82 Desire

he’ll come, he comes.”
    “You don’t smell so hot.”
    “I’ve been up on a ladder for twelve hours.”
    “Want to go get some dinner?”
    “I’m so tired I can’t move.”
    For the first time, sharing her garconnière with him was more work than fun—literally. They spent every spare moment choosing colors, applying them to walls, cleaning kitchen cabinets, hauling debris.
    Going to work was like a vacation—and she had one of the world’s hardest jobs.
    She was a cop in one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Before decentralization, she’d been a homicide detective.
    However, New Orleans, following New York’s lead, had disbanded its detective bureau and sent everyone out to the districts. Where she’d ended up, someone had bought a huge ledger, marked on it HOMICIDE LOG , and left it empty as a little joke—there had been only seven homicides since the first of the year.
    She had moved from the ferment of Headquarters to the Third District, which was housed in a one-story, low-ceilinged brick building right across Moss Street from Bayou St. John. With a really good tailwind, it wasn’t inconceivable that a ball from the City Park golf course could come sailing through one of its windows. Which wasn’t a bad metaphor for the pace of the Third compared to what she was used to. And that, she supposed, was part of the point of decentralization.
    Throughout the department, the load was lighter. More officers were being hired, were graduating from the academy, and were getting on the streets. And they were good, competent police officers, not desperation hires.
    More cars and more computers had been bought, and now the cars were being equipped with still more computers.
    It wasn’t yet a renaissance, but just about everyone thought things were improving.
    As for Skip, she liked the old system, the way anything could happen in any part of town and she could end up with the case. The Third, compared to some districts, was almost a model of gentility; indeed, it contained the solid middle-class section called Gentilly. It also contained Pontchartrain Park, an upscale black neighborhood built around a golf course, the fancy white districts of Lakeshore (mostly Jewish) and Lake Vista (mostly Catholic), the vast oak forests of City Park, the funky lakeside section called Bucktown, and no fewer than five universities if you counted the Baptist Seminary.
    Still, it wasn’t any quiet country town. The St. Bernard Project was there, for one thing, and for another, there was the constant pressure to lower the crime statistics and get the city livable again. It was an atmosphere where district captains met once a week with maps, comparing notes on what crimes were committed where, trying to identify patterns and develop military strategies. Though the department denied it publicly, there was no way such a system couldn’t lead to rivalry and competition. And so, quiet as the Third might be in some respects, there was still no time for coffee and bull sessions.
    Fortunately, Skip had been transferred with her favorite sometime-partner, Adam Abasolo. But she no longer reported to Sergeant Sylvia Cappello, who’d just passed the lieutenant’s test. Abasolo was her boss and she wasn’t sure she liked it. He had an independent, maverick style that meshed with hers; historically, she’d watched her p’s and q’s with Cappello and gotten down and dirty with Abasolo. She didn’t know if she could do that now.
    But what she did know was, she could work with him. If she’d ended up with Frank O’Rourke as her sergeant, she might have considered a new career in banking. The current deal was functional.
    Their new lieutenant was newly returned to the department—she’d moved away with her husband, and then they’d moved back—more than that, Skip didn’t know. She and Abasolo were reserving judgment. Kelly McGuire, with her by-the-book style, reminded them a bit of Cappello, which was good—but maybe she was a bit too stiff.
    On the other hand, perhaps that permanent wrinkle between her eyebrows was about something else entirely.
    Skip, six feet tall and twenty pounds overweight, distrusted women who made her feel clunky, and McGuire did, almost. She was average height, average weight—nothing wrong with that—but her light red hair was straight and proper, whereas Skip’s was unruly and brown; her blue eyes were pale as ponds, while Skip’s were bright green. There was something a little