The stuccoed, three-story building on Ursuline Street was a dark blue. A strange color, thought Lew, but not out of place in the Vieux Carre. An engraved wooden sign fastened to the wall near the door read, GILBERT A. ROSIERE, ATTORNEY AT LAW. The law office occupied the whole width of the ground floor.
Lew entered and stood on the thick wool carpet and glanced around the spacious room. Two young men, bent over files of papers, sat at a desk. One man was white-skinned, the other quite swarthy. Behind them a door opened to a hallway, apparently to inner, private offices.
Both men looked up at Lew.
“How may I help you?” asked the nearest man, a dark-skinned Creole.
“My name is Timothy Wollfolk. I have a letter from Gilbert Rosiere.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Wollfolk. Mr. Rosiere has been expecting some communication from you. He was not certain that you would come to New Orleans in person.”
“I’m here,” Lew said shortly.
“I can see that,” replied the man. “But unfortunately Mr. Rosiere is across the river in Algiers on a business matter and will not return until late today. I do know he would want to handle your case personally. Shall I make an appointment for you tomorrow early in the day? Would nine o’clock be satisfactory?”
“Nine it is.” From the man’s attitude, Lew judged the inheritance must be large. He left the law office.
He stopped on the sidewalk. A large part of the day lay free ahead of him. First a good meal and then he would widen his exploration of the city.
Lew ate fresh ocean shrimp, hot spicy vegetables, and crisp French bread. He finished the meal with two cups of strong coffee and a sweet French pastry.
He stopped at a tobacconist shop and breathed the pungent aroma as he waited for the proprietor to roll him half a dozen cigars. Timothy Wollfolk could afford the finest tobacco.
For hours Lew sauntered through the throng of people and vehicles on the avenues. The women were beautiful in silk and satin and also simple ginghams, but all with bows and ribbons; many smiled at him. He smiled back, but went on. Women would come later.
When Lew came to a way that led into a residential section of the city, he turned back into the business district. He passed the New Orleans Sugar Exchange, relatively quiet now in the off season of the year. The U.S. Mint on Gallatin Street held his interest. The fact the Mint was in New Orleans indicated the city was a powerful financial center. Farther along an iron foundry filled the air with smoke from its furnace, and from a sawmill came the shrill whine of the steam-driven saw blade ripping a log into lumber.
As the day grew old, Lew found himself approaching the dock area. He passed the ancient Cabildo, with its massive two bottom floors with their Spanish arches, and above, the delicate French garret floor and cupola. The building housed the seat of the city government. Nearby was Saint Charles Cathedral, its towering spires soaring into the sky. He crossed the crowded Jackson Square, where the night women were coming out in the dusk of the evening and strolling about and pairing up with the soldiers and sailors. Several of the women tried to catch Lew’s eye, but his attention was not on them and they went on their way.
He looked downriver three or four blocks to the tall structures of Steinberg and Company, a dealer in hides and furs, and Jackson Brewery on Decatur and Front streets. Then his view moved over the long line of warehouses on top of the levee. New Orleans was a rich and thriving city. A man with money to invest, as he might soon have, could become very rich here.
Lew had now made the circuit of the business district of the city and judged it two miles in a straight line along the river, and half a mile deep. The jostling people and hurrying vehicles, the narrow streets, and the half-mad activity at the docks were alien to his Texas life. Yet Lew was intrigued and attracted to the frenzy of the city.
* * *
The three young Creoles came out of the grog shop ahead of Lew. They were dressed in black trousers and white shirts closely tailored to fit their young, slender bodies. Thin two-edged swords hung in scabbards at the waist of each man. Laughing and talking, they moved off down the street.
One of the Creoles began to sing in a pleasant tenor voice as they walked along. The others laughed at his bravado of singing on a public street. But when he did not stop, his two friends took up the song, melding in a good, clear harmony.
Lew had no particular course, so he followed behind the Creoles through the gathering dusk. He enjoyed listening to the friendly camaraderie of the men. He felt his loneliness. He was a man with no friends.
The song ended and the men began to speak in French. Often they broke into ribald laughter at some joke.
The three men came to a city park and left the street to angle across the grass-covered space. The Creole who had begun the singing stopped on a low knoll. He ran his booted foot over the smooth grassy surface.
“This place would be an excellent spot for a duel,” he said.
“I agree,” a second man said. He pulled his rapier with an exaggerated sweep of his hand. The steel of the blade hissed as it slid from the leather scabbard. “On guard, you rascal,” he said with false fierceness.
The first Creole laughed good-naturedly. He too pulled his sword, made a bow to the first man, and took a fighting stance.
He looked at the third man. “Gustave, you shall be the judge. Call out the rules and then watch me trounce this blackguard.”
Gustave smiled broadly and asked in a loud voice, “Leandre, Maurice, is this duel to the death?”
