Lost River (2 page)

When Miss Parker pointed out the dried blood, the detective gave an absent shrug and told her that a wagon would be around later to pick up the corpse and carry it to the morgue.

It was another two hours, the sun was coming up, and the body was still there and getting ripe when the maid finally arrived back.

The madam was in a state. "Where in God's name have you been?"

The girl was all out of breath. "I had to rouse them at Miss Gonzales's, and they, they told me go down to Spain Street. And then I had to wait for the—"

"Did you find him?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well? What did he say? Is he coming?"

"No, ma'am," the maid said. "He say to find someone else. He say he don't do this no more."

When Valentin couldn't get back to sleep, he reached for the hem of Justine's nightdress and found her willing, as always. Afterward, they lay across the bed letting the breeze through the window cool them. She dozed. He ended up tossing and turning with such agitation that she muttered and then poked a finger into his ribs to make him stop.

The clock on the bedside stand was turning seven when he gave up and rolled out from under the sheet. In the tiny kitchen, he splashed water on his face and set the coffeepot to boil. He plucked a breakfast apple from the basket on the table on his way to the narrow balcony that overlooked Spain Street.

It was the time of day he liked best, still and quiet, and he often spent his early mornings there with a book or newspaper, or just watching the sun rise as his little corner of the city came to life, first in gentle eddies, then in a chop of busy noise and motion. He was pleased to take no part in the break-of-day rush.

Though on this morning, his thoughts were in a stir. The maid had stood in the doorway, explaining that a Liberty Street madam named Miss Parker had sent her. Valentin didn't recognize the name, but such women came and went all the time. Apparently, this one didn't know that he hadn't played the role of the Storyville detective for some time.

He recalled how the maid had squinted as she tried to guess in what category he belonged—"American," Creole, one of the shades of Negro, dago, or even Arab—so she'd know how to address him. He was used to it.

The girl kept her voice muted in case he was white and relayed the message from Miss Parker, describing a man lying dead on the parlor floor. Unnerved by his gray eyes and his silence, she prattled on, recounting the scene in too much detail until he cut her off with a curt refusal.

Her eyebrows hiked as the last word died on her tongue, and she stood unsure of what to do next. He had to get short with her.
Tell her I don't do that anymore. That's all!

The girl gave a start, stuttered an apology, and made a kowtowing retreat down the stairs. Valentin closed the door and stalked back to the bedroom, annoyed that he had barked at a poor servant.

Before the sound of her footsteps had faded down the stairs, he found himself pacing as he imagined the scene she had described: the parlor cast in the dim amber light from the tasseled lamps; the heavy furnishings and Persian rugs; the madam and her sporting girls standing around in their kimonos and nightdresses staring at the body that had appeared from nowhere; the bullet hole in the victim's chest but not a drop of blood anywhere except on the body.

It was a peculiar tableau, and not so long ago he would have thrown on clothes and rushed to get to the house before the police made an official mess of the scene on their way to sweeping the crime under the fancy rug.

That was back when Storyville was his territory. Nowadays, he felt as if his career working as a private detective for Mr. Tom Anderson belonged to someone else, and far in the past. He had quit before, had been fired, had even escaped the city, only to come wandering back like some lost mongrel finding his way home.

He left this time because he had frankly grown tired of ghosts dogging him through his days and nights. He hadn't caused all of their deaths, but he hadn't been able to save them, either, and their haunting eyes accused him. Neither drink nor dope would keep these haints at bay, and he had come to understand that they'd be constant company as long as he stayed in Storyville.

When it got to the point that they were invading his dreams, he gave up. He knew he couldn't explain to Anderson, Frank Mangetta, Lulu White, or any of the others, so he told Justine it was time to pack up and go. She didn't need to hear it a second time. She wanted out worse than he did. Even on Spain Street, the District was a little too close for her comfort.

Though it was true that New Orleans in the year 1913 was not such a bad place to live. The summer had passed into fall without a fearsome hurricane like the one that had blown through the year before and torn up half the city.

He and Justine were getting along. They had forgiven each other their betrayals and had come to an unspoken agreement that as long as he stayed with his current vocation, she wouldn't go back to her former life, either. One day he woke up and it was settled.

He had found rooms over an import-export office and every now and then, an odor redolent of some faraway port would drift upward like incense, and they'd fall a little drunk and dreamy on it. Other than that, their lives were so common and domestic that Valentin sometimes swore she was building a nest. So the red-light district was the last place she'd want to hear about.

His mind was drifting back in that direction when he caught a whiff from the pot in the kitchen. He was pleased to have the diversion of the morning's first cup of chicory coffee, which he would douse with cream and honey. That and one of his books would take his mind off the maid's visit and the dead man on the parlor floor, the kind of bizarre and bloody drama that could only happen in Storyville.

Tom Anderson was up just as early and heard about the body in the Liberty Street sporting house from one of the local gadabouts who seemed to have no purpose in life other than to sweep bits of news and gossip from the banquettes and carry them to his Poydras Street doorstep.

By the time the maid had served him a breakfast of scrambled eggs and fresh fruit, he had learned more, including the interesting news that the madam had in her panic sent a girl to find Valentin St. Cyr, and that the long-absent Creole detective had run the girl off. He was not surprised.

Meanwhile, the police arrived at the bordello and bumbled about for a while before carting the body away. Mr. Defoor was carried to the morgue and the next of kin were notified. It was all done quietly in order to spare the family shame, a traditional courtesy whenever a man died in the District, whether he expired from an excess of amours or a bullet lodged in his chest.

