Gods of New Orleans Read online

  Before Aiden could ask the rest of his question, the big boy, Theo Valcour, piped up.

  “He playin’ pyramid. Look.”

  The boys all crowded closer around the window, peering into the glowing room. Aiden stood on tiptoe and put a hand on the wall to balance himself over the smaller boys beneath him. The white-suited man in the house had laid out a pattern of cards in a pyramid shape, and now sat with his hands on either side of the display. About half the deck of cards stayed stacked up at the bottom of the pyramid.

  Theo Valcour’s deep voice broke the silence again. “Who says he make it in one? How ‘bout it, Dove?”

  Aiden knew well enough what he was being asked, even if he couldn’t put together a reply with the same words. He also knew that gambling away the six cents he’d just earned would be the dumbest move he could make. He shook his head.

  “I’ll just watch,” he said.

  The boy looked like Aiden had just claimed to be the lord and savior of all mankind. Then all the boys began talking at once, and Aiden’s heart skipped as the din swelled around him.

  The smallest boy, the one right in front of Aiden, stuck a hand out at Theo Valcour. Aiden saw a nickel pinched between the boy’s fingers. “I got five say he make it in one.”

  “Takin’ it,” came Theo’s reply.

  “Two say he make it in three,” another boy said.

  “Fool’s bet. I’m takin’ that,” Theo said back.

  And on it went, bets placed and answers given in a pattern like a dance that Aiden had never seen, but he could feel the rhythm of it, and he promised himself he’d learn the steps someday soon. When it was done and all the boys had gone quiet, Aiden felt his lips moving before he knew it.

  “Six says he makes it.”

  A crush of faces turned on him, some wearing questions, others something between a question and disgust. Julien helped Aiden out of the jam he’d stepped in.

  “Make it in how many? You gotta say how many you think he gon’ make it in.”

  The other boys sniffed and went back to watching the window. Some chuckled, and Aiden caught Theo’s muttering.

  “Dove gon’ get plucked.”

  All around the circle came whispers and nods of agreement, except from Julien who kept his eyes on Aiden like he was waiting for an answer.

  “Two,” Aiden said, only half knowing what he’d just bet would happen. Nobody replied to take his bet, but he didn’t think that much mattered. Somebody, somewhere, would call things to account. Aiden didn’t know how he knew that, but it wasn’t up for arguing in his mind.

  “He’ll make it in two,” he said, nodding his head with a sudden confidence he felt in his chest.

  The instant the last word left his lips, the man in the house moved his hands on the cards. Starting at the bottom he paired up sets and removed them. Sometimes the man would draw a card and pair it with the one previously drawn. Other times he’d draw three or four in a row before making a match. At last, with only two cards left to be drawn, the man paused.

  The playing field still showed at least a half dozen cards, and even though he didn’t know the rules to the game, it was clear enough to Aiden that the man wouldn’t be “making it in one.”

  Theo and a few other boys shook their heads, all of them except for Julien and the one boy who’d bet on “three.” The others stomped away from the window. Theo and one boy shuffled their feet, talking quiet as they left the alley. Aiden listened to the scrape and clatter of wooden wheels on stone as the boys pushed their carts along and into the night.

  Soon enough the alley went silent, all but for Aiden and Julien’s breathing. The other boy had his hands in front of his mouth and a look on his face that said he thought he’d struck gold.

  The man inside picked up his thin stack of cards and made his final draws. One more set was matched. The man took the stack of drawn cards, flipped it over, and drew through again.

  After the first five cards the game was over. The man had finished removing all the face-up cards from the table. He shuffled the deck together again and set the cards aside.

  The third boy shouted and threw a punch at the night. Tears spilled down his face and he ran out of the alley, coming back seconds later to grab his cart. Aiden felt his heart hammering in his chest. He worried the boy might try some kind of knockover, make a grab for Aiden’s money.

  The guy just kicked at the ground, though, and screamed at the night. He took off, slamming his cart against a waste bin by the house across the alley. Then he shoved his cart into the street and followed it, and Aiden heard his shouting and hollering fading into the distance, like a train whistle going down the line.

