The Assassins

by F. M. Parker

  “I’ve had no lost time. Within an hour after Albert Wollfolk was found dead in the river, another man came to me and offered to take the ship at the same terms.”

  “Who was that man?”

  “Stanton Shattuck. Do you know him?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “He’s one of your competitors on the docks.”

  “So he thought to buy my ship. Well, he’ll not get her. Build her sound. I’ll start looking for a captain.”

  “With every ship that is seaworthy, and some that aren’t, busy carrying cargo to Mexico for the military, you’ll not find a good captain without a berth,” Sorensen said. “I’d suggest you look at the best first officers around and make one of them your captain.”

  “Good idea. I’ll check them over. I’ll come back across the river every day or so to see how things are going.”

  “Come in workclothes someday and do some work on her yourself. You might like that. You should surely step the masts.”

  Lew swept his view over the ship’s strong wooden ribs and internal framing etched against the sky. “I’d like that.”

  Lew walked down the bank and climbed into the hired riverboat. “Back to New Orleans,” he told the coxswain.

  “Yes, sir,” said the man. He cast off from the mooring. The river current pulled them away from the shore. The two oarsmen dropped their blades into the oarlocks with a rattle of wood on wood.

  “Heave away,” said the coxswain.

  The oars dipped water and the coxswain swung the tiller to head the boat toward the opposite side of the Mississippi.

  Lew stared west out over the river and across the bayou lands toward Texas. His job as a Ranger had been dangerous. However, he believed there was more danger here in New Orleans. Somewhere out there in the teeming population of the city, the same men that had killed Albert Wollfolk now waited the opportunity to strike at him.

  13

  Old Ella was very late, more than two hours, and the day was drawing to an end. Morissot was worried. He had given her a dangerous task. He rose from the bench in the corner of Jackson Square and walked across to the intersection of Decatur and Saint Peter streets.

  A black woman with a coffeepot in a basket halted and offered to pour Morissot a cup. He waved her away and looked down both Decatur and Saint Peter. Pedestrians and vehicles flowed along the streets. Four soldiers leaned against a nearby wall. They oggled the passing women and talked and laughed among themselves. A block away a band of slaves was paving a section of Front Street with square blocks of granite. There was no sign of Ella.

  Morissot returned to the square and looked about in all directions. As he drew near to the bench once again, he saw Ella at the base of one of the large oaks.

  “Lezin,” Ella called in a voice barely loud enough to be heard. She beckoned for him to come. She caught Morissot by the arm and drew him behind the tree. Her eyes swept the open avenues between the trees.

  “Oh, my! Oh, my,” she moaned, and looked up at Morissot with wide, frightened eyes.

  “Ella, what is wrong?”

  “Lezin, you should have told me,” Ella said with a tremble in her voice.

  “Told you what?”

  “About Kelty, the assassin,” she said accusingly.

  “You saw Kelly? What happened? Tell me all, and from the beginning.”

  Ella gripped Morissot’s hand. “I did as you said. I followed the man Wollfolk. The first evening and night he spent with his placée on Rampart Street. The following day he traveled around, but mostly was at his office and the warehouse. Then the night again with his placée. The second morning I followed along behind as he went to the warehouse on the waterfront.

  “As I’m watching Wollfolk talk with that giant Julius, a man comes up beside me.” Ella shuddered. “He grabbed me by the arm. Oh, God! Lezin, he hurt me terribly. I thought he was going to crush my very bones.”

  Morissot spoke softly to Ella. “It’s all right now. You are safe.”

  Ella had known of the Irish assassin for a long time. Lezin also thought she knew what he did. But never had she given a sign to indicate it.

  “How did you know this man was Kelty? You never told me you knew what he looked like.”

  “I didn’t until today. I’ve seen men I thought could be Kelty, but I wasn’t ever sure. Now I know. The minute I looked into his face, I knew. There was murder in him. He would kill me without a second thought.”

  “Describe him to me.”

