Ran Away (16 page)

The old man who used to sell pink roses from a basket on his head was gone.

No one had the money for roses.

The few shops still open around the square were half-deserted. Passing the head of Gallatin Street, he’d seen the bar rooms and gaming houses were all still open, but the sound of the street was different. The gaiety that tinged the sounds of drink and play had been replaced with a harder note, a threat of violence.

It was as if, along with the smell of burned sugar, the air was alive with the stink of anger, frustration, and fear.

Lieutenant Abishag Shaw was at his desk in the big stone-flagged watch room of the old Spanish headquarters of law and justice in New Orleans, patiently writing the accounts of two flatboatmen, a gambler, a sailor and three whores concerning an altercation at Alligator Sal’s. Only the gambler was sober. Shaw had a cut over his left eye, and on the bench next to where January took a seat, one of the other City Guards was patching up another with sticking plaster and bandages.

‘Goddam Irish bastard started it!’

‘Who you callin’ bastard, you dog-friggin’ Whig whoreson?’

‘I’m callin’ you bastard, an’ cheat besides!’

Through the open doors at the rear of the watch room came the crack of a whip, then a man’s scream of agony, from the courtyard where disobedient or insolent slaves were sent by their owners to be whipped, at fifty cents a stroke. A man stood next to the doors waiting his turn at the whipping post, holding a girl of fourteen by the arm in an iron grip and casually smoking a cigar as he watched.

‘How can I help you, Maestro?’ Shaw uncoiled his tall height from behind the desk as the whole squad of the accused were herded, still shouting, from the room. He looked, as usual, like a badly put-together scarecrow, greasy blondish hair hanging to his bony shoulders, inches of knobby wrist projecting beyond frayed and dirty sleeves.

‘What are the chances I might speak with Hüseyin Pasha? I knew him in Paris—’

‘If
this
man is permitted entry to the cells,’ cried a rich, slightly gluey voice from behind January – ‘a mere Negro from the wharves, you can have no excuse for keeping the man sequestered from the licensed representatives of the Fourth Estate, sir!’ January was unceremoniously elbowed aside by a very large, very fat, very unwashed and unshaven man, in a blue frock-coat only a degree less grimy than Shaw’s stained green jacket and a pair of checked trousers in an alarming combination of mustard and cinnamon hues. He recognized the man as Burton Blodgett of the
True American
– until recently the
Louisiana Gazette
– the chief English-language paper of the city. ‘My readers have a right to know the facts of this shocking crime, sir! And not all the gold which this verminous Infidel has showered upon the officials of this city to cover up his misdeeds can erase the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to my readers, to know the truth!’

‘Maestro –’ Shaw stepped past the journalist to January’s side – ‘walk with me a spell. Mr January,’ he added as Blodgett determinedly thrust himself in front of them on the way to the watch room’s rear doors, ‘far from bein’ a mere Negro from off’n the wharves, is Mr Hüseyin’s personal physician, here to bring him news about his wife.’

‘Wife?’ Blodgett struck an attitude like Mark Anthony at Caesar’s funeral discoursing upon the honor of Brutus and Cassius. ‘And which of his
wives
is that, sir? Has he many left?’

‘Just the one. Sergeant Boechter,’ added Shaw, with a gesture to the officer at the desk, ‘would you make sure Mr Blodgett don’t wander off an’ get hisself lost? If’fn you knew Hüseyin in Paris, Maestro, I would purely like to have a word with you.’

TWELVE

‘
J
anvier.’ Hüseyin Pasha raised his eyes as Shaw and January came opposite the barred wall of the cell.

Privacy was a scarce commodity in the Cabildo. What had been adequate cell-space in the days of the Spanish governors not quite forty years previously had been long outstripped by the growth of the town once the Americans had taken over the territory, and the Americans’ recent insistence that white drunks, murderers, robbers and rapists not be required to share their facilities with blacks had not helped the situation. A year ago the city had been divided into three ‘municipalities’ – each with its own courts – and this had eased the crowding somewhat. The new jail in the process of completion a short distance away on Rue St Peter would, January knew, help in time, but it hadn’t yet.

