“I was very worried,” said Bill. “I thought … I didn’t know what to think.”
“I’m sorry I wrote. It was rash.”
“Of course you should’ve written.” The emotion pressed behind his eyes. He took her hand and squeezed. The skin was clammy, the fingers smaller than he remembered. Fatigue gathered around her pinkish eyes and in tense folds beneath her chin. Her greasy hair was tied in a ponytail. It looked fuller than before; perhaps she had stopped losing it once she left him. She did not squeeze his hand back.
“I’m very tired.”
“You smell like mustard.” He felt like a moron as soon as he said it.
“It’s the poultice. Mustard seed.”
“How do you feel?”
“I’ve tried to feel well. I’ve tried hard. The nurse gave me something.”
Her hand absently made flexing movements, as if squeezing a sponge. He took up the chart, which hung by a tether from the bedpost. It was three pages long. The entries, which began more than two days earlier, listed medicines beside their dosages: ice five mins for fever—cool enemata, sod. bicarbonate for hyperpyrexia—chloral hydrate for delirium—paregoric, codein and whisky for cough—jalap. powder, castor oil w/ turpentine for bowels. In a parallel column the nurses charted fluctuations in Maze’s temperature. She had entered the hospital with a 104 fever; the second day it had increased to 105.5. The most recent reading was 103.
“Doctor said it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“When did you return from Abita?”
She paused. “I don’t remember. I developed a fever and found the next train. I wore a cape over my head.”
She wiped a strand of sweaty hair from her forehead and he noticed her fingernails for the first time. They were long and blackened down to the quick.
“I’m on the edge of catching the Axman. There are some problems with the investigation—office politics—but I’m close.”
She regarded him blankly.
“The Axman—the guy going around hacking grocers to death. There was just another attack a couple days ago. A couple and their child in Gretna.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
Before he could respond, she recoiled into a violent cough. She pressed a hand towel over her mouth. When she removed the towel, he saw that it was lightly sprayed with blood. He touched the back of her head, but the gesture felt unnatural and she appeared irritated by the contact. He withdrew his hand.
“Funny,” he said. “I guess I never told you about the investigation.”
“I’m grateful that you came, Billy. But I need to rest.” She shut her eyes. Or eye—one eye was buried in her pillow.
No, he had not told her about the investigation. But he had never thought about the investigation without thinking about her. She had called him a liar but he would be honest now. Honest about all that mattered, at least. Eloise Obitz did not matter. She was a means to obtain evidence. Which was a means to solve the case. Which was a way to win back Maze.
“I want to tell you everything,” he said. “I’ve changed entirely.”
She coughed lightly.
“I’m about to solve the biggest murder case in the city. I took it up after everyone else gave up.”
“Is it dangerous?” She didn’t open her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
She patted his hand. Her breathing had become heavy, unnatural, as if she were the one struggling to breath through a gauze mask. He yanked off his own mask.
“Why are you telling me this?” She spoke slowly, as if within a dream. “You come here. You see how sick I am.”
“You’re right.”
“You tell me about police business.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s just that—I’m scared.”
“Scared about me? Or scared about your work?”
“I am scared about you. Us. Everything. I guess I’m afraid of everything at once.”
She breathed deeply and the pressure of the breath made her wince.
“I was scared about your work,” she said. “I was scared the way you threw yourself into it, after the war. It was like you were chasing disaster, violence.”
“There’s a difference between the way I am now,” said Bill, “and the way I was. I’m not letting the fear stop me anymore.”
“Did it stop you?”
“It stopped me. Then it started me up again. It made me reckless.”
“Scared about everything, you said. What’s everything?”
“Everything. Failure. Chaos. Weakness. Confusion. Death.”
She opened her eyes. “Are you really afraid of death?”
“Of course. Yes.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“Death isn’t so bad, Bill. The fear is the bad part.”
He took in her frail body, her trembling fingers, her flickering eyes. “Death is exactly the worst part.”
