New Orleans Noir

Muddy pond by Maureen Tan

Village de l’Est

On the Wednesday after the levee failed and flooded New Orleans East, sixty-eight-year-old Sonny Vien waded into chest-deep water to rescue the Virgin Mary.

The two-foot-tall statue was at the far corner of the house, near where the front yard met the side yard. It was sheltered by a stone grotto that Sonny had built and surrounded by a garden that his wife, Tam, had planted. Climbing red roses framed the grotto and tiny white flowers formed a carpet at the Virgin’s feet. In a perfect blending of New Orleans tradition and Vietnamese-Catholic belief, they had positioned the grotto so that the Virgin’s back was to the house while her delicate Asian features and outstretched arms were directed toward the not-too-distant levee.

For thirty years, the blue paint of the statue’s gown had faded, the brass cross at the grotto’s peak had weathered, and the garden had flourished. For all that time, the sainted Virgin — not the statue, but the mother of Jesus it represented — had remained vigilant, holding back the dangerous water of the canal and protecting the snug white house on Calais Street.

And then the Virgin failed, Sonny thought bitterly as he navigated through the foul water toward the cross that was now the only thing marking the location of the grotto. She’d failed to protect Tam from the cancer that so unexpectedly took her life. Then she’d failed to protect the house — to protect Village de l’Est and, in fact, the whole of New Orleans — from the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina.

If it had been up to him, the statue would have remained where it was. Failed and submerged. But Tam would have judged that a sacrilege. And with her less than six months in the grave, Sonny’s actions were most often guided by what he thought she would have wanted. That was why he’d ignored Mayor Nagin’s evacuation order and ridden out the hurricane rather than leaving their three Siamese cats to fend for themselves. And that was why he had left behind the security of his windowless second-floor attic.

Wearing the same worn T-shirt and faded khaki shorts he’d had on when he’d first retreated from the flood, Sonny had gone back downstairs. He’d already ventured into the flooded first floor several times before, intent on retrieving a few more photos, gathering a little more food, fetching a couple more blankets. So as he’d waded once again through the knee-deep water, he averted his eyes from the sight of his favorite chair soaked beyond repair, looked quickly past the darkly stained wallpaper curling away from the walls, tried not to think about the rugs beneath his feet. But he couldn’t ignore the smell — the odor of rotting food, wet paper, decomposing wood, and mildew that the stagnant water seemed to bind together.

The smell had followed him as he pushed open the water-swollen side door, then stepped onto a tiny porch. As he made his way gingerly down a trio of steps linking the porch to the driveway, a Vietnamese proverb sprang, unbidden, into his mind. He spoke it aloud before leaving the last step, tipping his head as he listened to the way the flowing syllables of his native tongue echoed off the unnatural silence beyond his kitchen door. A silence that — at least today — had been unbroken except for birdsong and the occasional racket of low-flying helicopters.

“An co di truoc. Loi nuoc theo sau.” (“When having a party, go first. When walking in the water, go after.”)

Sonny had smiled — a tired, twisted smile — as he considered the uselessness of the proverb’s wisdom. Then he went first and alone into the tepid water, using his wiry 5'2" frame to estimate its depth. About four feet, Sonny decided, knowing that he was one of the lucky ones.

Though he hadn’t anticipated the flooding, he’d been cautious enough to follow a New Orleans maxim. As Katrina made landfall, he’d taken his old shotgun — rather than an axe — with him into his attic. He hadn’t needed it. But in the hours after storm-driven water overtopped the nearby levee, he’d heard shotgun fire echoing in the distance. And he feared that in the lower-lying areas surrounding Village de l’Est, people trapped by rising water in their windowless attics were blasting holes in their roofs to escape deathtraps.

Another helicopter flew overhead, its clatter magnified as the sound bounced off the swamped houses below. It was on its way, Sonny was certain, to pluck unfortunates from their rooftops. To rescue people whose lives were endangered. But because that did not describe Sonny’s situation, it didn’t occur to him to signal for help. He didn’t need rescuing. As others had evacuated, he’d prepared. He had food and water, the company of his cats, a battery-powered radio, and a dry attic. No matter if it took a week or two or even three, Sonny knew that eventually the water would recede. Then his neighbors would return.

Ta ve ta tam ao ta. Du trong du duc ao nha van hon. That’s what generations of Vietnamese had advised each other. (“Let’s go home and bathe in our own pond. Clear or muddy, it’s the water of our pond.”)

Now that proverb, Sonny thought, was appropriate to the present situation. War and governments might have compelled the immigrants of Village de l’Est to abandon their homeland. But a big storm? An unexpected flood? Sonny shook his head. That would not keep a Viet Kieu — a Vietnamese living in the land of golden landscapes — away from home for very long. He was certain that most would return to the muddy pond that was now Village de l’Est. And they would rebuild.

In the meantime, he would wait. And rescue the statue. For Tam.

The day was hot and humid, so Sonny moved slowly through the water, conserving his energy, using his sandaled feet to feel his way along the path that led to the statue. The flagstones paralleled the driveway for a dozen feet, then rounded a corner into the front yard. From there, the path curved outward until it reached the center of the yard, then curved back until ending at the grotto. No need for American efficiency in this route, Tam had insisted as Sonny laid the stones. And then she’d filled the shallow half-moon between path and house with delicate shrubs, colorful flowers, fragrant herbs, and interesting objects.

Now all that beauty was submerged, replaced by debris and rainbow slicks of chemicals floating on the muddy water. The carefully placed objects and lush growth had become nothing more than hidden hazards. For the first time, Sonny wished the route to the grotto was more direct.

At a place where the arc of the path took it closest to the street, something caught Sonny’s ankles, sending him plunging into the water. For a heartbeat or two, he panicked, certain that he’d encountered a cottonmouth. That its curved fangs would soon plunge into his ankle, delivering its lethal poison.

Urgently, Sonny kicked himself free of the tangle, flailing his arms wildly as he scrambled back onto his feet. That was when the section of flexible drainage hose, dislodged by his movements, drifted to the surface. Still sputtering and coughing, Sonny cursed the hose, cursed his pounding heart and his irrational fear. Though he’d admitted it to few besides Tam, snakes terrified him. Especially vipers. He ran his hands over his face and his crew-cut gray hair, slicking away the worst of the water. And then he stood quietly, concentrating on his breathing as he struggled to regain his sense of calm.

Deliberately — almost defiantly — he ignored one of the customs he’d had since childhood. Though Tam would have disapproved, he did not pray to the Virgin for courage. Instead, he lifted his chin, turned his back on the grotto, and focused his attention on the ruined landscape.

Debris was everywhere. The screeching wind that had twisted signs and toppled trees had also shattered windows and torn away whole sections of houses. Power lines hung like thick, twisted vines, dangling down into the water, no longer sparking as they had when Katrina swept inland. Only the roofs of a few drowned cars made it possible to separate street from front yards.

One of those cars, Sonny saw, belonged to his neighbor on the corner.

The car was a distinctive color. Blackberry, its owner, Charlie Pham, had informed him just a week earlier. The presence of the expensive car in front of Sonny’s modest house puzzled him. No doubt the five members of the Pham family would have evacuated New Orleans in their minivan. But why, Sonny wondered, wasn’t the new Cadillac parked in the relative security of Charlie Pham’s brick garage? Sonny pondered this briefly, then shrugged, confident that there was some simple explanation.

His wandering gaze moved on, taking in the flood-ravaged houses of neighbors and friends. Abruptly, he looked back in the direction of the grotto, grateful that Tam had not lived long enough to see another home — another community — devastated and abandoned. They had been little more than children when they’d fled the Communists, abandoning their village in the North for the safety of South Vietnam. Then, when Saigon fell, they’d left Vietnam behind forever. And they’d come to America. Where their lives had been blessed.

Until now.

Once again, Sonny felt a stab of anger toward the Virgin. He used that feeling to push aside his fear and waded forward again. As he neared the grotto, he made an even greater effort to stay on the path as tangles of thorn-laden rose tendrils broke the water’s surface all around him — reminding him that he’d left Tam’s roses untended and untrimmed for a long time.

Sonny considered the possibility that the flooding was punishment for his neglect. But in the space of a few steps, he dismissed the idea as superstition and turned his attention to the task confronting him. He elbowed aside debris that had collected in front of the grotto, then firmly closed his eyes and mouth, held his breath, and plunged into the water. His fingers slipped over the smooth, rounded stones that lined the grotto’s interior. Then they encountered the statue. He wrapped his arms around the Virgin, reminded himself to use his knees rather than his back to bear the weight, and hefted the statue upward, out of the water.

It was heavier than he remembered.

He hugged the statue tightly against his chest, staggering beneath the weight, and moved back along the path. By the time he reached the place where he’d bumped into the hose, he was breathless from exertion. And he knew that he’d have to rest before carrying the statue the remaining distance into the house. But it felt like failure — and, though he hated to admit it, a lot like sacrilege — to drop the Virgin back into the muddy water. So, now more tired than cautious, Sonny left the path and headed for a nearer goal — Charlie Pham’s Cadillac.

The flooding had caused him to misjudge the car’s location. But it was still closer than the side porch. Struggling to maintain his balance and his hold on the statue as he stepped off the curb, Sonny waded forward into the street. He ignored the water that crept up his shoulders and tried to ignore his growing dread. Maybe the car had simply broken down and been left where it stalled. Heading away from Charlie’s house.

But heading where?

With his last bit of strength, Sonny hefted the Virgin onto the roof, laying her on her back. The rigid blue folds of her cast-stone robe scraped the pretty dark purplish paint of Charlie’s pride-and-joy as Sonny pushed the statue into a secure position. Then he finally admitted to himself that only a catastrophe — and nothing so small as an approaching hurricane — could have prompted Charlie to leave his new car in the middle of the road.

Free of the statue’s weight, Sonny almost bounced as he walked in the deep water around the car, seeking an explanation for why his friend had abandoned his Cadillac.

Just as he noticed that the driver’s door was open, Sonny also saw the top of a human head. It bobbed a few inches above the water, in the V where the door hinged to the car’s frame. The bald dome with its distinctive, monklike fringe of longish dark hair was definitely Charlie’s.

Sonny’s first thought was that Charlie was the victim of an unsuccessful carjacking. Or a robbery gone wrong. Periodically, the streets of Village de l’Est spawned violent gangs — gangs encouraged by the Vietnamese immigrants’ reluctance to call the police. Before Katrina, neighborhood gossip had centered on just such a group. A few greedy, alienated young men intent on victimizing their own people. Charlie, Sonny suspected, would be an obvious target. Everyone in Village de l’Est knew that he owned a jewelry store on Alcee Fortier Boulevard, the heart of the Vietnamese business — and tourist — district.

Sonny moved reluctantly toward the body.

When he fought beside American GIs in Vietnam, death had been familiar and unavoidable. But decades in America had conditioned Sonny to leaving death to others. And now, thanks to Katrina, the roads were impassable, the phones didn’t work, and the police... Sonny shrugged. No doubt the low-lying Versailles District Police Station was also underwater. And anyway, the NOPD would be too busy with the problems of the living to worry about the welfare of the dead.

There is no one else to rely on, Sonny told himself.

So he took a deep breath and went down into the water again, this time deliberately opening his eyes. Trying to peer through the muddy water. He sought the dark shape of Charlie’s body, used eyes and hands to discover that Charlie’s legs — clothed in loose-fitting jeans — were caught beneath the car door. Sonny freed the body, let it float to the surface, came up beside it, and gulped air. Charlie was face down in the water, and Sonny scanned the length of his friend’s back, seeing nothing that indicated how his friend had died. Comforted by that, he rolled Charlie over. Briefly and against his will, Sonny recoiled at the sight of the distorted, waterlogged features. But he could see there were no marks of violence on the front of Charlie’s body either.

Almost relieved, Sonny considered a more natural cause of death.

For a moment, he ignored the body floating beside him and looked carefully around. Noticed, for the first time, a few leafy branches jutting from the water not too far from the front of the car. He glanced upward at the canopy of trees shading Calais Street. Easy enough, now that he knew what to look for, to spot a splintery wound on a storm-battered magnolia. To guess that the thickest part of that fallen limb was now underwater, blocking the street. Blocking the car.

Obviously, he reasoned, Charlie had been driving away from his house in the hours just before Katrina made landfall. Too late, really, to be evacuating if the wind had already grown strong enough to tear away tree limbs. Sonny wondered now if the older van had failed mechanically. Stranding not just Charlie, but his entire family. Delayed for some unknown reason, they would have hurriedly piled into the Cadillac with the storm breaking all around them. Then, still within sight of their home, a tree limb had crashed to the pavement, blocking their way. Charlie was middle-aged, extremely fit, and one of the most determined people Sonny knew. Instead of turning around and taking the slightly longer route to Michoud Boulevard and Chef Menteur Highway, Charlie would likely have hurried from his car, intent on pulling the branch out of his way.

Suddenly, Sonny found significance in the power lines dangling in the water. The city’s electricity was still on when Katrina made landfall. If Charlie hadn’t noticed a live wire making contact with the wet ground nearby or if a power line tore loose just as he stepped from the car...

Charlie would have been electrocuted.

And if there were passengers...

Now Sonny was imagining a car full of victims. People he cared about. Charlie’s five-year-old twins, Magdalene and Michael. Agnes, who was three and nearly as tall as her brother and sister. They would have been strapped into their car seats. And Nga. A kind woman who had moved in with her son-in-law after his wife died. To help with the children.

Maybe she’d tried to help Charlie during the storm.

Sonny’s stomach twisted with dread as he pictured all of those bodies inside the car. Or floating somewhere nearby. Bloated after days in the water. He shook his head, thinking that this was too much to ask of any man. That nothing — not even the war — had prepared him to face this horror alone.

That’s when Sonny began praying to the Virgin again.

Not to the statue on the roof of the car, but to the sainted ancestor who had once been a flesh-and-blood woman. A woman who had remained quietly and steadfastly brave in the most horrific of circumstances.

“Please, give me courage,” he said aloud.

Then, without giving himself an opportunity to lose his nerve, he went below the water again.

He couldn’t see well enough to search the car from the outside. So Sonny crawled into the front seat, felt around for a body in the passenger seat. No one. He left the car, stood long enough to drag in another lungful of humid air, then resumed. Quickly, he ran his hand along its frame and located the rear door handle. Locked. So he went in again through the open driver’s side door, struggling to hold his breath as he leaned between the bucket seats. Real leather, Charlie had told him — not really bragging, simply pleased. Sonny kept his eyes open, seeking small shadows, his outstretched arms moving through the water that filled the rear compartment, bracing himself for the moment he would feel a small body.

