Music and Malice in Hurricane Town Read online

  For my parents,

  for taking me to New Orleans

  when I most needed to go.

  I hope we find ourselves on

  Bourbon Street again one day.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  BIOGRAPHY

  COPYRIGHT

  “Are you Jude Lomax?”

  Jude spat a mouthful of blood on to the cobbles and squinted up at the scruffy boy standing over her. “Who’s asking?” she grunted. She prodded cautiously at her tooth with her tongue, causing it to wobble in its socket.

  “Benny sent me,” the boy said, waving an envelope around. “Said to look for a red-headed girl. Said she’d probably be in a fight or in the gutter.”

  Jude scowled. She was in no mood for wise guys. “Just give me the message and clear off,” she snapped.

  The boy shrugged and dropped the envelope on the dirty cobbles in front of her before turning on his heel and leaving. Jude managed to sit up and prop herself against the nearby wall. It smelled like someone had taken a pee against it but she couldn’t even be bothered to wrinkle her nose. Every part of her ached – her ribs, her head, her shoulders and her soul too, come to that. Blood dripped into her eye from a cut on her forehead, it hurt to breathe and nausea churned in her stomach. What a shit of a morning it had been. What a shit of a life, really.

  She glanced around the street to make sure Sidney Blues Sampson had gone and wasn’t about to come out and take his boot to her again. There was no sign of him. It appeared her landlord had finally left, now that he’d delivered his threats and his kicking.

  The night before, Jude had gone to play at Moonfleet Manor as usual but when she turned up at the front door, her trumpet case beneath her arm, she’d been turned away. The master was not having a good day, Paris had said, a familiar sneer on her perfect lips.

  Jude’s heart had sunk straight into her boots, she’d been relying on that money, but there was nothing to be done except try to find work at short notice elsewhere. So she made her way to every jazz club and honkytonk in the Hurricane Quarter, every goodtime house and creep joint in the meatpacking district, every midnight supper club and gambling den in the vampire’s Ruby Quarter, and every steamship and pleasure boat moored at Paradise Pier. But nobody wanted a trumpet player.

  Walking back through Cadence Square that night she’d noticed a plate of congri, black-eyed peas with rice, placed beneath the sycamore trees, surrounded by a circle of silver coins. Her stomach had rumbled at the sight of the food and her fingers itched at the sight of the money, but she’d walked right on past and left it there, just like every other sensible person in Baton Noir. They all knew it had been placed there by someone who practised cajou – that strange, dark, powerful magic no ordinary person dared mess with. To take that money, or food, would be to invite disaster into your life.

  She had arrived home in the morning only to find her landlord waiting for her. And he’d been in no mood to listen to explanations about the late rent. No mood at all.

  Once Jude’s head finally stopped spinning, she picked up the envelope the boy had dropped, tore it open and pulled out the letter. As she skimmed its contents her heart lifted. There was to be a jazz funeral, and the Done and Dusted Brass Band had been asked to play in it. That meant work, a pay cheque and not getting the living crap beaten out of you because you were behind on bills. But then Jude scanned down the letter for the details and her elation quickly vanished. The funeral was now, today. There were no canals in that part of town so she couldn’t even take the swamp boat. She’d have to run halfway across Baton Noir to have any hope of making it, and right now she felt as if she could barely manage to hobble back to her own front door.

  She groaned and gritted her teeth. There was no choice. She couldn’t afford to miss this. Jazz funerals were only for Baton Noir’s more important and distinguished citizens, and who knew how much longer it might be until another one of them snuffed it?

  She dragged herself to her feet and hurried back up the stairs to the tiny apartment. To her relief, her pa still hadn’t emerged from his bedroom and she was able to get changed, snatch up her trumpet and get out of the door in record time. Before she left the house, though, she scrubbed their front step with brick dust from the bucket kept by the door for that sole purpose. Such a practice was said to ward off any hexes or curses put on the home by an enemy. Jude didn’t know whether she completely believed it, but she scrubbed their porch each morning just the same. Even on a day like today, when every second counted.

  And then it was simply a question of running as fast as she could. It was blisteringly hot and she could feel sweat trickling down the back of her shirt between her shoulder blades. The blue brass band uniform she wore was sticky and uncomfortable in the scorching heat. The military-style peaked black cap kept sliding into her eyes and her bow tie hung crooked, the lace-up St Jacques flats on her feet vigorously rubbing away the skin of her right ankle.

  But if she let herself slow down or rest then she’d miss the funeral. She would just have to fight through the pain, that was all. She would damn well make that funeral, even if it killed her to get there. She let herself think of all the things she was so furious about, and the anger was like a flame that fuelled her determination and made her run faster.

  “Girl, you gotta find some way of letting go of all that anger you carry around,” her best friend Sharkey kept saying to her. “It’s gonna get mighty heavy otherwise. Even going to get you killed, maybe.”

  Jude knew that the anger was destructive but sometimes it felt like a wild beast she couldn’t control no matter how hard she tried, and other times it almost felt like a friend that helped her struggle past the point where she wouldn’t have been able to struggle any further otherwise. So her feet pounded along the ground, the sweat ran down her back and she was glad of the pain and the chance to burn.

