Through the floor January heard voices rise in sudden fury, the stamp of feet and shouting: a fight downstairs, inevitable in gatherings of Creoles and Americans. He heard something that sounded like "species of American!" and "Consarn if I'll take that from any man!" Davis tilted his head a little, ready to rise, but the noises died away.
The entrepreneur sighed, and his stout shoulders eased in their bottle green superfine. "I've been a player all my life, you know, Ben. I've seen enough money won and lost, here and in Paris and in Haiti, probably to buy back all of the Mississippi Valley from the Americans, with this city thrown in for lagniappe. I know these men who gamble everything, who can't stop gaming any more than a drunkard can stop drinking; who ruin themselves at the tables-I understand what they'll do, how they'll react, how they'll lay their bets. I can read these men like books. But I don't understand them. I don't understand why."
The door behind January opened upon a gentle knock. Placide looked in, caught Davis's eye: "I think they need you downstairs, sir."
"Ah." Davis sighed and stood. "My apologies, Ben..."
"None needed, sir. It's your job."
"For my sins." He gave a wry grin.
"Perhaps for your virtues." January picked up his hat.
"About your mother's friend's money." Davis waited until the waiter was gone. "I haven't seen anyone in here... How to say this? Spending money it doesn't appear they should have. It's been quiet. Mostly what you have here these days are the local men, the ones who come in all the time-the ones who stay in town, like fools, to gamble. And here I am like a fool catering to them, but there! In a year or two I'll open that place in Spanish Fort that I've been looking at, and then you'll see something like!"
January nodded. He hadn't noticed any diminution of the establishment's clientele, but then, Davis's was not a place where he performed regularly. Maybe it was quiet.
"You'll have better luck asking in the Swamp, and near the Basin, or down on Tchoupitoulas Street by the levee. But frankly, Ben, I wouldn't advise you to go down there. Slaves are very high this year. I wouldn't want to see you come to harm."
So Otis Redfern had been in town all Tuesday night. January turned the matter over in his mind as he walked to the Hospital, carefully choosing the most populated and best-lit streets.
Redfern would have ridden in Tuesday to post the runaway notice in the Bee-presumably before the loss of his five thousand dollars was discovered. And despite the debts that had forced the sale of Gervase and the others, he'd stayed on, his gambler's logic telling him that this was the way to recoup his loss.
If Emily Redfern hadn't already been planning to include her husband, as well as his mistress, in her plans for murder, thought January, shaking his head, that would have decided her.
Too little remained of his dwindling funds to hire a horse, so when he forced himself to wake next day in the heat of noon, he bathed and dressed and walked the six or seven streets to the levee. The Missourian had left that morning, bound on its usual run to St. Louis; the Bonnets O Blue was just in and off-loading cotton and tobacco. The Philadelphia would leave sometime that afternoon for Natchez-"Or this evenin', more like," said its engineer, with whom January managed to get a quiet word in the arcades of the market, while the small white ship sat idle on its wharf and its crew of stevedores played monte in the shade. "That big mess of brandy that came in on the Caledonia yesterday ain't yet been brought over here, and it'll be four hours loadin' at the least. Mr. Graham-that's our pilot-says we can make as far as Red Church, 'fore we'll have to tie up for the night. You'll be fine."
So January booked deck passage as far as Twelve-Mile Point, all he could afford, and returning home, packed a small grip with a change of linen, a blue-and-red calico shirt, rough trousers, and a corduroy jacket. While he was doing so he heard sounds, first in the little room next door to which Hannibal had moved his books and clothing the previous afternoon, then out on the gallery. He deduced that his friend was at least out of bed, if not precisely awake.
He found him being thoroughly sick over the gallery