He found nothing. After thanking the Blessed Virgin for his courage, Sonny decided that Nga and the children must have evacuated in the van after all. Maybe only Charlie had been delayed. The jewelry store he owned was no more than two miles away. It was possible that Charlie had spent too much time securing the store, then foolishly returned home for one last look or to fetch one last possession. That was when fate must have dealt him an unexpected and lethal blow.

It took Sonny only a moment to decide that he owed it to his friend — to his friend’s family — to secure the body until it could be claimed and properly buried. It took a little longer to figure out how, exactly, that could be done. In the end, he decided to return Charlie to the Pham house. There, he would find some dry place to lay the body, say a final prayer for his friend, and then turn his back. Walk away. Return to his own high-and-dry attic — to the now almost irrelevant task of moving the statue — until the water receded and civilization returned to Village de l’Est. Then he would contact the authorities and make sure that Charlie’s family was notified and his body taken care of.

It didn’t seem like enough, but that was all he could think to do.

He grabbed a handful of Charlie’s sodden shirt, ignored the unnatural coolness of the flesh below the fabric, and waded down the center of Calais Street, towing the body behind him. He guided it up the front walk that led to the Phams’ big white house with its wraparound porch and pretty green shutters. Once on the porch, Sonny was left standing in water that was little more than calf deep. His friend’s body, no longer anchored by Sonny’s grip or buoyed by several feet of water, rested on the porch floor with the water nearly covering it.

The door was locked, but Sonny knew to tip back one of the terra cotta lions to retrieve the extra key. He unlocked the door, bent back down to take hold of Charlie, and dragged him inside. Left him stretched out on the tiled foyer floor as, more from habit than necessity, Sonny closed the door behind them. Time spent in his own devastated home had prepared him for the sight of Charlie’s. Except for the children’s toys floating in the water.

Almost angrily, he grabbed Charlie’s shirt again, grunting just a little as he slid the sodden weight across the foyer and into the flooded living room.

He heard Nga gasp as he came through the entryway. Heard her gasp and then let out a sound that lay somewhere between a sob and an abruptly muffled wail. With his eyes, Sonny searched for the source of the painful sound, saw her sitting halfway up the staircase to the second floor, illuminated by the light coming in through a broken window.

She was dressed, as was her custom, in a traditional ao dai. Her flowing black trousers were topped by a fitted gray-and-white patterned overdress whose long front and back panels were slit to the thigh. Sonny recalled how Tam — who was short and round — had always been good-naturedly jealous of Nga’s beauty. But now Nga’s large brown eyes and bow-shaped lips were stretched wide with shock. Her long, glossy hair — which Sonny had never seen except wrapped tightly in a bun — was caught in a limp braid. And there was nothing graceful in the way she moved down the stairs.

She hauled herself into a standing position, then leaned a slim shoulder against the wall as one of her delicate hands dragged reluctantly along the railing. When she drew closer, Sonny could see that there were dark circles beneath her eyes. And that her right cheek was bruised and swollen.

When she reached the body, Nga took Sonny’s outstretched hand and used it briefly for support as she knelt in the water beside her son-in-law. She ran her hand lightly over Charlie’s face, then sketched a cross in the center of his forehead with her fingers.

“I knew,” she murmured in Vietnamese, her eyes still on Charlie. “He was a good father, a dutiful son-in-law. When he didn’t come back, I knew that he had to be dead. Or terribly injured.” Then she switched to English as she looked up at Sonny. “Where did you find him?”

Her voice remained calm despite the anguish that touched her face. Though she and Sonny usually conversed in Vietnamese, Sonny understood that concentrating on an adopted language — no matter how well she spoke it — made it easier for Nga to control her emotions.

He matched the language and tried to match her calm. Despite his desire to find out why she was still in New Orleans, he quickly explained what he’d seen and how he thought Charlie had died.

“It would have been a quick death,” he said finally, hoping to give her some comfort.

To his surprise, Nga had another concern altogether.

“Which direction was the car facing?” she asked.

Though Sonny wondered if shock had compelled her to focus on such a triviality, he answered her question.

“Then he didn’t make it to the store,” Nga said flatly. At that, her voice broke, and she pressed her hand to her mouth again. But even as she muffled a sob, her eyes widened and Sonny saw something he interpreted as relief touch her features. “Unless...”

She scrambled to her feet.

“We must search the car,” she said, her voice suddenly stronger. “You told me where you found it, but perhaps the floodwater turned the car around. Maybe Charlie was returning from the store.”

Almost before she finished speaking, Sonny was shaking his head against such foolish hope. But, suddenly energetic, Nga ignored his reaction, abandoning her son-in-law’s body to rush through the foyer to the front door. She made it as far as the porch steps before Sonny was able to catch up with her. He grabbed her wrist, stopped her from plunging forward into the deeper water.

“Let me go!” she cried.

Sonny ignored her attempts to pull free, ignored the small fist pummeling his chest.

“Stop it, Nga!” he demanded, fearful that grief had driven her to madness. “Charlie is dead. Now you must think about the children. Are they upstairs?”

Abruptly, she stopped struggling and, for a moment, stared at him. As if surprised by his question. Then she spoke.

“They are gone. Held for ransom. They took them on Sunday.”

At that, Sonny released Nga’s trapped wrist, and he knew that his face reflected his shock.

Absentmindedly, she rubbed her arm as she continued speaking, seemingly oblivious to the water soaking her slacks and lapping above the hem of her dress.

“The children were already in their car seats. Waiting to leave. Charlie and I were in the house, grabbing just a few more things. We came outside in time to see two men in our van, backing it out of the driveway. And another in a car in front of the house. All wearing masks. The man driving the car shouted at us in Vietnamese. ‘Stay by the phone! No police or the children die!’

“Magdalene and Michael and little Agnes were crying, screaming in the backseat. Charlie begged the men to please, please give the children back. That he would pay now. Whatever they asked.”

Nga stopped speaking, stared out in the direction of the street. In the direction, Sonny suspected, that the kidnappers had taken. He watched as she pressed her eyes shut long enough to trap the tears that threatened her cheeks.

“It was hot,” she murmured in Vietnamese. “So I’d left the motor running, the air-conditioning on to keep the children cool. If I’d just kept the key in my pocket...”

“You couldn’t have known,” he replied in Vietnamese, shaking his head. “Blame them, not yourself.” And then he asked in English: “What did you and Charlie do?”

Nga took a deep breath, let out a trembling sigh, then spoke again: “We waited for hours, until after dark. And I was certain that they had already killed the children. But Charlie said no, that such a gang wanted money, not the attention of the police. So if they murdered—” Nga shook her head, as if to push the thought away. “Charlie told me that the waiting was just to make sure we would pay without hesitating. He said they must have planned this, that the evacuation just gave them an opportunity — a time when we would be vulnerable and the police would be too busy to help.”

“And then the kidnappers phoned,” Sonny said, his tone making it a statement. “And Charlie went out into the storm, trying to get to the store.”

Nga nodded.

“They told him to empty the safe at the store, to bring all the money and jewelry back to the house. They promised to come for it the next day. If the ransom was enough, he would get his children back.”

But like so many in New Orleans, Sonny thought, the kidnappers hadn’t anticipated the strength of the hurricane. Or the depth of the flooding.

“Have they returned?”

She nodded, briefly touching the bruise on her cheek with a trembling hand. And Sonny cursed himself for noticing at such an inappropriate moment that the nails on her long and graceful fingers were painted a delicate pink.

“Not on Monday,” she said, “but yesterday. Just before sunset. Long after I judged my entire family dead. Only one man came. He pounded on the door until I opened it and asked for the money and jewelry from the store. That’s when I told him that I thought the storm had killed Charlie. I begged him to return my grandchildren.”

“How did he get here?” Sonny asked. “Did he walk? Was his clothing wet?”

She nodded. And Sonny thought to himself that the kidnappers could not be too far away.

“He demanded the combination for the safe,” Nga continued. “He said that they would go themselves to get what was owed them. I swear, I would have given it to him had I known it. But the store is Charlie’s business, not mine. When I told him that, he struck me. Called me a useless old woman. Then he said that everyone knew the Phams were wealthy and that we’d installed an alarm on our house to protect our valuables. I told him it was just for protection, for me and the children. Nothing more. But he didn’t believe me. He gave me a day to gather up my valuables. And then...”

Nga’s face crumpled and tears began streaming down her cheeks. Sonny opened his arms to her and she pushed her face into his shoulder, sobbing out the rest of the story.

“He said that they would bring the children back with them before sunset. That they would drown them in front of me if what I had to offer was not enough.”

Sonny held her, letting her cry, knowing that her natural reserve would soon have her straightening in his arms, stepping away from him. And when that happened... He shook his head just a little, pushing away another stab of sorrow.

A moment later, she did just what he’d expected. And then she walked past him, back through the foyer.

Sonny followed her, saw her hesitate as she caught sight of Charlie’s body, then watched her straighten her spine and lift her chin. She walked to the base of the staircase. Kept her back to Sonny as she shook her head, laughed a little. It was a sound untouched by humor.

“These... thugs would be disappointed to know that Charlie grew up more American than Vietnamese. He believes... believed... in banks. That’s where our money is kept. And most of the jewelry we own is in a safe deposit box. But still, there were a few things around the house.” She glanced over her shoulder at Sonny. “Shall I show you what I have?”

Sonny nodded, then watched as she walked back up the carpeted stairs. Just past the landing, Nga bent to pick up a bundle tucked in the shadow of a step. Sonny saw that it was a lace-trimmed pillowcase.

“I gathered up everything that those men might value,” she said as she came back down the stairs, then opened the bag for him to peer inside. “Credit cards. Bracelets, watches, rings. A few gold coins. All the cash I could find. Almost five hundred dollars. I have a key to the neighbor’s house, so I even went there, too. Looking for valuables they’d left behind. I found a few things.”

Sonny imagined adding every bit of cash and jewelry he had to her bag and knew it would still not be enough for men who were willing to steal children. Though he said nothing, Nga sensed his doubt. Or perhaps she read it in his expression.

Panic pinched her voice, making it shrill. “Then what shall I do?”

Sonny murmured another prayer to the Virgin. For courage. And for a return of skills he thought he’d never use again. Not in America, where there was no war.

“We will wait for them to come,” he said finally. “And we will get the children back.” Or we will all die in the attempt, he thought.

Hours later, the men came back.

For much of that time, Sonny had been waiting in the shelter of a collapsed carport opposite the Phams’ front yard. He’d been sitting above the water on a section of crossbeam, but when he saw the men approaching, he slipped into the water.

There were three of them, just as Nga had said. Two moved through the deep water on either side of a raft created from a section of privacy fence. Another walked behind. They were bare-chested, golden-skinned, and muscular. Despite the masks they wore, it was easy to see that they were young men. A tattoo of a sinuous green dragon curled around each man’s upper right arm.

The Pham children were sitting at the raft’s center, bound together shoulder-to-shoulder with duct tape. Facing outward. More duct tape covered their mouths. Above the tape, their eyes were terrified. It would take little effort, Sonny realized, to tip the raft and send the bundle of children tumbling into the water. Where they would certainly drown.

The children shared the raft with three handguns.

The procession stopped in front of the house, in front of the porch. Sonny watched as the two flanking men abandoned their positions and went up the steps. Two of the handguns went with them. They shouted loudly and waved the guns in Nga’s direction when she came to the door.

Maximum intimidation, Sonny thought.

One of the men pointed at the raft, clearly threatening.

Nga nodded, looking nervous, but did just as she and Sonny had agreed. She gestured for them to come inside. To view the valuables she’d collected.

“Keep them inside for as long as possible,” Sonny had instructed her, silently admiring her courage when she’d immediately agreed. They had spread the ransom across the dining room table, then gotten rid of the pillowcase so that gathering up the money and jewelry would be less convenient for the kidnappers.

Nga had added to the plan: “There’s a wall safe upstairs. I’ll put half of the money back into it. When they demand more, I’ll reluctantly tell them about it. Then I’ll take them upstairs. After that, they can wait as I search the house for the extra jewelry I’ve just remembered.”

“Smart,” Sonny’d said, and then he’d grinned at her. “Be sure to move slowly, old woman. That way you’ll give an old man the time that he needs.”

Now, as he slipped quietly into the water, Sonny murmured another prayer to the Virgin. He apologized to her for previous transgressions, then asked her to intervene on his behalf. To ask the Lord’s forgiveness for what he was about to do.

“Ban cung sinh dao tac,” he said finally. (“Necessity knows no laws.”) And he hoped that the old adage was respected in heaven, too.

Then he made sure his grasp was firm around the razor-sharp filleting knife he’d taken from his tackle box when he’d briefly returned to his little house. And he moved forward, only his nose and eyes above the water’s surface, the top of his head camouflaged by a small, leafy branch. When he’d tested it, Nga had assured him that it looked as if the branch were merely floating loose on the water.

Sonny had already checked his route, knew exactly where the obstacles lay between him and the porch. He moved forward quickly, detouring when he needed to, half-swimming, half-gliding through the water. Recalling how he’d once crossed rivers in just this way, intent on an enemy.

The man who’d been left behind was entertaining himself by terrorizing the children. He had retrieved his gun and, with his free hand, was leaning on the raft, pushing it downward against the water’s pressure, then releasing it abruptly. He was laughing at the children’s muffled cries.

Sonny emerged from the water directly behind him. He wrapped one arm around the young man’s shoulders as he slid the blade firmly across his throat. Just as he’d been taught back in Vietnam. Then he held the body for a moment, waiting for it to hang limp before lowering it slowly into the water.

The gun sank before he could retrieve it, but that didn’t matter.

He smiled at the children and touched his fingers to his lips. But he left them taped up and gagged. Impossible to trust ones so young to the silence that was essential to saving their lives. He pushed the raft back down the street, moving as quickly as he could, finally beaching it on his own tiny side porch.

He took the children up into the attic.

“Stay here,” he said in Vietnamese, and then again in English. “Your grandmother and I will be back soon.”

He tossed them a package of cookies, then wedged the attic door shut from the outside so that they couldn’t follow him. They would die slowly, he knew, if he did not succeed. If he did not return.

He went back to the Pham house.

Just inside the living room, he stood on his tiptoes to reach past the ornate façade at the top of a mahogany display case. His shotgun, fetched from his attic hours earlier, was exactly where he’d placed it. Ready to use.

He followed the angry voices. And the high-pitched wavering voice of a woman. One who Sonny knew was far too brave to be as panicked as she sounded. He crept up the stairs, now too busy concentrating to be praying. Then he swung around the corner into the master bedroom.

Nga had backed away from the men, left them standing before the small wall safe. When she saw Sonny, she dove for cover behind the bed. Just as they’d agreed.

“Drop your weapons,” Sonny said in Vietnamese, making the effort to keep his voice low and absolutely steady. “Or you’re dead men.”

