Good Man Friday Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Benjamin January Series from Barbara Hambly

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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 Ninteen

  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

  The Benjamin January Series from Barbara Hambly

  A FREE MAN OF COLOR

  FEVER SEASON

  GRAVEYARD DUST

  SOLD DOWN THE RIVER

  DIE UPON A KISS

  WET GRAVE

  DAYS OF THE DEAD

  DEAD WATER

  DEAD AND BURIED *

  THE SHIRT ON HIS BACK *

  RAN AWAY*

  GOOD MAN FRIDAY *

  * available from Severn House

  GOOD MAN FRIDAY

  A Benjamin January Novel

  Barbara Hambly

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2013 by Barbara Hambly.

  The right of Barbara Hambly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Hambly, Barbara.

  Good man Friday.

  1. January, Benjamin (Fictitious character)--Fiction.

  2. Free African Americans--Fiction. 3. Private

  investigators--Fiction. 4. New Orleans (La.)--Social

  conditions--19th century--Fiction. 5. Detective and

  mystery stories.

  I. Title

  813.6-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8255-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-393-8 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Jasmine

  PROLOGUE

  ‘I told you to fetch me a doctor, boy, not some damn nigger!’

  The servant who’d brought Benjamin January to the yard behind the Turkey Buzzard saloon started to stammer an explanation, but January bowed to the man who’d sent for him, said politely, ‘I’ve had training as a surgeon, sir.’ And tried to make it sound as if he weren’t fighting not to knock the arrogant little feist’s teeth through the back of his head.

  The arrogant little feist in question was white, as was at least half the crowd that jostled around the scratched ‘stage’ at the end of the yard in the brittle winter sunlight. The fights, advertised by word of mouth for weeks, had been going on since noon, and by this time – three o’clock – most were drunk. January knew if he punched Ephriam Norcum, the outcome wouldn’t be good.

  Aside from the law that said that no black man, slave or free, could strike a white one under any circumstances whatsoever, for three weeks now Norcum had been January’s steadiest and best-paying employer. Since Twelfth Night had opened carnival season in New Orleans, Norcum had held lavish balls in honor of his wife’s birthday, his mother’s wedding anniversary, and the engagement of his sister to a man who owned four steamboats and a cotton press. In a city reeling from the effects of last year’s bank crash, six dollars for an evening’s work playing the piano wasn’t to be sneered at. Most banks in the city were closed, including the one in which January’s slender funds had been housed, and a third of the population of New Orleans was either out of work or begging for day-labor on the half-empty wharves.

  So when Ephriam Norcum slapped his face and snapped, ‘Don’t you fucken lie to me, boy!’ January folded his hands, kept his eyes on the man’s gold vest-buttons, and tried to ignore the rage that scalded his neck and ears.

  ‘No, sir.’

  For good measure Norcum turned and struck the servant who’d fetched January from the house where he’d been giving a piano lesson: not even Norcum’s own servant, but – January recognized him vaguely – the planter Jed Burton’s valet, who’d probably come to the fights to hold his master’s horse. ‘I send you for a doctor and you get me some damn piano-player—’

  ‘I was trained in France, sir, begging your pardon,’ January explained in his most diffident tones.

  Norcum stared at him as if he’d just announced that he’d recently been elected President of the United States. Even the FRENCH, his expression shouted, ain’t THAT crazy …

  A man yelled, ‘Your boy gonna fight, or ain’t he, Eph? I got a hundred-fifty dollars on him—’

  ‘Hold your goddam bladder!’ Norcum yelled back. ‘He’ll fight all right!’ And to January, ‘Over here.’

  The Turkey Buzzard was a two-story barn of a building constructed – like most saloons in the ‘back of town’ – from old flatboat planks, unpainted and weathered grimy gray. Along one side, amid scabrous piles of shattered liquor-crates and thigh-deep weeds, a sort of green room had been established for the fighters. Here the men moved about – nearly a dozen, all told – keeping themselves warm between matches, or sat on packing crates, heads back to stanch bloody or broken noses. There was no such thing, here, as real rest.

  Not until it was too dark to fight. Even then, January had known such gatherings to prolong themselves into the night by torchlight.

  Some had their masters with them, or their masters’ overseers: sharp-eyed men with the watchfulness of those who’ve bet large sums and fear to see it swept away unjustly. The fighters were mostly field hands, men chosen for their size; mostly African-black or close to it. Light-skinned boys were more often taken into house service, and with luck would have too much time put into their training as cooks or valets by the time they got big enough for the master to think, He’d make a fightin’ nigger. Most were naked – the way they’d fight; a few had put on the cut-down pants that men wore in the cane fields over their regular clothing to protect against the sharp edges of the leaves. Two had blankets over their shoulders, against the bitter, bright February chill.