“Yes,” Leandre said in mock seriousness.
“Yes,” Maurice said in equally severe mien.
“Then let the duel begin,” Gustave said. He clapped his hands with a sharp sound.
The two Creoles came slowly toward each other. Playfully they struck, and parried, and counterattacked. The rapiers rang lightly metal on metal.
In feined insult the younger duelist, Maurice, spoke to his comrade, Leandre. “Your sister is a whore.”
“But I don’t have a sister,” Leandre said.
“Then for not having a sister, take this.” Maurice reached out swiftly with his thin blade.
Leandre had not expected the abrupt change in the tempo of the game. The slender sword slipped through his guard, its finely honed point reaching in to nick his shoulder.
Leandre looked down at the seep of blood showing on his white shirt. “You play dangerously, Maurice.”
Leandre stepped swiftly forward. His arm shot out, thrusting his sword at Maurice.
The younger man blocked the strike. But instantly, almost too fast to see, Leandre struck a second time. The keen tip of the sword drew blood on Maurice’s chest.
“And there, my friend,” Leandre said.
Maurice glanced at the slight wound and then up at Leandre. “We shall see who loses the next drop of blood.” He advanced upon Leandre.
Lew entered the park and walked toward the men. He noted the growing seriousness of the game.
The sword action continued. The blades moved with amazing swiftness, seeming to vanish as the men struck and parried. The sounds of the metal hitting metal was harsh and cruel. In less than a minute, both men were bleeding from half a dozen shallow wounds. Still Lew could tell the two contestants were holding back from an all-out battle. Suddenly a rapid exchange of rapier strikes occurred. Maurice took a bad cut on the arm.
Lew had drawn close. Now he spoke to the young Creole name Gustave. ‘“As the judge, are you going to allow your two friends to kill each other?”
The young man, unaware of Lew’s presence, jerked, startled at the voice so near to him. He looked Lew over quickly. “Yes, you are right. It is up to me to stop it.” He wheeled about and shouted out in a loud, worried voice. “Leandre, Maurice, stop! The duel is over. You both have won.”
The swords of the contestants halted. The men looked at each other. A sheepish expression came to Leandre’s face. Then he began to smile. The smile broadened and he laughed. A second later, Maurice joined him and they laughed together.
Leandre slid his sword into its scabbard. He came forward and hugged Maurice. “Put your blade away,” he said.
Maurice sheathed his rapier. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and bound it around his bleeding hand.
“Come with me,” Leandre said. “And you too, Gustave. I know of another grog shop. I shall buy enough rum to get all of us drunk. Soon we will not feel these puny wounds.”
The three young Creoles began to move across the park. Gustave cast a look back at Lew. He stopped, said something to his friends, and walked toward Lew.
“My name is Gustave Besançon. Thank you for what you did. The duel did need to be stopped. I am in your debt.”
“I’m Timothy Wollfolk. You don’t owe me anything.”
“But I know that I do. Shall we fight to settle our disagreement?” He grinned widely at Lew.
“Some other time,” Lew said with a laugh.
“Until then,” said Gustave. He lifted his hand in salute and hurried to join his comrades.
Lew left the park, heading south toward the river. After four blocks, he encountered the natural rise of the levee. He walked up over the levee and down onto the quay.
In the late evening, the docks were mostly deserted, with the multitude of workers and drays drifting away from the river and melting into the city. Here and there lighted lanterns were being hung on ropes strung across the decks of ships, down the gangways, and onward over the docks to some particular mound of cargo. On those lighted stretches, stevedores labored under heavy loads to and from the ships.
“It used to be that cargo was seldom loaded at night,” said a man sitting on a pile of boxed cargo. “But now that New Orleans has been picked as the staging area and general jumping-off place for the invasion of Mexico, there are always gangs of men working on the docks.”
Lew glanced at the man. He was old, with deep wrinkles in a tanned face. A pipe drooped in the corner of his mouth. A pistol in a holster hung on his side.
The old man noted Lew’s view on his gun. “I’m a night watchman. There’s valuable goods here. River pirates and thieves from the town would carry off half of it in a night if I wasn’t here. You wouldn’t be a thief, would you?” There was a twinkle in the man’s eyes.
The question, even though it was made in jest, bothered Lew. If he had to answer, there could be but one response: that he was planning to be a thief.
“How could one man guard all the docks? They must stretch along the river for better than a mile.”
“I don’t have to watch it all, only eight hundred feet of it. You see each dock-owner must hire his own guard.”
Lew seated himself beside the watchman. He seemed to want to talk. “Have you been in New Orleans long?”
“Since 1813, when I came down from the North with old Stonewall Jackson. I helped him to beat the hell out of the British soldiers. I was wounded and had to stay here a few weeks to heal. Got to likin’ the city, so I just stayed on.”
