House of Blues

Crimes because the perps got more time,
the cases were more interesting, and you were really doing something
for the victim. He was right on count one, semi-right on count two—a
lot of teenagers killed each other over drugs, but every now and
then, Arthur Hebert's daughter shot him—and right again on count
three. In Homicide the victim was past it.
    Abasolo had been fine in the short term, but she
didn't know how he'd wear. The fact that he was so attractive might
be a problem. Would it be weird, riding in a police car with all that
testosterone in the air?
    Probably not, she thought. Police work was absorbing
enough so you'd hardly notice. Unless his ego was so big he insisted
you notice.
    But she didn't think Abasolo was like that. She
thought he was a good cop. More of a hot dog than jim, maybe, but a
little faster, probably, and a little trickier.
    And that, she realized, was what bothered her. She
was tricky herself. Were they the same kind of tricky? That was the
question. A hymn began, and that brought her back to the present.
    Jim's barely cold, and I'm already thinking about
working with someone else. But I had to sometime. Life goes on.
    It seemed immeasurably sad to her, that life would go
on without Jim, and yet it did occur to her to consider the
alternative. What's wrong with me? I haven't got time for this crap,
I'm a cop. But she had a nagging feeling somewhere in the back of her
brain that she wasn't done with it; that it wouldn't let her alone,
whatever it was.
    When the service was over, she and Steve walked back
to her house, so she could change for lunch, but they were barely
inside the door before they were all over each other like a couple of
teenagers. They ended up making love on the living room rug, not even
managing to climb the stairs, and they didn't make it to lunch
either.
    Because she had worked so late the night before, Skip
had taken the morning off, but the case really couldn't wait while
she took Steve to the airport, especially since the trip there
involved a stop to get Napoleon. So she had called him a cab.
    She made a couple of tuna sandwiches to eat while
they waited for it. She was only able to nibble, pretending a little.
She found the food wouldn't go down past the lump in her throat.
    Steve said, "I don't know if I should say this,
but I can't help worrying about you sometimes."
    " When you're in LA., you mean? Why?"
    "Oh, I don't know, it's like a magic spell. If
I'm here, nothing can happen to you. If I'm not—if I call you and
you don't answer—my imagination runs wild."
    " Look. What happened to Jim was a freak. I mean
it; Homicide's one of the safest places a cop can work. Think about
it. We get there after the shooting." She was trying hard to
keep her voice from breaking. What she was saying was true, but at
the moment not even she believed it.
    She forced a smile. "Let's talk about you. The
famous project that's going to bring you back to New Orleans."
    " I wish I could meet Delavon."
    " Delavon! Do you realize he probably set us up?
I mean, Jim was probably killed on his orders. You can't mess with a
creep like that."
    "He must be a true psychopath. I'd love to get a
psychopath on film."
    " Forget it," she said. "Why don't you
do kids with gay parents?"
    "Whatever made you think of that?"
    " Or French Quarter kids. On the one hand
surrounded by drag queens and literary eccentrics, on the other,
known by everyone in the neighborhood. Big-city, small-town life all
rolled into one."
    "Not bad. It's not exactly the heartland."
    " Or just—you know—weird lifestyles; odd
families."
    " I can't think where I'd find any of those."
    "Maybe Dee-Dee and Layne'll get married."
She was babbling. They were both babbling.
    The taxi had honked once;
it honked again.
    * * *
    Grady had been drinking all morning. He never drank
to write. Couldn't focus, couldn't think, couldn't even stay awake.
On the other hand, he hadn't been able to write about The Thing
sober. The worst that could happen was he'd waste another day; he'd
already wasted plenty of them.
    He plunged in, as far back
from the bad part as he could remember:
    * * *
    It was Easter, and Reed had awakened both of us
early, Evie and me, so we could see what the Easter bunny brought.
The Easter baskets varied from year to year. That year I got green
and the girls got purple; that is, they were straw-colored with
another color woven in—green for me and purple for them. They had
that synthetic grass in them, the