Louisiana Lament

foot, he’d never made this guy. He was pretty ordinary-looking—medium height, sandy hair—except for one thing. He looked like a bodybuilder. This was one big, strong dude. Eddie didn’t like that.
    Catherine had also included the tag number of the gold-colored Ford. Eddie said, “Angie, can I use ya phone?” and dialed before she answered, phoning a friendly cop with the license number. It was registered to a George Goldman, who’d reported it stolen earlier that day.
    He left to meet Ms. Wallis.
    He was in line at the ferry dock when someone tapped on his window. He whirled, wishing his Tee-ball bat was on the front seat instead of the floor behind him. But it was a teenager—a black girl in a baseball cap and those stupid short overalls.
    The girl was speaking to him. “Eddeee. Come on. Open up.”
    Quickly, he let her in. “Ms. Wallis. You’re somethin’ else. Ya gettin’ ready for Mardi Gras or what?”
    “Let’s make a U-ie, Eddie. If we get on the ferry, and they do too, it won’t be pretty.”
    Nimbly, he pulled out of the line and hung a U-ie onto the street, noticing no one else doing the same. “Does that mean ya think ya were followed?”
    “Damned sure I wasn’t. I was thinking about you.”
    “I think we’re okay. They followed me to Biloxi in a gold-colored Ford—stolen, by the way. I don’t see it anywhere.”
    “I had a white Le Sabre. See anything like that?”
    Eddie checked. “No. The Lincoln, either. I think we’re okay. If we were both followed, that means there are two of them, though.”
    He regretted it the minute he said it. She’d always maintained there were two.
    For lack of a better idea, he got on the Mississippi River Bridge—why not? The entire Eastern half of the country was on the other side. They could get damned good and lost.
    “Before I forget. Here’s ya new cell phone. Eileen wrote the number on a business card.” He handed the pictures over. “And here’s what we got today.”
    Absently she tucked away the phone, but she plucked eagerly at the manila envelope he’d given her, “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Come to mama. Oh, yeah.”
    “Ms. Wallis, what ya gettin’ at?”
    She reached into an envelope of her own. “Show and tell,” she said, and handed him a photocopy of a police sketch. Actually, it was a copy of a newspaper reproduction of a police sketch. But it was plenty good enough. It was the man who followed Eddie.

Chapter Twenty-Six
    After leaving L. J. Currie, Talba had once again gone to the Riverwalk, where she’d bought a baseball cap, yellow T-shirt, short overalls, and running shoes, which created an effect that startled her.
Even a Baroness,
she thought,
can look ordinary if she tries hard enough. All I need now is bubble gum.
    Once again working on the convenience theory, she’d checked into the Hilton, just a few steps away, and ordered from room service. Plenty of time before she had to meet Eddie.
    And she had one hell of a story to tell him. During her two hours in the library, she’d developed a really great candidate for Buddy Calhoun’s hit man, the one problem being that there was nothing to tie him to the case.
    That is, not till Eddie showed her Catherine Mathison’s pictures. Her breath caught when she saw them; her heart did a spooky little jig. This was no fantasy game. This dude was tailing them, and he was nobody to mess with. Not only that, he had a pal, and they still didn’t know who either of them was.
    When she handed over the sketch, Eddie spoke nonchalantly. “Who we got here, Ms. Wallis?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Whatcha mean ya don’t know?”
    “He goes by Stan. That’s the best I can do for now.”
    “Ms. Wallis.” Eddie was drawling softly, something he didn’t often do. “Ya done good. Ya done real good. Now start talkin’.”
    “Oh, man. Where to start? Eddie, we got a tiger by the tail.”
    He looked grim as an executioner, but he kept his mouth shut; only nodded for her to get started.
    “Okay, does the name Nora Dwyer mean anything to you?”
    “Hell, yeah. Celebrated murder-for-hire case—long time ago. Real long time ago. Across the lake, if I remember right. Nora and her boyfriend hired somebody to kill her husband and dump him in the river.”
    “Almost right,” Talba said. “It was
attempted
murder-for-hire. The husband got fished out before he was dead, full of whiskey and pills. So they pumped his stomach and he told some crazy story about two men who came