“No way!” she exclaimed. “Bud lived upstairs with his second wife and his mother, just like I do now, but this down here was always a club.”

“Yes!” Tubby slapped the bar. “That’s what we need to prove. Have you got any pictures?”

“Are you kidding me? This whole joint was under water. There was black mold from the floor to the roof. Hell, the roof blew off! But Bud always told me this downstairs was a happening bar. They always played live music here. Hell, his mother was a belly dancer!”

“Okay, tell me some names. Who played here?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. But they had some big shows. He talked about a New Year’s party that got raided.”

“That’s probably not too helpful. How about the neighborhood? Anybody here likely to remember?”

“The neighbors here are all new. Back in Bud’s day, this whole area was white. Then the yats moved to Kenner, darlin’. This was one of the last white bars. Not too many people were coming. At the end Bud was running it as a private club.”

“To keep it all white?”

“Shit, no! Bud wasn’t even all white. He was one of those blended Mediterranean types. He didn’t give a crap what color you were. He didn’t like wops, that’s about it. But to get the customers in here he had to offer extra entertainment.”

“You mean like…”

“I mean like girls.”

“This was a strip club?” Tubby exclaimed.

“It might have been that.” Janie lowered her voice. “But to be real about it, baby, this old joint was a back-of-town whorehouse!”

Raisin’s laugh was like a dog’s bark. “Let’s see you get a zoning variance for that,” he crowed. He happily tipped back his beer.

“A what-house?” Sadie was delighted.

“Jeez,” Tubby said. “That could give us a problem.”

“But,” Janie insisted, voice rising, “they had live music here on the weekends. I swear!”

XII

Cherrylynn had oatmeal with walnuts and cranberries at McDonald’s on St. Charles Avenue while studying a philosophy lecture on her iPad. This breakfast was a huge splurge. She usually ate low-fat yogurt, berries, and bran with almond milk at her apartment, and would normally be at her desk by now. But this morning she was traveling on business and was entitled to get to the office late. The public library didn’t open until ten. And she would get reimbursed for the meal.

She wasn’t getting all this “Utilitarianism.” Virtue lies in a thing achieving its purpose? So, the oats achieved their purpose by being oatmeal? This was just her third week of class and her professor had promised that they would be moving fast into the post-moderns and the existentialists and the phenomenologists, “where nothing means anything at all,” he said. She certainly hoped so, because she was already getting stuck.

Cherrylynn tossed her red hair back and wrapped it up behind her neck with a rubber tie while reading the last page of the lecture. This oatmeal hit the spot, though some of the customers in here were a little sketchy. One kid with an extra-large black T-shirt stuffed into his baggy black pants shuffled in to order a vanilla ice cream cone for breakfast. He got it and shuffled back out without being asked to pay. A couple of cops were arguing loudly over their Big Breakfasts about the score of a high school football game. As their voices rose, she was a little alarmed that they were both armed.

According to her watch, it was time to go. She grabbed her gear and ran out to wait for the streetcar. Almost immediately the green car came rambling down the tracks. She hopped on to find a typical morning crowd of people headed downtown to work. One nice guy offered her a seat. He had combed blond hair and was wearing a gray suit and tie and eyeglasses with heavy black frames. She accepted with almost a curtsy and a blush. They locked eyes for a poignant minute as the streetcar lurched forward and zipped along. By the time she jumped off the car in the CBD at Gravier Street she had already learned that the guy’s name was Carl, that he had just passed the bar, and that he was working at the Corrigan and Dutch law firm. He did admiralty. She divulged her own place of employment. Maybe they would see each other around. She considered coming late to work more often.

The main library had automatic doors that only worked sometimes. Inside was a sleepy guard to keep you from stealing books and an array of lost and homeless patrons wanting to stay out of the weather. But on the third floor there was the Louisiana Collection, with thousands of books and papers too rare to ever be checked out. Cherrylynn had spent hours and hours here before, doing projects for her boss, and she liked the quiet and seriousness of the room and the many intriguing items the collection contained. This was the real stuff worth preserving. The library was moving toward digital, and must have gotten a large grant to buy the rows of new computers set out for the patrons to use, but it also had several tall black microfilm readers. You could pick out a four-inch reel of tape, fix it upon the spindles, then slowly wind it under a bright light. It was like watching an old black and white movie— page after page, for instance, of old New Orleans newspapers.

The films were in gray file drawers against the wall, organized by date, and it took Cherrylynn only a few minutes to find the reel she wanted. Several machines were available. She picked one that looked like it would work, clicked on the light, and loaded up her reel. The past flashed before her.

General Creighton Abrams is to replace General William Westmorland. He asks for more troops. The Orioles, Red Sox and Tigers are all competing for the American League East. In local news, the first Southern Decadence Party is held at Matassa’s Bar in the French Quarter. Hurricane Agnes is expected to cause damage in Pennsylvania. D.H. Holmes has a summer sale on ivory silk organza and lace wedding gowns at $229.99. The New Dick Van Dyke Show comes on at seven p.m. on CBS. Manuel’s Hot Tamale carts are available, vendors keep half of what they sell.

The hard part of this research was getting distracted by all the vintage cars, the fantastically cheap prices, and the underdressed models in the department store ads. They wore bell bottoms or miniskirts. Cherrylynn stared at the drawings of their pencil-thin legs with fascination. And look at that ad for the red Corvette! Was that phallic or what? “Phallic” was a word her art history teacher threw into almost every other paragraph of her lectures.

She found the right day of the month. The headline was, “Secretary of State Speaks at the World Trade Center.” There were other big stories that day, but nothing in the front section about an anti-war demonstration or a shooting. She tried Metro. Nothing there, either. Maybe the evening paper. Nope, nothing there.

To be thorough, she scrolled ahead to the next day. “Governor Edwards Appoints Wife to U.S. Senate.” Not relevant. Nothing in the front section. Then, in Metro, under “Police Reports,” she saw, “An unidentified shooting victim was brought to Charity Hospital. Anyone with any information contact Detective P. Kronke at 555-2174.”

“Bingo!” She snapped her finger. “I am one sharp cookie!”

She took a picture of the screen when she was sure the librarian wasn’t looking.

* * *

Officer Ireanous Babineaux showed up at Dubonnet & Associates as scheduled, in uniform and carrying his hat under his arm. Cherrylynn showed him in, trying to put him at ease, but he sat down in Tubby’s big visitor’s armchair as upright as a porch column.

“Any trouble parking?” Tubby asked, to warm things up.

“Nope. Parked in front of your building on St. Charles Avenue with my flashers on.”

“You evidently don’t have to worry about getting tickets.”

“Never,” Ireanous said flatly.