Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries)

by David Fulmer

  "As far as you know," Anderson murmured.

  Badel's jowls flushed and jiggled. "I'm acquainted with the family," he exclaimed. "They're good, God-fearing Christian Americans. The fellow didn't gamble, didn't drink, didn't run with loose women. His hands are clean. It doesn't make sense. A gentleman like that, shot down, and on Rampart Street, of all places. It's some odd business and someone needs to look into it."

  Now Tom Anderson raised a thoughtful brow, as if pondering the request, all the while trying to figure exactly what Badel was up to. It could be as simple as placating a family that had suffered the tragic loss and sought answers to ease their grief. Or it could be something else entirely. It was important, that was for sure, or the alderman wouldn't have come knocking on the devil's back door.

  His guest was known as one of those righteous types who drew attention by roundly cursing Storyville as a sinful blight and demanding that it be shut down. Anderson recalled that in a recent screed, Badel had proclaimed to some temperance group or other that not only should the District be closed, but razed to the ground, with every stick burned, every brick buried, and the entire scarlet populace run out of town on rails. It would have been laughable, except there were more than a few important citizens of the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana who took such foolishness seriously.

  "What about this fellow St. Cyr?" Badel broke into his thoughts, pronouncing the name with a rough French curl of his lip: Sawn-sear.

  Anderson cocked one eyebrow, truly surprised at the turn in the conversation. "What about him?"

  "Well, he fixed that Black Rose business a few years ago, didn't he? And that trouble about those jass players?" The King of Storyville nodded vaguely. He himself considered both terrible episodes as history, fixed and finished; the Creole detective St. Cyr, on the other hand, would say there was much left behind. If he spoke about them at all.

  "Perhaps we could ask him to look into this," Badel said.

  Now Anderson studied the alderman even more carefully. So that was it. He had come to request the services of St. Cyr specifically. The King of Storyville was more than a little astonished, as St. Cyr had been doing his best to stay out of sight and out of mind since he had suddenly reappeared in New Orleans earlier that year.

  In any case, Anderson wasn't inclined to lend the detective out like some common laborer. Still, it puzzled him that Badel was going to so much trouble over an incident that would most likely end up swept under a rug. He thought about it a little more and realized that the alderman was presenting him an opportunity to kill two birds with the one stone. He would do a favor that would have to be repaid; more important, he'd find out if there was anything left of Valentin St. Cyr's skills.

  "Well, we can ask him," the King of Storyville said, keeping his tone offhand. "It so happens he's downstairs right now."

  Anderson had always taken a certain private delight in presenting Valentin St. Cyr to a stranger. It was always the same: the unsuspecting victim would look and then look again, brow furrowing in puzzlement. Though St. Cyr appeared at first glance to be a Creole of the French-Spanish variety, there was something not quite right about the picture. His flesh had an olive tint, his nose was bent a bit, and his black hair curled about like an Arab's. His gray eyes had a Mediterranean cast while his lips were almost as full as a Negro's. So if he turned one way in a certain light, he was clearly dago. Another half turn of his head and there was no doubt he was colored. And then he'd turn the other way and appear to be just one of those white men with odd features, not uncommon with New Orleans' racial mélange. In any case, it was enough to keep people guessing. He was just below medium height and built wiry, and he moved in a poised way that was just short of tense, as if there was violence stirring just under his skin. He was quiet, still as a stone for the most part, with a certain insolence resting in his cool expression and lazy posture.

  It was that exact posture that St. Cyr assumed as he stepped into the doorway. Anderson put on his best innocent gaze, all the while watching Badel's face out of the side of one eye and allowing himself a small smile. He glanced at the detective and tilted his head in the direction of his guest. "This is Alderman Badel," he announced.

  Valentin looked at the Frenchman who was wedged into the Queen Anne chair and murmured something that sounded like "sir," though Badel couldn't be sure. He knew of the detective only by reputation and frankly had been expecting someone less ... puzzling.

  "He has a problem and he'd like our help," Anderson explained. "Having to do with a murder that happened on Rampart Street on Sunday night."

  When St. Cyr didn't respond directly, Badel took it for modesty before superiors and spoke up. "The victim of this terrible crime was one of my constituents. He was shot down in the middle of the street."

  "Rampart Street," Anderson repeated. Valentin gave a blank nod. "Out beyond Third." Still there was no response from the Creole detective. "I told the alderman we might extend him the courtesy of looking into it," he finished.

