Deadly Pedigree - By Jimmy Fox Page 0,25

must have been gutted at some point in the past, maybe by the big 1788 fire that destroyed most of the original Quarter. Now there were hardly any interior walls, just eighteenth-century bricks, and beams that looked like pieces of a sailing ship. Topography is not a term often associated with human dwellings, but in this place, the elevation wasn’t the same at any two points on the old oak floor. You could stub a toe standing still. Nick half expected the building to crumble any day like so much stale icing. And if the whole Quarter didn’t collapse under the weight of its own enervation, the Big One would eventually come along and wreck it all in a watery Category 5 apocalypse. Whenever he started worrying about such possibilities, Nick said a few propitiatory words to the spirits of both Marie Laveaus, and carried on, like the Quarter itself.

Who was Ivanhoe Balzar? Nick wondered, reviewing his notes. He’d polished off a leftover portion of a hero sandwich from his favorite Greek restaurant over by the French Market. Cheap but potent screw-top red wine was aiding him in his ruminations.

For the sake of argument, he toyed with the theory that the missing middle “a” had been dropped from the name somewhere along the line, either accidentally or deliberately. Linguistic disinheritance. The fact that Ivanhoe was mulatto might explain this–often the case during and after slavery, when even a fractional part of black heritage led to exclusion from society in general–at best. Mulatto, a word derived from the French and Spanish ones for mule, was a badge of shame to those who had to bear it. So it didn’t surprise Nick that Ivanhoe had apparently attempted to pass as white on the census, perhaps to establish for the future some baseline of evidence that he was white.

Louisiana, then as now, sinned first and asked questions later. There was a great deal of mixing, and a complex hierarchy of race was born. Even today the term “Creole” is hotly debated by whites and blacks who define it to suit their traditions and satisfy their egos. Upper-crust customs only magnified the confusion: light-colored beauties were favored by young white French, Spanish, and American rakes as mistresses. In New Orleans, quadroon balls were big social events, where these beautiful young mulatto women were shown off by their mothers to the rich white men in masks. A few mulattoes attained high social status through such arrangements, and many prominent white men maintained separate families–white and “of color”–when mere forbidden pleasure gave way to genuine love.

In the census, Ivanhoe stated that he was born in Louisiana, but he said his father was born in France, and his mother in Mississippi. The France part got Nick’s attention. He knew that boundaries had shifted frequently in Europe; this man might have been from that contested area that changed hands so often, Alsace-Lorraine. Not too far from Corban’s German birthplace. Was this Corban’s collateral ancestor, the surviving branch the old man so ardently hoped to find? Was Ivanhoe’s father the Balazar who had emigrated, the individual who would unlock the door to old Corban’s American family?

Ivanhoe was forty-one in 1880, or so he said; he seemed prosperous. His wife, Mary, was twenty-seven. Their children were Erasmus, 8; Amicus, 5; Victoria, 4, all described as mulattoes. Ivanhoe stated that he was a barber; Mary occupied herself with “keeping house,” the usual description of a woman’s activities at the time. One or both had some education, Nick inferred from the somewhat novel names of the children. There were two others in the house, both black: Eliza Crome, 43, “servant” under the relationship column, performed the duties of “cook”; John Crome, 20, perhaps her son, was also a “servant,” his occupation being “laborer.”

Nick felt sure this Ivanhoe was a crucial link in the story. Since he now had a different strategy, he would need to recheck earlier censuses for Ivanhoe, fill in the picture of his youth, if possible. That could lead him to the father, who just might be the crucial Balazar individual.

But what Nick really needed to do was rummage around the local courthouse in search of birth, marriage, and death certificates, suits, wills, and deeds–the usual building blocks of the genealogical edifice. That would require a personal visit. He had severe doubts that his car was up to the drive. He’d probably make better time in Hawty’s chariot!

It was past midnight, but he had an urge to revisit the