  “Broad and strong, with black beard and eyes.”

  Ella was correct. Morissot and Kelty had come to know each other in their world of murder for pay. Never had a word passed between them, just a locking of eyes for a brief moment in those rare encounters on the street.

  “I knew it was Kelty,” Ella said, reading Morissot’s expression.

  “What did Kelty say?”

  “He said, ‘Why are you following that white man?’ I said I wasn’t. That’s when he hurt me again.”

  Ella stared into Morissot’s eyes. “He knows what I look like. I’ll never be safe again.”

  “Yes you will. He only kills white people.” That was the story told by those who knew that a killer named Kelty existed. However, Morissot believed Kelty had also killed blacks.

  Morissot had never slain a white man. Now he may have to kill the false Wollfolk. He would also kill Kelty if he harmed Ella. The immediate question was why was Kelty spying on the man he most probably thought was Wollfolk.

  “How did you get away from Kelty?”

  “J fainted. The very first time in my life. When I came to my senses, he was gone. But I thought he was just hiding someplace near and would follow me. I didn’t want him to see you. So I wondered around as if I was fuddled. Then, when I thought it safe, I came here.”

  Morissot knew Ella would have been safer if Kelty had learned who she was spying for. “You can tell me the rest of what you learned about Wollfolk later. Where did you last see Kelty?”

  “There on the downriver side of Wollfolk’s warehouse,” Ella pointed.

  “Go home, Ella,” Morissot said. He would like to have more information about the impostor, but Ella must not be the one to gather it. He gave her five silver dollars.

  Ella clutched the coins in her old hand. She hastened away, her eyes darting here and there like a doe that had once been mauled by the savage wolf.

  * * *

  Only pure luck allowed Morissot to spot Kelty driving the buggy heading north on Dumaine Street. Two little black boys were jigging in the street for pennies. A few people were standing and watching, and calling encouragement to the lively stepping lads. The killer Irishman drove through the gathering, scattering them and causing the boys to spring aside. The crowd’s angry shouts drew Morissot’s attention.

  He fell in behind the assassin’s vehicle and trailed it north toward Lake Pontchartrain. As the number of people on the street thinned, he slowed and fell farther to the rear. Morissot hoped Kelty was heading home because he wanted to know where the Irishman lived and could be found when the need arose.

  Kelty looked to the rear now and then as he traveled.

  There was nothing out of the ordinary to arouse his suspicions.

  He wondered about the old Negro woman he had discovered spying on the young Wollfolk. Why was she doing that, and for whom? Shattuck and the Ring would sooner or later hire Kelty to kill the man as he had killed Albert Wollfolk. For that reason, Kelty had decided to spend a few hours following the nephew. He was glad that he had. The knowledge that someone else was also interested in the man was very valuable information. Too bad the old hag had fainted before he could force her to tell what she knew. He had frightened her so badly that her brains were scattered, for when she had come to, she had wandered about like a crazy woman.

  On a straight stretch of road and on one of the rises of land seldom found on the flat delta land, Kelty stopped the buggy and sat for several minutes. He watched to the rear as the day waned
and the dusk came. He saw one man on foot. The fellow turned off on a side road at a distance. In the growing murk, Kelty went on.

  * * *

  Morissot slipped through the woods which were filling swiftly with night. He had observed Kelty stop for a time and then continue on for a mile or so before veering right onto a lane running easterly. Morissot now moved parallel to that narrow way.

  The lane ended at a house set in among large trees. Kelty’s buggy, barely visible, sat by the front stoop. Morissot saw no sign of the man. The windows remained dark. No family waited for the assassin, or were they merely absent for the evening?

  The house remained dark as the minutes passed. Morissot started to move closer, then abruptly halted. He shivered as if someone had drawn a feather along his spine. He looked to the right at the dark trees and slightly lighter shades of darkness between them. Kelty was in the woods with him. And he was creeping nearer.

