Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries)

by David Fulmer

  She was spotted wandering the Negro streets and the coppers collected her and carried her back to the Irish Channel. She didn't stay long. Now she did help herself to some of her husband's cash and threw it all over uptown New Orleans in an attempt to buy information about Brother John's current whereabouts. Most of the scoundrels who took her money didn't have the slightest idea where he'd gone, and those who did wouldn't say for fear of incurring one of his much-vaunted curses.

  The crazy woman wasn't to be denied. She set up shop in the upstairs room of a saloon and took all comers. Her appetite was insatiable. There were estimates of a hundred partners in all, though this was probably a gross exaggeration. Whatever the number, the party ended when the word went out that there were Regulators on the way, their lynching ropes in hand, causing her amorous congregation to evaporate like so many puffs of smoke.

  The Pinkertons her husband had hired later found her staggering around the alley off Franklin Street, a delirious mess. She was carted away, placed in a hospital somewhere far beyond the Mississippi, and was never seen or heard from again.

  So Brother John escaped. Though in the beginning there were whispers that he had not been so lucky, but had been caught, strung up, his yancy sliced off like andouille, his body burned and what was left buried in an unmarked grave. Or so one rumor went around.

  The fact was, no one knew how much of the tale was true. It was impossible to find anyone who could actually name the doctor's wife or point out the room where she had offered her entertainment, or to find a man who would admit to being one of the cars in the train she pulled that day. For all anyone knew, Brother John had started the talk himself just to have something so lurid attached to his name. The story swelled and made the rounds for a couple years afterward, then went up onto the shelves of Storyville's sordid lore. One thing was certain: Brother John was gone.

  Most people forgot about him, too, until he showed up again in the high summer of '06, now as lean as a stick, his hair cropped short, carrying a shiny new trumpet and the new moniker Prince John.

  He had heard about the King Bolden Band raging through uptown New Orleans, and became one of those who grabbed on to the tail of Bolden's comet for that brief period when anyone who could blow a scale got to share in the whiskey, the hop, and the willing women.

  He put on an act that was a stage version of his voodoo routine, and all done up, was something to behold. Bolden saw him perform once or twice and stole a few of his more outlandish moves. That was all, though; the man didn't have anything else worth filching. He blew fast and loud to cover the fact that his skills hadn't advanced much. He was fortunate that he could put on a show and that the other players were good enough to make up for his poverty.

  He landed in an ensemble that was thrown together from the pieces of other groups that went by the name Union Hall Brass Band.

  They did fair business and then something happened. The rumor was it was trouble with some woman, with Prince John right in the middle of it. Whatever it was, he was there one day and gone the next. This time he didn't come back. The members of the Union Hall band drifted off to other employment and to their tragic fates.

  So went the story of the notorious Prince John, the last member of the band who might still be alive.

  Valentin slept another ten hours, then woke up late in the afternoon to find that the sun had gone away and clouds had come up over the Gulf. It looked like rain. He hoped so; he could use the cover for his evening's work. After he visited the privy in back, he filled the tub with hot water and soaked away the muck of his three nights and days on the back-of-town streets and holed up in a closed flat. He went to the washstand and labored to scrape the stubble from his cheeks.

  He rummaged in the back of the bedroom closet for his work clothes, a pair of de Nimes cotton trousers, a thin jersey, heavy socks, and his ankle-high police brogans. From the hook on the wall, he grabbed an old railroad jacket that smelled so musty that it made him sneeze. Finally, he dug out his slouch hat. It was an outfit he kept for those rare times he had to wander off the city streets. He hadn't worn it in years.

  Once he finished dressing, he spent a few minutes putting his rooms back into some kind of order. As he made ready to leave, he found a pill of hop, still wrapped in its silver paper. He thought about throwing it away, then decided it might be useful and put it in his pocket. He went out and locked the door. The city was draped in pale ocher light as the twilight sun dropped below the horizon and refracted through the rolling clouds.

