“Bill!”
The voice was distant but clear. It came from downtown. One navy instinct he did have: when his partner called out, he ran to him. Bill sprinted down the alley to the back of the plaza. He broke right, down Rampart.
“Bill!” Charlie’s voice was still faint—at least a block away.
He came to the terminus of the New Orleans Canal. He was fully exposed here, but could see nothing. He continued down Rampart, past the Texas Gas Station on Julia Street, and came to a work yard that occupied a full square block. The sign said LOUISIANA DEMOLISHING COMPANY, HECTOR SCHMITZ, PROP. The gate was open. Beyond it stood a huge pile of amputated cypress trees, each trunk easily seventy feet long.
Behind this great wall of lumber came an agonized shriek.
“He’s loose!” screamed Charlie.
Bill prepared himself. He squatted slightly to lower his center of gravity, raised his weapon, and prayed wildly in his mind.
In a frenzied flurry a form whirled into view from behind the wall of trees, mewling incoherently, and for a moment Bill wondered whether it wasn’t again the snorting hog attacking him, eyes wide and crazed. The silence became very loud in his ears, the Klaxon revving up until Bill suspected he had gone deaf.
Bill noticed that the right part of the highwayman’s face had fallen off. The man stumbled and raised one arm. His hand rotated as if unscrewing an invisible lightbulb. The revving grew even louder, climaxing in a series of detonations.
Everything went still.
Charlie’s disembodied voice came from behind the lumber. “You get ’im?”
Bill tried to form words.
Charlie crept into view. “He must’ve got nervous when he heard you,” he said, approaching tentatively. “He was sleeping when I found him.”
“He was asleep?”
“He’s sure sleeping now.”
There were footsteps behind Bill.
“New Orleans Police Department!” someone shouted. “Yay! NOPD!”
“It’s us, Harry.” Charlie raised his hands. “Bastrop and Breaux.” Charlie gestured at Bill to lower his revolver.
He saw that he was still pointing it at the body on the ground.
Bill turned to find Harry Dodson’s silhouette edging through the gate, followed by Harry himself. Harry looked minuscule in the wide factory entrance. He had shed his bloody jacket but still wore his cap. That’s funny, Bill thought. A tiny navy in his undershirt with a cap but no uniform. That’s a funny sight.
Harry approached, relaxed by the sound of Charlie’s voice. But he lurched violently when he saw the corpse. He bent over it, tentative. He knelt. He peered into what remained of its face. He seemed baffled.
“That’s him, right?” said Bill.
Harry Dodson, his mouth contorted in a jagged rictus, turned to look up at Bill.
“Harry? That’s him, isn’t it? The guy shot Big Blond?”
It wasn’t confusion on Harry’s face, Bill realized. It was horror.
“That’s him, Harry—isn’t it?”
“Billy,” said Charlie.
Bill ignored him. He wished Harry would speak.
“Harry?” said Bill, louder. “Isn’t that him? The highwayman?”
His own voice sounded strange in his ears, as if it were coming from another person. Was it coming from another person? From the body on the ground? The more he thought about it, the more certain he became. Yes, the body spoke to him. While Charlie gaped idiotically and Harry, solemn now, stared at Bill, the dead man screamed out of the half of his mouth that remained. He pleaded through his bloodied broken teeth, screaming, “That’s him—isn’t it, Harry? That’s the highwayman who shot Big Blond. Isn’t that right, Harry? Harry?”
MAY 26, 1918—UPTOWN
A fat red-haired fellow stood at the entrance to the alley. His bearing—stooped posture, smug arms crossed over the swollen chest, a smirk, just visible in the streetlamp’s pale gumdrop light—exuded a cool self-assurance, as if he and Isadore had made a plan to meet right here, next to the garbage barrels in the middle of the 2100 block of St. Charles Avenue, at exactly 4:09 a.m., and he was mightily looking forward to their parley. Isadore flashed the palms of his hands, the palest skin on his body. They were trembling; he jammed them into his pockets. He gave a silent prayer in gratitude for having been spotted from a hundred yards away and not surprising the man by coming up behind him. Isadore concentrated on maintaining an even stride, holding eye contact, and resisting the urge to run. As he stepped into the streetlamp’s penumbra he forced a large, supplicatory smile.
