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her. She felt something slip over her head, and then she was wearing the ski mask, backward, so that it formed a blindfold.
    “Scream and your mother’s dead,” the man said.
    Inside the wool mask was unbearably hot. Why a ski mask? she thought. Why not a stocking mask? She realized that wouldn’t have disguised the man’s race. But he’d blown that one. The man was white.
    He spoke to her gently, much more nicely than you’d expect from someone who’d just threatened to kill your mother. “You’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you and I’m not going to hurt your mother. You’re involved in something you don’t understand, that’s all. Wait till tomorrow and call me at the office.” She felt something slide into her hand, something he was pressing into her palm. A business card.
    “Now, wait till I’m gone and then go in the house. Your mother’s okay.” She waited till she heard her car door slam and then ripped off the mask. He had his back to her so she still couldn’t see his face, but she damn sure wasn’t going to sit there like a dummy when she had a chance to get his plate number.
    But it had been splashed with something, probably mud. He drove off while she was still squinting at it. She looked at the card in her hand and let out a little gasp.
    It bore the crescent and star of the New Orleans Police Department. DETECTIVE SKIP LANGDON , it said.
    She dashed inside. “Mama? Mama, you okay?”
    Her mother was watching Oprah. “Girl, why ain’t you out looking for a job?”
    “Did you send me to college to make chicken fricassee? I hope so, ‘cause that’s what I’m gonna do.”
    “Hmmph. For ya no-account boyfrien’ wit’ the horrible hair. Not for ya mama.”
    Talba had stuffed the damn ski mask into the Schwegmann’s bag. She took it out and looked at it. Fuck! she thought. No way a cop would have treated a white person that way—threatenin’ to kill my mama! I think I might call Public Integrity.
    That was the office called Internal Affairs elsewhere, but she hesitated, deciding instead to try Allred’s office one last time. No one answered. All day she kept calling and getting no answer.
    She ran the whole thing by Lamar that night, after they’d eaten the chicken fricassee. Whatever her mama said, Lamar was not no-account, any more than she was. He was a grad student at Xavier, in the art department, and he was a damn good artist, especially, as her mama said, if you listened to him. He had fabulous dreads and looked something like Lenny Kravitz, whom he had once seen in the French Quarter, and whose style he greatly admired.
    He was outraged. “Are you kidding? Call Public Integrity! Call ’em now! Don’t even call the cop back. Just call and report him. Do a thing like that! Damn.”
    “Well, I just thought—”
    “I’m gonna do a painting. You know what, I’m gonna paint what happened. Give me that ski mask. He really put it over your head?”
    She didn’t have time to answer.
    “Maybe I’ll actually use the thing itself in the painting—make a collage with it. Yeah, all red and blue. How dare they do that to my baby? Can’t imagine a cop doing a thing like that.”
    “Oh, come on, Lamar.”
    “I mean, oh sure, I can imagine it. A good cop’s harder to find than a good artist in this town. Baby, you just lucky you got one. You want to go to bed? “ He nuzzled her.
    “Not with my mama—”
    “Oh, your mama. You got to grow up, Talba. Fuck this shit. I’m leavin’. Leavin’ right now.”
    He marched out the door, his dreads swinging in the breeze. It was something he did about once a week.
    “Pshaw,” Miz Clara said. “I come up with that boy’s mama. If she was alive, he wouldn’t be like that.”
    “Now, Mama. Lamar’s an artist.”
    “Lamar a sperled brat. That what Lamar is.”

Four
    IT WAS SATURDAY morning and Skip had been up since seven-thirty. Life was complicated. The whole place was in an uproar, not just her own space.
    Skip had the