by David Fulmer
"Mr. Anderson," Picot said, flushing. "You see, the problem is, he has no official status here. This is definitely a, a ... a police matter."
"I understand," Anderson said evenly. "But if you'll allow me to vouch for him, I'll certainly accept the responsibility."
Valentin was surprised to see Picot hesitate. The man was either a braver man or a bigger fool than he'd imagined. Anderson's cool eyes went ten degrees colder. "If you wish," he said, "I can send one of these gentlemen to headquarters to get written permission from Chief O'Connor."
But Picot was already backing up, grabbing blindly for Valentin's arm. "No, that won't be necessary," he mumbled. "Thank you, sir. Thank you..." and he all but dragged Valentin to the stairwell.
When they reached the second floor hallway, Picot walked directly away from the Creole detective and went to the third doorway on the left, alley side. He disappeared inside, leaving the door wide open. This, Valentin understood, was all the invitation he was going to receive. He stepped into the room.
It was the copper's little revenge. Valentin gasped and took a step back. Picot stood amidst the bloody carnage like a jolly Mephistopheles and laughed.
***
Anderson had commandeered the dining room and now slid the doors closed and crossed to take a seat at the table where Picot and St. Cyr waited. Each of the men at the table had a tumbler of whiskey before him. The two dull-faced roughnecks stood by the doors on either end of the room, their thick arms crossed stiffly.
Anderson turned to the policeman. "Lieutenant Picot, I understand your position as regards your official capacity. But I would like to hear your opinion on this terrible matter. Unless you'd prefer to wait for one of your superiors." He was being solicitous, giving Picot a chance to redeem himself and the policeman gobbled the bait, dismissing the concerns with a wave of one hand and flipping open his leather-bound notebook with the other.
"The girl's name is Martha Devereaux," he recited. "An octoroon about twenty-three years of age. I believe she had some minor arrests. Drunk and disorderly, that kind of thing. But nothing on her record for over a year."
"What happened up there?" Anderson inquired.
Picot said, "What happened is someone cut her throat. One large stab wound in the, uh, jugular vein there. She bled to death. Not a pretty scene. It come out like a gusher. There's blood all across the floor, halfway up the walls, she—"
"No one saw anything?" Anderson broke in. Picot shook his head. "Or heard anything?"
Valentin spoke up. "With that wound, she couldn't have made a sound. It was in the throat and she—"
"Yes, yes, but, my Lord," Anderson said. "It's Tuesday night. Business is slow. How could anyone go by unnoticed?"
"I suppose the fellow could have sneaked himself in," Picot said. "And out."
Anderson sighed heavily. "The weapon?"
"A large kitchen knife or maybe a hunting knife," Picot said. "It's gone."
Anderson glanced at Valentin, then said, "And did you find a black rose anywhere about?"
Picot swallowed. "Yes, sir. By her door there."
"I see," Anderson said. His gaze lingered on the policeman for a discomfiting moment, then swiveled to Valentin. "Anything to add?"
The Creole detective considered carefully. "Only that repeat killers do just that. The same thing over and over. We have these three women dead, but all killed in a different manner."
"You saying it ain't the same one?" Picot said sharply. "Well, what about them roses, then?" When Valentin didn't respond, he let out a tense laugh. "What, there some kinda black rose killer's club out there?"
Anderson waited, his eyes on Valentin, as if to say, Well, is there? Valentin shrugged. "Just an observation."
"Any other notions?" Anderson said to no one in particular, then with exasperation, "Or any suspects?"
Picot's face relaxed then, and his eyes wandered to the Creole detective. "We might have one," he said. When Valentin looked at him, he smiled coldly, as if he knew something.
Picot went back upstairs. Anderson whispered to Jessie Brown, then headed for the door with his men in tow. He stopped, took Valentin by the arm and steered him to the far side of the parlor.
