Deja Dead Page 0,79

and talked in packs, leathered and booted despite the warm evening.

Their women sat behind them, or formed conversational clusters of their own. It reminded me of junior high. But these women chose a world of violence and male dominance. Like hamadryas baboons, the females in the troop were herded and controlled. Worse. They were pimped and swapped, tattooed and burned, beaten and killed. And yet they stayed. If this was improvement, it was hard to imagine what they’d left behind.

I scanned to the west of St. Laurent. Right away I saw what I was looking for. Two hookers lounged outside the Granada, smoking cigarettes and playing the crowd. I recognized Poirette, but wasn’t sure about the other.

I fought an impulse to give this up and head for home. What if I’d guessed wrong on the dress? I’d chosen a sweatshirt, jeans, and sandals, hoping they’d be nonthreatening, but I didn’t know. I’d never done this kind of fieldwork.

Cut the crap, Brennan, you’re stalling. Get your sorry butt up there. The worst that can happen is they blow you off. Won’t be the first time.

I moved up the block and planted myself in front of the two women.

“Bonjour.” My voice sounded quavery, like a cassette tape stretched and rewound. I was annoyed with myself, and coughed to create a cover.

The women stopped talking and inspected me much as they would an unusual insect, or something odd found in a nostril. Neither spoke. Their faces were flat and devoid of emotion.

Poirette shifted her weight, thrusting one hip forward. She was wearing the same black high-tops she’d had on when I first saw her. Wrapping an arm across her waist and resting the opposite elbow on it, she regarded me with veiled eyes. Pulling hard on her cigarette, she breathed the smoke deep into her lungs, then pooched out her lower lip and blew it upward in a stream. The smoke looked like haze in the pulsating neon glow of the hotel sign. The sign’s blinking cast nets of red and blue across her cocoa skin. Wordlessly, her dark eyes left my face and returned to the sidewalk parade.

“What you wantin’, chère?”

The street woman’s voice was deep and raspy, as if the words were formed by particles of sound with empty gaps floating among them. She addressed me in English, with a cadence that spoke of hyacinths and cypress swamps, of gumbo and zydeco bands, of cicadas droning on soft summer nights. She was older than Poirette.

“I’m a friend of Gabrielle Macaulay. I’m trying to find her.”

She shook her head. I wasn’t sure if she meant she didn’t know Gabby, or was unwilling to answer.

“She’s an anthropologist? She works down here?”

“Sugar, we all work down here.”

Poirette snorted and shifted feet. I looked at her. She was wearing shorts and a bustier made of shiny black vinyl. I was certain she knew Gabby. She’d been one of the women we’d seen that night. Gabby had pointed her out. Up close she looked even younger. I concentrated on her companion.

“Gabby’s a large woman,” I went on. “About my age. She has”—I groped for a color term—“reddish dreadlocks?”

Blank indifference.

“And a nose ring.”

I was hitting a brick wall.

“I haven’t been able to reach her for a while. I think her phone’s out of order, and I’m a little worried about her. Surely y’all must know her?”

I drew out my vowels and emphasized the Southern version of vous. Appeal to regional loyalties. Daughters of Dixie unite.

Louisiana shrugged, a fluid, Cajun version of the universal French response. More shoulder, less palm.

So much for the Daughters of Dixie approach. This was going nowhere. I was beginning to understand what Gabby had meant. You don’t ask questions on the Main.

“If you run into her, will you tell her Tempe’s looking for her?”

“That a Southern name, chère?”

She slipped a long, red nail into her hair, and scratched her scalp with the tip. The updo was so lacquered, it would’ve held in a hurricane. It moved as one mass, creating the illusion that her head was changing shape.

“Not exactly. Can you think of anywhere else I might look?”

Another shrug. She withdrew her nail and inspected it.

I pulled a card from my back pocket.

“If you think of anything, this is where you can get in touch with me.” As I walked away I could see Poirette reaching for the card.

Approaches to several streetwalkers along Ste. Catherine yielded much the same result. Their reactions ranged from indifference to contempt, uniformly leavened by suspicion and distrust.