Crescent City Connection

Get her a curly wig, police uniform, and Bob’s your uncle. Meanwhile, I shave my head, dye the stubble black, and wear kids’ clothes—jeans or something. They see us across the street, more or less together, they get used to the idea that the curly one’s me—voices might not matter so much.”
    A tiny muscle under Goerner’s left eye was twitching, forcing him to close it slightly, so that he looked more like a thug than an officer of the law. “Okay, I’ll go for it. It might buy us something. What, I don’t know—but I don’t see the down side.”
    Abasolo said, “Let’s go talk to Lovelace.”
    They found her watching television and pacing. “That mess on Magazine Street—my dad’s in there, isn’t he?”
    “I’m afraid so,” Skip said, and told her everything except that her father’s life might depend on ending the standoff as quickly as possible.
    Lovelace considered the switch. “Sure,” she said finally. “I don’t see any harm in that—I just don’t want to be a party to anyone’s getting hurt.”
    Skip was hard put not to roll her eyes. Someone was definitely going to get hurt.
    Lovelace said, “There’s only one thing—I need to talk to my uncle first.”
    “Fair enough,” said Abasolo, as if it were a huge concession. “And we have a little coaching to do. Skip has to get shaved and dyed, so I’ll take over if it’s okay with you.”
    That should cement the deal, Skip thought. Women found Abasolo hard to resist.
    He took Lovelace away to see Isaac and to make a tape of her voice, while Skip twitched under the hands of a hairdresser, enduring the removal of the silky curls she regarded as her best feature. Though she was turned away from the mirror, a great sadness came over her as they fell on the floor. She’d had them all her life.
Get over it
, she thought.
This isn’t your identity. It’s only hair.
    But she thought there was a good chance she’d cry about it later.
    Dye wasn’t necessary. The hairdresser sprayed the inch-long locks with something that was probably meant for Halloween parties, and then sheared them off to a quarter of an inch.
    “Ready?” he said, finally.
    “I guess so.”
    The hairdresser whirled her around. “Omigod. I kind of like it” He nodded. “You got the face for it. Cheekbones.”
    The only problem was, it in no way resembled Lovelace’s face. Though Lovelace was thinner, what baby fat she had was in her face. Makeup rounded Skip’s a bit.
    Abasolo was waiting for her. “Ready to meet your double?”
    “No comment about the new me?”
    “Langdon, you’re a cool customer. You know that?”
    It was something like what Shellmire had said.
If they only knew
, she thought. All during the shearing, she had sung to herself to avoid thinking about Steve, or the kids, or what would happen if she died today: “Let the Good Times Roll.”
    Lovelace had been fitted with a new, rounder figure, a police uniform, and a toy gun that looked exactly like a real one—the sort more than one kid has been shot by a cop for brandishing.
    On the way back to Magazine Street Abasolo filled her in on the thing they’d withheld. “We have some bad news for you. We think your father may be ill—what’s wrong, we don’t know, but we need to try to get him out of there. How are you going to be with that?”
    She gave him as level a gaze as a woman ten years older. “What do you mean by that?”
    “Are you going to fall apart? Can you stay in character?”
    “You mean if I find out he’s dead or something?”
    Skip thought,
She gets right to the point. That’s probably good
.
    Abasolo said, “Yes. That. And if his condition changes.”
    “If he dies while we’re doing it.”
    “Yes.”
    She nodded, having apparently asked herself the question and found the answer. “I’ll be okay.”
    Skip gave her a pat. “Good girl.”
    Lovelace smiled. “The hairdo looks better on you.”
    “Thanks.” She smiled back. “Here’s what’s going to happen first. We’re pretty sure how it’s going to go. If it doesn’t, don’t say anything. I’ll ad-lib.” She outlined the scenario, with a few possible variations, all worked out on the phone with Ferguson. There’d be no time for Ferguson and Lovelace to talk before the show started.
    As they neared the taped-off area, they had to fight their way through media vans and cameramen. Shellmire and Ferguson were standing in the middle of Magazine Street, Shellmire holding a megaphone. Abasolo