“Sir.” Isadore nodded, two stiffs passing each other on the way to work.
“I don’t know you.” The Paddy seemed very pleased with himself, as a toddler might be pleased at forming a full sentence.
“I can see what you’re thinking,” said Isadore. St. Charles was so silent that he could hear the vibration of the iron streetcar tracks against the gravel, though the streetcar itself was not yet in sight. “You’re wondering if I’m up to something.”
“Something.” He was almost exactly the same diameter as the garbage barrels beside him. “There’s been some business with a Negro highwayman. Maybe you heard.”
“I stay right here,” lied Isadore. “Down the block.”
“That so.”
“I’m puzzled,” he said daringly, “that I haven’t seen you around yet.” He wondered where Bailey was. He hoped Bailey had been smart enough to go home when they parted, at the first sight of the police, that he hadn’t kept chasing down bakery-truck drivers like a stray dog. “I’ve been staying here nearly a week.”
“At whose pleasure?”
“My old lady works for some gentlefolks here.”
“Which folks?”
Isadore laughed—too loudly perhaps, but the laughter was the only channel for his rage. It often went like that with him, the terror, unexpected and sudden, slipping into rage. It was enraging to be scared all the time. Enraging and also exhausting, being perpetually alert to mortal threats that might be triggered by the crime of walking on the wrong street, looking at the wrong person, saying the wrong thing or saying the right thing with the wrong inflection. Not to mention being the wrong color, or no color, not quite white enough to pass, not dark enough to be invisible. But in those moments when he came face-to-face with his fear—face-to-face with a red-faced Paddy on a dark night on New Orleans’s whitest street, who had legal sanction to kill him—he felt something close to relief. Nothing bad could happen anymore. It was already happening. The awareness soothed his fear, which is to say his rage, and his mind focused.
He could not reveal that he was visiting his wife because if the Tiltons found out they would fire her. He could not run because the watchman would shoot. He could not head back to the Battlefield, into the dragnet, nor continue blindly into the night, now that he’d said he stayed down the block. He could not do anything. It was a familiar feeling.
He imitated the watchman, crossing his arms over his chest, to create the impression that he was in no rush either—that he wouldn’t mind chatting until sunup. With his right hand, concealed beneath his left elbow, he felt through his jacket for the butt of his revolver, tucked into the rolled-up waistband of his trousers. Its heft reassured him and he told his next lie.
“I call them Sir and Missus, to be honest.” Isadore gave his voice a singsongy lilt and despised himself for it, picturing a shoeblack executing a buck-and-wing. “That is,” he said, “when I have the chance. I keep unfriendly hours, on account of my trade.”
The watchman nodded. “What’s that?”
“Sir?” Isadore snuck a glance at the alley. It wasn’t ten yards away. Halfway down the alley was the back entrance to the Tiltons’ house.
“You work nights.”
“I play the honky-tonks, sir.” Isadore recognized his mistake as soon as he heard himself say it. Most of the tonks were in the District or the Battlefield. He might as well have said he ran prostitutes, played
cotch, cut cocaine. He might as well have said he was an accomplice to the highwayman.
The Paddy’s grin stayed frozen but his eyes sharpened, a photograph developing in a chemical bath.
“When I’m not working my regular gigs, at least,” said Isadore. The sound of his own voice made him want to vomit. “The New Orleans Country Club,” he lied. “Economy Hall. On the weekends you can find me at Spanish Fort, playing at the gentlefolks’ picnics. Cornet man, myself. Just about blowed my brains out tonight.”
“Jass.” The man spat. “’S’not music.”
“No, sir. But it’s a living.”
“Where’s your instrument?”
