Big Easy Bonanza

him.”
    They filed out behind him, Skip marveling once again at the small-town quality of the place. She had been dating Steve for less than a week and already everyone knew about it. But she reminded herself that it was her own fault—they had been rather obviously together at Chauncey’s funeral.
    The night air was slightly chilly. She shivered, taking a long pull at her Dixie (now in a go-cup) to repair her scratchy vocal cords. While she drank, the men introduced themselves. Hinky said, “I heard our Skippy finally met a guy big enough for her.”
    Steve laughed. “I’m not big enough to call her Skippy, though. She’s made that pretty clear.”
    “Tell me,” said Hinky, “is it true you screwed Simi and Susie Barclay over at Cookie Lamoreaux’s house the Monday before Mardi Gras?”
    Skip gulped.
    “Not true at all,” said Steve. “That was a fellow named Joe Paul Carter. Ol’ boy down from Winona, Mississippi. Looks a lot like me.”
    Skip had to work to keep her jaw from flapping open. “Ol’ boy”? Could this be Steve Steinman speaking?
    Hinky said, “Shee-it. I thought it was you.”
    “Hinky,” said Skip, wanting finally to get down to it, “I hear you can tell me about a woman named LaBelle Doucette.”
    “Well, that’s kind of a personal question, officer.”
    “Excuse me, but did you just ask my friend here what he did with whom on a particular day? And what he did with whom else?”
    Hinky emitted his roar. “I guess I have to answer, huh?”
    “I guess you do.”
    “Well, LaBelle’s a black call girl. Best-lookin’ little piece o’ ass in Orleans Parish. Whooo!”
    “Go on.”
    “Want to know what positions she likes?”
    “She doesn’t like any of them, baby. Prostitutes lie about that sort of thing.”
    “Now don’t go feminist on me, officer.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, call me Skippy.” She turned to Steve. “You didn’t hear that.”
    “Did you say this has something to do with Chauncey’s murder?”
    “It might.” She felt a funny twinge in her belly, the beginnings of regret that she’d mentioned Chauncey.
    Hinky was chewing on a nail. “Something sounds right about that. I wonder if he was the ‘important New Orleanian.’ “
    “Maybe you should start from the beginning.”
    “Well, LaBelle’s been getting around quite a bit lately. She’s cut quite a swath through the old crowd; I forget who discovered her—Jack Kincaid, maybe—but everybody knows her now.”
    Skip was shocked—not at the notion of call girls. You lived with that in a place where the madonna-whore separation was so much the recognized norm that plenty of Uptown women—lots of them not even Catholics—claimed they’d made love with their husbands only when their children were conceived.
    What shocked her was that the “old crowd” had apparently managed to blot the AIDS danger out of their consciousness. In a mood to make trouble, she said, “I heard she’s a junkie.”
    Hinky shrugged. “Could be, darlin’, but she carries her own rubbers. Likes to say, ‘no glo-o-o-ove, no 1-o-o-ove,’ in this real sultry voice. And if you happen to bring your own (the supersensitive kind) she’ll make you leave ’em in your pocket. It’s latex or nothin’ with that young lady. So everybody feels safe with her. I mean, it’s not like anybody wants to kiss her.”
    “What about the ‘important New Orleanian’?”
    “Miss LaBelle has some very high-falutin’ fantasies about herself—or else pretending she does is part of her routine.
Moi,
I think she’s nuts. The gist of it is that she claims she’s the illegitimate daughter of some bigwig.”
    “White or black?”
    “Who asks? No, wait—white. I know because that is part of the routine. She tries to make you think it’s your own dad—says things like, ‘I could be your sister,’ and asks you what you’ve always really deep down wanted to do with your sister and like that. Didn’t go over too well with me—I’ve always wanted to strangle the little bitch. So I made LaBelle quit doing it and she switched to some pirate and slave girl number. She probably has a million of them.”
    “Did she ever say anything to make you think there might be a grain of truth in the story?”
    Hinky kept quiet for a minute, as if he was thinking, an exercise with which Skip wasn’t sure he was familiar. Finally he said, “No. I can’t honestly say she did.”
    “Okay, one more thing, on another subject. Did you ever