It hadn’t stopped raining from the moment I stepped off the plane, and the forecast predicted worse to come. Everyone was talking about how it reminded them of August 2005, just before Katrina found its full force, which was no comfort at all. But the people were friendly enough, and I was only planning to be there for a couple of days until I could hook up with Ren, the photographer who was coming down from Memphis to take me on the last leg of the trip, if he ever bothered to sober up and return my phone calls.
For a couple of days I checked out locations for good copy and moody shots, and although I quickly got tired of traipsing around with a yellow slicker dripping ice-water onto my knees, the dry hotel air made me feel sick. So, forcing myself back into the rain once more, I headed from Canal Street in the direction of Bourbon.
I was meant to be revealing ‘secret New Orleans’ from an insider’s perspective, but I wasn’t an insider. I wasn’t even from the same side of the country. I was working for a low-end travel supplement based out of Fresno and had, I suspect, been chosen for the assignment by my boss because I was willing to work below standard rates and leave at short notice. But I needed the cash right then, and freelance writing assignments had been pretty thin on the ground lately. I figured I could scrape by with some guff about jazz clubs and voodoo rituals, the ones that still get staged for tourists, and catch myself some good times in the process.
First I needed a funky dark-wood sawdust-floor bar with a peanut barrel, a pianist and candles in colored pots, a place where life had been restored to how it had been before the hurricane, but the coolest joints wanted to charge me a fortune for the privilege of a story, and my editor felt the bar should be paying the magazine for the free publicity. Except nobody had ever heard of the Fresno Freedom Travel Guide here and was like who the fuck are you?
But then I turned off Bourbon into one of the narrow cross-streets where the shops beneath the verandahs were smaller and darker, and found myself outside an open-fronted bar called Stormy’s, where one hell of an argument was hammering. As I peered through the folding front doors into the beer-musty dimness of the bar, I saw a tall, bony old dude in a blue Zephyrs cap and collarless shirt shouting at someone who could only be an official, because he wore the kind of suit no man would ever purposely choose for himself.
‘So what did you evah do for me, huh?’ the dude shouted. ‘All this talk, all these promises. The last time we had a flood around here, when we was bailing out the basement trying to save th’ only supplies we could lay our hands on, where the hay-ull were you? We couldn’t even raise your damn office on the phone. Now you come in here and give me shit about breaking regulations, well you can kiss my skinny black ass before I take it down, and that’s the end of it. Now you turn yourself around and get out of my bar.’
‘Mr Beauregard, I have every respect for you—my father used to greatly admire your piano playing—but the fact remains that you cannot simply remake the rules on this. Now I can give you seven days to remove that thing before my boys will be forced to come in and take it down.’
‘You ain’t stepping one foot into my bar, Marchais. Your father and his pals was nothing but trouble, and all you doing is tryin’ to follow in their footsteps. You come in here again, or you send any of your little butt-boys in here to do your dirty work, I’ll set my dog on all of you. Now start marching.’
The owner was no spring chicken but feisty as hell, I had to give him that. I got to talking to LaVinna, the waitress, who told me he really was called Stormy, and he always lived up to his name. ‘I’ll introduce you,’ she said, ‘but if he starts cursing and getting all heated up you’ll have to go, because one day that vein on the side of his head is going to pop.’
Stormy was riled because he’d rebuilt the bar after Katrina with his own hands, and now the official was telling him he didn’t get proper permission for the work.
‘What I did,’ he told me later, ‘was build a new platform out back for the piano, but to put it there I had to build a roof over it where the yard had been. Hell, it weren’t even no yard, just waste ground some crazy woman across the way uses for her damn chickens, and it ain’t even legal to keep chickens around here no more, ’specially when you’re killing ’em in some damn religious ritual. In the forty years we’ve been here we never needed no building regulations.’