The two did as he said, turning to face his shotgun. Impossible to read the expressions on the faces beneath the masks. But Sonny didn’t much care what they thought. He marched them down the stairs at gunpoint. Into the water of the first floor. Past the place where Charlie’s body had been before he and Nga dragged it up to the second floor, placed it in the bathtub, gently wrapped it with a sheet.

He showed them to the front door.

“Your friend is dead,” he said. “But I was able to take back the children without killing you. Say your prayers tonight and thank God and the Virgin for your worthless lives.”

Sonny stood on the porch, gun leveled in their direction, watching as they waded out into the deeper water.

Nga had come downstairs, too, and stood just behind him.

“The children are safe,” he murmured.

“Kam ouen,” she replied quietly. (“Thank you.”)

Sonny would have smiled, but just then one of the men stopped moving. He turned to face the porch, and his friend followed his lead.

“As long as the water is high,” he shouted, “we own Village de l’Est! And we’ll be back. Perhaps we’ll take the woman next time.”

The other kidnapper laughed, nodded.

“Don’t sleep, old man. Because when you do—”

Sonny begged for the Virgin’s understanding as he shot them both.

Their bodies sank beneath the muddy water.

Lawyers’ tongues by Thomas Adcock

Gentilly

I hope that the one of my relations who come across this gift find a very exlent use for it since the old bag I hereby confess to steal it from was a lowdown evil person who actually deserve what I imagine they going to do to me up to Angola after they catch up to me, which is stick me with the ugly needle and put me down like a cat...

Maybe there was ten thousand dollars’ worth of “gift” slipping around in my hands, maybe twenty. A sheaf of beautiful green-gray bills fluttered to the floor, along with Frank’s last letter to anybody. I stared at etchings of dead presidents on paper money. But all I could see, really, was the memory of my brother’s face, how it so often wore the expression of a mutt dog expecting to be cuffed.

My brother wrote letters practically every day of his life, always on lined paper torn from the Big Chief notebooks he bought from Bynum’s Pharmacy. Frank bought Big Chiefs like other people buy newspapers and chewing gum.

I picked up his letter from the floor.

Probly you going to come across this here loot, Wussy Wally. You being the onlyest one of our so-called family ever care to be buzzing around my bizness...

He always wrote in jet-black Sheaffer Skrip fountain pen ink. His handwriting was strangely elegant; surely that would seem most odd to those who didn’t care to know anything about Frank besides the worst thing about his record in life.

He called me “Wussy Wally” only when it was just the two of us. I imagine Frank believed his little brother would be embarrassed otherwise. So I was properly Walter, or sometimes Walt, when anybody else was around.

I considered the private name a gesture of my brother’s affection and gentleness. For indeed, I did care to know about the thoughtful dimensions of an angry man’s life.

Frank was right. Nobody else cared anything about him beyond keeping him far away. All our uncles and aunts and cousins kept their doors shut to Frank — and, by extension, to me too. This was due to Frank’s light fingers. As Aunt-tee Viola said for the whole bunch of our relations, “That boy Frank, he’d steal anything but a red-hot stove.”

But he was more than a thief, of course. Just as surely as crooks in high places got where they are because of doing some good things for people now and then. A man’s life is not so petty it can be measured up at the end as all good or all bad. Frank was plus and minus like anybody else, except for cheap schooling and black skin, which of course magnifies all minuses.

When I recollect his plus side, I would describe Frank as a philosopher. The things he said!

Such as things he’d whisper in the dark of night when we were boys in a shared room, me in one twin bed drifting off to sleep, Frank in his — only I can’t recall ever seeing him sleep. Frank would be sitting up, sounding out important thoughts before scratching them into a Big Chief by the light of a radio dial.

One night it was, “It’s a damn lie they say down to Asia Baptist Church about God create us all equal. But anyhow, every life is a big deal.”

Another night, “Since I am only a poor man walking around to save on funeral expenses, maybe I ought to find a way of doing somebody a good deed when I leave. That sound like suicide. Well, suicide is just a trick played on a calendar.”

And another night, “I am too sad to be dangerous. I am sad as a dead bird in a birdbath.”

The night I especially remember from back in those years came the summer when Frank turned sixteen — on his birthday, actually. Mama said he was a man now according to the law, and that a man didn’t need his mama’s birthday fuss anymore. Just about everything was a fuss for Mama by then. She had the sugar, and it was taking her down fast and furious, even faster than diabetes killed Daddy six years before.

So Frank and I went out and had a birthday party, thanks to thirty-one dollars I’d squirreled away for the big occasion. Frank knew how to spend it, due to his knowledge of where a couple of teenage boys could purchase whiskey and the attentions of certain ladies who frequented the alley behind the Star Lounge on Senate Street.

I remember Frank grabbing hard on my arm when a police siren sounded faintly in the distance. The party was over for some reason; I didn’t bother to ask why, as my brother was long in the habit of cringing and fleeing whenever a siren went off. I remember a party lady’s voice calling out behind us — “Where y’all going, baby?” — as we sprinted together up the alley and around over to Harrison Avenue toward home.

It was the hottest night I have ever known, running aside. So hot the chameleons that usually skittered across the screens outside our bedroom windows were hanging loose by their sticky little toes, and I swear they panted like hounds under a porch. I don’t believe I slept any more that night than Frank did.

In one of the tiny hours, Frank whispered something that froze the sweat on my neck. He cursed the city is what he did.

The page where he wrote down that curse must have floated off with Katrina someplace, along with all the rest of Frank’s life collection of Big Chiefs. But I don’t need that long-lost page to remind me of what he said.

“New Orleans be a jazzy town,” he said, “full of dead markers, a funeral urn of polished-up brass on top a flowery grave, and underneath the box going rotten.”

So there I was in our old room in the old house — what was left of it — with all that money slipping and sliding through my shaking hands. I stepped over to a smashed-out window and took a sneaky look through a slit in the plywood cover to make sure no wrong numbers were out there in the street or the yard picking through trash or casing storm-bashed houses or otherwise prowling around.

Up and down DeSaix Boulevard and pretty much all over Gentilly, variously wrecked homes were still waiting on overpriced contractors to show up, a whole year after that bitch Katrina. Gangs of discriminating thieves and expert metal-strippers seemed to know exactly which houses were worth their while. My suspicions were the same as the neighbors’ suspicions, what was left of the neighbors: Maybe the wrong numbers knew where to go because when they weren’t contracting, they were thieving.

Nobody was prowling around outside.

I stepped back to where I was when I came across the money and Frank’s letter — stooped in front of my grandfather Benjamin Masson’s chifforobe, going through the drawers and shelves after anything worth keeping before the unhappy need of my cutting it down with a rented chainsaw.

That chifforobe and the matching cherry wood blanket chest and Mama’s wide bureau, as we called it, along with the bed frame with the carved headboard and footboard, were Masson family heirlooms. They’d all been handed down to Daddy as Benjamin’s wedding gift. The heirlooms crowded up my parents’ first little bedroom in the St. Bernard projects, which is where I lived for the first ten years of my life until we left.

We didn’t go far, at least not by the lights of Frank and me, resentful of being told we shouldn’t be playing with the project kids we ran with since now we’d moved up in the world. But Daddy was proud to leave the apartment in St. Bernard and move off Gibson Street not so many blocks to DeSaix Boulevard. He had enough to buy a small house there, a wood one painted pink with two bedrooms and a Queen Palm in the front and two Chinaberry trees in back.

“Little no-account niggers,” Daddy called the St. Bernard kids we weren’t supposed to play with anymore. Never mind they came in approximately the same good-to-bad ratio as everybody else in New Orleans, little or big. Never mind that Daddy and Mama and all us Massons have been called that same hurting word at one time or another; never mind that everybody else on our new block, save for the Spagnuolo family, had to sit way up in the balcony at the Circle Cinema.

So anyway, what was I doing there with a chainsaw?

It was hard enough years ago to haul that chifforobe and the rest of the bedroom suite out of Gibson Street and onto Daddy’s pickup for the short drive to Gentilly. Daddy called it a bedroom suit. It was even harder to get the whole cherry wood shebang jiggled through the front door and the narrow foyer of the pink house. Daddy and two of his work crew buddies from the parks department grunted clear through a Sunday on that job.

Now, thanks to that hellbat Katrina, there was no way of removing the family heirlooms out from the pink house. The cherry wood was all waterlogged, too swollen up to get through the door frames. Everything had to be cut into pieces, and the pieces carted out to the curb to wait a minor eternity for the garbage haulers to come fetch the mess.

The cutting job fell to me for two reasons. First, I’m handy. Second, the house was automatically deeded over to me as next of kin by the state of Louisiana when its previous orphaned owner was convicted and sent up to Angola for what he did to a white woman by the name of Eugenia Malreaux, who lived uptown on St. Charles Avenue in a big old place with her prize tulip trees in the back garden.

What in the name of Heaven I was doing hanging on to the pink house and the heirlooms these past years I do not know. I didn’t need a house. I have my own very nice little house uptown. And I didn’t need a suit for my bedroom.

Before Katrina, my wife Toni was after me to rent out the pink house. But I always managed to stall by reminding her about Mama and Daddy both dying there in the cherry wood bed, both blind and crippled up from the sugar and helpless to keep from soiling themselves. And then how Frank took over the house after Mama died, and moved into our parents’ own room at night to sleep in the big cherry wood death bed — leaving me to wonder what he might be cursing there in the dark...

... And how Frank took care of me in that house all the while I went through high school, then Xavier. And then on top of that, three years of law school at Loyola. No thanks to any of the cold relations who turned their backs on a pair of orphan boys. Just us two against the world, Frank and Walter.

I only worked part-time construction jobs in my school years, and I didn’t manage to get half what I thought I might in scholarship money. But Frank always came up with the rest, always on the promise that I would not ask where the money came from.

It was hard for Frank to be as responsible as all that. But not as hard as the rest of his life. This was a capital-B bone of contention between us.

Frank claimed he was halfway a regular citizen for bringing me up, and so anything outside of his role of being a big brother was none of my business. It didn’t sit well with me to be shut out like that. So to spite him, I did the meanest thing I could think of doing.

The day after commencement at Loyola, I marched down to the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office with my law degree and got myself hired. I could just as easily have taken a job as a public defender. Frank never said anything about my spiteful choice, but I know I hurt him.

The white man who hired me at the D.A.’s office soon thereafter prosecuted my brother and sent him up to Angola, where they eventually put him down like a cat for stealing Miss Malreaux’s money and afterwards splitting her head open with an axe.

Even though the crime scene investigators never found that axe and had to rely on the coroner’s analysis at trial, the prosecution case against Frank was sufficiently solid. More solid, I admit, than a lot of cases I have prosecuted myself. People go to prison and get the needle for pitifully little evidence, really. All colors of people.

Frank had long been working handyman jobs at the big Malreaux house — earning money for my tuition at Loyola University School of Law, no less. So Frank had access to the place. The forensics squad came up with a smudged thumbprint they claimed was Frank’s, right there on the dial of a private safe in the brick shed where Miss Eugenia was known to keep large amounts of cash. Add to that, investigators found a considerable number of Miss Eugenia’s jewelry items inside a chifforobe drawer in the pink house.

They didn’t find the looted cash, though. Frank, of course, denied stealing money or jewelry from Miss Eugenia, just like he denied stealing anything else in his life. He’d wear that bad-dog look on his face when confronted on matters of theft, which was as close as he’d come to admitting his light-fingered predilection — until his last letter, that is.

Certainly he denied murdering Miss Eugenia. Which flew in the face of jewelry found in the chifforobe. Which Frank’s court-appointed lawyer might have said flew in the face of common logic, therefore constituting reasonable doubt in the mind of a juror. Because why would a murderer keep mementoes of his victim in the same place he kept his socks and boxer shorts?

At first, I thought it would be no problem to chainsaw the bedroom suit. Maybe in the past it was all worth some serious antique money. But the value was surely gone now — now that all that cherry wood was so nasty and swollen and probably full of termites, too. It was junk and nothing more. No problem.

But there I was in my dead brother’s house, in the room where he used to sleep as a free man. Sentiment hammered me. The rented chainsaw seemed as disrespectful to Frank’s house as Mother Nature had been.

Speaking of a hellish vandal woman, I took a long moment to gaze around the bedroom after a knock-down drag-out with Katrina.

Schaefer Skrip bottles by the dozen had flown around like stones in the hurricane, smashing into walls where splattered ink adhered to glass shards and blue and yellow labels. The floor was a carpet of Budweiser cans, crushed the way Frank crushed them with his big right hand, sodden Camel butts and moldy paperback books with underlined pages. Crime novels mostly. The door to the hallway was cracked in two and the plaster ceiling had gone pulpy like ricotta cheese.

Then I read the next parts of Frank’s last letter.

Because Frank had secured them so carefully in a false compartment he’d constructed in the back of the chifforobe, the only thing in the room that wasn’t ruined by greasy water were the Big Chief pages of his long letter. Oh — and the money, which made me nervous on many levels and which trembled my hands to the point where I couldn’t help but spill the cash over the muck of cans and butts.

What especially unnerved me was my own larcenous first impulse on seeing all that green: how I’d spend it on my own selfish self, or at least pay off my bills. Which is not the way a sworn man of the law such as I am, after all, is supposed to think. The first thing I am obliged to do under the circumstances of tainted money is turn it in lickety-split, along with anything else incriminating, such as Frank’s letter of a singular confession to theft in this particular instance.

But somehow I knew I wasn’t going to feel so obliged. Maybe this was because of the crappy trial that Frank endured; not quietly, as they often tied him down on the defendant’s chair and stuffed a bailiff’s hanky in his mouth when he cursed the judge too much. Maybe it was because of my own rage that I had to keep bottled up since I myself am part of the crappy system, prosecution side. Maybe it was because of the parade of incompetent drunkards Frank kept hiring, since that’s all he personally knew of the city’s criminal defense bar and refused to consult me on the matter of his defense.

“Sorry, my Wussy Wally, but I ain’t about to trust nobody who work for the Man going to get me needled for a lawyer reference — not even my own brother.” Frank had told me this on the one occasion he agreed to see me in his cell.

Or maybe I was feeling rebellious against the whole crappy system, because once again Aunt-tee Viola spoke for the whole bunch of my cold relations when she came on the bus to the D.A.’s office on South White Street, right in the middle of my brother’s highly publicized axe-murder trial, for an approving look-see. She told me, “Walter, we’re so proud of you for rising above your brother’s miserable failure of a life.” I bottled up what I thought right then: In my brother’s case, the words South and white were not harbingers of justice.

No doubt I was seriously conflicted because of my guilt for spiting Frank. It was a guilt settled in for life after I read through the transcript of his trial in the Superior Criminal Court of New Orleans, especially the part I can’t help but remember by heart:

Mr. Masson: I want another attorney.

The Court: Well, I don’t think I’m going to do that.

