I said, “What are you working on? We might—”

“We’re not,” he cut me off. “What I’m working on is off-limits. Get out now.”

“And if I don’t?” I challenged.

“I’ll have you arrested for everything I possibly can.”

“Don’t you think arresting me might blow your cover?”

That answer was even farther down on the pleasing list. “You could spend the next week sitting in my office answering questions. If you so much as forget to signal a lane change, you’ll have a ticket. Get my drift?”

The only replies I could think of would only get me into more trouble. O’Connor and I just stared at each other for a moment. Finally, I decided to play his game. “Look, the reason I’m here is…”

“Get out of here. Now. Be at the station tomorrow at two. Tell me then.” With that, he got up and walked away.

It was past my bedtime anyway. I would talk to O’Connor tomorrow. I wondered if he would find it odd that a young girl would have a matchbook advertising this place in her pocket. Oh, yeah, real likely.

My friend, the rain, was still visiting in torrents, the thirty feet to my car a drenching distance. I hadn’t found anything that would tell me how the matchbook had gotten into Cissy’s pocket. It didn’t seem likely that she had come in, bellied up to the bar, asked for a glass of milk, and taken a book of matches.

It was time to go home. I was wet and cold, and I didn’t have the energy or concentration to think about the things I needed to think about. I started my car and drove away from the darkened streets.

Chapter 19

The rain had not left by morning, merely gone offstage for a bit. The sky remained dark and potent. Time felt ambiguous with the sun so completely obscured. I had to glance first at my alarm clock, electric and subject to power outages, then my wristwatch to be sure of the time.

After a scrubbing shower and brewing a pot of coffee, I sat down at my desk. Usually, I make case notes every day, a rough scribble meant for no one but myself. It can contain everything from the prosaic (what I did that day) to hunches and stray thoughts, right-brain scattershot. Sometimes it’s useful, most often not. From those notes, I culled my progress reports and case files that I passed on to the client. I hadn’t really been keeping case notes for my investigation of Cissy’s behavior. Patrick, ostensibly whom I was working for, was a bit of an irregular client, not to mention that, as a minor, I doubted he could legally enter into a contract with me. Aside from the legal aspect, there were a lot of things about this case that I couldn’t just jot down and hand to a twelve-year-old boy.

I forced myself to do the work I had been neglecting, expanding on the few sketchy notes I had made, writing a complete log of what I’d done and where I’d been. After that I sat staring at the paper for several minutes, until I finally told myself, don’t censor, just write. I had no hunches, so I had none to write down, that left the passing marginalia.

The first thing I scribbled was, “Lindsey and Cordelia—lovers?” then I scratched it out. Their past had no bearing on this case. Then I wrote it back in, as illegibly as I could. Lindsey had a bearing on the case and her past was part of who she was. If my present lover had been a lover of hers, I needed to at least acknowledge it. Then I wrote, “Pulled away from Cordelia as if she were someone else.” I scratched it out. That didn’t fit in with this case.

I made lists of names, drawing lines to show their connections. As a final thought, I added O’Connor, putting a question mark next to his name instead of a line. I looked at my handiwork, but nothing emerged from the hodgepodge of names and events.

I put aside my pen and notepad and got up to feed Hepplewhite. She didn’t like it. Nothing was going to be easy today. I had a sneaking suspicion that seeing O’Connor at two o’clock would not change the tenor of the day.

Since it was likely that I would spend some time with O’Connor, I needed to wear clothes that would fit in with Alex’s party. I had almost forgotten about it. As everyone else would be coming from work, I decided on professional woman drag, a sober gray suit, a white shirt, and sensible black pumps, the heels low enough so that I wouldn’t be taller than O’Connor.

I presented myself at the appointed hour, but O’Connor was nowhere around. A not very precise “I suppose he’ll be back sometime” was the only information I was offered.

I waited an hour. I couldn’t decide whether he’d forgotten me or just gotten busy. I finally veered toward busy, as being forgotten isn’t a very flattering feeling, and why let unpleasantness intrude into your life if it doesn’t have to? An additional inquiry into O’Connor’s whereabouts gained me no additional information.

