Louisiana Lament

her, and he was waving something. “Hey, miss! Ya dropped ya wig.”
    The damn thing had fallen out of her jacket. He was waving it around in front of the whole parish.
    Well, hell. There were plenty of people around, she was out of breath, and this guy was in such fantastic shape he was probably going to catch her no matter what she did.
    She stopped but kept her distance, letting anyone watching see by her body language that she didn’t trust him. “You were chasing me before I dropped it,” she said.
    “S’posed to detain you. You steal somethin’?”
    “That son of a bitch felt me up; scared me half to death.”
    “Who?”
    “Calhoun. Buddy Calhoun, the great white hope for black people. Grabbed my titties like it was okay. He probably
is
gon’ accuse me of somethin’, stop the story from gettin’ out. Shit!” She’d momentarily forgotten the church-lady routine. “You know where I’m livin’? In a shelter for battered women—at home, my husband gets drunk every night and pounds on me. I need to get out of that mess. I need a job so bad—and
this
is what the Lord sends me! I get felt up, scared to death, and now I’m gettin’ chased.”
    “Hold on, now. Hold on. Ain’t nobody gon’ chase you no more. You seem like a nice lady—I just want to return ya property’s all. I’m ’on leave ya alone now. Don’t you worry. Nobody’s gon’ hurt ya.” He held out the wig very gingerly, making it an olive branch. Standing as far away as she could, and still touch it, she reached out and grabbed it by a loose curl. He dropped it instantly. “See?” He gave her a beautiful smile. “That didn’t hurt a bit. Good luck to ya now.”
    He turned and walked briskly away.
    Breathing a sigh of relief, she thought,
Well, they can’t pay them all off. It’s just possible that every employee of every building in New Orleans isn’t part of Calhoun’s crime empire.
    But she only half believed it. She watched the guard out of sight, went into a building full of people, pulled out her cell phone, and called a taxi.
    While she waited, she called L. J. Currie. “Hey, L. J., what kind of job was that? Some bastard in that office attacked me.”
    “I just hung up with Miss Neuschneider. She said there was a ‘misunderstanding.’ ”
    “Yeah, well, that’s one thing you could call it. Tell her you’ll be sending only men over there in future.” She was starting to believe the story herself. “But there is something you should know. I didn’t mention I was a Baroness gone slumming.”
    “No?”
    “In case anyone asks, I’m staying at a battered women’s shelter. An experience like that’s real hard on somebody like me. They’ll be lucky if I don’t sue.”
    A throaty chuckle debouched from the phone. “You are some piece of work, Your Grace—you know that?”
    “My mama tells me every day of my life. Gotta go, L. J.—here’s my cab.”
    “Don’t forget my six hundred dollars,” he said. “Payable by Monday.”
    Talba was actually so close both to her office
and
the Hilton, the cab was superfluous. She was still being super-cautious. She got in and tried to think what to do next. She didn’t even want to call Eddie from the cab—drivers could be found and paid off.
    Finally, she decided it was okay to go to the office as long as she didn’t look like herself. “The casino,” she told the driver. “Canal Street entrance.”
    Inside, it was dark and confusing. She walked through to the Poydras Street side and crossed to the Hilton, where she went to her room and donned the overalls and baseball cap, her copious hair tucked underneath, a pair of shades on her face. She looked in the mirror and frowned. These were no clothes for a baroness.
    But they gave her all the confidence in the world. She walked out of the Hilton, barely looking around her, she was so sure no one would make her.
    Indeed, when she got to the office, Eileen Fisher asked if she could help her.
    Talba took off the shades. “Got any morphine?”
    “Talba! Is this your day off or something?”
    “Casual Thursday. Eddie here?”
    “Oh, yes. He’s been swearing all morning—forced to do employment checks, since you weren’t here.”
    She found him hunched over the computer, his fingers gnarled at the keyboard, tension in every cell of his body.
    “Miss me?” she said, and hurled her cap onto his extra chair. Her extensions tumbled around her shoulders.
    “Ya just love a dramatic entrance, don’t ya, Ms.