Crescent City Connection

obvious was so very obvious:
Nothing you can do could make up for not having a father.
    He drove with her to the building in Gentilly where Shavonne lived with her mother, going so far as to creep up on the porch and and ring the buzzer. They left the basket with a note that said: “For Shavonne from the Easter Bunny.”
    “She probably hates egg salad sandwiches.”
    “Oh, God. We used to have those for days after Easter.”
    Napoleon barked when they entered their own courtyard and for once she wasn’t bothered by it, even rather welcomed it. A nice, warm animal, she thought, glad she had a human one to take to bed with her.
    She and Steve made love a long time and she went to sleep more relaxed than she’d been in days, the case momentarily out of her head.
Life’s too short,
she thought,
to do what I’ve been doing.
    Easter, as usual, was a perfect spring day. They got Kenny and Jimmy Dee (Sheila being at church) and wandered all day, from one parade to another.
    When Sheila joined them finally, and Cindy Lou came over, and Layne, they talked of Layne’s miraculous cure and whether there was such a thing as magic. Definitely, said Kenny—he had seen it.
    Assuredly not said Sheila. That was for kids.
    “But do you really think you have to see something for it to be real?” asked Layne. “I mean,
something
cured me.”
    “True love,” said Sheila. “Maybe that was it.”
    Skip was surprised—she wasn’t the kind of kid who talked about love; maybe the Catholic lad was going to be around for a while.
    “Could have been God,” said Steve. “Half the country would go for that one.”
    “Could have been natural causes,” Layne said. “Maybe I just got used to the dog.”
    “Yes,” said Jimmy Dee. “You do.”
    “You do what?”
    “You have to see something for it to be real.”
    “Oh, yeah? How about viruses. You can’t see those.”
    “How about God?” said Sheila.
    Skip said, “For heaven’s sake, Dee-Dee. You’re the one who sent him to the witches.”
    “I can’t help it—it’s too New Age-y. I can’t accept it.”
    “So voodoo would be okay?”
    “At least it’s part of our heritage.”
    Sheila said, “I wasn’t kidding. How about God?”
    “What do you mean, how about God?”
    “I mean, you can’t see him, but people believe in him. Why is that okay and this other stuff isn’t?”
    “Because it’s in the culture,” said Cindy Lou. “And this other stuff isn’t.”
    “You mean, like the majority go for it.”
    “Just say God’s on your side and you’re in business.”
    Skip was starting to hate the conversation. This was the stuff in which Jacomine traded. Because he had used the Judeo-Christian God as a shield, he had quite literally gotten away with murder—and often. Now he was using justice as a shield. She hated the thought that she was going to have to think about him again tomorrow—to have him in her consciousness until she had him in a cell.
    She pulled Cindy Lou aside to give her a personality sketch of Isaac.
    “Okay, yeah. A little weird,” said her friend. “But who isn’t? I can’t really tell anything from that little data.”
    “Damn. I’ve tried juice bars and I’ve talked to every artist at Jackson Square. He meditates, and there’s that white thing—maybe he’s in some religious thing. Maybe I need to—”
    “Hey, wait a minute. How about galleries?”
    “What do you mean how about them?”
    “Why stop at Jackson Square? Maybe he’s hooked up with a gallery.”
    “I hadn’t thought of that.” She considered it. “I guess I just assumed he was a marginal sort of character.”
    “Even if he is, he might have gone in and tried to peddle his work. Someone might remember him.”
    “Not a bad idea. Good thing he picked white instead of black for a uniform—in that world, guys in black are a dime a dozen.”
    It was curious—it had never once entered her mind that Isaac was any kind of legitimate artist. She’d simply assumed he was more or less a street person with ambition.

Fourteen
    NOW THIS WAS a house Dorise could live in, all cool and comfortable, without even the AC running; sunlight streaming in the back, though it was late afternoon; prettiest garden she’d ever seen in her life. The party was a fund-raiser for a school called NOCCA—she didn’t know what the letters meant, but she knew it was a school for kids to learn music and things like that. Plenty of famous people had gone there, lots of them black,