There was one other curious detail: Those on the scene were saying it appeared that Defoor had been shot dead somewhere else and then carried into Miss Parker's house, all without being detected. The local wags would be snickering; Anderson didn't see any humor in it. But his mood was gray that morning, in spite of the misty sun that was casting a golden glow over the New Orleans streets.

He took a last sip of the coffee that he'd laced with a hefty shot of brandy and rose from the chair with a soft groan. A substantial man, of late his bulk had begun to drag on him. Sometimes his bones ached and he found himself short of breath. There was the gout, the itching rashes on his skin, fevers that came to stay. His appetite had faded, and not only at the dinner table.

Since his earliest days as a street Arab and the police department's most able stool pigeon, Tom Anderson had been able to perform with the ladies like a regular stag, slipping from one steamy bed to the next. Not so many months ago, he'd had his most recent wife and three or four other scarlet women hissing at each other like alley cats. But Gertrude, a former Basin Street madam whose true last name was Hoffmire, now regarded him as if he was a tired old hound that wouldn't worry a mouse. Some days, he reflected with a doleful sigh, she wasn't too far off.

He carried his coffee cup through the silent first-floor rooms of the house, Gertrude having toddled off to Canal Street to meet a friend for breakfast and shopping. Or maybe she was on her way to see a lover of her own. He didn't know and didn't care. In any case, it would have been a perfect opportunity for him to spend a half hour dallying with the maid, a young quadroon who was round, cheerful, and ready for some work in the bedroom to start the day. He wasn't in the mood.

His advancing years—he was now sixty-two—and a more general weariness had him feeling low. Though managing the red-light district had never been easy, it also had always been filled with pleasures. Lately it felt like tiresome, alien territory.

And now, playing the part of a doddering old fool, he couldn't seem to make up his mind whether the death of poor Mr. Defoor was serious. He had once been able to sense anything amiss in any corner of Storyville, as if the twenty-block square was an extension of his own nervous system. Not so much anymore; especially without the services of a certain Creole detective at his disposal.

He heard the maid calling from the kitchen and came out of his funk to find himself standing in the middle of the living room, staring at nothing at all.

"What's that?" he called back.

"Said the man's bringin' the car around. He'll be out front in a minute." It was rude for a servant to be yelling like that, but he couldn't scold her, because ... well, just because.

Instead, he muttered, "All right, then," and spent a moment fumbling to find a place to set his cup. On his way out the door, he decided that he was going to seek out a doctor who could prescribe a tonic for what ailed him, and sooner rather than later.

Justine had been drowsily aware of the knock on the door before the break of dawn and Valentin rising to see what it was about. She heard him mutter something she couldn't catch. The door closed and he was back in the bedroom.

"Who was it?"

Sounding gruff, he told her it was a girl who had been sent by a Storyville madam named Parker. He lay down, curled into her, and in the next moment lifted her nightdress. He came on her hard, rougher than usual, though she wasn't about to complain. They rattled the bed frame for a little while, and then it was over and she dropped back to a brief, sweet slumber that was interrupted by tossing and turning that ended when he got up again.

She came awake to the rich scent of coffee and chicory. The sun, slanting through the window, was the color of pale butter behind curtains that undulated in the breeze. She lay back to savor the moment, spreading languid arms and legs and thinking about how their lives had changed, welcome after her career as a prized Basin Street sporting girl and his as a detective in the employ of Tom Anderson, "the King of Storyville."

Three years before, he had investigated a string of murders of well-to-do citizens that included some of the richest men in New Orleans. Though he lingered for another year or so afterward, the cast seemed to have taken something out of him. So he walked away, leaving Tom Anderson and his scarlet battalions to get along without his special services. He surprised Justine by showing up on Miss Antonia's gallery to humbly request that she come with him to the rooms he had taken over the import business on Spain Street, not far from the river. She considered his offer for a little less than a minute before stepping back inside to pack her things.

She cut all the strings to her past, save for the posing she did for a class of student artists. She was happy and at least once a day stopped to utter a small prayer that it would last.

Valentin appeared with a cup of coffee, one of the little things he did for her. She sipped and watched him dress. Like her, he was of mixed blood, though his was an odder gumbo. She could detect his Sicilian father in the olive cast of his skin, the Mediterranean curve of his nose, and his slender peasant body; and his Creole mother in his gray eyes, curly hair, and African lips and cheekbones. Depending on the way the light struck him, he could appear to be anything from Negro to dago to white or any selection in between.

For years, and without trying, he had passed. Those who knew the truth either kept it to themselves or didn't care, because he was so good at what he did and because he had been Tom Anderson's man. Though every now and then she noticed in those eyes a hint of a longing for his former life, he had stayed put, and she was grateful.

William Brown lay on a bed in a rented room in a house on the corner of Bolivar Street, watching the dust drift in a swath of thin morning sunlight that poured in through the window. A door slammed, echoing along the hallway, startling him. He didn't know exactly how long he had been lying there, transfixed by the drifting, sparkling particles. His shirt and trousers were damp in the stuffy room, and he sat up, feeling a sticky sheen on his skin and the mild buzz of a headache. His mouth was dry.

When he swung his thin legs off the bed, he noticed dark spots splattered on his trousers above the knees and more trailing down the front of his white shirt. He got up to shuffle to the mirror over the washstand to study the dots on the drawn and grayish flesh of his face for a few puzzled moments before pouring some tepid water from the pitcher into the bowl. Using the ragged cloth, he scrubbed until he couldn't see the splotches anymore.

He lay back down on the bed and closed his eyes, reaching into the shadowy corners of his brain for some clue to how his clothes and flesh had been soiled, and a gradual pantomime came to life.