  She knew she’d reached the Hurricane Quarter by the music. Jazz lived in this part of the city day and night, spilling out from the doorway of every club and honkytonk. It played on juke boxes and phonographs, and scratched and crackled from radios in the barber shops and shoeshine stands. The air smelled of stale rum, the onions that were already sizzling on the greasy griddles of the hot-dog carts, cheap perfume and sweating oyster barrels that had been left out for too long in the smouldering sun.

  Jude loved it all. She loved every cobble, every weathered plank of wood, every iron balcony and crooked street, every hot-dog stand and flower box, every neon sign and lamp post. For all that cajou had warped and corrupted Baton Noir, it was still the most wonderful city in the world, as far as Jude was concerned.

  Finally she skidded round the corner to the Done and Dusted Brass Band headqu
arters. She was starving and had been hoping there might be a few spare minutes to scoot into the kitchen and grab a steaming cup of chicory coffee and a sugary beignet, but the funeral was ready to begin. Everyone was getting into position in lines before the coffin, which rested in a shiny black carriage. Like all of the carriages in Baton Noir, this one was horseless and had a long rope attached to the front for four strong human bearers to pull along.

  Jude noticed that she didn’t seem to be the only one who was late. There were quite a few members of the band missing. Sharkey was there, however, dripping in cajou charms from head to toe, as usual. They hung from chains around his neck, were pinned to the front of his band jacket and dangled from bracelets on his skinny wrists. His skin was coal-black and his cheekbones were so striking that he normally had at least three girls lusting after him at any one time. Jude wasn’t one of them (despite what her ex-boyfriend had thought). She’d known Sharkey, or Kerwin as he’d been back then, since she was five and he was seven. He was like an annoying older brother to her.

  Despite the fact that he was every bit as poor as she was, he had a distinguished way of carrying himself, soulful brown eyes and a straight patrician nose. His family had lived in Baton Noir for so long that even Sharkey’s accent was gumbo-flavoured. He played the saxophone in the row behind her, and Jude raised her hand in greeting as she took her place and gasped for air.

  “Cutting it a bit close, darlin’?” Sharkey remarked, raising an eyebrow. Then he took in her appearance, frowned and added, “Barely even midday. Bit early for scrapping, ain’t it?”

  “I wasn’t scrapping,” Jude replied, breathless. “This time.”

  Sharkey gave her a doubtful look and Jude could hardly blame him. She got into fights a lot, and normally because she had sought them out herself. It wasn’t difficult to find a fight in Baton Noir. And a lot of the time, punching something seemed to be the only way to blank out the thoughts and worries inside her own mind, even if just temporarily.

  “Honestly,” Jude said. “It wasn’t my fault. My landlord beat me up.”

  Sharkey’s eyes narrowed. “You all right?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been better. Where is everyone anyway?”

  “Some turned it down. Said it weren’t worth the risk, even with the danger pay thrown in.”

  Jude frowned. “Danger pay?” she repeated, wiping sweat from her forehead. “But whose funeral is this?”

  Sharkey looked startled. “Don’t you know?”

  Jude shook her head. She hadn’t read the message properly in her haste.

  Her friend leaned forward, causing his charms to jingle together. “It’s the cajou queen,” he said in a low tone.

  “Ivory Monette?”

  Sharkey nodded. “Went and got herself murdered last night.”

  Jude was astonished. Ivory Monette was one of the city’s most powerful players and wielders of magic. Untouchable, or so she’d thought. She had seen her at Moonfleet Manor on more than one occasion.

  “Where did it happen?” she asked.

  “At the Blue Lady.”

  The Blue Lady was a jazz club on Moonshine Boulevard where, by all accounts, the cocktails were strong, the clientele were dangerous and the jazz was hot.

  “People are saying she won’t go to her grave quietly,” Sharkey went on. “That’s why half the band ain’t here.”

  Jude snorted. “Cowards.”

  A live cajou queen might be a force to be reckoned with, but a dead one was just a lump of meat like everyone else in Jude’s opinion. When she said as much to Sharkey he shook his head and said, “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  Like most people in Baton Noir he was a great believer in cajou. Two years ago he’d pawned the beloved diamond sock suspenders he’d inherited from his uncle in order to buy a powerful charm to make him into a better musician. After that, he was the only person in the band skilled enough to play the fiendishly difficult jazz piece, Sharkbite Sally – hence his nickname.

  Unfortunately, Jude’s ex-boyfriend Leeroy Lamar was one of the band members who had decided to show up. A smug-faced and handsome drummer with pale skin and cruel eyes, Leeroy was the one and only boyfriend Jude had ever had. The relationship had been toxic and unhealthy from the start, a disaster, enough to make Jude feel that she never wanted to date anyone else ever again. She could still hear his voice inside her head sometimes, those words that had wormed their way beneath her skin and bitten down deep into her bones. The dawning realization that what she had first taken for love and concern was in fact nothing more than a determination to control every aspect of her life.

