by Julie Smith
The guard was an old white guy, looked to be in his late sixties. He took a step backward, obviously cowed.
Talba bolted.
About that time the other guard, a young black guy, really buff, burst out of the stairwell. “What’s going on?”
That was the last Talba heard of that conversation. She was outside now, streaking down Gravier Street, with people all around. Surely no one would bother her here, out in the beautiful sunshine.
But she heard someone pounding after her.
The question was this: were they going to try to kidnap her, work her over, find out what she knew, or turn her over to the police?
It occurred to her that now, away from the building, they could make her disappear and those nice ladies who’d taken care of her would be none the wiser.
She turned her head ever so slightly. The brother was chasing her, and he was waving something. “Hey, miss! Ya dropped ya wig.”
The damn thing had fallen out of her jacket. He was waving it around in front of the whole parish.
Well, hell. There were plenty of people around, she was out of breath, and this guy was in such fantastic shape he was probably going to catch her no matter what she did.
She stopped but kept her distance, letting anyone watching see by her body language that she didn’t trust him. “You were chasing me before I dropped it,” she said.
“S’posed to detain you. You steal somethin’?”
“That son of a bitch felt me up; scared me half to death.”
“Who?”
“Calhoun. Buddy Calhoun, the great white hope for black people. Grabbed my titties like it was okay. He probably is gon’ accuse me of somethin’, stop the story from gettin’ out. Shit!” She’d momentarily forgotten the church-lady routine. “You know where I’m livin’? In a shelter for battered women—at home, my husband gets drunk every night and pounds on me. I need to get out of that mess. I need a job so bad—and this is what the Lord sends me! I get felt up, scared to death, and now I’m gettin’ chased.”
“Hold on, now. Hold on. Ain’t nobody gon’ chase you no more. You seem like a nice lady—I just want to return ya property’s all. I’m ’on leave ya alone now. Don’t you worry. Nobody’s gon’ hurt ya.” He held out the wig very gingerly, making it an olive branch. Standing as far away as she could, and still touch it, she reached out and grabbed it by a loose curl. He dropped it instantly. “See?” He gave her a beautiful smile. “That didn’t hurt a bit. Good luck to ya now.”
He turned and walked briskly away.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she thought, Well, they can’t pay them all off. It’s just possible that every employee of every building in New Orleans isn’t part of Calhoun’s crime empire.
But she only half believed it. She watched the guard out of sight, went into a building full of people, pulled out her cell phone, and called a taxi.
While she waited, she called L. J. Currie. “Hey, L. J., what kind of job was that? Some bastard in that office attacked me.”
“I just hung up with Miss Neuschneider. She said there was a ‘misunderstanding.’ ”
“Yeah, well, that’s one thing you could call it. Tell her you’ll be sending only men over there in future.” She was starting to believe the story herself. “But there is something you should know. I didn’t mention I was a Baroness gone slumming.”
“No?”
“In case anyone asks, I’m staying at a battered women’s shelter. An experience like that’s real hard on somebody like me. They’ll be lucky if I don’t sue.”
A throaty chuckle debouched from the phone. “You are some piece of work, Your Grace—you know that?”
“My mama tells me every day of my life. Gotta go, L. J.—here’s my cab.”
“Don’t forget my six hundred dollars,” he said. “Payable by Monday.”
Talba was actually so close both to her office and the Hilton, the cab was superfluous. She was still being super-cautious. She got in and tried to think what to do next. She didn’t even want to call Eddie from the cab—drivers could be found and paid off.
Finally, she decided it was okay to go to the office as long as she didn’t look like herself. “The casino,” she told the driver. “Canal Street entrance.”
Inside, it was dark and confusing. She walked through to the Poydras Street side and crossed to the Hilton, where she went to her room and donned the overalls and baseball cap, her copious hair tucked underneath, a pair of shades on her face. She looked in the mirror and frowned. These were no clothes for a baroness.