  Strips of pickled leather wrapped their hands, bloody from earlier matches. Their faces – scarred from
years of battle, sometimes – wore the blank look of those who dare think of nothing but keeping strong for the next fight.

  A bench stood against the saloon wall, where, by the smell of it, customers pissed when they were too drunk to find their way to the privy in the nearby trees. Two men in the threadbare coats and coarse ‘quantier’ shoes of field hands knelt beside it, but got quickly to their feet at Eph Norcum’s approach.

  January read bad news in their faces before he knelt by the bench himself.

  Shit. He touched the prostrate man’s icy hand. Shit.

  ‘Get the fuck up, Gun.’ Norcum stood over the man on the bench. ‘Look alive. You, Mr French-Ass Nigger Doctor – you put my boy back into shape for his bout and be quick about it. There’s a lot ridin’ on it.’

  January felt the glance the two field-hands traded. Gun – a man as ebony-black as himself, with ‘country marks’ scarred into his face such as January recalled his African father had borne – was drenched in clammy sweat, his eyes shut and an ashy pallor to his flesh. His lips were swollen and bleeding, his puffed nose crusted with gore.

  There’s a man been hurt in the fights, Jed Burton’s valet had said to him, when he’d knocked at the kitchen door of James Thorley’s house. Needs a doctor right away.

  January had known then that it could be anything.

  He hated nigger fights and stayed as far away from them as he could.

  But since long before he’d taken his first training, at the age of fifteen, from a free colored surgeon named Gomez, he’d never been able to turn away from someone who needed help.

  ‘Does this hurt?’ Even the slightest brush of his fingers on the fighter’s rigid abdomen brought a hissing intake of breath, and the swollen lips squashed tight to suppress a sob. The man Gun was a few inches shorter than January’s massive six foot three but heavy-muscled as a bull. By the scars on his shaven head, and the thickened flesh of his ears, January guessed he’d been a fighter in these slave-on-slave bouts – staged for the masters to bet on – since puberty.

  ‘’Course it hurts,’ Norcum answered for the slave, and spat a line of tobacco into the weeds. ‘That nigger Ulee of old man Peralta’s got a kick like a goddam mule. I thought Gun was never gonna get up from that one. But Gun beat him in the end.’ He grinned with savage pride. ‘Gun’s tough as a jack bull. Once you get him on his feet—’

  From the yard, a man shouted in anger: ‘You callin’ me a liar, you pussified French pimp?’

  ‘I call you a dog, and an Irishman, and a thief, who stole money from every man in town when that whorehouse bank of yours closed—’

  As he’d passed through the yard, January had noted that as usual the crowd was divided, Frenchmen with Frenchmen, Americans with Americans, a representation in miniature of the vicious animosity that had, not quite two years previously, resulted in the whole town splitting itself into three ‘municipalities’. By the storm of curses that now broke, he wondered how long it would be before the spectators who’d come to bet on black men fighting started in on each other with canes, boots, and bowie-knives.

  The man Gun’s eyelids creased.

  As if he knew it was time for him to get up …

  ‘This man is in no shape to fight.’ January rose and faced Norcum. ‘He’s bleeding internally. He needs—’

  Norcum gaped at January, incredulous. ‘I didn’t send for you to ask your goddam opinion, boy! I sent for you to get my boy ready for his next fight!’ He spat again. ‘I got ten thousand dollars ridin’ on him layin’ out Bourrège’s Pedro –’ he pronounced the French planter’s name Boo-reg – ‘and I ain’t pullin’ him out of it on the word of some nigger witch-doctor!’

  ‘Then I strongly urge you send for a white physician, sir. I’m sure he’ll come to the same conclusion when he’s seen this man. I saw Dr Barnard in the yard there—’

  ‘Barnard?’ Norcum jeered. ‘That French nancy’s got five thousand dollars on Pedro! You bet he’s gonna come to the same goddam conclusion as you do, boy!’

  ‘Norcum!’ A group of men appeared around the corner of the saloon. January recognized them, from having played at their balls, parties, musicales in years past, when everyone in town still had money to entertain lavishly in the carnival season. The Lafrènniére brothers owned four sugar plantations between them, mortgaged to the eaves to cover operating costs when buyers had offered half of last year’s prices for this year’s crop; Francois Delaup owned the New Orleans Bee, the largest French newspaper in the city. Armand Roffignac – with a hotel and a cotton-press – would have been a rich man, in any times but these. Among them was the planter Louis Bourrège and, with him, a tall young man naked to the waist and sheened with sweat despite the day’s sharp cold.

  Pedro. Bourrège’s fighting slave.

  ‘Are we to have a bout or not, M’sieu?’ Smugness tinged Bourrège’s voice. ‘My boy cannot stand about like this in the cold, waiting for you to forfeit.’

