Mortal Sins Read online

  This book is a work of historical fiction. In order to give a sense of the times, some names of real people or places have been included in the book. However, the events depicted in this book are imaginary, and the names of non-historical persons or events are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such non-historical persons or events to actual ones is purely coincidental.

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 2000 by Penn Williamson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Cover design by Jesse Sanchez

  Cover illustration by Stanislaw Fernandez

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group,

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: February 2003

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55414-5

  Contents

  Acknowledments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  A preview of "Wages Of Sin"

  RAVES FOR

  MORTAL SINS

  “Williamson turns up the heat…a book of high-action imagery…. The descriptions of a dank and deceit-filled New Orleans evoke the smell of the oysters, the shrimp, the oleander, the mimosa, as well as the blood, sweat, and dark green water…. Be prepared to soak it all in, despite the heat.”

  —USA Today

  “Skillfully unfurls for maximal chills…plenty of spicy love scenes, intriguing subplots, and Jazz Age atmosphere…tempting gumbo of guilty pleasures.”

  —People

  “Captivating…extremely enjoyable…. Williamsonbrings the city to life. You can feel the humidity, smell the swamps, and hear the soulful sounds of the blues…. MORTAL SINS twists and turns and leaves you guessing until the very last page.”

  —Salisbury Post (NC)

  “A host of fascinating characters and plenty of dark atmosphere make this one a haunting mystery with lots of twists.”

  —Sunday Oklahoman

  “A steamroller of a story.”

  —Booklist

  “Rich atmosphere…sincere and touching…an entertaining book that provides insight into the human condition.”

  —Southern Pines Pilot (NC)

  “Intriguing…gritty…richly detailed…a delight.”

  —Historical Novels Review

  “A wildly intricate plot…. None of the story goes where you think it's going—whipping back on its tail like a mishandled snake.”

  —Rockland Courier-Gazette (ME)

  “Stunning…suspenseful…a high-voltage tour de force…. MORTAL SINS envelops the reader inside the sultry charms of the city.”

  —Amarillo Globe-News (TX)

  “Well plotted…highly readable.”

  —Library Journal

  For Tracy Grant, beloved friend

  Acknowledments

  I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my agent, Aaron Priest, for seeing me through this. I am sure there were times when he despaired, but he never gave up on me or the book. And my gratitude goes as well to Maureen Egen and Frances Jalet-Miller for their superb editorial guidance.

  Once again, I would like to thank Lindsay Casablanca for her assistance with the research, although any mistakes found herein are all mine.

  As it is, I have taken literary license by inserting the Flying Horses of Audubon Park into the story even though they wouldn't come into existence for another two years, and I created an outing to the Fair Grounds Race Track in the summer, quite arbitrarily choosing to ignore that the season only ran from January 1 through Mardi Gras. These are two of my favorite childhood memories of New Orleans, though, so I selfishly decided to included them in this fictional tale.

  Finally, I would like to thank the city of New Orleans herself for giving me so many wonderful moments and memories over the years.

  Prologue

  HE STOOD NAKED ON THE SAGGING PORCH OF THE OLD slave shack, with moonlight burnishing his skin to the smooth ivory of a marble gravestone. He might have been waiting for his lover to come.

  The night smelled of death, heavy and smothering. It was summer in New Orleans, when the streets steamed in the morning and the rain teemed in the evening, when the brown river flowed thick and muddy, and the bayous spread in a primal ooze of putrefying lily pads and crawfish. In the old St. Louis Cemeteries, where the raised crypts had cracked and sunk into the earth, water lapped at the rotting bones so that the sweet smell of decay rose into the air and took on the breath of resurrected life. A summer's night in New Orleans, rancid life and ripe death, and always—the heat.

  The porch he stood on faced the Bayou St. John, although he could barely see it through the huge live oaks. Streamers of moss hung from the gnarled branches, limp in the still, heavy air. The water curved like a slow, silver snake around the low moon.

  If he turned his head and looked across the yard he could have seen the big house. An heirloom of slender white colonnettes and broad galleries, and as much a part of him as his bones and breath.

  If he turned his head he could have seen the window of his wife's bedroom, but he didn't need to look to see her as he was remembering her. Linen sheets twisted around her naked legs, lamplight pooling on her belly. Her eyelashes spiking shadows on the bones of her face.

  He breathed, and the sultry air panted with him. He imagined her looking out her window now, seeing him standing naked in the night.

  He turned and went inside, leaving the door open. His shadow leaped out ahead of him in the wash of the brass gasoliers. Years ago they had brought electricity out to the shack, but he loved the gaslight. Once, in his grandfather's time, slaves had lived in this place. Of course in those days the floor had been packed dirt, the furniture a rotting table and a stool or two, rough ticking stuffed with moss and swamp grass to sleep on. Certainly no green leather chairs, no ormolu-mounted bureau, no big brass bed. When he and his brother were boys, these two small rooms had served as a sort of garçonnière. Out here where their mama wouldn't have to let herself know better, he and Julius had indulged in a lot of expensive bourbon and cheap women. Sure enough, some sinning had gone on in those days, most of it his.