“What do you think about, when you think about it?”
“Oblivion.”
“What’s the alternative? Immortal life?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad not to live forever. I’m having trouble keeping my hair as it is. I’d be a bald old lady.”
“If we lived longer, we’d get better at doing it.”
“The knowledge of death makes life worth something.”
“Wouldn’t we enjoy life more if we didn’t have to worry about dying? Think how free that would make us.”
“Why did you pull off your sanitary mask?”
“I guess it’s pretty dumb: a navy who’s afraid of guns. Whose fear makes him run at guns.”
“There’s nothing dumb about being afraid. Ouch.”
“What—your head?”
“It’s just a whisker.” She winced. “It passed.”
“A whisker?”
“It’s like a brief shiver of pain that whisks you away from yourself.”
“Should I call the nurse?”
She shook her head to one side. “I don’t understand why you never told me about it before—the fear.”
“I never told myself.”
“I love you. You should tell me everything.”
“I love you.”
“It’s not fear I mind. It’s dishonesty.” She turned her head and coughed again, into her pillow. “I saw the fear in your paintings.”
“What I fear most about death is losing you.”
She gazed at him with her one eye—wet, pinkish, piteous. The eye is an atrium for disease.
“The pain is getting worse in my head,” said Maze. “It gets to where it feels like it is my head.”
“What do you mean?”
“First it’s inside my head. Then it radiates outward until it fills my head and the head is inside the pain. The pain is a bubble that contains my head.”
Bill called to the nurse but she was on the other side of the ward, preparing a syringe.
“I wish someone could come and get it out of my head.” Maze winced, her mouth straining.
“Nurse!” shouted Bill. “Nurse!”
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“I’m not leaving until this is over.”
Maze’s face fixed in an agonized rictus.
“I’m not afraid.” Bill hoped that he sounded confident, strong. He hoped he sounded like a different man. He hoped he was becoming that man. But merely picking up the Axman investigation would not do it. He saw that now. His cowardice had led to too much death already. He had to stop the killer dead.
Maze broke into a sob. Her hand drifted up from the mattress. “I’m glad you’re here. Billy? Are you still here?”
“I’m here, Maisie.”
“Oh, Billy,” she said. “I’m afraid.”
* * *
Charlie shook his head with both hands in consternation. “Uh-uh. That don’t pay.”
; “It’s an arm. What don’t you understand? Most bodies come with two.”
“That’s just it. We found two arms already. This here is three.”
A motorcar rumbled toward them across the denuded plain.
“What’s this?”
“Foreman come back?”
“Foremen,” said Bill, “don’t drive automobiles like that.”
A man dressed in a shepherd’s plaid suit unfolded himself from the passenger seat. His formidable executive neck was secured with a pumpkin-hued cravat, and a gray felt hat rested low over his sharp executive eyes. He stepped gingerly onto the turf, careful not to muddy his loafers.
“Where is Mr. Davenport?” he asked, addressing none of the assembled officers in particular.
“He mean the foreman?” said Charlie.
“I do not mean the foreman.” The man spoke with an accent that reminded Bill of the British commanders he’d met abroad. The voice was soft, lilting, indifferent to being heard. “I am speaking of Hugh Davenport, my nephew, vice president of Hibernia Bank. He is the liaison between the foreman and myself.”
“I know your nephew.”
The man’s skeptical glare struck Bill like a stiff breeze.
“I met him a couple of weeks ago,” Bill continued. “The last time we visited the canal. I haven’t seen him today.”
“Very well. My name is Rudolph Denzler. I am bank president. The foreman called my secretary in a frantic state. I gather there has been another accident.”
“I wouldn’t call it an accident, sir,” said Charlie, waving at a mosquito. “We’ve found three arms so far.”
“Excuse me?”
Bill put his hand on Charlie’s shoulder, a sign for him to stop speaking. Charlie sighed. He knew better than to blubber to civilians.
