Jules grabbed back his hand. “Whoa whoawhoa! This is a one-time-only deal! You can’t expect me to trick myself up like some goddamn Bourbon Street transvestite every time I leave your house-”

“Oh, I wouldn’tdream of demanding that of you, Jules. There’s too much danger that you might take to it and begin raiding my wardrobe. No, we’ll only take these more drastic precautions until I can drill it into that thick skull of yours that you need to call in some help. And youknow who I mean.”

Jules was about to demand some further explanation of Maureen’s cryptic remark when they were swept into the human maelstrom waiting inside. The department store’s shelves and racks looked like they’d been ransacked by looters. Or maybe locusts. Dozens of shoppers scanned price tags for red slashes and enticing markdowns. Jules stared at the elderly cashiers furiously pecking away at their equally elderly mechanical cash registers, all relics of the Swing Era, and remembered when his mother had brought him to shop and gawk here on Krauss’s opening day, more than a hundred years ago. Looking around him, he was surprised by how little the store had changed. New Orleans had managed to hold on to its musty, familiar, comforting haunts much longer than most other towns, he told himself. Even so, this would soon all be gone: the horseshoe lunch counter on the second floor, next to the Shoe Department; the odd little fourth-floor section that juxtaposed candles, hand-dipped chocolates, and nautical knickknacks; and the clerks who knew their favorite customers better than they knew their own families.

Maureen gave his arm a powerful yank. “Comeon, Jules! You lollygag much longer and they’ll toss you out with the old mannequins. I’m due at the club in a little over an hour, and so long as I’m your meal ticket, you’d better not make me late for a shift!”

The Big-and-Tall section was tucked away in a corner of the Men’s Clothing Department on the first floor. Jules noted with relief that its racks were a bit less depleted than racks elsewhere in the store.

A frazzled-looking salesman, his wrinkled tie drooping at half-mast, approached them. “Can I help you ladies with anything? Shopping for a husky husband or son? We’re runnin‘ great closeout specials on safari suits.”

Jules cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “we’re shoppin‘ forme.”

The salesman, who’d obviously served a wide range of customers in his years on the floor, barely cocked an eyebrow.

Jules ended up walking to the cash register with three safari suits (two in mauve, one in lavender-the more popular colors were long gone), two pairs of drawstring pants, a black-and-gold checkered suit coat, a parcel of lime-green and melon-colored Oxford shirts, and a red velvet vest that even Maureen had to admit looked rather stylish on him.

But his best purchase by far was the wonderful trench coat that the clerk dug out of back stock for him. It was a near-exact copy of the famous garment worn by Humphrey Bogart inCasablanca. Even better, it had the intriguingly exotic pedigree of having been manufactured in the People’s Republic of Poland.

While they were standing in line, Jules nudged Maureen with an overstuffed shopping bag. “Say, what’d you mean earlier about me needin‘ to call in help?”

She glanced back at him, her eyes flashing with irritation. “I meant just that. It’s pretty clear. You need help.” She glanced nervously at the mostly black crowd, then pulled Jules out of line to an isolated corner. “Thestaying alive kind of help. You can’t keep wandering around the city by yourself like some big goofy clown looking for the rest of the circus. You need someone who’s good at figuring things out. You’re not exactly a rocket scientist, you know.”

Jules felt himself redden all over. Maureen, for reasons known only to her impenetrable female mind, had just launched a direct assault on his self-esteem. “What? Are you sayin‘ I’m notsmart enough to solve my own problem? Hey, maybe I wasn’t head of the class in arithmetic, but when it comes to good ol’ common sense, I gotplenty, sweetheart. Look, I got through World War Deuce, didn’t I? The navy wouldn’t have hadhalf as many landing craft on D-Day if it weren’t for me and Doodlebug puttin‘ the bite on them saboteurs-”

Maureen’s eyes flashed with triumph.“Exactly!”

“Huh? ‘Exactly’ what?”

“You just said it yourself. You didn’t fight those saboteurs all by yourself. It was you and Doodlebug.”

“Well, yeah, sure. But he was my sidekick. He didn’t reallycount. I kept him around for laughs. I mean, his biggest job was when he used to run to the corner while we were on stakeout and get me coffee.”

“Don’t you fool yourself. I was around back then, too. That ‘kid’ was thereal brains behind the Hooded Terror. You would’ve tripped over your own cape without Doodlebug around. You need him now more than ever.”

Jules wasn’t smiling. “Yeah? Well, read my lips, Miss Know-It-All.No Doodlebug. No. Doodle. Bug. Ain’t gonna happen.”

Maureen’s voice softened, and she batted her eyes at Jules in a way that might almost be construed as coquettish. “Oh, I don’t see why you have to be sostubborn. After all, you and Doodlebug were such good partners during the war. And besides, I’m sure the two of you would work together even better now,” she said, playfully running her fingertips along the seam of Jules’s muumuu, “now that you have evenmore in common.”

“Why, you-!”

A few minutes later, after Maureen had paid for all of Jules’s purchases with her platinum charge card, a thoroughly chastised Jules fumbled through his newly purchased pockets for his keys and opened the passenger-side door for her. “Look, Mo, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to blow up in front of all them cashier ladies. I really,really appreciate all you’re doin‘ for me.” He waited patiently for her to latch up her seat belt, then carefully closed her door and hurried back to his own side. “Say, you wanna maybe go over to the Trolley Stop for some coffee before your shift? I’d get to show off my new duds, and I could introduce you around to some of the guys.”

Maureen sighed with exasperation; her long, heavy breath left a circle of vapor on the passenger window. “This is a perfect example of what I was talking about before. You crow about all this ‘common sense’ you supposedly have, and then your first decision is to go straight to the one place where people know to find you. The one place in the whole city Malice X iscertain to have a lookout watching for you. Do I need to spell it out any more clearly?”

“Nope.” Jules felt himself redden again as he backed out of Krauss’s parking lot onto Basin Street. Much as he hated to admit it, Maureen had a point. He couldn’t just fall back into his old life as if nothing had happened.

“Just drop me at the club,” she said. “As is, makeup’ll have to be a rush job tonight.”

Jules crossed the seedy boundary of North Rampart Street and entered the Quarter. On Iberville, two preteen boys savagely kicked a third and peeled off his expensive basketball shoes while a pair of tourists holding half-drained Hurricanes watched.

“You want my best advice, Jules? You just stay put at my place tonight. Stay put andthink; come up with a plan before you run out somewhere and get yourself killed.”

Jules was silent until he pulled up to the curb in front of Jezebel’s Joy Room. “Just one question before you go. Where am I sleepin‘ at the end of the night? You got a ’guest coffin‘ or somethin’?”

Maureen hesitated before replying. “Look, you can sleep with me for a couple of nights-just until you get a new coffin built.”

Jules smiled.“Really?”

Maureen, pointedly, did not return the smile. “Now don’t you go reading anything into this! You have exactly two nights to get yourself a new coffin built. In the meantime, as you may remember, my bed is very large-it takes up a full room, in fact-so you and I willnot be sleeping in close quarters. Think the Petries, from the oldDick Van Dyke Show. One foot on the floor, buster.”