Lost River (33 page)

James McKinney had failed that test. Having become intrigued by St. Cyr from the moment their paths had first crossed, he had taken the time to learn that the detective had come from the uptown neighborhood around First and Liberty streets, had lost his family, and had later changed his name in order to become a New Orleans police officer. When that career ended badly, he hired on as Tom Anderson's man, responsible for the security of the red-light district.

He was a lone wolf and skilled investigator who had followed an uncommon path by working both sides of the law. The infamous King Bolden had been his best friend. He carried on a turgid romance with a onetime sporting girl named Justine Mancarre. He had been embroiled in several of the most remarkable cases in uptown New Orleans' recent history and had broken the Black Rose and jass murders, along with the Benedict killing.

McKinney understood that the brass cursed St. Cyr because he had embarrassed them time and again. Captain Picot in particular held him accountable for some unnamed offense. McKinney wondered what it could be that would inspire such bile. He was enough of a detective to know it was more than just two men who happened to despise each other.

Whatever it was didn't matter this day. He had been given an order to carry out, and while he had no love of dead bodies, he was curious to identify the victim.

The same two attendants—the dull and quiet one and his smaller, talkative companion—were waiting for him. They stepped into the alley and went about the business of unloading the shrouded corpse onto a gurney and maneuvering it back inside. The horse-drawn meat wagon rolled away, and Detective McKinney followed the two living and one dead citizen down the long corridor.

The attendants stripped the body, irked at having a copper standing by, which made it impossible for them to snatch any overlooked prizes from the clients: a watch, cuff links, now and then a few dollars in coin. So they stood aside, their arms crossed as McKinney went through the victim's clothes, finding nothing helpful, save for two calling cards with the same name and address printed on them:

Roland Parks
No. 1212 Perdido Street—2nd Fl.

Such cards could be found in many pockets. The lack of any profession generally meant that the holder didn't have one, other than day laborer, drifter, or petty criminal. Even gamblers carried cards, describing them as
Agents
or
Advisors,
whatever those titles signified.

So the casually employed Mr. Roland Parks had the prior evening left his room in a boardinghouse on Perdido Street and traveled to Storyville. Then, before or after visiting one of the houses, he was murdered, cut, and left where he fell, to be discovered some time later by a maid on her way home.

The policeman spent another moment with the victim's clothes. The bullet hole in Parks's jacket was surrounded by a corona of dried blood and a black residue. After he shuffled through the rest of the garments, he put them aside and turned back to the body. Parks was a common-looking white man, his face hitched in an expression of slight puzzlement, as if he, too, couldn't imagine why he had been marked for death.

"Your bad luck, fellow," McKinney murmured. The attendants exchanged a glance. The detective examined the wound, a hole the size of a Liberty nickel and the flesh around it bruised and stained. Taking the appearance of the jacket into account, he surmised that the weapon had been held dead against the body. No wonder Roland Parks looked baffled; a fellow stepped up to ask for a light or the time, and a second later he was dead. The cut on his forehead had a sloppy appearance, as if the assailant didn't care about getting it right.

McKinney straightened, closed his notebook, and put it away.

"All right, then," he said. Til see if I can find anyone who knew the man. Maybe there's next of kin. And if not..."

"Then we know what to do with him," the older attendant said with a smirk.

Evelyne spent extra time at her dressing mirror before she started her trip downtown. She could not remove the flush of excitement from her face or slow the thumping of her heart.

Every piece of her plan was in place. She had gone undetected, slipping through the undergrowth as sharply and slyly as a fox. Even when things went awry, she didn't panic, the sign of a true leader.

She tucked the last ivory pin in her hair and stepped to the window. The rain was drenching the cobbles of Perrier Street. She saw the Winton idling at the curb, the exhaust pipe billowing thin smoke into the afternoon mist. Though the top was up and the flaps were down, she could picture Thomas with his hands gripping and releasing the wheel and tapping his foot nervously, eager to get gone. He could wait a little longer. It was only the afternoon, and Evelyne wanted to savor the moment.

She accepted as simple truth that along the course of every person's life came an intersection grander than any other. The choice made at this junction would echo down the years to come. She had reached such a crossroads, had made her decision, and so had drawn her fate.

The plan that had begun many months ago as a wicked diversion gradually bloomed as a strategy to be carried out. The District was coming apart. Evelyne recognized an opportunity and, rather than wait, helped it along.

Knocking down Tom Anderson had been simple. The King of Storyville was already tottering, getting older and weaker by the day. Lulu White and the other madams, Negroes and dagos and crude white women, could barely manage their mansions.

The only uncertain player in this rogue theater was Valentin St. Cyr. When Louis Jacob got around to bringing up the Creole detective, she was curious, then fascinated, at first enjoying a girlish thrill imagining the man. She went about ascribing to him a face and body, building a character out of the pages of a dime novel. When reality took over and she learned more, she was even more entranced.

She hired a copyboy at the newspaper to go through the files of index cards and bring her old issues with stories that mentioned him. She paid a clerk at City Hall to go into the police files and pull records that carried his name. It was New Orleans, and no errand was impossible if the money was right.

As time went by, she saw him as a potential enemy, the one person who might come to Storyville's rescue and wreck her plans. So she sought to draw him out and check him, and his skills were so rusty that he walked into her trap. It, and he, should have been finished, except that he managed to escape, and Evelyne realized that the man was her match. She decided it was time to present the Creole detective with his own special intersection.

It was another brilliant piece to be embroidered into a grand architecture created by her alone. She fixed it in her mind a final time, then turned from the window to make her way downstairs to the impatient Thomas.

