Big Easy Bonanza

you? Your dad’s his doctor, right?”
    Skip’s heart pounded. She felt the energy start low in her belly and rise up her spine. She knew that in a minute it was going to turn nasty and come out of her mouth. She took a deep breath and hoped her voice was steady. “I went through the academy just like you. I was first in my class, were you?”
    “Second,” O’Rourke breathed.
    “The chief’s my dad’s friend, not mine. What I got in this department—which is hired—I got on my own.”
    Tarantino patted the air with his right hand, keep-it-down style. “Hey, guys, come on—we gotta work together.”
    Skip said, “I’m not so sure, Joe. If Frank doesn’t want to work with me, he doesn’t have to.”
    She left feeling at odds—half deflated, half heartened. Half proud of herself for standing up to O’Rourke, half wondering whether she’d been childish to pull rank. That was really what she’d done. Because even though they outranked her in reality, she outranked them in a weird way. The chief had brought her in as a kind of independent consultant from another division. She may be only a patrol officer, but she didn’t have to take orders from them and she didn’t have to do the shitwork on the case—the endless calling up of costume stores and gun dealers. She was free to lollygag about with the swells, as O’Rourke apparently saw it.
    She could understand his resentment, and she wondered if she should have confronted it directly instead of getting snippy. But that stuff only worked with a reasonable person, and she didn’t know whether O’Rourke was one.
    Another half was coming up—she was only half convinced. Half convinced that O’Rourke was the enemy. Maybe he was just in a bad mood and she’d gotten in the way. Or worse, much worse—maybe he and Tarantino were Mutt-and-Jeffing her. Maybe they both resented her being assigned to the case and were using this way of keeping her at arm’s length, refusing to really cooperate while it seemed Tarantino was trying to. If she were gullible enough, she’d give him what she knew, let them run with it, and gratefully accept whatever crumbs they threw her.
    She sighed as she got on the elevator. She was wondering when the famous police code was going to kick in—the us-against-them mentality, the simple belonging she craved. She’d felt it in the academy, but she’d been out a year now and still hadn’t carved her niche in the department. Things here weren’t so different from on the outside—the smaller, prettier, more submissive women did better with a lot of these guys than she did. It hadn’t been all bad, it just wasn’t home yet. She’d had two good experiences, working with a woman and with a young man she’d gone through the academy with. But some of the older guys just didn’t like big, sassy broads. Or maybe it was her problem—maybe she did something that intimidated them.
    Once she confronted a lieutenant who’d nearly made her quit with his constant balking. “I just don’t like self-confident people,” he’d said.
    What a joke! Self-confident? Skip? But she’d said, “Hadn’t a cop better be self-confident?”
    He said, “I don’t like
you
, Langdon,” and she got the transfer she requested.
    She didn’t give a damn if she did work with Tarantino and O’Rourke. Maybe she was more of a free-lancer anyhow.
    Anyway, they don’t know about the film and they don’t know about Chauncey’s mistress.
    Skip, are you two years old or three?
    Hold it, here. Let’s think about this. Would it be smart to tell them at this point? Nope. Okay, then. Stop putting yourself down. Do your job and let them do theirs, and don’t let them intimidate you. They’re not Daddy, okay? You don’t have to act as if they are.
    She stepped into the sunlight of South Broad Street. The landscaping in front of police headquarters was fairly bleak, consisting only of a desultory fountain and a monument dedicated rather ungrammatically to “police personnel that died in the line of duty.” A patrolman had been killed trying to stop a bar holdup a few days ago, and there were six or eight wreaths in front of the manorial. Skip walked over to get a look at them.
    It was five of three and as good a place as any to wait for Steve Steinman. She certainly didn’t want to get into the film problem with O’Rourke listening in—she didn’t want him or anyone else or
anything
screwing her up. She was surprised at the vehemence of the