Crescent City Connection

something—Lovelace told her roommate he didn’t talk much. Maybe this is what she meant.”
    Shellmire shook his head. “He’s a case for that good-lookin’ police shrink.”
    Skip snapped her fingers. “Great idea. Let’s sic her on him.”
    She called Cindy Lou. “Lou-Lou? Get up.”
    “Girlfriend. It’s not even seven yet—and you kept me up late.” But it was a feeble protest; Cindy Lou couldn’t stand to miss anything.
    “We got The Monk. He says he might have killed somebody, but he won’t give us any details.”
    “So? Interrogation’s your department. Whatever happened to the rack and the iron maiden?”
    “I’ve got a feeling something’s off here, but I can’t be sure. He seems sane; he just talks crazy.”
    “Sounds like half my exes.”
    Skip called the assessor next, asked who owned the house on Magazine Street, and after that, it was hurry up and wait till he could get to City Hall to look up the address. She rejoined Shellmire and The Monk.
    For a grueling fifteen minutes she listened to the same phrases over and over: “I might have. I don’t know. How can I be sure?”
    Finally, she and Shellmire decided to vary the routine. They asked The Monk about his father, his brother, his art, his relationship with Lovelace, everything they could think of that might shed some light. When he wasn’t confessing to murder, he seemed normal—if you didn’t count the shaved head, the vow of silence (which he told them about), and the all-white house (which Skip had seen for herself).
    At seven-thirty, the assessor called with the name of the property owner—a Mrs. Julia Diefenbach, who was evidently an absentee landlord, as her tax bills were sent to Los Angeles.
    Oh, boy
, Skip thought,
five-thirty on the West Coast. She’s going to nominate me for a medal.
    A woman answered on about the fifteenth ring—the merest trickle of sound. “Hello?”
    “Mrs. Diefenbach? Sorry to bother you so early. This is Detective Langdon, calling from New Orleans.”
    The voice said, “Oh, my Lord. Oh, my Lord. Has something happened to Jamie?” Skip thought she must be about ninety-three, and not too well.
    “No, no. Everyone’s fine. I’m just calling to find out who lives in your house on Magazine Street.”
    There was a long pause; a pause so long Skip feared she’d gone back to sleep. But apparently she’d merely been paging through her too-crowded RAM space. Finally she said, “I don’t b’lieve I own anything on Magazine Street anymore. I used to, but I don’t b’lieve I do now.”
    “Do you know a Daniel Jacomine?”
    “No, I don’t b’lieve I do. Jamie handles all that; my grandson.”
    “Does he live in New Orleans?”
    “Why, yes, he does. Let me see now, does he live on Magazine Street? No, I b’lieve it’s Prytania.”
    “Jamie Diefenbach? The same name as yours?”
    “Well, it’s James really, but we just always called him Jamie.”
    James Diefenbach was awake, alert, and a pain in the butt; he was a lawyer and a hard-nose, who absolutely declined to give information until Skip told him what the call was about.
    She went and got Shellmire, who was still talking in circles with The Monk. “Mind getting tough with someone? People quake in their boots when they hear those three little letters.”
    “Ah. Famous But Incompetent. Isn’t that what you people call us? And then you come around begging when the chips are down.”
    Nonetheless, he performed the extraction like a dentist—a referral to a rental agent named Jay Fingerer.
    Skip looked at her watch again. Nearly eight. Bad and good— bad, because chances of a confrontation before the streets got crowded were pretty much gone. Good, because everyone was probably up now, and not so grumpy.
    Or so she thought. The rental agent was plenty grumpy, and an hour away from his office, what with taking kids to school, and another appointment. “Mr. Fingerer,” she said, “this is a matter of life and death. Could you possibly send someone else to look up the record?”
    “Life and death? It doesn’t have anything to do with those kidnappings, does it?”
    Damn. All I need
. “I’m afraid I can’t say what it’s about. All I can tell you is we badly need your help, and there’s really no time to spare.”
    “Hey, I hope they don’t have a time bomb in there.”
    Me, too.
She also hoped Fingerer’s immediate circle didn’t include members of the media.
    Apparently, she impressed him with the urgency of the