After a moment Shaw asked, "Find her?"
"I followed her out of the square and down Rue Saint Louis. The men who beat me followed me. I still can't imagine why. Maybe they just thought I looked like I had money on me, or they recognized me as a stranger."
He turned his face away for a moment, not looking at the tall white man who stood over him. The movement pulled at a fold on his trouser leg and he swatted at it, filled again with the morbid conviction that some of the Cabildo's medium-sized fauna were still with him. Then the fact that he was here, beneath the brick arcades of the market, and not still listening to the profanity of his cellmates and the screaming of the insane, brought it home to him, belatedly, that there was something he needed to say.
"Thank you for getting me out of there." He had to force back the childish impulse to mumble the words, force himself to meet the man's eyes. "It was... good of you. Sir."
Shaw shook his head, dismissing the thanks, and signaled a praliniere who was making her way between the tables. "I never can get enough of these things," he admitted, selecting a white praline and waving away the offer of change from his half-reale. January bought a brown praline, and the woman gave him a little bunch of the straw-flowers that lined the edge of her basket, for lagniappe.
"Lots of Johnnie raws comin' into town all the time," Shaw said, when she had gone. "If it don't bother the folks none if white folks watch 'em dance, what do they care if some out-of-town darky with his big hands in his pockets stares? It ain't like it's a real voodoo dance, not the kind they have out on the lake. You speak to any of the women?"
"I didn't speak to anyone. Maybe I should have."
"Don't see why. You lookin' for Miss Olympe for some reason?"
January hesitated, conscious of the old wariness about showing things to white men, any white men.
Then he nodded and felt in his coat pocket-not the pocket in which he kept his rosary. The gris-gris was still there, wrapped in his handkerchief. He brought it out carefully and unwrapped it behind his hand, lest the waiters see.
"Madame Dreuze asked me at Angelique's funeral Saturday to prove Madame Trepagier had her servant Judith plant this in Angelique's mattress. A theory," he added dryly, "with which I'm sure you're already familiar.
Shaw rolled his eyes.
"Not that it matters to you anymore," added January, looking down as he made a business folding the handkerchief back around the little scrap of parchment and bones, so that the anger wouldn't show in his eyes. With some effort he kept his voice level. "I don't believe Madame Trepagier had a thing to do with either the charm or Angelique's death, but considering the police have decided to drop the investigation, I thought I'd at least see who did want Angelique dead. Do you know if Madame Trepagier managed to keep Madame Dreuze from selling off the two slaves, by the way? Judith and Kessie? They were both Madame Trepagier's to begin with."
It was something he knew he'd have to find out, and the thought of walking down to the brokers along Baronne Street turned him suddenly cold.
He hoped the sick dread of it didn't show in his face, under Shaw's cool scrutiny, but he was afraid it did.
"Morally they were," said the policeman slowly. "But a woman's property is her husband's to dispose of, pretty much. Neither Arnaud Trepagier nor Angelique Crozat made a will, and he did deed both the
cook and the maid to his light o' love. Yes, Madame Trepagier swore out a writ to sue and get 'em back, but both of 'em was sold at the French Exchange yesterday mornin'. Madame Dreuze took maybe half what they was worth, to get 'em turned around quick."
January cursed, in Arabic, very quietly. For a time he watched as a gang of blacks passed by under guard toward the levee, chained neck to neck, men and women alike.
Matthew Priest, for impudence... He couldn't get the guard's voice out of his head, or the slap of the leather on skin.
Any man in the city could have his slave whipped in the Calabozo's courtyard by the town hangman for twenty-five cents a stroke.
On the far side of the Place des Armes, he could see the tall wooden platform of the town pillory. A man- colored, but still lighter than him-sat in it, wrists and ankles clamped between the dirty boards, while a gang of river rats spat tobacco and threw horse turds at him, their voices a dim demonic whooping through the noise of the wharves and the hoots of the steamboats. Sixteen years ago, the pillory was still a punishment that could be meted out to whites as well.
A hundred and fifty dollars would get him to Paris. With his current small savings he could probably do it in three months.
That thought helped him. He drew a deep breath and explained, "Not long before I left for Paris I learned that my sister-Olympe, Minou was only four-had entered the house of a woman called Marie Laveau, a voodooienne, and was learning her trade." He slipped the gris-gris back into his pocket and looked at Shaw again.
"I thought I might still be able to find her at the slave dances, and that she might be able to tell me something about who actually made the charm. A dried bat's a death charm. Someone who wanted to scare her would have put brick dust, or a cross made of salt, on the back step, where she'd be sure to see it. Hiding a conjag like that where she'd sleep next to it every night without knowing it was there-that's the act of someone who really wanted to do her harm."
The lanky Kentuckian slowly licked the remains of the praline from his bony fingers, along with a certain amount of clerical ink, before he replied.
"Someone who sure wanted to do you harm, anyway. Given they was sicced on you by whoever planted that charm... How'd they have known it was you?"
January sniffed. "Everybody in New Orleans heard Madame Dreuze beg me to find her daughter's killer," he said. "And since no one else seems to be taking any further interest in the case..." he added pointedly.
"Well, now, that's changed again," said Shaw. "As of this morning. That's why I was over at your ma's."
"So they changed their minds?" said January, anger prickling through him once again. "Decided that a woman doesn't have to be white to merit the protection of the law?"
"Let's just say several folks on the city council have come to see the matter in a different light." Shaw finished his coffee and set the cup on a nearby table, pale eyes thoughtful, watchful, under the overhang of brow.
"Captain Tremouille spoke to me this mornin' on the subject, and that's why I's at your ma's-that's why I came hotfoot down to the Calaboose, too, when I heard you was there. Seems they're lookin' for
evidence to put the killin' on you."
TWELVE
"Me?" All January could think of was the half-dozen wounded men he'd spoken to after the battle at Chalmette, who said that when first hit by a musket ball, all they felt was a sort of a shock, like being pushed hard. They'd fallen down. Later, the pain came.
"That's right."
Fear. Disbelief, but fear, as if he'd just stepped off a cliff and was only realizing gradually that there wasn't a bottom.
"I didn't even know the woman."
"Well now," said Shaw mildly, "Captain Tremouille asked me to look into that."
"I didn't! Ask anyone! Galen Peralta-"
"Nobody saw Galen Peralta go into that room," said Shaw, "except you, Maestro."
There was no bottom to the cliff. He was plunging through the dark. He'd die when he struck the bottom.
His mother hadn't come to the jail. Nor had his sister.
Only Shaw.
"Captain Tremouille's problem," said Shaw, judiciously turning the fragments of praline over in sticky fingers, "is that he has a colored gal-a placee-dead, and the man who looks likeliest to have done it is the son of one of the wealthiest planters in the district. Now, Captain Tremouille believes in justice-he does-but he also believes in keepin' his job, and that might not be so easy once the Peraltas and the Bringiers and the half-dozen other big Creole families that are all kissin' kin to each other start sayin' how let's not make a big hoo-rah and start arrestin' white folks over a colored gal who wasn't any better than she should have been.