  Julien’s voice snapped him out of it. “We won, Dove. Me an’ you bet he’d take two. An’ he did.”

  “Yeah,” Aiden said, looking at the man in the house. “But so what. Theo and the others all left, so who’s gonna pay up on our bet?”

  In that instant, Aiden knew he’d been a sap.

  There ain’t no house, so who’s gonna make the payouts?

  He was shaken from his thoughts when the man looked at him and Julien. His face beneath the brim of his fedora looked ashen white, pale as the full moon, but Aiden saw that was just the way the lamplight glowed against his pale brown skin. The man turned his head some more and the fullness of his color came clear to Aiden.

  But the only thing Aiden could focus on was the patch that covered the Ghost’s right eye.

  “Ghost don’ mess around,” Julien said from beside Aiden. “He used to be way up, like I say. Then he lose his eye to the Birdman, but he don’ end up in the street.”

  “Who’s the Birdman?”

  “Ain’t time for a history lesson now, Dove. You bet. You gotta put in.”

  “Huh?” Aiden asked, then noticed Julien had an old can in his hands. He shook it and Aiden heard the rattle and clink of coins against the sides.

  Aiden fished into his pocket and drew out the six pennies he’d earned from Mama Shandy. With his heart beating and sweat burning on his neck and under his shirt, Aiden dropped the coins into the can. Julien smiled and huffed a little laugh. Then he reached to the wall beside the window and opened a small iron door Aiden hadn’t noticed before.

  “Ghost probably gon’ cover us. Or maybe nothin’ happen, we jus’ get our money back. But I’m thinkin’ he gon’ cover us.”

  Julien put the can in and stepped back to close the metal door. Inside the house, the man in the white suit stood up and came to the wall. Aiden heard the squeak of small hinges, and the sound of coins plinking and plunking into the can. The hinges squeaked again and the Ghost went back to his table where he fished a cigarette case out of his jacket.

  Aiden watched the man light up while Julien opened the metal door on their side of the wall. The can was still there. Julien reached for it and hefted it from the box. Aiden could tell right away that it held more than they’d put in to begin with.

  Aiden felt himself grin, big and happy as Julien shook the can, and he saw Julien’s face light up just the same.

  “Hah! My momma’s gon’ be happy to see me come home tonight,” Julien said.

  Aiden silently thought about his mother and what her face would look like when he told her how much money he’d brought home, and then how it would look when he told her he’d won it gambling.

  “How’d you know?” he asked.

  “Know what, Dove?”

  “About the can. And that he’d pay up.”

  “Ghost don’ mess around, like I said. He say he gon’ do somethin’, he do it,” Julien said, pointing at a sign tacked up on the wall beside the metal door. Aiden hadn’t spied the sign before, and reading it now he felt his heart skip a beat.

  ALL BETS PAID, GUARANTEED

  HOUSEBOYS ESPECIALLY ARE ENCOURAGED TO PLAY

  100 TO 1 ODDS

  “Hold out your hands now,” Julien said. Aiden did as he was told and his eyes nearly fell out of his head when a torrent of coins spilled from
the mouth of the can and splashed off his fingers. Julien kept up his pouring and the coins kept up their jingling and jangling on the pavement at Aiden’s feet.

  Chapter 23

  Being careful not to press too tight, Emma slid her hands down Eddie’s body to rest at his waist. He’d healed up good, sure enough. But she still caught him moving slow now and then, and he winced whenever he leaned to the side. Emma let her eyes drift to the window. Rain fell in sheets outside.

  A good old fashioned Gulf Coast downpour.

  Emma thought about the rain like it had been brought in just for them. Just for tonight.

  “You don’t have to go again, do you Eddie? It’s pouring down outside, and you’re still‌—‌”

  He stiffened and placed his hands on her arms. His touch was soft, be she felt the pressure to release him all the same. Too late she realized she’d clasped her hands to his sides. He gave a short cry and breathed in sharp.

  “I’m sorry, Eddie!” she said, leaving her hands where they were even as she relaxed her touch.

