Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,19
close and hot inside the confines of the streetcar. As she watched, huffing and puffing from her dash, she saw that the East Germans had gotten into their tan sedan, pulled away from the curb, made a left turn, and were now tailing the streetcar on the right-hand side down St. Charles. Damn, Jackie cursed to herself, what was she going to do now?
She suddenly got the impression that she was being stared at. She looked up and saw that every face at the back of the streetcar, all of them black, was looking at her. One black woman, wearing a purple dress and clutching a brown paper grocery bag overstuffed with food, leaned over and said, “Sorry, miss, but you don’t belong back here.” She and the other black passengers looked on nervously, wondering what kind of trouble they might be in for having this young white woman riding back here with them.
Not wanting to cause any trouble, Jackie said, “I’m sorry. Excuse me.” Feeling chastened for reasons that she didn’t totally comprehend and had no time to examine in depth, she got up and moved forward to the “whites only” section of the bus, where she took a seat at the right-hand window in order to keep track of the tan sedan as it unnervingly kept pace with the streetcar. Burying her face in her hand, Jackie had no idea how she was going to get shut of these three East German spies.
Her breathing finally back to normal, Jackie decided to stay on the streetcar as long as possible. She saw that the vehicle was headed in the direction of downtown. As it passed Lee Circle, she knew the time was nearing for her to make her move. She would wait until the pedestrian traffic was as thick as possible, then jump off the streetcar with the intention of losing herself in the crowd. Unfortunately, the volume of people she hoped to see never materialized, and then a view of the twin gleaming white spires of the St. Louis Cathedral in the near distance told her that the streetcar was rapidly approaching the French Quarter and the end of its route. She looked out the side window and was dismayed to see the tan sedan still keeping pace in light traffic, pulling even with the front of the streetcar.
At the next stop, Poydras Street, Jackie abruptly rose and bolted off the streetcar, using its middle doors to exit and hoping that the men in the tan sedan wouldn’t notice her among the black passengers disembarking. She looked around to get her bearings. Like the good spy trainee that she was, she had spent time on the plane familiarizing herself with a map of New Orleans and the layout of the city, so she knew that the Mississippi River was on her right and the French Quarter on her left.
Jackie headed down the first street that she came to, not looking to see if the tan sedan was following her. She walked down the street as briskly as possible but found her way blocked by a funeral procession stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk. At the head of the procession was a coffin on a horse-drawn cart. Following the horse-drawn cart was a dense assembly of slow-walking black mourners. And behind them came a brass band, its members swaying as they walked and performing a funeral dirge that seemed to set the mournful pace of the procession. Damn, Jackie thought, there was no possible way she could interrupt this funeral and make her way through the crowd.
For the first time, she looked back and saw that the Three Stooges had ditched their car and were coming after her on foot. They shambled forward in a way that wouldn’t call attention to themselves or make their intentions known to any police officers who might be in the vicinity. Jackie took advantage of their restrained gait to quicken her pace until she found herself at the very edge of the procession, with no way to broach the wall of mourners.
Suddenly, the brass band switched musical gears, and the funeral dirge was transformed into a sprightly version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” At the same time, the mourners broke rank and the previously impermeable crowd suddenly became porous, allowing Jackie to intermingle with the throng. Parasols and handkerchiefs sprouted as the mourners began to dance around in time to the music, an ecstatic combination of joy mingled with grief. Jackie tried