Nor a black daughter." He sipped his coffee and gazed straight ahead of him, out across the street at the stucco walls of pink and orange and pale blue, the shutters just opening as servants came out onto the galleries to air bedding and shake cleaning rags. He didn't look back at Shaw, but he could almost sense the man's surprise.
"I got th' impression yore ma was right proud of Miss Janvier."
"She is," said January. "Dominique has fair skin and is kept by a white man. It's Olympe Janvier she's not proud of. My full sister. The one I was looking for in Congo Square."
"Ah."
A woman passed, selling callas from a basket on her head, and stopped, smiling, to hand one of those hot fried rice balls to old Romulus Valle, neatly dressed with a rush basket on his arm, out doing the morning shopping as if he'd never spent last night dancing under the spell of Mamzelle Marie.
After a moment Shaw asked, "Find her?"
"I followed her out of the square and down Rue Saint Louis. The men who beat me followed me. I still can't imagine why. Maybe they just thought I looked like I had money on me, or they recognized me as a stranger."
He turned his face away for a moment, not looking at the tall white man who stood over him. The movement pulled at a fold on his trouser leg and he swatted at it, filled again with the morbid conviction that some of the Cabildo's medium-sized fauna were still with him. Then the fact that he was here, beneath the brick arcades of the market, and not still listening to the profanity of his cellmates and the screaming of the insane, brought it home to him, belatedly, that there was something he needed to say.
"Thank you for getting me out of there." He had to force back the childish impulse to mumble the words, force himself to meet the man's eyes. "It was... good of you. Sir."
Shaw shook his head, dismissing the thanks, and signaled a praliniere who was making her way between the tables. "I never can get enough of these things," he admitted, selecting a white praline and waving away the offer of change from his half-reale. January bought a brown praline, and the woman gave him a little bunch of the straw-flowers that lined the edge of her basket, for lagniappe.
"Lots of Johnnie raws comin' into town all the time," Shaw said, when she had gone. "If it don't bother the folks none if white folks watch 'em dance, what do they care if some out-of-town darky with his big hands in his pockets stares? It ain't like it's a real voodoo dance, not the kind they have out on the lake. You speak to any of the women?"
"I didn't speak to anyone. Maybe I should have."
"Don't see why. You lookin' for Miss Olympe for some reason?"
January hesitated, conscious of the old wariness about showing things to white men, any white men.
Then he nodded and felt in his coat pocket-not the pocket in which he kept his rosary. The gris-gris was still there, wrapped in his handkerchief. He brought it out carefully and unwrapped it behind his hand, lest the waiters see.
"Madame Dreuze asked me at Angelique's funeral Saturday to prove Madame Trepagier had her servant Judith plant this in Angelique's mattress. A theory," he added dryly, "with which I'm sure you're already familiar.
Shaw rolled his eyes.
"Not that it matters to you anymore," added January, looking down as he made a business folding the handkerchief back around the little scrap of parchment and bones, so that the anger wouldn't show in his eyes. With some effort he kept his voice level. "I don't believe Madame Trepagier had a thing to do with either the charm or Angelique's death, but considering the police have decided to drop the investigation, I thought I'd at least see who did want Angelique dead. Do you know if Madame Trepagier managed to keep Madame Dreuze from selling off the two slaves, by the way? Judith and Kessie? They were both Madame Trepagier's to begin with."
It was something he knew he'd have to find out, and the thought of walking down to the brokers along Baronne Street turned him suddenly cold.
He hoped the sick dread of it didn't show in his face, under Shaw's cool scrutiny, but he was afraid it did.
"Morally they were," said the policeman slowly. "But a woman's property is her husband's to dispose