House of Blues

you a different take on things—someone trying to kill
you."
    Skip shrugged. "He's not the first one."
    "Oh, God, I'd be depressed too."
    Skip clasped her hands, sunk once more in despair.
"Yeah."
    Tricia said, "I've got to think for a minute."
She closed her eyes and rubbed her head. Then she got up and walked
to the window. When she came back, she said. "Well, there's got
to be something to be learned from this."
    "That's my line."
    " Here's the thing: It will come clear. But I
have to warn you of something. It may take years. You can't sit
around waiting for a sign from heaven. You could go to a shrink—or
are you seeing one already?"
    Skip shook her head.
    " I thought not. This doesn't feel like it's
something in you. The answer, I mean. In you yet, anyway. When it
comes, it'll come."
    "What will come?"
    " The lesson; the justification. I don't know—the
knowledge. The thing that puts it in perspective."
    " What makes you so sure?"
    Tricia laughed. "Nobody can prove me wrong, can
they? I love predicting the future—who's going to disagree?"
    It's too facile. But her mind began to chew on it.
    Even when you're a kid, when you're in school, you
don't get the point of anything. You don't see why you have to learn
to add or know the parts of speech, and then one day you're trying to
balance your checkbook or write some damn case report, and you never
think, "Oh, so that's it." You've just learned it and you
use it. Maybe this is like that.
    She was suddenly unbearably tired, couldn't wait for
Tricia to leave. The instant she could, she threw off her clothes and
flung herself down.
    The taste of tears warmed her tongue as she fell
asleep.
 
 
    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    The wonderful folks at Arnaud's provided invaluable
expertise on the restaurant world, and Chef Kevin Davis even lent me
his knives. My heartfelt thanks to Chef Kevin, Rick Mayeaux, Ross
Miller, Norman Henry, and especially to jane and Archie Casbarian,
who let me spy on them to my heart's content.
    NOPD Captain Linda Buczek gave generously of her
time, energy, and imagination, as did Lieutenant Bob Italiano,
Sergeant Jimmy Keen, and Detectives Wayne Rumore, Tony Caprera, and
Joey Catalanotto.
    Help came from many other kind New Orleanians,
including Betsy and Jim Petersen, Kit and Billy Wohl, Janet Plume,
Debbie Faust, Chris Wiltz, and two writers whose excellent books I
relied on: Bethany Bultman, author of New Orleans, my favorite
guidebook; and Carol Flake, author of New Orleans: Behind the Masks
of America's Most Exotic City.
    Thanks to them all and to David Ramus, Earl Emerson,
Susan Berman, Becky Light, Steve Holtz, Sandy Pearlman, Jon Carroll,
and Captain Ronnie Jones of the Louisiana State Police Department's
gaming enforcement division.
    The fictional restaurant herein—Hebert's—isn't
based on a real restaurant, but the proposed casino is very real. At
this writing, there's no plan for an important restaurant in the
casino and therefore there's been no infighting of the sort described
in the book.
    In Louisiana, though, it's never over till it's over.