by David Fulmer
Since that time he had been more vigilant, taking advantage only of women who had no man to protect them. Even that had diminished as the years went by and his random cruelties began to eat at him.
That didn't mean he couldn't relish this moment. It was Valentin St. Cyr's woman standing before him, after all. He spent a moment picturing her undressed and at his mercy, then pulled his thoughts away from that scenario. If he abused her in any way, St. Cyr would come for him. Still, he could use the girl to his own ends; in this case, for bait.
She spoke up, poking into his thoughts. "Am I under arrest?"
Picot did look at her now, his brow pinching. "If you are, you'll be the first to know." He pushed some papers around on his desk. "Is there any point in me asking you where St. Cyr is at the moment?"
Justine said, "I don't know." She tilted her head. "I told the detective that."
"Oh, well, then I guess we made a mistake bringing you in." Though the captain's eyes widened clownishly, there was no humor in his voice. He saw the way she was watching him, prey to predator, just a little unsure of his power, and he felt a tingle in his bones. He had St. Cyr's woman, and there was nothing the Creole could do about it, having run away to hide.
When he looked at her again, their gazes locked and he saw that she was trying to read his thoughts. She was a sly one, all right, and had no doubt learned some tricks from St. Cyr. The captain remembered the other officers were standing by idly, surely wondering what the hell was going on. He quickly reverted to his officious posture, though his face remained flushed with agitation.
"Where's the damned matron?" he inquired to no one in particular.
"She's out there," Detective Weeks said.
"All right, have her park this one somewhere."
Weeks took Justine by the elbow to lead her out. Again, she said, "Am I under arrest?" She sounded like was losing patience with this foolishness.
"You ask too many questions," Picot said, and waved a dismissive hand.
He watched through the doorway as the matron, a trusty guard from the women's prison who wasn't more than twenty-five herself, directed her charge to the bull pen, a part of the room cordoned off by a low molded railing and set with chairs and a small table.
The captain wanted her to sit there and stew the rest of the day, if need be, and think about where St. Cyr might be, what he was doing, and if he was going to leave her to fend for herself.
SEVENTEEN
Uptown New Orleans woke Saturday morning to the news that the Storyville murders hadn't stopped after all. Another shot-dead body marked with a slash had been found on the streets, and the Creole detective St. Cyr had gone into hiding with a warrant out for his arrest in the death of William Brown.
The Daily Picayune and the Sun had already assigned reporters the task of wrapping up the story of the murderer Brown. The Sun was the bolder of the two and had someone tracking down St. Cyr for an interview by way of a young rounder who went by the moniker Each. But then the afternoon papers took a sharp turn with the lurid tale of a fresh killing in the tenderloin, a sure sign that something had gone terribly wrong in that part of the city, and that citizens should be on their guard.
Telephones had been ringing in parlors and foyers through the night as crabby men sniped back and forth. Chief of Police Reynolds's voice was trembling with anger when he finally got Tom Anderson on the line.
"You made fools out of the both of us!" he yelled.
"Calm down, Chief. We don't—"
"You had me put a murderer back on the street," Reynolds went on, rolling over him. "Now won't I have a hell of a time explaining that?"
The King of Storyville bit his tongue.
"Where is he?" the chief demanded.
"Where is who? St. Cyr?"
"Yes, St. Cyr. Who else? We have a warrant out on that Creole son of a bitch."
"I don't know where he is. He's not—"
"Don't you dare try to hide him."
Reynolds's tone was severe, as if he was dressing down some underling, and Anderson decided he'd heard enough. "I told you he doesn't work for me, goddamnit."
The chief took a step back to allow a moment of calm, and the two old heavyweights went to their corners. Momentarily, the King of Storyville said, "He's not my man anymore, Billy. It's different now. I helped him out because I couldn't believe he'd be so wrong about this man Brown. I still can't. But..."
Reynolds, standing in the study in his house in Carrollton, heard the odd note of defeat in Anderson's voice. The man sounded almost pitiful.
"Well." The chief was confounded. "If you do hear from him, he needs to give up. He'll get a fair trial. You tell him I said that." He lowered his voice as if there were other people in their respective rooms. "You know there's still bad blood at the department. The last thing we need is a 'shot while escaping' situation."
"He's not going to come to me," Anderson said with a sigh. "He knows I can't do anything for him. He's on his own." He paused for a quiet instant, then said, "Of course, he always preferred it that way."
The chief of police was mulling these last weary words when the line went dead.
***
Officer McKinney had been assigned the task of accompanying the victim's body to the morgue and working up an identification. He knew full well this was intentional, that Captain Picot didn't trust him and wanted him out of the way. The captain was as edgy as a rattlesnake when it came to Valentin St. Cyr, and alert for any sign of sympathy in that direction.
James McKinney had failed that test. Having become intrigued by St. Cyr from the moment their paths had first crossed, he had taken the time to learn that the detective had come from the uptown neighborhood around First and Liberty streets, had lost his family, and had later changed his name in order to become a New Orleans police officer. When that career ended badly, he hired on as Tom Anderson's man, responsible for the security of the red-light district.
