Louisiana Lament

Wallis?” He looked at her over reading glasses she’d never seen him wear. Must be his computer drag.
    She removed the cap and sat down. “You’d be proud of me, Eddie. I spent the morning telling lies. Beautiful lies. Do I look like a battered woman to you?”
    She ran the story down for him.
    “That’s it, Ms. Wallis. Now ya catchin’ on. Tell me somethin’—any purpose to all this? Ya find anything?”
    “Actually, yes.” She’d carefully told the story in such a way as to leave a dramatic ending. “Stan’s last name, I hope. Underwood ring a bell with you?”
    He shook his head.
    “The campaign paid a Stanley Underwood $10,000 for services.”
    “What services?”
    “My question exactly.”
    “Ya backgrounded him yet?”
    “I’ll do it now.”
    She grabbed her hat and went to her own office. Eddie hated working two at a computer.
    She was back in a few minutes. “Interesting guy.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “For openers, he owns a 2001 Lincoln Continental.”
    “Ya got my attention.”
    “He’s forty-two.” She picked up one of the pictures Catherine Mathison had shot. “Brown and brown, six feet, a hundred eighty. What do you think—about right?”
    Eddie grunted.
    “Lives in Chalmette with three other people—Frank, Margaret, and Rufus Underwood.”
    “What the hell kind of setup is that? Thug Family Robinson?”
    Talba ignored him. “Look, we’ve got his plate number. All we really have to do is identify the guy with that plate—who we know is Stan Underwood—as the guy who’s been tailing us. Because he’s the same guy in the police sketch.”
    “You know police sketches aren’t considered very good.”
    Talba named her police connection. “Langdon’s sharp, Eddie. She’s not going to discount it.”
    He nodded. “Yeah, it’s our best bet. What’s your plan?”
    “What’s my plan? You’re asking
me
?”
    “I’m axin’ ya.”
    She shrugged, improvising quickly. “Surveil his house, I guess. Much as I hate the idea.”
    “ ’S a lot of effort,” Eddie said. “Heck of a lot of effort.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and the effect was that of locking a pair of steamer trunks. Finally, he said, “Why don’t we just flush him out? We pull a sting, see, like we did to get the pictures.”
    She could see him getting into it.
    “We bring in a third party—could be Catherine again, could be anybody. You call me on the office phone, say ya got something in Buddy Calhoun’s office that proves he had Clayton killed, and I gotta meet you at such and such a place. I go there, ya hand me the disk, and when Stan shows up to follow me and get the damn thing back—which he will—Catherine photographs his license plate. Boom! We got him.”
    “Unless he doesn’t show up in the Lincoln—remember, he was driving a gold-colored Ford in Mississippi. Hey, wait a minute! Wonder whose car the Le Sabre was?” Without even saying good-bye, she left, went back to her office, and ran Frank, Margaret, and Rufus Underwood through a motor vehicle database. For once, Eddie followed her.
    She looked up when she had it. “Sure enough—Frank and Margaret are proud owners of a Buick Le Sabre.”
    “If he shows in that one, we’ve still got him.”
    “Listen, Eddie, a lot of stuff could go wrong. He could send someone else or steal a car like before. But it sure beats the alternative. You know what Chalmette’s like—blue-collar white. I try to work surveillance there, I’m dead meat. Sure, let’s try the sting. When do you want to make the switch?”
    He looked at his watch. “Right away. Hell. Logic says you’d have called the minute you got chased out of that office. The more time goes by, the more it looks like a setup.” He yelled out to the anteroom, “Eileen, can you get Catherine Mathison on the phone?”
    They set up what details they needed, then Talba left the building by the back door, hurried back to the Hilton, changed back to her navy skirt and white blouse, and made a phone call. “Hey, Eddie, I got something.”
    “Ya mean a virus or somethin’? Thought ya had the curse.”
    “Eddie, listen to me. I
got
something—on the Patterson case.”
    “What the hell ya talkin’ about, Ms. Wallis? Ya been off for two days.”
    “I was doing some stuff on my own.”
    He sighed showily. “Start talkin’, Ms. Wallis.”
    “I’ve got evidence that connects Clayton’s killing to—you ready for this?—Buddy Calhoun.”
    There was a long