Lost River (4 page)

Valentin thought for a moment. "You want me to go to Storyville?"

"Well, yes, you'll have to." The attorney regarded the detective curiously. "What's wrong? You still know the territory, right?" Valentin answered with a brief nod, and Ross said, "If this is anything at all, make it disappear. We understand we might have to pay. But a man in Mr. Beck's position can't afford embarrassment. And if we don't stop it now, someone could get hurt."

Valentin knew that by "someone" Ross meant one of the boys rather than whichever whores they might molest. "Can't these people control their families?" he said.

"That's what they pay us to do," the attorney said crisply. "The young fellow has a future, and his father wants him corralled. Do whatever's necessary. Just so it's quick and quiet."

Valentin didn't need to hear this last bit; it was the standard order. He put his notebook away. "Anything else?"

"That's all for now," Ross said. "But there'll always be more. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, sir, it is," Valentin said, and stood up.

The attorney waved him out of the office and went back to his papers.

Valentin walked away from the heavy doors feeling a stitch in his gut. Though Samuel Ross was a pleasant-enough fellow, Valentin didn't care a bit for the firm's clients. He didn't give a good goddamn about the welfare of James Beck, his band of louts, or the father who couldn't manage his brat of a son. Because of them, he would have to travel to Storyville after avoiding just such a visit only a few hours earlier.

He walked a half-dozen doors down the avenue to the second of the three law firms that currently employed him. Inside, he stepped to the front desk and collected two envelopes; one was a scribbled note from one of the attorneys asking him to check on a client's fiancé, a certain gentleman who was making claims of European royalty, and the other contained a bank check for his monthly retainer of seventy-five dollars.

He signed for the check, thanked the dour-faced clerk, and went outside to catch a car back into town.

It didn't take long for the word about the dead man on Miss Parker's floor to make its way along Basin Street. Though the madams down the line uttered shock over the incident, each one also let out a sigh of private relief that it wasn't her parlor where Defoor had come to rest, and even more privately wished that if he had died on Basin Street, the curse would have landed on French Emma Johnson. Let the evil witch explain
that
away.

Honore Jacob, the landlord of the property, made an appearance and a proper fuss. Red-faced and flustered, he sweated his way up the gallery steps to demand to know what the hell was going on.
A dead man on the floor? Who was he? Which one of your good-for-nothing whores shot him?
All Miss Parker could do was shrug. The exasperated landlord left, shaking his head in bewilderment.

Other than that, the odd happenstance was brushed aside. Corpses were a fact of Storyville life. Usually, it was some poor fellow whose heart couldn't take the strain. Women were murdered by lovers, and vice versa, sometimes with such tragic drama that local musicians wasted no time in turning the incidents into song. Suicides were not uncommon among the ranks of the sporting women. So the death of Allan Defoor raised few eyebrows.

Antonia Gonzales was not so complacent. Sitting at her kitchen table, sipping a lukewarm cup of coffee, and gazing out at the back garden, she thought the other madams were a little too eager to shove the strange incident out of sight. There was something wrong about it.

Not so long ago, she could have gone upstairs, tapped on Justine Mancarre's door, and, finding Mr. Valentin there, asked him to look into it. And he would have solved the problem just that directly. That was why Tom Anderson had kept him on, in spite of their regular quarrels and the detective's mixed blood. St. Cyr had been good for Anderson and for the District. And yet the King of Storyville had let him walk away.

Two blocks down on the corner of Iberville Street, a white Packard Victoria pulled to the curb. Tom Anderson opened the passenger side door, put a foot on the running board, and clambered down with a soft grunt of discomfort. The springs of the automobile replied with a mocking squeak of relief.

Standing on the banquette, he surveyed the world he had created. Even with his ills, the mere sight was a balm. The mansions that fronted the street were the showcases, with ornately furnished downstairs rooms for relaxation before and after the more lurid diversions of the upper floors. These houses employed the finest of the sporting women, known for their beauty, amorous skills, and wit. Some well-traveled gentlemen claimed that they ranked with the courtesans of the high-class bordellos of Europe.

That was the main line. To the north lay Franklin, then Liberty, Marais, and Villere, and each avenue was a step down a slope that ended in the nightmare alleys of Robertson and Claiborne. When it came to fornication, Storyville offered something for every pocketbook and taste.

Though quiet at this early hour, around noon the District would come to life, yawning and stretching like a harlot worn out by too many rough nights, and yet ready for service. The daytime hours were businesslike, as men of modest means were ushered in, sated, and sent back out the door, an assembly line of quick and cold joy.

Later, though, when the sun went down, Storyville would apply its paint and perfume and turn on its lights to become a fantasy world dedicated to pleasures of the body. Men drank, caroused, drank some more, listened to the professors at the pianos, caroused once again. Finally, they went home, leaving piles of gold behind.

It was all part of the grand machine that had been devised by the heavy-framed gentleman who now waved off his driver, then watched absently as the Packard chugged away in the quiet morning light. Stepping beneath the colonnade that stretched along two sides of the building as the etched-glass doors of the establishment opened wide, he muttered a good morning to Ned, the old Negro janitor.

"Coffee's ready, Mr. Tom," the Negro replied, and the King of Storyville passed inside and enjoyed another rush of pride.

As a premier drinking, dining, and gambling establishment, Anderson's Café and Annex occupied almost half the city block and anchored Basin Street. Anderson had opened it fifteen years before as a modest restaurant, then expanded it by steps until it dominated the District. The decor, from the tiled floor of Italian marble to the brocade on the walls to the chandeliers overhead, had been inspired by the great casinos of the Riviera. The food and drink were the best to be had, and all the games were straight up. There was even a salon for ladies tucked away behind a curtained archway. It was a grand room by any measure.

