The Crescent Spy (19 page)

“While they burn you in effigy in Charleston and New Orleans.”

“Only if we lose.” She gave him a sharp look. “Does this mean you’ll send it?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll send it. So help me, God, I will.”

J
osephine walked back to the Jefferson Hotel instead of hiring a cab. A late October breeze drove away the heat and the damp air, leaving the day clear and pleasant. Birds chirped and squabbled in the branches of trees. Along Gasquet Street, Spanish moss draped from the live oak trees that framed tidy, brightly colored cottages.

She passed an elderly gentleman smoking a corncob pipe from one corner of his mouth, while his hands busied themselves trimming dead roses with a pair of shears. A white-haired woman knelt on a twisted rag a few feet away, tugging weeds from a bed of begonia.

The man looked up as Josephine passed, and tipped his hat. “Good afternoon, miss. Right fine weather for a stroll.”

“That it is.” She looked over his work. “What a lovely garden. Did y’all do all this yourself?”

The man beamed. “That we did.” He cut a long-stemmed pink rose and handed it over the wrought-iron fence. “It’s the prettiest rose in the garden, but I dare say it’s not half so pretty as your fresh face.”

“Oh, Charlie, will you let the young lady go?” the woman said, her voice holding only mild exasperation. “She doesn’t need an old codger like you goin’ on with all them sweet words.”

Josephine leaned over the fence and kissed the old man on the cheek, then winked at his wife. He blushed, and his wife cackled in glee.

As Josephine rounded the corner, she heard the old woman tell her husband, “Well, look at you, gapin’ like a fool. Now you’ll be cutting blooms every time a pretty young girl says a kind word, until I have nary a rose left.”

Josephine was still smiling when she came in the garden entrance of the hotel. She took the creaking wooden steps up to the second floor and walked down the carpeted hallways to her room, but when she put in the key, the door wasn’t latched, and it swung open at her touch.

A man was inside, his back turned to her, bending at the foot of her bed, rifling through the contents of her trunk.

J
osephine stared at the thief bent over her trunk. She was trembling with anger.

“Stop what you are doing,” she said, “or so help me God, I will kill you.”

He stiffened and turned slowly. “Hello, Josie.”

It was the Colonel. His mustache was still black, but gray streaked the dark, curly hair on his head. He was more slender than she remembered, and also not as tall. For some reason, she always thought of herself as coming up to his shoulder, but no, he wasn’t more than an inch or two taller than she was. It had only been four years, but there were fresh wrinkles on his forehead and around his eyes. Or was that another thing she’d failed to notice?

What’s more, his suit was tired and worn. He still hadn’t reclaimed
his pearl buttons and gold watch. His shoes were scuffed and in need
of a visit to a cobbler. There were no rings on his fingers. Only the
hands themselves looked unchanged, the nails neatly trimmed, the palms he was rubbing nervously together soft and uncalloused. They
were the hands of a man who eschewed labor. Who craved soft living.

She cast her eyes over the bed, where he’d tossed her books and clothing. “A simple robbery, is that what you’ve come to?”

“Where is the box? I told you to keep it.”

“I was poor, so I sold it.”

He closed his eyes and took in a deep, labored breath. “You . . . you sold it? When?”

“Years ago. A little place on Exchange Alley offered me seventy-five cents.”

“Oh, sweet angel of mercy. Why would you do such a thing?”

“What was I supposed to do? I was sixteen, I had nothing. You let my mama die.”

“I didn’t.”

“Damn you, Colonel, you did so. You ran off for your precious box, and she drowned in the river. Because of you. Because of that confounded box.”

He sat on the bed and buried his face in his hands. A shudder worked its way through his body. Josephine set the leather satchel to one side and closed the door. Then she stood with her hands on her hips, looking at him coldly.

“Please,” he said at last, looking up. “You know it was an accident. The boiler . . . I had nothing to do with that. Many people died, not just Claire. It was a great tragedy.”