  Most of the sins had been his, yes, but not all. Not all.

  Pulled by memories, he loo
ked through a curtain of blue glass beads and into the shadowed bedroom. He saw, in the silver shawl of moonlight floating through the gauzy bed netting, the sweet curve of a woman's breast.

  His breath quickened, and a hot flush prickled his bare skin. “That you, darlin'?” he said.

  He took a step and the netting stilled, the shadow disappeared. His excitement died, leaving behind a melancholy ache. He wanted suddenly to be done with it all. He wanted to live a life without old longings, free of the past and old sins. Free of new sins and all the chaos and pain in his mind.

  He picked up his silk robe from where he'd left it lying on the floor and shrugged it on. He went to the bureau, and his hands shook as he opened the flat silver box that was filled with not cigarettes but shaved cocaine. With the blade of a penknife, he scraped up the fine white flakes, then spilled it onto the back of his wrist. He brought it up to his nose, snorting deep, blinking.

  His lips pulled back from his teeth and his eyes opened wide as the rush hit him. Beyond the open door the knifelike leaves of the banana tree stirred, sounding to his ears like a hurricane. He could feel his heart beating hard now.

  He took a silk handkerchief out of his robe pocket and wiped his nose. He poured a glass of absinthe and spiked it with more cocaine. He tossed back most of the cocktail in one long swallow. The rush hit him again, harder this time, making him shudder.

  Time spun away from him, letting go. He stood, swaying, drifting, caught up in the unraveling threads of a dream. Something brought him back, a noise. The locusts in the canebrakes, singing for their mates. He sucked in a deep breath and felt his chest expand with the force of it, felt the oxygen feed his blood. His blood pulsed now with the locusts' scratching song.

  And then they stopped.

  A wicker rocking chair creaked out on the porch. He jerked, almost stumbling, to peer back through the open door. The chair was still. The beaded curtain clicked softly, and he spun back around. He held his breath now, listening, but he heard only the whirring of the ceiling fan and the dripping of rainwater off the fronds of the banana trees. The tripping thump of his own heart.

  A chill moved down his spine, in spite of the oppressive heat. There was something dangerous about the night, a sense of ancient, predatory creatures stalking silently through the tall grass or flying among the trees on soundless wings.

  He laughed.

  The mosquito netting in the next room stirred again, flashing white across the corner of his eye. The netting floated open and a woman rose from the bed. A woman, naked, her body glowing silver as moonlit snow. A snow dream, he told himself. She's only a dream.

  He took a step backward though, even if she was only a dream, and still she came toward him. The beaded curtain parted around her, clicking and clacking. Thick worms writhed in her hair and her face was flat and dead, the color of the old bones rotting in the cemetery down the road.

  She raised her arm, and at the end of it was a cane knife. The blade, long and flaring, bled red with a liquid fire.

  “No,” he said, although even then he didn't really believe in what he was denying.

  She came closer, the snow woman with the horrible dead face, and then he realized what he was seeing and he laughed again.

  “Remy,” he said, smiling, laughing. “Hey, you comin' to get me, baby?” He backed another step, grinding his hips a little now, almost dancing, and she followed. She liked to play at dangerous games, did Remy, but in the end they were only games. “Come on, come on, come and get me.”

  The cane knife slashed across his belly.

  He grunted and looked down, he saw his flesh gape open and the blood well thick and black, and he wondered why it didn't hurt, and then he screamed.

  The knife cut him again, lower, and his scream broke into a wail. Run, he had to run; he ran but the knife came after him, came for his eyes this time, and he threw up his hands to stop it. The blade sliced across his palms, and he saw a finger go flying, but it wasn't real and so he laughed, and then he screamed, and then he whimpered. “Please,” he said, as the knife slashed again. He opened his mouth and the screams filled it so he couldn't breathe, rising and swelling in his throat like big wet bubbles.

  He could hear her harsh panting in a wet darkness now filled with pain. He wanted her to stop so that he could breathe again, so that he could scream. He wanted to tell her he was sorry. He wanted her to understand that he wasn't supposed to die.

  He fell instead, and still she came. To cut out his heart with her knife.

  He was slipping down, down deep into a hot black cocoon, his chest bursting, burning. His eyes filled with a black light, and then the light brightened into a whiteness and the world became new and sweet again. Night rain still dripped off the fronds of the banana trees, but the camellias outside the window smelled of tomorrow's sunshine, and she was kissing him, warm, lingering kisses, her lips begging him to stay, and he didn't want to go.