Mr. Masson: Y’all go ahead and have your trial if you want, but leave me out of it. You can sentence me, hang me, stick a needle to me, do what you want. If you don’t give me no other lawyer, I ain’t taking part in this stupidity. I already told you I didn’t steal no money and I didn’t bash the brains out of no white lady. Go on now, have court without me. I don’t care.

The Court: It’s your life that’s involved. Don’t you care about that?

Mr. Masson: I care about my life just as much as you care about it.

The Court: Don’t you want to protect it?

Mr. Masson: Do you want to protect it?

Late as I was, I was finally doing the right thing by Frank, and set about business.

First, I confirmed with the senior barflies at the Star Lounge that a puffy-faced white guy used to pal around there with my brother.

“Oh, he still comes by here,” according to somebody called Shug. “Real wormy kind of a man, just sit over to the end of the bar and complain. I ain’t saying we don’t got our share of complainers, but things that guy said — well, seems to me he was creeped by his own life.”

Before I left, Shug told me, “Your brother was all right, you know? Sure, I know what they say he did. But that’s lawyers making the charge. You know what your brother said about lawyers one time?”

From whispers of a long-ago night I had a fair idea.

“The Devil makes his Christmas pie with lawyers’ tongues,” said Shug. “That’s Frank’s own words. Oh, but he could talk some.”

Next, I searched for a record of a safe deposit box rented to one Philip Malreaux, after which I pulled a few strings, thanks to my official capacity as a lawman, and quietly obtained a court order to open it up and inspect the contents. I had a fair idea what I’d find.

It was not difficult to crack Malreaux after a long talk at the Star Lounge, accompanied by a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red, which mostly he drank while softly weeping as I told him what I’d found — and what I made of it. As I was looking into Malreaux’s white face, I saw my dead brother’s own black dog face; it was as if the two of them, Philip and Frank, were some old married couple who came to resemble one another.

I asked Malreaux if he’d care to tell a detective to back up my theory of what really happened to the lowdown woman who shattered his life as bad as Katrina shattered the city. He took a long pull of Johnnie Walker before saying, “Yeah, that’d be all right.”

As we rode in a taxi together down to police headquarters on South Broad Street, Malreaux said, “You being Frank’s brother, I offer my word of honor — I’ll protect you like Frank protected me.”

That’s when I realized we both knew the all-around score: He knew that I knew that he knew.

“Deal,” I said to Malreaux. “Just say what I tell you to say.”

Finally, I had a little talk with the boss — the man who had hired me and sent Frank to Angola.

“You found what?” he said, annoyed. I had interrupted the tuna sandwich he was eating at his desk.

“The axe.”

“Don’t matter about a murder weapon all this time after the fact.”

“It matters if it’s new evidence — grounds for a new trial for my brother.”

“Who is a dead and gone man.”

“True, but that doesn’t mean the case is. Besides the axe, there was a whole lot of cash in Philip Malreaux’s box.”

“I don’t see how that matters.” The boss used the back of his hand to wipe a string of tuna off his lip. “That money could have come from anywhere, anytime.”

“Including it could have come from Eugenia Malreaux’s wall safe, a strong possibility I’m having the forensics squad consider.”

In the worst way, I wanted Frank’s name cleared. Frank might have said I wanted this in the best way.

And — hoo-whee! — what would my aunt-tee say if things turned out to clear Frank? What would any of my chilly relations say when it was written up in the newspapers the way I reasoned how things really went down in connection with the death of Eugenia Malreaux?

Frank helped himself somehow to Miss Eugenia’s wall safe, that’s for certain. But legally speaking, maybe there was a way of muddying up certainty. That thumbprint of Frank’s? He must have brushed the dial of that safe a hundred times reaching for tools to tend the old lady’s tulip trees. Frank’s fingerprints that no doubt would be found all over the murder weapon? Well, of course Frank’s prints are on that axe — probably a hundred times over the years of pruning trees.

But why would Frank murder Miss Eugenia anyhow? If it was true what was said at his trial and he’d stolen jewelry from her before, then he hardly needed a goose that laid golden eggs to be dead. Philip Malreaux, on the other hand, had plenty of motive, which he’d been brooding over since his awful boyhood; since the first night his mama raped him.

Philip’s fingerprints were never found on the wall safe in the brick shed. Why not? Maybe he was careful to wear gloves. But if Philip’s fingerprints showed up on the axe, which was likely, it was for the simple reason that nobody but the owner of a safe deposit box account is allowed to put anything into it. So why would he do that?

Maybe Philip Malreaux came across that axe before the police did and ran down to the bank with it, thinking his buddy Frank Masson must have got liquored up and killed Miss Eugenia on account of hearing so many stories about the old bag that you could toss your lunch.

Having seen a bunch of loose ends in every single criminal matter that ever crossed my desk at the D.A.’s office, I was unsurprised by the case of my own brother and his wormy pal. For instance, how come Frank took the fall for murdering Miss Eugenia? Well, maybe it was his way of doing a good deed for somebody before playing a trick on the calendar.

And there’s the little matter of what everybody overlooked right from the jump: What about old man Malreaux, by which I mean Philip’s daddy? Mightn’t the old man himself have gone crazed over all the years of carrying around the sickening knowledge of what went on in his house?

But mostly my theorizing was informed by what I alone knew about — namely, Frank’s last letter and the money that came with it, and the contents of my long conversation at the Star Lounge with Malreaux. Three things I was not bringing up with the boss.

“My brother was no killer, he was just sad,” I continued. “Sad as a dead bird in a birdbath.”

“He was sure as hell a thief, I am sorry to inform you, Walter. And even if this Philip Malreaux was in on the crime like you are intimating, even if he was the one who did the whacking on his mama’s skull — well, as party to felony theft when the axe fell, you know your brother was equally guilty of murder.”

“But we don’t know that the theft and the murder occurred at the same time,” I said. “Or if Frank was even involved in the theft part.”

“Then how come that jewelry ends up in his bedroom?”

“He could have come by it honestly,” I lied. I thought about the Devil and his Christmas pie. “He could have bought it off Malreaux.”

“Sure, and boar hogs might grow teats some day... Are you talking like reasonable-doubt talk, Walter?” he asked. “Because if you are, I don’t like hearing that from a man supposed to be a prosecutor.”

He glared at me while taking a last chew of sandwich, like it was me he wanted in his teeth.

“Especially when we’re talking a heinous crime I prosecuted myself,” said the boss, “and which I don’t especially want to open up again. You get me?”

I said I sure did.

“Reasonable-doubt talk,” added the boss, “that could imperil a man’s career around here.”

And so, under threat as I considered myself to be, I had the right to remain silent, except for resigning from the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office.

The very next day, I found office space for no rent: The pink house in Gentilly. I am today waiting on contractors to come renovate the place as the offices of Walter Masson, Esq., criminal defense counsel.

I already have two clients: the late Frank Masson, whose case I am taking pro bono, and Philip Malreaux, who has the wherewithal to pay me handsomely.

That’s part of the deal I struck with Malreaux.

As for all that money in the chifforobe, I am keeping it, in a kind of solidarity with my big brother.

And hell walked in by Jeri Cain Rossi

Bywater

The rain will never stop.

And her landlord would never fix the air conditioner, she thought, while she sat naked at the kitchen table fanning herself, sweating and stinking. As the bath water faucet dripped, she took two ice trays from the refrigerator and emptied them in. She stepped into the claw-foot tub filled with bath water and ice cocktail, lay back, and submerged, eyes open. Through the ripples, she looked up at her drowning reflection in the full-length mirror on the ceiling. Her long black tresses floated around her lily white flesh like the passion of Ophelia.

Her long black tresses floated around her lily white flesh like the passion of Ophelia. Her ex was bartending at the Sugar Park, a dive bar at Dauphine and France Streets in the Bywater, what was left of it. She went in to use the ATM and there he was, not looking so good — not that anybody was looking good since the storm of two-thousand-ought-five. Curious, she sat down for a nightcap. He walked over to her stool like it was the last few steps to the electric chair. He politely asked what she wanted and she politely told him red wine. Like he didn’t know, the coward. That was their drink. She had an urge to lunge over the bar and rake his face for treating her like a stranger, like their time together didn’t matter.

“Why, thank you so much,” she said, sugary sweet when he returned with the beverage. At least she could savor the pleasure of having him serve her.

His new girl, an emaciated brunette, walked out of the kitchen like a coiffed skeleton in a red halter dress. Her scapulae jutted and the vertebrae stretched like a mountain ridge down her back. They must be doing coke, she noted. The brunette had those deer-caught-in-the-headlights eyes. They were more bugged-out than usual. Yeah, coke or crystal meth, and lots of it. The brunette sat at the other end of the bar near the TV. She had no jealousy for this girl, this brunette girl, she told herself. She started to chew her fingernails, then caught herself.

Thinking back on it, there was nothing heroic about their affair, her and her ex. It was cowardice on both accounts. He was a charming heartbreaker trying to extricate himself from another fling that had run its course and she was the willing vehicle of his getaway. Just to be a bitch. The luxury of it. There’s something alluring about being on the arm of a good-looking heartbreaker, like having something in your pocket everybody wants. And they indeed made quite an enviable ruckus, staggering around the Quarter arm-in-arm, howling merrily — beautiful, barefoot, and besotted. However, his attention began to waver toward the end of the summer. In fact, the night before the storm he made his move for the brunette.

That was months ago, and her insides were still charred like so many buildings in the neighborhood. There’s nothing like knowing where you really stand when your man goes off with another girl during a cat-five hurricane, leaving you to die. She took a long gulp of Vendage and shuddered at its horribleness.

Maybe she read it somewhere in a book at the Isle of Salvation Botanica, maybe she imagined it, but this is what she figured: She’d fuck a hundred men. Each man would be a pin stuck deep into her ex’s cheating voodoo-doll heart. Each seduction would be a ritual to cleanse herself of his brutal rebuff. Then she wouldn’t want him anymore. Furthermore, she imagined her indifference would revive his interest, because that’s how it is with heartbreakers. He would be cursed to want her forevermore. And all evidence of the hurricane would go away as if it didn’t happen. The shotgun houses would rebuild the way they were before. The people would come back. The music would play. Paradise would return.

One hundred men.

And she set off on her goal with abandon, especially in those first months. National Guardsmen, Louisiana SWAT, Texas Rangers, NOPD, animal rescue workers, paramedics, firemen. The second wave brought in demolition and salvage crews, construction workers, electricians, Latin migrant workers. Her bed was open to musicians, artists, poets, the drunken, the sad, the crazy. Men she would have never slept with before the hurricane. Men who would never have slept with her before the hurricane. By her calculation, she was at ninety-nine. She had been one man short for weeks now, peculiarly relishing the idea that with one more fuck her suffering would be over. So why did she hesitate? She stared deep into her wine glass.

“Gigolette!”

There was Jimmie Lee. The most beautiful boy in town. He waved at her drunkenly from the pool table, wearing a T-shirt with a frog drawing on it. To be anywhere near this creature was to be blessed by the gods. Pretty, pretty Jimmie Lee. Like many youth in New Orleans, he started carousing early. He was everything innocent and pure yet wicked that was the Big Easy. A naughty manchild. Girls giggled and blushed when they passed him, peering back to see if he was looking at them. Men measured him with their eyes. Jimmie Lee flirted with everybody, but he wasn’t a heartbreaker. More like a boyfriend to the world. He was the one good, true thing that seemed untouched by the storm. Everybody looked after Jimmie. He was like something holy.

She took her drink and sauntered over to him. Jimmie Lee leaned against the table aiming his shot with the pool stick, a cigarette butt with a long ash resting precipitously between his lips, ash stains on the green cloth. The balls clacked and, as drunk as he was, he still managed the solid into the hole.

“Who’s winning?” she asked.

“Me!” he chirped.

“Who are you playing?” She glanced around.

“Myself!” The ash fell on the pool table.

Her cruel lover and his skinny brunette were necking at the bar, for her benefit no doubt. That’s what wild animals do.

“Oh fuck it all to hell,” she said under her breath.

Jimmie Lee looked at her, put down the stick, grabbed his beer, and took her by the hand. “I want to show you something.”

He took her to the door and outside. Even at night, the weather was oppressively sauna-like. He took a swig of his beer.

“What, Jimmie Lee?”

He giggled like a little mischievous boy, then pulled her close and kissed her. It was like a third-grade kiss behind the magnolia tree in the school yard.

“Don’t be silly, Jimmie Lee. You’re too good for me.”

She looked into his handsome brown eyes under the luminescent, almost full moon. He wiggled his eyebrows in his comical, precocious way. They both started laughing. The more they laughed the funnier and funnier it seemed. They laughed harder and harder there on the street at the corner of Dauphine and France in the Bywater, where before the storm, teenagers from the projects used to die with regularity from gangland drive-bys — neighbors would wake up and find a dead body on their lawn. Yet they laughed. A few blocks away across the Industrial Canal was the Lower Ninth, where the frail had floated in their attics, unable to breech their roofs during the storm. Laughed and laughed. They hugged long and hard.

“Let’s go to a hotel and use their pool,” he said.

“You got one in mind, Jimmie Lee? It’s 3:00 in the morning.”

“We could go swimming in the river.”

“Are you out of your mind?” The undertow was notoriously fierce. The Mississippi was like a snake that swallowed its prey whole.

He pulled out a joint. “Well, how about we smoke this in my car?”

She could hear the phone all the way up the stairs. She was coming home from waiting tables at Elizabeth’s Diner near the levee. The voice on the phone wouldn’t stop crying. A tugboat captain, the voice sobbed, reported a body caught on a floating tree near Poland Avenue Wharf in the late morning.

Her instinct was to get drunk. She listened to her instinct. She parked her bike at the corner of Lesseps and Burgundy and entered BJ’s, an old neighborhood dive bar, and proceeded to wallow. It was a skill she was good at. Several of the colorful older regulars had disappeared since the storm, but there was always another drunk to spring up and take the vacant barstool. She sat at a table away from the new faces.

A great many drinks later, the welcome feeling of indifference washed over her. Indifference over losing electricity every other day. Indifference over having to ride the bus for miles to find a decent grocery store. Indifference over nobody knowing what they were doing or how they were going to do it. She reckoned New Orleans as the best loverboy in the neighborhood who all the husbands cornered and mutilated while the wives wailed.

“Why are you crying?” He was dripping wet, his sparkly brown eyes mischievous. She jumped up and held him. Hard. He smelled of Old Man River.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Everybody thinks you’ve drowned.”

The strains of a brass band reached a crescendo. The bar door opened and a second-line entered loudly, marching drums, trumpets, tuba, trombones, good-time people swaying with the good-time music, customers smiling, waving their drinks as they danced.

“See what you’re missing?” she yelled to him over the cacophony.

She looked long and hard in the bathroom mirror and didn’t like what she saw. I wonder if I’ll die tonight, she thought, and sat on the toilet. Now that’s a sign you’re wasted, she mused, when you actually sit on the toilet at the Abbey.