He took me to the rear of the bar to show me his handiwork. I guess he was pretty proud of what he’d achieved, even though it was technically illegal. The centerpiece of the new room was a piano in an upright teak case chased with silver designs, acanthus leaves and lilies. A pair of ornate silver candlesticks stuck out above the keyboard, which was reversed from the usual layout, white notes raised out of black. It was a thing to behold, and Stormy had done the instrument justice by housing it on an octagonal stage in his covered yard.
‘The piano used to belong to Warena Samedi, told me she built it herself,’ he said proudly. ‘What I want to know is, how’d Don Marchais get to find out about me rebuilding the bar?’
I’d read in a local magazine that Warena Samedi had been some kind of hot-shot voodoo priestess back in the sixties, which I guessed meant she sold potions and rag-dolls to the easily fooled. The fact that she wore red leather miniskirts and looked more like a centerfold than a witch didn’t hurt business, either. I didn’t have too much time for people trying to perpetuate primitive black mythology, just because it suited them to believe there was something more exotic about people of a different skin color. But if she’d really built the piano and could play it like a dream, she at least had the soul of an artist.
‘Maybe one of your customers saw it when he came in here, and bears a grudge against you,’ I suggested. ‘Know anyone like that?’
Well, of course he did. Everyone who owns a bar has a few enemies. Stormy thought hard for a minute and made a connection with Marchais. I got all this from LaVinna, who told me that Marchais had appointed a guy called Sam Threefinger—they called him that because he got stupid-drunk one time over in some Creole bar in Metairie and shot up his own left hand—to take down any property extensions he couldn’t pull extra cash out of. Point is that Threefinger had been running a rival bar to Stormy’s across the street, and they’d had a big old falling out. Threefinger knew about the piano because he was a believer, and had bought up most of the items Warena Samedi once owned. Someone had written a book about her scandalous life, and as a consequence, her stuff fetched top money from collectors. Now he and Marchais were working Bourbon as a team, shaking down owners and helping themselves to whatever they liked.
I did not want to mess with this. It wasn’t my turf, and it wasn’t what my editor wanted. But maybe some part of me, the part that had once wanted to be a real journalist and not a features hack, sparked back into life when a story fell at my feet. I told myself I’d see if it went anywhere, write it up and then check around to find a buyer. I asked LaVinna what she thought Stormy was going to do about it, but I must have been staring too hard at her wide, deep, smooth cleavage because she told me she was ending her shift at six and maybe we should discuss it over dinner. Except that she came back to my room and we never did get that dinner.
Next morning the weather had worsened and it was hard not to think of Katrina as I fought my way up Canal Street. The NHC had pegged the little bugger swirling past the Florida coastline as a storm, not a hurricane, and weren’t even going to the trouble of naming it, but they’d been wrong before. I wanted to grab a meeting with Sam Threefinger, and picked up his address on the internet because he was using his nickname as a URL, like he was proud of it. He was running an antiques business on the side, and it didn’t take a genius to work out where he was getting his stock from. I figured if he was that much of a lush I could snag an interview with him in exchange for a couple of bottles.
But he wasn’t at his house. My timing was off; he was already on his way to see Stormy and make him take down his new patio. Most likely, I thought, he had designs on that piano, althoug
h he must have been pretty dumb not to think folks would put two and two together when they saw it in his store. So I retraced my steps to the bar, but the rain was sheeting off the rooftops like needles, and I’d only managed three blocks before my eyes were burning. I waited in a café as the tail of the storm hit hard and the girls on the next table started to share their memories of Katrina, how one had been forced to hide from looters, how another had her baby airlifted out without a name tag, and how she’d gone crazy trying to find it. It was all background for me; I took notes and kept quiet.
The streets didn’t look like they could get any wetter so I finished my coffee and pressed on. But I’d lost valuable time. When I arrived at Stormy’s, I was late again. This time the cops were already there, tying yellow plastic ribbons around the back of the bar.
LaVinna came over as soon as she saw me. ‘I told you that temper of his would do the job,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘What happened?’