But they gave her all the confidence in the world. She walked out of the Hilton, barely looking around her, she was so sure no one would make her.
Indeed, when she got to the office, Eileen Fisher asked if she could help her.
Talba took off the shades. “Got any morphine?”
“Talba! Is this your day off or something?”
“Casual Thursday. Eddie here?”
“Oh, yes. He’s been swearing all morning—forced to do employment checks, since you weren’t here.”
She found him hunched over the computer, his fingers gnarled at the keyboard, tension in every cell of his body.
“Miss me?” she said, and hurled her cap onto his extra chair. Her extensions tumbled around her shoulders.
“Ya just love a dramatic entrance, don’t ya, Ms. Wallis?” He looked at her over reading glasses she’d never seen him wear. Must be his computer drag.
She removed the cap and sat down. “You’d be proud of me, Eddie. I spent the morning telling lies. Beautiful lies. Do I look like a battered woman to you?”
She ran the story down for him.
“That’s it, Ms. Wallis. Now ya catchin’ on. Tell me somethin’—any purpose to all this? Ya find anything?”
“Actually, yes.” She’d carefully told the story in such a way as to leave a dramatic ending. “Stan’s last name, I hope. Underwood ring a bell with you?”
He shook his head.
“The campaign paid a Stanley Underwood $10,000 for services.”
“What services?”
“My question exactly.”
“Ya backgrounded him yet?”
“I’ll do it now.”
She grabbed her hat and went to her own office. Eddie hated working two at a computer.
She was back in a few minutes. “Interesting guy.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“For openers, he owns a 2001 Lincoln Continental.”
“Ya got my attention.”
“He’s forty-two.” She picked up one of the pictures Catherine Mathison had shot. “Brown and brown, six feet, a hundred eighty. What do you think—about right?”
Eddie grunted.
“Lives in Chalmette with three other people—Frank, Margaret, and Rufus Underwood.”
“What the hell kind of setup is that? Thug Family Robinson?”
Talba ignored him. “Look, we’ve got his plate number. All we really have to do is identify the guy with that plate—who we know is Stan Underwood—as the guy who’s been tailing us. Because he’s the same guy in the police sketch.”
“You know police sketches aren’t considered very good.”
Talba named her police connection. “Langdon’s sharp, Eddie. She’s not going to discount it.”
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s our best bet. What’s your plan?”
“What’s my plan? You’re asking me?”
“I’m axin’ ya.”
She shrugged, improvising quickly. “Surveil his house, I guess. Much as I hate the idea.”
“ ’S a lot of effort,” Eddie said. “Heck of a lot of effort.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and the effect was that of locking a pair of steamer trunks. Finally, he said, “Why don’t we just flush him out? We pull a sting, see, like we did to get the pictures.”
She could see him getting into it.
“We bring in a third party—could be Catherine again, could be anybody. You call me on the offic
e phone, say ya got something in Buddy Calhoun’s office that proves he had Clayton killed, and I gotta meet you at such and such a place. I go there, ya hand me the disk, and when Stan shows up to follow me and get the damn thing back—which he will—Catherine photographs his license plate. Boom! We got him.”
“Unless he doesn’t show up in the Lincoln—remember, he was driving a gold-colored Ford in Mississippi. Hey, wait a minute! Wonder whose car the Le Sabre was?” Without even saying good-bye, she left, went back to her office, and ran Frank, Margaret, and Rufus Underwood through a motor vehicle database. For once, Eddie followed her.
She looked up when she had it. “Sure enough—Frank and Margaret are proud owners of a Buick Le Sabre.”
“If he shows in that one, we’ve still got him.”
“Listen, Eddie, a lot of stuff could go wrong. He could send someone else or steal a car like before. But it sure beats the alternative. You know what Chalmette’s like—blue-collar white. I try to work surveillance there, I’m dead meat. Sure, let’s try the sting. When do you want to make the switch?”