Now the proprietor of the address leaned at the end of the long bar to observe the crew going about their chores.

"You hear 'bout what happened up at Miss Parker's?" Ned said.

"I did." Anderson eyed the janitor. "Is there anything else going around?"

"Jes' that they done took the man away," Ned said. "Police is all gone now. It's over with." His white eyebrows arched and he said, "Someone say Miss Parker sent for Mr. St. Cyr, but that he wouldn't—"

"I know about that," Anderson interrupted gruffly.

Ned shrugged, stepped behind the bar, and picked up a rag to resume polishing the brass fixtures. Anderson walked slowly down the length of the room to his favored table near the end of the bar.

He helped himself to a cup of coffee from the urn and settled into his usual chair, facing the door. As the morning passed, he would attend to paperwork, direct his staff, and address the mundane details of his day. Only after his lunch would he make his way upstairs to use the telephone set and doze in his big leather chair. Later in the afternoon, he would greet visitors on more delicate and confidential errands: local politicians, merchants, landlords, certain high-level criminal types, the occasional madam. He'd listen and then dole out advice, orders, and justice. When the sun went down and the streets came alive, he'd be back downstairs to host his most important guests.

At the very end of this long workday, he might slip away to a private room in one of the better houses to enjoy the attentions of a special young lady. Otherwise, he would call for his car and go home to bed. Lately, that's how most of his nights ended.

The body of Allan Defoor was placed in a locker in the Parish Prison morgue, along with the other white unfortunates. It was late morning when the police brought the victim's eldest son, who provided a hushed identification before being escorted back out, ashen faced and shaking. The police sergeant on hand informed him that the investigation would likely be closed and the body released to the family by the end of the day.

The official review was cursory. The coppers made quick rounds to ask about the victim. When these efforts came up empty, they dropped it.

After Defoor's son hurried home to deliver the sad news, the police went back on duty and the morgue attendants locked the doors, hitched the horses to the hack, and rode to North Peters Street to collect the body of a drowning victim. On the way back, they stopped at their usual place on Perdido Street for an early lunch, leaving the waterlogged corpse outside.

When they returned to the morgue, they found a police officer waiting. Detective James McKinney had been given part-time leave from street patrol and was eager to cover every detail. If his captain gave the word, he'd talk to the family and friends and see if he could puzzle out how and why the man had been murdered. It was unlikely he'd get that far. No one appeared interested, least of all Captain Picot, who seemed to harbor the belief that any death in the red-light district was well deserved.

The senior of the two attendants, a callow-faced mulatto named Royce, told their visitor that one of the doctors from the medical examiners' office would be around later and that maybe he should come back then. The detective requested instead that they fetch the body from the cooler and wheel it on a gurney into the examination room so he could have a look. The two attendants exchanged an annoyed glance. They were used to having a nap after lunch and weren't much in the mood to work. McKinney got his way, though, and within a few minutes stood viewing the denuded corpse from head to toe and taking notes on a little pad. The younger attendant wandered out of the room, and the mulatto perched atop the desk, with his back against the wall, his arms crossed and head drooping.

McKinney found Defoor's wound to be precise: a hole the size of a Liberty dime, over the heart but doing enough damage to put an end to the victim in a matter of seconds. While there were no powder burns in evidence, the precision of the shot meant that it had come from at most a few feet away.

The detective searched the body further.

"What's this?" he inquired presently, interrupting a rattling snore.

Royce raised his chin, blinking. "What's what?"

McKinney pointed. "Right here."

Huffing, the mulatto pushed himself off the desk and stepped close to the gurney. "What?"

McKinney directed his attention to Mr. Defoor's forehead.

Royce squinted. "What?"

"He's been cut," McKinney said.

The cop pointed to the faint pinpoint line that started over the victim's right eyebrow, crossed the bridge of his nose, and ended on his left cheek. Officer McKinney treated the dull-faced mulatto to an absent glance.

"Now why would someone do that?" he said.

The fellow had been lying dead for a day and a half and had grown so putrid that the smell was noticed even among the cribs that lined Robertson from Conti to Bienville streets. The call went out around midmorning. It took another two hours for the police to arrive, first a pair of beat coppers, then a detective from the precinct attached to Parish Prison.

The sergeant and the rookie patrolman in their blues and round-topped helmets ambled along the litter-strewn banquette in opposite directions, canvassing for witnesses. They came back to report to the detective that the whores on both sides said the crib had been vacant for at least a week, and none had a recollection of the woman who had rented it last.

So the officers had the body of a white man in a plain suit and that was all. The victim had been shot in the back of the skull, from the look of the entry wound a single bullet from a .22, and then dumped on a filthy, lice-riddled mattress in a foul Robertson Street crib. A few more of the harlots were paraded by the door for a look at the poor fellow. Not one of them could identify him. This was no surprise; the men who visited that part of Storyville rarely lingered for long. And even sober, the sluts who served them saw so many faces that they all blurred into one.

The detective sent the women away, and he and the sergeant strolled off to Marais Street to find a saloon with a telephone so they could call the precinct for missing persons reports and enjoy a draught beer or two while they waited to hear back.

The patrolman, whose name was Casey, was left to stand by until the wagon came for the pungent corpse. It wasn't his first visit to the raw edge of the red-light district, though like most New Orleans policemen, he hoped it would be his last.

Even now he could feel hard eyes glaring from other doors. Business was already bad; having a copper standing around made things worse. A corpse in a crib was a regular occurrence, and the whores were used to quicker service. They wanted the body and the policeman watching it gone, so that they could go back to selling pieces of themselves to whichever citizens were desperate enough to pay the ten cents.