The desk clerk rang the Wellers’ room, and the wife said her husband was out but she would come right down, so Sam waited in the illusory lobby with its puddled curtains and genteel walnut settees and side tables. He knew what the rooms were like, small and hot and plain as toast. He heard Elsie on the stairs before he saw her, and her steps were slow. She joined him on a green plush sofa, sitting down quickly, perhaps pretending not to notice a polite scattering of dust rising from the cushions.
“Do you have any news?” she asked. She was composed and did not smile at him.
He shook his head, once. “I’ve been going around town trying to find a job that won’t maim me or drive me crazy or get me arrested.” He watched her face, but she seemed unconcerned about what he’d said. He knew what she wanted to hear. “While I was out and about, I did what I could. Checked with the porters at the stations. Visited some hotels and the one criminal I know.”
She still did not smile. Out in the street the vegetable man’s wagon passed by, his falsetto rising about the glories of tomatoes and plums, “Ahh gotta da bannannnn…,” but her gaze didn’t stray toward the window. “We’ve paid a private policeman to investigate Lily’s disappearance, but he’s turned up nothing. I don’t think he really cares about her, just our money.” She didn’t say this in a bitter voice, and he was glad of it. His uncle had taught him that bitterness solved nothing. “I don’t suppose you have children,” she continued. “I didn’t see any sign of them at your house.”
He looked over at the bald desk clerk, who was watching them. “I had a son. But we lost him to a fever.”
“How old?”
“Nearly two. I know a little of what you’re feeling.”
“A little,” she said. “At least you know where your son is.”
He reddened at her presumption, bordering on meanness, and had opened his mouth to say something, he wasn’t sure what, when a big hand came down on his shoulder. He looked up and saw a large, white-haired gentleman dressed in a bluewater uniform, a soft cap pulled down at an angle with the legend “Captain” in gold braid above the patent-leather bill.
“Pardon me,” he said, “but I’ve got to put a quick question to this lady.” He was about sixty-five years old, the type of blustery fellow used to taking over anyone’s conversation. “Elsie, I need you and Ted to come down to the Industrial Canal out by the cracker works. We’ve just closed on the Ambassador and we’ve got to get her in shape fast.”
“Is there a piano on board?” She seemed confused.
The big man cocked his head. “Now, Elsie?”
“Oh, I see. You want us to clean and paint,” she said, frowning.
“The Ambassador’s a big old boat and she’s been laid up a while down here in all this dampness. You know the routine. So you’ll come out tomorrow? Bring your work duds?”
Elsie nodded vaguely, and the captain straightened up and put his hands behind his back. “I’ve got to get on and find some men who won’t milk me dry for salary.”
Suddenly, her face seemed busy with several ideas at once. “This man here’s looking for work.”
The captain leaned back and examined Sam as though he were a deck chair he might or might not buy. The leather in his shoes creaked in the quiet lobby. “You’re a pretty nice-looking fellow. Ever worked a dance boat before, son?”
“No, but I’ve gone dancing on a few.”
She stood and put a hand on his shoulder. “Last night Ted said that if you worked on the boat, you’d be able to go ashore and help us look. Maybe you could watch the crowds while we worked.”
“Watch the crowds for what?”
“The woman you saw. We figured that somebody who caught Lily’s act paid that woman to take her.”
Sam stood up, looked through the glass-paneled entry door, and took a step toward it. “That old lady’s not going to show up on your boat.”
“She’s on the bank somewhere along our route.”
He stopped, then, admitting to himself that this was probably true.
“You a musician?” the captain asked.
“I’m a pretty bad pianist.”
“And were you in the war?”
“The army.”
The captain’s white eyebrows collapsed together, and he lowered his voice. “Can you break up a fight and keep your hand out of a till?”
Elsie began to shake him. “Sam, this new boat will work the same landings we did on the way down. You might could spot that old woman in one of the towns.”
He watched the desperation rising in her face, then turned to the captain. “What kind of work do you have?”
“I need a third mate. One of the main duties is to walk around the dance floor and show some authority. You have any experience walking around and looking like you know what you’re doing?”
Elsie sat down on the settee, smoothed her dress, then ran a forefinger along one eyebrow. “He’s the floorwalker I told you about.”
The captain’s expression darkened. “You’re the one who couldn’t stop those people.”
Sam looked back through the door where three smiling couples were strolling along the street. “That’s me, all right.” Suddenly he seemed to have a new identity: the man to blame.
The captain glanced down at Elsie. “Well, I’ll hire you anyway. Long hours, free room and board.”
“I’m Sam Simoneaux. My friends call me Lucky.”
The other man took his hand soberly. “My name’s Adam Stewart, and you can call me Captain.”
HIS WIFE was not happy about this job that would keep him away from home, and seemed suspicious of his motives. It took him until late that night to explain to her why he felt obliged to go on the river, but as he fell asleep he realized that he wasn’t sure of his motives himself, though the idea of wearing a snappy uniform and being around musicians had its appeal. He could explore each town on the boat’s route, asking questions about the stolen girl, but beyond that he wasn’t sure what he might accomplish for the Wellers.
The next morning he kissed Linda goodbye and caught a streetcar down to the Canal line and made the first of several transfers, walking the last leg down the east side of the new Industrial Canal. He could see the boat from a distance as it was nearly three hundred feet long, and he could tell by the kinks in the deck railings that it had seen too much river. He judged it to be at least forty years old, a sternwheeler four decks high that must have started life as a packet, hauling passengers and cotton, and then was made over into an excursion boat after the trade played out. The wooden hull was sprung, planks out of line and seams gorged with oakum. The main stage ramp was hung up over the bow in a tangle of rusted pillow blocks limed with bird droppings. A long two-by-twelve led from the wharf to the first deck. Beyond the boat the wide canal shifted, oily and slow, the new sun caught in it like a yolk. He bounced down the plank onto a deck made of broad cupped planks shedding enamel like red snow. He glanced up a broad central staircase and walked beyond it and then aft along the outside rail, past the boiler room, stepping through a door and walking among the main engines and pumps, expecting to find someone going over the machinery. He stopped in the dark and smelled cold oil, a ferrous mist of rust, and from below deck the sour ghost of a dark, side-rolling bilge. The old noncondensing steam engines looked like dead museum pieces that would never move again, asbestos-stuffed mammoths hulking in the gloom.
He walked forward and pulled himself up the main staircase. The vast second deck opened before him all the way to the stern windows, a maplewood dance floor hundreds of feet long that popped like distant musketry as he walked across it. A bandstand stood amidships on his left, and a long raft of small tables ganged next to cloudy windows slid shut against rain and birds, everything dusted blue with mildew. The ceiling was cross-bracketed every eight feet with gingerbread arches layered with gunpowder mold bred by the water-bound air.