"That copper's a dunce," he muttered in a low voice and then pointed a finger. "You fix this thing, Valentin. I mean directly. Find this fellow and get rid of him. Shoot him in the head or break his neck and sink his carcass in the river. This has to stop. We're not talking about some nigger house back of town or some dive like Lizzie Taylor's anymore. This is right in the heart of the District!" He took a moment to calm himself, glancing off at his two men, who were standing with their thick arms dangling and their faces showing nothing. "What's this about a suspect?" he resumed in a quieter voice.
"I believe he means Bolden."
Tom Anderson stared down at the detective. "Bolden?"
Valentin shrugged. "That's what he thinks."
"Well?" Anderson said. "What about it?"
Valentin shook his head, dismissing the notion, and Anderson treated him to searching look. "Well, whoever it is, you'd better stop him," he growled.
After Anderson and his toughs went out the door, Valentin stepped into the sitting room to find Miss Brown slumped on a Café chair, drinking off what was left of the whiskey she'd broken out for the three men. She raised wet eyes to the detective. "Valentin," she said, "Who'd do such a thing?" She took another swig from the bottle. "Such a fine girl. Such a fine girl."
"I need to know something," Valentin said quietly. "I need to know if King Bolden was around here tonight."
The madam looked surprised, then fearful, and then her thin shoulders heaved. Valentin had his answer but he let her speak.
"He came round to the kitchen. He talked to the cook. He was asking after her."
"After who?" Valentin said.
The madam's voice was so low he could barely hear her. "After Martha," she said.
Tom Anderson, pulling away in his Winton motorcar, watched narrow-eyed as the Creole detective bolted out the front door of the house and hurried away down the banquette.
From the second floor window, Picot also watched, with the same smile he had delivered at the table, a look of grim satisfaction that lit up his dull, copper-colored eyes.
From her office just off the parlor, Antonia Gonzales saw him come into the foyer and stepped out to greet him. He strode right past her and vaulted up the stairs. Had it been anyone else, she would have whistled for one of the floor men who lounged on the back gallery, waiting to be called. Instead, she gathered up her skirt and went after him.
He opened the door without knocking just as Justine was lying back on the bed. A man who looked like a prosperous farmer in from some rice plantation stood over her. They both froze; the citizen with suspenders askew, about to drop his drawers, Justine in the motion of pulling her chippie up over her hips, her knees hiked and legs falling open. Her eyes went wide and the white man's face began to flush in anger. "What is this?" he barked.
"She's my sister," Valentin told him and Justine put a hand over her mouth.
The farmer stood there trying to decide whether or not he was going to get nasty, but he was saved the consequences of a decision when Miss Antonia bustled into the room. She treated Valentin to a withering stare and then extended a bejeweled hand to the man.
"Let me take you down the hall," the madam said in a low voice. "Someone you'll really enjoy. Come on, now. Have I ever given you a bad time?" And so she cajoled the citizen out the door. He acted like he wanted to salvage his pride with a word to Valentin, but the look on the detective's face changed his mind.
Justine put an arm behind her head, watching him steadily. She lowered her legs but left the hem of her chippie up, waiting to see what he would do next. Valentin crossed to the bed and sat down. With a gesture that was prim in a clumsy way, he pulled the thin fabric to cover her, and then folded his hands together. He was beginning to feel ashamed and he dropped his eyes to the floor. Justi
ne sat up and put a hand on his arm.
"What is it?" she said in a quiet voice.
"It's number three," he told her.
Miss Antonia found them sitting side by side on the bed. She studied Valentin from the doorway, hands on her heavy hips. "Valentin," she said at last, "this isn't like you."
Justine shook her head at the madam. The madam glanced between the two of them and said, "Oh, no..."
He related the bare facts, leaving out the part about the blood, what looked like fountains of it, flowing into a deep pool across the floorboards and splattered over the plaster walls. He didn't describe the raw, gaping slash in the girl's throat. He didn't tell them about her dull, cold flesh and the doll look of her dead eyes. When he finished, Miss Antonia sighed deeply, then hesitated, her eyes shifting to Justine. "I'm sorry, but you have a..." She glanced at Valentin, then touched a finger to the watch that hung from a gold chain around her plump brown neck. "You have a gentleman caller."
