Big Easy Bonanza
BIG EASY BONANZA
NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
A Skip Langdon Mystery
by JULIE SMITH
* * *
CROOKED MAN
A Tubby Dubonnet Mystery
by TONY DUNBAR
* * *
LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
A Talba Wallis Mystery
by JULIE SMITH
* * *
PRIVATE CHICK
A Short Story
by JULIE SMITH
Praise for NEW ORLEANS MOURNING, the EDGAR-WINNING FIRST BOOK in the SKIP LANGDON SERIES:
“Murder at the Mardi Gras and the flavor of New Orleans… old secrets are highlighted in this wonderful story that is as filled with topical information as it is with a great story about murder and history. Smith writes with authority about her city.”
—Ocala Star Banner
“Smith has researched the Big Easy exhaustively…. Her plot careens with as many twists and turns as a car chase through the French Quarter. … [A] rich, tightly structured narrative.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Julie Smith writes like jazz should sound—cool, complex, and penetrating right to the heart.”
—Val McDermid, best-selling author
of the Tony Hill series
The Skip Langdon Series
(in order of publication)
NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
THE AXEMAN’S JAZZ
JAZZ FUNERAL
DEATH BEFORE FACEBOOK (formerly NEW ORLEANS BEAT)
HOUSE OF BLUES
THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
CRESCENT CITY CONNECTION (formerly CRESCENT CITY KILL)
82 DESIRE
MEAN WOMAN BLUES
Also by Julie Smith
The Rebecca Schwartz Series
DEATH TURNS A TRICK
THE SOURDOUGH WARS
TOURIST TRAP
DEAD IN THE WATER
OTHER PEOPLE’S SKELETONS
The Paul Macdonald Series
TRUE-LIFE ADVENTURE
HUCKLEBERRY FIEND
The Talba Wallis Series:
LOUISIANA HOTSHOT
LOUISIANA BIGSHOT
LOUISIANA LAMENT
P.I. ON A HOT TIN ROOF
As Well As:
WRITING YOUR WAY: THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL TRACK
NEW ORLEANS NOIR (ed.)
NEW ORLEANS MOURNING
A SKIP LANGDON MYSTERY
BY
JULIE SMITH
booksBnimble Publishing
New Orleans, La.
New Orleans Mourning
Copyright © 1990 by Julie Smith
eBook ISBN 9781617507267
Cover by Nevada Barr
Originally published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
www.booksbnimble.com
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First booksBnimble electronic publication: April 2012
Digital editions by eBooks by Barb for booknook.biz
DEDICATION
For Ann—a tour of the old neighborhood
Prologue
IN NEW ORLEANS, Carnival is nothing less than a season. It lasts thirty to sixty days and virtually consumes its celebrants, who in turn consume several oceans of inebriants. This exuberant annual escapade has its roots, as does almost every excess of high spirits, in pagan fertility rites.
Early on in Arcadia, to purify the soil, the priests painted themselves, the shepherds stripped naked, and the former chased the latter over the landscape, merrily lashing them with goatskin whips. But of course that was nothing compared with the Roman bacchanal that evolved from it. Naturally the church sought to end the hilarity. Just as naturally, it failed. Early quashing efforts only resulted in skylarks such as the medieval Feast of Fools, which included a mock mass and blasphemous impersonations of church officials.
Finally, in the spirit of compromise that has so often saved their bacon, the bishops offered instead their own celebration, neatly transforming a pagan debauch into a Christian one. It was first called Carnelavare, or “farewell to the flesh,” because it preceded the forty Lenten days of fasting and penitence before Easter. But one must be sober to pronounce such a word, and so it became simply “Carnival.”
The medieval custom of holding parades, masquerades, and revels in celebration of Carnival has been handed down in certain unruly cities—notably New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Nice, and Cologne. The two gentlemen who originally claimed Louisiana for France (Iberville and Bienville) got things rolling in that area one February night around the turn of the eighteenth century, when they camped on a small bayou and, overcome with homesickness, remembered that back in France the streets would be mobbed with revelers. They called the creek Bayou Mardi Gras, for “Fat Tuesday,” the last-chance feast before the fast beginning Ash Wednesday.
