out," called the girl who worked at the grocery, coming into the yard while January stood irresolute in front of the crudely latched shutters of Rose's door. "That lock don't work, you can probably go right on in."
And remind me never to put YOU in charge of my belongings, thought January wryly. But he'd seen the girl-her name was Marie-Philom?ne-a number of times in the past week, and she knew him to be Rose's friend.
"Did you see her go?"
Marie-Philom?ne nodded. "She went out to market this morning, then 'bout three, four hours ago she come runnin' back here, and change into her nice dress, the pretty blue one with the white collar." It was the dress Rose had worn to impress her backers at the school-merino wool, a little worn but neat and businesslike. "Gloves and everything. I think she might have been goin' to that school she works at; she had a book with her, anyway."
Like a Dutch still life, January saw in his mind the mended gloves, the Conversations in Chemistry More Especially for the Female Sex on the corner of the hall table...
She'd gone to Madame Lalaurie's.
Everything they had spoken of concerning that lady rushed back to him in a scalding flood: her vindictiveness, her connections with slave-dealers, her power. Her ability to seem like the kind of person who could not possibly do ill. He'd been a fool to believe her, to accept her graciousness and charm...
Rose had recognized Genevi?ve's shoes, and had learned from the pralinniere that they'd come from the charity bin of the Ursuline Order. And the only way they would have gotten there, he now knew, was through Madame Lalaurie.
Rose had gone to Madame Lalaurie's. And like Cora, she hadn't come back.
Lieutenant Shaw was out. "Captain Tremouille got a bee up his behind again about the blacks sleeping out." Sergeant deMezieres, on duty at the desk, shook his head. "I don't see what business it is of anybody where they sleep, but seems a couple of those Americans whose boys were kidnapped last fall have taken it in their heads to sue the city over it. No, I don't know when he'll be back."
January knew a handful of the Guards from a couple of encounters during the past year, but knew also that none of them would back him if he tried to tell them he thought a colored woman was being held prisoner by one of the town's most prominent society matrons, particularly not in the face of Barnard's newspaper campaign. More than likely Captain Tremouille, who was connected to three-quarters of Creole society himself, would simply ask Madame Lalaurie about it, get a startled and indignant no, and that would be that.
He said, "Thank you, sir," and took his leave.
The sun was sinking over the glittering river, the new moon following it like a lovelorn suitor, pale and thin. The day had been a clear one, spring heat melting already into thc promise of summer. Another fever season on its way. Whatever the Lalauries intended to do to keep Rose quiet-and surely she knew too much English, and too much about her own rights, to sell even to the crookedest broker-they'd do so at night.
Hannibal wasn't at his last known lodging, the shed behind Big Annie's house of assignation near the Basin. The cook there directed January to the establishment of Kentucky Williams, on Perdidio Street.
By the time he reached there the river's long curve was a bed of fire, the mucky gulch of Perdidio Street blue with shadow among its weeds and sheds. Few lamps were lit, and drunken, louse-ridden bravos jostled from tavern to tavern; January nearly trod on a flatboatman who came flying out of the Cairo Saloon and plowed into the mud almost under his feet.
In a two-room shed built of old flatboat planks, January found Kentucky Williams, as tall as some men and with arms like a keelboat's tiller, dispensing something from a barrel with a tin cup. January mused a little that in her five-word inquiry as to the nature of his business, three of those words were obscenities.
She was already dippering up liquor for him, though. A few feet away the woman Railspike was engaged in a screaming quarrel with a prospective customer. How do these girls ever make any money?
"He's gone out," said Williams. When January indicated he wasn't interested in drinking she shifted her cigar to the corner of her mouth, took a swig from the tin cup herself, then dumped