  It was worse when he was up on stage. The music inside him had to come out, and if he wasn’t playing, he’d sway and tap his feet to the rhythm. After that first gala house session, the krewe boss had given Eddie a new horn. He’d started playing on the side of the stage, but tonight Eddie would be out front, like he was the band leader. Emma was happy he had his music again, even if the demands of playing caused him pain, and she couldn’t let herself feel anything but guilt about that.

  “Gotta get on, Lovebird. Krewe waitin’ on Mr. Collins to bring his horn to the show. Can’t disappoint, you know?”

  Emma knew, and she kept her fear and resentment hidden behind a thin smile. Ever since the krewe had adopted Eddie as one of their own, he’d been more and more ready to fly from their nest on a moment’s notice. That first time he’d asked her to go with him, and Emma had believed he truly felt torn between staying home with her and heading out to play with the band.

  That hadn’t lasted long. One week and three shows later and Eddie was champing at the bit to leave her alone on the wettest night she’d seen since they arrived.

  “I know, Eddie,” Emma said, looking around at the mildewed pile of sticks they called a house. “We’ll never get a better place around us if we don’t have the scratch to buy one. But‌—‌”

  Emma was interrupted by a heavy knocking on the front door.

  “Guess the krewe got tired of waitin’ on me,” Eddie said, pushing her arms away and turning to open the door. Emma bit her tongue and kept her hands hovering in the air in front of her.

  Eddie opened the door and froze. When Emma saw who was standing on the stoop, she went still, too, only moving her hands to smooth her skirt.

  The krewe boss rapped the end of his gold-tipped stick on the threshold and opened his wide mouth in a toothy grin. Another glimmer of yellow metal adorned his waistcoast. Emma held her breath as the man who all but owned her and Eddie’s lives lifted a dazzling pocket watch and checked the face.

  “About forty minutes left, my very good man, Mr. Collins. Forty minutes. Before the very big show.”

  “Yessir,” Eddie said, stepping aside so the bigger man could enter. “We was‌—‌I mean, me. I was just on my way now, Mr. Bacchus. I was just‌—‌”

  The krewe boss waved a hand, his gold-flecked eyes glowing with reflected gaslight. “Never you mind about what you was just, Mr. Eddie Collins. Never you mind. Tonight you ride with Mr. Bacchus in his chariot.”

  Eddie’s eyes rounded in surprise tinged with worry, and Emma felt her eyes being drawn into the same tight circles. The krewe boss pursed his lips and then erupted with laughter that shook the house. Emma’s feet tingled with the motion in the floor and her ears rang deep with Bacchus’s bellowed gusts.

  “You two,” the big man said between laughs. “You two got no reason to fear. Mr. Bacchus means you no harm. Not an ounce, not a sliver.”

  The krewe boss snapped his thick fingers and rapped the tip of his stick on the floorboards. Two liveried white servants appeared, both dripping wet. One entered and quickly snatched up Eddie’s horn in its case before exiting just as fast to stand on the stoop. The man opened an umbrella he’d held by his side and used it to keep the instrument case dry.

  The second servant entered carrying a paper-wrapped bundle in his arms. He held it out and carefully peeled back the wrapped so that Bacchus could lift the contents in one of his thick mitts. With a quick shake, he unfolded a heavy fur coat, nearly as fine and fancy as the one the gangster wore draped around his thick frame.

  “Miss Emma,” Bacchus said. “To keep out the cold, I thought this coat would suffice. May I?” He gestured as if to drape it around her and Emma felt herself turning her back to the man, like her body knew what it wanted even as her mind screamed at her to run out of the room.

  The coat sat heavy on her, and the warmth instantly came through to her bones, filling her with comfort like she hadn’t known since she was a child in Chicago City. Her father had given her a coat just like this one for her sixteenth birthday.

  Heavy, warm. And nothing like what she’d really wanted.

  “It’s . . . it’s very nice, Mr. Bacchus,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, Miss Emma. Very welcome. Now, if you will accompany me,” Bacchus said, extending his hand as if to usher her and Eddie outside.

  The servant stayed just inside the door with an umbrella in one hand, held outside to cover the stoop. Emma watched droplets of water fall from the man’s clothing to mark the dirty wooden floor beneath his feet. In a flash, faster than his bulk should have allowed, Bacchus whipped a hand out and across the servant’s face, sending him stumbling out the door.