  "That would be police business," St. Cyr said.

  "They investigated and came up with nothing," Badel said. "We need another opinion on the matter."

  Though the detective's gaze was fixed on the alderman, it was blank, as if he was actually listening to the noise from the Café below. Badel frowned, annoyed at the indifference.

  Tom Anderson was watching Valentin and trying to fathom what was going on behind that stony visage. This former New Orleans police officer and sharp-minded private detective had to be bored doing nothing but working the floor of the Café four or five nights a week. Why wouldn't he be curious about a well-to-do white man shot down so far back-of-town? It was an odd matter, just as the alderman described it, the sort of puzzle that St. Cyr would jump to untangle. Or at least would have, before the troubles that had driven him away.

  No matter; he was back, and it was high time that Tom Anderson found out what he was worth, if anything at all. "So perhaps you can help our guest," he prodded him.

  Valentin nodded again slightly and returned his attention to the alderman. After a quiet moment, he asked, "What was the man's name?"

  Badel leaned back and his chair creaked. "Mr. John Benedict," he said.

  Anderson had dismissed St. Cyr, and he and the alderman waited until the footsteps had moved along the short hallway and receded down the stairs.

  Badel said, "He didn't seem all that interested."

  "He's quiet," Anderson said. "Discreet. It's what you want in a situation like this."

  "Well, you know best, Tom." The alderman huffed brusquely, then with some difficulty pushed himself out of the chair. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment." Having done his duty, he was eager to be on his way.

  "Of course." Anderson stood up. He happened to know that Badel was on his way to visit a certain octoroon girl three doors down at Josie Arlington's. It did not strike him as the least bit odd that the alderman would pose as his sworn enemy by day, railing up and down the Crescent City about the terrible malady that festered in uptown, and then, since he was already in that den of iniquity anyway, help himself to those same delightful pleasures of the flesh by night. The man was not a priest, after all; he was a politician, and a New Orleans politician at that.

  Anderson escorted him through the door, along the short corridor, and down the steep staircase. Once he had ushered him safely out the side door, he went back through the kitchen, nodding good-evenings to the sweating cooks and rushing waiters, and peered out through the round window in the door and into the big room.

  It was thrumming like a happy machine. Anderson's Café and Annex was an elegantly appointed palace of its proprietor's personal crafting, the best address south and west of New York City for the diversion of gentlemen. The proprietor's deft hand was in evidence at every turn, from the cut glass in the doors, to the ornate crystal chandeliers, to the floor of Italian marble crisscrossed with dark carpeting, to the bloodred brocade above the wainscoting that ran along
the walls. The bar with a constellation of colorful bottles and a long mirror held up one wall. The floor was filled with tables for drinking, fine dining, gambling, and political conniving. There was a small salon in the back for the ladies, their eyes shielded from the men and their diversions by drawn curtains.

  On this night the tables were crowded and the games at full throttle. The Storyville sharps had descended on the Café, intent on plucking clean some fellow with more cash than skills. St. Cyr had sworn, and Tom Anderson had come to agree, that a fair number of the marks showed up with their fat bankrolls for the express purpose of being cleaned out. It would be something to talk about for years to come over glasses of good whiskey back home in Dallas or St. Louis.

  The King of Storyville took another look around the big room, saw that all was well as could be. St. Cyr had taken up a post on the landing near the front door and his gaze moved over the crowd in a distracted way, as if he wasn't really seeing any of it. Anderson shook his head and muttered under his breath, wondering again if he had made a mistake. The man looked more like one of the derelicts who sometimes wandered in off the street, the same sort of miscreants St. Cyr was hired to keep off the premises.

  Anderson went back upstairs and spent the next hour engaged in business by way of the brass-and-walnut telephone set on his desk. He received two visitors, both with disagreements that were too far wide of the courts. He took the problems under advisement, promised solutions, and accepted payment in the form of some future service. It was a normal night.

  After the last guest departed, he made ready to slip out for his visit with the girl at Gipsy Shafer's mansion. He knew both Hilma Burt and Josie Arlington had their spies watching him. Still, he had his ways: Miss Shafer had a private entrance that led to a private stairwell that led to a private room.

