Mortal Sins

by Penn Williamson

  The driver—a college boy out slumming by the look of him—popped the monocle out of his eye, opened his mouth, and squeaked. Rourke grabbed him by the wide lapels of his knickerbocker coat and dragged him, still squeaking, out into the street.

  Rourke got into the Cadillac, threw it into reverse. Berries and peaches rolled off the roof and bounced on the hood. He spun the steering wheel one-handed while slamming the door closed with the other, sending the car into a violent, fishtailing U-turn and clipping a pyramid of empty milk cans. The rear bumper snagged the handle of one of the cans, and Rourke dragged it along behind him for a half block, trailing sparks.

  The Lincoln had turned right at the corner of St. Ann, heading for Jackson Square and the river. The man at the wheel was good. It was Sunday evening and traffic was light, but automobiles, buggies, trucks, and horse carts still crossed back and forth on the narrow, cobbled streets of the Quarter. The wheelman not only expertly swerved in and out and around these obstacles, he was using them as shields, putting them between himself and Rourke's pursuit.

  Rourke smiled and pressed the Cadillac's accelerator to the floor. The faces of startled pedestrians looked up as he sped by, engine screaming, wheels howling. Rain clicked flatly against the windshield and slanted through the headlamp beams. Street lamps cast intermittent light into the fleeing Lincoln, silhouetting two heads.

  One of the heads moved, thrust out the car's open window, followed by shoulders, arms, and a firing tommy gun. Rourke zigzagged, bullets ripped into the Cadillac's right side, and its rear window exploded in a shower of glass.

  The black Lincoln crossed Royal Street and barreled into Jackson Square, darting between the closing gap of a streetcar and a black-plumed hearse.

  Rourke hurled the Cadillac after them but the gap was closing fast—with a space of seven feet at the most now between the streetcar's cowcatcher and the hearse's flying-horse hood ornament. The streetcar swayed and rocked and rattled.

  Six feet.

  The hearse's black plumes bobbed and dripped in the wet.

  Five feet.

  Rourke gripped the steering wheel hard, stood on the gas, and hummed “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye” hard under his breath.

  He slewed between the streetcar and hearse so fast the car whipped back and forth like a water moccasin, shaving it so close he saw the conductor's teeth as the man's mouth fell open in a scream. Rourke shot the Cadillac into the open square, leaving a chaos of locked bumpers and blaring horns in his wake, but he'd brought part of the streetcar's cowcatcher with him.

  The metal got caught up between the Cadillac's wheel and fender, acting as a brake. The car bucked and jerked in Rourke's hands, riding up onto the banquette toward the colonnaded corner of the French Market, which was closed up and empty of people, thank God. The jolt knocked the piece of metal loose out from under the fender, and the car surged with a roar of released speed through one of the mar-kethouse's arched set of columns and out the other, crashing catercorner through the butchers' row along the way. Bloody sides of beef smacked into the windshield before he was back on the cobblestoned street, pointing toward the river and the dead end of the levee, where masts floated disembodied across the dusky, rain-swept sky.

  Another burst of machine-gun fire spewed from the Lincoln's open window, bullets shredding the sweet olive trees in the square, before the getaway car whipped a right at the levee. It took the rainslick corner at a skid and headed uptown on the river road, with Rourke on its tail.

  The Lincoln had come out of its skid on the wrong side of the road and nearly smacked head-on into a flat wagon stacked with hogsheads of sugar. The wagon's team reared in its traces and swerved into another wagon piled high with bananas just off the boat. Barrels tumbled and rolled and broke apart, spilling sugar, and the banana bunches slid and flopped as the two wagons crashed into each other, blocking the road.

  With brick warehouses on one side of him and the levee on the other, Rourke had only two choices: either plow into the tangle of horses, shattered wagons, sugar barrels, and squashed bananas or sprout wings and fly over it all.

  He jerked the wheel hard toward the levee, gunning the engine. The Cadillac careened, tilting so far over, impossibly far, until Rourke thought it must be driving on only two wheels, driving up, up, up onto the grassy bank until it seemed he would either flip right over or shoot like a rocket straight up into the sky.

  The Cadillac's front tires spun, clawing at the empty air, until gravity won out and the chassis slammed into the ground with a bone-rattling jar.

