Free Lost River by David Fulmer Page B

carted him off in a hoodoo wagon.

    The streetlights along the main line flickered and then glowed a steady pale yellow. From his office window, Tom Anderson looked down on Basin Street, wondering if the foot traffic was that light or if his mind was playing tricks on him again.
    He had spent almost two decades as the King of Storyville, though it was in fact Alderman Sidney Story who created the District by way of a city ordinance. Prostitution was deemed legal there; more precisely, it was pronounced
illegal
everywhere else in New Orleans.
    All Tom Anderson did was step into the breach with a vision of Storyville's glorious possibilities and the energy to connive, wheedle, battle, and buy it into reality and then keep it rolling along like a smooth-running machine.
    A smooth-running
money
machine, in fact. Something like a quarter million dollars was generated in the bordellos, cribs, saloons, and music halls every month. There were more workers under Anderson's sway than Henry Ford employed in his largest plant. He had hobnobbed with senators and presidents, men of enormous wealth, the royalty of foreign lands, beautiful women. He had no doubt that had he been born in some other time and place, he would have been a political powerhouse or a captain of industry. And yet as Storyville's lord and master, he was quite famous in his own right, afar and at home.
    Though his admirers would not be so impressed if they could see him now. Always a thick man, his waistline had advanced with the years. His hair and extravagant mustache, both once a reddish blond and both parted precisely, had gone gray and thin. He had been known for a gaze that was now often weak and watery behind wire-rimmed spectacles. Everything about his body felt slower, like a clock winding down.
    Indeed, this evening had just begun and he was ready to go home. But what would he do there? Listen to the birds singing in the eaves?
    He turned away from the window and crossed to his desk, a solid affair of good oak that was adorned only by a blotter, a brass reading lamp, a ledger bound in fine leather, and a pen-and-ink set. He kept it that way, as a simple and powerful statement that Mr. Tom Anderson did not need crass symbols of power. As a side benefit, it was simpler to clear when he was in the mood for a quick and breathy dalliance with a compliant young lady.
    Settling back in the throne-size chair, he tried to remember the last time the desk had been pressed into that service and could not.
    As he mused over how things had changed, his thoughts turned to Valentin St. Cyr. So, the Creole had visited the District that afternoon. The word was that after chasing down some vague business on Claiborne Avenue, of all places, he had stopped to see the Sicilian saloonkeeper Mangetta. He had not paid the King of Storyville the same courtesy.
    Tom Anderson was not a man who indulged petty slights and did not take this one to heart. St. Cyr had too much history fending off crooks of every stripe, thieving and murdering sons of bitches, crazy whores, and crazier madams, all on the King of Storyville's behalf. Who could blame him for moving on to other work? At the same time, he was the one person who could be trusted with the arcane inner workings of the District.
    The lord of that piece of real estate blinked out of this reverie, aroused by the sound of footsteps on the staircase. He sat forward and flipped open his ledger to October 15. There was nothing entered for that hour, and he frowned, wondering what had slipped his mind. The footfalls drew closer: two people, one heavy, the other lighter.
    At the sight of Honore Jacob, Anderson felt a small pain in his temples. Jacob was the landlord of several houses in the District, including Antonia Gonzales's and, more significantly, that Liberty Street house where the body of the Defoor fellow had been found. No doubt it was the reason for the visit.
    That was bad enough; add to it Jacob's habit of complaining constantly,