She looked in the mirror and started to cry. But then she laughed brightly and wiped her eyes. She put on some lipstick that I didn’t know she had, and a little mascara. Stuck out her tongue at the reflection.
We split a pair of earrings, black pearl studs that she had in the bottom of her purse. I hadn’t worn one since I was an undergraduate, so it hurt and bled.
As a mutual disguise, though, it worked pretty well. We did look like a couple of thirty-ish tourists trying to look younger. On the Bourbon Street sidewalk, we blended in like cows in a herd.
A restaurant on St. Charles, Korn Dogs ’n’ More, needed a dishwasher and a waitress. The manager looked like he had just stepped out of a Yale faculty meeting, but he didn’t blink at our appearance or at Kit’s story that we’d been robbed and had no IDs.
The dishwashing wasn’t hard. Piled up after lunch and then was quiet until about five. Pretty busy till the place closed at ten. The pots and pans took another hour after that, Kit helping.
I probably would have hated it if I’d had to do it for a living, up to my elbows in greasy water. Doing it as protective coloration was kind of fun.
The Italian owner, Mario, cooked nonstop but had lots of stories, and was obviously happy to have a new audience. He’d also been in the desert, so we bonded over that.
Once I didn’t respond when he called me “Jim,” my temporary name, and he gave me a big wink.
He had a friend who rented rooms by the week a few blocks away, and gave Kit an hour off to get us a place. We finally crashed there a little after midnight.
The computer beeped at ten. Kit was already in the shower down the hall.
The room had a coffee machine. By the time I had it charged up and dripping, she came back, rubbing her hair with a towel. She shrugged out of her robe and handed it to me, then giggled when I put it on. “We’ll have to get you something without lace and flowers.”
I looked in the mirror and almost didn’t go down the hall. Baby-blue posies clashed with my skinhead asshole look. I showered quick.
We got to work one minute early, and Mario seemed vaguely surprised to see us. But we were going to hang in there at least six days, until the first paycheck. Or until somebody caught up with us.
4.
We got our first week’s pay and the phone call the same day, no coincidence, I suppose. Even paid by cash, there would be a record. My “James Kinney” ID probably went straight into a federal database of false IDs, and a face recognition program linked it with the person I used to be.
The phone rang at Korn Dogs and someone asked for me. Mario put it on hold and asked whether I was here.
“Someone want Jim Kinney?”
“Well… ‘the person who calls himself James Kinney.’ Want me to say you haven’t come in yet?”
No, they might be watching. I shrugged and held out my hand. A woman’s voice asked if I was Jack Daley.
“Or Jim Kinney, yes. Who is this?”
She was agent Sara Underwood, who had been “partnered with” James Blackstone. She asked me whether I had any information about him.
I was tempted to say that if the federal government couldn’t keep track of its own people, how are they going to track down the bad guys? “No, not since our interview last week. I called his office once, but he wasn’t in.”
“What business did you have with him?”
“He asked me to call in if I had a change of address. He wasn’t there, though.”
There was a long pause. “Agent Blackstone has died, under odd circumstances.”
“Oh, my god. I’m sorry.”
“Yes. We’re calling everyone who had contact with him recently. You were not a person of interest in any of his ongoing investigations, but you did speak with him the afternoon of the seventeenth. About a sniper rifle?”
“Yeah, we called on Tuesday last week, I think. Someone left a weapon in my car, the sniper rifle that I thought I’d gotten rid of, with a suggestive note.”
“Yes, we know that from his desk report. I’m afraid we have to confiscate the rifle now.”
I tried to respond but my throat had closed up.
“Mr. Daley? We need that rifle. You don’t have to ship it to us. We can pick it up now.”
Sirens outside. A black-and-white screeched to a stop in the side street. I signaled Kit and she stepped into the ladies’ room.
“I—I don’t have it.”
“Where is it, Mr. Daley?”
Two uniformed cops banged into the store. The black one had his hand on his gun, the Hispanic on a Taser. I raised my free hand. “The police are here.”
“Where is the gun? Mr. Daley.”
“In the trunk of a car in St. Louis. Airport parking lot! That’s what I told—” The cops towered over me. I covered the phone. “I’ll be right with you,” I said. “Talking to the FBI.”
“Put down the phone,” the black one said. “Right now.”
“I mean Homeland Security,” I said.
“We’ve recovered that car,” Sara Underwood’s voice said, and then she said something else, but I couldn’t hear it because the Hispanic officer had snatched the phone away.
“Are you going to cooperate?” he said.
“I’m already cooperating! Talk to the lady on that phone!”
He opened the phone and looked at it. “Says ‘call blocked.’”
“Yeah, of course.” I stuck out my wrists. “Let’s go.”
“We don’t do it that way,” the Hispanic one said. He grabbed my arm and hauled me out of the chair and had my hands cuffed behind my back in about one second.
“Take it easy, for Christ’s sake!” One held me while the other patted me down roughly.
“Homicide,” the black one said, in explanation, as he goosed me. “Up in Indiana or someplace.” I almost said “Illinois,” but decided to leave him uncorrected.
At least they didn’t get both of us, I thought, and didn’t look at the door to the ladies’ room.
They stuffed me in the back of the patrol car and managed to belt me into the shoulder harness with both hands behind my back. Maybe my one phone call would be to a chiropractor.
It didn’t last long. We went a couple of blocks with the siren going, the black officer driving slowly while the other said incomprehensible things into the radio. Then they pulled over and helped me out of the car, took off the cuffs and gave me back my cell phone.
“Be careful now,” the black one said by way of apology, and they drove away.
If something like that happened in Iowa City, I’d go down to the station and get on their case. False arrest, harassment, intimidation. Not in the Big Easy, I think.
I walked back down St. Charles for a few blocks and then sat down at a sidewalk café to think.
Was I being watched? Not obviously. Wouldn’t make any difference anyway, if it was just Homeland Security and the FBI and the New Orleans cops. But how far behind are the ones who gave me the rifle, twice?
A pretty black waitress came out, looking bone tired. End of the night shift. I ordered white coffee and a beignet, playing knowledgeable tourist. After I ordered it I chastised myself. Black coffee and a doughnut would have saved me three bucks.
I talked to an operator and then a secretary in the Springfield Homeland Security office, and got a call back from Sara Underwood. “What on earth is going on down there? You’re in trouble with the New Orleans police?”
“You tell me, Ms. Underwood. My girlfriend and I are getting jacked around six ways from Sunday, and all we’ve done is try to cooperate with the authorities. I was just now handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car, and then released, all without a word of explanation. You tell me what’s going on!”