Gods of New Orleans (30 page)

She paused before she answered, took a deep breath, then replied, “Sniffing out a rat.”

Chapter 30

It took Aiden two lifts to get up the steps and a third to set the mop bucket on the splintered boards of his new cart.

New.

Aiden sniffed and tugged the bucket closer to the middle of the cart so it wouldn’t spill over the side. His old cart, it’d had a strap to keep the bucket steady. But this one . . .

When he’d gone into Mama Shandy’s place, she had a look on her face that told him it was a bad day to be asking for anything, let alone a new clean-up cart. Like the mess outside the house hadn’t already told him enough.

“What you want, Dove?”
she’d asked, with her eyes glued to the wall above Aiden’s head. He’d told her about losing his cart and held out the can he kept his money in. He’d put it on her desk and she had snatched it before his fingers left the rim of the can.

Without even counting it, she’d told him it wasn’t enough for a new cart. She’d then shooed him out with her fingertips, still staring up at the wall above the door, her face shaking and eyes red-rimmed with anger and fear. Aiden had caught a glimpse of the wall as he left. Something dark, like paint, was smeared there, and the shape of a bird. Feathers scattered around it.

And blood. Aiden had smelled it as he left.

A tough outside Mama Shandy’s office had taken him by the scruff and pushed him down the stairs. Aiden had kept his feet, but he had still skidded down a few steps and nearly turned his ankle. The tough bird then opened a closet under the stairs and had pulled out this pile of splinters and old twine on four beat-up, old rubber wheels. He’d shoved it across the floor at Aiden, telling him he’d best get to work.

Mama Shandy’s voice had come down from above him and Aiden had looked up the stairs to see her tear-stained cheeks and wild, crazy eyes glaring at him.

“Damn dove be workin’ a year ‘fore he pay off a new cart. Well, that Bonvivant bitch can take it outta his ass. She gettin’ nothin’ else from me!”

Mama Shandy’s words echoed around Aiden’s head now. He pushed the cart into the new gala house where he had been told he’d be working. He was careful not to hit the door jamb or the newel post just inside the entry. A hall led into the back, where Aiden could see the kitchen. Doors led off left and right to parlors and other rooms he’d have to clean up, but he couldn’t tell what he was supposed to clean. Aiden breathed in the smell of fresh plaster and paint, and he stared at the gleaming brass fittings and polished wood.

“Hey, boy!”

Aiden looked up the stairs and met the gaze of his new employer, the house mother he’d been sold to, or who’d stolen him like he was something to steal.

Mama Sophie Bonvivant. She stood in the glow of an electric bulb set in a wall sconce at the top of the stairs. Her blond hair lit up like a halo, but the heated look on her pale face said trouble was on the menu.

But he’d just got here, and early. What kind of trouble could he be in?

“Y-yes’m,” he said, dropping his eyes to the toes of her shoes.

“Up here,” she said, coming down the stairs as she spoke. “And leave the damn bucket where it is. I’ve got a room full of mess upstairs. First one on the right. You’ll just need a broom and dustpan.”

With her last words she came to the bottom landing. Mama Sophie was about Aiden’s height, maybe a little taller. But she carried herself like she was ten feet tall. Her hands framed her hips and her blazing blue eyes added a weight to her slight frame. Aiden knew that she wouldn’t think twice before knocking him silly with the back of her hand.

“Yes’m,” he replied, standing still and holding his hands in plain sight on the cart handle, like he’d learned to do.

“You all right, boy?”

Aiden didn’t much care for the way she called him, but he had to admit it was better than
dove
.

“Yes’m. I’m fine, ma’am.”

“The way you’re standing there like you don’t have work to do, I thought you might be getting the vapors. You aren’t, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” Aiden said, moving his head side to side nice and slow.

“Well that’s good, then. Go on and do your job. Money’ll be in the can outside when you’re done.”

“Yes’m,” Aiden said, still not moving because he’d have to go around Mama Sophie to reach the stairs, and he knew as well as any houseboy never to set foot in the path of a house mother or her staff, or pretty much anyone he met in the gala houses.

“Well go on then, boy,” she said, stepping to the side.