Back in the bar, the jukebox was screaming a Tom Waits song about the end of the world. She spied Wyatt nursing a cocktail in the corner and sauntered over.

“That really sucks about Jimmie Lee,” he said after hugging her.

“Don’t tell anybody,” she whispered in his ear, “but he’s in hiding.”

Wyatt looked at her, incredulous.

“He’s too embarrassed.”

“You mean it’s a hoax?”

“Just like Tom-fucking-Sawyer.”

Wyatt grinned ear to ear. “I’m going to kill him!”

They laughed and drank with renewed vigor. They drank all night long and made out at the bar. She’d already slept with Wyatt. He had been number forty-six or so.

By the time they decided to part company the next morning, it was already humid and scorching. The thought of her air conditioner still on the blink prompted her to order an ice-cold cocktail in a to-go cup. She remembered the pill someone had given her the night before and popped it in her mouth. As she walked down the street, she heard the low purr of a muscle car. It stopped next to her.

“Gigolette!”

She leaned into the open passenger window. “Aren’t you dead? Did you fall off the dock or jump?” She grabbed his cigarette and took a drag.

“Funny girl. Thirsty?”

“Always.”

She climbed in and they barreled down to the Saturn Bar on Saint Claude. They sat in a booth drinking whiskey, smoking Camels, and listening to George Jones on the old dime jukebox. The pill took effect, making the music sound like she was in a tunnel. She looked at her hand and it seemed a mile away.

“You’re really gone, aren’t you, Jimmie?”

“Yes, I’m surely dead.”

“I must be crazy then.”

“I like you because you’re crazy, girl.”

“I’ve been a terrible, terrible person. Horrible. I’m just a wreck, Jimmie. Sometimes I think I stick around just so another hurricane can finish the job.” She wiped her brow. “Your funeral’s tomorrow. You coming?”

He took a drag off his Camel. “I think it’s going to storm again.”

She sat down on a stone bench in front of the mortuary in Metairie. The service was proceeding inside but she couldn’t bring herself to go in. Instead, she remained outside and smoked cigarettes. A pair of crows landed near her, cawing loudly. Thunder sonic-boomed in the distance.

“You going in or what?”

“You asshole, Jimmie! This prank has gone on long enough. You’re coming with me now.” She took him by the arm and pulled him to the front door. The crows shrieked as she opened the door and marched to the chapel.

“Look who I found!” she announced loudly to the room. Jimmie Lee’s grandmother, mother, stepfather, sisters, aunts, uncles, other relatives, friends looked up. The priest paused. Jimmie Lee’s cousin Ronnie slipped his arm out of hers and coughed. The priest held up the Eucharist and the service resumed. She watched Ronnie walk away to sit down with a girl who glared at her. She felt bewildered and faint, and ran outside to the parking lot as the rain came down.

She woke up suddenly from an afternoon nightmare about trapped, dying cats and dogs howling from the evacuated houses around her. Drenched in sweat, she arose and started the bath water.

She was depressed in the first place, so it was hard to differentiate the new despair from the old. Everything was a chore. Everything was broken. Someone opened the door to Paradise, and Hell walked in.

After the bath she donned a leopard-print wraparound dress with strappy high heels, barelegged. Too hot for stockings. Her long black hair reached to her lower back. The Latin migrant workers, brought in to secure blue tarps over roofless houses, wolf-whistled after her.

Drinking was a crutch, yes, but it got her through the day. Just for today, she would drink just for today, one day at a time. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe she should sell everything and move west. West of Eden.

“Maybe you should slow it down, lady,” said the new bartender. New bartenders were the worst. She hated the new faces that appeared daily in the city. New faces from the rest of America, dull uninspired faces. She surveyed the bar and noted the appalling number of strange men. They all seemed to be staring at her. New predatory faces contending for spoils. Modern carpetbaggers descending upon a modern Reconstruction.

Wyatt sat next to her.

“You okay?”

“I’m ghastly, thank you for asking.”

“That was a bit of a fiasco at the funeral the other day. You’ve sure been acting loopy, come to think of it. Even more than usual.”

“It’s my fault he’s dead.”

Wyatt put his arm around her. “Come on, now, we all feel helpless about it.”

“I was with him that night. Just before.”

“Then what happened? What happened to you and Jimmie Lee down by the levee?”

Jimmie started the car, a rebuilt Mustang.

“Maybe we should ride around so we get some breeze,” he said, and pealed out into the late night. They drove around the Bywater, sharing the joint, then headed over the Industrial Canal to the Dead Zone. It was black as black can be. No streetlights, nothing. Just the gleam of the waxing moon on the eerie razed stubble of a landscape that was once a neighborhood. Acres of toxic silt. Mountains of trash. Even the crows wouldn’t land here.

Jimmie parked near the levee and turned the headlights off.

“If they build a casino on this land, I swear I’ll torch it myself,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

Tears welled in her eyes inexplicably. “I think I’m cracking up.” Jimmie took her hand and caressed it. “You can lean on me, girl.” He handed her his cigarette.

She took a drag, wiping her eyes. “You think the city is finished, Jimmie?”

“Hell no. If yellow fever, fire, and Betsy didn’t wipe us out, Katrina won’t either. But the government might.” He gave her a toothy smile.

His handsome gaze lingered. Their breath quickened, and she leaned toward him. They kissed and embraced under the moonlight in the Mustang parked in the Dead Zone with an urgency like it was wartime. And it was.

Later, she opened the door from the backseat and looked for her panties. Jimmie sat there with his Wranglers unzipped, smoking a cigarette.

“You sure got a tiger in your tank,” she said automatically. She said that to all the men. She found her panties in the front seat and put them on.

“You may want to keep those off. I’m not finished yet,” he said tenderly, putting a hand on her back. She brushed it away.

“This was a mistake,” she snapped.

“Why?” Jimmie asked in a puzzled voice.

“Why why why. Don’t be so clingy.” She couldn’t believe what she was saying, but she couldn’t stop herself.

They rode in silence to Montegut Street.

“Please stay,” Jimmie said low, as he stopped near her gate. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Go cool yourself off, Jimmie. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

She got out and walked to her door. The Mustang squealed away loudly.

Wyatt sighed long.

“Someone told me they found his clothes all neatly folded on the rocks down there at the Riverwalk. You know how crazy a kid he was; he probably tried to swim across the river to Algiers. Nobody ever makes it. The current lost him. Hell, the hurricane lost him.”

She left Wyatt and wandered down by the Riverwalk, desolate at this hour. Clouds moved fast across the moon. Is this where you did it, baby? Just like you to go skinny-dipping in the River Styx, she thought. She walked down the steps to the water. She used to drink wine here with her ex. There was a figure sobbing.

“Jimmie Lee?”

She looked closer; it was the brunette her ex had been seeing.

“He set me up. The bastard!” she sobbed. “He called and asked me to meet him, and when I walked into the bar, there he was all cozy with some new fat rich cunt from New York who thinks she’s going to save New Orleans. He wouldn’t even look at me.” The brunette shuddered as she cried.

“That’s really tough, kid,” she said, as she sat down on a step and lit a cigarette. Lightning flashed in the direction of the Gulf, followed by the low drones of thunder.

“You must really hate me,” said the brunette when the sobs receded.

“No, I hate myself,” she replied, and offered the brunette a cigarette.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” the brunette said, taking the offered cigarette. “Does anyone know how he ended up in the river?”

She took a long drag and stared at the light dancing on the river currents. A breeze came off the water, small respite to the burning.

“He was number one hundred,” she said finally.

The former rivals sat side by side smoking cigarettes. Watching the shadow of a barge in the dark moving quickly and silently up the river.

Night taxi by Christine Wiltz

Lakeview

Mike left his office at the shipping company at 5 o’clock sharp, his senses dull from another day of taking orders, checking invoices, and listening to the pursers gripe about prices going up. Didn’t they know? It’s what prices do. He always left work vaguely angry. All day counting the big money, all night counting the stingy tips. When he thought about driving the cab, trying to make ends meet, which they never did because the price of everything kept going up, he would get so worried he’d forget about being angry.

It had been worse since the hurricane. He was one of the lucky ones, his house was still standing; the floodwaters had leveled out with barely a centimeter to spare under his floorboards. The roof had nearly blown off. He and his wife prayed for no rain as they waited for their name to come up on any one of several roofers’ lists, not likely until spring, while Mike often spent the midnight hours covering the mold with toxic goop to keep it from getting the upper hand.

Too many people hadn’t come back yet, or they couldn’t come back because they had no place to live. Mike did the work of two, sometimes three people at the shipping company, but his paycheck was still the same amount, as if nothing had happened. His initial gratitude had worn thin. Each night as he left his office to drive to the yard to claim his cab, to drive sometimes for two hours without a fare, to pick up irritable people who thought disaster warranted cheaper fares, he found it harder and harder to remind himself how lucky he was. Only the thought that he could have died, his family could have died, put him in the proper attitude of thankfulness. He had to be careful. The death thoughts could get hold of him in spite of his deeply rooted Catholic faith. They could take over his mind so that he wouldn’t hear someone talking to him.

“Hey, Mikey,” the man said, “remember me? Mikey...? Hey. Mikey.” His breath fogged in the cool air as he leaned into the open passenger window.

“Yeah, sure. The casino. Kenner.”

Last week. Thursday night. The guy had flagged him as he drove by, same time, about 8:00, near the same place he was parked now, in front of Igor’s on St. Charles. He’d taken him out to the ’burbs because Harrah’s had been closed since the storm. He’d waited a couple of hours for him, then dropped him off at a worn-out building on Felicity Street, right off Prytania, where he had a room. “Up there,” the guy had said, and pointed to the second-floor balcony, rotting wood and rusted wrought iron that you’d think would have ripped clear away in the killer winds and landed on the avenue. The big wad of money he pulled out to pay Mike looked worth a week at the Pontchartrain Hotel. What did Mike care? It was the best money he’d taken in since the hurricane had wiped out the tourist trade.

Mike turned around now as the guy dropped his big rear end on the backseat and pulled his legs in after him, the way a woman gets into a car. “The casino?”

“Nah.” The guy’s short thick arm pulled the door closed and rocked the taxi. “We’re on another mission tonight, Mikey.”

Mike frowned as he turned away to start the car. What’s with this Mikey? he wanted to ask the guy. No one called him that, not even when he was a kid. Then he was the French Michel, his mother straight off the boat from Pau, France. He’d taken his fair share of abuse for having a girl’s name. So he’d changed it to Michael. His license on the dash of the cab read Michael Willet, clear as day. Now here comes this slick-haired, stubby guy with his big hard-looking tub, one of those guys who pushes his stomach way out front, uses it the way other people use authority, takes up space with it, likes taking up as much space as he can, likes his tub of lard because it gives him a kind of presence he could never have as a thin man. And thinks it’s cute to call him Mikey. Puts him in his place.

Mike let it go. After all, this was the third night he’d parked outside Igor’s hoping to run into the guy again. He started driving. “Where to?”

“Lakeview, Mikey. We’re going to Lakeview. West End and Filmore.”

Mike turned into the St. Charles neutral ground, stopped on the streetcar tracks they said would be out of commission for a year. He jerked around in his seat. “Lakeview? There’s nothing out there.” He could hear his voice echoing back at the guy, heard the whine in it. He hated going into the devastated areas where the water had gone up to the roofs, moved houses off their foundations, killed anything it touched except the damned mold spores. They were everywhere, waiting to go into your lungs, attach to your sinuses, take over your body. When he and his wife had made the obligatory tour of destruction soon after they returned to New Orleans, it reminded him of that horror movie he wished he’d never seen, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He felt as if his body was being taken over, like one of the pod people, even when he wore a respirator.

“We need respirators,” he told the guy.

That got him a laugh. “It ain’t gonna kill you, Mikey. It’s the land of opportunity out there. Some of us sees it, some of us don’t. Don’t worry, you can stay in the car. It ain’t like I need a bodyguard.” He snorted a big laugh over that one.

Mike turned his attention back to the street. Anger filled his chest, turned his olive skin a shade darker. He knew the guy was taking a shot at his thin frame, his body that looked weak, his slouchy posture, rounded shoulders, a body type that could catch attention coupled with the right attitude, like the young Brando or James Dean. Especially if the man was strong, and Mike was stronger than he looked. His thinness was sinewy, his muscles taut like rope, and his grip — try to get out of his grip. Like that amped-up gutter kid a couple of weeks ago who reached over the seat to take Mike’s money pouch while he was making change. He grabbed the kid’s thick wrist. The kid twisted and pulled, but all his amphetamine energy couldn’t break Mike’s hold. The way he ran off clutching his arm to his chest, Mike might have broken a bone.

At heart Mike was not a violent man. The thought of violence of any kind, even verbal, horrified him. His wife had insisted he carry a gun when he drove the cab. She’d gotten so worked up about it that he’d given in, but he kept the gun in the trunk, in the wheel well.

He made the U-turn heading toward the interstate. He spoke with his head slightly to the right so his coated, low-pitched voice would travel to the backseat: “Yeah, but if you did need a bodyguard, I could be your man. I’m even licensed to carry a gun.”

The words sounded as empty to him as he knew they were, so he was surprised when the guy took him seriously. “That right? I guess you can’t be too careful driving a cab these days.” He shifted in his seat. In the rearview mirror Mike saw him lean forward. “You wear it on you?”

“No,” Mike said low, without turning his head. The blower in the dashboard muffled him.

“What’s that?”

“I said no, I don’t talk about where I keep the gun.”

The man leaned back. He laughed. “Yeah. You right, Mikey. Don’t talk about the gun. Just show it when you need it, huh?” He chuckled a little more, his mouth closed, like it was his own private joke.

Mike felt his face heat up again. Fuck him. He turned the blower up another notch.

Mike headed toward the St. Charles ramp. Traffic was light, not many cars waiting underneath the overpass to get onto the ramp. The lights didn’t work. One of them was on the ground. They were replaced by stop signs on short tripods. He stopped in the left lane behind a car that waited for a lone driver to cross the intersection in front of him. The car traveled slowly. In his peripheral vision, Mike saw a dark sedan pull behind the truck in the right lane. Mike knew the car without looking at it directly. It was his family car. His wife was at the wheel, no one in the passenger seat. He glanced; she glanced too, but turned away quicker than he did. He sensed the tension. Her mortification. He risked a look into the backseat. His daughter sat behind his wife, not looking his way, thank God. She had two friends with her, and she was reaching across one of them. He thought he could hear them laughing and talking through the glass, but he was only putting sounds to their animation. His head felt as though it was underwater. With effort he began to turn away, as though struggling against a current. His daughter, tight in her seat belt as she reached across to her friend, suddenly slammed herself hard against the seat back. He thought she would look at him then, but her head tipped backwards as she laughed. Her long gangly arms, arms like his, reached again, and the sedan moved up to where the truck had been. He could feel the sweat on his forehead. Twelve years old, the age of irreversible humiliation. His wife had told her never to tell anyone her father drove a cab.