He looked at his watch. “Right away. Hell. Logic says you’d have called the minute you got chased out of that office. The more time goes by, the more it looks like a setup.” He yelled out to the anteroom, “Eileen, can you get Catherine Mathison on the phone?”
They set up what details they needed, then Talba left the building by the back door, hurried back to the Hilton, changed back to her navy skirt and white blouse, and made a phone call. “Hey, Eddie, I got something.”
“Ya mean a virus or somethin’? Thought ya had the curse.”
“Eddie, listen to me. I got something—on the Patterson case.”
“What the hell ya talkin’ about, Ms. Wallis? Ya been off for two days.”
“I was doing some stuff on my own.”
He sighed showily. “Start talkin’, Ms. Wallis.”
“I’ve got evidence that connects Clayton’s killing to—you ready for this?—Buddy Calhoun.”
There was a long pause, during which Eddie breathed like he had asthma. “Ms. Wallis, ya losin’ me.”
“Swear to God, Eddie. I’ve got a disk.”
“A disk.”
“You know—a computer disk. A floppy.”
“Umm-hmm. And what’s on that disk?”
“Eddie, I don’t have time for that now. I’m not at home—I’m in a safe house. But they know I’ve got it.”
“How in the hell would they know a thing like that?”
“They caught me. I had to lie my way out of it. Calhoun himself was the one who caught me. He knows damn well what I’ve got.”
“Now ya scarin’ me.”
“Tell me about it. The quicker I get this to the police the better. I’m on my way now.”
“Are you crazy? Ya can’t do that, Ms. Wallis. You forget who ya workin’ for? Ya can’t go takin’ in some huge piece of evidence when I don’t even know what it is. Ya want to make me look like an idiot?”
“Eddie, trust me—this thing is a hot potato.”
“Miz Wallis, I make the decisions in this firm. Ya forget that?”
She made a show of sighing. “All right. I’m on my way over.”
“Not to the office you aren’t.”
“Why not?”
“You know why. They followed us before. They might be watching the building.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t you think you’re being a little paranoid?”
“That’s how ya stay alive, young lady. That’s how ya stay alive.”
“Okay, Wise Man of the Mountain. Where do you want me to meet you?”
“How about the library? I can go in and use one of the computers there.”
“What do you mean, ‘I?’ ”
“I mean, you’ll bring it to me, get back to ya safe house, I’ll go in and look at it and decide where to go from there.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was a good sound plan, meant to lull Stan into a cozy feeling of false security—make him think he had plenty of time to scope Eddie’s car out, then wait to head him off when he came back out of the library. Only Eddie wasn’t going in. He was just going to take the disk from Talba and drive like a maniac to the Third District police station, where Talba’s friend Langdon worked.
Talba would round the block, lose any tail she had, and do the same.
They’d be in city traffic the whole way. Unless Stan was crazy enough to start shooting in front of half the population of New Orleans, they’d make it okay. Catherine Mathison would shoot Polaroids of Stan, his car, and his plates, and meet them at the station. If Stan used the Lincoln, they’d have the whole package, ready to deliver. If he didn’t, they’d have to stage a phone call in which Eddie told Talba how badly she’d screwed up, how much of nothing was on that disk, and what an idiot she was. Then they’d have to go to plan B—surveillance in Chalmette.
Eddie got there first and parked. Talba drove by, handed the disk in the window, and that should have been that, except that a large white man—Talba couldn’t tell if it was Stan or not—broke Eddie’s right front window with something heavy, flipped the lock, and got in the car before Eddie could get out of the parking spot.
Talba caught the action out of the corner of her eye. At the same time, a form the size of a bear appeared at her own right front window, but their timing was off, Stan’s and his pal’s. She saw what was happening to Eddie and hit the accelerator too fast for the bear to knock out her window.
