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to the Northerner who had to learn to loosen up and enjoy easy-going New Orleans.
    â€œI think, oh boy, here comes one of them big-spending Yankees,” Flowers continued, “just offa the plane and lookin’ for a good time. Good man for Albert. Then right off you wanna go to the police station. And now you wanna know about this leather bag that smells funny. Sounds like gris-gris to me.”
    â€œGree-gree? Is that French?” Spraggue asked, puzzled. “What’s it for?”
    Flowers shrugged. “Gris-gris is for a lot of things. You can get a gris-gris to put on a spell, or guard against a spell. You can get one for spirits and one for men. They all different. It depend on who made this one you’re talkin’ about.”
    â€œAnd who might have done that?”
    â€œI can’t tell you. I couldn’t tell by lookin’, not even by touchin’, and I ain’t eager to touch no such thing, no way. But I can tell you this. It cost some money if it’s a leather bag. Not somethin’ the tourists buy for a lark, somethin’ made to order. This gris-gris belong to some guy in the jail? Maybe if you told me what he’s been arrested for—”
    â€œHe’s not in jail,” Spraggue said. “He’s dead.”
    â€œI guess that gris-gris didn’t work so good then,” Flowers said. “I doubt, though, the man be lookin’ for a refund.”
    Spraggue smiled. “I suppose,” he said, “the gris-gris could belong to the man’s killer, if he was obliging enough to leave it behind. You said it wasn’t the sort of thing a tourist would pick up. It’s unusual?”
    â€œNot that strange. Not here among the right sort of people.”
    â€œAnd if it were found near the body of a man who was a chef here in New Orleans?”
    â€œNothin’ to say a chef can’t be interested in a little hoodoo.”
    â€œIs that ‘voodoo’ or ‘hoodoo’?”
    â€œHoodoo. It’s sort of a mix, a mish-mash of voodoo from the islands, all messed up with local Catholic. Your chef, now, he a man of color?”
    â€œWhite man. Cajun, I think.”
    â€œBe more usual to find a charm like that on a man of color, but we got some white hoodoos here too.”
    Spraggue said, “Maybe you can tell me where I’d be likely to learn something about that charm.”
    â€œMaybe I could.”
    â€œAnd, of course, if you were assisting me as well as driving, there would be an increase in your pay.”
    â€œAssistin’ you in doing what?”
    â€œI’m sort of a private investigator,” Spraggue said. The expired-license sort, he added silently.
    â€œYou gonna bribe me? Well, okay, I’m easy, I’m easy. I’m just figurin’ out the best place to start. I ain’t really into no voodoo, no hoodoo, no witchcraft, you know. I keep the charms and stuff, but mostly ’cause the tourists expect it. They want to hear about voodoo, and they want to hear about the graveyards, those spooky-looking tombs, all above ground. Now I hear there’s a woman works at this tourist place, this witchcraft museum. Woman named, let me see—Del, yeah, for Delores. Sister Del, she call herself. If we find when she be at work, she can probably send us to somebody who would know about an old leather gris-gris.”
    â€œCan you make me an appointment to see this Sister Del?”
    â€œI can sure try.”
    All the time they were talking, Flowers was driving through streets that narrowed by the block. They crossed a wide boulevard and Spraggue was abruptly oriented, sure of his location. They had found the French Quarter, the Vieux Carré , the section of New Orleans he knew from a long ago six-week Tennessee Williams’ festival, understudying Brick in Cat and Stanley in Streetcar , waiting every night for the lead to show up too drunk to go on. Over ten years ago, he