Free Rampart Street (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) by David Fulmer Page A

long
    Beansoup added some notes and full chords, growing a little more assured with every measure. Valentin shook his head in wonder that it didn't insult his ears.
When the womens all heard King Brady was dead,

Well, they go back home, get all re-ragged in red

Come a-slippin' and a-shufflin' and a-slidin' down the street

In their old Mother Hubbards and their stockin' feet

He been on that job too long
    Beansoup finally saw the detective and his face flushed as Charley sang on.
Well, a hard-tailed carriage was standin' around

For to take King Brady to his burying ground

Hard-tailed carriage, double-seated hack

Took him to the graveyard but they didn't bring him back

He been on that job too long
    It was an odd contrast. Valentin could have taken a few steps back and he'd hear an old man playing a coon song about grinning, foolish, watermelon-eating darkies, then turn around and find a mean-looking fellow singing a dark tale of bloody murder committed by a Negro with nothing to lose.
    Valentin shook his head, bemused. Just as soon as one low-down brand of Negro music had been tamed, along came another. While jass was crossing over from Rampart Street, the gutbucket blues got dressed up and came into town from the farm fields and country crossroads and especially from the plantations of the Mississippi Delta, landing in the heart of New Orleans, right before Valentin's eyes.
    Charley now slapped his razor up the strings in a metallic wail as Beansoup blew hard to stay with him, and for one instant he didn't look so much like a boy. He looked like a man with some age on him as he shared an ancient ritual of song.
Well, it's twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, little star

Well, along come Brady in his 'lectric car

Got a mean look all in his eye

Gonna shoot somebody just to see him die

He been on the job too long

Been on the job too long...
    They ended in a cascade of crying notes. With a round of applause, coins clinked into the cup at Charley's feet. Beansoup's face got all pink with pride. He looked like a kid again.
    When they started the next song, Valentin walked over to drop a Liberty quarter in their cup and give Beansoup a quick wink. Charley Johnson fixed his eyes on him in a prison stare. The man was an absolute ray of sunshine. The detective hoped Beansoup would be on his toes with this character.
    All the way back to Marais Street, the sound of the music and the sight of his young friend playing it stayed with him. He had known Beansoup as little more than a child, and now he was closing in on grown-up and working the streets as a gutbucket blues man, no less.

    Valentin got to the
Daily Picayune
office, a three-story brick building on the corner of Camp and Poydras, at one in the afternoon. He went around to the alley in back of the building and pushed the button next to the door that was down a short flight of brick steps. Inside, a buzzer croaked. He waited. He waited some more.
    Presently, he heard the sounds of movement and growls from beyond the wall. The door creaked open and the face of Joe Kimball appeared, red and glaring. Then it broke into a bleary grin.
    "God
damn
!" he cried happily. "Son of a bitch! I heard you were back!" He grabbed Valentin's shoulder in a meaty paw and dragged him inside. "Where the fucking hell have you been?"
    Even in the bizarre menagerie of New Orleans characters, Kimball was a standout. Some people thought he was crazy. Others dismissed him as a common sot. He was loud and abrasive and hated his bosses as much as they despised him. They couldn't do without him, though, and so there he stayed, dwelling like a mole in a maze of shelves and stacks and file cabinets that made up the
Daily Picayune
's morgue. The day his liver gave out, as it surely would, the morgue would fall into hopeless chaos. As long as he remained upright, however, he was more than useful. He was a walking library of information about the city and its residents.

    Like some rare nocturnal creature, he was