Crescent City Connection

is getting done, even if ours isn’t.”
    Daniel grinned. He couldn’t be in that bad a mood, not after what they’d accomplished.
    “Have you got the dossier?”
    “What?”
    “On Rosemarie Owens.”
    He’d all but forgotten. He’d put it on a back burner. His father hopped around so much, Daniel wasn’t even sure he’d remember it.
    He said, “I’m working on it.”
    “All right, boy. All right. You work on it.” Jacomine sounded vague. “What about the girl?”
    “Lovelace?”
    “Of course, Lovelace. Goddammit, who the fuck else are we looking for?”
    “I’ve kind of had my hands full, Daddy.”
    “Now is when we’re going to get her. Have you got that?” He was intense today; his eyes were lasers, but he hadn’t raised his voice and he hadn’t hit his son.
    After the session in which he’d been struck three times, Daniel had given some serious thought to leaving The Jury. Prayed about it.
    In the end the whole hitting thing seemed stupid. Daniel could lay his father out any time he wanted to. If it bothered him so much why didn’t he just do it? Or else quit the movement and go back to Idaho. He asked himself and he asked God. And the answer he got was:
It doesn’t bother me that much. In fact, it’s kind of humorous.
    But the hitting was a signal—it meant his dad was under stress. And he wasn’t under stress today. He was mellow as a Buddha.
    “Okay,” said Daniel. “You bet. I thought maybe we could put our heads together on it. Brainstorm, maybe.” He didn’t pause for an answer. “I’ve been racking my brain wondering where to look for her. Where would she go?”
    His father was steepling his hands again. “To her mother.”
    “Naah. Jacqueline’s off with one of her crazy boyfriends—climbing the Andes or some kind of shit.”
    “Well, then it’s obvious. Isn’t it, son?”
    “I don’t know. Does she have a boyfriend I don’t know about?”
    “Hell, you’re her father.”
    “I just thought she might have written you.”
    “Written me? Did you forget I’m a wanted man, boy? She can’t write because she doesn’t know where I am. Unless you told her, like you told her everything else.”
    “Okay, no boyfriend. Her roommate’s her best friend and she’s still at school.”
    “Well, bully. So who does that leave?”
    The answer came to him like a visitation from an angel. “Isaac. Her only uncle.” He snapped his fingers at the realization. “She’s with Isaac.”
    “And where’s he, son?”
    “I don’t know, sir.” Daniel was so humbled at realizing how simple it all was, he forgot to be on the defensive.
    “Well, I do. He’s in New Orleans. Least he was last time I looked.”
    “New Orleans? Where we’re going? How could he be in New Orleans?” It was the last place Daniel would have thought of. Yet it made sense; New Orleans was easily accessible from Jackson, where Lovelace had disappeared.
    Sure she’d head for New Orleans.
    “He didn’t go there because I was there, that’s the only thing we know. I didn’t pay much attention, because what was the point? But we kept loose tabs on him, and that’s where he was.”
    Daniel went to Daddy’s reference shelf and plucked a New Orleans phone book. “He’s not listed.”
    “I could have told you that.”
    “Okay, help me, Daddy. Help me. You know where he lives, don’t you?”
    “Nope, sure don’t.”
    “If you kept tabs on him, what do you know?”
    “We know he used to work at a juice bar. Juicy’s Juice.” Errol Jacomine smiled, and in the smile there was something of the wolf. Daniel got the feeling his father enjoyed watching him run in circles.
    He looked up Juicy’s Juice, and it wasn’t there either.
    His father shrugged. “He just sort of disappeared.”
    Daniel sat down, aware that something felt funny in his chest, but not knowing exactly how to talk about it. “Well, Daddy, he’s your son. And I’m your son, right?”
    Jacomine nodded. “What are you getting at?”
    “This is making me feel kind of funny.”
    Jacomine laughed and reached across the desk to give Daniel an affectionate cuff, something he’d never done before. “I didn’t follow you to the wilds of Idaho, did I? Didn’t mean I didn’t love you. If a son wants to disappear, he’s got a right.”
    “That’s what he wanted? You think that’s what’s going on?”
    This time his father made his smile sheepish. “I think I embarrassed him a little. Anyway, Isaac’s got