Jass (Valentin St. Cyr Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF

his man for almost eight years now, and though he made it his business to know everyone else's, after all that time the Creole detective's shifting and cryptic presence still vexed him.
    He knew the basic facts, of course. The man's given name was not Valentin St. Cyr at all, but Valentino Saracena. He was thirty-four years old. His father, a Sicilian dockworker, had been murdered in the midst of the Italian troubles of the 1890s, and his Creole-of-color mother had disappeared not long afterward. Saracena had gone away for a long while, then returned to New Orleans, bearing the fairly common St. Cyr moniker as he covered his tracks and separated from his past. He had become a police officer, of all things, and first came to Tom Anderson's attention when he was assigned the Storyville beat. Anderson took a glance and then fixed an eye on the young patrolman, watching how he worked the District. It took a certain special touch; for there was no place like it on earth.
    As it turned out, St. Cyr was a good copper. Too good to last, in fact, and when he left the force over some nasty business with a sergeant, Anderson stepped in to offer him a situation. It infuriated some in the commissioner's office, but he wanted the best man for the job and St. Cyr was it. He was hired to handle matters of security at the Café and around the District in general, and he earned more of his employer's confidence as time went by.
    They had an unspoken agreement that he would pass as a Creole on the European side of the line, rather than a Creole of color, which he could truthfully claim on his mother's side. Even so, most citizens took him to be a white man. Those who knew the truth either didn't care or weren't about to challenge Anderson over having a person of color tending to his affairs. The King of Storyville trusted him; any discussion ended right there.
    All had been well until the Black Rose murders of the spring of the previous year. It was after that terrible business ended that St. Cyr began to drift. In the months since, he had been going about his duties mechanically, doing what was expected of him and little more, and more often than not it seemed his mind was elsewhere. Lately Anderson had been hearing whispers about his young lady, the café-au-lait dove named Justine, and he wondered how that might be complicating the detective's life.
    Too bad, but business was business. St. Cyr was not the asset he had once been. Still, it was with genuine regret that the King of Storyville found himself regularly mulling over who he might find to replace him.

    The onset of the weekend always created a jittery buzz up and down Basin Street. Making his way along the banquette, Valentin had a sense of being on the floor of a busy market just before the rush of buying and selling began, or on a stage with the curtain about to rise on a grand, tawdry pageant.
    He knocked on Hilma Burt's door and stepped into the same foyer that he had visited not ten hours earlier. The house was still, all the girls upstairs sleeping or just waking up. The Negro cleaning woman straightened when she saw him and nodded in the direction of the sitting room on the far side of the parlor. He exchanged a few words with Miss Burt, collected another envelope weighted with gold coins, signed a receipt in her little book, and went on his way. He was not invited to sit down and the madam kept a cool eye fixed on him the entire time. Valentin understood; with the trouble brewing between her and Tom Anderson, he was suspect. He made a hasty exit before the madam decided to start bracing him.
    At Antonia Gonzales's one of the girls was waiting with the envelope and the receipt book. As he descended the steps from the gallery, it occurred to him that for the last few weeks the madam had not been around for his Friday morning visit. It was odd, since she had always been happy to greet him, chat for a minute, and personally hand over his pay. A touchy sort might think he was