Josephine had no intention of letting him ease his conscience with bromides. “Tell that to God at the judgment bar. You as good as killed her yourself, you know it. And for what, a curio worth all of six bits. Yes, I sold it for seventy-five cents. And I’m not sorry, either. It was either sell the box or hawk my body on Gallatin.”

“I never wanted that. You know it’s true. I wanted you to be a writer, like you dreamed.”

“Of course you did, and that’s why I never saw you again after that night. Because you wanted so badly to help me.”

“I searched for you. I tried.”

“Liar.”

“Look at my girl,” he said after a long moment. “So grown up and pretty. And a heroine of the cause. Once Francesca told me she’d met you, I finally put two and two together. Josephine Breaux. Should have realized earlier. Breaux was your mama’s surname.”

Josephine shook her head, frowning. “It was? It was just a name I grabbed in New Orleans before I left.”

“You must have known.”

Had she? There was no specific memory of when she’d decided on the name Breaux, only that she’d known she couldn’t go by de Layerre, her mother’s stage name.

“She must have told you,” the Colonel said. “You tucked that away and you remembered.”

“That was her surname name, you swear?”

“On my honor. Claire Breaux. She changed it so her brother wouldn’t come looking for her.”

Mama had a brother? This was thrilling new information. Josephine had wondered many times about relations, had concocted fanciful stories of her mother’s origins. Claire had had a family somewhere who disapproved when she ran off to become a riverboat dancer. A religious family, Josephine told herself, by the name of Breaux, who always attended Mass and prayed to St. Anthony for the return of the missing girl. One brother, she imagined, would continue the search after the others had abandoned hope, traveling up and down the Mississippi, searching brothels and poorhouses.

“What more do you know of her family?” she asked. “Tell me.”

The Colonel looked uncomfortable. “There isn’t much to tell. Claire didn’t like to talk about it. Her mother was a disreputable sort.”

Josephine began to deflate. “More disreputable than riverboat dancing?”

“She was the madam of a bordello and grog house in the Irish Channel. An opium eater. Claire’s father was a drunk wanted for murder in Mexico.”

“My grandfather was Mexican?”

“I have no idea. Maybe just an adventurer. I’ve told you everything I know.”

The news came like a blow, and her illusions broke apart. Josephine’s own father was unknown—possibly this scoundrel in front of her—and her mother a riverboat dancer. Her known grandmother had been even more disreputable, her grandfather a drunk and a murderer.

“But what about Mama’s brother?” she asked, seizing desperately on this detail. “He was looking for her?” Maybe there had been another in the family, one who’d got himself out, made something respectable of himself. Josephine’s uncle. What had become of him?

The Colonel winced. “Claire ran away from home at twelve. Seems her half brother took a fancy to her. He was eighteen, and already a troublemaker.”

“Dear God.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Claire’s brother,” he said. “Your mama thinks he was hung for killing a negro woman after she refused him.”

“That’s my kin?” she cried, despairing. “What chance does that give me?”

The Colonel came over and reached for her hand. “You have plenty of chance. You’re a fighter.”

Josephine jerked away from his touch and glared at him until he backed off. She hadn’t meant to say that last part aloud and was ashamed that she had.

She corrected herself now. “I’ve made my own chances. And not you, nor anybody else will take that away from me.”

“I would never try. I’m proud of you, and what you’ve done, so young, yet already so accomplished.”

“You’ve come, you’ve had your say. You see I don’t have anything to give you. Now go away.”

“Where did you sell the box? Do you remember exactly?”

“No, I don’t. Anyway, it was years ago—you’ll never find it now. If you want another seventy-five-cent box, you’ll have to send for it from China.”

“It wasn’t just a box, don’t you understand that? There was a hidden compartment. I kept emergency reserves in there. For if things went badly for me. I’d have a way to get back on my feet.”

“And I was supposed to know this? I looked inside. I saw nothing.”