“This is a crime scene, Mr. Denzler,” said Bill. “We have initiated an investigation. I will be happy to notify you, or Mr. Davenport, of any conclusions we reach.”
“After the last incident, Captain Capo assured me that no police would visit the canal site without his accompaniment.”
Bill pressed his palm to his temple. The pressure behind his sinuses had diffused into a tickling, undulating vibration; it was almost pleasant, like an alcoholic buzz. “Sir, we have jurisdiction wherever a dead body is found in this city.”
A voice shouted from the canal floor, “Another head!”
Bill walked to the edge of the canal. He was followed by Charlie and, belatedly, bank president Denzler. When they came into view, the men at the bottom of the pit backed away to reveal what they had unearthed.
Though some of the mud remained, it was obvious enough: a naked female torso, missing her arms and most of her legs. A large tangled mass of muddy-brown hair sprouted between her thighs and it took Bill a moment to realize that it was not her pubic hair but the back of a decapitated head that had been set there.
“Sir,” said Charlie, “you need to move back.”
It was too late. Denzler had seen it. He removed his hat. “Who is that?”
“Sir—”
“The head. Show me.”
Everyone looked at Bill. He nodded.
One of the men knelt and lifted the head from the corpse’s crotch. He held it up so that the men on the lip of the canal could see its face. The eyes were open, the mouth closed and twisted to one side. The bluish neck had been cleanly severed. Bill looked into the open eye and saw Leonard Perl.
The river flows both ways, said the head soundlessly. It goes out but it comes back too.
You’re dead and I have never regretted it, said Bill, unspeaking.
There are forests buried under forests. There are towns within towns. There are rivers that run down and run back up too.
Go back to hell.
I have seen Maisie in the river.
Perl’s face underwent a sudden contortion. It realigned itself into the features of the young man from Hibernia Bank. Of course the head could not have belonged to Perl. Perl’s head fell into the Mississippi. This head belonged to the young banker, Hugh Davenport. It wasn’t Perl. That would have made no sense. Perl was dead and gone.
Still Bill wasn’t certain until he heard the bank president scream.
MARCH 19, 1919—UPTOWN—THE BATTLEFIELD
The first indication that something extraordinary was happening came shortly past one in the morning, after Isadore and Sore Dick left the Van Benthuysen Mansion. Aside from the occasional streetcar, St. Charles Avenue tended to be silent because nearly nobody lived on it. With two or three colossi to each city block, it was not part of any neighborhood but a nostalgic promenade, a refuge of Confederate majesty. As Isadore had learned from his hosts that evening, the Van Benthuysens were relations of Jefferson Davis; Watson Van Benthuysen II, for whom the mansion was built, was a quartermaster for the Grays. Watson’s grandchildren, who had hired the Slim Izzy Quartet for that evening’s entertainment, supposed that Isadore’s band would be excited to learn of their brush with Confederate aristocracy.
The grandchildren, two graying unwed sisters, looked as if they had spent the better part of their energies to ensure that the family fortune did not survive their generation. Their faces were too pink, their hair too thin; they smeared far too much lipstick on their heavy mouths. The dissipation of the family mansion had followed the same careless course: the portraits of Watson Van Benthuysen II and III were jaundiced, and dust coated the ancient oak chest, the pedestal desk, the recamier sofa. Even the porcelain monkey band figurines—miniature monkeys attired in Elizabethan wigs and ruffs, each playing a miniature chamber instrument—were cracked and faded. The sisters seemed to have expected the Negro performers to take delight in the monkey musicians but only Isadore was game enough to feign interest. He felt obliged; the Van Benthuysen wastrels had, after all, paid him fifty dollars. They had wanted the best Axman jazz show on St. Charles Avenue, and by God, the Slim Izzy Quartet had given it.
