CHAPTER 51

When Sam got back to town, he parked in the alley next to Lawson’s Dry Goods and crossed the street to City Hardware. Art Nelson had been opening the Otasco store every morning so Sam could take care of things at home, and he had been so wrapped up in his own affairs he had not kept up with town business. He found the council president filling nail bins.

“Morning, Sam, how’s your momma doing?” Neal O’Brien asked, as he shook the last tenpenny finishing nails from a keg. Happy to have a break, he set the keg upside down on the floor, motioned Sam to sit on it, and lugged over an unopened keg for himself.

“I reckon she’s doing better,” Sam said. “She’s still in bed but she’s giving everybody orders. Anyway, I was wondering how things are going with Jesse Culpepper.”

“He’s not gon’ be able to start till Friday. Something personal came up that he wants to take care of first. But he’s happy as a pig in slop. He was over at the town hall last night after the votes were counted and said he’s rearing to go. By the way, we missed you there.”

“Sorry about that,” Sam said. “I was so busy I clean forgot about the election. How’d we do?”

“No matter,” Neal said. “You won. We all did of course. Same mayor and council for two more years. Anyway, Jesse’s all set to start on Friday. Mr. Claude says that’s okay with him. He also says he wants to rest up some before he starts the night watchman’s job. We’ll have to keep on making do with Crow Hicks.”

“Yeah, I reckon so,” Sam said. He was pleased that Mr. Claude had not mentioned anything about getting together with Leon Jackson to watch Spurlock and Upshaw.

“But Mr. Trammel always ran bios on the election winners,” Pearl said. She was standing in front of Upshaw’s desk, clutching story drafts in both hands.

“You know I don’t give a fig about what old man Trammel did. The only reason Sam Tate and the rest of that bunch won is because no one ran against them. They’re incompetent morons and I’m not gon’ waste any more ink on them. I’m not gon’ waste it on that second Russian Sputnik either. To hell with the red menace. It’s the black menace I’m worried about. Go on and set those Farley and Smitherman speeches like I told you.”

“But Mr. Upshaw, you’ve reported on those before. They’re not news anymore.”

He stared coldly at Pearl. “Mrs. Goodbar, you still don’t get it, do you? I don’t mind breaking a few rules and conventions to get what I want.”

While Upshaw went on using the Unionville Times to blast anyone and everything that hinted at integration, elsewhere the Soviet Union dominated the news. The El Dorado Daily News proclaimed, “Soviet Newspapers Predict Russia to Send Rockets to Planets” and “Reds Claim New Super Fuel.”

“What I’d like to know is how the hell those idiots in Washington could’ve sat on their fat asses and let this happen,” Doyle Scoggins said at the Otasco store Saturday night. The usual loafers had gathered, and about the only thing keeping them anywhere near a good mood was a mess of Sam’s peanuts parching on top of the large gas heater while it gave off a warm glow and soothing hum. Doc Perkins was fighting a cold he had picked up from one of his patients, Tucker had hunted all day without much luck, and Sam was worried about Billy taking care of his grandmother alone all evening. There was not even a Razorback game to listen to. Arkansas had played that afternoon and lost 13 to 7 to the Rice Owls. With three losses, their hopes for a bowl bid had grown dim.

“That satellite’s not as much of a threat as everyone thinks,” Doc said. He got up and grabbed a handful of peanuts. “We’ll have our own satellites pretty soon. I’ll tell you, though, if the Russians and us end up bombing the hell out of each other, we’re not gon’ have to worry about who’s got the most do-hickeys in space.”

“What do you think about that dog they sent up this time, Doc?” Houston Holloway asked. “You think it’s gon’ survive?”

“No, I don’t think they expect it to. They just want to get some medical readings so maybe they can send a man up sometime soon.”

“I think Odell Grimes hit the nail on the head up at Emmett’s this morning,” Scoggins said, flicking cigarette ashes on the floor. “He said we ought to let the Russians send ole Daisy Bates up there. Said it’d be good riddance since she don’t know how to stay in her place down here.”