  ‘I ain’t gonna goddam forfeit!’ Norcum’s weather-reddened little face grew dark, and the two or three Americans who had followed the French planters all took up the cry in a way that told January that they, too, had money on Gun. When January opened his mouth to speak, Norcum grabbed him by the arm, shoved him against the saloon’s wall.

  ‘Don’t you say one goddam word, boy.’ Brown spittle flicked January’s shirt front. ‘You get my boy on his feet and into that stage—’

  ‘He can’t fight.’ January’s voice was hard now. ‘He is badly injured. Another fight will kill him.’

  Norcum waved the words aside. ‘Shit, Gun’s won fights with a goddam broken leg!’

  A man named Fry came over to them, a land-speculator who, like Norcum, was one of the few businessmen in the city still able to afford such things as parties, music lessons for his sister, and a subscription to the much-reduced opera. Without so much as a glance at January, he whispered to Norcum, ‘You ain’t gonna scratch, are you, Eph?’

  ‘I am not gonna goddam scratch!’ Eph Norcum thrust January away from him, strode back to where his slave lay. January saw him drag Gun up sitting.

  ‘Now you listen to me,’ said Norcum quietly. ‘I don’t care how bad your belly hurts. You can lay down when you won that fight.’

  ‘Sir, I can’t—’

  ‘You gonna. I got ten thousand dollars ridin’ on your black ass, and every man I know got the same. You know where’s the only place I can get that money back if you don’t get in there and win? By sellin’ that wife of yours – and both your girls – to the dealers.’

  January drew breath to protest, and the servant who’d fetched him grabbed his arm, tried to pull him away. You’re in New Orleans, January reminded himself with an effort. Not Paris …

  Paris where he’d spent sixteen years of his life, Paris where he’d trained at the Hôtel Dieu, Paris where a surgeon could protest blackmail and murder without being beaten by outraged white men for his temerity …

  In Gun’s eyes January saw the knowledge that this was exactly what Norcum would do.

  His voice low, Norcum went on, ‘You kick that Pedro’s French-nigger ass or you’re gonna be the sorriest nigger in this state. And your wife’s gonna be the sorriest one in Missouri.’

  Gun closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Yes, sir.’ He didn’t weep, the ability to do so having been beaten out of him years ago. Only put out his hand – massive as an ox’s hoof – and the two young field-hands who’d stayed near ran up and helped him to his feet. He barely staggered when his master, and Harry Fry, and half a dozen other Americans crowded around him, slapped him on his back and yelled things like, ‘That’s the spirit, Gun!’ and, ‘Now we gonna show them sissy-ass French …’

  January knew he’d better go. Yet he sank down on to the bench where Gun had lain and sat there while the other three slaves ran around the corner to watch the fight. He heard someone shout the names of the contestants: Norcum’s Gun and Bourrège’s Pedro. ‘No interferin’ with the combatants … no man to
step over the lines into the stage … a round is called when a combatant’s knee touches the ground … thirty seconds between rounds …’

  Nothing, January reflected, about no biting, no eye-gouging, no recourse to what were politely termed ‘foul blows’. This wasn’t a white man’s fight.

  He remembered telling his fellow musicians in Paris about these fights, as he’d told them of the other ‘customs of the country’ into which he’d been born: of the quasi-genteel arrangements of free colored plaçage and of ‘Blue Ribbon’ balls, and of the manner in which well-bred young white girls were taught to ignore the fact that their husbands were tupping the female slaves. Of the means by which ‘portly’ slave girls were ‘put with’ the most ‘portly’ of their master’s slave men, whether the girls wanted to breed by those men or not. He could afford then to display such curiosities, like the decorative mutilations of savages, for he’d had no intention of ever returning to Louisiana.

  Nor would he have done so, he thought, if he’d had anywhere else to go, when the epidemic of Asian cholera had taken his first wife a good deal farther away than Missouri …

  In the yard, voices rose to shrieks. Jed Burton’s valet came racing around the corner of the saloon. ‘Best you clear outta here, Mr January,’ he panted. ‘Mr Norcum, he mad fit to kill.’

  ‘Is Gun dead?’ In his heart he already knew.

  The servant nodded. ‘That Pedro fetched him a blow in the belly, an’ seem like he throw up all the blood in his body. I think he’s dead ’fore he hit the ground.’

  January closed his eyes for a moment and saw again the fighter’s face when he’d stood up and disappeared straight-backed into the crowd.

  He hoped someone would tell Gun’s wife – and his daughters – what this man had done for their sakes, or tried to do.

  ‘Thank you.’ He picked up his satchel, filled with the simple piano-pieces that he taught the children of those few – all of them whites, these days – who had the money to pay for it. In it he generally carried a few paper twists of basilicum powder and willow bark, laudanum, and a scalpel or two, tools of the surgeon’s trade that neither whites nor free colored would hire someone as black as himself to practice. Even the darker-complected among the sang melée found it inconceivable that one who looked so much like a hulking coal-black field-hand would have either education or skill.