The colony’s settlers remembered also the customs of yore and declined, though far from home, to let the standards slip. In fact, they may have even raised them a bit, because in most cities Carnival lasts about a week. In New Orleans the season starts on January 6, making Mardi Gras Day itself the climactic moment of weeks of revels.
From time to time in New Orleans, by one early governor or another, Mardi Gras was banned as rowdy and dangerous. But it always popped up again, and always rowdier still. In 1857 people thought that it would the a natural death due to the high crime rate. In feet, that year’s Mardi Gras was really the beginning of the frolic as we know it today. The Mistick Krewe of Comus paraded for the first time. This may have been the single most important event in the social history of the city.
Quite simply, Comus is the most elite and important of the city’s krewes, or Carnival organizations, of which there must now be hundreds. Nowadays there are women’s krewes, like Venus and Iris, black krewes, like Zulu, gay krewes, black gay krewes, krewes composed of suburban dentists, krewes that make fun of other krewes, krewes of every stripe, krewes from every stratum. But the important krewes are secret societies made up of male members of the creme de la creme. To get in, an aspirant may have to wait for someone to die. Then, of course, he must be voted upon and must be able to contribute substantial dues to pay for the annual ball and parade.
For the raison d’etre of the krewes is to have a parade and a ball at Carnival. Eccentric as it may seem, they truly exist for no other purpose. (However, the membership of Comus, though theoretically unknown, also runs the Boston Club and therefore the city.)
Rex, the second most important krewe, is a different animal from Comus. Its membership is not secret and its focus is civic rather than social. Even a New Orleans newcomer might be asked to join if he had the right job, knew the right people, and worked hard for the good of the city. Despite such seeming common status compared with the rarefied circles of Comus, Momus, and Proteus, Rex himself, the civic leader selected each year as king of the krewe, is also king of Carnival. (He’s very likely to be a member of Comus as well.)
The crown of Rex is the most coveted honor of New Orleans society. It’s said that ex-Rexes tend to get carried away with their royal status. The one who had little crowns engraved on his stationery has gone down in history. Others simply rest on their laurels in the Rex Room at Antoine’s, eating, drinking, and remembering.
The notion of Rex was invented in 1872, the greatest of all Mardi Gras. That was the year the city devoted its energies to impressing a visiting Romanoff so glamorous that in New York he’d caused near-riots and left the streets strewn with swooning women. The grand duke’s favorite song, “If Ever I
Cease to Love,” became the theme song of Mardi Gras; Mardi Gras was declared a legal holiday; and Mardi Gras got a king, all in the same year.
The first Rex, Louis Salomon, wore purple velvet embroidered with rhinestones and rode not a float but a horse. Though Salomon was a Jew, today no Jew can be Rex. This discrimination occurs because the monarch of mirth must now come from the Boston Club, which does not admit Jews, women, blacks, or anyone of any ethnic origin whose blood is not a vivid shade of azure. Originally just a group of guys who liked a card game called Boston, the club grew in numbers and exclusivity until it became the power hub of the city—solidly and absolutely committed to the preservation of the status quo.
Not only Rex but every krewe has a king, though in the fancy ones his identity is kept secret. Each king has his court of nubile young maidens as well—the season’s debutantes and almost certainly the daughters of members. Far from being kept secret, the names and faces of the queens and maids are widely publicized, as there would be little point to the honor otherwise.
Naturally, the most important party of Mardi Gras Day (the Comus and Rex balls being scheduled for evening) is held at the Boston Club. The club being on Canal Street, which is right on the parade route, the Queen of Carnival and various other dignitaries (including the nearly forgotten wife of Rex himself) view the passing of Rex from a balcony draped in the purple, green, and gold of Carnival. From the thronged and frenzied street, the king toasts his queen.
