Big Easy Bonanza

something had been torn from it. She was staring at it, wondering what it meant, when her homicide contact arrived—Sylvia Cappello, young, bright, and all business.
    A man from the crime lab came and busied himself while she filled Cappello in on the case and the burglary, then showed her the scrapbook and the painting with the tape marks. Cappello seemed dubious about the painting, but at least she was polite about it. She was a little brusque—maybe insecure—but definitely someone Skip could work with. She’d gladly have traded O’Rourke for her.
    Cappello interviewed Steve politely and efficiently, except for a little impatience when he got to the part about breaking into LaBelle’s. He claimed now that he’d heard a noise, though Skip hadn’t heard it and he hadn’t mentioned it before.
    Cappello pointed a pencil at him. “You were with a police officer. Why didn’t you report the noise to her?”
    “I didn’t think. I was excited.”
    “When one civilian enters another’s home, it’s called breaking and entering.”
    Steve didn’t answer.
    Cappello said, “I think Officer Langdon would have already put you under arrest if she felt that was in order, but I’m sure she gave you a stern warning; I’m going to give you one too.” She had very black eyebrows, and the way she bunched them was its own warning.
    “I understand. I’m sorry,” Steve spoke very quietly, barely above a whisper, and Skip almost believed he meant it.
    It was shortly after eleven-thirty when they left for Tipitina’s—early yet. Her original thought had been to go there alone—Hinky Hebert wouldn’t even turn up till most decent people were already home from their Saturday night dates, snuggling down for a long winter’s night. She could easily have begged off spending the night with Steve and gone out again after a full evening, with Steve none the wiser. She had decided to take him in that moment, pulling on her sweater, when she made up her mind to give him the evening.
    “This is your Uptown joint?” asked Steve as they approached what anyone could have seen was a joint, and a crowded one at that, a frat rat type of clientele spilling onto the sidewalk.
    “Uptown is a state of mind but also a place,” Skip said. “And we are most undeniably Uptown, aren’t we? Besides, look at that crowd.”
    “How the hell can you tell one kid in a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt from another?”
    “You have to look at their tennies,” she said. “Reeboks mean the same thing here as anywhere.”
    The inside was a dark barn with corrugated metal walls, bar, stage, and a bunch of kids drinking Dixies. Skip clenched her teeth as they elbowed their way to the bar, thinking Hinky Hebert was a little old for this scene.
    Yet, looking around her, she remembered her own days here. Then, as now, the students felt it was their own special purview, but nonetheless, even then the crowd had been sprinkled with kids of all ages. There had always been a few just-over-the-hills, like Steve and herself, in casual clothes; bohemian-looking types of any age at all wearing God knows what; and much older people, the forty-to-sixty crew, dressed for a gala evening—sometimes, especially during Carnival, in evening clothes. Tipitina’s was a very “in” joint and therefore often scorned by the jaded, older (meaning mid-twenties) natives such as herself, who would just as soon leave it to the kids and the Hinky Heberts. But every time she was dragged there, kicking and screaming all the way, she remembered what its charm was—the music was absolutely unbeatable.
    Tonight the headliner was Charmaine Neville, and now the stage was dominated by a big mama named Marvella Brown. She had the usual girth, the Mae West kind of moves and jokes, and cynical songs that put her men in a bad light. And she had the usual three female backup singers, two in the usual seductive outfits, the other in a black skirt and plain jacket, prompting Skip to wonder if she’d rushed straight from the airport without even a moment to change. Steve said no, she probably belonged to some Christian sect or other, a notion hard to reconcile with some of Marvella’s material.
    Hinky Hebert’s skinny shoulders were nowhere in sight. Skip kept scanning the crowd, every now and then recognizing younger brothers or sisters of her peers, none of whom recognized her. Too stoned, too drunk, or, in more than one case, too stupid, she surmised.
    Marvella was throwing her several