Louisiana Lament

He jerked an aggressive thumb over his shoulder. “Move your ass.”
    What the hell. She was just glad to have a ride. Clutching her computer, she got in the back. The cop named John joined her, and then they were burning up the road, Charvet’s siren squealing.
    “They’re stopping,” she said.
    She was staring at the screen in terror. If they stopped, they must be ready to kill him. But surely they wouldn’t, with cops on the way—had they thought Radford’s car a coincidence?
    “Where are they?” Charvet asked.
    “Just up the road.” She swallowed. “They got off at Michoud Boulevard.”
    Radford said, “Pray, honey. If you know how to pray, do it.”
    Talba was considering the possibility when she heard another siren… actually, it sounded like two more. There were other cars in the area.
    Radford said, “Step on it, Charvet!”
    And Charvet pointed downward. His foot was on the floor. They were all silent for the next few minutes. The scream of sirens filled the air; the beating of drums filled Talba’s chest. They took the Michoud exit, turned left, went over a bridge, and came to a dead end.
    And what they saw there made them laugh, a momentary release of tension. Ten or twelve district cars were ahead of them; had built a semicircle around the parked Cadillac.
    Okay, so they weren’t that badly needed. But the fat lady still hadn’t sung.
    An officer was speaking over a megaphone. “Hands on your head and walk towards me.”
    Talba turned off the computer and collapsed against the seat “Whew!”
    And Radford said, “Wonder if they got here in time?”
    Talba’s palms started sweating again.

Chapter Twenty-Nine
    They pulled up, parked, and piled out like kids at the beach, Talba swiveling her head frantically, trying to make sense of things. Of even one thing.
    There was a wall of cars and a throng of cops, guns still drawn. The tension was like another wall.
    Talba could see two prisoners now, being frisked and cuffed. But no Eddie.
    “Eddie,” she called, more or less to the passing breeze. “Eddee!”
    Radford shouted also, to the officer in charge, whoever he was. “Hey, her partner was in that car.”
    Two officers moved forward, opened the doors, and shook their heads. “Well, he’s not now.”
    And then Talba became aware of a soft thudding. The two guys looked at each other and turned toward the trunk. One of them shouted, “Hey, Eddie, you in there?”
    Three loud, staccato thunks answered.
    “Hang on, now. Hang on. We’ll get ya out.”
    His partner went to get the key from the prisoners. And then they opened the trunk and helped Eddie out. He was in one piece; he was walking.
    But he kind of had a hand over his face. When he removed it, Talba saw he’d been hit—with a gun, probably. The left side of his face was swollen and already purple.
    With no hesitation, no shyness at all in spite of her audience, she hollered, “Eddie, you all right? You okay, Eddie?” and started toward him.
    He looked up at her and grinned. “Ms. Wallis. See—the cops got here first. Told you that damn GPS was worthless.”
    ***
    Eddie dreaded looking at the paper the next day. And the day after that, and the third day as well. Six months into it was the worst.
    A lot of men in his position would have killed for the kind of press he was getting, and so would he, except for one thing: his daughter, Angie.
    As the days went by, the headlines escalated:
    POLICE RESCUE PI IN BIZARRE KIDNAP ATTEMPT
    KIDNAPPERS TIED TO GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE
    CALHOUN WITHDRAWS FROM RACE
    And finally, when the whole story had come out, and the reporters had time to tie all the loose ends together:
    HOW A SMALL PI FIRM UNCOVERED A CONSPIRACY OF MURDER-FOR-HIRE AND BROUGHT DOWN A POLITICAL MACHINE
    It should have been the proudest day of Eddie’s life; in some ways it was. But the idea of listening to Angie congratulate herself one more time on making him hire Talba Wallis made his teeth itch. The minute he saw that paper, even before he read it, he grabbed Audrey and said, “Let’s take a little drive over to the Gulf Coast.”
    That way, at least his daughter couldn’t start in till Monday—and it was a sure route to marital bliss. Audrey always got romantic on the coast.
    There were a couple of other bitter pills. They got Stan for the kidnapping and the attempted murder of Nora Dwyer’s husband, but so far they’d been unsuccessful in getting him to deliver Calhoun. And why
should
he talk? He had