who was being distracted by a girl selling little bouquets of violets in paper cones. It was too hot to give chase to some penny-ante pickpockets, and it wasn't his lookout anyway. He had murders to solve. Truth and justice and honor and all that shit.

  “For all his faults,” Fio was saying, “this St. Claire seems to have been one helluva lawyer. The story goes he once floated a defense that had his client pulling the trigger accidentally not just once, mind you, but a dozen times. The guy had to stop and accidentally reload, and still St. Claire got the jury to buy it.”

  A spasm band had formed up on the corner across from the French Market and was starting in on their slap-foot dancing. A washboard, pot covers, and tin cans banging out “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.” The bottle caps on the bottoms of the boys' flying shoes tap-tapped on the brick banquette, striking sparks. Their mouths opened wide, singing hi-de-hi, ho-de-ho….

  “I'm figuring,” Fio said, “what the Cinderella Girl did was hire some colored boy to take the cane knife to that scissors and knife sharpener you talked to. We find that boy, we can show premeditation, and then we got her nailed.”

  The boy with the washboard had set it down so that he could throw his whole body into his slap-footing rhythm. This time Rourke didn't holler his name. He stood up and started walking toward him, casual, a hand in his pocket, not looking at the boy at all.

  The boy spotted him, though, and took off running.

  The boy tried to cut through the market and slammed into a woman who was carrying a wicker tray of coconut pralines. Pink, white, and brown candy went flipping through the air like tiddlywinks. He careened into a stand pyramided with cantaloupes next. Rourke, in pursuit, leaped over the rolling melons, his arm swinging wide and knocking into a mountain of okra, setting off an avalanche.

  The boy looked over his shoulder and saw that Rourke was gaining on him. He darted across the street and into the fish market. Rourke could follow him by the disaster he left in his wake: the man waving a scaling knife and bellowing curses; the set of jangling, swaying scales; the giant loggerhead turtle broken out of its crate and making his ponderous and steady way toward the open door and freedom.

  Rourke chased the boy back out of the market and into the street. He heard a shout, the frantic clanging of a streetcar bell, then smelled the hot electrical scorch of brakes skidding on the tracks. The boy dodged in and out among cars and trucks, horse-drawn carts and buggies, dashing around the corner onto Royal—a street of secondhand furniture stores and curiosity shops.

  The boy made the mistake of looking over his shoulder again and ran smack into a sidewalk table full of alligator skulls, stumbling, his foot thrusting into a pair of gaping jaws, coming down hard on sharp, jagged teeth. He screamed but he didn't stop, although he was limping badly now. He lurched down a service alley, with Rourke hard on his heels.

  “Dammit, LeBeau,” Rourke tried to shout through his sawing breaths. “Will you stop now?”

  The boy didn't stop, so Rourke threw himself forward, tackling him around the waist. They hit the flagstones hard, with Rourke on top, and he heard and felt all the breath drive out of the boy with a whoosh like a punctured tire. Rourke's own battered ribs shrieked with pain.

  He turned the boy over onto his back. His thin, shallow chest jerked worse than a speared catfish, his eyes bulged, and his mouth pouched as he tried to suck in air. About the time Rourke started to worry that the kid was going to croak on him, the scrawny chest spasmed once, hard, and then he drew in a deep, wheezing, gagging breath.

  Rourke gripped him by the arm, hauling him to his feet and down a narrow set of steps that led to the kitchen door of a restaurant. The air was cooler, almost dank within the brick-enclosed space. Smells of fried panné and shrimp gumbo drifted through the screen door.

  The boy's gaze met Rourke's, slid away, then came back again. LeBeau was LeRoy's brother and so Rourke knew him to be fourteen, although he looked closer to twelve with his slight build and round, pug-nosed face.

  “I oughta hit you upside the head,” Rourke said. “What in hell possessed you to run like that? Didn't you see that other cop with me? You could've wound up with a bullet in your back.”

  LeBeau's right eye was twitching, but he got his lips to curl into a pretty good sneer. “So what you goin' to do? Put a bullet in the front of me?”

  “Don't tempt me.”

  The boy's face remained defiant, but the tic in his eye picked up a beat.

  “Let's start,” Rourke said in his meanest beat-cop voice, “with what you think I know that's got you runnin' scared.”

  “Man, I don't know what you talkin' 'bout.”

  “I'm talking about how I know you were out gigging for frogs on the bayou the night Mr. St. Claire was killed.”

  “I wasn't out there that night. Must be somebody else you thinkin' of.”

  “Did you see someone come running out of that old slave shack in back of Sans Souci?”

  “I tol' you I wasn't out there that night.”