“Hey, Mikey.”

Sweet Jesus, there was someone in the car with him.

“We never gonna get there unless you stop dreaming your life away, Mikey.”

“What?” He’d heard the guy perfectly. He touched the knob on the dash and turned the heat down as he eased off the brake. His wife was up the ramp before he reached the stop sign.

The moron in the back repeated his piece of sarcasm.

It had cut close to the bone. “I heard you the first time,” Mike said with a certain amount of viciousness, but he mumbled.

The man leaned forward saying, “What?” When Dean or Brando mumbled, no one said, What?

Mike lifted his head to throw his voice behind him. “What kind of opportunities you got out in Lakeview at night?”

His wife must have taken the girls out to eat. It was funny how the people who’d come back didn’t seem to like staying home. The few restaurants open were more crowded than ever, as though everyone wanted to see who had dared to return, bump shoulders with them. He wondered where his son was. Talk about attitude.

“Whew, Mikey,” the guy was saying, “you really don’t want to go to Lakeview, do you?”

“I don’t care about going to Lakeview. I just asked you a question.”

“Okay, okay...” He started to say something else, but Mike broke in.

“Look. My name isn’t Mikey.” He pointed at the license. “Michael, see? Or Mike.”

“Okay, Michael it is.” He deepened his voice. “A little touchy, huh, Michael?” The dramatic tone was followed by a high-pitched, strangled chuckle way back in his throat. The guy was his own best audience. “Did you know that woman in the car back there or something?”

Mike’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and made contact, a split second when all his anger, his attitude slipped away, gone through the looking glass, and left him slumped in the front seat of his taxi.

“My wife.” Out before he could stop it, as if he had no will left. He gave a short laugh.

“What’s the matter? She not talking to you?”

“Not much.” He nosed the taxi into the curve that took them toward Lakeview. “Not these days.”

“You mean, since the storm?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So the storm’s your fault?” That high strangled laugh again.

“No. Come on — everyone’s on edge since the storm.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You’re not from here.” Mike looked in the rearview to see if the guy was shaking his head or something, some indication he’d heard him, but he was gazing out the side window. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Jersey.”

“Just down here to make a buck, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Boy, it burned Mike up. Some of us sees it, some of us don’t. That kind of arrogance, the guy was probably gouging the money out of people. Riding around in cabs, going to the casino — money to burn.

Mike exited the interstate and drove slowly along West End Boulevard. It looked as though most of the debris had been bulldozed out of the street since he’d last come through here, but if he went too fast he might drive into one of those crater-sized potholes the storm had left all over the city, as if it had blown out the asphalt with its explosive winds, the same way it bombed through houses and tore huge trees whole out of the ground. You could bust a tire if you missed one of those holes in the dark, do some serious damage to your car.

Mr. Sees-it was still looking through the window into a night so dark the skeletons of houses loomed like blackened ghosts. Mike jumped in his seat as a mountainous mass appeared ahead on his left in what had been the half-block-wide green space between West End and Pontchartrain boulevards. Once he was up on it, his headlights revealed a giant mound of debris. The green space, which Mike knew was now black even in the daylight from the toxic water, had become a dumping ground. He’d heard on the radio that the amount of debris already collected in the city was a year’s worth of garbage in Manhattan. The landfills couldn’t take any more.

Mike jumped again; his eyes had drifted from the road and caught the edge of a rift in the concrete. Sees-it said, “You sure you know where you’re going? I can’t see a fucking thing.”

“Yeah, I know where I am. Filmore’s just up there.”

The man faced forward now, sitting up so he could clutch the back of the front seat. His nerves had got him. He was nuts to want to come out here at night. Mike had heard the looters came out after dark. Like cockroaches. They crawled through places most humans wouldn’t go, searching out anything that might turn a dollar. They stripped the plumbing, the light fixtures, the copper flashing, chimney covers, eating a house down to the bare bones. Who knew what kind of opportunity this cockroach in the back of his cab could find at night. Mike should have said no. To hell with the extra buck. He rubbed his hand over his face. Christ — couldn’t he think about anything other than money?

“Here’s Filmore.” He made a right turn and slowed the taxi to the speed of a gimpy pedestrian. “Where to?”

“Uh, General Diaz, General Haig, Argonne. One of those.”

“If you’d told me that to begin with, I could have gone straight to Canal Boulevard.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s your money.”

Roach Man scooted to the edge of the seat, his antennae tuned. “They’re in a service alley behind one of the houses they’re gutting.”

They crossed Canal Boulevard. Mike stopped at the General Diaz alley, but it was a dead end in the dark. The guy mumbled something that sounded like, “Motherfucking spics.”

“What?”

“You think we’d see a lantern in all this pitch black.”

Mike rolled past the intersection of Filmore and Marshal Foch. Just before Argonne, they saw a soft glimmer of light, presumably from a lantern, a quarter-block down the alley.

The guy opened the cab door. “I’ll be fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. If it’s gonna take any longer, I’ll come let you know.” Outside, he stood for a moment to zip up his cheap windbreaker. His new white sneakers shone in the dark. Even with the windows up, Mike could hear the crunch as he walked down the alley, the poisonous wasteland dried to a crisp in the drought since the hurricane.

Mike decided to turn the taxi around so he’d be pointed back toward the interstate. The quicker he could get out of here the better. His lights picked up the sheetrock dust surrounding several houses as he made a wide circle at the intersection. The dust coated Argonne; a lot of house gutting going on back here. He could smell the dust in the air. He didn’t know if it meant people were trying to come back or trying to crowbar the money out of the insurance companies’ tight fists. The latest word was they wouldn’t pay off unless the house was gutted. What people were being put through, like puppets on a string.

Mike parked at the mouth of the alley but left the engine running for the heat. He could make out the top edge of the carport where the light came from; he could see that it leaned sharply, but he didn’t notice anyone or any shadows, only a halo of light illuminating a small area of the alley.

Mike didn’t like the finger of fear running up his spine. He had a bad feeling sitting out here in a dark ghost town with lots of good hiding places. He needed to be alert, to hear the slightest sound in the dark. He cut the engine, cracked his window open enough to hear a different quality of silence than that in the car, and pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck. Somehow his passenger was up to no good, maybe the whole bunch of them, whoever it was that found cover in the shambles of other people’s houses. Guilt rose in him like bile that he would have a payday, likely a good one, from this opportunist.

The guilt stole into his awareness. If it wasn’t guilt about not making enough money, it was guilt about taking it from the wrong people, guilt about the way he made it. How did the straight-A Jesuit student, the kid with so much promise, end up driving a taxi at night? He rubbed his hand over his face, something he did so often now it was like a tic. The worst thing about driving the taxi, it gave him too much time to think. He wished he had a button on the side of his head he could turn to the OFF position.

Behind him came a sharp crack that sounded like a pistol shot. His body jumped with enough force that he hit his head on the ceiling of the cab. He whipped around. Another crack and the limb of a dying camphor tree fell to the ground inches away from his rear bumper. He slumped into his seat, limp, wasted. As if he could stop his racing heart, he pressed his hand against his chest. He glanced down the empty alley, checked his watch. It had been fifteen minutes. Where was this guy? His heart wouldn’t slow down; his throat was tight. Christ, he thought he was going to die.

Mike was afraid of death. He thought about it a lot and wondered if other people did. No one ever talked about it much, but then neither did he. Stories he’d heard about people dying for a few minutes before being pulled back into life — the white light, the feeling of peace, of someone, God, beckoning from the light-filled tunnel — he wanted to buy it. The nuns at Holy Cross, even the sometimes cynical Jesuits, had assured him there was an afterlife. But Mike feared death would be painful and messy and final. He would die and there would be nothing. When he was a boy, he would look into the sky, stare deeply into the heavens, his mind traveling into an infinity of nothing as long as he could stand it, before panic set in and he returned to earth. He could never keep going to find out if anything might be there to make him believe; his heart would begin to pound unnaturally and he would think he might die.

Had the nuns put this fear of death in him with their talk of eternal damnation? Wasn’t he supposed to have developed a fear of God, not of nothingness? Had the Jesuits used subliminal messages in the religion classes? Had it been the Sunday trips to the cemetery, rain or shine, to visit the dead, his morose grandmother pulling him along by the hand, telling him to keep up? Or could it have been his father’s stories about the war, about watching men die, about saving men whose bodies were already dead from paralyzing wounds?

Mike would go to bed sometimes thinking about how he might die. His father’s talk of heroism, the great terribleness of war, and the glory of it all would swarm in his head. “No guts, no glory,” he liked to say, speaking about it the way Mike later heard men talk about their college football days, as though life beyond could never live up to such thrilling times. He tried to imagine a natural death, in his sleep, but all that did was make him try not to close his eyes.

Mike pulled up a short laugh. Here he sat, waiting for a man who might be dangerous, in an area people referred to as looking war-ravaged, surrounded by streets named after generals and world war heroes and scenes of battle. His father’s description of the fighting in the Argonne Forest was the most vivid — the guts and the glory.

The tic, his hand down his face. The war Mike remembered most was the one he hadn’t gone to and that his father had never seen. Vietnam. When he got drafted, his father, not a man big on physical affection, had hugged him and regarded him with the utmost seriousness and pride. His son was going off to experience what he had experienced, even if it was a different kind of war. There would still be valor and Mike would be one of the proud who fought for his country.

Two weeks before he was to leave for Fort Polk, Mike’s right foot swelled to twice its size. Tests were run, the diagnosis was gout, not so common in such a young man, the doctor said. He hobbled to the recruiting office downtown in the Customs building where he expected a delay in his orders. Instead he walked out with a 4-F.

His relief was so overwhelming that he went straight to a nearby French Quarter bar, where at 9:30 in the morning he drank one beer fast and the second one slowly and counted his blessings with every sip. It had nothing to do with whether he thought the Vietnam War was right or wrong. He hadn’t been a particularly idealistic young man. For six weeks, since the draft notice, he’d been nearly sick with fear that he was going to die.

He went home and told his father the news, keeping his face and tone emotionless. His father briefly laid his hand on Mike’s shoulder, but said nothing.

Thirty-five years later, Mike sat in the taxi he drove six nights a week, rehashing the scene from his own private war. His father’s hand seemed to have left a permanent mark of shame. He wanted to believe that the gesture had been one of sympathy and even some relief, but he believed that his father knew his son was a coward. He’d never since had an attack of gout.

Mike hoped his own son never had to face a draft or go to war. With the war in Iraq and the world so unstable, he worried about it a lot. His wife told him he dwelled on morbid thoughts. His priest told him that older parents were often more fearful for their children. He told Mike not to let fear control him. But he couldn’t tell him how. The world was a hotbed of fear. It thrived everywhere, like the mold and the cockroaches.

A man’s cry jerked Mike back into the night. He looked into the alley as the guy was shoved from under the carport. He tried to break his fall but his arm twisted under him and he cried out again as the side of his face and shoulder hit the hard rough surface left by the flood.

Four men rushed into the alley, all shouting in Spanish. One kicked the guy, whose ass was still up in the air, onto his back. He raised his arms weakly as if to ward off what he knew was coming. They were all over him — no more shouting, only the sounds of the punches against his body.

As soon as it started, Mike swung the cab door open. He rushed into the alley. “Hey,” he called, “hey, stop that!”

At the sound of his own voice, he hesitated.

“Hey!” he yelled again, and began moving forward. “Hey!”

He had their attention. The flurry of blows stopped and the four of them turned toward him.

“Let him go!” He went another couple of steps.

The guy tried to raise himself on an elbow. One of the men shoved him down.

“Mikey.” The guy sounded far away.

Mike took another step and stood his ground. “Let him go. Now!” No one made a move. “Comprende?” Mike yelled at them.

One of the men stood and Mike saw that he held something close against his thigh. He thought it was a gun. He froze. The man lifted his hand, and enough light from the carport caught it that Mike saw the blade clearly. Holding the knife at waist level, the man came toward him. He spoke hard, rapid Spanish and gestured with his free hand. He was telling Mike to go, no doubt about it, and when he thrust the knife forward and picked up his speed, Mike turned and ran back to the cab. He vaguely heard the guy on the ground calling, “Mikey, Mikey,” so far away now. Mike gunned the engine. The car slid a little on the dusty street and covered four blocks before a thought crossed his mind. He slammed on the brakes at Canal Boulevard.

His heart was pounding, his throat almost closed. He stared at the cab’s radio, not a blip from it all night. It went in and out; his cell phone was useless. He was alone, completely alone, an entirely new way of being alone, and he made a choice.

He took a deep breath as he stepped out of the taxi. He went around to the trunk. Wrapped in old rags, the gun sat deep in the wheel well beside the spare. Mike unwrapped it, put the rags back in the wheel well, and replaced the cover. He got in the taxi and drove to the Argonne alley.

The four men in the alley all turned when Mike drove up. He didn’t see his passenger. He killed the engine and pocketed the keys as he got out of the cab. He held the gun pointed at the men. As he walked toward them, he asked where the other man was. He got close enough to see that the men were standing around a pool of blood that had soaked into the crust covering the alley.

“What did you do to him?” he demanded.

They were mute, staring at him, maybe afraid of his gun, maybe not. He could see their hands, empty, no knife showing.

“Where’s the man?” Mike repeated.

“El hombre,” one of them said.

“That’s right, el hombre. Dónde está el hombre?”

They all shrugged. One of them said something in Spanish Mike didn’t understand.

“Do you speak English? Doesn’t anyone speak English? Habla inglés?”

They stood there.

“Come on,” Mike said, “You have to know something. Did he walk away? Did you kill him?” He thought a moment. “Muerto? Hombre muerto?”

This got them very agitated. They spoke among themselves, too fast for Mike to understand anything other than a word here and there — hombre, casa, pistola.

“Hey!” Mike waved the gun and took a step toward them, but he didn’t want to get so close that they could jump him. They stopped talking and looked at him. He looked back. Hard. He didn’t know what to do. If he stared them down, maybe they’d think he was dangerous, not desperate.

What seemed like a long time went by. Mike finally said, “If you killed him, I’ll kill you.” He hadn’t known what he was going to say, but in that moment he thought he had it in him to shoot every one of them.

The tallest one spread his hands. “No,” he said, “we don’t kill him.”

“Then where is he?” The man dropped his hands. Anger began to rise in Mike. “You speak enough English to know the word ‘kill.’ How about this? You don’t tell where he is, I’ll kill you.”

The Mexican spread his hands again, his gesture of supplication. “Not so much English.”