Lord was it a relief to play. Even for a bunch of drunk fools who thought dancing meant walking in place. Nobody Slow Dragged or Turkey Trotted or did the Grizzly Bear, nor did they even recognize any of the songs. But they were as engaged as the parishioners at the Funky Butt and appeared to love it as much too, in their own ridiculous way. He had done a crazy, harebrained thing and if this evening was the only reward, it was worth it, just to touch the music again. He could admit to himself finally that he wasn’t made to be a highwayman or a ditchdigger or a cooper. He was meant to do this thing—this thing that didn’t pay, that broke your spirit, that caused trouble and pain and ephemeral joy. Through the horn he shouted, Love me! He shouted, Hear me! He shouted, Love me! Hear me! Love me! Hear me! It was a strange sensation, performing again, like reentering a dream. Or rather it was as if the rest of his life were the dream, vaguely recalled, and this was reality—playing onstage with Sore Dick and Drag Nasty and Zutty. But he knew it wasn’t a dream because the fingers that pumped the valves were stained with mud. His fingernails were jammed with the stuff.
At a quarter past midnight, the hour of reckoning, one of the party guests stood atop the stair and raised a champagne bottle to the Axman, thanking him for “a night of merriment and jazz, and on a Tuesday no less!” The reveler smashed the bottle on the banister. The bottle didn’t break but slipped from his hand and, barely missing Drag Nasty’s head, fell to the marble parlor floor, where it shattered, spraying the players with white froth and slivers of glass. The Van Benthuysens considered this the apex of hilarity and begged the band to play beyond the allotted time—for a tip, of course. Jazz music was a scream: they couldn’t get enough. The band played another forty-five minutes before departing to quaking applause.
Drag Nasty and Zutty hopped the streetcar but Isadore and Dick were too exhilarated to go directly home. They walked down St. Charles. The avenue was lit like a carnival, electricity spilling from the windows of the mansions. Even the serpentine branches of the live oaks lacked their usual nefarious quality; they were like elderly arm
s beckoning the musicians onward.
“The Lord works mysteries,” said Dick. “All the Uptown millionaires wanting to hear jazz?”
“Not just any jazz. Our jazz.”
“Your jazz. Then again, at night all cats are gray.”
“Yah, they wouldn’t know the difference between the one and the other, let alone between ragtime and Dixie and jazz.”
“Don’t get me wrong. They fell for the hot stuff.”
“Like a baby falls for milk.”
“Like a pig falls for slop.”
“It wasn’t just the gin either.”
Sore Dick shook his head. “I never had gin like that. Tasted like daffodils.”
“We should’ve asked for more.”
“More than fifty dollars plus fifteen in tips? You’re getting greedy. I’m amazed this family found you to begin with.”
“Credit the Reverend.”
“That’s what I don’t get. Why didn’t he recommend, I don’t know, Freddie Keppard?”
“Keppard’s in Chicago.”
“You know what I mean. Frankie Duson. Lawrence Duhé. Sidney Bechet?”
“Chicago, Chicago, Chicago.”
Dick shook his head. “What about Dutt Ory? He still here?”
I draw the line at taking away my livelihood, Isadore thought. King Zeno, I place my faith in you! “Maybe he got the first call.”
“I guess we’re the last men standing. Funny how that comes out.”
There was a loud concussion, followed by a horn blast. Streetcars didn’t make that kind of noise, and there was no rail track closer than the wharf. The sound grew louder.
“Damn,” said Dick. “Some other millionaires had the same idea.”
The music rumbled out of Christ Church Cathedral, a block away.
“They’re playing the devil’s music in the house of the Lord.”
“Praise Mr. Axman,” said Sore Dick. “These folks are either petrified of the Axman or they just needed a respectable excuse to listen to hot music.”
The band at the church was blazing like hellfire.
“Impossible.”
“Fuck my head.”
The cathedral was overflowing with St. Charles millionaires, spilling onto the avenue. Sore Dick climbed onto a sidewalk bench so that he could see into the nave. Isadore climbed up beside him.
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