At the moment, with Burton Blodgett ensconced, loudly protesting, in the watch room, the only place available to meet Hüseyin Pasha was either in the infirmary, in the makeshift morgue below the ground-floor stairs, or in the dirty corridor outside the cell itself.

The cell which was hallowed to the incarceration of slaves and free blacks, not whites.

Anger stirred in him. Evidently a Turk did not count as a white man.

‘
Sayyadi
.’ January inclined his head, and the Turk’s thick, ugly lips bent in a wry smile.

‘So the wheel turns again, my friend. And here I did not think to see you until next Wednesday, when you were to play at my reception.’

January returned both the wryness and the smile. Hüseyin Pasha had greeted him joyfully back in November, when January had been playing for a ball at the wealthy Widow Redfern’s, though few words had been exchanged. It did not do – they both understood – for one of the guests of honor to speak overlong with the musicians. Subsequent meetings had been equally brief, usually under similar circumstances. Once the Turk had asked, ‘Is your beautiful lady with you?’

January had replied, ‘She died in the cholera, in thirty-two. Two years ago I remarried, and my wife has just borne a son.’

Hüseyin’s sympathy had been genuine and warm.

Now January asked, ‘What happened, sir? For I know you did not do this thing; and I know there must be a way to find who did.’

‘You are the only man in this city who believes me, then, Janvier.’ Hüseyin Pasha had removed his turban – which he still affected, along with the rest of his Turkish dress – and January saw that the stubble on his scalp, like his heavy mustache, was now shot with gray. ‘As for what happened, that I do not know. The two poor girls – Noura and Karida – had fled from my house on Friday night  . . .’

His voice hesitated as Shamira’s shadow seemed to pass between them.

‘I was angry,’ he admitted. ‘They took with them not only the jewelry that I had given them, but also my wife’s as well. Yet I did not wish to make of myself a spectacle for the newspapers in your city, and so I spoke of their flight to no one. I see now that I should have done so. And indeed I feared for them, for they spoke only slight French, and no English at all. Three men had already offered me money for them, without ever seeing them.’ The heavy flesh of his face hardened, and under the ape-like brow his dark eyes glinted with anger.

‘They were not dark like Negroes, yet I have seen slave women in this country even more fair of complexion, and being foolish girls, how could they judge whether a man’s intentions were honest or not? I should have spoken.’ He sighed, angry, January could see, at himself  . . . 

And who would believe him, when he only says, ‘They were not in the house,’ after he is accused of their murder?

Only someone who knows him well
.

January understood that he himself was the only man in the city who did.

‘Tell me about Sunday night. Was anyone else in the house with you?’

Under the thick mustache, Hüseyin’s mouth quirked again, at the bitter jests of Fate. ‘I was to meet a man of business named Smith that night, who had said that no one must learn of his presence in New Orleans. Given the anger over the failure of the banks, this did not seem unreasonable to me. I gave my son’s tutor leave to take my son to the theater, and with them all the other servants as well, saving only my wife’s woman.’

‘Would that be Ra’eesa still?’ January smiled. ‘After all these years?’

‘You could not send her away at gunpoint.’

‘We been inquirin’ after Mr Smith.’ Shaw’s voice was dry over that most common of names. ‘Mr
John
Smith. Business unknown, address unknown – nobody in no hotel in town by that name ’ceptin’ a former director of the Mobile an’ Balize Commercial Bank that don’t look a thing like Mr Smith’s description, even if he
had
been wearin’ dark spectacles an’ false whiskers.’

‘What did Smith look like?’

‘A man of girth and strength, like myself,’ provided Hüseyin. ‘A little taller. As the officer says, with dark hair and a full dark beard, and spectacles on his eyes.’

‘French or American?’

‘That I cannot say. We spoke French, but whether he spoke it as a true Frenchman would, I am not so familiar with the language that I could judge. The beard may indeed have been a false one – M’sieu Shaw tells me that it is not common for men in this country to wear beards, as it is in mine. By the light of candles, it is not so easy to tell.’

‘Had you met him before?’

‘No. He sent me a letter, introducing himself, saying that he wished to speak to me of investment. Much to my advantage, he said, but needing the capital of my gold. Again, I have had many men come to me in the city, offering me the opportunity to invest my gold.’

