Read Online Chasing the Devil's Tail by David Fulmer - Free Book Online

belief in the
voudun
from the hearts of God's children there.
    It was a standoff with a long history, and in his well-oiled style, Tom Anderson made sure it remained cordial, extending a helping hand with problems of a public or private nature that no amount of prayer could resolve. So a telephone bell
tinkled or a message was delivered at his door. He came to know Father Dupre as a pious and kindly old rooster and his clerk John Rice as an officious bully. Over the years, Anderson had offered assistance to the church with the tact and discretion that was his signature.
    Those instances had dwindled as the years went by and when a call did come, it was always from the parish clerk. Then he read in
The Sun
that the Father was turning his duties over to a younger man. He heard nothing more until he was petitioned over this last delicate business. When the request arrived, he thought immediately of Valentin St. Cyr.
    The front door opened and closed and he looked up, expecting the detective—the
Creole
detective—to come barging back in to annoy him with another question, another suspicion. But it was only a delivery boy. Anderson picked up his pen, but didn't put it to paper, as his thoughts began another circle. He mused upon having to remind himself that St. Cyr was a colored man; and color was a brick wall. But this was New Orleans and nothing was ever that simple.
    Sometimes it made Anderson weary just thinking about it. Ask any white man on the street and he would tell you there were four social levels in Crescent City society: the "Americans" of Anglo-Saxon blood, the descendants of French aristocracy, and the like; Creoles of mixed French and Spanish blood; a huge step down by law to the Creoles of Color, which included anyone with a single drop of African blood, such octoroons, quadroons and mulattos of the fairest complexions; finally, on the bottom rung, the Negroes, the most direct, most black-skinned products of slavery.
    The caste system contained sub-divisions that defied any sane man's logic and memory, so that anyone in the City of New Orleans who actually tried to explain it ended up sounding like a madman. But at least it was so muddled that it allowed a few like St. Cyr to dance about all sides of the color line—a benefit to Mr. Tom Anderson.
    He sighed quietly. If he paid proper respect to the petrified notions of superiority, no one with a trace of African blood would be allowed anywhere near his affairs. But, by God, St. Cyr had worked for him for almost five years now, and there was no one in New Orleans who matched him in matters of discreet security. Anderson shook his head grimly, imagining what would happen if he gave any one of the local crew of dirt-white toughs the free hand St. Cyr enjoyed. Those dunces would be likely to beat a man half to death when a simple word or two would do. Hopeless thugs, for the most part. He had owned yard dogs with more sense than all of them put together. But St. Cyr was another breed entirely and Tom Anderson afforded him so much deference that the detective could voice doubts about eminent white men like Father Dupre without a second thought.
    The King of Storyville knew about St. Cyr, knew of his father and mother and his police career, about his friendship with that maniac King Bolden. He would have to hold such information on anyone he allowed so close.
    Maybe he had given him too much free rein; but the man had earned it, and surely never abused the privilege. So if there was, by chance, something peculiar to the deaths of the two sporting girls, St. Cyr would take care of it. Though he would have to lose those notions about Dupre, that helpless old man of God.
    Anderson ran a lazy hand over the pages before him and shoved his thoughts toward practicality. It was not his habit to create problems out of whole cloth. With two thousand soiled doves working the houses and streets, two dying mysteriously was no reason for alarm. God rest their souls, but