***

Captain Picot stood at the front window gazing out at the dark city. The clerk called that Chief Reynolds was on the line.

"Jesus Christ almighty!" Picot groaned. He was sure the chief wanted to dress him down over losing St. Cyr.

He stepped to the desk and lifted the receiver gently to his ear. The chief laid into him, squawking like an angry rooster.

"What the hell is going on down there?" he demanded.

"Chief, we're doing every—"

"Well, you're not doing enough!" Reynolds's voice swooped. "What's your plan?"

"I'm putting additional officers on the street," Picot said quickly.

"That won't do it," the chief snapped with impatience. "We need more than that. This son of a bitch is thumbing his nose at us."

Picot allowed a significant pause, a signal to his superior. "We can close the net on him," he said.

"What's that mean?"

"We can start shutting down the District."

Reynolds said, "Good lord, Captain. Shut it down? Do you know what kind of a commotion that would cause? It would be chaos."

"We already have that, sir."

"No, we can't do it. There'd be too much trouble."

Picot understood: Too many important people had too much money invested. Not to mention the local diocese, full or part owner of at least a dozen properties in the District, by way of holding companies.

"I don't mean permanently," he said smoothly. "And I don't mean the whole place. We've been wanting to clean up that damned mess up on Claiborne and Robertson for a long time." He took another second's pause, then said, "We could probably close a couple more streets and no one would squawk."

He braced himself for the chief to shriek back that he was out of his mind and was quietly surprised when Reynolds said, "I don't know ... I'd be stepping on some toes..."

Captain Picot understood that this meant Tom Anderson's. They'd be tangling with the King of Storyville himself. Tired as he might be, Anderson wouldn't let go without a fight.

Picot knew he was taking a big gamble, and if he lost, he'd be finished. He had no doubt that the chief would find a way to dump it all squarely in his lap.

"Where would the women go?" Reynolds inquired ruminatively, breaking the silence.

"Away," Picot said. "Let them be someone else's problem for a while."

After a vacant moment, Reynolds said, "Have you found St. Cyr?"

Picot, surprised at the change of tack, said, "No, sir, but we will. He'll be in jail before the night's out. I can guarantee that."

Of course, he had no idea if any such thing was possible; it was more important to placate the chief and worry about the rest later.

Reynolds took a pause, then said, "Don't do anything other than lock him down until you hear from me again."

"Yes, sir. Understood."

Captain Picot dropped the handset back into the cradle, thinking that no matter how long it took, sooner or later everyone got their due, even the likes of Valentin St. Cyr.

Once word of the latest murder made the rounds, business ebbed. A number of gentlemen who were in houses when they heard the news came up with excuses and cut their evenings short. Others who had regular Saturday-night visits turned around and headed back the way they had come. Some even stayed home and bedded their wives. It had the inklings of a disaster in the making.

Lulu White had watched the whole bizarre drama unfold from her Mahogany Hall parlor, first the murders, then the shooting of the suspect, and finally the twist that sent Valentin St. Cyr into hiding and put the whole of Storyville on edge.

Not willing to stand by and watch her place of business crumble into dust, she put on one of her best dresses and marched down the line to collect Antonia Gonzales and then Countess Willie Piazza.

The three madams made a formidable brigade on Basin Street, each with a security man in tow, a trio of bejeweled ships pushed along by heavier tugs. It was coming on to twilight, and they were all three done in their finest: long dresses, huge Floradora hats, ostrich boas, cloaks befitting queens in court. It was unfortunate that there were not more spectators to see them arrive at the doors of Anderson's Café with a full head of steam, leaving their roughnecks to loiter outside on the banquette.

The Café, like most drinking and gambling establishments, was off-limits to females except the better class of sporting women, meaning the prettiest of the octoroons. It had always caused a bit of rancor, more so as women began agitating for certain rights. Rather than fight it, Tom Anderson, in a stroke of inspiration, created a women's salon off the main floor, one with its own small bar and tables and effectively shielded from prying eyes by a heavy brocade curtain. It was into this lounge that Lulu White led the other two madams, as whispers of astonishment trailed in their wake.

Each had been hanging around the bar at the Café to see if he could pick up any word about Valentin, Miss Justine, and the coppers while he tried to decide what to do with the envelope that was stuffed in his pocket. He now stood by in wonder as the madams passed. "With a curt word and an imperious twiddle of her gloved fingers, Miss Lulu sent him running to fetch Mr. Anderson from the upstairs office.

The women had barely tasted their champagne when the King of Storyville appeared through the curtained archway, pushing a smile before him.

"Ladies," he murmured. "What a surprise. And a pleasure."

The three feminine heads performed one nod. Countess Piazza and Antonia Gonzales smiled slightly. Miss Lulu treated him to a searching gaze, noting the flushed cheeks, tight brow, and eyes that seemed a little despondent. It was no surprise that he was feeling low after allowing such a mess to fester under his very nose.

And yet, even in the midst of mayhem, she knew he could still be a charmer, and so before he could befuddle her two companions with sweet talk and engaging smiles, she drove directly to the business at hand.

"What about Mr. Valentin?"

Anderson's grin fell; so there would be no idle chatter this evening. "He's in hiding. I don't know where, and I don't want to. The police have a warrant on him. He killed the wrong man."

"So they say. I don't buy it." Miss Antonia shook her head grimly. "None of this has been an accident, Tom. Someone's out to topple us. And this is part of it."

Though irked by the snippy tone, the King of Storyville understood that this was no time to indulge petty emotions or for forced jollity, for that matter. He knew as well as she what kind of trouble they were facing. It had been in the back of his mind that the killings of the past weeks might be more than just the work of a madman. Now the madam was giving voice to his suspicions.