  Morissot stole to the left, placing his feet with no sound. He had uncovered what he had hoped to, where the man lived. He had no reason to fight Kelty. Not yet.

  He came out onto the main road and broke into a fast walk to the south. He would remember that Kelty was a wary animal, one that would not be taken easily.

  * * *

  When the rain ended, Tim made his way along the muddy road toward the Morissot home. He walked swiftly, enjoying the strength that had increased every day. He slapped at the mosquitoes that swarmed about him, and he wished he was more like the natives of New Orleans, who seemed to ignore the biting pests.

  Marie met him with a smile at the gate and walked along the carriageway with him. “Father wants to talk with you. He learned something yesterday that should interest you.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something about the impostor.” She turned her green eyes on him. “You are in danger as long as he exists. Please be careful. Should he learn who you are, he would try to kill you.”

  “He’s the one that’s in danger,” Tim said. “I’ll soon take my revenge for what he has done to me.”

  Lezin called out from the kitchen as Tim and Marie entered the house. “Tim, come have a cool glass of wine with me. You must be hot from your walk and I want to talk with you.”

  Lezin poured both Marie and Tim a glass of red wine. He refilled his own glass. “A friend of mine told me some news about the false Wollfolk. It appears that a man named Kelty has been following him around, at least for a day or so.”

  “Who is Kelty?” asked Tim.

  “A paid killer, an assassin.”

  “Why does he follow the impostor? Is it to protect him?”

  “I don’t think so. He trails at a distance. I think Kelty might be planning to kill him.”

  “Who told you about this? Is it the truth?”

  “A friend told me, a very reliable friend.”

  Tim almost asked how the friend would know to tell Lezin such a thing. However, he held his tongue. Lezin would tell him only what he wanted to. The man seemed protective of Tim. He wondered why.

  “There is something in all this that I can’t fathom,” Tim said. “I felt the same way when the fight at the warehouse happened.”

  “I agree the situation is taking strange twists.”

  “Anything else?” Tim asked.

  “The impostor spends his nights with a placée on Rampart Street.”

  Tim cocked a questioning eye at Lezin. “A placée?”

  “A quadroon mistress, a woman who is one-quarter Negro. It is common in New Orleans for a white man to take a light-skinned mulatto woman and set her up in a house on the Ramparts. This placée has been there for a few years, as Albert Wollfolk’s mistress.”

  “So my replacement has taken that over also?”

  “It seems he is very thorough.”

  “I’ll worry about the placée later. Right now we need more information. How do we get it?”

  “I can have my friends try to find out things about the impostor.” Lezin meant to continue his surveillance of the man with or without Tim’s approval. However, it would best fit his plans if Tim knew what he was doing.

  “Yes, please do that.”

  “I will. Now something more pleasant. Would you and Marie like to go froggin’ with me this evening? The sky is clearing and it’s going to be a nice night for a change.”

  “Oh, yes, Father! I’d like that,” cried Marie.

  “I like frog legs too,” Tim said.

  “Good. Then it’s settled. Tim, harness the horse, for we must travel a couple of miles from here. Marie and I will make up the mixture of spices and meal to cook the frog legs in. We’ll eat what we catch right on the spot.”

  “That’s a deal,” Tim said. He left the room and went off to the stables.

  Marie hurried into the kitchen. She began to hum happily.

  Lezin followed his daughter. “Marie, you like Tim, isn’t that so?” he asked.

  She blushed brightly as she raised her face to Lezin. “Yes, very much.”

  “He would make an excellent father for your children.”

  Marie blushed even redder. “He would never ask me to marry him. A white mail can’t marry a woman with Negro blood in her veins.”

  “I know. But I wasn’t thinking of marriage.”

  Marie’s eyes opened wide in great surprise. “But, Father?”

  Lezin plunged ahead with his plan. “The Morissots have been free men for a hundred years. Your greatgrandfather was one-half white, for his father was a white man. He paid a white woman to have his child. Therefore, your grandfather was three-quarters white. I’m seven-eighths white. You are almost white. Look at your skin and eyes, very much like your mother’s.”