Lew gestured out over the wharves with their huge piles of cargo and beyond to the hundred or more ships. “I expect some businessmen are getting rich.”
“Some are getting rich faster than they should.”
“How’s that?”
“There’s only just so much dock space and even less warehouse room. The army and navy are paying two and three times the rate for tying up and using the docks and warehouses than was being charged just a few months ago.”
“That will always happen when there’s a shortage of something.”
The old man puffed on his pipe. He looked squarely into Lew’s face. “You from around here?”
“No. Just got in today. From Cincinnati.”
“I would expect the docks are busy there too.”
Lew was caught off-guard by the query. And there would be more questions about Cincinnati, a city he had never seen.
“Yes. But not so busy as here.”
Lew thought the man wanted to say something else. He waited. However, the watchman just looked both ways along the river and remained silent.
Lew let the time slide by without conversation. A ship creaked as it wallowed to the current of the river and rubbed against the dock. A sailor came down a gangway from one of the ships and went out of sight over the levee. A guitar sounded from a ship down the river.
“Does Albert Wollfolk own any docks or warehouses?” Lew asked.
The watchman turned to Lew. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m Timothy Wollfolk. Albert Wollfolk was my uncle.”
The man thrust out a hand. “Well, I’ll be damned. I sure am glad to meet you, Tim. I’m Dave Cadwaller. I knew your uncle right well.” He began to smile. “You’re sitting on Wollfolk property at this very moment. Look up there.” He pointed at the warehouse on the levee above them.
Through the growing dusk, Tim saw the sign on the building: A WOLLFOLK, WAREHOUSE & DOCKAGE.
“Your uncle owns this eight hundred feet of river front that I told you I guarded. I work for your uncle. Or I should say, I did. The lawyer handling Mr. Wollfolk’s legal business told me and everybody else to keep on working and the new owner would see that we got paid. Is that you?”
“It may be. I’m to see the lawyer tomorrow.”
“Well, if you do end up owning this piece of old Mississippi River bank, you’ve got a good location.”
Cadwaller saw Lew’s quizzical expression. “Albert Wollfolk was a smart man and knew the river better than most everyone else. He bought the best place for a dock. And that’s right here. The river current comes in against the bank just strong enough to keep the sand and gravel swept away, but not so strong that the pilings of the docks get washed out. In other places along the shore the current is weak and the river bottom fills up and needs dredging. That costs money.”
“So the profit is high,” Lew said.
“Yes, and because of that, your uncle could underbid his competitors up and down the river. Of course, Mr. Wollfolk was sharp in other ways too, but not crooked.”
“That’s good to hear,” said Lew. “How did he die? The lawyer’s letter didn’t say.”
“There are conflicting thoughts about that. The law says he died accidentally. There’s a few others that ain’t so sure.”
“Why is there doubt?”
“Mr. Wollfolk was found early one morning in between the docks just down the river there. I heard the yelling when a sailor off one of the ships saw his body in the water. I hurried to see what was happening. The law comes and they pull Mr. Wollfolk out. I did see a big bruise on his forehead.
“Well, the law decides he walked off the end of the dock in the night and struck his head and simply drowned in the river. I don’t believe that worth a damn. He knew every crack and knothole in his docks. He could walk every foot in the dark and never fall.”
“Did you tell the law this?”
“You bet. They asked more questions around. Then that’s the last I heard. But the ruling by the law stands as an accidental death.”
“Were you on watch that night?”
“Yes, but there was some fellows fooling with cargo at the upper end and I was there talking to them for a spell. Whatever happened could have been then.”
“Did you know my uncle was here on the docks?”
“Nope. And he almost always come by and said hello to me when he was here. I feel bad that this thing happened while I was on duty.”
“Who were the men around the cargo that you were talking with?”
“Didn’t know them and have never seen them since.”
Lew waited for Cadwaller to continue speaking. But the man had withdrawn into himself and gave no indication of wanting further conversation. He pressed the lever down to raise the glass globe of his lantern and began to scrape the ash from the tip of the wick with his pocket knife.
Lew climbed erect. “Be seeing you,” he told the night watchman.
“Young fellow, I believe someone hated your uncle bad enough to kill him, or have him killed. Some of that hate may come your way. I’d keep an eye peeled.”
Lew nodded. “I’ll do that.”
He walked off along the wharf in the deepening dusk. He glanced back once at Cadwaller. The man had lit his lantern. He was still working on the wick, the light flickering on his face as the flame was disturbed by the knife blade. The old watchman looked sad. Had he truly guessed the cause of Wollfolk’s death? Or was his story a wild rambling?
