Crescent City Connection

suddenly.”
    “I need to talk to the friend.” Skip produced her badge.
    “Damn you. You lied to me.”
    She shrugged. “Only about my angels—and I’d like to own them.”
    The shop opened onto a narrow courtyard where a black man hummed as he painted. He said, “How you?” and narrowed his eyes in a way that said her most secret thoughts were known.
    She showed him her badge. “Detective Skip Langdon.” The man nodded. “Thought you were heat.” Now this one had been to prison—cons always knew.
    “Where’s the Monk?”
    “Gone.”
    “He thought I was heat, too?”
    The man shrugged. “Guess so.”
    “Where he’d go?”
    “Home, I guess, but nobody know where that is. I’m his best friend and I don’t even know.”
    “Dahveed? You know?”
    “He’s very secretive. He never would tell us.”
    “How about a phone number?”
    “He wouldn’t give us one.”
    She raised an eyebrow at the other man, the old con.
    “Wouldn’t tell me either.”
    “Look. I’m trying to help him. He’s not in any trouble, I only want to help. Not only him, but his niece.” She saw the surprise in the black man’s eyes.
    Skip said, “The girl in the picture.”
    Dahveed was clearly eager to end the interview. “There is only one thing we can really do—when he comes back, we will give him your card.”
    She was so frustrated she was quite sure that if they’d been alone, she’d have slammed him up against the wall and yelled at him. She was convinced Dahveed knew how to reach The Monk, and equally sure he was going to call and warn him about her as soon as she left.
    He’d have regurgitated the information she wanted in about thirty seconds, but there was something about the other one that kept her from going for it. Not only was he street-smart—he’d never tell something he didn’t want to—but he had a funny feel about him, an air of repressed violence. If he thought he was helping out a friend, he might get a little too rough.
    She crossed the street and went into the antique store opposite the gallery—it was a perfect place for a stakeout, but she didn’t dare broach the subject. Shop owners in the French Quarter were a regular retail mafia; the owner and Dahveed probably took each other’s UPS deliveries.
    But it was a good place to regroup. She pretended to look at silver candlesticks and antique tables, while she turned over options in her mind.
    She could contact the federal pen in Atlanta—and would—but she already knew there was little point. She had run Isaac through NCIC and he had no prison record. Evidently The White Monk was a self-invented entity.
    As she saw it, aside from beating answers out of Dahveed, there were only three solutions, one of which was also out of the question—burglarizing the gallery for The Monk’s phone number. That left two—she either had to stake the place out or send a surrogate in to make an appointment with The Monk—someone posing as a potential buyer. The last, of course, was the simplest solution, but whom could she send? In the end there was only one choice. Abasolo.

Nineteen
    ISAAC MADE GOOD on his promise. He called his friend Anthony, the erstwhile owner of Juicy’s Juice, and spoke as if he did it every day. “Anthony, how you doin’, baby?” Just like that—slang and everything. Lovelace couldn’t feature Isaac talking like that.
    “Listen, man, I need a favor. Bet you didn’t know I had a grown-up niece. No, I’m not kidding, she really is a niece. My brother’s an old man—real old man, rocking-chair age. That explains it, right, man? What she needs is a reference. She’s a real good cook, and she’s trying to get a job cooking. The only trouble is, the last place she worked closed and she can’t find the owner.
    “No, it didn’t close because of her cooking. You be nice now. You know how good I was when I worked for you—remember that? Well, if you could write me a reference and just, you know, put her name on it—”
    Here there was a long pause, during which Lovelace’s palms sweated and her heart thumped. It wasn’t going to work.
    “Hey, congratulations, brother! Hey, that’s great news. Sure she can cook. I wouldn’t bullshit you. Okay, sure. Sure, I’ll send her over.”
    He hung up the phone and reached for his notepad. Damn! He’d started talking; she didn’t see why he couldn’t just continue.
    He scribbled forever. When she thought she couldn’t stand it one more second, he gave her the