Big Easy Bonanza

brown hair, handsome in all his pictures, but up close he had a layer of “I love me” around him that just wasn’t my idea of adorable. He was sitting on a plastic chair in the middle of his dusty outdoor welding area, wearing dirty khaki shorts, caressing a Starbuck’s cup, and rockin’ a half-smile. Evidently admiring his handiwork. At least he was looking at what passed for a sculpture, I guess. Anyhow, it was a giant pile of metal.
    I stuck out a hand and prepared to lie. “Mr. Erickson? Diva Delish? This is…ummm…a totally fab set-up.”
    The half-smile turned self-satisfied. “Isn’t it? I never even have to go off the block—I can fabricate everything right here. And I can do casting too. What can I do for you, Miss Delish?”
    Barkus chose that moment to let me know he was tired of riding.
    “Excuse me,” Erickson said, “but your purse is barking.”
    “Oh. That’s Barkus.” I lifted him out. “Come on, my baby, let’s get you out of there and on solid ground.”
    But I guess the barking was about more than being tired of purse-riding. The minute I set him down, my baby set off on a little mission of his own, heading straight for the pile of scrap metal that I had a terrible fear was the sacred Armstrong Park piece.
    “Uh-oh! Barkus! Barkus, darlin’!”
    Too late. He was giving it the major sniff treatment, which usually preceded something else.
    “What’s that…
ragmop
…doing?” Erickson actually hauled his skinny butt out of the plastic chair and headed right towards Barkus, like he was going to kick him.
    “He’s just investigating the, uh….” And then, just as I feared, one tiny rear leg lifted ever so delicately. Erickson stopped in his tracks, no doubt to avoid getting his kicking foot wet.
    “Omigawd. I am so sorry!
    “You have
got
to be kidding. He just peed on the clarinet!”
    “That’s the clarinet? I never saw a six-foot clarinet before. With, uh, pointy things sticking all…uh…”
    “It’s a
stylized
clarinet.”
    I could have died. I pride myself on a beautifully behaved dog, a dog you can take anywhere, and this was supremely bad form.
    But Barkus was anything but penitent. He’d now taken to barking fiercely at his makeshift fire hydrant, as if…well, as if he thought it was simply too ugly to exist.
    Erickson was so not amused. “Get that rodent the hell away from my art!”
    I couldn’t help it if he was a critic, I was still embarrassed. “Back in the purse, short stuff.”
    As you might imagine,
that
got us off on the wrong foot. But eventually I’d gushed enough about Erickson’s stylized musical instruments, which actually looked more like stalagmites—that I managed to turn the conversation around to his missing employee. “Know this guy?” I stuck the photo in his face.
    Erickson didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I know him. That’s the kid I had to fire. Lied, came to work loaded, stole money, you name it. He was strong, I’ll give him that, but enough was enough.”
    “You fired him?”
    “I just told you I did. I even gave him a few bucks and a ride home.”
    “Oh, yeah? Where does he live?”
    “How’m I supposed to remember that? Somewhere around here. Mazant Street, I think.”
    “I’ll try that neighborhood then. Thanks for your time.”
    As it happened, the Mistress of Detection had taken the precaution of getting the client’s phone number and address. So I knew Wendy and Geo lived on Dauphine, not Mazant. In the Marigny, not the Bywater. It was starting to look like Miss Thing was onto something. Maybe Geo did Know Too Much. But the question remained,
what
did he know?
    A P.I.’s best friend is always the neighborhood mixologist and, as luck would have it, there was a cozy little bar down the block. I walked in, surveyed the joint like Bette Davis in her “what a dump” mode (because that’s what I always do), but ended up giving an approving nod. Yeah, baby, it might have been a dump, but it was my kind of dump, a great little Bywater dump with six or eight barstools and five or six tables. Cozy as ya grandma’s kitchen.
    The bartender looked like he’d just arrived from Itawamba county, Mississippi to follow in Tennessee Williams’ footsteps. By that, I mean he was pale like he never went outside and he had that look of dazzlement that people from away always wear when they come here to Write. He was short and slightly plump, possessed of ancient acne scars, and way too serious-looking. But he was still cute