friends.
Even if those friends still called you "Monsieur Janvier."
H?lier Lapatie lived in a bare little one-room shed in the rear yard behind what was officially termed a "grocery" but was in fact a groghouse, owned by a man who'd been manumitted years ago by one of the Lafr?nni?re family. The place was a sort of gathering-place or clubhouse-illegal, of course-for the free colored stevedores of the levee and the slaves who "slept out." The crowd in the groghouse whistled and called out comments when January came in, for he still wore the black long-tailed coat and sober waistcoat of a music teacher and carried an umbrella, but the owner behind his plank bar asked good-naturedly, "Get you somethin', sir?" and directed him out the back to H?lier's little shack.
As he went through the door January thought he recognized by lantern-light the woman Nani?, sitting on a flour-barrel talking earnestly with another woman and a man-light-skinned, so he could not have been the Virgil whom she'd sought through the fever wards. But in the flickering gloom he could not be sure.
Had Nani? found her man or was this his replacement?
He found H?lier out of bed, stubbornly dragging himself back and forth across the dirty boards of the shed's floor with the aid of two sticks. The water seller turned his head sharply as January came up the few plank steps: "Is that you?" he called out in English.
"It's me," replied January in French. "Benjamin January." He wanted to add, the big black nigger, but didn't, knowing the man had been under opium when he'd said it. Long dealings with Hannibal Sefton had taught him to let what was said under the influence of the drug slide like water off his back.
"Ah." H?lier dragged himself to the door of the shed. The young man's face was bathed in sweat, his blue eyes sunk in new webs of pain. "The surgeon no one will hire. I'm sorry," he added quickly, stepping back to let January into the shack. "It's the pain-and the opium, a little." He was very much more bent than he had been before, the spinal muscles that had been stretched and torn contracting, hunching him further, the damaged ligaments restricting the movement of his right shoulder and leg.
"Wonderful stuff, opium. Twenty-five drops for a penny, old Lafr?nni?re charges, which is fine if you've got a penny. My father would be proud."
"Your father?"
"Giles Lapatie, of Beau Rivage plantation. A gentleman of the belief that children should be neither seen nor heard nor acknowledged, if they're not as comely as they might be. Educated, yes. Given promises, yes-promises are cheap. Provided for, no. But I'm sure you're familiar with the type. What's that?"
"Philom?ne, at the vegetable market, sent them along."
"Leavings from my betters? Wrap them up for the helpless? How very kind of her." H?lier knocked the basket aside with his stick. For a moment there was no sound but the mice-feet of the rain. "And what about yourself? Come with a few pennies for opium? Maybe make a little music to cheer up the sufferer, since music after all is free?" His voice slurred just a little; January guessed he'd been dosing himself on whatever he could come by.
In a different tone, he went on, "I seem to remember it was you that unlatched me from that hell pit.
Thank you. Soublet seemed to think if they unjointed every bone of my body they could straighten me out, the fool. Lalaurie just stood by rubbing his hands, watching like a schoolgirl when they put the stallion to the mare."
"One of my pupils in Paris had her hands crippled by a 'patented finger-stretcher' her parents were convinced would improve her playing," said January. "It's the fashion, these days."
"Oh, well, I'm so glad to be in fashion." The darkness in the shed was almost complete, but January saw the twisted man's mouth quirk into an ironic grin. "I suppose the priests would say I deserved it. And maybe I did. What can I do for you, my friend?"
"I'm looking for information," said January. "You know everyone in town; hear everything. A friend of mine disappeared off the street last Friday night. It was while you were in Soublet's, but since then you might have heard something."
H?lier tilted his head a little, peering up at January like a turtle under the weight of its shell. His back was to the fluttering rush-dips; impossible to read either his face or his voice. "Disappeared, did she? What