‘Sam came in here and told Stormy that he and Marchais were getting a court order to close down the bar, and that he was impounding the piano.’
‘I knew it,’ I said. ‘He’s after that damn relic.’
‘Not any more he ain’t. Stormy took the shotgun down from behind the bar and pulled it on him. Short version is, they got in close and the damn thing went off.’
‘Jesus, is he hurt?’
‘He has a hole through his brain the size of a nickel so, yes, I guess it pinches a little.’
‘You don’t sound too upset.’
‘Listen, I liked him, I worked for him, but he was an old lech and he never raised my wages in four years. I have a little boy stuck at my grandma’s house going crazy with boredom. I was about to find myself a better job. But this ain’t gonna look good on my resume.’ She nodded back at the mess behind her. ‘After the bullet left Stormy’s head it went through the keyboard of the piano, then he fell back on top of it and the damn thing collapsed. The police got a blown-up body and an exploded piano back there to sort out. Now I got to stick around for witness statements instead of making tips.’
I looked over her shoulder to the mess on the patio. I could see Stormy’s legs sticking out from a pile of wood sticks and shattered veneer panels.
I’ll be honest here, I didn’t know LaVinna had a kid and it put me off seeing her again. But I wanted to flesh out the story, and she seemed the best way through it. I knew I could probably get to Sam Threefinger too, because he had the law on his side and had been attacked, and innocent parties like that were always happy to kick off about how badly they’d been treated. There’s something about knowing you’re in the wrong that makes you want to tell everyone you were right.
I missed something LaVinna said. ‘That is, if you’re going to stick around for a few more days,’ she was saying, like she had plans for us.
‘I don’t know,’ I told her. ‘I got to wait until Ren gets here and do the shots, but after that I’m gone.’
‘Right.’ She gave me a cool, steady look. ‘But you may end up getting caught out by the storm. It ain’t blown out yet.’ She made sure I knew what she meant.
I called Sam Threefinger but he wasn’t picking up, so I left a message for him to call my cellphone. Next, I rang a few local contacts and dragged promises out of them to at least read anything I wrote on the subject; seems there was plenty of interest in any story that included mention of Warena Samedi, so I decided to do a little more research. I started online, but kept hitting the same three or four sources, so it was necessary to put in some face-time with people who knew her.
Now, I don’t mean to be rude, but a lot of women find God when their men leave them, know what I mean? And Ms Samedi’s friends had found religion big time. Not just Christianity, though. I met up with Tamasha Woodfall, an old follower who lived in an apartment full of plants by the river, where she sat on an overstuffed stripey sofa watching the boats, her corkscrew copper hair piled on and around her head, her beads and bangles and bracelets clattering every time she moved her arms. Her plumpness protected her from being dated to any era, but I figured the stuff in her apartment went back at least sixty years. I liked her a lot, but she was crazy as a loon.
‘Warena didn’t just have knowledge of the old religion, she was a living part of the process,’ she told me. ‘Come over here and sit by me, boy.’
Frankly I didn’t know what she meant at all, and admitted it. And I wasn’t going to sit beside her either, because I could tell the old broad had wandering hands. ‘Are you talking about love potions, curses, stuff like that?’ I had to ask.
‘Oh, that’s just front-of-house sales,’ she said, waving the idea aside. ‘And nobody needs love potions, they just need to get in touch with themselves and their sex-u-al-ity, you know?’ She smoothed her fingers down the side of her breast, and I could see she’d be big trouble after dark and a few whiskies. It’s the old ones you have to watch out for.
‘So what did Warena do that other people couldn’t?’
‘All kinds of things. But her biggest talent? She could restore a form of life.’
‘You mean she could bring someone back from the dead?’
‘I wouldn’t use those words exactly, ’cause it’s not like that. I mean, the corporeal remains stay behind and go down to the grave, bless the Lord. It was more—a conjuration.’
I wasn’t sure there was such a word, but gave her the benefit of the doubt. ‘You ever see this happen?’
