Death Before Facebook

CHAPTER ONE
     
    PEOPLE HATE New Orleans because it’s hot—certain people, that is, from the sort of bland, tepid climate that spawns good mental health and consuming boredom. In a hot climate, anything can happen. A quiet dinner can ignite. “Bobby,” a wife may say to her husband, “you never fuck me anymore. Bobby, why don’t you fuck me anymore?” Her tone will change here. “Because when you do, you’re soooo good at it.”
    Just as the guests are beginning to smell danger, she may say, “He is, isn’t he, Emily? Isn’t he good at it?”
    Emily’s husband knows he should do something, but what? Defend his wife? Yet he’s torn—maybe he’s about to find out something he needs to know.
    But Bobby says, “Precious lamb, I never fuck you anymore because ever since you went on Jenny Craig you’re such a little bitty thing I can’t even find you in the covers.”
    Thrilled, she answers, “You really think it did some good?” and all is well until the next course, when the neighbor from next door, drunk and deciding suddenly to remodel, may pound a hole in the wall.
    “Burton,” the host will ask coolly, “what do you want?”
    Burton will raise one finger and begin to fall through the new doorway, passing out about fifteen minutes too late to avert disaster. “Ham and cheese on rye,” he will answer, crashing loudly onto the floor. But still, he will open one eye: “Hold the mayo.” And that is the part of the story that makes it worth repeating.
    This sort of thing would never happen in Sweden—or even in California—according to Steve Steinman, the great and good friend of New Orleans detective Skip Langdon, and a resident of California himself. Steve claimed to have been at the gathering where the above events occurred, and as a result had formed a theory that the heat of the place causes chemical changes in the brain that loosen the inhibitions. Skip said it was only the alcohol, but he said that and the heat, taken together…
    Steve had some quaint notions, Skip thought, and furthermore, he had never been to New Orleans in late fall and winter.
    The cold can be piercing. In those magnificent rooms for which the city is celebrated, the ones with the fourteen-foot ceilings, occupants sigh and reach for their thermostats, reflecting that, expensive as heat is, it’s nothing compared to air-conditioning. In November, it’s merely crisp—a welcome cold, a refreshing chill, one that won’t last. Those in sweaters today may be in shorts by Thanksgiving—or not, depending.
    It was early in the month, the tenth, the first really cool day, and Skip woke up shivering. She was in a new place, one she’d never slept in in winter—it was the slave quarters behind her old apartment building, which had been restored to its original status as a single-family house and was now inhabited by her landlord, Jimmy Dee Scoggin, and the two children he’d acquired when his sister died.
    Jimmy Dee had gutted the slave quarters and turned it into as posh a showplace as the Quarter had to offer when he’d lived there himself. But it now had a new name. His adopted children were from Minneapolis and hadn’t grown up with the city’s brutal history. Determined to protect their innocence, he insisted upon calling the outbuilding a
garconnière
. “In the old days,” he told them, “they had special houses just for the boys,” which prompted eleven-year-old Kenny to ask why he couldn’t have it instead of Auntie.
    “Because,” answered Skip, “now that I’m there it’s going to take an earthquake to get me out.” She had four times as much room as in the studio she’d rented before, ten times the luxury—and about twenty times the open space, as her three or four sticks of furniture didn’t really make a dent. She thought it was a mansion and she was as close to happy as she’d ever been in her life. But what she didn’t have, she was discovering, was central heating.
    She called Jimmy Dee.
    “Make a fire, darling, a fire. So romantic, don’t you know.”
    “Dee-Dee, it’s seven-thirty A.M. I’m going to work.”
    “Well, then, what’s the problem? I’ve oatmeal to make if you don’t mind.” In the background she heard a chorus of “Ick, oatmeal!”
    Fatherhood was proving a little more than Jimmy Dee expected.
    Skip dug out a black wool skirt and cocoa sweater, dressed, and hoped the day didn’t warm up. Somewhere she found a brown blazer that “pulled the outfit