“Bullshit! Where did he go, you creeps?” With his free hand he pointed down the alley. “That way?” None of them looked. “That way?” The opposite direction. “That way?” He pointed at the house. “La casa?”

“Sí.” The tall man nodded vigorously, “La casa.”

“Buncha dumb Mexicans,” Mike muttered.

He started toward the house, moving sideways so he could see them. On his way, he picked up a Coleman lantern that sat on an ice chest and walked around a high wood fence that leaned on the carport.

The back door of the house had been removed. When Mike held up the lantern, he could see straight through the gutted downstairs and out the front door, which stood wide open. The house wasn’t large, and a quick walk through the lower floor did not reveal a body or his passenger bleeding to death from a stab wound.

The stairway was by the far wall near the front door. As Mike looked at it, he knew he’d been duped, sent into the house on a fool’s errand. He tore through the house as he felt for his car keys. He arrived in the alley in time to see the last Mexican pull his foot into the cab and close the door. The vehicle roared off and Mike ran down the alley to Filmore Street. It was already a block away, but he stood in the middle of the street and shot twice at it. It fishtailed and he thought he’d hit it, but if anything, it moved away faster.

He pulled his keys out of his pocket and pressed the red alarm button, knowing it wouldn’t work. The remote needed a new battery.

Mike stuck the gun in the back of his pants and walked back to the house in a silence more oppressive than the blackness of the night. He retrieved the lantern, glad for the warmth of its light and the slight hissing sound it made.

The Mexicans had cleared out the carport. The ice chest was gone and not a tool or piece of clothing was left, only a few rags hanging on the Page fence that separated it from the carport next door. Mike stood there, the lantern at his side, as if gathering his energy for the long walk ahead.

His whole body jerked when he heard the rustling in the weeds across the alley.

“Mikey, hey, Mikey.” His fare emerged from behind a dead shrub and limped across to the carport. Mike held up the lantern expecting to see him covered with blood. Instead, he saw sheetrock dust and dirt, maybe a smear of blood on his dark blue jacket, and the evidence of hiding in a weed patch. He held one arm tight against his rib cage. “I was over on Argonne when I heard the shooting. I knew you’d come back, Mikey, I knew you’d come back with the gun.” He grinned.

How could he know it? Mike himself didn’t know it. He wanted to knock the grin off him. He didn’t even know why he felt so hostile. “Your face is a mess,” he said.

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t much to begin with.” He was grinning again.

“I thought they’d stabbed you.”

The guy frowned. “They had a knife?”

“I saw a knife.”

“Glad I didn’t see it.”

“Looks like you lost a lot of blood.” Mike walked over to the stain.

“My nose,” the guy said. “Bled like a son of a bitch. I think it scared them.” He shrugged with one shoulder. “They stopped kicking me.” He glanced down the alley where the cab had been. “So what, you leave the keys in the car?”

“Hot-wired.”

He laughed, a short one, and clutched his arm tighter against his side. “Fuckin’ spics. They can do anything.” He tilted his head and looked at Mike, amused. “What I don’t get — you had a gun on ’em, right?”

“I went in the house looking for you, moron.”

He did his high-pitched laugh, keeping it in his throat to avoid hurting his ribs, and the night air sent it out, a sound to make the worst scoundrel’s skin crawl. He grimaced when he forgot his hurt leg, doing a little hop on his good one.

“You’re a bucket of cheer for a guy who just got the crap beat out of him.”

He rubbed at an eye, as though drying it, but touched the open cut on his cheekbone and winced. “Yeah, well, Mikey, what you gonna do? I tried to talk them into staying, but they weren’t buying it this time.”

“This happened before?”

“No, I mean they been stranded out here since my truck broke down.”

“So they decide to beat you up tonight?”

“I was supposed to get the truck Friday. I went to the casino Thursday night, remember? Lost the repair money. They said they’d wait till today.”

“I don’t get it,” Mike said.

The man’s good humor seemed to be deteriorating. He said crossly, “I been at the casino all weekend and lost most of their pay, too. They’re illegals. What they gonna do but beat me up?”

They started walking.

A block later, the guy’s amusement recovered, he said, “Not only that, I been taking cabs all over the place. Fuckin’ expensive.”

“I guess you get off cheap tonight.”

“Fuckin’-A. I gotta walk home.” He tried to elbow Mike, but Mike moved away from him. “Don’t be a sour puss. Come on, find us a bar. Buy me a drink. The spics get to party in a hot taxi.”

The guy was strangled with laughter until they got to the intersection of Filmore and General Diaz.

After that they walked awhile in silence, until he added, “Look, Mikey, that was a real stand-up thing you did, come back to get me.”

“Sure.”

“No, I mean it. Four of them, one of you. Even if you had a gun. You didn’t know what kinda weapons they had. You saw a knife. Hell, they had crowbars, sledgehammers, all kinda stuff.”

“I never thought about it.”

“That’s what I mean. You come back for a guy you don’t know, some fare you picked up. You coulda just gone home. That’s real stand-up stuff.” He brushed his knuckles across Mike’s arm. “I appreciate it, man. I mean it.” He limped along, grunting every few steps with the effort.

It was true, he’d gone back without a thought for his own safety. He couldn’t just run away from a man getting kicked like that, who could have been killed. He would never have known whether the guy was dead or alive. His thoughts careened around his brain, and his emotions with them — afraid when he shouldn’t be, not afraid when there was good reason. Maybe he didn’t think right, not like other people. Maybe he’d gone back because the guy was a fare, no other reason than still hoping for a payday.

Christ, where was that button on the side of his head? He needed to turn it off.

“Yeah, I guess they could have killed you.”

“Nah,” the guy said, “I’m the meal ticket.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not much of a businessman, are you, Mikey?” The arrogance — Judas Priest, Mike wanted to kill the asshole. “I get the work, collect the money, they gut the houses, I pay them.”

“The way I read it, you’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

“Whatever you say, Mikey. You saved my life, okay? I’m telling you I appreciate it.”

He said that, and all Mike felt was the weight of the gun against his back. “I didn’t save your life. They let you go before I ever got back.”

“That’s what I mean. They could have killed you.”

“You’re right, they could’ve. Instead, they took all their belongings, all those crowbars and sledgehammers, their ice chest, clothes, and they took the first ride out they could get.”

The guy stopped dead. “So what’s your conclusion here? You scared them off?”

“No, hombre, I’m suggesting that you need to reconsider just who the meal ticket is. The Mexicans have vamoosed. They aren’t coming back.”

“Okay, I get it. You don’t need to tell me three ways to Sunday... Fuckin’ asshole,” he added under his breath. He started walking again.

Mike clutched the guy’s shoulder and stopped him. “You calling me an asshole?” He held the lantern up so it lit the man’s face.

“Get that thing outta my face.” He pushed Mike’s arm away and started moving again, limping down the street a little faster, trying to get away from Mike.

The lantern swinging at this side, Mike took a long step and caught up with him. “What’s your hurry? We got a long way to go. You better pace yourself.”

“Pace myself right outta this goddamn place,” he mumbled.

“What — back to Jersey?”

The guy walked, his head down. He grunted with each step.

“You mean you’re leaving the land of opportunity? One small setback and that’s it? What about that house back there? The one the Mexicans didn’t finish gutting.” Mike had read all the warnings about rip-off contractors.

The big businessman tried to go faster, but Mike lengthened his stride and walked comfortably next to him. “All you have to do is go down to Lee Circle and hire another crew at the gas station.” The illegals gathered there every morning, holding up signs for work.

The man wouldn’t talk to him. He was going to leave the city, leave people who had paid him in good faith.

“You have any other houses lined up?” He waited a second then went on. “How ’bout it, buddy. You gonna return the money?” He held the lantern up again, leaning so he was in the man’s face.

He didn’t see it coming. The guy from Jersey back-fisted him. Mike felt a tooth go. Blood filled his mouth.

The man grabbed the lantern from Mike’s hand. “Who’s gonna make me, huh? You?” He swung the lantern and threw it. It shattered against the side of the house they stood next to. Mike smelled gas. All the dry debris beside the house burst into flame. It pushed Mike back several steps, into the street.

The man was on him, hands all over him, feeling for the gun. As hard as he could, Mike kicked him in the shin of the bad leg. The guy landed full weight on his ass, yelling and wrapping both arms around his broken ribs.

Mike rushed forward as if he could stop the fire. But the heat stopped him first. The house had already caught; it would burn to the ground faster than he could get help.

Mesmerized by the fire, Mike felt the hand at his back too late. Jersey had the gun. Mike turned and caught his forearm, twisting the weapon away from them both. It fired off to the side. Mike kept twisting, the man’s thick forearm held against him. They stayed like that, both of their bodies tense, unmoving, until the tree next to them caught fire. Without much strength behind it, Jersey kneed Mike in the groin. Mike lost his balance but didn’t release his hold. He pulled Jersey with him as he fell against the tree. Both their jacket sleeves caught fire, but Jersey’s cheaper one went up faster and hotter. He started screaming. Mike released him, moved away from the tree, and started tearing off his own jacket. The man seemed almost frozen. He pointed the gun at Mike, still screaming. Mike threw his jacket to the ground. He watched his passenger shake the gun at him and waited for the bullet. But then he realized something else was going on. The man finally shook the gun free. The flesh of his hand went with it. Then the flames from the tree jumped to the man’s back, and in a moment the screaming stopped.

Mike watched until most of the body had melted away, until the stench of burning flesh was no longer overpowering. He kicked the gun out into the street. It was still hot. After it cooled, he picked it up, wiped the grip off on his trousers, and put it back in his waistband. He started walking toward West End, death all over him. His mind, for once, was still.

Annunciation shotgun by Greg Herren

Lower Garden District

“I swear I didn’t mean to kill him.”

If ever a person was meant to come with a warning label, it was my tenant, Phillip. He’d been renting the other side of my double shotgun in the Lower Garden District for two years now, and while he was a good tenant — always paid his rent on time, never made a lot of noise in the wee hours of the morning, and even ran errands for me sometimes — chaos always seemed to follow in his wake. He didn’t do it intentionally. He was actually a very sweet guy with a big heart, a great sense of humor, and he was a lot of fun to have around.

Every morning before he went to work, he’d come over for coffee and fill me in on the latest goings-on in his life. I usually just rolled my eyes and shook my head — there wasn’t much else to do, really. For all his good heart and good intent, somehow things always seemed to happen whenever he was around. Bad things. He attracted them like a magnet attracts nails.

I looked from the body on the kitchen floor over to where he was standing by the stove and back again. I knew I should have evicted him after the hurricane, when I had the chance. I don’t need this, I thought. My evening was planned to the second. My new book, the latest (and hopefully biggestselling) suspense thriller from Anthony Andrews was due to my editor in three days. I was finishing up the revisions, and when I was too bleary-eyed to stare at the computer screen any longer, I was going to open a bottle of red wine, smoke some pot, and throw the third season of The Sopranos in the DVD player. A very nice, pleasant quiet evening at home; the kind that made me happy and enabled me to focus on my work. When Phillip called, panic in his voice, demanding that I come over immediately, I’d thought it was a plugged toilet or something else minor but highly annoying. I’d put my computer to sleep and headed over, figuring I could take care of whatever it was and be back at the computer in five minutes, cursing him with every step for interrupting my evening.

A dead body was the last thing I was expecting.

“Um, we need to call the cops.” I shook my head, forcing myself to look away from the body and back over at Phillip. I felt kind of numb, like I was observing everything from a distance that I wasn’t a part of. Shock, probably. Phillip’s eyes were still kind of wild, wide open and streaked with red, his curly hair disheveled, his face white and glistening with a glassy sheen of sweat. “We need to call the cops like right now.” I raised my voice. “Are you listening to me?”

He didn’t move or answer me. He just kept standing there looking down at the floor, occasionally shifting his weight from one leg to the other. There was a bruise forming on his right cheek, and his lips looked puffy and swollen. I peered back at the body. I hadn’t, in my initial shock and horror, recognized the man sprawled on the floor with a pool of blood underneath his head. “You killed Chad,” I heard myself saying, thinking, This can’t be happening, oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this isn’t happening.

Chad was his scumbag boyfriend.

“We can’t call the cops. I mean, we just can’t,” Phillip replied, his voice bordering on hysteria. “Please, Tony, we can’t.” His voice took on that pleading tone I’d heard so many times before, when he wanted me to do something I didn’t want to. He was always wheedling, dragging me out to bars against my will, urging me on until I finally gave in. He could always, it seemed, wear me down and make me go against my better judgment. But this was different.

A lot different.

This wasn’t the same thing as a 4 in the morning phone call to pick him up at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel because he’d somehow lost his pants. Or to come bail him out of Central Lockup because he’d pissed in public in a drunken stupor. Or to help him buy his car out of the impound lot where it had been towed. Or any number of the minor crises that seemed to constantly swirl around him, like planets orbiting the sun.

Chaos.

“What happened?” I asked. I was starting to come back into myself. I’ve always managed to remain calm and cool in a crisis. Panicking never makes any situation better. A crisis calls for a cool head, careful thought, the weighing and discarding of options. I started looking around for the phone, cursing myself for not bringing my cell with me. We had to call the cops, and soon. The longer we waited, the worse it would be for him.

“You didn’t hear us?” Phillip stared at me. “I don’t see how — you had to have heard us, Tone. I mean, he was yelling so loud...” He shuddered. “Are you sure you didn’t hear anything? He came over in one of his moods, you know how he gets — got — and you know, just started in on me. I was making him dinner...” his voice trailed off and he made a limp gesture with his hand toward the top of the stove.

I noticed a pot of congealing spaghetti floating in starchy water and another one with skin starting to form on what looked like red sauce. “We’ve got to call the cops, Phillip. We don’t have a choice here.”

“He started hitting me.” He went on as if I hadn’t said a word, beginning to shake as he remembered. “Yelling and screaming. You didn’t hear? You had to have heard, Tony, you had to have heard.”

“I was working. I had the headphones on.” I always put on headphones when I am writing so I can shut off all external distractions and focus. The littlest thing can take me away from my work, so I try to avoid all outside stimulus at all costs. The iPod had been a huge help in that regard.

“And I just pushed him away and he slipped and hit his head on the table.” Phillip started to cry. “Oh, Tony, what are we going to do?”

“We have to call the cops. Where’s your phone?”

“We can’t call the cops!” His voice started rising in hysteria. He buried his face in his hands. “I can’t go to jail again. I just can’t. I’d rather die than do that.”