Now that was a good question. The watchman’s ghastly grin stretched a bit wider, the streetlamp notching shadows in the creases of his cheeks. The streetcar tracks hummed louder. Isadore made a show of looking down at his arms, as if surprised to realize that he wasn’t holding his horn. The weight of the Webley & Scott tugged on his hip.
“Mr. Webley, at the Country Club?” he said blindly, crazily. “Mr. Webley holds our instruments overnight so we don’t have to carry them home.” Isadore was speaking quickly—too quickly, perhaps—and might have kept going had the watchman not poked a stubby forefinger into his own eye. He dug around the socket, as if trying to carve out the eyeball.
“I got something in here,” mumbled the Paddy. “Something what won’t get out.” Isadore tried to master his disgust while the man dug deeper into his skull with his filthy finger. “Doctor prescribed silver nitrate. But with the salary I draw from the neighborhood association…” He kept digging. The tracks rumbled; the next streetcar couldn’t be five blocks away. Undoubtedly navies would be on the streetcar. The police were fanning wide tonight.
“Sir, how much does the medicine cost?”
“Oh?” said the Paddy, removing his finger. Isadore could swear the finger was covered with a waxy residue. “I expect it’ll take about a dollar.”
It was a trick. If Isadore took out a bill, he would renew the man’s suspicion.
“Would you allow me to make a donation to the eyeball fund?” Isadore reached into his pocket, past his roll, and scooped out the coins. “Here’s seventy-two cents. It’s everything I got.”
The watchman gave an irritated grunt but accepted the money. “C’mon. I’ll see you home.”
“I know the way. I’ll let you continue with your rounds.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a dangerous night. You said you lived on this block?” He paused. “Or are you down the alley?”
The men stared at each other for some time.
“Down the alley.”
With a magnanimous gesture, the Paddy indicated that Isadore should lead.
The alley, which ran between the delivery entrances of grand houses, was littered with broken things: a cracked cistern, a dismantled pram, a splintered palette stamped RIZZO’S GROC. He saw his lifeless body lying facedown in the alley, another broken, discarded thing. The Tiltons’ door was the fourth down, maybe twenty paces away. Isadore gripped hard the barrel of the revolver. In the moonlight, puddles of sewage, swarming with mosquitoes, glowed green. A rat glanced up from a nest of chicken bones, rubbing its paws like a wino before a fire. If the watchman struck him down, would the rats find his body before Orly did? The Paddy was so close behind him that Isadore could smell the gin on his stubble. He could hear the man’s watery exhalations. Without thought Isadore twisted and swung the gun barrel into the watchman’s rheumy eye. There was a loud pop and the watchman fell sideways to the ground. He didn’t move. Panic electrified Isadore. It told him: Move.
Within a heartbeat he was at the small back door to the Tiltons’ manor. He glanced once behind him—the watchman remained motionless on his back—and swung the door open. His wife’s amazed face stared back at him. She stood wrapped in a thick brown muslin bathrobe cinched at the waist with a lanyard.
“Izzy!”
“Don’t speak.” He closed the door behind him. “Does this lock?”
“It don’t lock,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”
In the middle of the tiny room a copper lantern stood on a doll-size table covered with green oilcloth. The lantern cast onto the walls the roiling waves of a black ocean.
“Turn off the light,” he said.
“Why are we whispering?”
“I came to surprise you. A night watchman saw me, got suspicious.”
“Mr. Boyle. Where is he?”
Isadore snuffed the lantern and returned to the door, listening for movement. He heard nothing but his own shallow breathing. In the moonlight he took in Orly’s room for the first time—he had dropped her off before, using the alley, but had never dared to enter. The ceiling wasn’t seven feet high. A narrow bed lay against one wall, the sheets rumpled. A tiny brown oval rug covered the remaining floor space. Despite its size, the room was meticulously clean. At the back, between the doll table and the bed, a door connected to the main part of the Tiltons’ house. He was touched to see that Orly had mounted above her mattress a torn print of Saint Peter Claver, parrots on his shoulders and an infant in his arms.
