Big Easy Bonanza

were on a float she would have insisted, she thought, on rewarding those in the most amusing costumes. Like that man across the street who’d apparently got himself up as an Italian restaurant. He had a round, tablelike arrangement around his middle covered with a red-checked tablecloth and topped with a plate of papier-mache spaghetti and an old wine bottle complete with colorful wax drippings. She also liked the grasshopper with a little grasshopper kid just about knee-high to him. If you were going to behave like an idiot, which was the whole point of Carnival, you could at least go all the way.
    There were a lot of popes this year, as His Holiness had earlier favored the city with a visit. Here and there was a two-legged Dixie beer can, and the random screwball who had sprayed himself gold or silver. Inevitably, there was a film crew trying vainly to make some sort of visual sense of it all. Skip wondered if the filmmakers would bother to record the prodigious number of kids in fraternity sweatshirts carrying Hurricanes or beers—or even legal go-cups—and barfing all over one another. The drinking age had recently been raised to twenty-one, but the unofficial tall-enough-to-reach-the-bar rule was still very much in effect. And you could drink on the street as long as you didn’t do it out of a bottle or glass, but on Mardi Gras who could enforce the go- cup law?
    Skip was absolutely convinced that most of the damage done by Carnival drunks was perpetrated by the football and beer-bust crowd. She ought to know, having done quite a bit of it herself in her day. She was well aware of the legendary kinship between cops and criminals. It was only recently that she’d come over to the side of law and order.
    A roar was gathering up the avenue. The sovereign float, the one bearing Rex himself, was approaching. The closer it came, the pushier people got. Skip knew this was the wrong time to let her attention stray—and all too well, she knew she wasn’t supposed to turn her back to the crowd—but one of Rex’s pages was calling her.
    “Hey, Skip, whereyat, dawalin’?” Probably Tricia Lattimore’s little brother, who was at the age where kids thought aping the yats was funny. She was dying to say hi. And that wasn’t all—she had to get a look at one of her oldest acquaintances in his moment of glory. She turned around.
    There he was—the King of Carnival, Rex himself, the Monarch of Mirth, all in gold and positively exuding
noblesse oblige
. Despite all the fancy sobriquets, he was known to his intimates as plain Chauncey St. Amant. He was a well-padded gentleman, like most New Orleanians of a certain age, and he was in his element playing Old King Cole the merry old soul. Skip hoped his arm wouldn’t fall off from too much waving. She’d known him since her rubber pants days.
    He looked up and waved at someone on one of the balconies. Automatically, Skip’s gaze followed his. The float was just parallel to the balcony, one she knew well. Today it was draped with Mardi Gras bunting—purple, green, and gold. The single occupant standing on it was dressed as Dolly Parton in cowgirl finery.
    Dolly had on her trademark curly wig, a red satin sequined blouse, blue satin skirt, fawn gloves, balloons in her bodice, and two-gun holster. She had on a white mask with eye shadow in three colors and sequined rouge spots. As Chauncey waved, she drew one of her six-shooters. She twirled the gun, clowning, and pointed it, leaning on the balcony. Not very amusing to a cop, but Chauncey was appreciative enough to throw her a doubloon. And then he fell off his throne.
    The band in front of the float was playing “When the Saints Go Marching In,” so Skip never heard the shot. All she knew was that one moment Chauncey was admiring Dolly and the next minute he was down on the floor of the float. Knowing instantly what had happened, Skip started to draw her own gun, but there wasn’t a chance. She was pushed from all sides, had to fight to remain standing. One of the filmmakers, determined to miss nothing, hit her on the side of the face with his camera. “Oh, God! Sorry. Are you hurt?”
    “Shove it!”
    “But did you see? Dolly…”
    Her partner yelled, “Goddammit, Langdon, quit acting like a broad!” She had time for one last look. Dolly was gone.
    “It was Dolly!” she yelled back. “Dolly Parton!” But none of the other cops seemed to hear. Could she make a run for it? Get to the apartment house,