Anticipating this moment could be an occasion of deepest boredom, but the inventive citizens of the City That Care Forgot are well practiced in the art of diversion.
The Boston Club
1
BITTY WOULD HAVE to be propped up, and God knew what Henry would do. If Marcelle fell flat on her face that would be three grand screw-ups out of three. The least she could do was stay on her feet. She was the only one who gave a damn about Chauncey anyway. Except for Tolliver, maybe, and he wasn’t even a St. Amant.
How many drinks were too many? She had had three, maybe four, and it was barely eleven o’clock. It would be almost another hour—nearly noon—before the parade passed and stopped so that her father could toast his youthful queen. She had to slow down—she wasn’t supposed to be the drunk in the family. Then again, it was Carnival. Who’d notice anyway?
Only everyone. Because all eyes were on the St. Amants today. In another hour and a half the population would be staring up at the balcony, where Rex’s lovely family, to do their patriarch proud, must look like refugees from the ’50s—even down to their hairdos and clothing. All three of them were wearing suits—son Henry, wife Bitty, daughter Marcelle. The wife and daughters of Rex always wore suits, just as Rex’s queen was always a debutante of the season and the daughter of someone important. The queen—Brooke Youngblood this year, a Kappa at LSU—wore a suit as well.
Marcelle wondered if a woman would even be allowed on the balcony in a dress or pants. But the question wouldn’t come up. You wouldn’t make your debut in a black dress either.
Marcelle’s suit was rose-and-black houndstooth checks with knee-brushing skirt and short, neat jacket. If she ever wore it again, she would shorten the skirt by at least two inches. Brooke Youngblood’s skirt was box-pleated, and she wore her hair in a pageboy.
Being well into her twenties, Marcelle didn’t have to go that far, but she’d had to smooth down her short dark hair. Normally she liked to look as if she’d had it styled sometime in the twentieth century; but today she wore no gel, no mousse, no spikes, no magenta rinse. She looked like Daddy’s good little girl even if she wasn’t, and everyone knew it.
Not, of course, that anyone cared. Certainly her mother didn’t. Bitty cared about nothing that wasn’t amber-colored and wet. As for Henry, he was a bigger slut than Marcelle. And Chauncey wouldn’t even have noticed she’d grown up if she hadn’t had a four-year-old son. He was forever ruffling her hair and buying her raspberry ice cream. When she was a kid he used to take her for walks and buy her cones. It was about the only pleasant memory of her childhood.
Marcelle’s glass was still half full. For Chauncey’s sake, she thought. For Chauncey she could make the drink last another hour.
It was absurdly quiet here. There was only the drone of conversation and the genteel clinking of glasses. You’d hardly know it was Mardi Gras at all, and indeed, in a way it wasn’t. The Boston Club party was stultifyingly different from anything anyone else in the city was doing that day. There wasn’t a soul in costume—unless you counted the two women from Mississippi in the clown outfits. Someone’s guests.
And no one was rowdy, out-of-hand, or seemingly even drunk, though Marcelle suspected at least fifty percent had arrived with a blood alcohol content well above the legal driving limit. These were the sorts of people who held their liquor well and pretended their livers would last forever. Her grandfather, for instance. She’d never seen him drunk in her life, yet never seen him without a drink in hand, never kissed him without tasting bourbon. The old boy had been well pickled for the last forty years. Yet it didn’t seem to interfere with his performance—he’d been bossing around most of the old coots currently juicing it up in these very dark-paneled rooms for most of his life. Too bad Bitty hadn’t inherited his ability to remain standing while blotto.
Marcelle wondered where her grandfather was and hoped she wouldn’t run into him. But he didn’t walk that much anymore. Probably found a leather wing chair in which to sink and be surrounded by his sycophants. He’d be looking exactly like a toad on a leaf—enormous belly and chest, tiny legs, big ugly mottled head, and sharp, dangerous little eyes. No wonder Bitty had married someone so different—so handsome and gentle.