“We’re clear,” Isadore said finally. Even if the man, Boyle, came to, he’d have no idea where Isadore had gone. He’d have to assume that Isadore ran out the other side of the alley.
“Why did you come here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
Orly gave him a serious look.
“I guess I was excited after the show. We were on it tonight. I tell you, it was getting Spanish in there. Real Spanish talkers, the bunch of us.”
Orly slapped his mouth.
“How stupid do you got to be?” She caught herself raising her voice and repeated herself in a whisper. “How stupid do you got to be?”
Isadore rubbed his mouth. A wave of exhaustion overtook him. He leaned back on the table for support.
“You almost died.” She said it matter-of-factly. Her brown eyes—normally so open, warm, erotic—narrowed to slits. “Mr. Boyle is a savage.”
“Come.”
She gestured behind her, presumably toward the nursery, where the two Tilton children slept. “You know how easily I can get fired?” He noticed that, despite her anger, she was trembling. She never trembled. She sat heavily on the bed. “I love you, Izzy, but you’re bringing evil home with you.”
“The watchman doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Forget Boyle. It’s not hard to find someone to wash children’s behinds. If the Tiltons come to suspect I have a man coming around, even if he is my husband—”
He sighed. Lately she had begun to place emphasis on that word. Whether conscious or not, it conveyed a subtle indictment, to the effect that he wasn’t holding up his marital duties: bringing home sufficient money to support his family, to be precise. “It was a long night at Savocca’s,” he said, “and the streets being so wild—”
She shot him a wrinkled, pinching look. “You were at Joe Savocca’s tonk?”
“—with the highwayman on the loose, but I don’t worry about that so much as the navies, there’re more of them than termites tonight, fanned out looking for any black son of a bitch they see walking the streets.”
“This morning you said Ferrantelli’s.”
“Savocca’s. Anyway, you should’ve seen Sore Dick…”
She let him talk himself out of breath. She had been looking forward to bawling him out all right and she was going to take her time with it. But he wasn’t about to make it easy for her. He reminded himself, halfheartedly, that he had done nothing wrong. At least nothing wrong to Orly. He had taken up with Bailey for her, after all. Not that he could tell her that.
“I figured it’d be stupid to walk through the Battlefield. Besides, I didn’t want to scare your mother coming home so late. Besides, I wanted to see you.”
She nodded patiently, languorously—no doubt the same gesture she used with the Tilton kids when they made excuses for their cretinism. “You we
re playing at Savocca’s,” she said in a reasonable voice.
“That’s what I said.”
“Where’s your horn?”
“Funny, that’s what the Paddy said.”
“What’s that?” She sniffed—a bit melodramatically, it seemed to Isadore. “Smells like the gutter.”
It wasn’t the gutter, but she was close. It was fear—similar to sweat but stiffer, like a toxic mushroom.
She shook her head. “Get out.”
“What?”
“Go out the other end of the alley.”
“What about the watchman?”
“You said it. He’s either passed out or he’s gone.” She rubbed her stomach absently. That was another new habit she’d been developing. It made her look as if she were hungry all the time. “This job’s the only steady money we have.”
“Dick agreed to take my horn. He lives across from Savocca’s. The cornet’s with Dick.”
She paused, trying to read him. “All right,” she said at last, her tone softening. She rose from the bed. “Give me your jacket.”
“Thank you, baby.” He removed the jacket and handed it over. He unbuttoned his shirt. He really did feel exhausted. He could have slept standing up, leaning against the wall. Given the size of her bed, that might be the only place for him. “We were Spanish tonight, I’m telling you. Just a bunch of regular Spaniards. We stormed. We thundered and lightninged. We tornadoed. I’m telling you, people are starting to understand.”
When he glanced up she was holding his roll. She had tossed the jacket onto the bed. The pockets were turned inside out.
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