  He didn't leave right away. Instead, he loosened his necktie, unbuttoned his vest, poured a glass of fine brandy from the decanter on the corner table, and carried it to the front window. Though his bones ached with weariness, the mere sight of the boulevard all aglitter with newly installed electric lights cheered him. Standing there, brandy in hand, he let his mind wander back over his day, going from hour to hour and putting all in order in his head. This review was something that he did most nights, the attention to detail one mark of his genius.

  He wound his way through the morning and afternoon to arrive at the evening visit from Alderman Badel and stop there. It was a curious matter that had been laid before him. Of course, there was more to it than Badel had let on; the man had skittish eyes, and schemer was written all over his face. The crime had happened far out on Rampart Street, another world entirely, mean, loud, and bloody. The women and the whiskey along that avenue were dirt cheap, the rounders as low-down as they came, the type to kill a man over a wrong look.

  They all drank Raleigh Rye by the gallon, smoked pills of hop, whiffed cocaine, and stuck needles of morphine sulfate in their craggy veins. Most of the men and half the women carried hideaway pistols, straight razors, or spring knives, which they employed with ill-tempered abandon. And the bands in the saloons and dance halls still played jass in the fast-and-furious style that crazy King Bolden had started.

  By morning light the bodies of niggers, mulattoes, various other kinds of colored, and poor white trash were collected off the street, all good-for-nothings who deserved their sorry fates. This time, though, it had been a well-to-do American from the high-priced neighborhood on Esplanade Ridge.

  Watching the swirl of the crowds on the banquettes below, Anderson pondered Badel's fussy insistence that someone look into the crime, even though it was the sort of shameful mess that most families would want buried along with the victim's remains. Not just someone; Badel was willing to risk the wrath of the police by bringing in Valentin St. Cyr, a fellow that coppers generally despised, instead of a Pinkerton or some other private copper.

  It was odd, indeed, that Badel had picked St. Cyr, of all people, and he wondered how much the alderman knew about him. The Creole detective had only recently come back to the city. Where he had gone and what he had done for the fifteen months he was away was anyone's guess. He hadn't said. All Anderson knew was that he showed up at the Café door one chilly Tuesday afternoon after the turn of the New Year to ask humbly, like a stranger, if there might be any suitable employment for him.

  The King of Storyville had been sitting at his usual downstairs table. He masked his surprise, regarding St. Cyr with frank appraisal. The Creole looked the worse for wear. His clothes were hanging loose and dirty. He had lost weight, and there was a certain hungry edge about him, like a stray dog that had been scrapping for food. The King of Storyville thought about it for a moment, then told him that he could work the floor of the Café as needed. The detective had responded to the offer with such an odd, absent look that Anderson had wondered if there was something wrong with him.

  When he asked where he would be staying, St. Cyr muttered something about a room on Clio Street. The King of Storyville knew in an instant that there was no such room, and that the poor fellow would be sleeping that night in a flophouse, in the park, or in some doorway. So he offered an advance on the first week's pay, five Liberty dollars. St. Cyr had stared at the coins for a long time before picking them up. Then he thanked Anderson quietly and took his leave. A few days later, he announced that he had taken a room over Frank Mangetta's Saloon and Grocery on Marais Street.

  The Creole detective who carried a history that had taken on aspects of legend had come back, and yet there was no fanfare at all, only whispers in the saloons and the parlors of the sporting houses. Of course, fifteen months was a long time to be gone, and memories in this part of the world tended to be short.

  Except for working late nights at Anderson's Café, he stayed out of sight. If he was visiting any sporting girls, no one talked about it. Everyone assumed he was just finding his way and left him alone. That couldn't last, though; indeed, there were already rumors floating about that Tom Anderson was already losing patience with him.

  In fact, after just a few days, the King of Storyville had discovered that he was dealing with a different Valentin St. Cyr altogether. Though the detective had never been able to afford the best clothes, he had at least taken some care with what he did own. Not anymore; he appeared at the Café in the same dingy suit every night. He had been known to keep a sharp eye and a firm hand on the nightly crowds, respecting those customers who behaved and dispatching those who didn't. In fact, the blunt way he'd dealt with the miscreants had been a source of some entertainment for the patrons. Now he barely paid attention, and there were complaints that some of the local pickpockets had been having a field day right under his nose.

  Anderson sighed and brought his thoughts back to the business of the murder on Rampart Street. A case this simple would either get the Creole detective back on his horse or prove that he truly had lost his once-extraordinary skills. If that was so, he would no longer be of any use to the King of Storyville.

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