  “Where the hell were you?” he’d hissed that final evening, stale beer strong on his breath, his fingers clamped too hard on her skin.

  She felt a little bit sick every time she saw him now but there was no avoiding him unless she quit the band, which she absolutely refused to do. She would die before she gave him that satisfaction.

  When Leeroy saw her, he leaned over to his friend Ollie and whispered something. The two of them worked together as clerks at the same fancy hospital in the Fountain District. They both laughed at Leeroy’s comment and then turned to look at Jude, smirking. She glared back, hating him, hating the way he was somehow able to make her feel so worthless and small, hating how he had scraped out her soul with his cruelty and chipped away at the self-confidence she’d always been able to rely on before.

  Leeroy turned and whispered something else to Ollie and they both burst out laughing. Jude felt her ears burning, certain that Leeroy had probably just made some crass, lewd comment about her. Why the hell had she ever let him see her naked? What had she ever seen in him in the first place? How could she have been so unbelievably dumb?

  Sharkey leaned forward from the row behind and said in his lazy drawl, “Say, fellas, I know you ain’t got no more class between you than a can of beans, but if you don’t stop that giggling you’re gonna feel the blunt end of my boot up your ass.”

  Leeroy and Ollie stopped sniggering abruptly. Everyone knew that Sharkey boxed when he wasn’t in the band and that he somehow seemed to win every fight in the ring, despite his lanky frame and gentle nature. Perhaps he had a cajou charm for that too but either way no one really wanted to cross him in a fight. Leeroy and Ollie scowled but turned back round in their positions without saying anything more.

  Jude threw Sharkey a grateful look and seconds later the bandmaster gave the signal and they were off. Although the band was reduced in numbers, the remaining musicians did their best to make up for it and the jazz funeral proceeded through the Hurricane Quarter in a noisy, boisterous group. First there was the brass band, then the coffin and then the mourners following on behind. As usual, there were plenty of bystanders lining the sidewalks to watch the procession pass by, but something felt a little different this time.

  Normally the spectators would be dancing and singing and calling out to one another. Jazz funerals were a lively, vibrant, joyous affair after all. But today the people were mostly just standing in silence, staring with sullen eyes at the coffin as it passed by.

  There was a taut, expectant feeling in the air, as if a violin string had been wound too tight. You could almost hear it whining and straining to snap. Jude supposed Ivory Monette had had her share of enemies. She’d been murdered after all. And it was well known that she dealt in hexes and curses just as much as love potions and good luck charms.

  Some of the bystanders wore the red crown charm marking them out as members of the so-called magical Royalty. It was hard to tell what they were just by looking, except for the vampires who gave themselves away by lurking in the shade beneath the wrought-iron balconies. Other than that, they could be anything: witch doctors, cajou priests, conjurers, even descendants – people with the legba blood of cajou spirits in them somewhere.

  Jude recognized some of the spectators. There was Doctor Herman, a renowned witch doctor, with his long hair in elaborate knots on top of his head. Within these he carried
his various gris-gris – tiny bags filled with powders – as well as dried lizards, animal bones and even a small owl’s head. He was known to throw the owl’s head at people who displeased him, so Jude was glad to walk on past as quickly as possible.

  As they marched on down the street, Jude began to find it more and more of an effort to lift her knees up high. It was terribly hot – the collar of her shirt seemed as if it was throttling her. Her stomach grumbled and she felt faded and thin, like a pencil drawing that was being slowly erased. The feeling only got worse when they marched past Cadence Square, where the food market was. The humid air was full of the smell of pecan pies and sticky, nutty, golden, delicious pralines filled with coconut or caramel popcorn.

  Jude’s anger had fuelled her before but now it was like a firework that’d had its burst of colours and sparks and was fizzling away into thin trails of smoke. Sweat dripped into her eyes and she couldn’t clear her vision. The ground wobbled beneath her and all the strength ran out of her legs like water. Everything went slow and stretched as melting tar, and Jude sank forward on to her knees.

  Sharkey was immediately beside her, gripping her by the collar and hauling her to her feet. He pulled her back into his row and gave her his arm to lean on.

  “When did you last eat, girl?” he said, leaning close to Jude’s ear to be heard above the band.

  Jude shook her head. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t think straight.

  Sharkey huffed at her. “You should’ve asked me for help. Now, listen, do you think you can make it through to the cemetery? If you can just keep up with everyone then you’ll still get paid. It ain’t that far.”

  Jude nodded. She had to get paid. She just had to. She seemed to have lost the power of speech and her trumpet hung loosely from her hand. She was dangling right at the end of her rope, running on empty.

  It seemed to take an age to reach the St Clémence Cemetery, where Ivory Monette was to be laid to rest in her family crypt. But finally the charm gates marking the entrance came into view. The twin iron gates were ten feet tall and completely covered in mojo hands, amulets and cajou poppets. Some were designed to ward off evil or silence the dead, while others were offerings to gain favour with the spirits. They were all different shapes and sizes and colours. An eclectic assortment of witchcraft and cajou. Jude breathed a sigh of relief because they were almost there, it was almost over.