  Rourke drove as fast as he dared along the narrow spine of the levee, digging grooves through the wet green grass and buttercups and dodging the batture willow trees. Below him on one side spread the immense swell of brown Mississippi and mud flats. On the other, railroad tracks and a river road that was filling up with the trucks and mule-drawn wagons of farmers bringing their produce into town for tomorrow's market. Ahead—way ahead, too far ahead—was the black Lincoln.

  Which veered suddenly toward Howard Avenue, away from the river.

  Rourke twisted the steering wheel and floored the accelerator. The Cadillac flew off the top of the levee and he thought, Sweet Jesus, I'm going to die.

  The car plunged through a gauzy curtain of cobalt rain, over the railroad tracks, and barely missed landing in a pickup truck full of seaweed-lined baskets of bluepoint crabs. It hit the road so hard Rourke's head nearly banged through the roof and the rear bumper fell off with a loud clang, but by some devil-induced miracle the tires didn't blow. They caught at the wet gravel-and-tar surface, Rourke poured power into the sputtering engine, and the Cadillac veered right, following the curve of the train tracks.

  Ahead of him, he saw the Lincoln's taillights leave the road, bouncing and bounding over the spiderweb of rails and crossties at the Union Station terminal, disappearing in the clouds of billowing steam that spewed from the locomotive smokestacks.

  Rourke cut hard right through the station's red-brick arcade to head them off, sending a taxicab swerving into a telephone pole. The Lincoln responded with a tracery of bullets and the stuttering pop-pop-pop of the tommy gun. Rourke kept on their tail, clattering over the railroad tracks. The machine gun hacked again and a locomotive's headlamp blew in a flash of white light.

  Rourke chased the Lincoln a couple of miles through the streets of midcity, past corner groceries and diners, past shotguns and Queen Annes and Creole cottages, whose families would be just sitting down to a quiet Sunday supper. They sped down the rain-slick dirt and gravel streets toward the lake, until the houses gave out and they were on the Old Shell Road, where Rourke had driven with Katie that morning. Lights from the boats on the New Basin Canal blinked by on the right. On the left the banks of oleanders had become hulking shadows. Roadhouse speakeasies rushed by in bursts of light and sound.

  Into marshy cypress groves and marshland now, and it seemed the road would go on forever, into the night. It had an end, though, as all things did. At a bridge over the canal and the lakefront resort of West End Park, where you could leave the hot city streets behind and listen to a Sousa concert in the bandstand or watch a movie played on a giant outdoor canvas screen. Dine at Mannessier's overlooking the lake, or take a ride on the Susquehanna steamboat and dance the Black Bottom beneath a summer moon.

  They tore through the park now, on a winding road, tires grinding and spraying shells and pebbles. In the center of the park an electrical fountain shot rainbow-hued jets of water high into a smoke-gray sky. Even on this rainy Sunday evening a few families had gathered to watch the kaleidoscopic display, and the Lincoln was headed right for them.

  At the last possible instant it cut across the horseshoe of grass that ringed the fountain. Rourke, following close behind, responded just a hair of a second too late.

  He didn't run over the young boy in a yellow slicker who was tossing a ball up into the air for his dog, because he flipped the wheel hard over and stood on the gas, just managing to pull out of
the inevitable spin. Ruby, sapphire, and emerald drops of water showered the windshield. Ahead of him loomed the bandstand and the back of the enormous canvas movie screen.

  No concert played tonight, and the bandstand was empty. But the movie projectionist was in love with Remy Lelourie, and although he'd been showing her films over and over, ever since the murder, still he could not get enough of her. Hour after hour, he would send her image out into the night, even when there was no one but him to see.

  Rourke didn't even try to stop. He aimed the Cadillac straight at the giant screen's rear supporting struts, riding it like a ramp and hitting the canvas at seventy miles an hour. The car's pointed grille burst through the stiffened cloth, ripping open the beautiful face of Cinderella.

  The Cadillac soared twenty feet through the air and hit the ground right in the Lincoln's path.

  The Lincoln's brakes screamed as it veered off the road. The face of the man in the black fedora got caught in the beam of the projector's light, and he threw up a hand to protect his eyes. The steering wheel jerked out of his other hand, and the Lincoln swerved violently toward the lake.