  The used-clothing store at the mouth of the alley was opening up for the afternoon. Someone came out front and unwound the rope that fastened a roll of canvas awning, and it fell with a snap like a gunshot. The boy nearly leaped clean out of his skin.

  Rourke smiled. “And they say you never hear the shot that kills you.”

  The boy swallowed so hard his throat made a clicking noise, and his gaze broke away from Rourke's. The tic was so
bad now it pretty much had his whole body shaking.

  “LeBeau—”

  “Didn't go giggin' for frogs that night, I'ma tellin' you.”

  Sometimes it was like trying to slip a noose over the head of an alligator. Sometimes you had to come at the knotty problem from the other end. “You heard from your brother LeRoy lately?” Rourke said.

  LeBeau's shoulders sagged with relief at having the subject changed. He wiped his damp palms on his overalls. “He writes Grandmama ever' now an' then, and she gets me to read they letters for her.”

  “Did your brother hear something bad about Miss Lucille, something that made him angry?”

  The boy's gaze flickered at Rourke, then away again. “Don't know what you be on 'bout. Lucille ain't done nothin'.”

  “Did LeRoy write and maybe ask you to go pay a visit to Mamma Rae, maybe ask her to be putting hoodoo spells on Mr. St. Claire?”

  LeBeau shook his head, but the denial was puny this time, and slow in coming.

  Rourke took out the pack of cigarettes and box of matches that he always carried around in his coat pocket, even though he didn't smoke. He offered one to LeBeau, and while the boy lit up, he talked to him, feeding him the line.

  “You ever been up to Angola to see your brother? He ever tell you what it's like? Working from can't-see to can't-see in the cane and sweet-potato fields, the sweat burning in your eyes and the sun so hot on your head it fries your brain like grits. Then one day you look at the gun bull a bit cock-eyed, or maybe you don't duck your head and call him sir quick enough, and he whips you bloody for it, and then gives you a week in the Hole with nothing but a biscuit and greens, and a cup of water a day.”

  The boy's hand trembled a little as he took a drag on the cigarette. “Why you sayin'…” He choked. “What you gettin' at?”

  “Well, I guess I was sort of preparing you for the eventualities of your actions. You see, I happen to know for a fact that you put gris-gris in Mr. St. Claire's bed and a salt cross on his gallery. I got all the proof that me and a jury are going to need, and the law doesn't look too kindly on that, uh-uh. It's called breaking and entering, and whether it's for putting something in, or taking something away, it doesn't much matter, you can still get fifteen years for it. Maybe if you're lucky they'll put you into the same dormitory with your brother and he can protect your cherry ass.”

  The boy sucked on his lower lip, then took a swipe at his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I didn't know 'bout that law. Breaking and…what's-it. I didn't know nothin' 'bout that.”

  “No, I don't guess you probably did. I don't expect your not knowing will cut much ice with the judge, either.”

  Rourke took off his hat, surprised he still had it with him. He fanned his face with it, bracing his hip against the stair rail, not looking at the boy anymore, reeling him in now. “Lord, I'm telling you this summer heat sure is brutal. It's got me so wore out and frazzled I don't know whether I'm comin' or goin'. It's getting to where I can up and forget something that just a minute ago I knew for a fact.”

  Slowly, he turned his head and pinned the boy to the wall with his stare. “On Tuesday—two nights past at about nine o'clock, when you were out on the bayou—what did you notice was going on up at Sans Souci?”

  Rourke could practically see the scales tilting back and forth in the boy's head, the scales he'd learned from birth to use when dealing with the white man, weighing what he had to give up against what he hoped to get away with.

  “I heard this screamin',” he finally said. “Seemed like a screech owl. But then I saw this thing go runnin' 'cross the yard from the shack. I don' know what it was, suh, honest I don', 'cept it wasn't no human bein'. It was all white and it kinda floated in an' out the trees, an' it had snakes for hair.”

  “You sure this thing you saw was running from the shack, and not to it?”

  “I'ma sure. Came flyin' right out the do' and went floatin' 'cross the yard.”

  “Did you see anything else after that then—say, someone running from the big house out to the shack?”

  “No, suh. But then I wasn't stickin' 'round to do any more lookin'.”

  Rourke slipped a sawbuck into the boy's overall pocket. “One more thing. Did anybody give you a cane knife recently and ask you to get it sharpened by the knife-grinder who works along Esplanade?”

  LeBeau's face wrinkled with genuine puzzlement. “Huh? What for would anybody do that? It ain't the time of year for cuttin' cane.”

  Rourke gripped the boy's shoulder. “Thank you kindly, LeBeau, and now get lost,” he said, then gave him a little shove when he didn't move his feet fast enough. “Go on, get. And leave the hoodoo alone.”

