Louisiana Lament

pause, during which Eddie breathed like he had asthma. “Ms. Wallis, ya losin’ me.”
    “Swear to God, Eddie. I’ve got a disk.”
    “A disk.”
    “You know—a computer disk. A floppy.”
    “Umm-hmm. And what’s on that disk?”
    “Eddie, I don’t have time for that now. I’m not at home—I’m in a safe house. But they know I’ve got it.”
    “How in the hell would they know a thing like that?”
    “They caught me. I had to lie my way out of it. Calhoun himself was the one who caught me. He knows damn well what I’ve got.”
    “Now ya scarin’ me.”
    “Tell me about it. The quicker I get this to the police the better. I’m on my way now.”
    “Are you crazy? Ya can’t do that, Ms. Wallis. You forget who ya workin’ for? Ya can’t go takin’ in some huge piece of evidence when I don’t even know what it is. Ya want to make me look like an idiot?”
    “Eddie, trust me—this thing is a hot potato.”
    “Miz Wallis, I make the decisions in this firm. Ya forget that?”
    She made a show of sighing. “All right. I’m on my way over.”
    “Not to the office you aren’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “You know why. They followed us before. They might be watching the building.”
    “Oh, come on. Don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?”
    “That’s how ya stay alive, young lady. That’s how ya stay alive.”
    “Okay, Wise Man of the Mountain. Where do you want me to meet you?”
    “How about the library? I can go in and use one of the computers there.”
    “What do you mean, ‘I?’ ”
    “I mean, you’ll bring it to me, get back to ya safe house, I’ll go in and look at it and decide where to go from there.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight
    It was a good sound plan, meant to lull Stan into a cozy feeling of false security—make him think he had plenty of time to scope Eddie’s car out, then wait to head him off when he came back out of the library. Only Eddie wasn’t going in. He was just going to take the disk from Talba and drive like a maniac to the Third District police station, where Talba’s friend Langdon worked.
    Talba would round the block, lose any tail she had, and do the same.
    They’d be in city traffic the whole way. Unless Stan was crazy enough to start shooting in front of half the population of New Orleans, they’d make it okay. Catherine Mathison would shoot Polaroids of Stan, his car, and his plates, and meet them at the station. If Stan used the Lincoln, they’d have the whole package, ready to deliver. If he didn’t, they’d have to stage a phone call in which Eddie told Talba how badly she’d screwed up, how much of nothing was on that disk, and what an idiot she was. Then they’d have to go to plan B—surveillance in Chalmette.
    Eddie got there first and parked. Talba drove by, handed the disk in the window, and that should have been that, except that a large white man—Talba couldn’t tell if it was Stan or not—broke Eddie’s right front window with something heavy, flipped the lock, and got in the car before Eddie could get out of the parking spot.
    Talba caught the action out of the corner of her eye. At the same time, a form the size of a bear appeared at her own right front window, but their timing was off, Stan’s and his pal’s. She saw what was happening to Eddie and hit the accelerator too fast for the bear to knock out her window.
    Eddie was on his own and Talba might as well have been. She had no backup except Catherine, who wasn’t armed or particularly well equipped to deal with any of this. However, she did have a cell phone and Talba hoped to God she was on it right now, reporting Eddie’s position and plate number, as well as Talba’s own.
    The thing to do was to go immediately to the Third District, where she’d be safe. She knew that. But by the time the police got to Eddie, he could be dead—and she had an advantage. They’d made a mistake by hijacking his car. A very big mistake. It had the GPS in it. She might lose it in traffic, but all she had to do was turn on her computer, and she could track it exactly, could phone in its position to Langdon, her cop friend.
    Technically, she didn’t need to follow, and in fact, she didn’t have a clue what she could do for Eddie if she got there first, but there was no question of deserting him.
    For a few minutes, she just drove, paying little attention to where she was, just making sure she got away from the scene and didn’t have a tail. Her phone rang: “Talba,