“So what did Corinne say to your good advice?” I prompted him, trying not to sound impatient: I could well be the first sober person to listen to him in a decade.

“Oh, she’s crying, she can’t stand it, why can’t she just run home to Mobile? And I tell her ’cause she’s underage and rich, the cops will all be looking for her and just haul her butt back to Chicago. And when she keeps talking wilder and wilder I tell her they’ll be bound to blame me if something happens to her and does she really need to run away so bad that I go to jail or something. So I thought that calmed her down. ‘Think of it like rookie camp,’ I told her. ‘They put you through the worst shit but if you survive it you own them.’ I thought she figured it out and was staying.”

He shut his eyes. “I’m tired, detective. I can’t tell you nothing else. You go away and detect.”

“If she went back to Mobile who would she stay with?”

“Wouldn’t nobody down there keep her without calling Brigitte. Too many of them owe their jobs to LeBlanc Gas.” He didn’t open his eyes.

“And up here?”

He shrugged, a movement like an earthquake that rattled the bed rails. “You might try the neighbors. Seems to me Corinne mentioned a Miz Hellman who had a bit of a soft spot for her.” He opened his eyes. “Maybe Corinne’ll talk to you. You got a good ear.”

“Thanks.” I got up. “What about this famous Maltese cat?”

“What about it?”

“It went missing along with Corinne. Think she’d hurt it to get back at Brigitte?”

“How the hell should I know? Those LeBlancs would do anything to anyone. Even Corinne. Now get the fuck out so I can get my beauty rest.” He shut his eyes again.

“Yeah, you’re beautiful all right, Jade. Why don’t you use some of your old connections and get yourself going at something? It’s really pathetic seeing you like this.”

“You wanna save me along with the Daytona?” The ugly jeer returned to his voice. “Don’t go all do-gooder on me now, Victoria. My daddy died at forty from too much moonshine. They tell me I’m his spitting image. I know where I’m going.”

“It’s trite, Jade. Lots of people have done it. They’ll make a movie about you and little kids will cry over your sad story. But if they make it honest they’ll show that you’re just plain selfish.”

I wanted to slam the door but the hydraulic stop took the impact out of the gesture. “Goddamned motherfucking waste,” I snapped as I stomped down the corridor.

The floor head heard me. “Jade Pierce? You’re right about that.”

VI

The Hellmans lived in an apartment above the TV repair shop they ran on Halsted. Mrs. Hellman greeted me with some relief.

“I promised Corinne I wouldn’t tell her sister as long as she stayed here instead of trying to hitchhike back to Mobile. But I’ve been pretty worried. It’s just that… to Brigitte LeBlanc I don’t exist. My daughter Lily is trash that she doesn’t want Corinne associated with, so it never even occurred to her that Corinne might be here.”

She took me through the back of the shop and up the stairs to the apartment. “It’s only five rooms, but we’re glad to have her as long as she wants to stay. I’m more worried about the cat: she doesn’t like being cooped up in here. She got out Tuesday night and we had a terrible time hunting her down.”

I grinned to myself: So much for the thoroughbred descendants pined for by Joel Sirop.

Mrs. Hellman took me into the living room where they had a sofa bed that Corinne was using. “This here is a detective, Corinne. I think you’d better talk to her.”

Corinne was hunched in front of the television, an outsize console model far too large for the tiny room. In her man’s white shirt and tattered blue jeans she didn’t look at all like her svelte sister. Her complexion was a muddy color that matched her lank, straight hair. She clutched Lady Iva of Cairo close in her arms. Both of them looked at me angrily.

“If you think you can make me go back to that cold-assed bitch, you’d better think again.”

Mrs. Hellman tried to protest her language.

“It’s okay,” I said. “She learned it from Jade. But Jade lost every fight he ever was in with Brigitte, Corinne. Maybe you ought to try a different method.”

“Brigitte hated Jade. She hates anyone who doesn’t do stuff just the way she wants it. So if you’re working for Brigitte you don’t know shit about anything.”

I responded to the first part of her comments. “Is that why you took the cat? So you could keep her from having purebred kittens like Brigitte wants her to?”

A ghost of a smile twitched around her unhappy mouth. All she said was “They wouldn’t let me bring my dogs or my horse up north. Iva’s kind of a snoot but she’s better than nothing.”

“Jade thinks Brigitte’s jealous because you got the LeBlanc fortune and she didn’t.”

She made a disgusted noise. “Jade worries too much about all that shit. Yeah, Daddy left me a big fat wad. But the company went to Daddy’s cousin Miles. You can’t inherit LeBlanc Gas if you’re a girl and Brigitte knew that, same as me. I mean, they told both of us growing up so we wouldn’t have our hearts set on it. The money they left me, Brigitte makes that amount every year in her business. She doesn’t care about the money.”

“And you? Does it bother you that the company went to your cousin?”

She gave a long ugly sniff-no doubt another of Jade’s expressions. “Who wants a company that doesn’t do anything but pollute the Gulf and ream the people who work for them?”

I considered that. At fourteen it was probably genuine bravado. “So what do you care about?”

She looked at me with sulky dark eyes. For a minute I thought she was going to tell me to mind my own goddamned business and go to hell, but she suddenly blurted out, “It’s my horse. They left the house to Miles along with my horse. They didn’t think about it, just said the house and all the stuff that wasn’t left special to someone else went to him and they didn’t even think to leave me my own horse.”

The last sentence came out as a wail and her angry young face dissolved into sobs. I didn’t think she’d welcome a friendly pat on the shoulder. I just let the tears run their course. She finally wiped her nose on a frayed cuff and shot me a fierce look to see if I cared.

“If I could persuade Brigitte to buy your horse from Miles and stable him up here, would you be willing to go back to her until you’re of age?”

“You never would. Nobody ever could make that bitch change her mind.”

“But if I could?”

Her lower lip was hanging out. “Maybe. If I could have my horse and go to school with Lily instead of fucking St. Scholastica.”

“I’ll do my best.” I got to my feet. “In return maybe you could work on Jade to stop drugging himself to death. It isn’t romantic, you know: it’s horrible, painful, about the ugliest thing in the world.”

She only glowered at me. It’s hard work being an angel. No one takes at all kindly to it.