  LeBeau disappeared out of the back end of the alley a few seconds before Fio came trotting around the corner from the front end. The big man's chest was heaving, his face wet and flushed from the heat. His .38 Policeman's Special was in his hand.

  He stopped in front of Rourke. He had to suck in air for three beats before he could talk. “Man, you southern boys are full of fun. Chasing jigaboos all over to hell and gone, and during the hottest part of the day—”

  “His name is LeBeau Washington,” Rourke said. “My friend LeRoy's little brother.”

  Fio looked away, drew in a breath and then let it out slowly. “Okay. LeBeau Washington. So you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  “LeBeau was in a pirogue out on the bayou across from Sans Souci gigging for frogs the night our man bought it—probably with a couple other boys but he'll never give up their names without a beating. He says he heard screaming and saw something white floating in and out among the trees, coming from the shack. It had snakes for hair.”

  “No shit?” Fio put his revolver back into his shoulder holster, snapping shut the flap. “Case solved. The gowman done done it.”

  “Colored gossip has it that Mamma Rae was the one putting those spells on good ol' Mr. Charlie. She could have been out there that night—”

  “Killing him? A little murder to drum up the voodoo business?”

  “Or maybe she was making a gris-gris delivery and she saw something.”

  “Aw, Jesus.” Fio rubbed the back of his neck, shaking his head. “Don't say it, don't fucking even think it. I don't want to go see that witch-woman. You heard about what happened to the last cop who tried to roust Mamma Rae? She put some kind of spell on his cock and he went to take a whiz, and the damn thing came off in his hand, just fell right off, and—what're you laughin' at?”

  “That never happened. That's just a New Orleans story, like the one about the hurricane that blew an old woman clean through the slats of a fence without breaking a bone in her body. And the baby that was supposed to've been born with the head and feet and tail of an alligator.”

  “The gator baby never happened either?”

  “Nope.”

  “Hunh. So you say. But then you lie. You lie with a smile, but you still lie.”

  They could feel and smell it, the warm brown breath of the river. And a tugboat's horn blew a sad, deep note, touching on lonely places. The evening sky was just starting to turn a dusky pink by the time they made it out to the batture settlement where Mamma Rae lived. Traiture, voodoo witch, juju woman.

  In the years that she had been New Orleans' most powerful tanton macoute, she'd probably made a fortune off her black magic arts, but her house was indistinguishable from the other driftwood houses sharing space on the mud flats with the willow trees and flatboats, the dead garfish and the rotting canebrakes. They were watched as they walked along, eyes peering around doorjambs, through rotting window curtains. The air reeked of somebody cooking cracklins outside in an iron kettle.

  She stood, as if waiting for them, in what passed for her front yard—a patch of jimsonweed and crabgrass. She was an ageless woman with eyes like beads of jet and tightly coiled black hair with dead blue lights in it. Her thick upper lip was pushed out with a wad of snuff.

  “I expected y'all sooner,” sh
e said in a voice that was full and husky. The cicadas, Rourke noticed, had suddenly stopped their fierce humming.

  “And here,” he said, “the very last thing I told that LeBeau was to stay away from the hoodoo.”

  She stared at him with eyes that were at once both empty and hot, then slowly her gaze went to Fio, to his crotch, and she made a wet sound with her tongue. “You can take yo' hands outta yo' pockets, white man. If I done decided to spell your thing, yo' hands sure wouldn't save it.”

  She laughed then, and took a step back and planted a fist on her hip, posing for them. She wore a plain black skirt with a red sash around her waist, and a man's white shirt that was open at the neck, displaying a necklace made of snake bones. From it, nestling between her breasts, hung an alligator's fang encased in silver. The fang stirred and trembled, even though she wasn't breathing hard.

  “If you've come callin',” she said, “then no sense to standin' out here with the skeeters.” She turned and led the way through the mud and canebrakes, following a path only she could see. Her figure was still good, and she showed it off in the way she moved, hips swaying, her arms swinging slow and easy.

  Mamma Rae's shack was set up high on stilts. She led them up rickety steps to a warped door with an old-fashioned string latch. It was murky inside, lit only by a half-dozen rancid black tallow candles set in saucers of water on the altar. In the old days slaves would have come to someone like her asking for the gift of domination over the minds of their masters. Now it was for help with a lottery gig, a powder to prevent a man's seed from taking root, a potion for taking that man away from his wife.

  But she was a healer too: She could douse the fire in a fever and ease the cramp of a bellyache. She could make warts disappear.

  She poured a syrupy homemade wine into a couple of jelly glasses and gave one to each of them. She might have been a hostess in an uptown parlor, except this front room was furnished with gourds, a white horse tail, broken bits of horn and bone, dried lizards and toads. A crude human effigy fashioned out of black wax sat in the middle of the altar.