I left him a note. A polite, “I was here” note without the “where the fuck were you?” postscript that I contemplated. So, at a quarter past three, I was standing beside my car, wondering what to do next. Going home wasn’t very useful. I would just be leaving again to pick up Alex.

Then I decided to see what the Heart of Desire looked like in the daylight. Just a quick drive by before I picked up Alex for her party. I headed back downtown. The light of day dispelled the dense and threatening shadows from the night before. The peeling paint, and leaning porches were clearly visible. Even though it was only afternoon, there were clumps of men standing on the sidewalks, paper bags covering the malt liquor or cheap wine in their hands. Did I really think I was so different from them, that if I led their lives, that my best respite wouldn’t be some drink or drug to obliterate these streets?

I’ve been what passes for poor, eating crackers and raisins once for four days, because that was all I had, and no money to buy anything else. My car is old, my apartment cheap, and in a neighborhood that has its own share of poverty and despair.

But I’d never been hungry as a child, my parents so powerless that they couldn’t even feed their children. I’ve never watched a world of new cars and large houses on TV that I knew I could never enter, never even visit.

I could, if I wanted to, take my fancy college degree and go earn money. Go to law school, medical school. Even if I didn’t take those avenues to money and so-called success, I had a map of how to get there.

I glanced again at the passing men standing on corners. Did any of them, even the youngest, think it possible to be a doctor or lawyer? Not an idle thought or a fierce struggle, but a reality, like it was for the sons and daughters of the middle class? I wondered what my life would be like if the only possibilities I’d ever seen were the ones Aunt Greta had cast my way.

Heart of Desire came into view. As I had the night before, I turned onto Law Street. A car suddenly roared around me, pulled in front of me, and then stopped abruptly. I jammed on my brakes to avoid hitting it. It was a black Porsche with a familiar license plate. He remained stopped long enough to let me know he’d recognized me, then slowly and deliberately, inviting me to follow him, pulled over to the side of the road.

At first I was angry. I had told Joey I didn’t want to see him again. No, I had told him Karen didn’t want to see him, although not seeing me again was implied, I would have thought. Then curiosity hit. What was smooth-talking Joey Boudreaux doing in this neighborhood? New Orleans is just a small enough city that it could be coincidence. But I had a hunch that Joey was on the illegal side of whatever O’Connor was tangled up with. And if I could find out enough about who was involved to find a name that intersected with Cissy’s life, I might blow this case open. Admittedly a series of jumps, but I finally had a direction and some possibilities. I pulled behind Joey’s car. I was prudent enough to let him get out first, before I opened my door and stepped onto the cracked sidewalk.

“I know you’re not the uptown girl Karen is, but I didn’t think this was the kind of place you’d hang around,” Joey greeted me. “I saw you last night,” he added, “leaving here.”

“What’s it to you?” I answered, taken aback at having been seen.

“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a neighborhood like this?”

“Trust me, I’m not nice,” I retorted.

He leered for show, then said, “So, are you naughty?”

“Not in any way you’d appreciate.”

Joey nodded slowly. He’d been putting on a show so my rejection barely pricked his ego. “How’s Karen these days?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said coldly.

“You’re not…friends?”

“I did what she paid me to do. No, we’re not friends.”

“Money’s the ticket?” he asked.

“The only ticket that gets you anywhere.” Discussing morality and good and evil didn’t seem the way to impress Joey.

“It seems we think alike. Good thing I ran into you.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” He clearly wanted me to ask, so I did.

“Want to earn a little extra money?”

“Doing what?”

“Using your talents to the fullest.”

“Not an answer.”

He changed his tactics. “Making some good money. I’m overbooked at the moment. I need an assistant.”

“Back to my original question, doing what?”

“Making some connections. Getting person A to person B.”

“Is this legal?”

“As legal as two girls together,” he answered.

“And what crime against nature would I be committing?” In Louisiana, sodomy, oral sex, and all that fun stuff—covered under the heading “crimes against nature”—is a felony.

“I have a client who has, uh, unusual tastes. Your job is to arrange for the right person to meet his needs.”