He was a lone wolf and skilled investigator who had followed an uncommon path by working both sides of the law. The infamous King Bolden had been his best friend. He carried on a turgid romance with a onetime sporting girl named Justine Mancarre. He had been embroiled in several of the most remarkable cases in uptown New Orleans' recent history and had broken the Black Rose and jass murders, along with the Benedict killing.
McKinney understood that the brass cursed St. Cyr because he had embarrassed them time and again. Captain Picot in particular held him accountable for some unnamed offense. McKinney wondered what it could be that would inspire such bile. He was enough of a detective to know it was more than just two men who happened to despise each other.
Whatever it was didn't matter this day. He had been given an order to carry out, and while he had no love of dead bodies, he was curious to identify the victim.
The same two attendants—the dull and quiet one and his smaller, talkative companion—were waiting for him. They stepped into the alley and went about the business of unloading the shrouded corpse onto a gurney and maneuvering it back inside. The horse-drawn meat wagon rolled away, and Detective McKinney followed the two living and one dead citizen down the long corridor.
The attendants stripped the body, irked at having a copper standing by, which made it impossible for them to snatch any overlooked prizes from the clients: a watch, cuff links, now and then a few dollars in coin. So they stood aside, their arms crossed as McKinney went through the victim's clothes, finding nothing helpful, save for two calling cards with the same name and address printed on them:
Roland Parks
No. 1212 Perdido Street—2nd Fl.
Such cards could be found in many pockets. The lack of any profession generally meant that the holder didn't have one, other than day laborer, drifter, or petty criminal. Even gamblers carried cards, describing them as Agents or Advisors, whatever those titles signified.
So the casually employed Mr. Roland Parks had the prior evening left his room in a boardinghouse on Perdido Street and travele
d to Storyville. Then, before or after visiting one of the houses, he was murdered, cut, and left where he fell, to be discovered some time later by a maid on her way home.
The policeman spent another moment with the victim's clothes. The bullet hole in Parks's jacket was surrounded by a corona of dried blood and a black residue. After he shuffled through the rest of the garments, he put them aside and turned back to the body. Parks was a common-looking white man, his face hitched in an expression of slight puzzlement, as if he, too, couldn't imagine why he had been marked for death.
"Your bad luck, fellow," McKinney murmured. The attendants exchanged a glance. The detective examined the wound, a hole the size of a Liberty nickel and the flesh around it bruised and stained. Taking the appearance of the jacket into account, he surmised that the weapon had been held dead against the body. No wonder Roland Parks looked baffled; a fellow stepped up to ask for a light or the time, and a second later he was dead. The cut on his forehead had a sloppy appearance, as if the assailant didn't care about getting it right.
McKinney straightened, closed his notebook, and put it away.
"All right, then," he said. Til see if I can find anyone who knew the man. Maybe there's next of kin. And if not..."
"Then we know what to do with him," the older attendant said with a smirk.
Evelyne spent extra time at her dressing mirror before she started her trip downtown. She could not remove the flush of excitement from her face or slow the thumping of her heart.
Every piece of her plan was in place. She had gone undetected, slipping through the undergrowth as sharply and slyly as a fox. Even when things went awry, she didn't panic, the sign of a true leader.
She tucked the last ivory pin in her hair and stepped to the window. The rain was drenching the cobbles of Perrier Street. She saw the Winton idling at the curb, the exhaust pipe billowing thin smoke into the afternoon mist. Though the top was up and the flaps were down, she could picture Thomas with his hands gripping and releasing the wheel and tapping his foot nervously, eager to get gone. He could wait a little longer. It was only the afternoon, and Evelyne wanted to savor the moment.
She accepted as simple truth that along the course of every person's life came an intersection grander than any other. The choice made at this junction would echo down the years to come. She had reached such a crossroads, had made her decision, and so had drawn her fate.
The plan that had begun many months ago as a wicked diversion gradually bloomed as a strategy to be carried out. The District was coming apart. Evelyne recognized an opportunity and, rather than wait, helped it along.
Knocking down Tom Anderson had been simple. The King of Storyville was already tottering, getting older and weaker by the day. Lulu White and the other madams, Negroes and dagos and crude white women, could barely manage their mansions.
The only uncertain player in this rogue theater was Valentin St. Cyr. When Louis Jacob got around to bringing up the Creole detective, she was curious, then fascinated, at first enjoying a girlish thrill imagining the man. She went about ascribing to him a face and body, building a character out of the pages of a dime novel. When reality took over and she learned more, she was even more entranced.
She hired a copyboy at the newspaper to go through the files of index cards and bring her old issues with stories that mentioned him. She paid a clerk at City Hall to go into the police files and pull records that carried his name. It was New Orleans, and no errand was impossible if the money was right.
As time went by, she saw him as a potential enemy, the one person who might come to Storyville's rescue and wreck her plans. So she sought to draw him out and check him, and his skills were so rusty that he walked into her trap. It, and he, should have been finished, except that he managed to escape, and Evelyne realized that the man was her match. She decided it was time to present the Creole detective with his own special intersection.
It was another brilliant piece to be embroidered into a grand architecture created by her alone. She fixed it in her mind a final time, then turned from the window to make her way downstairs to the impatient Thomas.