  The Lincoln's speed took it up the sloping seawall steps, across the embankment, and onto the wide pier. A tire blew but the brakes must have given out, for it kept on going, toward a bathhouse whose steeply pitched roof touched the weathered boards of the pier, and still it kept going, on up the roof, to be launched like a rock from a slingshot out over the lake, where a steamboat rolled, its paddle wheel idle as it eased up to the dock. The Lincoln sheared off the top of the steamer's tall smokestack and sailed another ten feet through the rain-shrouded sky before its gasoline tank exploded in a ball of red and yellow and blue flames.

  By the time Rourke had walked to the end of the pier, what was left of the Lincoln had sunk into the deep, green-black water. Out on the steamboat a calliope was still playing ragtime, but the smell of scorched metal and gasoline floated thick over the gently lapping water.

  A flapper who had been watching all the excitement from the restaurant window came out to stand next to Rourke. Rain dripped from the silver fringe of her skirt and off the ends of her sheared hair. She smiled at him with a mouth that was red and tipsy, and offered him a drink from a flask she took from under her black lace garter.

  Casey Maguire hadn't let the wet weather ruin his Sunday shrimp boil at his camp out on the lake. It was summer, after all, and so he'd prepared for rain. He'd set up a huge red-striped tent on the front lawn, with sides you could roll and tie up to let in the breeze. He'd strung the tent with Japanese lanterns, covered picnic tables with newspaper, and laid out piles of spicy shrimp and crab, loaves of French bread and thin slices of boudin. Slabs of pork ribs were put to barbecuing on top of a tin barrel.

  The hooch, of course, was the best a bootlegger could smuggle. Labeled, uncut, and straight off the boat.

  The camp wasn't really a camp—that was just what folk in New Orleans who could afford one called their summer cottages. Casey Maguire's cottage was built on stilts out over the water and approached by a long, slatted pier. It was a rambling two-story affair, with a wraparound screened porch filled with cots for sleeping and rocking chairs for dozing, and littered with cane poles, crab traps, and fishnets.

  Rourke drove up on the lawn in the bullet-riddled, smashed, and dented red Cadillac. Metal grated against metal as he shoved open the door and got out. He brought the machine gun with him.

  His shoes flattened the tall wet grass and crunched over fallen banana leaves and palm fronds. He walked into the open-sided tent and, just as at Bridey's wake two evenings ago, he entered on a rush of startled silence. Many of the faces were the same. Most of the guests Casey Maguire invited out to his summer camp shrimp boils were from the old neighborhood. Once, years ago, he had told Rourke that he liked remembering where he had come from.

  At Bridey's wake, Maguire had worn a dark blue silk suit and tie. Tonight he had on fashionably floppy white Oxford bags, a snappy hat, and saddle shoes. Yet he stood alone, and with a raw stillness, as if he'd been waiting.

  His eyes clicked from Rourke's face to the gun in his hands and then back to his face.

  Rourke pointed the submachine gun at Maguire's belly. “You lousy, cocksucking bastard,” he said, his voice grating in his throat. “I had my little girl with me.”

  “Day.” Maguire lifted his hands, spreading them a little. “I don't know what this is about, but you've got a tommy gun in your hand and there are innocent people here. Women, children.” The black shine was there, deep in his pale eyes, but it seemed born more of pain than of anger or fear. “I swear to Jesus, whatever it is you think I've done this time, you're wrong.”

  Slowly, Rourke brought up the barrel of the machine gun and laid it against Maguire's face, softly rubbed it against Maguire's cheek before pressing the muzzle hard into the bone. “Your goons missed me, Case, but I did for them. All of them, and the only reason why I don't rip a fucking hole in your guts right here, right now, is because she came out of it without a scratch.”

  “No, that's not the reason,” Maguire said, and the words came out wistful. “You won't kill me yet because you're not sure I'm guilty, and you're much too honorable a man for murder.” He wrapped his hand around the barrel of the machine gun and gently pushed it aside. “Let it go, Day. Let it all go.”

  Rourke shook his head, smiling, showing his teeth. “When we're dead.”

  He took a step back, and then another. He turned and flung the gun away from him, throwing it out the open side of the tent with a hard violent motion, and the gun flew end over end, in a wide, high arc.

