Big Easy Bonanza

Claude at the Abbey Bar. Perhaps she simply wasn’t cut out for domesticity. She took a bite and forced herself to swallow.
    Or perhaps this wasn’t the guy for her.
    She didn’t trust him in daylight. He had waked up, rolled over and said, “Stay with me today.”
    “I have to work.”
    “Take me with you.”
    Take him with her! She was a police officer. “You know I can’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Would you want me with you while you were filming?”
    “Sure. I’d film you.” He smoothed her eyebrow with a forefinger.
    “I’m a cop, Steve. I can’t do it.”
    “Can’t do what?”
    “Can’t endanger a civilian. Can’t let myself get distracted.
    Can’t treat this case trivially. It isn’t a movie, it’s real life.” She hated the way she sounded.
    He did too, if the Bronx cheer he emitted was any indication.
    “Sony, I just can’t do it, that’s all.”
    “I understand.”
    She wasn’t sure he did, though, or he wouldn’t have been so insistent. He wasn’t treating her seriously as a professional. She wondered again if it was just her job—the information she could give him, the color—that he was interested in, and not really her at all.
    Come on, Skip. You started this, not him.
    Maybe she was just in a bad mood because of what she had to do this morning. Putting it off as long as possible, she stopped first and got Calvin Hogue’s rap sheet. The guy Jeweldean “did busiess with.” Good—the guy looked like a small-time dealer. That might give her some leverage.
    She dragged herself onto the elevator and went up to see Duby.
    “Skip. Sit down. Are you okay?”
    She shrugged. “Just a concussion. Nothing time won’t take care of.”
    “The guys think the St. Amant killer whacked you—they think you know who it is.”
    “I didn’t know they gave me that much credit.”
    He waved a hand. “Ahhh, they’re just paranoid.”
    “I think I do know something. There’s a woman involved in this, and I can’t find her.”
    She told him everything she knew about LaBelle. When she was done, his expression didn’t change. He didn’t venture an opinion, he didn’t give Skip a back pat. He said, “Are you well enough to work?”
    “Of course.” Though she wasn’t so sure.
    “Find her.”
    “I’m doing my best.”
    “Look, she has to go home sometime. Go back to her apartment and stake it out. Just stay there till you see her go in. It’s that simple.”
    Not so simple for a white woman
, she wanted to say, but thought that would sound whiny and unprofessional.
    She said, “Alone?”
    He nodded.
    “Are you going to staff this around the clock?”
    “How many officers do you think I’ve got, goddammit?”
    A one-person stakeout was very unusual. But Duby’s irritation at her second question had told her what was behind it—it wasn’t a matter of being short-staffed. It was a matter of pleasing the chief and doing something with her, even something Duby thought unimportant. She didn’t care. Except for the fact that she found stakeouts a form of hell, there was nothing she’d rather be doing if it meant finding LaBelle.
    She went into homicide to look for Tarantino—to have the promised talk with him. Neither he nor O’Rourke was there, which was fine with her. Her head hurt too much to talk. She left Joe a note.
    She wanted to get to Tremé as soon as possible, on the off chance that LaBelle was still there, sleeping after a hard night plying her trade. But the way Skip’s luck had been running, she didn’t think she would be. So she went home first and changed into jeans, dark sweater and a blue bandanna. She’d still look white and alien, but less like an easy target for rape or robbery.
    Neither LaBelle nor Calvin Hogue answered her ring. LaBelle’s apartment was on the first floor, the center right one, it looked like. She slipped to the right side of the building. Curtains, shades, blinds, or pinned-up sheets covered every window of the first floor—apparently privacy was much prized in this neighborhood. The center apartment had rice-paper curtains, one with a tiny tear near the bottom, about the size of a nickel. Skip found two bricks to stand on and hoisted herself up. If this was LaBelle’s apartment, at least she hadn’t flown the coop. Skip looked into a neat bedroom furnished with a platform bed, made up; ’30s-style dresser, and the usual lamps and tables. A sweater lay on the bed, as if LaBelle had been dressing, changed her mind at