House of Blues

Despite his mother's warning, the shock of seeing someone so
wasted nearly rendered her speechless. He had on no pajama top, so
that she could see paper-thin skin, skin like plastic wrap, stretched
over a frame that looked too small to belong to a man.
    " Hello," he whispered. "This is my
wife, Janine. And my daughter."
    Skip thought he had meant to say his daughters name,
but decided to save his breath. He grimaced as if it hurt to talk,
but Janine said, "It's the sheet. It hurts his feet, and his
shoulders sometimes. It's caused by a deadening of the nerves that
makes him supersensitive. "
    " I know what that is," said the little
girl. "It's called neuropathy." Skip thought that was a
fact the child was much too young to know.
    Janine stood up and swabbed Justin's mouth with what
looked like a giant Q-tip. She slipped something between his lips
that must have been an ice chip.
    Skip walked a step closer, not wanting to invade his
space, but not sure she could hear from a distance. She said again
that she was sorry to disturb him, and she told him Dennis was
missing. This time she said nothing about Reed and Sally; it was
somehow too grim.
    " Dennis," said Justin. "He was always
a needle freak. We shared. But he got through okay." The words
came slowly, one by one, painfully. His lips looked as if he'd spent
weeks in the Sahara—this was not normal chapping, something much
more extreme. When he spoke, Skip could see that the inside of his
mouth was dead white, tongue and all, as if he had no blood left.
    Skip waited a moment. "If he were really in
trouble, does he have a friend he'd go to?"
    " Me. Me, man."
    "Has he been here? Has he phoned?" It
sounded ridiculous, but she had to ask.
    " I don't know," he whispered.
    Janine turned pouched and swollen eyes on her and
shook her head.
    " If he's in trouble, he'd go to Delavon."
    " Delavon?"
    "His dealer."
    " You mean Delavon's a friend—or he'd go to
make a buy?"
    "To get fucked up."
    "He's been clean for a long time."
    Justin shook his head, or rather turned it on the
pillow once or twice. "Don't know that Dennis. Only know the
other. He needs the warm hug; gotta have the cocoon."
    " I beg your pardon?"
    "Dope."
    "What kind?"
    "Only one kind. He hated coke; couldn't stand
that wiry feeling."
    " Heroin?"
    Justin was quiet, as if the question didn't deserve
an answer. "Where do I find Delavon?"
    " Treme. No last name. I know Dennis. He'd go to
Kurt's too."
    The words came slowly, each one an effort.
    "Who's Kurt?"
    " Not a person. A bar."
    "Can you tell me where?" She felt like an
officer of the Inquisition.
    "Dumaine. Near Rampart."
    " Thanks. Anything else?"
    Justin closed his eyes and again rotated his head.
    "Thank you," Skip said, and she said it
again, this time whispering. Janine looked at her, not changing
expression. The little girl had turned over on her stomach.
    She looked about four or five, and no doubt her
mother thought she didn't understand what was happening, or that her
father needed her now—or more likely, since she'd known about his
nerve problem, that it was better for her to face it. Skip wondered
how many years on a shrink's couch she would spend as a result of
this experience, or if she would simply forget it, bury it, and
suffer depression the rest of her life.
    She wondered too if the girl and the woman carried
the virus. Even outside, in her own car, she could not escape the fog
of misery.
    She went back to headquarters to talk over the case
with her sergeant, Sylvia Cappello, who threw a file down hard as
Skip walked in. "Shit!"
    She looked in the direction of an officer who was
just leaving. Maurice Gresham.
    " What's wrong?"
    " Goddammit, another piece of evidence is
missing. I'm so damned tired of the little things that happen when—"
She stopped, but stared in Gresham's direction, pointing him out.
    "What, Sylvia?"
    "Too much shit happens here, that's all. We're
about to serve a warrant, nobody's home. We lose a little piece of
evidence and it turns out somebody"—again she stared at the
space where Gresham had been—"checked it out and, what do you
know, they lost it."
    Cappello was far more upset than Skip had ever seen
her. What she was saying bordered on unprofessional, and Cappello was
never unprofessional. She was a by-the-book cop who thought before
she spoke, and right now she was  bad-mouthing one of her
officers to another.
    Skip tipped her chin at the now-invisible Gresham.
"You think he's dirty?"
    " Who's not in this