She was sitting on the sofa, her baby sleeping next to her. In the terry cloth robe, a towel wrapped around her wet hair like a turban, she looked like a kid, not a mother. The baby lay on its belly, wrapped in a towel. I went to my kitchen table and put the food down, flipping on the light and telling her I’d be downstairs if she needed anything else.
“Is that a holster?” she asked, staring at my right hip.
“I told you I’m a detective.” I kept moving toward the door, giving her a wide berth, hoping the fear in her eyes would subside.
“Thank you,” she said, standing up, arms folded across her chest now.
I pointed down the hall beyond my bathroom. “There’s a washer back there for your clothes and a clothesline out back, if it ever stops raining.”
She nodded and said, “I’m Kaye Bishop.” She looked down at her baby. “This is Donna.”
I stopped just inside the door. “Nice to meet you, Kaye. If you need to call anyone, you know where the phone is.”
I hesitated in case she wanted to keep talking, and she surprised me with, “You’re not how I would picture a detective.”
“How’s that?”
Her eyes, like chocolate agates, stared back at me. “You seem polite. Maybe too polite.”
“You’ve been out there for three days. You all right?”
“We’ll be fine when Charley comes for us.”
“Charley?”
“Charley Rudabaugh. Donna’s father. We’re not married yet. That’s why I’m staying with the Ursulines.”
Nuns. The Ursuline convent on Chartres Street. Oldest building in the Quarter. Only building that didn’t burn in the two fires that engulfed the city in the eighteenth century, or so the story goes. For an instant, I saw Kaye Bishop in a colonial costume, as a casket girl, labeled because they’d arrived in New Orleans with all their belongings in a single case that looked like a casket. Imported wives from France, daughters of impoverished families sent to the New World to marry the French settlers. The Ursulines took them under wing to make sure they were properly married before taken off by the rough settlers. Looks like they’re still taking care of young girls.
“The church took us in.” Her eyes were wet now. “We’re waiting until Charley can get us a place.”
Donna let out a little cry and Kaye scooped her up. Then she moved to my mother’s old rocking chair next to the French doors, which opened to the wrought-iron balcony that wrapped around my building along the second floor. As she rocked her baby, she reached up and unwrapped the towel on her head, shook out her hair, and rubbed the towel through her hair.
The baby giggled and she giggled back. “You like that?” She shook her hair out again and the baby laughed. Turning to me, she said, “Can you get my purse? It’s in the bathroom.”
I brought it to her and she took out a brush and brushed out her short brown hair. Donna peeked up at me, hands swinging in small circles, legs kicking.
“She’s a beautiful baby,” I said, backing away, not wanting to crowd them.
Kaye smiled at her daughter as she brushed her hair, the rocker moving now. I was about to ask if the eggs and bacon were okay when she started singing in a low voice a song in French, a song that sat me down on the sofa.
My mother sang that song to me. I recognized the refrain... “le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connâit point.” Still don’t know what it means. I wanted to ask Kaye, but I didn’t want to interrupt her as she hummed part of the song and sang part.
I closed my eyes and listened. It was hard because I could hear my heart beating in my ears. When the singing stopped and I opened my eyes, Kaye was staring at me; I could see she wasn’t afraid of me anymore.
Two hours later, just as I was about to call upstairs to suggest I go over and pick up Charley, she called and said, “Could you get a message to Charley for me?”
“Sure.”
“He’s working at the Gulf station, Canal and Claiborne. He’s a mechanic,” she said with pride.
Slipping my blue suit coat back on, I looked out at the rain still falling on my DeSoto. It wasn’t coming down as hard now. I slid my .38 back into its holster and took the umbrella anyway. I started to grab my tan fedora but left it on the coat rack. Hats just mess up my hair.
It took a good half hour to reach the station on a drive that normally took fifteen minutes. Everyone in front of me drove slowly, as if they had never seen rain before in one of the wettest cities in the country. I resisted leaning on my horn for an old man wearing a hat two sizes too large for his pinhead, wondering why he couldn’t get his Cadillac out of first gear.
Forked lightning danced in the sky, right over the tan bricks of Charity Hospital towering a few blocks behind the Gulf station as I pulled in. The station stood out brightly in the rain, illuminated by lights that were normally on only at night. I parked outside the middle bay of the garage with the word “tires” above the doorway. The other bays, marked “lubrication” and “batteries,” were filled with jacked-up vehicles.
Leaving the umbrella in my DeSoto, I jogged into the open bay and came face up with a hulking man holding a tire iron.
“Hi, I’m looking for Charley Rudabaugh.”
He lifted the tire iron and took a menacing step toward me. I stumbled back, turning to my right as I reached under my coat for my revolver.
“Sam!” a voice boomed behind the man, and he stopped, but kept leering at me with angry eyes.
I kept the .38 against my leg as I took another step back to the edge of the open bay doors so he’d have to take two steps to get to me. I’d have to run or shoot him. Neither choice was a good one. A second man, even bigger, came around the man with the tire iron. Both wore dark green coveralls with the orange Gulf Oil logos over their hearts.
The bigger man growled, “Who the hell are you?”
“Kaye Bishop sent me with a message for Charley.”
“Kaye? Where is she?” He took a step toward me, and I showed him my Smith and Wesson but didn’t point it at him.
“I’m a private detective. You wanna tell me what’s goin’ on?”
“You got an ID?”
I don’t remember ever seeing Bogart, as Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, showing his ID to anyone, but I had to do it — a lot. I reached into my coat pocket with my left hand, opened my credentials pouch for him, and asked, “Where’s Charley?”
The bigger man looked hard at my ID. “I’m Malone,” he said. “Charley works for me. Where’s Kaye?”
“At my office.” I slipped my creds back into my coat pocket.
Malone turned his face to the side and spoke to his buddy with the tire iron. “He’s too skinny to work for Joe. And his nose ain’t been broke. Yet.”
The man with the tire iron backed away, leaning against the fender of a Ford with its rear jacked up.
“I told you where Kaye is. Where’s Charley?” I reholstered my revolver but kept my distance.
“Don’t trust the bastard,” said the man with the tire iron.
I could see, in both sets of eyes, that there was no way they were telling me anything. Maybe they’d tell Kaye. I suggested we get her on the phone. I stayed in the garage as Malone called my apartment from the office area. When he signaled for me to come in and get the phone, the first hulk finally put the tire iron down.
“Kaye?”
“Charley’s in the hospital,” she said excitedly. “Can you bring me to him?”
“I’ll be right there.” I hung up and looked at Malone. “You wanna tell me what happened now?”
Charley Rudabaugh was a good kid, a hard worker, Malone explained, but he borrowed money from the wrong man. Malone learned that tidbit that very morning when a goon came by with a sawed-off baseball bat and broke Charley’s right arm.