  He turned north on Common Street. A few blocks up, he came upon a diner he didn't know and went inside for a quick meal of fried chicken and potatoes. He ate, then ordered some more. He dawdled after he finished and was looking out the window as the first drops of evening rain tapped on the glass.

  He thought about what he was doing, now that he had escaped from the nightmare of the past three days. Let Tom Anderson try to stop him if he wished, but he was going after Dominique's murderer, who had to be same person who had taken the lives of Mumford, Noiret, Lacombe, Martin, and the landlady Cora Jarrell.

  He knew it would mean trouble and not just for him. Justine was going to have to fend for herself. He couldn't help that now. She had betrayed him by keeping her secret, whatever it was, then by going to Basin Street, finally by leaving him. Maybe he could have protected her before. Not now. He might have even given up on the murders of Mumford and the others, but he couldn't let Dominique's killer walk away. He was the one who had left her vulnerable. It was his fault she was dead. He at least owed her justice.

  At Union Station he once again purchased a seat on the Smoky Mary and out of sheer contrariness sat in one of the "star cars" that were placed up front in the smoke and sparks from the engine and reserved for Negroes. There was only one other person on board, though, so no one bothered him over it. The train, the next to last of the day, rolled east and then north through the darkening city.

  Valentin stared at his reflection in the window glass, listening to the rhythm of the wheels on the rail as he thought about the night to come and the man he was seeking out.

  A half hour later, he stepped onto the station platform at Milneburg. He waited around for a few minutes to see if Anderson or Picot or whoever else took such an interest in his movements had sent another tail. The train pulled out and the last passenger disappeared. He walked through the station and turned east along the gravel road, rain dripping from the brim of his cap. When he reached the banks of the lake, he stopped again to make sure that he wasn't being followed. It was hard to tell with the steady drizzle hissing in his ears and making mist in the darkness. He would be just as hard for someone else to see as he slipped into the low brush off the side of the trail.

  Following Eulalie Echo's directions, it took almost half the night to travel from the gravel road to the wagon trail that cut through the brush and trees, and then more miles of walking on the footpath that ran east along the lake. He stopped at regular intervals to rest, get his bearings, and check for a tail. If there was anyone following him, it had to be a ghost.

  As he drew close, he began to think he had gotten lost, then suddenly found the site just as Miss Echo had described it, a stand of tall bamboo on two sides of a clearing and a grove of stunted willows and live oaks on the other. On the side that faced the lake, the ground was sopping and slick with mud and algae. It was inhospitable terrain that bordered shallows too stagnant for fish. It was no place for a human, in other words—unless it was a human who was looking to hide.

  After five minutes of searching, he found the twisting path through the thick stalks of bamboo. When he emerged and stepped into the clearing, he was greeted by the sight of a building that tottered shakily three feet above the ground on wooden pilings. From the smell, it seemed the crawl space underneath was a combination garbage dump and latrine.

  The rain had slowed to a light drizzle, lightening the night sky, and he could now see that the shack had been thrown together with clapboards
that had been scavenged from the store, so the facade was a patchwork of varied colors and textures. The roof was rusty corrugated tin and a chimney pipe stuck up another four feet, wisping gray smoke. Next to the open door was one dirty window with a burlap sack hanging behind it as a curtain. The steps to the door were building stones crossed with rough lengths of plank. Valentin put his foot on the first one and peered inside. He saw only darkness.

  "Whatchu want here?" a voice croaked, startling him.

  "My name's Valentin St. Cyr. I need to talk to you."

  "How'd you find this place?"

  "I found it. Now I'm here."

  There was a pause, then: "You need to go."

  "I'm not going anywhere," Valentin said to the darkness.

  "I said get away. I got me a pistol in here, goddamnit!"

  "If I leave, I'll come back with the law."

  There were sounds of movement. It could have been the man in the shack, some scrabbling rodent, or just the patter of rain. The voice croaked again. "Step inside."