Justine said, "Oh."
Valentin heard the words and the note of dismissal. He thought to ask her not to entertain anymore, not this evening. But the moment passed and he took a deep breath, drew himself up and got to his feet. He was halfway to the door when he heard her tell the madam, "I'm sorry. No more. Not tonight."
He left Justine at Miss Antonia's and made the five-block walk back to Nancy Hanks' Saloon, reaching those doors a little after one o'clock. He looked over the heads of the crowd and up at the stage—no Bolden. He ordered a whiskey to calm his nerves, then another, brooding a half-hour away while the band played on.
They were working through "If You Don't Shake, Don't Get No Cake," a lively dance number that seemed to drag like a slow mule without Buddy out in front, when an echo rolled in from the street and the door was blown open by a blast of loud brass. Every head in the room turned and the band on the stage almost stopped cold. Buddy lurched inside, his horn at his mouth and his eyes whirling crazily. Applause and laughter rippled up from the crowd. The fellows in the band peered into the darkness, glaring. Buddy didn't dare get directly up on stage, so he began to move through the crowd, all the time the horn shouting out a wild trill, like it had a life of its own. The manic look on his face had the people at the tables and the dancers on the floor hollering and after a half-dozen bars, Willie Cornish began to smile and Jeff Mumford laughed and suddenly the whole band seemed to shoot up about five feet into the air.
Valentin watched the crowd on the dance floor part like the Red Sea, and more people got to their feet to stomp the boards and Buddy took it as a signal to shift his gears, and went stalking up and down in front of the bandstand, his fingers punching out an electric code on the valves. The horn wailed louder and faster and then he went up the scale, up the scale to the B-flat octave, and the others grabbed on for dear life as he took off.
The wooden floor was rumbling and the street windows were rattling and the women were yelling out his name, so Buddy jumped on stage, weaving in and out and around the other players, smiling through his horn, dropping it for one beat to shout out something and they shifted the key up to C and halfway through the chorus, he ran over to the open window and jammed the bell of the cornet outside into the black, steamy New Orleans night. Valentin could barely hear Mumford shout out, "Man, whatchu doin'? What the hell you doin'?"
Buddy reeled around, his face all aglow, his eyes crazy with joy, his voice taking up where his horn left off. "I'm callin' my children," he shouted back, "I'm callin' my children home!"
Valentin never forgot that night. The band stayed on the stage for two hours, barely drawing breaths between songs. About halfway through, a woman who had worked herself into a lather began to undo the hooks on her dress and then walked right out of it and careened about the dance floor in her camisole. Then a voluptuous Creole girl went one better and threw everything off, stepping naked as the day she was born in the middle of the floor. Her body was so slick with sweat she looked like she was covered in oil and when Bolden saw he began to play to her, like a snake charmer, as she shimmied up to stand below the bell of his horn, her eyes closed, shiny flesh rippling in the low, hot lights.
Valentin watched as everyone else in the room disappeared and Buddy's stare fastened onto the girl, moving up her long legs, over her wide hips and heavy breasts to the face, the mouth open and nostrils flaring, framed by dark hair that whipped about in long wet strands. He saw the two of them entwine over five feet of air that was thick with sound, saw them wrap around each other in a hungry, invisible embrace.
The crowd fell deeper into the frenzy of motion and color and shouts and laughter, all to the rise and fall of King Bolden's music. Valentin looked from one side of the room to the other, stunned by the power of the hands and lungs of this one-man Louisiana hurricane. It was then that he saw, through a gap between two dancing bodies, the form of J. Picot standing in the doorway, regarding the scene with a cold sneer of an expression. Some bodies came together, blocking Valentin's view and when they split apart again, Picot was gone. After that, the night dissolved into a noisy, drunken revelry that ended sometime after four o'clock with Valentin St. Cyr and his old friend Buddy Bolden staggering out the door and onto the street.
