Big Easy Bonanza

visitors?”
    “Nooo-ho, indeed. Not Miss LaBelle Doucette. She no sooner bring a john here than ax the guv’nor to tea. Miss LaBelle—she got a Uptown clientele.”
    “I wasn’t thinking of johns. I was thinking of women—a sister or friend maybe.”
    “Uh-uh. Nobody but the one person she
want
to see. He sell her what she need.”
    “Junk?”
    Hogue nodded. “Guess tha’s why she still live here. Cain’t seem to get out of that hole she in.”
    “You friends with her?”
    He thought about it, finally shrugged. “Not specially.”
    “Good. Then you won’t tell her I’m looking for her.”
    “Don’t even know when she gettin’ back. Hadn’t been around for two, three weeks.”
    “Two or three
weeks!
”
    “At least. She do that sometime. Goes for weeks at a time.”
    “You know where she goes?”
    “I tol’ you. I think she works conventions. Maybe goes to Atlanta, Dallas—stays there awhile.” He shrugged. “Maybe jus’ Baton Rouge.”
    Skip was thinking. No way was she going to wait around for LaBelle to get back from a trip. “Listen, I took a look at your rap sheet today. You could use a friend like me.”
    “Oh, yeah? What you gon’ do for me?”
    “I don’t know. Depends on what you need. Like if you got arrested again, maybe I could say you’re a good guy, helped me out on a case. Maybe I could come up with some money if you’d rather have that.”
    He turned down the comers of his mouth like a pouting child. “I ain’t no snitch.”
    “You don’t have to snitch on anybody. Just let me know when LaBelle gets home, that’s all. She’s no friend of yours, right? And you probably know what she did to Jeweldean. She’s not a nice woman, Calvin.”
    “Hey, now you got somethin’, speakin’ of Jeweldean. You get me a freebie?”
    “Consider it done.” If Jeweldean wouldn’t donate it, she could always pay for it herself.
    She gave Hogue her number, took his, and left feeling as if she’d pulled off a fabulous scam. She could get used to this working alone. There was nobody to find out how you operated.

2
    “Mr. Albert, could you spare us a few moments?” It was the dark one who spoke, the friendly one.
    I
couldn’t spare you a nickel if you were starving. Go away and leave us all in peace.
    “Hello, Inspector—Officer—”
    “Call us Joe and Frank. Joe Tarantino and Frank O’Rourke.” He remembered them from the Boston Club, but hazily. He had known they’d be around, but he hadn’t expected Marcelle. She’d unsettled him and he wasn’t ready for these two.
    “How’re you doing with the case? Any leads?” He’d heard the words on television.
    “We think we’re getting close, but we need you to answer a few questions for us.”
    “I’ll be glad to do whatever I can.” He hoped he could pull this off. He’d blown it with Marcelle.
    “About that bunting on your balcony—you said you didn’t put it there.”
    “I never saw it before.”
    “Can you think of any reason the killer wanted it there?”
    He let a moment or two go by, as if he were thinking.
    “None,” he said. He hoped his eye wasn’t twitching; it felt as if it was.
    “Mr. Albert,” said the other one, the good-looking blond. “You said you didn’t leave the party on Tuesday.”
    Tuesday. Mardi Gras, they meant. The party at the Boston Club. “That’s right,” he said.
    “Well, Mr. Albert, we were wondering if you went out after all and maybe you just forgot about it.”
    “With all due respect, officer, it was only two days ago.”
    “You were seen leaving the club, sir.”
    Tolliver covered his face with a hand. What to do with this one? “Seen leaving the club?”
    “Yessir.”
    “May I ask by whom?”
    The fat man pulled out a notebook and consulted it. “A Mrs. —uh—Kerlin. Teata Kerlin.”
    “Tea-Ta.”
    “Sir?”
    “Tea. Ta. Not Teata. Her older sister gave her the name, but I’m surprised anyone remembers that part; Deeanna’s been dead ten or twelve years. Tea-Ta must be, oh, seventy-five by now.” And still a beauty too. White hair done up in what used to be called a chignon—surely it was called something else now, but maybe not, considering Tea-Ta wore the hairdo exactly as it had been worn thirty years ago. She’d married an Irishman, but Tea-Ta was very much the Creole aristocrat, with a lot of Spanish in her. She’d have mooned the crowds from the Boston Club balcony before she’d have had a nose job, and her beak was the size of a