“You mean pimp?”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“No mere ‘pimping’ allowed in the Sans Pareil Club?”

Joey shot me a look, then recovered, “I am impressed, Ms. Knight. I didn’t think that was something Karen would know.” Then he added, “Or dare to tell anyone.”

“Karen didn’t know. Or, if she does, she didn’t tell me. I have other sources.”

Joey shrugged. “So you understand the nature of the business.”

“To a degree. What I don’t understand is why you’d turn over keeping someone like Anthony Colombé happy. Displeasing him must have its consequences.”

“I’m not turning it over. This is just temporary. I have a major conflict in the next few days. I just need a little help to keep both my masters happy. Of course, if it works out, sometime in the future…” He trailed off invitingly.

“Your other job must be something big. For you to blow off Colombé.”

“I’m not blowing him off. He’ll be taken care of. That’s what I’m working out now.” But Joey couldn’t help bragging, “But, yeah, the other job is big. It could be really big. It could mean old Joey B. never working for nobody again.”

I let the bad grammar go. “How big?” I asked.

“Too big to talk about,” was his answer.

“You sound like you’re talking about olives—large, jumbo, and huge.”

“Hey, it’s a train that’s going places. No one says you got to ride it.”

“Why are you offering me a ticket?” I countered.

“Why not?”

I gave Joey a look that said, “Bullshit.”

He continued, “’Cause I need help. You’ve got the talent to help me. You’re pretty butch for a girl.”

I started to make a caustic comment and be on my way, but I stopped myself. If Joey, however obliquely, held the key to Cissy’s terror, I had to follow it up. “Oh, I am, huh?” was my ever-so-polite reply.

“Yeah. You’re not working for Karen anymore, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“So you want to help me for a little bit?”

“What about this ‘big’ thing?” I wasn’t really interested in Colombé.

“That’s my deal. I just need you to help with Colombé,” Joey said.

“But is it big enough that you might need help?”

Joey gave me an appraising look before answering slowly, “Yeah, yeah, it might be that big. Come on, let’s see how you work out on this gig.”

“What’s the deal?”

“Tonight I take you through the ropes. We split half and half. Then you cover the next few nights for me. You get it all. I won’t even take a cut.”

“How kind of you.”

“Hey, the first month I did this I had to split fifty/fifty with the old guy. He did shit, I did all the work.”

“You’re all heart, Joey.”

“I sure am. Follow me,” he said, turning to his car.

I started to ask him again what he was doing in the neighborhood, but didn’t. If I played it right, that would come in time. Joey wanted to show off, but he wasn’t sure yet that I was the person he could show off to. I had to convince him that I was. I got into my car and followed him. He led me to a gas station on Claiborne, near the I-10 ramp. He pulled up next to a pay phone. I stopped behind him.

“Always use a different phone,” he said as we both got out. “You got to learn where a bunch of them are.” He strode over to the phone, punching in a number before I could get close enough to see it. I stood near him to overhear the conversation. His end of it was, “Yeah,” and “Uh-huh,” repeated several times. Very enlightening.

When Joey hung up, he turned to me and said, “Tonight he wants to watch a tall, dark, handsome man fuck a young, blond dude. We get to arrange it.” With that, Joey got back into his car.

I followed him again, this time to Rampart Street, finding semi-legal parking places next to Armstrong Park. Rampart is one of the boundaries of the Quarter. It openly exhibits the decadence that Bourbon Street only hints at. Tourists don’t wander down Rampart; only those who know what they want come here.

“So what do we do now?” I asked as I caught up to Joey. “Just ask some guys if they want to make some money?”

“Naw, that’s how you get busted. You use your brains and your contacts.” We crossed the street and he led me into one of the bars that crowded this part of Rampart.

As we entered, Joey did a quick scan of the place. Evidently he didn’t see who he was looking for as he headed for a table and sat down.

“I need to make a phone call,” I said. I didn’t sit with him, but instead headed to the pay phone next to the bar.

“What’s the number?” Joey asked as he picked up the phone before I could get to it. He had followed me.