"Rene, you dirty bastard, put your tongue back in your mouth."
Rene Broussard lowered his binoculars to watch the enticing twitch of their subject's ass beneath a pink sundress as she walked, carrying coffee and a sugarcoated beignet, toward a bench in front of Saint Louis Cathedral. That dress should have been outlawedi>in the muggy New Orleans heat it stuck to her skin in all the right places. His body tightened with the purely involuntary reaction of a healthy male. He pressed the talk switch on the radio clipped to his jacket lapel. "You're just jealous, chère, 'cause you have no ass."
The radio squawked. "Do, too," his partner, Chessa Tomas, replied. "You just haven't taken a good look 'cause you know you can't have it."
"There is that." He shifted his gaze upward to the woman's face.
Even watching through the iron spokes of the fence surrounding Jackson Square, Rene knew this was their girli>only the Tennessee DMV photo hadn't done her justice. The other stats he'd pulledi>Caucasian female, 25 yrs. old, 5'6", blonde hair, green eyes, 135 lbs.i>also hadn't hinted at the cuteness of her saucy behind, the length of her softly rounded legs, or the shape of her breasts, high and uptilted. Just like he liked them. "Mmmm-mmm."
"Yoo hoo!" Chessa's voice broke in. "Are you gonna ogle her all afternoon, or are we pulling her in for questioning?"
Rene looked up to the balcony over Muriel's restaurant.
Chessa gave him a little wave and tilted her head toward her radio. "It's gonna rain, and I'd just as soon not get soaked."
Rene slid his small binoculars into a jacket pocket, and then glanced up at the sky. Gray clouds, heavy with rain, hovered just above the street lamps. The wind began to whip the colorful beach umbrellas above the street vendors' carts. Mother Nature was giving a preview of the tropical storm the weathermen predicted might hit during the weekend. Time to bring in Natalie Lambert.
Just as he rounded the corner of the fence, a devil wind picked up dirt from the street and swirled toward the row of benches, carrying with it an odd sulfurous odor. "Merde, I wonder if I remembered to latch my balcony doors?"
"That must be one helluva doughnut," Chessa murmured. "The lady seems pretty popular with the pigeons."
Weaving in and out of the psychics' fabric-draped tables and the street artists' booths, Rene kept an eye on his target as she tossed crumbs at the birds gathering around her feet. The little black whirlwind whipped through the crowding pigeons, ruffling their feathers and lifting a few off the ground. "Don't she know we have ordinances against feedin' those birds?"
"Breaking that particular law's the least of her worries."
He paused in front of an artist's stand, pretending to admire the watercolors. "My gut says she's the target, not the perp."
"Sure you're thinking with your brain?" Chessa asked, in her usual smart-ass tone. "Just 'cause she looks pretty in pink doesn't mean she's not a murderer. Why else would she run?"
The lady in question glanced toward the darkening sky and pitched the rest of her meal to the birds.
"Wouldn't you, if everyone around you was droppin' like flies?" Rene nodded to the seller and continued on his way toward the woman who looked like a tasty sherbet.
"I don't knowi>and right now, I don't care. Let's just pull her in before all hell breaks loose."
"All right," Rene said, injecting false...
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