  He walked out of the tent and across the lawn, past the wrecked Cadillac and down to the lake where the ragged palms clacked in the salt breeze and a heron was feeding in the edge of the cattails. Rain sparkled over the water like spun glass.

  He began to shake. His ribs ached like hell and he felt tired beyond bearing.

  He brought his hands up to his eyes, pressing hard enough to leave an impression on bone. Katie, Katie…She was all right, though. Not hurt, thank God, not a scratch. She hadn't even made a sound until she looked into his face and then she started screaming. What in sweet, sweet mercy had Katie seen in his face to make her start screaming so?

  “Suh?”

  Slowly, Rourke dropped his hands and looked up. A tall, thick-shouldered colored man stood in front of him. The man was dressed like a fisherman, but he had the flattened eyebrows and gray scar tissue around the eyes of a former prizefighter.

  “Mistah Maguire be wantin' to talk to you tomorrow,” the man said. “Mistah Maguire—the man whose place you at here now,” he added, misunderstanding the utter lack of comprehension on Rourke's face. Rourke's mind was still back with Katie. He thought he would go home now and hold her if she would let him, hold her until she fell asleep.

  “Fuck it,” Rourke said. “I've nothing more to say to him.”

  The fisherman shifted his thick weight, his gaze drifting to the tent and then back to Rourke's face. “Please, suh. Mistah Maguire, he say to tell you he be at the Flying Horses tomorrow at straight-up noon.”

  Rourke nodded, hardly listening. The Flying Horses was a carousel in Audubon Park—a relatively safe place to meet amongst a crowd in the middle of the day. But that was for tomorrow and tomorrow was an eternity away. Right now he just wanted to go home, to hold Katie, to feel the giving warmth of her living flesh and smell her sweet little-girl breath, and he felt weary beyond belief, because later on tonight he still had to go over to the Pink Zebra and play bourré for ruinous stakes against a clever and ruthless Miss Fleurie, who might or might not have something to tell him that he needed to know.

  One o'clock in the morning in the Pink Zebra and the music was wild, booze was flowing, and the shebas were easy. They drank Manhattan cocktails and gin fizzes and smoked cigarettes from long, rhinestoned holders, while dancing to a band with a frantic tin-panny beat, their fringed dresses jittering, bare legs flashing, twir
ling their long beads from fingers that had painted nails. They puckered their red lips and blew kisses to their sheiks, who were dropping dollars like confetti at the bar and gaming tables.

  In an earlier incarnation, the Pink Zebra had been an ordinary Bourbon Street saloon with a couple of minor attractions: the games of bourré that went on nightly in its back room, and the pair of large zebra skins that faced each other across its gold-flocked walls. Then Prohibition came along, and Miss Fleurie followed. The bourré games became brutal, the zebra's white stripes were painted a shocking pink, and the ordinary had been reborn into the Pink Zebra.

  Before it became the Pink Zebra, though, back when it was just another Bourbon Street dive, it was the place where Daman Rourke had met his future wife, on Mardi Gras night in 1919. She might have arrived with someone else, but she had left with him.

  Although they had never spoken before that night, Rourke had known who she was, for he had seen her for the first time only a few weeks before. He had been out to the Carrigan house on Rose Park, because a pearl-and-diamond bracelet had gone missing during a king cake party. Weldon Carrigan had yet to be appointed superintendent of the police force, but he still had big juice, and so the captain had sent four cops to answer the call—three detectives and Rourke, who was just a few months home from the war and new to the job.

  The whole neighborhood had turned the cold, gloomy day festive by stringing lanterns in the oaks that lined the quiet, exclusive street, and the air was filled with the smell of yardmen burning discarded Christmas trees. Rourke and the detectives stood in the front hall while Mrs. Carrigan flounced and fluttered and explained that a silly mistake had been made. The bracelet hadn't been stolen, after all, only lost, a broken clasp, you see, and it had since been found, and so sorry to have been such a bother to y'all….

  From where he stood in the wide hall with its molded ceiling and vine-stenciled walls, and its polished floor that shone like pond ice, Rourke was able to look into the front parlor where the party was going on, and there among a group of college boys in fraternity sweaters and debutantes in gloves and pearls, one girl caught his eye. She was laughing, and she wore a white camellia in her dark hair.