  Valentin climbed the two sagging steps. As he stood in the doorway, he was assailed by the pungency of strong herbs, gamy sweat, smoke, and something else all sour and fecund, saturating the close air and deep murk. His eyes adjusted and he began to discern details. The single room was low ceilinged and square, twelve feet by fifteen at the most. A cast-iron stove glowed weakly in one corner. The walls of unpainted wood planks were festooned with leaves and drying flowers and various parts of animals, the tail of a rabbit here, what looked like the skull of a nutria there. He could see gaps in the boards and feel wisps of breeze. The place would be an icebox come wintertime.

  Among this clutter, he discerned a small man, copper brown and thin of bone, who was sitting on a pallet that had been pushed up against the back wall with a low table of rough pine boards and stacked bricks before him. The face was feral, like some swamp animal, and his hair stuck out at spiked angles where it wasn't knotted. The eyes, though half-lidded, still glowed a sharp green.

  "Prince John," Valentin said by way of introduction.

  "How you know my name?" The voice sounded like rattling gravel.

  "You're famous."

  Prince John let out a dry hack of a laugh. He got quiet then, as his eyes prodded his visitor's face. "You been running wild lately, aintcha?" he said. "Where was you at? Rampart Street?"

  Valentin was startled at the man's intuition. "There and other places," he admitted.

  Prince John produced a wolfish grin of sharp teeth. "I knowed it," he said. "I can still smell that place." A bony arm came up, pointing. "There's a chair. Sit."

  Valentin made out the backless wooden chair against the wall to his right, pulled it out a few feet, and sat down.

  Prince John's smile gave way to a blank frown as he fiddled about with something that he held at the tips of his fingers.

  Valentin remembered seeing him at work once, years back, playing his horn at some carnival. He recalled the body of a circus acrobat and a handsome, sharp-featured face with those green eyes set against bronze skin, a gift of Cherokee grandparents. What he now beheld was a shrunken shadow of that striking man; the flesh was parched and drawn, the rickety bones jutting. Valentin got a sense of something broken inside, too. Then there was the voice, sounding as if he was being choked with every breath.

  "I asked what you want here?"

  "I'm conducting a murder investigation," Valentin said.

  "Murder?" Prince John's eyes flicked. "You a copper?"

  "Private security."

  "Private..." The eyes narrowed, brightened. "I know you. You was friends with Bolden."

  "That's right."

  The man on the pallet gave out with another jagged laugh. "I thought I had me some tricks until he showed up," he said. "Man could play that horn. Goddamn, that's the truth! He had some voudun on him, too. Yessir. What happened to him? He dead?"

  "He's ... gone," Valentin said.

  Prince John shifted on the pallet and the gamy smell from his clothes wafted across the room. Valentin was thankful that the door was open.

  "How'd you find me?" Prince John said.

  "I'm a detective," Valentin said, and realized that it had been some time since he had mouthed those words.

  "Anyone else know you come?"

  "No, no one."

  "You gonna state your business?"

  Valentin paused, letting the drama build. He wanted the man's full attention. "Every member of your band is dead," he said. "Everyone except you."

  The Prince grunted. "Well, they was a wild bunch."

  "I mean dead in the last three weeks, Prince. I think they were all murdered by the same person. Someone was out to get them."

  A moment went by and then the green eyes came alive, blazing from the shadows. The Prince let out a long breath, more like a gasp. "Christ..." He drew back, hunching his thin shoulders.

  Valentin said, "Do you know who might be committing the crimes? Or why?"

  "There ain't nothin' I can tell you," the Prince said, his voice rising. "Not a goddamn thing. So you can leave now." When Valentin didn't move, he muttered, "I can make you go, if I want to."

  The detective laughed shortly. "Go ahead, then."

  Prince John stared, then turned away. "I ain't got nothin' to say."

  Valentin made a show of digging into his pocket to pull out the pill of opium in its silver paper. Prince John's head came back around and his eyes went wide with hunger. "Talk first," the detective said. "And then it's yours."

