“Quinn does. I don’t.”
“You can fake some songs. Your father gave up on you learning the bagpipes, but I know you took piano. And if you can play the piano, you can master a keyboard. And if the band plays loud enough, no one will care whether you can play or not, anyway.”
“Such faith! How will I live up to it?” Danni asked her.
“I’m telling you, that’s what you need to do.”
“Quinn is fairly decent on the guitar. My friend Jenny LaFleur—you know Jenny, she and her boyfriend, Brad, play with a group called the Nightwalkers—told me that he’s actually pretty good.”
“There you go. There’s your opening. This city is music. You want to get into the heart of the music scene, join a band.”
“I’ll talk to Quinn when he gets back. But Natasha—”
“Give me your palm,” Natasha said.
“You’ve read my palm before.”
“Hand it over,” Natasha said, grinning. “You heard me. Hand over the hand!”
Danni complied.
With an elegant finger and a long, manicured nail, Natasha traced the lines in her palm. “This...is your life line,” she said. “You should have a long life. But see these? These little striations off the main line? They seem to be deepening. Danni, this is a dangerous situation. We don’t walk away from these things, but you need to listen to what I’m saying. You need to find that sax quickly—and the killer. I’m telling you, do what I say. And don’t worry. I’ll come and clap for you no matter how bad you sound.”
*
“Naturally there was no one else in sight,” Jeff Braman said. “There’s always someone on the street and plenty of cops around. But not that night.”
Braman was about thirty-five and looked like a holdover from the sixties. His beard was long, and as he’d told Quinn earlier, his hair would have been long, too, but the doctors had needed to shave his head so they could treat the wound he’d received from the butt of the attacker’s gun.
“It was late. We’d been clowning around with the waitstaff as they cleaned up,” Lily Parker, an attractive woman with short-cut dark hair, told him. Quinn thought she was in her late twenties to early thirties.
The third member of the group was Rowdy Tambor; he was the oldest of the three, as well, probably in his midfifties.
Lily leaned over and tapped the city map Larue had spread out on his desk. “We were there—right on the corner. The guys were walking me home. I’m on Decatur, so we always head there when we’re done, and then Rowdy gives Jeff a ride home.”
“I live in the Garden District,” Jeff said.
“I checked the records, and a patrol officer was a few blocks over right when you needed him,” Larue said, shaking his head. There was no way to have a cop on every block at all times, and everyone there knew it.
“Forgive me if I’m asking you to repeat details you’ve already covered in the past,” Quinn said, “but this guy who held you up at gunpoint and demanded your instruments... How did he manage to wield the gun, beat Jeff and take your instruments? I’m trying to figure out the logistics,” he added quickly, so they wouldn’t think he disbelieved them. “Every little detail is important.”
“It’ll be easier if we act it out,” Lily said. She didn’t appear to be offended. She stood up, and though they looked a little surprised, her bandmates joined her.
“So,” she said then paused. “You want to be him?” she asked Quinn.
“Okay.” He stood, as well.
Larue leaned back in his chair and tossed Quinn a pencil. “Your gun,” he explained, when Quinn shot him a puzzled look.
Quinn caught the pencil and pointed it at the three musicians. “Okay—give me your instruments.”
“I’m glad you didn’t go into acting,” Lily said. “Never mind. Give me the pencil. You be me. I’ll tell you what to do.”
Quinn handed her the pencil, and they changed places.
“You three are walking down the street,” she said. “I had my ukulele that night, so my case was small, and even though he took it, I don’t think he was much interested in it, honestly.”
“Not my guitar case, either,” Rowdy said.
“Okay,” Lily said. “You three are just laughing and joking, and suddenly—I’m there. In front of you. In a black trench coat. And my face is all weird, as if it’s made of plastic, but it’s really a mask. Then I say, ‘Stop! Hand me those cases now—right now—if you want to live.’”
Lily had made her voice harsh, guttural—and muffled.
“He talked like that?” Quinn asked.
“Yeah. I think the mask made his voice funny. I don’t really know how to describe it. It wasn’t a cool Mardi Gras mask. It was like those featureless white faces you see in Venice at Carnevale, except it wasn’t white. It was opaque and shiny, skin-colored, and it made him...faceless,” Lily said.
“She’s described it perfectly,” Rowdy said.