Eddie was on his own and Talba might as well have been. She had no backup except Catherine, who wasn’t armed or particularly well equipped to deal with any of this. However, she did have a cell phone and Talba hoped to God she was on it right now, reporting Eddie’s position and plate number, as well as Talba’s own.
The thing to do was to go immediately to the Third District, where she’d be safe. She knew that. But by the time the police got to Eddie, he could be dead—and she had an advantage. They’d made a mistake by hijacking his car. A very big mistake. It had the GPS in it. She might lose it in traffic, but all she had to do was turn on her computer, and she could track it exactly, could phone in its position to Langdon, her cop friend.
Technically, she didn’t need to follow, and in fact, she didn’t have a clue what she could do for Eddie if she got there first, but there was no question of deserting him.
For a few minutes, she just drove, paying little attention to where she was, just making sure she got away from the scene and didn’t have a tail. Her phone rang: “Talba, Catherine. I called your buddy Langdon, but she wasn’t in, so I talked to someone else.” Her voice sounded shaky. “You all right?”
“Fine. Which way did they go?”
“Out Loyola. Towards the aiport.”
“They still have Eddie?”
“Yeah. Oh, God, I feel so helpless. I couldn’t even get the pictures.”
“Well, don’t worry about that. Listen, Catherine, Eddie’s car has a tracking device.”
“A what?”
“I’ll explain later.” If there is a later. “What I’m saying is, I can track his car. I can tell where they’re taking him. And I’m following.”
“Talba, don’t. The police’ll take care of it.”
“I’m going. Can we stay in phone contact?”
“Listen, Talba. Do you have a gun?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. Pick me up.”
So much for Catherine not being armed. Talba swallowed hard and thought about crossing a bridge she thought she never would again. Once before, she’d fired a gun—twice, actually; and both times had been disastrous.
She said, “I can’t, Catherine. Eddie told me about you. You’ve got kids.” Catherine had kids and a husband, and grandchildren as well, but it was the word kids that always struck a nerve.
Catherine didn’t answer, evidently thinking it over.
Talba shut her eyes and made herself speak, feeling she had no choice. “Let me have the gun.
”
“Okay.” The answer came fast—no way did Catherine Mathison want to get in a gunfight. “Where are you?”
“I’m at LaSalle and Poydras—right by the Superdome. You?”
“Three minutes away. You want me to come to you?”
“Please.” That gave Talba time to boot up her computer and check out Eddie’s position. First, though, she put in her own emergency call to Langdon. Then she got out her trusty Toshiba; she went nowhere without it. Stan and Eddie had covered a lot of ground already. They were already on the Interstate, going toward New Orleans East. They could be headed anywhere.
There were woods and swampland there, right in the city itself. She had to get on this—and fast. Her phone rang, making her jump.
“Baroness? What’s going on?”
“Skip. Thank God. Listen, this is complicated. But the short version is, Eddie’s life is in danger. Someone just kidnapped him and they’re headed towards New Orleans East. They’re in his car, which has a GPS in it—”
“LoJack?”
“What?”
“We can track LoJack. Is that what it is?”
“Uh… no.” She hadn’t gotten LoJack; she had no interest at all in a police-controlled system. The appeal of the GPS was that it was hands-on. “I have to track this one myself. I’ve got him on my computer—and I’m on my way. Tell me a few hundred officers are too.”
“Talba, listen. Please stay where you are. Pull off the road and wait for an officer.”
Like hell she would. But this was no time to mention it. “He’s at… almost at Esplanade. His car is a 1999 white Cadillac.” She gave them the plate number.
“Okay. And where are you?”
“I’m at LaSalle and Poydras.”
“Stay there, would you? An officer will come and monitor the GPS.”
“No, I’m going to keep going. Here’s my cell number.”
“Talba, don’t be a fool.”
“Look, I’m hanging up—just give my cell number to the first officer who answers the call—I’ll keep him or her up to date.”
“Wait! Not all our officers have cell phones.”
“Well, he can radio you and you can call me.”
