very well come here."
"And paint the town bright red, eh?" Davis chuckled richly. "We get them coming in all the time.
These-what do they call themselves?-these mercenaries, these filibusters, these Kaintucks from the levee, they often `hit it rich,' as they say. Three thousand dollars." His eyes, dark as cafe noir, sharpened, speculative, as he regarded January across the rim of the bourbon glass Placide had brought on the same tray with the lemonade. Under that keen gaze January was very thankful he hadn't named five thousand as the sum. "Lot of money. Why didn't your mother's friend have credit on the bank?"
"She didn't say, sir. She'd just sold her cook and her coachman that afternoon, a private sale. She was leaving town and needed the money pretty badly."
Davis grimaced. "And lost it that same day? What a damn shame. This town just isn't safe. Some people don't trust banks. I don't, myself, but I trust my fellow man even less." He chuckled again, and gestured with his glass. "But fifteen hundred apiece-that's damn good bargaining, even with prices as high as they are now. Who'd she sell to, do you know?"
January appeared to think hard, frowning. Then he shook his head. "I don't... Redfield? Redman?
Redfern? Maybe Qtis Redfern?"
Davis's eyes widened. "Otis Redfern?"
"I might be thinking of someone else."
"I'd say you are, my friend." Davis shook his head. "Otis Redfern, God rest his soul, couldn't raise three thousand dollars to pay his debts here, let alone buy a coach man and a cook. He had a cook, anyway, the best in town; that wife of his saw to that. She asked around for months, and nothing was good enough for her; in the end she paid twice what he was worth for that stuck-up yellow fussbudget who used to cook for Bernard Marigny. And for all that the man ended up sold to that church fellow for six hundred dollars-money he probably took straight out of the profits of that silly Musicale those American ladies held for him out in Milneburgh last week. Now, that's gratitude for you!" he concluded sarcastically. "At least he could have paid her a decent price."
January remembered the Reverend Micajah Dunk bargaining in the Exchange: nine hundred, nine hundred fifty dollars for men who would be sold for over a thousand in Missouri next week. He wondered if one of them had been the Marigny cook.
He said, "Tcha!" and related, with libelous embellishments, the tale of the musicians' contracts for the Musicale, something Davis had heard secondhand or thirdhand already, but listened to avidly again.
"Well, for all her airs she's having the plantation sold out from under her," Davis remarked, after a fairly derogatory discussion of Emily Redfern's pretensions. "It went under seal by the bank today; Granville's going to auction it at Maspero's Monday. I never knew the lady well, but a harder, more grasping woman I have yet to meet. It must have driven her insane, the way that poor man let the ready slide through his fingers-and he was about the most inept gambler I've seen," he added, shaking his head. "Otis Redfern was one of those poor souls who couldn't let it alone, not even against plain common sense.
He'd bet on anything, for the thrill of it. Last week-Wednesday, it would have been-when everyone in town knew he was over his ears in debt, he came in here playing roulette... Roulette, like a fool!"
"Wednesday?" said January, startled.
Davis's gray brows raised politely; January said, "A friend of mine tried to reach him Wednesday and was told he was indisposed."
Davis shook his head. "The small hours of Wednesday morning it was-Redfern came in here around midnight or one, and gambled until just after sunrise. God knows what he said to his wife when he reached home."
He gestured with his glass toward the door and the gambling room beyond. "Liam Roarke, that slick Irishman who runs some dive by the Basin, came in at four with a couple of his bravos, and braced the man over money he'd lost to them, five thousand dollars two days before. Two days before, with Fazende and Calder ready to go to law over what Redfern owed them from last year's crop coming in poorly because of the cholera, and him selling up his slaves to cover the debt. And after they left, what does the poor fool do but go back to the tables."
He sipped his whisky and shook his head again at the marvel of human conduct.