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mouth flapped, then his face closed like a fist.
    “I’ve got more questions for you Miss Wilson.”
    He swiveled in his chair with the big left hand pawing air,
    his eyes still following her figure.
    His own face wearing a genial look, Sherry ambled out the
    door behind her, his jacket draped over his arm, his hat plopped on askew.
    Agent Walker was silent, his own face pink and buried in the
    computer screen.
    “Miss Wilson! This childish behavior’s just going to cost us
    more . . .”
    Ruggle’s lecture faded as she strode down the hall trailed
    by Sherry, then it was cut off completely by the opened door and the traffic
    noise climbing the Chartres Street steps.
     

 

CHAPTER 3
“Café du Monde”
     
    Mrs. Cloutier murmured a jambalaya dialect into the boy’s
    ear, her mottled face brightened by rouge ovals smeared over Indian cheekbones;
    long strands of gray-streaked hair were managed by a paisley scarf, its corners
    joined in a forehead knot at her hairline. Her eyes sheened a pale green
    pierced by slivers of silver; gleaming dully against her shadowy features, a
    single gold hoop earring bobbed in a gentle rhythm with her words. Her age was
    not clear.
    An emaciated black bird stood motionless on a trapeze in the
    cage hanging over the half wall separating the rooms, the longest of its
    iridescent feathers dryly brushed the newspaper spread on the cage’s bottom.
    Sitar notes floated from somewhere. The air was perfumed by a columbic candle
    flickering from a wicker table in the corner opposite the cage. The other
    source of artificial light came from a floor lamp draped over with a vermilion
    bed-sheet that cast the apartment’s textured beige walls into a mysterious
    shade of orange.
    The boy sat next to her on the divan, a plastic box wired to
    headphones lay on top of folded sheets and a pillow stacked on the floor at one
    end. He gazed out the open balcony doors with the lady’s wine-red lips moving
    next to his ear, brown spots marred the skin of her long fine hand at the end
    of the silk-sleeved arm draped around his shoulders. He leaned against her and
    appeared to listen, but his face and eyes were blank.
    Mary and Detective Sherry bent over the kitchen table in the
    next room, faces drawn close behind the strings of colored beads that separated
    the rooms. The apartment’s size made privacy a difficult proposition, even with
    the lady’s efforts at distraction.
    A plump white cat sat licking a paw under the table holding
    the candle; it blinked from time to time, but its pink eyes never left the
    bird. Mary cracked her knuckles and sighed to herself, absently regarding the
    homburg crouched in the third chair like it was one of the conferees.
    She was worn out, not interested in more conversation. She
    tried again to let him know through thinly-stifled yawns and bored body
    language. He ignored the signals, seemed determined to speak with her. And, she
    considered, in the interest of her son and her self she ought to fight
    off her fatigue and boredom and make herself listen to whatever it was this guy
    was trying to say.
    Her eyes shifted to the next room, the woman’s hands
    gesturing elegantly with her story, her face near Brian’s ear. The reality was
    that they didn’t have many friends, and their best one had just been murdered.
    This new one across the little table appeared level-headed and genuinely
    concerned about them. She regarded Sherry, hunched over his elbows, hands
    fisted under his chin. She sensed that behind the watery blue eyes looking at
    her that there was more.
    “Why ‘ont the two of us maybe take a little walk?” he
    groaned as he rose, picking up the hat and flicking it meaningfully toward the
    ensconced pair on the divan. “We’ll tryta look jest like tourists.”
    He flicked the hat at Mary’s running shoes and grinned.
    “Walkin’ only though, Hon. Don’t go in for nonna that runnin’ stuff.”
    She nodded and stepped through the beads, bending to