  Slowly, he turned his head and looked up into her face. The screams were still trapped in his throat, beating like moths against glass. He opened his mouth to say her name one last time.

  It came out in a gush of hot blood.

  Chapter One

  BLOOD WAS SPLATTERED AND SPRAYED ALL OVER THE walls and furniture. It lay in dark smears on the oiled wooden floor and pooled beneath the dead man's cut throat, glossy and syrupy, like blackberry wine.

  Daman Rourke stood just within the shack's open door and tried not to breathe in the rank smell. He winced as the magnesium explosion of a flashlamp illuminated for an obscene moment the gashes in the dead man's white flesh and his bulging, glassy eyes.

  “Sweet mercy,” Rourke said.

  The cop with the camera cast him a glance and then leaned over and pointed the lens at a cane knife that lay glued to the floor by a puddle of blood. “Day, my man. Welcome to the party,” he said, as the flashlamp blew with another burst of white light. “Where you been at? I've had guys looking for you in every gin and hot pillow joint this side of the river.”

  Rourke resisted the urge to rub his hands over his face. It was past midnight at the end of a long day, beneath his linen suit coat his shirt was sticking to his back like wet paper, he had a scotch-and-rye headache throbbing behind his left eye, and he hated the smell of blood.

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and smiled. “What can I say? I guess you didn't look in low enough places.”

  The other man's thick shoulders, which had been hunched up around his ears, relaxed. The smile worked, as always. Daman Rourke could charm anybody, and he knew it. Sometimes he did it for a reason, and sometimes just to get in the practice.

  Rourke stayed where he was and let his partner come to him. The other cop's loose pongee suit was rumpled and sweat-stained, and his sparse light brown hair stuck up like tufts of salt grass on a sand dune. In this, the year of our Lord 1927, Fiorello Prankowski was the only homicide dick in the City That Care Forgot who wasn't Irish, but then he had been born and raised in Des Moines, and allowances were made for Yankees, who couldn't be expected to know better.

  “The stiff's Charles St. Claire,” he said. Fio had a sad, haggard face, as if all the cares New Orleans had forgotten he felt obliged to remember. “But then I guess I don't need to tell you that, since you both were probably altar boys together at St. Alphonsus, where you used to jerk off Saturday afternoons in the sacristy. Your mama likes to tell the story of how she got a little tipsy at his mama's wedding, and you, you bastard, once tried to screw his sister.”

  “Charles St. Claire never had a sister.”

  “Know him well, do you?”

  “No,” Rourke said, which was not the same thing as saying he wasn't acquainted with the man at all.

  He knew it drove Fio crazy that in a city of half a million people, everybody was connected to everyone else—through blood or marriage, through shared secrets and shared desires. All those connections formed concentric and interlocking circles that no outsider could ever penetrate or understand.
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  Neither living nor dying in New Orleans was ever completely and truly what it seemed, but the trappings, the traditions, the rituals were all enshrined and made inviolate by a collective act of faith. You buried your family secrets deep and spun intricate, invisible webs to hide your sins from yourselves and from the world. And sometimes, thought Rourke, it was far better that the sins stayed hidden, the secrets safe.

  “The Ghoul is here,” Fio said, pointing his chin at the corpse, and at the man who was squatting over it.

  Not that anyone could have missed him, for he had the thick, blubbery roundness of a walrus. The cops called him the Ghoul because he always smelled of rotting flesh. He spent his life in the bowels of the Criminal Courts Building, cutting open dead bodies and examining disgusting specimens under microscopes, drawing conclusions too wild ever to be admitted into court.

  The feelings of aversion and distrust were mutual. Moses Mueller, coroner for New Orleans Parish for less than a year, already held to the firm belief that the collective intelligence of all the detectives on the force was only slightly above that of a mollusk.

  “So what's he think?” Rourke asked as he made his reluctant way to the body. He hated looking at dead things.

  “You asking me?” Fio said, following after and rolling his shoulders like a horse with an itch. “You know the Ghoul—he never gives us squat. He told me it was murder, like I was supposed to run out and stop the presses. Hell, I had to give up on my theory that the stiff went chasing himself around the room hacking at himself with a cane knife.”

  The Ghoul had leaned over to sniff at the corpse's gaping, blood-caked mouth. “Oh, man,” Fio said. “Why does he do stuff like that?”

  Rourke was trying to keep from stepping in the blood. It had dried in some places, in stacks like glossy black tiles scattered on the floor, but in other places it was still wet and sticky, and he had just bought his expensive-as-hell alligator wing tips with last week's winnings at the track. No matter how low he did go, he always went there in style.

  Charles St. Claire had not died in style. His paisley silk robe gaped open, revealing naked flesh that had been literally bled white. His throat had been slit, his chest cavity ripped open, and his guts oozed out of a cut in his belly. A slash across his pelvis had left his penis hanging by a small string of what looked like gristle.