“Yes, Mama Sophie,” Aiden said as he waited for her to leave.

She stopped with her hand on the knob and gave him a look up and down. He could feel her eyes burning into his cheek. “They tell you to call me that when they sent you over from Shandy’s pit? Huh, boy? They tell you to call me
Mama
?” She took her hand off the doorknob and came to stand inches away from Aiden. He could smell a hint of gin on her breath as she hollered into his ear.

“Maybe they told you to call me
Mama
because they thought it’d be funny. Well listen up, boy, and listen up right. You see a white woman in front of you, you don’t call her your
Mama
. You call her
Mother
. Is that clear, boy?”

“Yes’m,” Aiden said, shaking and waiting for the hand that he knew would come up any second and sweep across his face like a storm.

But she didn’t hit him. Ma‌—‌Mother Sophie Bonvivant stepped back and put her hand on the knob, turning it. Then she clicked her tongue and muttered something about “soiled doves” before going out the front door.

When she had gone, Aiden lifted the dustpan off his cart. Taking the old broom from its clasp he breathed deep and let it out as he made his way upstairs.

The single electric light cast a glimmer around the door to his right. Three more doors stood across the hall, all closed. Nothing but silence came back to him as he listened to the house. The washroom was to his right, just beyond the room he would be cleaning. Past that was another closed door. The far wall was all windows and looked out to the yard behind the house.

Aiden went back to the first room and pushed the door all the way open. He stepped in and stalled with his foot halfway to the floor.

The room was torn apart. Pictures had been ripped from the walls, glass lay around in scattered shards, the bits by the door reflecting pinpoints of warmth from the wall sconce. In the corners of the room, lamps were on their sides, the electric bulbs shattered across the wood flooring. A couch was turned over on its front, like it had been pulled away from the wall and forced out of someone’s way.

Rolls of the carpet buckled up from the floor in places, and the corners of the rug were all peeled back, making a sort of basket for all the broken glass. Moonlight slanted through a window in the wall opposite the door, casting crazy shadows with the toppled furniture. A door in the left wall of the room was closed, but Aiden could tell it had been open when the mess was made. Shards of glass had scraped across the floor and under the door into whatever was behind it.

The last time Aiden had seen such a mess he’d been running from the Governor’s army in Chicago City. For a second he worried a soldier would come through the closed door with a gat in his hand, ready to plug Aiden in the chest for helping Mr. Brand mess things up for the Great Lakes Governor.

But that was all behind them. It had been over a month with nothing from Chicago City, not even a peep.

Lifting his feet careful around the larger shards of glass, Aiden swept the bits and pieces together. He picked up the corner of the carpet and shook it gently, bouncing the smaller slivers into a pile in the middle. He got the big shards collected by hand and pitched them into the waste chute in the wall. But the house mother hadn’t told him how to get the smaller pieces out of the carpet.

He could sweep until the sun came up and not have them all cleaned away.

Since this was a new house, it had to have one of those fancy vacuum systems. Aiden looked around and, sure enough, he spotted a valve set into the wall by the door. So somewhere there had to be a hose to connect to it, and a way to turn it on.

Aiden went to the closed door. The vacuum hose and control box was probably in there. He tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t locked, just jammed with something that stopped it from flipping up or down. He jiggled it again and felt it slip away from whatever had jammed against it. He tugged and the door fell open, pushing Aiden backward.

Something heavy fell out from behind the door, pushing it against Aiden. He heard a thump and felt something hit the floor as he stumbled and went down against the overturned couch. With a quick grab, he steadied himself so he wouldn’t land in the pile of glass on the carpet. When he had his feet again he looked at the door and what had come out.

A Negro girl was lying there, half out of the closet that held the vacuum hose. When Aiden went over to her, he recognized her. She’d been at Mama Shandy’s place a week back, on the arm of some thick-necked bird, and the both of them were dressed for uptown. The guy was white and had a set of dark eyes like gun barrels.

The girl had been smiling that night, a week ago. But now, Aiden could tell right away she was dead. Her cheeks were puffy and bruised under both eyes, and a scarf was wrapped tight around her neck. The one eye Aiden could see was open and bloodshot.