For weeks January had amused himself at receptions, balls, entertainments – at the Opera and the Blue Ribbon Balls of the demi-monde – watching the businessmen of the city swarm around the Turk:
Now, don’t you be deceived, Mr Hüseyin, the Carrollton Bank’s sound as a rock – as a ROCK, sir! Just needs a little capital to get through this rough time  . . .  Banks, pshaw! Nuthin’ like land to turn over a profit in this country  . . .  Now, a score of men – not a score, three dozen, easy! – have come to me offerin’ to partner me in this new cotton-press, but I didn’t trust a one of ’em, not a one! But I’ll give YOU the opportunity
 . . . 

Nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit
, as January’s friend Hannibal had whispered irreverently on one such occasion.
There is no fort so strong that it cannot be taken with money
.

‘He arrived shortly after eight – just before the rain began,’ went on Hüseyin after a moment. ‘I let him in myself. As you know, my house has two entrances: the great door out on to Rue Bourbon, and the carriageway that lets on to Rue des Ursulines. We went upstairs to my study, where there was a good fire. We talked for perhaps two hours. At the end of that time we were interrupted, by the crash of something falling past the study windows. I sprang to my feet and listened – he caught my arm and said:
It must not be known that I am in town
, or something to that effect. Then there was a second crash, and men began to shout in the street.’

‘Did you go to the study window?’

‘It was shuttered,’ said Hüseyin, ‘and I did not. My first thought was that my wife, who sleeps in the room above the study, had come to some harm. Yet I knew Ra’eesa was in the room with her, and moreover I had heard no sound of footfalls overhead. Yet when the second body fell I rushed out on to the gallery above the courtyard, and so down the stairs and through the passageway to the street. By the time I reached the street door men were shouting and banging on the door. I threw it open. It was almost too dark to see, though some of the men had candles, and a lamp burned in the passageway behind me. The bodies of my poor girls lay on the bricks.’

His face twisted as he said it, and he looked aside. Shaw leaned an angular shoulder against the bars that formed one wall of the cell and spat tobacco at one of the enormous cockroaches, which even in this frigid weather moved sluggishly along the grimy wall.

‘They said that I had done it,’ Hüseyin went on after a moment, his voice held steady with an effort. ‘That someone had seen me hurl them down from the attic window.’

‘Feller name of Breche, that keeps the shop down the street. Says he saw him clear.’

‘The pharmacist?’ January knew the place, though he seldom went there.

‘That’s the one. The old man’s son.’

January fished in his memory for a moment for a picture of the man, small and fair and a little tubby, grinding powders in the back while his father shouted at him:
Oliver, where’s that jalap? Oliver, this cinchona has lumps in it you could choke a horse on! Can you never do anything right?

He looked back at the Turk, who only shook his head.

‘It is a lie. I told them that I was with this man Smith. Yet when I led them up to my study, Smith was gone, and with him also the letter that had introduced him to me.’

‘Had the attic window been opened?’

‘It had,’ said Shaw. ‘Was still open when I got there, which was maybe an hour after the defenestration. But naturally every livin’ soul that had been in the street had gone tearin’ up to the attic by that time to look for theirselves, an’ the attic was trompled up like a brick pit. I had to run the lot of ’em out sayin’ I’d be happy to arrest every man jack of ’em as well as Mr Hüseyin, but there was no question about what room it was nor what window.’

‘Any other way to get into the attic?’

‘It’s what I intend to have a look at this afternoon, if’fn I can get there ’fore the light goes.’

January glanced toward the cell’s single window. It was barred on the inside, with a pierced iron plate set into the stucco of the wall outside. The pallid gray spots made by this admitted just enough light for him to see his watch. It was past four. ‘Will you have company, sir?’

‘I’d ’preciate it.’ Shaw spat at another roach, with no greater success than he’d had with the first. January had seen the Kentuckian put out a candle with a rifle ball at two hundred and fifty feet. ‘Not officially, but nuthin’ says you can’t call on Mrs Hüseyin in about twenty minutes’ time. Care to have a look at the girls’ bodies? They’s down in the morgue.’