  “Damn stupid white boy,” Bacchus said. “Getting wet on the floor inside Mr. Collins’ home. The very ground he walks on is worth more than the two of you put together.”

  Emma’s face went stony as the scene before her recalled a childhood memory, and the coat felt more and more like a cage she couldn’t leave. On that same sixteenth birthday, her father had taken issue with a member of their household staff. She cried when her father hit the man. She’d never known what he had done, but she saw the same look of resignation on the white servant’s face now, and it burned a hole inside her heart.

  The krewe boss turned to face Eddie. “I do apologize for my boy’s behavior, Mr. Collins. But let us not delay. We should all be going,” he said, his eyes flashing on Emma as he finished his statement.

  “All?” Emma said before she knew the word sat on her tongue.

  “Oh, yes. Miss Emma,” the krewe boss said. “We all have work that awaits us. In fact, I have a proposition for you in particular. And should you accept, then this”‌—‌he motioned around the room with his gold-tipped stick‌—‌”all this will be but a memory. A new home has been prepared for Mr. Collins and his . . . companion. If, as I said, you accept the proposition.” He ended with a question in his eyes, and a set to his mouth that told Emma she’d better just nod and play along like a good girl.

  Emma regarded the krewe boss with the only expression she felt safe showing the man, something between awe and admiration. Even if all she truly felt was terror.

  “Well, yes, Mr. Bacchus. Yes, and th-thank you.”

  “Very well, my Lily White,” he replied. “Very well. Now shall me depart for a venue more . . . befitting your new found station?” He offered Emma his arm and she moved slowly to accept it, watching Eddie for signs of objection. But he’d seemingly fallen under the same spell and had his eyes on the rain outside.

  The servant holding the umbrella over the stoop walked Eddie to the car first, then returned and held the shelter over the krewe boss while the other servant used his umbrella to shield both Emma and Eddie’s horn. As they walked, Emma forced herself not to look at either of the sodden men beside her, and she was both surprised and horrified to find it didn’t take much effort to ignore them. As much as she hated what this
‘new station’ meant about the people around her and what she knew would be expected of her, she couldn’t deny the relief the familiarity brought.

  Comfort, care. Authority. The trappings of her life in Chicago City. And she didn’t miss a beat as the word trappings went through her mind.

  But it was the life given her at birth, and the life she had let fall away without much thought to the consequences. Now, after just two weeks of playing second fiddle to Eddie’s life, she was ready for anything if it meant she’d be stepping into the world on her own two feet again.

  At the car, a long sleek Duesenberg, Emma wondered if Bacchus knew who she was. Had he found out that she’d once been a society gal in Chicago City? The thought stung Emma’s gut. She’d escaped the city of her birth, leaving behind nothing but the ruins of her family name. As much as she wanted to blame her father for all of it, she couldn’t deny she’d played her role just as well as Josiah Farnsworth had.

  He’d lost the family’s money and killed himself. She’d killed two men, and one of them was a copper. A filthy copper who’d had a noose around Eddie’s neck, but a copper just the same.

  “Won’t you precede me into the vehicle, Miss Emma?”

  Nodding, and accepting the hand Bacchus offered, Emma put a foot on the running board. Eddie sat inside on a rear-facing seat. His half smile showed he was just as unsteady as she felt, but in that moment Emma’s mind quickly skipped away from fear and worry. The car was like a piece of her childhood come back to her, all welcoming with warmth and luxury.

  Smooth leather and polished wood decorated every surface and seam, with shining brass trim around the windows. A decanter of glimmering amber liquid stood on a tray suspended from the wall of the car just inside the door. A leather strap held the glass container in place along with two glasses.

  Emma leaned forward, reaching for Eddie’s hand so he could pull her inside. As their fingers touched, Emma’s foot slipped on the rain-slicked metal surface and she fell back a step.

  The servant to her right put an arm out to catch her, but in doing so he dropped the umbrella covering Bacchus. Emma steadied herself and saw the servant fumbling with the umbrella on the ground. He hoisted it, covering the krewe boss again, and stood upright, staring straight ahead. But the damage was done.