He reeled back then, knowing what he’d found and knowing good and well he wasn’t supposed to have found it, and why Mother Sophie had told him how to do his job.

“You’ll just need a broom and dustpan.”

But he couldn’t just hide the girl’s body again. There was no way he could put it all back like he’d never opened the door. They’d find out. The house mother and every man in her krewe would know he’d seen the dead girl.

As Aiden stared at the girl’s frozen eyes, Mother Sophie’s angry voice swept up the stairs like she didn’t care who heard.

“I know who he is, Mr. Bacchus. And I know where he’s from. He killed one of my girls and he’s gonna pay up for it. That fat white cat shows his face in your auction house tomorrow night, I want him in the street. You hear me?
In the STREET!
”

Aiden whipped a hand over his mouth when he heard Bacchus’s name. He stayed silent and still and waited for the gangster’s heavy voice to reply. He got nothing for his trouble but more silence. Aiden wondered what Mother Sophie meant by “auction house.” The words played around in his head like puzzle pieces that wouldn’t quite fit together. Then Mother Sophie shouted a curse and kept on.

“I don’t care if all of New York City comes down on my head. Sophie Bonvivant doesn’t run from any man.”

When no reply came again, Aiden figured the house mother was on a radiophone. He hadn’t seen one when he’d come in, but the house had to have one. It had a vacuum system.

And a dead girl in a closet.

Aiden nearly shrieked when Mother Sophie’s voice sliced the quiet house apart again.

“Well the Birdman owes me for giving him my bitch of a half-sister, doesn’t he? When he’s done with Shandy and her krewe, you get him a message. Tell him Mother Sophie needs to collect.”

Aiden heard the clatter of a radiophone in its cradle. He crept away from the dead girl to watch the stairs in case Mother Sophie came up to check on his work. A door opened somewhere downstairs. Aiden craned his neck for a look below the landing, but Mother Sophie’s voice rang out of the kitchen and hit his ears like a fire alarm.

“Boy, you about done up there?”

Aiden backed into the room and shouted, “Yes’m!” He kicked at the glass near his feet to make sounds like he was cleaning.

“Good. Get on and finish.”

“Yes’m, Ma‌—‌Mother Sophie. I will.”

“That’s your only free one, boy,” she yelled up at him. “Mix me up with a
Mama
again, you’ll feel the cane on your backside. And don’t tell me what you
will
. Just
DO
! And hurry up. I got some more work for you out back, too.”

Aiden listened for her footsteps on the stairs, his heart in his throat as he waited. Then he heard the kitchen door close a second time and he stepped fast but careful to the landing windows.

Mother Sophie went down a stone walk to a little shack where two colored men were busy flinging mud all over the outer walls. A white man came out from the shack with a bucket that he filled at a trough where the other men were also collecting mud and who knew what else.

“Got some other work for me, huh?” Aiden said to the empty house. He felt a twitch in his throat and it told him he’d made his last move in the houseboy game. Aiden stepped down the stairs. He went as quiet as could be and unlatched the front door, breathing a silent hope that the stoop wouldn’t be guarded. He opened the door and saw the night waiting for him, empty and cold, so he ran into it with all his will, leaving the house and its horrors behind.

Chapter 31

As Emma piloted the
Vigilance
, she thought about the letters Brand gave her. They were in his old desk now, where Lisette was sitting. Emma tucked the letters in there as soon as she and Lisette got on board, and she hoped that’s where they would stay. They hadn’t moved since she put them there. No showing up in the cockpit right when she went to start the motors or radio down to a mooring deck.

Maybe Brand was just playing tricks to scare her. But why would he do that?

As soon as the question hit her mind, Emma swatted it away. Who cared what Brand was up to? If she’d thought the letters were magical before, it must have been the stress of dealing with Eddie and the worry about the job she’d been doing for Bacchus.

Brand was just a crazy old tramp, half drunk, or all the way drunk.

But what if he wasn’t fooling? And how could he be with that vanishing act of his.

If one of those letters was for her, then it meant she’d found some way to get the gods’ attention, more than before anyway.