“You could have smashed it open.”

“I needed the money. I was starving.”

He grimaced at this. “Did you have to . . . ? You know . . . ?”

“To what? Say it.”

“Sometimes we do terrible things to survive. I could never forgive myself if I thought you’d sank that low.”

For a moment she wanted to say yes, she’d done all of that and more. Stick the knife in and twist it. But she didn’t truly believe this man had a conscience, and such a lie would get in the way of her pride.

“No, I never whored myself. I never danced, and I was never the mistress of any devil of a slave trader, either. I survived on my own wits, no thanks to you.”

Your own wits, and several thousand dollars of gemstones.

And what of it, she thought stubbornly. Her mother had drowned. Josephine had lost everything: her writing, her books, her clothing, the money Claire had set aside for mother and daughter, should they ever find themselves in trouble. All she had was the box and a few dollars that had run out too quickly.

When she’d found the gemstones, she had immediately set about in turning them into ready money. She sold one small ruby in Exchange Alley and bought passage up the river with the proceeds to sell the rest. She traveled all the way to the Ohio River, and on to Pittsburgh, which she believed would be less corrupt, more transparent than New Orleans. In total, she collected almost $7,000 by selling the gems. Of this, she donated the proceeds of one of the large emeralds to the Sanitarium for the Burned and Indigent in New Orleans and kept the rest for herself. If she had any remorse whatsoever, it was for the poor fools the Colonel had suckered at cards with use of his advantage tools.

The Colonel looked relieved when she told him she hadn’t prostituted her body to survive. “You look well. I’m pleased to see it. You might have heard that I have remarried.” He rose and began to put away the books he’d taken out of her chest.

“Don’t touch that. Just—just step away. I don’t need you pawing through it.” Josephine narrowed her eyes. “How do you mean,
re
married?”

“True, true. I never actually married your mother. I wasn’t the marrying type then. I should have, though. Should have made us a proper family. Then you could have taken my name, respectable-like.”

“Josephine the Colonel? Lovely name.”

He winced. “It’s Hancock. I didn’t share that because . . . well, there were men who wanted me dead. Still are, but seems they’ve gone north for the duration of the war.”

“So, Colonel Hancock. What regiment did you serve in?”

“Well, I—”

“You are how old—forty-five, maybe? And you seem in fine health to me. A genuine officer would have no trouble getting a commission. When do you ship off to join the Army of Northern Virginia to fight the Yankees? No? A Union fellow, then? I’ve heard they need men, too.”

“I will seek a commission. Shortly.”

“You’re no military man. I knew that a long time ago, and I can see it even more now.”

“Josie, please. Be reasonable. There’s no need for us to be enemies.”

“You killed my mama. And after four years with no word—not the first time you’d vanished, mind you—I come home to find you trying to rob me.”

“I wasn’t going to rob you. I only wanted to find the box. Then I was going to share my emergency stash with you, I swear it.”

“Go into the hallway. Wait there while I think it out.”

He looked like he was going to protest, but after a nod, he complied. She shut the door and flipped the latch, in case he was tempted to pick the lock again.

When Josephine was alone, she opened her carpetbag and removed the Oriental box, which she always took with her when she would be gone for more than a day or two. She sat on the bed with the box in her lap, and she slid the carved boat to reveal the catch. A thick wad of banknotes was stuffed into the lid. She removed two twenty-dollar Confederate bills. After a moment of thought, she peeled off two more bills.

Shortly, she had the box closed and hidden. She opened the door and handed the Colonel the greybacks. “This is all you’ll get.”

“I didn’t ask for charity,” he said, but nevertheless took the money and pocketed it.

“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Mama. That’s what she would have done, even as she cursed your no-good hide. Use the money to get back on your feet, or throw it away gambling and drinking. It makes no difference to me.”

“Thank you, Josie.”

“Either way, it’s the last money you’ll see from me. Go back to Memphis and never trouble me again.”