art deco. After she used the electric motor to put up the top, she tied a scarf on her head and removed a pair of sunglasses from her tote bag and put them on and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. She reached in the bag again and removed a tube of lipstick and rubbed it on her mouth. She could see the old iron green-painted streetcar coming up the neutral ground from the Carrollton district, its bell clanging. The sun had gone behind a rain cloud, and the homes along the avenue, most of them built in the 1850s, had fallen into deep shade, the white paint on them suddenly gray, the only touch of color in the yards from the camellia bushes that bloomed year-round. The barometer had dropped precipitously, the wind had started to gust, and the air was colder and smelled of dust and the advent of winter. Some of the restaurant’s patrons were eating outdoors on a patio covered by a green-and- white-striped nylon awning. The streetcar stopped at the corner, discharging several passengers, then clanged its bell again and lumbered down the tracks through the tunnel of live oaks that extended almost to the Pontchartrain Hotel, near downtown. Gretchen studied the patrons at the tables and tried with no success to see through the smoked-glass windows in the side of the building. When the passengers who had been on the streetcar walked by her, she concentrated on locking the Caddy’s doors, her face angled down. She adjusted the strap of her tote bag on her shoulder and entered the restaurant through a side door.
The maitre d’ approached from his station at the front of the restaurant, a menu under his arm. “Would you like a table?” he said.
“I’m supposed to meet Pierre Dupree here. But I don’t see him,” she replied.
“Mr. Dupree and his party have a private room. Please follow me,” the maitre d’ said.
Gretchen did not remove her sunglasses or her scarf. When she entered the private dining area in back, she saw an elegantly dressed, tall, black-haired, handsome man sitting at a table with two other men, neither of whom wore a jacket. She pulled up a chair and sat down. The tall man was eating a shrimp cocktail, chewing in the back of his mouth, the fork dwarfed by his big hand. He had tucked a napkin into the top of his shirt. “Are you sure you have the right table, miss?” he said.
“You’re Pierre Dupree, aren’t you?” she said.
“I am.”
“Then I’m in the right place. My name is Gretchen Horowitz. I’ve met your wife and your grandfather, so I thought it was time I meet you.”
“How thoughtful. But I have no idea who you are or how you would know my whereabouts,” he said.
“I called your answering service and explained to the woman there that I was from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. She was going to take a message, but I told her I had to catch a plane this afternoon and I wanted to see you before I left. She was very helpful.”
“You’re with the Guggenheim?”
“I went there once. But I don’t work there. I work for Mr. Purcel. You know Clete Purcel?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure. Your name is Horowitz?”
“That’s right. Do you know Tee Jolie Melton?”
“You lied to my answering service, and now you want to sit down at my table and question me about whom I do or do not know?”
“You mind if I order? I haven’t eaten yet.”
“This is a put-on, isn’t it?”
“You wish.”
“The name is Hor owitz, emphasis on the first syllable?”
“Any way you want to say it.”
He set down his fork and removed a granule of crushed ice from the corner of his mouth. He studied her face, his eyes vaguely amused. The two men with him were smiling. One man wore his hair combed straight back, the sideburns buzzed off. There was a thick bump in the top of his nose; his eyes were wide-set and not in line with each other and gave the impression that he saw everything and nothing. The other man was fleshy, too big for his clothes, his neck chafing against a starched collar, his coat flecked with dandruff. He had a small, cruel mouth and wore a big ring on his right hand, inset with a sharp-edged emblem rather than a stone.
“How can I help you, Ms. Hor owitz?” Dupree said.
“Here’s the gen on your wife’s situation,” Gretchen said. “She-”
“The what?” Dupree said.
“The gen. That means the ‘background,’ the ‘information.’ Here’s the gen on your wife. She’s sending us signals that she’s trying to screw you on your divorce settlement. So out of nowhere, she comes up with a photo that shows you with Tee Jolie Melton. That’s the singer you told Dave Robicheaux you didn’t know. But your wife has evidence proving that you’re a liar. Except I don’t believe Varina Leboeuf is trying to screw you. I think she and you are working in concert in order to rat-fuck Mr. Purcel.”
“I see,” Dupree said, snapping his fingers for the waiter.
“You gonna have me eighty-sixed?”
“Oh, no, no. Andre, bring me some more hot water. Ms. Horowitz, all my dealings with my wife are through a lawyer. The other thing she and I work on together is staying out of each other’s way. That’s about all I can tell you, so let’s call this business quits.”
The fleshy man whose collar was biting into his neck said something to his friend. The friend’s hair was greased and as shiny as wire against his scalp. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” Gretchen said.
“It was nothing,” the fleshy man said.
“Something about lipstick?” she said.
The fleshy man shook his head, grinning broadly at his friend. The waiter arrived with a stainless steel teapot, a damp cloth wrapped around the handle; he set it in front of Pierre Dupree and went away.
“I wear lipstick when I work,” Gretchen said. “I wear shades sometimes, too. Sometimes a scarf. Know why that is?”
“No,” the man with the greased hair said. “Clue us in on that.”
“It depersonalizes. Certain things shouldn’t be personal. That’s the way I look at it. What was that about a pig?”
“Don’t know what you mean,” the fleshy man said.
“You said something about lipstick on a pig. That’s what I look like, a pig wearing lipstick?”
“Who would think that?” the fleshy man said.
Gretchen pulled off her shades and set them on the tablecloth, then untied her scarf and shook out her hair. “Now you can get a better idea of what I look like,” she said. “Except now it’s gotten kind of personal. I hate it when that happens.”
Dupree rolled his eyes like a man reaching the limits of his patience. He pulled his napkin from the top of his shirt and dropped it on the table. “Ms. Horowitz,” he said, the Z sound hissing off his teeth, “we have to say good- bye to you now. Say ‘ta-ta’ to everyone and squeeze your way through the dining room and out the door. I’ll ask the waiter to help if you need assistance.”
Another thought besides his own cleverness was obviously on Pierre Dupree’s mind. He suppressed an obvious laugh by coughing on his hand. “I’m going to take a guess. Miami, right? Family originally from Coney Island? How do y’all say it, ‘Me-ami’?”
“I went over to Burke Hall at UL and checked out some of your artwork. I thought it was pretty keen,” she said. “What I didn’t understand was why all the figures look like they’re made of rubber. They made me think of ectoplasm or maybe spermicide being squeezed out of a tube. My favorite painting was the abstract, the one that’s all smears and drips, kind of like a big handkerchief someone with a brain hemorrhage blew his nose on.”
Pierre Dupree reached out and took her hand in his. “You have eyes that are like violets. But they don’t fit in your face or with the rest of your coloration,” he said. “Why is that? You’re a woman of mystery.”
She felt his hand tighten on hers, squeezing her fingers into a cluster of carrots.
“No answer?” he said. “No more cute one-liners from our clever little kike from ‘Me-ami’?”
The pain in her hand traveled like a long strand of barbed wire up her wrist and into her arm and shoulder and throat. She felt her eyes water and her bottom lip begin to tremble.
He tightened his grip. “Are you trying to tell me something?” he said. “Did you think perhaps you fucked with the wrong people? Have you experienced a change of heart? Nod if that’s the case.”
With her left hand, she fumbled the top off the teapot and threw the scalding water in his face. A cry rose from Dupree’s throat as if he were being garroted. He jabbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, pushing back his