‘Oh sure, plenty of times.’
‘How did it work?’
‘The usual way. There was a service, songs and prayers, a series of incantations, rituals to observe, certain powdered herbs and minerals scattered in a prescribed sequence—sometimes she used the blood of a chicken, but I think some of that was for show, you know, so the clients felt they was getting value for their money.’
‘And what did they get? I mean, at the end?’
‘A restoration of the spirit, like I said, entirely separate from the body, but a kind of’—she watched the wide grey river for a minute, carefully formulating her words—‘essence of the departed. It wouldn’t stay long, a day or two at the most, but it was most definitely visible. When my Sammy died she brought him back to me, just for a few hours.’
‘Sammy was your husband?’
‘No, my dog, praise Jesus.’
‘But what was the point?’ I wondered if I was missing something obvious. ‘Why bring someone’s spirit back at all?’
‘Bless you, to bring peace to those left behind, of course. How many times have you wanted someone back, just for a few moments, for one last look of tenderness?’
I realised that she was staring intently at me. ‘But you’ve never lost anyone, have you?’ She made it sound almost sad.
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘No-one really close. I don’t know much about death.’
‘Then you don’t know about love, neither. You should testify to Christ the Lord and find the love.’
The conversation closed quickly after that, but I promised to look in on her again if I heard anything more. The other woman I went to see was Missy Allbright, who was nothing like her name, and lived on the first floor of a rundown apartment out in Metairie. The stairs were dark, the room was dark and she was dressed in black. The floor was covered in cats, some of them stuffed, and I couldn’t tell which ones were alive as I stumbled through them to her guest chair.
‘I’d give you some tea but I don’t really want you to stay that long,’ she announced, seating herself opposite.
‘Well, at least you’re honest.’
‘I have to tell you no good will come of mentioning that woman,’ she told me straight off. ‘Warena Samedi—her real name was Miriam Fellowes but that didn’t sound so enticing to the press—underneath that pretty hide she was a vengeful, messed up, mean old bitch.’
I remarked that she didn’t look so old in the pictures I had seen.
‘That’s ’cause she never again let herself be photographe
d after she was thirty. She played with fire all her life and got old real fast. You don’t race an engine without wearing down the parts.’
I asked Missy if she’d read the book about Warena. ‘I did, and I can tell you there wasn’t one word of truth in it.’
‘But did she really have a gift?’ I asked.
‘I can’t deny her that, but the way she used it—well, that wasn’t how we were taught.’
‘You have it too?’
She caught the rise in my voice. ‘Why is it everyone thinks she was the only one with special abilities?’
‘She had good PR and prominent tits,’ I ventured.
That got a laugh from Missy. ‘Maybe you and I’ll have some ginger tea.’
We talked until it got even darker. I thought the storm was going to suck the windows clean out of the room. ‘There was only one man she ever really loved,’ Missy told me. ‘You should have heard the sweet music they made in that bar of a night. Stormy worshipped her, but he couldn’t give her what she needed.’
‘What did she need?’
‘More. More of everything. The problem was that by this time she couldn’t turn it off.’
‘Turn what off?’
‘The sex energy, the power, the darkness that channeled right through her and kept on going until she became its slave. It destroyed everything around her and it finally killed her. After she was gone old Stormy lost around a hundred pounds, like something was eating him from the inside out.’
‘How did Warena die?’
‘She and Stormy were fighting all the time. She’d go out and stay missing for three, four days at a stretch, and he’d always take her back. Then she finally left him for good, and nobody saw her around here again. All I know about her death is what I read in the papers, but it was ugly. No-one really found out the truth. The cops got a call late one night to a filthy house with a bunch of dead men in it, and the story goes she was sleeping with all of them. Of course, there was something weird right at the end. The city coroner got himself fired for incompetence, because he swore the men died after she did, even though they’d been killed with her knife and her prints were all over the handle.’
Red Gloves, Volumes I & II Page 23