A Twisted Ladder (41 page)

NEW ORLEANS, 1920

U
LYSSES TURNED AND ENTERED
the alley behind Chloe. Rémi bent his shoulder and surged through the crowd. He cursed his own drunkenness, and for having brought Chloe to the tavern. Why had he done that? He would never have brought Helen to a place like that.

He reached the mouth of the alley and dashed in. He could see two silhouettes as they struggled. Chloe’s white handbag lay open in a filthy gutter, and Rémi could hear the sound of tearing fabric as Ulysses ripped her clothes.

“Vile demon!” Rémi cried as he rushed Ulysses. “Let go of my wife!”

“Your wife, hey?” Ulysses replied with surprise, his words slurring, and he let go of Chloe.

As Rémi drew nearer, he realized he had been mistaken about Ulysses. The man attacking Chloe was white, a big, dirty brute in a worn jacket. Rémi slowed, and the man looked him over with one eye cocked.

“You’re
married
to this little nigger whore?”

Rémi pulled back his fist and drove it into the man’s jowls. The brute staggered backward, head pitched, but he recovered and hardened his gaze on Rémi. Growling, he bent his head and rushed Rémi like a bull, shoulder to Rémi’s diaphragm, knocking him to the cobblestones.

He heard Chloe gasp, and marveled at the way it sounded very far away, like a puff of wind that stirs an oak tree on a distant hill.

The alley turned black.

CHLOE WATCHED AS THE
brute straddled her husband, beating him bloody.

“You will not strike another blow!”

He stopped short, gaping at her. His eyes registered surprise at her audacity, and yet his jaw turned slack and his tongue protruded as he accepted the command.

Rémi was out cold. The brute seemed to take sudden notice of this, and chuckled. He reached down and slapped Rémi’s face, but Rémi’s head only wagged dully with the impact.

Chloe gritted her teeth. “Get away from him!”

The man picked himself up and turned back to Chloe. He reached for her in the darkness, his breath husky and sour with alcohol.

But she had already unsheathed the knife she kept in her garter belt, the knife she carried in a city she did not trust, and on a plantation where danger comes as frequently as the phases of the moon. And when the oaf put his greedy hands on her, she plunged the blade into his chest.

He gaped, his eyes wild and glinting in the darkness.

He sank to his knees, still grasping her arms. She wrenched the knife free from his chest. He moaned and collapsed to the ground, his head landing next to the soiled white evening bag in the gutter.

He rolled over and crawled a few paces, then slumped prostrate on the cobblestones.

“I’m dying,” he whispered, spittle dropping to the filthy stones. He lifted his head and called out louder: “I’m dying!”

Chloe wiped the bloody knife on what was left of her white suit jacket and then lifted her hem, thumbed the band of her garter belt, and resheathed the blade.

“Help! Help me!” The brute put his hand to the wound and grimaced at the black blood. “She’s killed me!”

She folded her arms and looked toward the crowd at the end of the alley, and could not tell whether they were brawling or celebrating. Worse than any Mardi Gras, this eve of Prohibition. She’d never seen such collective wildness.

“Nobody hear you.” She crouched next to the fallen man. “Cry louder.”

He looked up at her with hazy eyes.

She shoved him hard, causing him to roll. “Cry louder!”

“Help me!” His voice was high and shrill. “Help me! She’s killed me! Help!”

He bawled and shuddered, and she could see he was growing weaker.

Chloe shook her head. “They do not hear you.”

“I’m dying,” he sobbed. “You’ve killed me.”

She stood and regarded him. “You are not dead yet. You not dead until I say you are dead.”

She stepped over his body and walked to where Rémi still lay unconscious, and nudged him with her foot. The man quieted for a moment. She felt his eyes on her in the shadows.

“Who are you?” he whispered, and in his voice she heard deference and a hint of awe.

When she did not answer, he said, “Help me. Lady, please help me.”

She folded her arms and looked back over her shoulder at him, then down at Rémi again. Two useless men in the gutter. The marriage, at least, was legally sound. Should anything happen to Rémi, she and her children would have a home.

She considered this monstrosity of a man who’d felt her blade, and wondered whether she might put him into service.

She said to him, “No, I think I let you die here. You be dead by morning. You rot in the stinking gutter where you belong.”

“No! Help me dear lady, please help me.”

He wept, repeating the words. She grew nauseated with his puling. Finally she turned back to him, leaning over his trembling shape, speaking to him in a whisper.

“Better for you to die. If I help you, you belong to me. You do what I say. Better for you to die, for sure.”

