Lousiana Hotshot

do a damn thing without a name. Then I went to find that little bitch Shaneel, and the idiot counselor wouldn’t even let me talk to her. Goddammit, you see how frustrated I am? No one will
do
anything!” Talba remembered what Darryl had said about her causing a scene in the counselor’s office. She hoped it wasn’t going to be repeated.
    Grasping at straws, she said, “There’s no name anywhere in the diary?”
    “Oh, yes, there’s a name. Toes.”
    “Toes.”
    “My daughter had her first sexual experience with a man named Toes.” She twisted the tissue till it tore, and at this moment, her anguish seemed real to Talba. She didn’t care much for the name Toes herself.
    Eddie said, “We need to talk to the girl.”
    Scott nodded. “Might as well. She doesn’t talk to me, that’s for sure. But I don’t think it’s— I don’t want to be rude, but I really think she’d respond better to Ms. Wallis.”
    Take that,
Talba thought.
Take that, Eddie Valentino. I’m the right demographic— young, female, and as dumb as the kid when it comes to guys. Scratch that. Formerly as dumb as the kid.
    She was feeling magnanimous. Instead of letting Eddie do the dirty work, she jumped in ahead of him. “I’ll be happy to talk to her, but we do work as a team. Okay if Eddie comes along?”
    “I guess it can’t hurt.” Scott didn’t seem happy about it.

Chapter 4
    She was pushy, she was smart-mouthed, she was probably brilliant (or thought she was, which was just as bad). She was also cute as a button, and the whole package added up to one large pain in the ass. But after the reading, once he got home and got sober, Eddie found he didn’t hate her at all. In fact, he had to admit she reminded him of someone— an awful lot, as a matter of fact. Except for the little matter of skin color, she was just about a clone of his daughter Angela.
    The thing he hated was Angie and Audrey pushing her down his throat. Sometimes it seemed like he never got to make any decisions on his own. They worked on him all the way home from the damn reading— both of them seemed to think she was Sherlock Holmes and Robert Frost rolled up in one— and in the end he ran out of excuses.
    Yes, she could probably make his life easier. And yes, she was about ten times more qualified than anyone else he’d probably be able to get. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to make the mere facts that she was black, female, pushy, and had an uncanny ability to get around him outweigh the rest of it. Matter of fact, not a single one of the four facts could even be mentioned outside a poker club in Arabi.
    Plus, that poem about her father had really gotten to him. He hated it when she read it because it made him so goddam sad— like maybe he was missing something. He didn’t see why it was anybody’s business to go and make him feel like that. But the girl really loved her father. You couldn’t fake a thing like that. That had to count for something.
    “Okay, okay, okay. I know when I’m licked,” he had said, slamming the door of his Buick, and Angie had given him a big sloppy kiss. That part was okay, but he hated it when she followed it up with crap like, “Dad, I’ve been so worried about you.”
    Worried about him, hell. He could damn well run his business by himself.
    Anyway, he thought he could until the damn
Baroness
stuck a gun to his head and walked away with everything he’d ever worked for. That was what he was going to tell Audrey, but actually, once he realized how much she was going to save him on the financial reports, he didn’t mind that much— might even come out ahead.
    That was an interesting thought. He had business— had plenty of business— but to his recollection, he’d never had an African-American client who wasn’t referred by a lawyer. What if there was a nice little market there, and Ms. Talba Wallis could tap into it for him? Blacks did business with blacks, and now he had one on his staff. He could even give her a little commission for each new client she brought in— sweeten the pot a little, get her to put the word oµt.
    He was most impressed with Aziza Scott as a client. Not only hadn’t she balked at his considerable hourly fee, she’d turned out to be a hospital administrator. Hospitals were big businesses. They got sued; they had employees who stole; they had plenty of investigative needs. Also, from the looks of her, Ms. Scott was plenty well-fixed and likely had plenty of