  “I wish I could have known my mother,” Marie said. “It’s too bad she died of the fever.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lezin said. He recalled that year the yellow fever struck New Orleans so devastatingly. Thousands died during the weeks the disease ran rampant on every street. He had stayed clear of the city. However, one day as he traveled to the river to fish, he heard the cry for help from the house of a white man. He could not deny the call and entered the home.

  The man and his two children were dead. The wife, though too weak to rise and filthy from her own vomit and waste, had survived the worse symptoms of the disease. Lezin had loaded her into his wagon and took her to his home, the very one where Marie and he now lived.

  The white woman had great stamina, and under Lezin’s care she had recovered. Her body recovered its strength and the roses came to her cheeks.

  When Lezin came to her bed in the dark, she had welcomed him. Over the next several months she remained in the house, rarely venturing outside. For a white woman to be seen in Lezin’s house, especially carrying his child, would mean his death—and perhaps her own as well—at the hands of white men.

  A healthy baby girl was born to the woman. She nursed and cared for the infant for three days. On the fourth day when Lezin returned home, the woman was gone. A note stated simply that she was leaving and going to her people in the north. She asked that he not try to find her.

  The woman had left the baby. For that Lezin had thanked her a thousand times as the years passed. He hired a wet nurse and began the long pleasant task of raising and educating his delightful daughter.

  Lezin spoke to Marie. “White men rule the world and enjoy all the privileges as rulers. Now the Morissots have the opportunity to become white. Children born from you and Tim could go where they wished and do what they wanted without fear, for they would have passed into the white world. For three generations we have strived to accomplish that. Now you can complete the task.

  “Remember, daughter, it is better to be a bastard than to be black.” Lezin’s voice was full of rancor.

  “I understand, Father. But how do I make him want me?”

  Lezin’s face cleared, and he laughed lightly. He caught Marie by the chin and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. “You are a beautiful young woman. You could have any man y
ou wished. I’m sure you will think of a way. Now hurry and get things ready for tonight. I’ll get my frog gig and torches.”

  14

  “You owe me, Shattuck,” Gunnard growled. “I did your crooked work. I slowed Wollfolk’s niggers down for several days. Maybe you don’t owe me the whole five hundred dollars, but sure part of it.”

  “Gunnard, I owe you nothing. Your reputation as a fighter is pure horseshit. You let a kid from Ohio whip you and you didn’t lay a knuckle on him.” Shattuck threw a contemptuous look at Gunnard’s face with its swollen lips, his nose broken and knocked off to one side by Wollfolk’s fists.

  Shattuck stood by the wall of the Flatboat Saloon. It was located in a section of New Orleans with no formal name, but called the Swamp by the pirates, rogues, muggers, and cheap killers who lived, fought, and often died there. He looked along the main street of the Swamp; it was lined with crudely constructed buildings, single-story and made from the lumber of broken-up flatboats that had come down the river over many years.

  A few people carrying candle lanterns moved through the evening dusk on the muddy street. There were no sidewalks, only the wet black dirt, now stirred to mud by rolling wheels and the feet of men and horses. A light reflected a weak glint of silver as one of the lantern people veered around a water puddle. A streetwalker was propositioning a man in the light coming from the open door of the gambling shack. Three richly dressed young Creoles with swords buckled to their waists entered the saloon. Nobody paid Shattuck and Gunnard as much as a glance.

  “I want two hundred dollars and I’ll go on my way,” Gunnard said. “That amount of money don’t mean anything to a rich man like you.”

  “You’ll get not one penny from me.” Shattuck’s temper rose and his voice was brittle. He should never had come to meet with the man. But there had been a threatening tone in the note delivered by the Negro boy at Shattuck’s office.

  “Two hundred dollars, Shattuck, and I’ll not tell what happened to the white foreman who worked for the Wollfolk Company before I did.”