Sam looked on in silence. In the past he had not paid much attention to this type of talk, but now it sounded different to him. He knew people would say things like this about Becky if they learned her secret, and it hurt to think about it.

While the loafers gabbed in Unionville, Lucien Bouchard slipped onto a barstool in Lee Ann’s Palais de la Femme, just off Bourbon Street in New Orleans. The beefy detective had logged nearly twenty-five hundred miles by car during the last two weeks, walked dozens more, and poured over enough old newspapers, letters, journals, land deeds, and census records to fill an eighteen-wheeler. He had driven first to St. Louis, then south to the Crescent City, and since then, he had gone back and forth to Baton Rouge half a dozen times. He visited two county courthouses, one parish courthouse, one state archive, and three university libraries and walked up and down half the streets in New Orleans, or so it seemed, and talked to dozens of people. He was bone tired but the effort was paying off. He had only one more source to check.

At home amid the smell of cigar smoke and stale beer, he shucked his rumpled sport coat, ran a chubby hand through his thick black hair, and motioned to the stacked blond tending bar at the end of the counter. He wondered if she took a turn stripping on Lee Ann’s beat-up stage, empty at the moment. If so, he might stay longer than he had planned. She winked at the customer she had just served, stuck a five down the front of her spaghetti-strap dress, and glided over, all smiles and boobs, aiming for another big tip.

“Hi, there, sugar. What can I get you?” she asked, leaning forward to give him a view intended to loosen his wallet. He admired what she was showing then laid a twenty on the counter and held it down.

“I’m looking for Skinny Red Hérbert,” he said, as a five-piece band launched into a lively jazz number on the other side of the dimly lit room. “He’s an old trombone player. Fellow down the street told me he likes to hang out around here.”

“What do you want with him?” she asked in an almost motherly tone, as she reached for the twenty. Bouchard kept his hand on it.

“Do you know where he is or not?”

“Maybe. It depends.”

“I just want to ask him some questions about some of the old joints, that’s all.”

He lifted his hand and she grabbed the twenty and pushed it in where the five had disappeared earlier.“Go through that green door over there and all the way down the hall,” she said. “He’s in the last room on the right. He’s a nice old man and he’s a little down on his luck. Lee Ann lets him come in from the alley and rest back there.”

“Thanks for the information, baby. And thanks for the peep show too,” he said, reaching for his jacket.

“You come back with some more of them Andrew Jacksons, sugar, and I’ll show you a lot more,” she said, winking.

Once in the hallway, Bouchard found the door to Skinny Red’s room cracked open and the light-skinned old man sitting in a ragged platform rocker, his head on his chest and his feet on a liquor crate. He was wearing a worn black suit and white shirt with no tie. The detective walked over and gently shook his shoulder.

“Yep, what can I do you for?” Skinny Red asked, springing up as if he were used to being shook awake. Bouchard had expected to see a Negro but Skinny Red did not look or sound like one. Although he was well into his nineties, word had it that he still played now and then over at Preservation Hall, an old art gallery turned jazz room. Bouchard thought all those fellows were black, so maybe Skinny Red was a high mulatto or something. That might explain a lot.

“I hear when you were a kid you lived in one of those old Freedmen’s Bureau homes and you knew Louise de Mortié. That right?”

The old man looked closer at his guest. Louise de Mortié was one of several people who had organized homes for black orphans in New Orleans near the end of the Civil War. The houses later came under the authority of the bureau and stood for years.

“How’d you know that? That was a long time ago.”

“There’re some records scattered around and I found out you looked at some of them.”

“That was a long time ago too.”

“Yeah, but people who keep that stuff generally remember who uses it, especially since not many folks do. I also hear you used to play in the pleasure houses over in Storyville. Did you?”

“Yeah, that was back before World War I when ladies of the evening were legal down here. Man, I could sure tell you some stories.”

“That’s exactly what I came for, Skinny Red. Do the names Charlene or Abigail Clémence mean anything to you?”

“Well, let me see now. They do sound sort of familiar like.” He took his feet off the liquor crate and rested his hands on his knees. “Yes, sir,” he said after a moment. “I recollect both of them.”