Jazz Funeral

CHAPTER ONE
    The newcomer is told three things by the old New Orleans hand: don’t walk on the lake side of the Quarter, don’t drink the water, and always take a United cab.
    He is sometimes surprised to find the lake side is nowhere near a lake, but quite near what natives call the “projects,” housing so poor and mean it would make a preacher think about mugging, just to even things up. Only one project is near the Quarter, the Iberville. Others are scattered throughout the city, as is crime, which is said to be so prevalent, Uptown gentlemen have taken to presenting their ladies with handguns for their purses. The ladies, in turn, dare not step out of their cars at night and stroll up their own front walks without pistol cocked and at the ready.
    The newcomer is puzzled. Is this because urban crime came late to Louisiana, with the crack plague that hit the rest of the country, and the natives haven’t yet adjusted? Or is it really, as they say there, worth your life not to heed the warnings?
    Now and then the city does lose a tourist, but Californians and such are nonetheless bemused by the syndrome of pistol as fashion accessory.
    And by the other advice.
    “Why not drink the water?” they will ask, and they will be told with a shrug: “This is a Third World country.” On further questioning, one is told something about sewage and chemicals, but the Sewerage and Water Board says the city’s water is some of the purest in the nation. The first answer is probably the one that counts.
    It is a position with which it’s difficult to argue. New Orleans, though technically a city, is more like a nation unto itself; though legally a piece of America, it’s Caribbean in its soul, as exotic an adventure as exists short of navigating the Amazon.
    The question of the cab has never been solved.
    Steve Steinman, in town for one of the country’s better bashes, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, was puzzled as usual over the bizarre customs of the City that Care Forgot. He was haranguing his hostess. Detective Skip Langdon of the New Orleans Police Department.
    “So I asked three people on the street. You know what one of them said? You’re not going to believe this. ‘Because most of the drivers are white.’ How do you stand the way people talk in this town?”
    “I never heard that.”
    “Well, the next one said United’s more reliable, and the next one said they’re the best. I said, ‘What makes them the best?’ and he said he didn’t know, he’d never taken a cab in his life, that was just what he’d always heard.”
    “Me too.”
    “That they’re the best?”
    “Well, not exactly. Just that that’s what you’re supposed to do: ‘Always take a United Cab.’ It’s like ‘wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident.’ You hear it so early on, you never question it.”
    “Some detective,” he grumbled.
    Skip liked this: the banter, the endless, meaningless, companionable nattering. She wasn’t used to the luxury.
    But it was a challenge, living in one room with a man. The world seemed made of elbows and laundry.
    When Steve Steinman wasn’t there, those wretched times when he was at home in L.A.—most of the time—the studio was an echo chamber, a place for listening to Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan, a cell to while away the lonely hours, to contemplate the melancholy of a gloomy Sunday.
    But it was getting more cheerful, Skip reminded herself. She had painted it cantaloupe. She’d bought a painting by Marcy Mandeville, the artist whose work she’d coveted since her college days; and she’d upgraded her Goodwill sofa bed to one from Expressions. Her landlord, Jimmy Dee Scoggins, had kicked in a new taupe carpet. The place was cozy. It was fine.
    It was only lonely on nights when Steve called and the sound of his voice made her ache. Or nights when he didn’t call and she ached for the sound of his voice. Or other nights when, for no reason, her suddenly girlish heart went Southern on her and gave birth to the blues.
    Usually when he was in town he didn’t stay here. Or technically he didn’t. He stayed Uptown with Cookie Lamoreaux, in a house with more rooms than most hotels. This time she’d thought she could handle having him here. And I could , she thought now, if I just had a living room .
    The place even smelled different. Not bad—she just needed to open the windows more often. She had to laugh at her own old maidishness, and then at her quaint