Crescent City Connection

your chin?”
    “I am not
late
. We’ve been out front the whole time. Talking.”
    Parked on a public street. Not talking at all, if the lipstick was any indication. Totally oblivious to her surroundings.
    Vulnerable as a bunny rabbit.
    “Sweetheart, you okay?” said Steve when they were alone. “I think they call that a panic attack.”
    He never called her pet names.
    “I can’t crack, Steve. I can’t. I’ve got to get this asshole before he—”
    “Before he gets Sheila or Kenny? Don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid? He’s not exactly the big bad wolf, you know—he’s just one guy. And, as he keeps reminding the world at large, he has bigger fish to fry. I think you’re taking this kind of personally. What do you think about going back to Boo?”
    The therapist she had seen a few months ago that time when she fell apart at work. Shortly after shooting Delavon.
    It was a thought. It was certainly a thought. But she didn’t have time. She still had fifty galleries to visit—that was her guess, anyway. She was nearing the end of the alphabet.
    As she stood in the shower, an act that often produced clarity, she suddenly thought,
Galleries, schmalleries. I’m just spinning my wheels. And for what?
    She was crying when she came out, and Steve made her tell him why.
    “I don’t understand,” he said. “Isn’t that what detective work is? Slogging? Listen, let me help. Let’s divide up the list.”
    They were lying in bed. She laughed through her tears, nestling her head in his armpit. “You never give up, do you?” From the moment they met he’d been offering to help her do her work.
    He was right. All she could do was slog. But she needed a payoff in the worst kind of way.
    She began the morning at Rhino, moved on to the elegant Arthur Roger Gallery, then had coffee on the run and blew into Rough Trade, which, its name notwithstanding, was located in a fashionable part of the French Quarter.
    Judging from the work she could see, Rough Trade specialized in the work of untrained artists, the sort that were once called “primitive.” She asked to see the manager and as she was waiting, amused herself looking at the pictures. Most of them, to her mind, looked as if they had been drawn by seven-year-olds, but there were many things she liked, including a collection of angel faces that looked oddly familiar. Alongside the grouping hung a picture of the artist and a short bio. The man in the picture wore a white robe and a beard. Skip jumped as if someone had leapt at her, hollering, “Boo!”
    Belatedly she saw why the angels were familiar—though the hair had been darkened to auburn, they had the round face and almond-shaped eyes of the girl in the picture the feds had given her—the one of Lovelace Jacomine.
    She devoured the bio like a woman starved for words. The artist, it seemed, was a native South Carolinian who had spent most of his teenage years in and out of juvenile facilities, and his early adulthood in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, where he had learned to paint. He had also learned to meditate in the joint and now divided his time between his art and his spiritual studies. He was known as The White Monk.
    Bullshit, she thought. It’s Isaac.
    “Ah. You like The White Monk?” The voice had a trace of an accent, but nothing recognizable—it could well have been an affectation. “I am Dahveed.”
    David? Skip thought, but she wasn’t about to ask. Dahveed was a slinky, smooth young man of indeterminate ethnic origin and skin that glowed gold. He wore black pants with a narrow belt and a white shirt that might have been silk but probably wasn’t; Dahveed simply had a silky way about him.
    “Does he live in New Orleans?” Skip asked.
    “Oh, yes. In fact, he often paints in our courtyard. The angels are marvelous, aren’t they?”
    “Wonderful. I own a pair of them, actually. I find them so haunting. I came in to ask about the artist, to tell you the truth—”
    Her mind raced. Did she want him to donate a painting for a fund-raiser? Talk to a class? Was she simply a fan?
    Maybe she was. That might fly fine, New Orleans being the kind of town that celebrates celebrities, however modest.
    Her instinct was right. She didn’t even have to bring it up. “You would like to meet him, perhaps?”
    “Is he here?”
    “Of course. One second.”
    Dahveed disappeared and in a moment was back, looking distressed. “His friend said he had to leave