Charles and Carrollton. It was a fine morning, smelling of the wet sidewalks and the breeze off the river. The fronds of the palm trees on the neutral ground were pale green and lifting in the wind against a ceramic-blue sky; the streetcar was loading with passengers by the levee, the conductor's bell clanging. No one seemed to take notice of a chartreuse Cadillac convertible that turned off St. Charles and parked in front of the flower shop, nor of the man in the powder-blue porkpie hat and seersucker pants and Hawaiian shirt who sat behind the steering wheel with a huge plastic seal-top coffee mug in his hand. The man in the porkpie hat inserted a dime in the parking meter and looked with interest at the display of flowers an elderly woman was setting out on the sidewalk under a canvas awning. He talked a moment with the woman, then entered the restaurant and stopped by the hot bar and wrapped a cold cloth around the handle of a heavy cast-iron skillet filled with chipped beef. He made his way unobtrusively between the checker-cloth-covered tables toward the rear of the restaurant, where Ricky Scarlotti had just patted his mouth with a napkin and had touched the wrist of one of the men at his side and nodded in the direction of the approaching figure in the porkpie hat.