Oh, Chauncey, I hope Bitty or Henry doesn’t wreck it for you. Or me, God knows, that’s a distinct possibility. But what is there to do but drink? It’s so dismal here.
Feeling defeated, Marcelle strolled to the bar and got her fourth drink of the morning (if it wasn’t her fifth). In fact, she realized, this was a lovely room—not dismal at all. A kind of garden room. The rest of the club looked very much as she would imagine a men’s club on St James’s Street in London—dark wood, leather chairs, Oriental rugs. Stately. Elegant. At the moment, full of forsythia and lovely spring flowers. The Boston Club was famous for the elaborate flower arrangements it always displayed at Mardi Gras. Marcelle almost smiled.
The ladies of Venus and the members of Endymion (880 strong) wore outlandish feather headdresses, but even these could barely hold a candle to the feather getups the Mardi Gras Indians conjured up. And the Indians were wildly out-flashed by the drag queens. But at the Boston Club, when they kicked out all the jams, that meant they had some flowers brought in.
Marcelle looked around her and wondered why she found the atmosphere so dismal. Maybe it was the clothes. To a man, the gentlemen wore dark suits—except for the ones on the reception committee, who wore full-dress morning clothes. The women’s suits and silk dresses all looked as if they’d cost what Marcelle had paid for her car, and they were in punctiliously impeccable taste. But to Marcelle’s mind, “frumpy” might have been a better description—nothing above the knees or very much below them.
It was middle-of-the-road city in these dark and hallowed halls. Neutral ground. That was what New Orleanians called the median strips that divided the streets. The phrase suddenly seemed a metaphor for what was wrong with the whole place—everybody trying to hold the neutral ground. You were supposed to look neutral, act neutral, pretend you were beige—when your whole family might be falling apart even though your father was King of Carnival. Suddenly it seemed funny. The drink was helping.
“That’s more like it.” It was Jo Jo Lawrence, all blond hair and football shoulders. He bumped against her slightly, dumping white wine all over her pink silk blouse. “Oh, Lord. I’m sorry.” He dabbed at her with a paper napkin, lightly touching her breasts.
“It’s okay.” Marcelle brushed at her own chest. “It’s white. It’ll hardly sho
w at all when it’s dry.” She raised her face to his. “What’s more like it?”
“That little smile. I was watching you. Why so sad on Mardi Gras? Especially this one?”
“Mind your own business, okay, Jo Jo?”
“I heard your divorce is final.”
Marcelle said nothing. Sometimes she wished she’d married Jo Jo. After Lionel’s drunken rages, his vacant sweetness seemed a lot more appealing than it had in high school. She couldn’t remember why she’d married Lionel anyway, or why she hadn’t married Jo Jo. He hadn’t asked her, she supposed. They’d been too young anyway. But he was the first boy she’d been to bed with—only it wasn’t bed, exactly, it was the lakefront.
“How ’bout a kiss for Jo Jo? For old time’s sake.”
Why not? He was about the only man in town she hadn’t kissed in the last six months. Why not Jo Jo? She lifted her face.
He kissed her gently, sweetly. Then he put both arms around her and kissed her for real. Right there in the Boston Club, in front of everybody. But did anybody notice? She’d be amazed if they did. Not a little thing like a kiss. Everyone kissed everyone at Carnival. No one would remember who they’d kissed themselves, much less who else had kissed whom. You could go to church on Ash Wednesday and sit next to someone you’d done God knows what with and not even know it.
Jo Jo’s body felt unexpectedly, familiarly good. Familiar and yet forbidden. Jo Jo was married now. But everyone was married, and that didn’t seem to stop anyone else. Even her own father. It had never stopped Marcelle either.
It must be two weeks since I’ve been with a man—some kind of record for me.
Jo Jo was pushing her back toward the wall, toward the nearest doorway, his heavy body against hers, his breath redolent of Bloody Marys. I’m burning, she thought. I’m burning up. Her suit jacket was sticking to her, her corsage must be crushed.