He whimpered, his voice high and thin. “No. I don’t want to die. Help me. I’ll do whatever you say.”

“What you have to live for? Stealing money for liquor and molesting women? Be a man, once in your life. Die tonight.”

“No! Please help me. I’ll do whatever you say.”

She stared at him. “What is your name?”

“Bruce.” The word was a puff of air as he stifled a sob. “Bruce Dempsey.”

She leaned over, hands on her knees. “Bruce. You stinking drunk. You will not even remember me tomorrow, if I let you live.”

“No ma’am,” he pleaded. “I’ll remember. I promise. I . . . I belong to you.”

She narrowed her eyes. He had spoken the right words. Perhaps he was not so dumb.

“Hmph. We will see.”

She moved her hand under her skirt and once more removed her knife from its sheath. She crouched down next to Bruce and folded the blade into his hands.

Nearby, Rémi groaned and shifted, but did not rouse.

“Bruce Dempsey. Cut off your ear and give it to me.”

His jaw dropped, and the cold air around him filled with his vinegary breath. “Mother of God. What sort of black magic is this?”

Chloe rose to her feet.

“Devil’s whore! I should rip your throat out!” He lurched and slashed at her with the knife.

Chloe took a single step backward and watched him struggle. Dempsey swayed to a sitting position, and then ran out of fury. His hand went to the wound, which now coursed afresh with blood.

“Mother of God.” He slumped backward and lolled flat on his back again. The knife clanked against the cobblestones as he released it.

“Dear lady. Please, have mercy on me.”

She gathered her purse and its spilled contents, then turned and walked away.

“Have mercy,” he cried after her. “Mercy! Mercy! I’m begging you! Oh my God!”

She left him there; left him to die and left her sot of a husband in the alley with him.

“You monster!” Dempsey screeched.

She joined the crowd in the street, a hand over her belly, letting herself fall in step with the flow. Another child would be coming, their fourth, though she hadn’t told Rémi. A good thing to have these children. She could school them in her ways, groom them for a new era, and create new leaders. Four children were a good start, but Chloe knew she should bear more. The more children there were, the stronger the line. She looked back over her shoulder toward the dark alley. She should retrieve Rémi, then, lest he die of exposure during the night.

Chloe turned and pressed back toward the maw of the alleyway. It occurred to her that she knew at least one person in New Orleans. Jacob Chapman had attended the wedding, and would remain in town for a week. She detested the man, a lazy playboy, but could call on him for assistance. She paused outside the alley and looked around for street children. She could pay one of them to send word to Jacob Chapman.

From the alley came Bruce Dempsey’s shrill voice: “Take it then! Take my ear!”

Chloe paused. Dempsey fell silent, and she listened for any sound from him. She waited.

Then suddenly, shrieking. The alley coursed with the sound. She knew that he had done her bidding. The crowd streamed around her. Dempsey’s screams hovered just above the volume of the horde, but no one took notice. Chloe watched the throng of people as they ambled by, too absorbed with the ecstasy of the moment to notice the shrieks of a dying man. She stepped into the alley.

A couple, arm in arm, stumbled in behind her. The man’s bolo was untied, and the woman was giggling from under her cloche hat. They staggered, arms wrapped around each other. Bruce Dempsey let out a piteous wail. The couple stopped short and peered into the blank darkness, then spotted Chloe in her blood-smeared coat. They turned and stumbled back into the street.

Dempsey lapsed into sobs behind her. She turned and walked back to where he lay bleeding. He writhed and wept, his hands over his face, and she watched him for a time.

She folded her arms against the cold. “Bruce Dempsey.”

He removed his hands from his face and looked up at her in wonder. “God in heaven. She’s come back. I thought you’d left me here to die.”

“Give it to me,” she commanded.

Dempsey’s face contorted. “It’s here.”

He shuddered, and his hand grasped a mottled piece of flesh and cartilage that lay next to him on the stones. He lifted it with a trembling hand.

Chloe wrapped the ear in her handkerchief and slipped it inside her purse. “You belong to me now.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

BATON ROUGE, 2009

A
NITA LET THE TOP
down on the Mustang, and Julie hopped into the passenger seat without opening the door. They were both dressed to kill, Anita’s ruffled sleeves fluttering like angel wings in the sudden rush of air as she careened out of the driveway.

She drank in the warm, sumptuous Gulf South wind. Next to her, Julie’s arms were stretched up into the air, fingers spread. The Mustang sped toward the freeway and away from Baton Rouge’s city center.