Big Easy Bonanza

kiddin’—” He shook his head. “How a gal looked like that could end up shakin’ her tail—” The head wagged some more. “Dance! Could she dance! When she could stand up.”
    “She was a drunk?”
    “Junkie.” He lit a cigarette and blew smoke in Skip’s lace. “I finally had to let her go. Really hated to do it—she brought in the customers like I was givin’ out free drinks—but there wasn’t no choice. Sometimes she didn’t come to work two, three nights a week. A shame when people do that to themselves, ain’t it?”
    Skip turned her head as more smoke came her way. She said, “You wouldn’t know where she’s working now, would you?”
    “I heard she ain’t dancin’ no more. The rest of what I heard you don’t want to know.” He was shaking his head again, in sadness and judgment.
    “Mr. Macaluso, I’m a police officer.”
    “Oh, yeah. Well, you’re still a woman.” He opened his arms, palms up. “I heard she was turning tricks. What would you expect?”
    I’d expect her to have been turning tricks since she was thirteen or fourteen—and certainly while she worked here. And I’d expect you, Dutch Macaluso, not to be such a phony bastard. For all I know, you were her pimp.
    “I just hope she got her act together,” Macaluso said. “I’d hate to see that girl in the gutter.”
    What would you call this place?
    “You want an address for her? I think I still got it.”
    “I’d appreciate that. A phone number too, if you have it.”
    He rooted through his Rolodex.
    “Did she have any friends who worked here? Or a boyfriend?”
    “Not that I know of. Here you are.” He handed over an address and phone number.
    “You don’t know anybody else who knew her?”
    “Honey, she was only here six weeks. And that was about a year ago.”
    The address was on Burgundy, a run-down street on the lake side of the Quarter. The building wasn’t that different from Skip’s, a gorgeous old Creole town house that had fallen on hard times and been divided into apartments. What was left of the green paint looked nearly as old as the structure itself. The windows were barred.
    Skip rang all four doorbells and got no answer. Surveillance was clearly called for. She walked home, got her car, went back to try the bells again, and again got no answer.
    It was about twelve-thirty, barely an hour later, when someone stopped in the doorway across the street. It was a plump black woman in a miniskirt and a young white man, a laborer of some kind by the looks of him, the sort you saw in working-class bars making racist pronouncements. His right hand was clutching her buttocks. The woman searched her purse. “Now don’t you worry, that ol’ key’s got to be someplace.”
    Silently, Skip joined them. “Excuse me.”
    Both turned around to find themselves staring at her upheld badge. “I’m looking for a woman named LaBelle Doucette.”
    “Don’t know her,” said the man. “’Scuse me, I’ve got to be going now. That okay, officer?”
    He was probably as sexist as he was racist, Skip thought, and momentarily relished his submission. Quickly, she smashed the feeling, knowing all too well that too much of it turned good cops into sadists. “Sure,” she said.
    The man walked away briskly.
    “Look what you done, Miss Cop-Ass! Maybe you don’ care I got a baby to feed. I ain’t had a trick all night—you got any idea what you jus’ cost me?”
    “Maybe you haven’t heard, Miss Ass-for-Sale, but prostitution’s still illegal. Now calm down and cooperate, okay? And maybe I won’t follow you when you go back out and bust you for soliciting. What’s your name?”
    “Jeweldean Sanders.”
    “I’m Skip Langdon, Jeweldean. I’m looking for—”
    “Yeah, I heard you the first time. You lookin’ for LaBelle Doucette.” She was short and had to look up at Skip. The face, though currently hostile, had a round, bovine prettiness marred by a scar near the right comer of the mouth.
    Skip nodded and watched the hostility melt.
    “Well—every cloud got a silver linin’. Come on in. This my chance to get back at that bitch. What’s she done now?”
    “I just want to talk to her.”
    “Yeah, I know you gotta be discreet. I hope she in baaad trouble, that’s all. You want me to testify against her, you got me. I wouldn’t even have to perjure myself. If it’s bad enough, she done it—you can count on that one.”
    She led Skip up a flight of scruffy stairs and into what looked