Lousiana Hotshot

town. The other’s his brother.”
    “Can I go, please? I’ve got homework.” Everything the girl said had a whiny edge to it. Maybe she was always that way, but Talba thought she was under a lot of pressure. She spoke before Aziza could. “I’d like you to stay a minute.” Cassandra sat down hard on a sofa, a little black cloud that plopped rather than floated.
    “What man?” Aziza said. “What powerful man? These guys look like gangsters.”
    “Baron Tujague.”
    Aziza said, “Who?”
    Cassandra said nothing. Talba watched her face.
    Absolutely inscrutable.
    Okay. That proves it.
“You know who he is, don’t you, Cassandra?”
    “Of course.”
    “You don’t seem surprised that these guys are close to him.”
    Aziza said, “Will someone please tell me who Baron Tujague is? A drug dealer or something? I know very few African-American barons.”
    Cassandra’s silence was so deafening she almost had to hold her ears. Finally, Talba answered herself. “He’s a rapper.”
    The girl said, “Can I go now?” and Aziza nodded, not even looking at her.
    “I think I know who you mean,” she said. “The guy who owns the record company?”
    “The same. I think his brother’s called Toes.”
    “But Cassandra says no.”
    “Aziza, tell me something. What teenage girl wouldn’t react if you showed her pictures of anyone— not even someone she’d had sex with, anyone at all— and said he was the brother of a big-deal rapper? None. Not one— unless she was hiding something.”
    Aziza considered it. “I don’t know. Rap’s not Cassandra’s thing.”
    “Oh? What kind of music does she like?”
    “She likes… well, she…” Aziza stopped cold, clearly at a loss. “She sings in a choir, for Christ’s sake!”
    “Does she have a Walkman?”
    “Of course she has a Walkman. She’s a kid. What does that have to do with it?” She was getting testy.
    “She may be playing music you aren’t aware of.” Talba felt stupid, stating the obvious so wimpily, but this woman had a lot of hard truth to wake up to. She had a set of nasty blows to deliver— she might as well start out with a love tap.
    As casually as she could, she said, “Did you know Pamela Bergeron’s missing?”
    “Cassandra didn’t mention that.”
    “She may not know.”
    “How do
you
know?”
    “I went to show Pam the pictures. Her parents told me.” (That was close enough to the truth.)
    “Look, if Cassandra and Shaneel say you don’t have the guy, you probably don’t.”
    Here was a woman, Talba thought, who’d go through near-boggling mental acrobatics to avoid looking at the truth.
    She felt utterly out of her depth, feeling as she did that Cassandra was in grave danger, yet not wanting to drive Aziza farther into her shell of denial.
    This was a job for Eddie. She realized it suddenly and certainly. There was no way in hell she was going to get through to this woman, but Eddie might be able to.
    She said, “Back to Pam a second. Is she here, by any chance?”
    “Here?”
    “Staying with you.”
    “No, of course not. Don’t you think I’d have told you?”
    “Could Cassandra be concealing her?”
    “Are you kidding? The way she keeps her room you couldn’t get a kitten in there, much less another kid.” She raised her voice. “Cassandra! Come out here a minute, please.”
    The girl appeared with her Walkman still in place. With a show of huge inconvenience, she removed the headset. “What?”
    “Cassandra, is anyone visiting?”
    “What? You
know
no one’s visiting.”
    “Tell me the truth. Is Pamela Bergeron here?”
    Wonderment appeared on Cassandra’s face, so far her only expression besides clamped shut and angry. “Pam? Are you kidding? She wasn’t even at choir practice.”
    “Okay, you can go.”
    The girl hesitated. “Why? Why do you want to know?”
    Talba said, “Her parents are worried about her.”
    Disdain appeared briefly on the teenage features, and then Cassandra showed them her cute little backside switching down the hall. If it involved parents, it had all her contempt.
    “Ms. Scott,” Talba said, “I think you’ve got a bigger problem than you think you have. I’m going to have Eddie call you.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You may have a dangerous situation here.”
    Anger flickered on Aziza’s face. It was quickly replaced by suspicion, and then a certain wiliness, the sort that could outsmart itself. “Oh, I get it. Oh, yes, it’s all coming clear.