They made their way to the banks of the river and found a place to sit and share the bottle of Raleigh Rye that Nancy Hanks herself had shoved into Buddy's hands as they'd left the saloon. The first streaks of dawn were painting the sky out beyond Arabi as they flopped down on the rotting remains of the old riverboat dock at the bottom of Poydras Street. The noise and motion were gone, leaving an empty space around them.
Buddy swilled from the bottle, then waved it in the air. "Goddamn, what a night. What a night." He chortled weakly, took another long pull, then handed the whiskey to Valentin.
They drank in silence, passing the bottle and watching the colors where day and night combined in the mist that hung over the water. Minutes passed and Valentin sensed that Buddy was slipping away somewhere, but then he turned abruptly, closed one eye and gave a quizzical look.
"So, what I want to know is, why the hell you been followin' me around?" he said. "I see you everywhere I go. What is it that's so damn important?"
"You know Martha Devereaux?" Valentin said. It came out louder and sharper than he'd intended.
Bolden stopped in the middle of raising the bottle. "What about her?"
"She was murdered last night." The bottle went up the rest of the way and an inch of it disappeared. "That's three girls killed now," Valentin went on, holding up fingers. "First Annie Robie. Then Gran Tillman. Now this one."
Bolden handed the bottle over. "I don't want to hear no more about it, thank you."
Valentin shook his head and turned away to watch an early-rising pelican's silent swooping glide over the green waters. He thought to begin snapping out the questions that were buzzing about his head, but instead he said, "I went to see Nora."
Buddy turned slowly to regard his friend. "What for?"
"To tell her you were in jail," Valentin said.
"You don't need to be upsetting my wife," Bolden snapped.
"She's already upset."
"What'd you go out there for?" The voice was harsh. "I don't go botherin' your little fair brown, what's her name?"
"Justine."
"Well, you don't see me goin' round Antonia Gonzales', makin' trouble with Justine. Tell you what. You stay outta my stuff and I'll stay outta yours." He made a rough gesture. "Now drink your whiskey."
Valentin lifted the bottle, then lowered it. "Where were you around midnight?" he said.
Bolden turned to stare at him. "What the goddamn hell is this?"
"Were you anywhere around Basin Street?"
"Ain't none of your damn business where I was. Or what I was doin'."
"The way you been acting, maybe it is."
"What about the way I been acting?" He sounded suddenly weary of the whole exchange.
"There's somethin' affecting you."
Buddy di
dn't like the sound of that at all. He snatched the bottle back roughly and took a long swig. "Ain't nothin affecting me," he muttered.
It was now Valentin's turn to get angry. "Oh, no? All I hear is how you're goin' crazy. And I believe it. Half the time I see you, you're gettin' drunk. You don't show up to play with the band. You got yourself thrown in jail. It ain't good news." Bolden made a harsh gesture. "Goddamnit, what's wrong with you?"
Buddy lurched to his feet and planted an angry thumb in his own chest. "The only thing wrong with me is I happen to be the horn player who went and turned this whole goddamn city upside-down. That's right. 'Cause I don't play like nobody else, not like no John Robichaux, not like no Frankie Dusen, not like nobody. I got black folk, Creoles, white folk comin' out to hear. Comin' to hear King Bolden, and dancin' together like nobody's business." He weaved for a second, frowned darkly. "You want to know what's wrong with me? I scare the hell outta people, that's what."
Valentin shook his head at these dramatics. "The only people you're scaring is your wife. And your friends," he said.
Buddy gave him a cold look, raised the bottle and drained it in one swallow. He let it down, then banged it against his mouth again, in case there was a drop or two left. When he pulled it away, a trickle of red ran from his lip.
Valentin said, "Jesus Christ, Buddy."
Bolden reached with a fingertip, stared at the crimson smear and came up with an empty, lopsided smile. "It's only blood, Tino," he said. "Only blood." Then he smashed the bottle against the top of the nearest piling. He held fast to what remained by the neck, the jagged shards glinting in the first glimmering light of day. "So, do I scare you, too?" he asked his old friend.
His old friend didn't answer. Bolden laughed softly and tossed the broken bottle into the dirty brown waters of the Mississippi. Without another word, he walked away, going home.