***
Captain Picot stood at the front window gazing out at the dark city. The clerk called that Chief Reynolds was on the line.
"Jesus Christ almighty!" Picot groaned. He was sure the chief wanted to dress him down over losing St. Cyr.
He stepped to the desk and lifted the receiver gently to his ear. The chief laid into him, squawking like an angry rooster.
"What the hell is going on down there?" he demanded.
"Chief, we're doing every—"
"Well, you're not doing enough!" Reynolds's voice swooped. "What's your plan?"
"I'm putting additional officers on the street," Picot said quickly.
"That won't do it," the chief snapped with impatience. "We need more than that. This son of a bitch is thumbing his nose at us."
Picot allowed a significant pause, a signal to his superior. "We can close the net on him," he said.
"What's that mean?"
"We can start shutting down the District."
Reynolds said, "Good lord, Captain. Shut it down? Do you know what kind of a commotion that would cause? It would be chaos."
"We already have that, sir."
"No, we can't do it. There'd be too much trouble."
Picot understood: Too many important people had too much money invested. Not to mention the local diocese, full or part owner of at least a dozen properties in the District, by way of holding companies.
"I don't mean permanently," he said smoothly. "And I don't mean the whole place. We've been wanting to clean up that damned mess up on Claiborne and Robertson for a long time." He took another second's pause, then said, "We could probably close a couple more streets and no one would squawk."
He braced himself for the chief to shriek back that he was out of his mind and was quietly surprised when Reynolds said, "I don't know ... I'd be stepping on some toes..."
Captain Picot understood that this meant Tom Anderson's. They'd be tangling with the King of Storyville himself. Tired as he might be, Anderson wouldn't let go without a fight.
Picot knew he was taking a big gamble, and if he lost, he'd be finished. He had no doubt that the chief would find a way to dump it all squarely in his lap.
"Where would the women go?" Reynolds inquired ruminatively, breaking the silence.
"Away," Picot said. "Let them be someone else's problem for a while."
After a vacant moment, Reynolds said, "Have you found St. Cyr?"
Picot, surprised at the change of tack, said, "No, sir, but we will. He'll be in jail before the night's out. I can guarantee that."
Of course, he had no idea if any such thing was possible; it was more important to placate the chief and worry about the rest later.
Reynolds took a pause, then said, "Don't do anything other than lock him down until you hear from me again."
"Yes, sir. Understood."
Captain Picot dropped the handset back into the cradle, thinking that no matter how long it took, sooner or later everyone got their due, even the likes of Valentin St. Cyr.
Once word of the latest murder made the rounds, business ebbed. A number of gentlemen who were in houses when they heard the news came up with excuses and cut their evenings short. Others who had regular Saturday-night visits turned around and headed back the way they had come. Some even stayed home and bedded their wives. It had the inklings of a disaster in the making.
Lulu White had watched the whole bizarre drama unfold from her Mahogany Hall parlor, first the murders, then the shooting of the suspect, and finally the twist that sent Valentin St. Cyr into hiding and put the whole of Storyville on edge.
Not willing to stand by and watch her place of business crumble into dust, she put on one of her best dresses and marched down the line to collect Antonia Gonzales and then Countess Willie Piazza.
The three madams made a formidable brigade on Basin Street, each with a
security man in tow, a trio of bejeweled ships pushed along by heavier tugs. It was coming on to twilight, and they were all three done in their finest: long dresses, huge Floradora hats, ostrich boas, cloaks befitting queens in court. It was unfortunate that there were not more spectators to see them arrive at the doors of Anderson's Café with a full head of steam, leaving their roughnecks to loiter outside on the banquette.
The Café, like most drinking and gambling establishments, was off-limits to females except the better class of sporting women, meaning the prettiest of the octoroons. It had always caused a bit of rancor, more so as women began agitating for certain rights. Rather than fight it, Tom Anderson, in a stroke of inspiration, created a women's salon off the main floor, one with its own small bar and tables and effectively shielded from prying eyes by a heavy brocade curtain. It was into this lounge that Lulu White led the other two madams, as whispers of astonishment trailed in their wake.
Each had been hanging around the bar at the Café to see if he could pick up any word about Valentin, Miss Justine, and the coppers while he tried to decide what to do with the envelope that was stuffed in his pocket. He now stood by in wonder as the madams passed. "With a curt word and an imperious twiddle of her gloved fingers, Miss Lulu sent him running to fetch Mr. Anderson from the upstairs office.
The women had barely tasted their champagne when the King of Storyville appeared through the curtained archway, pushing a smile before him.
"Ladies," he murmured. "What a surprise. And a pleasure."
The three feminine heads performed one nod. Countess Piazza and Antonia Gonzales smiled slightly. Miss Lulu treated him to a searching gaze, noting the flushed cheeks, tight brow, and eyes that seemed a little despondent. It was no surprise that he was feeling low after allowing such a mess to fester under his very nose.
And yet, even in the midst of mayhem, she knew he could still be a charmer, and so before he could befuddle her two companions with sweet talk and engaging smiles, she drove directly to the business at hand.