  Prince John licked his lips noisily. "It coulda been..." He coughed. "I mean, I don't know."

  "What?"

  "There was this one woman..."

  "Is this the one from the Irish Channel?"

  "You know about that?"

  "I've heard the story."

  "No, it wasn't her. This was another one. Later on."

  "What was her name?"

  "All I know was what she called herself."

  "Which was what?"

  "Emma. Emma Lee. I think."

  "Emily?"

  The Prince got snappish. "Not Emily. Emma Lee. Two words."

  "So her last name was Lee?"

  "I don't know no last name. All I remember is Emma Lee. That's what she went by."

  "When was this?"

  "What, right about two years ago? It was wintertime."

  "So that's the winter of oh-six?"

  "I believe that's right."

  "And what happened?"

  "What happened..." He took another raw breath, his vacant gaze fixed on the silver foil package, and Valentin could almost see his mind winding backward in time. "She showed up back-of-town one night," he rasped. "And she had that look."

  "What look?"

  "Like she was out for trouble, in the saloons like that. But them young gals, they used to love that jass. God almighty! They used to—"

  "What about Emma Lee?"

  "Oh. We run her off. But she come back the next week. Actin' crazier than before." He kept eyeing the pill of hop as if it might disappear. For a moment, he seemed ready to snatch it away and take his chances.

  "Go ahead," Valentin prodded him.

  "We was playin', uh ... It was down to Longshoreman's Hall, and there she was again. All drunk and hopped up and wild as could be. You know how them women can get. They chased her out the front door, but she just come around the back. She was out there in the alley when we was done playin', so..." He made a vague wave of his hand.

  "So?"

  A wicked grin bowed his mouth. "So we took her back to my rooms."

  "And?"

  "And we all had at her."

  "What?"

  "I said we all had at her. You know what I mean. We all fucked her. The five of us." He laughed with raw humor. "Hell, she let us do any damn thing we wanted. She couldn't get enough. We just took turns. Sometimes two at onst. Jesus! We was all drunk as hell, and there was some dope around. What's that one fellow's name ... Lacombe, that's it. He too
k a needle, but the rest of us was just smokin' some hop. We had us a hell of a time. Went on for the rest of the night, all the next day, and the next night, too. We kept her busy all that time. And she never missed a lick."

  "Then what?"

  "Then the mornin' come and I ran her off. What else?" He laughed again. "She was mad as hell. Said if we didn't let her back in, she was going to..." His eyes fastened on the package. "Now how about it?" he muttered.

  "When we're done," Valentin said. "She was going to what?"

  Prince John gave him a blank look.

  "All right, so you put her on the street. Do you know what happened to her after that?"

  His dark brow furrowed. "I think ... I heard later on that she got put away in that hospital."

  "What hospital?"

  "It's called ... uh ... some retreat? Is that right?"

  "You mean the Louisiana Retreat?" Valentin knew the place. "It's in New Orleans. On Henry Clay."

  "I believe that's right. That's where they put her. She was crazy as hell..." He looked up at the detective for a moment as if some new thought bad just wound through his brain. "All them fellows was all murdered?"

  "I believe so, yes."

  "Jesus Christ almighty!" he moaned suddenly. "Then she done got out!"

  "I don't know if that's—"

  "She's done got out!" he repeated, his eyes getting wild. "She done got out and went and murdered all of them!"

  "Who says it's her?"

  The rasping voice went up. "It's her! It's her! Who else would it be? Jesus and Mary!"

  "Why?"

  "Why? You got any idea what we did to her? We worked her like some goddamn field whore." His eyes skittered from side to side, then his panting slowed and his hard stare settled on Valentin. "I done what you asked. I need somethin' now, goddamnit. You gonna gimme that pill or do I gotta cut you?"

  "You're not going to cut anybody," Valentin said, then tossed the package onto the table.