Lew came to a place where the dock was blocked by a string of lanterns and a long line of stevedores. The laboring men carried kegs of gunpowder on their shoulders off the docks, up the swaying gangway, and down into the bowels of a steamship. Lew turned away from the lights and the men and angled across the dock in the direction of his lodging.
The gloom of the coming night gathered among the mountainous islands of canvas-covered cargo. On the eastern horizon a yellow moon showed the top curve of its round body. Lew increased his pace. Darkness would soon catch him in a strange city, and he had no light.
Lew heard booted feet on the wooden decking of the dock. He cast a look over his shoulder. Two men were swiftly overtaking him.
“Hey, fellow, wait up,” one of the men called.
Lew pivoted slowly to the left. As he did so, his right hand clasped his Colt, slid it out of his belt, and held it against the side of his leg. The old watchman’s tale was making Lew cautious.
“What do you want?” Lew asked, peering at the shadowy faces of the approaching men.
The two halted barely ten feet distant. Their eyes moved up and down Lew, examining him very closely.
“Looks like he’s the one,” said the second man. He started to circle to the side.
Lew’s hand stabbed out at the man. “Stand where you are and tell me what you want.” They must not be allowed to flank him.
“We just want to talk,” said the man.
Lew heard the lie in the voice. The men acted as if this was an old game they had played before. Lew’s muscles tensed for the fight.
Both men sprang forward, drawing short leather-covered clubs from rear pockets. They cocked their arms ready to strike Lew with the lead-weighted blackjacks.
Lew brought up his pistol, thumbing back the hammer. He swung the gun to point at the nearer man. He was not going to let them break his head with the blackjacks. He could kill both of them before they could do that.
At the last fraction of a second, Lew moved the barrel of the revolver slightly to the side. He squeezed the trigger. A spear of red flame exploded from the muzzle of the gun, hitting the attacker in the arm. The man spun halfway around under the impact of the bullet.
Lew instantly faded to the side, to evade a possible blow from the second man, and rotated the Colt. The open bore swung like a snake’s head searching for the next enemy to strike.
The sudden, unexpected crash of the pistol jolted the second assailant. He veered off from Lew and kept right on running. Lew brought the pistol in alignment with the man and broke his shoulder with a bullet. The wounded man ran headfirst into a pile of cargo, bounced back, and fell.
The first assailant stood leaning to the side and watching Lew with pain-glazed eyes. Suddenly his legs melted and he collapsed. His head hit the decking with a loud thump.
“You stupid bastards,” Lew said to the crumpled forms. “Two men with blackjacks can’t beat a man with a pistol.”
He heard running feet coming swiftly. He sprinted away up over the levee. He did not want the police to become interested in Timothy Wollfolk, Lew slowed as he came down onto Front Street. He ambled past a group of men and women staring in the direction of the river.
“Mister, what was the shooting about?” asked a man.
“One of the night watchmen killed a big alligator,” Lew replied, continuing to move down the street. “It must have been at least twelve feet long.”
“My goodness,” exclaimed one of the women. “An alligator right in the middle of New Orleans.”
“Now, Mary, it simply swam in on the rising water of the river,” responded a man beside her. “They’ve done that before. They never come over the levee and into town.”
Lew found Saint Philip Street and turned up it toward Burgundy Street. Several blocks along, at a small cafe, he stopped and entered. He ate a bowl of thick soup containing large pieces of chicken, a dish of red beans, warm bread, and a tall glass of cold buttermilk.
The darkness lay dense on the street when Lew left the cafe. He struck off again on Saint Philip, walking cautiously for the frail moonshine only faintly illuminated the sidewalk. He overtook a lamplighter moving from one gas streetlight to the next, reaching up with his torch to touch them off. Lew walked off ahead of the lamplighter and into the darkness.
People passed, most of them carrying oil-burning lanterns to light the way. Other nightwalkers, like Lew himself without a light, went by, silhouettes without faces. No one paid him any attention.
He reached his lodging place and went into the carriageway. At the rear he entered his sleeping room just off the courtyard. He undressed in the dark and hung his clothing on hooks in a shallow closet.
For a time he lay on the bed and reviewed the violent events that had come his way in a few short hours. The words of the man on the docks kept coming back to him: “Looks like he’s the one.” What did that mean? Were they actually looking specifically for him? And the old night watchman saying Albert Wollfolk had been murdered. Who would want to kill him, and why?
Lew wondered what kind of a situation he was getting into. He might have to earn his inheritance. He smiled ruefully in the blind darkness at the thought. At least no one knew where he was staying, and he was safe for the night.
Somewhere inside the walls of the aged dwelling, there was a patter of small feet. Then a mouse began to gnaw, like a tiny saw cutting on a thin board.
Lew shoved the happenings of the day off to a far corner of his mind for later study. The sound of the mouse was somehow comforting. Bringing back memories of Texas. Sleep came at once to Lew.