I looked at him, starting to get exasperated. Even now, in a panic and terrified, he was handsome, with his mop of curly brown hair and finely chiseled face with deep dimples and round brown eyes straight out of a Renaissance painting of a saint. He was wearing a tight sleeveless T-shirt that said, NOPD — Not our problem, dude. Phillip always wore T-shirts a size too small, to show off his defined arms, strong shoulders, and thickly muscled chest. I’d been attracted to him when he first moved in, and even considered trying to get him into my bed for a few days. Seeing him shirtless and sweating in the hot August sun as he moved in certainly was a delectable sight; almost like the opening sequence of one of your better gay porn movies. Yet it didn’t take long for me to realize that as sexy and lovable as he was, I just couldn’t deal with the chaos that followed him around like a dark cloud. No, I’d spent most of my adult life getting chaos out of my life, and wasn’t about to let it in again just so I could fuck the hot guy who lived next door. I didn’t mind listening to his tales of woe every morning — but that was as involved as I got. Just listening to him some mornings was tiring enough.

“So, what do you suggest? We dump the body in the river?”

Phillip let out a big sigh and smiled. “Oh, I knew you would understand! You’re the best! I knew I could count on you!”

I stared at him. He could not be serious. “That was sarcasm, Phillip.” I looked down at Chad again, and my stomach lurched. I’d never liked Chad, couldn’t understand what Phillip saw in him, and every day for the month or so they’d been dating I told Phillip to dump him at least once. He was a jerk, an arrogant ass who thought because he was handsome and had a nice body he was better than other people, as though spending hours in the gym every week somehow gave him the right to treat people like something he’d stepped in. He’d been awful to Phillip almost from the very start of their relationship. He seemed to take great pleasure in tearing Phillip down in front of people, and I could only imagine what he was like in private. After a while, I gave up trying to get Phillip to wake up and see Chad for the loser he was. I just wanted to scream at Phillip, Get some goddamned self-esteem! After Chad hit Phillip the first time, I was ready to kill the son of a bitch myself — but ultimately decided he wasn’t worth it.

And now, as I looked down at the pool of blood under his head, I realized I wasn’t sorry he was dead. The world was a better place without the arrogant son of a bitch.

“I wasn’t serious.”

“Come on, Tony, we can’t call the police.” Phillip shakily lit a Parliament. “You know what that’s like. Even if they believe me, that it was self-defense and an accident, it’s still going to be a big mess.” He shuddered again. “That night I spent in Central Lockup — Tony, if I go back there, if I have to spend one night there again, I’ll kill myself. I will. And you know how the cops are. You know.”

He had a point. I didn’t blame Phillip one bit for not having any confidence in the New Orleans Police Department. No one really did after the hurricane and all the allegations of police looting and car thefts and so forth, whether they were true or not. Their reputation hadn’t exactly been great before the storm either. Phillip might be right — getting the police involved would probably only make matters worse. He needed to protect himself. They’d been pretty awful when he’d been arrested that one time. And, as it later turned out, he’d spent the night in jail for something that was merely a ticketing offense. He’d been a hysterical mess when I bailed him out. I’ll never forget the look on his face when they finally let him go, and the stories he told me about that night in jail made my blood run cold.

“We’ll call the police and then call a lawyer.” It sounded reasonable to me. “I won’t let you go to jail,” I said, as though I had any control over what the police would do. The more I thought about it, the less I liked it.

“I can’t afford a lawyer.” Phillip worked at the Transco Airlines ticket counter out at the airport. He made a decent living — always paid his rent on time — but there wasn’t a lot of money left over for extras. I was always loaning him a twenty when he fell short. “And what if they don’t believe me? What if they arrest me? I don’t have bail money. I’ll lose my job. My life will be ruined.”

“We can’t just dump the body somewhere,” I replied, it finally beginning to dawn on me that he was completely serious. He wants me to help him dump the body. “They’d find out, and that would just make things worse.” I shook my head. “Phillip, this isn’t something we can just cover up. They always find out... and then they definitely wouldn’t believe you.”

“You’ve said a million times that anyone can get away with murder if they’re careful.” He crossed his arms. “I mean, you write about stuff like that all the time, right?”

I looked at him. “Murder? I thought you said it was self-defense?” I chewed on my lower lip.

“We could dump him in the Bywater. We could make it look like it was a mugging, couldn’t we? How hard could it be?”

“Phillip...” I sighed. I could think of at least a hundred reasons off the top of my head, minimum, why that wouldn’t work, but there wasn’t time to go through them all. Besides, I knew Phillip. He wasn’t going to listen to any of them. “We can’t dump him in the river. We need to call the police.” I looked back down at Chad’s staring eyes, and noticed the congealing blood again. “Oh my fucking God, Phillip! How long has he been dead?”

He bit his lips. “Um, I didn’t know what to do. I freaked!”

“How long has he been dead?” I gritted my teeth.

“Maybe about an hour.” He shrugged. “Or two.”

My legs buckled and I had to grab the edge of the table to keep from falling to the floor next to Chad. We couldn’t call the cops. It had been too long. I could hear the homicide detective now, see the look on his face: And why did you wait so long to call us? Why didn’t you call 911? It looked bad. What if Chad hadn’t died instantly? What if they could have saved him? What if he’d bled to death?

And once the history of physical abuse came to light — and there were any number of Phillip’s friends who’d only be too glad to tell the cops all about it, not realizing that they’d be sealing Phillip’s indictment, thinking they were helping by making Chad look bad, like he deserved killing.

Phillip was going to jail.

Jesus FUCKING Christ.

I was going to have to help him.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, his voice hinting at rising hysteria once again. “I’m telling you, Tony, we can’t call the police! I can’t go to jail, I can’t.” He suddenly burst into tears, covering his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking.

“Well, the first thing is, you need to calm the fuck down,” I snapped. My head was starting to ache. I definitely didn’t need this shit. I was on deadline — I couldn’t exactly call my editor and say, Sorry, I need a few more days, I had to help my tenant dispose of a dead body and come up with a story for the cops. I raced through possibilities in my mind; places to dispose of the body where it might not be found for a while. Almost every single one of them was flawed. Seriously flawed — though an idea was starting to form in my head. “Is Chad’s car here?”

Phillip wiped at his nose. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, we’re going to have to get rid of that, too.” I refrained from adding dumbass, like I really wanted to. But there was no sense in getting him all worked up again, since he seemed to finally be calming down. And if we were going to do this — and, more importantly, get away with it — I needed him calm. “Give me a cigarette.” I’d managed to finally quit a few months earlier, but I needed one now. Get ahold of yourself, look at this as an intellectual puzzle, shut off your emotions. I lit the Parliament and sucked in the bitter smoke. I took a few deep breaths and decided to try one last time.

“Phillip, we really should call the cops. I mean, if this was self-defense—”

“What do you mean, if it was?” Phillip’s brown eyes narrowed. He pointed to his cheek, which was purple. “He slugged me again, Tony. He threw me against the wall — I can’t believe you didn’t hear him screaming at me.”

I hadn’t, though — no shouting, no crashing, no struggle. Sure, I had the headphones on, but — no, it was probably self-defense, there was no reason to doubt Phillip. Chad was an egotistical bully with no problem using his fists whenever he decided Phillip had looked at him cross-eyed. I looked down at the pale face, the sticky pool of blood under his curly brown hair. His eyes were open, staring glassily at the ceiling. He was wearing his standard uniform of Abercrombie & Fitch sleeveless T-shirt and low-rise jeans, no socks, and boat shoes.

“What exactly happened here, anyway?” None of this made any sense. But then, death rarely does.

“I don’t know, it all happened so fast.” Phillip’s voice shook. “Chad called and wanted to come over. I said okay, even though I was kind of tired. So I started making spaghetti. He came in the back way—” he gestured to the door I’d come through, “and he just started in on me. The same old bullshit, me cheating on him, me not being good enough for him, all of that horrible crap.” He hugged himself and shivered. “Then he got up and shoved me into the wall and punched me—” he touched his cheek again, “and was about to punch me again when I shoved him really hard, and he fell back and hit his head on the edge of the counter... Then he just kind of gurgled and dropped to the floor.” He gagged, took some breaths, and got control of himself again. “Then I called you.”

Two hours later — what did you do for two hours? “Well, good enough for him,” I finally said, stubbing the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray on the counter.

“Are you going to help me?”

“Give me another cigarette and let me think, okay?”

The plan was simplicity itself. Once I’d smoked two or three cigarettes, I’d worked it all out in my head. I looked at it from every angle. Sure, we’d need some luck, but every plan relies on luck to a certain degree. The Lower Ninth Ward above Claiborne Avenue was a dead zone. Hurricane Katrina had left her mark there, with houses shifted off foundations, cars planted nose-down in the ground... and bulldozing had recently begun. I’d clipped an article out of the Times-Picayune that very morning on the subject, thinking it might be useful with my next book. Out in the shed behind the house, I still had the remnants of the blue tarp that had been our roof after the one-eyed bitch had wrecked it on her way through. I had Phillip help me get it, and we rolled Chad up in it. We carried the body out into the backyard, and then we cleaned the entire kitchen — every single inch of it — with bleach. I knew from a seemingly endless interview with a forensic investigator with the NOPD for my second book that bleach would destroy any trace of DNA left behind. I made Phillip wash the pots and pans and run them through the dishwasher with bleach. When the kitchen was spotless and reeked of Clorox, I checked to make sure the coast was clear.

The Lower Garden District, before Katrina, had been a busy little neighborhood. We weren’t as fabulous as the Garden District, of course; when Anne Rice still lived here, I liked to tell people I lived on a street called Annunciation, about “six blocks and six million dollars” away from her. We didn’t have the manicured lawns and huge houses you would see above Jackson Avenue; we were the poorer section between I-90 and Jackson. Around Coliseum Square there were some gigantic historic homes, but most of the houses in our neighborhood were of the double shotgun variety, like mine. Our section of St. Charles Avenue — about four blocks away from my house — was where you’d find the horror of chain stores and fast food that you wouldn’t find further up the street.

But I liked my neighborhood. There’d always been someone around — kids playing basketball in the park down the street, people out walking dogs, and so forth; the normal day-to-day outside ramblings of any city neighborhood. The floodwaters from the shattered levees hadn’t made it to our part of town — we were part of the so-called sliver by the river. When I’d come back in October, the neighborhood had been a ghost town. And even though more and more people were coming back almost every day, it was still silent and lifeless after dark for the most part.

Tonight was no different. Other than the occasional light in a window up and down the street, it was as still as a cemetery. We carried Chad out to his car and started putting him in the trunk. The way things were going, it would be just our luck to have a patrol car come along as we were forcing the body in the blue tarp burial shroud into the vehicle, and I didn’t stop holding my breath until the trunk latch caught.

No one came along. The street remained silent.

Then Phillip got behind the wheel of Chad’s Toyota to follow me through the city. “Make sure you use your turn signals and don’t speed,” I cautioned him before getting into my own car. “Don’t give any cop a reason to pull you over, okay?”

He nodded.

I watched him in my rearview mirror as we drove through the quiet city. There were a few cars out, and every once in a while I spotted an NOPD car. The twenty-minute drive seemed to take forever, but we finally made it past the bridge over the Industrial Canal. I turned left onto Caffin Avenue and headed into the dead zone past the deserted, boarded-up remnants of a Walgreen’s and a KFC. It was spooky, like the set of some apocalyptic movie. We cruised around in the blighted area, my palms sweating, until I found the perfect house. There was no front door, and there were the telltale spray-paint markings on the front, fresh. It had been checked again for bodies, and the three houses to its right had already been bulldozed; piles of smashed wood and debris were scattered throughout the dead yards. Several dozers were also parked in the emptied yards, ready for more demolition.

I pulled over in front of the house and turned off my lights. I got out of the car and lit another cigarette. We wrestled the body out, and lugged it into the dark house, which stank of decay and mold, rotting furniture scattered about as we made our way through it. We found the curving stairway to the second story, and carried him up. The first bedroom at the top of the stairs had a closet full of moldy clothing.

“Okay, let’s just put him here in the closet,” I said, panting and trying to catch my breath. Chad weighed a fucking ton. “But put him down for a minute.”

Phillip let go and the body fell to the floor with a thud. I had the body by the shoulders, and I staggered with the sudden weight. The tarp pulled down, exposing Chad’s head, and then I couldn’t hold him anymore, and he fell, dragging me down on top of him.

“FUCK!” I screamed, looking right into Chad’s open eyes. His mouth had come open as well, and in the moonlight I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

There are bruises on his neck. Bruises that look like they came from fingers around his neck, choking the life out of him. A chill went down my spine. What the fuck — I looked back up at Phillip. I could almost hear him saying again, You’ve said a million times that anyone can get away with murder...

No wonder he hadn’t wanted to call the cops.

It hadn’t been an accident. It hadn’t been self-defense.

It was murder.

And I’d helped him cover it up. I was an accessory after the fact.

And even if I cooperated, testified against him, I might have to serve time myself. At the very least, author Anthony Andrews would get some very nasty publicity.

Does he know? I thought, my heart racing. Can he tell that I’ve seen? It was awful dark, and I only saw because my face was right there by Chad’s.

“Are you okay? Jesus, I’m sorry!”

He doesn’t know I know. Thank you, God.

Phillip grabbed me under the arms and lifted me up to my feet without effort. He started dusting me off. “Are you okay?”

“Didn’t know you were so strong,” I said. I forced a smile on my face. “I’m okay.”

“Don’t you want to put him in the closet?” he asked. “Or can we just leave him here?”

“No, he needs to go in the closet, just in case. Let’s do this and get out of here,” I said, managing to keep my voice steady. I can’t let him do this, I can’t let him get away with this, but I’ve got to get out of here. Think, Tony, think, there must be something I can do...

We shoved him in, standing up, and wedged the door shut.

“All right, now we have to get rid of his car, right?” He gave me a smile. “This means so much to me, Tony, you have no idea.” He gave me a hug, almost squeezing the breath out of me.

How come I never noticed how strong he is before now? Aloud, I said, “Well, maybe we could just leave it here after all.” I shrugged. “I mean, they probably wouldn’t think anything about it, really.”

Phillip raised an eyebrow. “But you said—”

“No, no, I know, we can’t leave it here.” I gave him a ghost of a smile and tried to keep my voice steady, even as I thought, I am alone in an abandoned house in an empty neighborhood with a killer. “I’m just a little — you know...” I tried to make a joke. “This isn’t exactly my normal Tuesday night routine.” I gave a hollow laugh. “No, we can’t leave the car parked out in front.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll leave the car in the Bywater,” I went on, my mind racing, trying to think of something, some clue, to leave behind. If they didn’t find the body, he’d get away with it, but how to tip them off and leave myself out of it...? “With any luck, the tires and everything will be stripped in a few days. If and when the cops finally find it, the body will be gone, and Chad will have just disappeared from the face of the earth.”

“Won’t they check the house for bodies before they bulldoze?”

“They already checked this house — they marked it as clear.” I’d picked the house for that very reason. I felt sick to my stomach. Oh, yes, the plan was clever. I’d outsmarted myself, that’s for damned sure. Tomorrow morning the bulldozers would level the place into a pile of rubble, and when the backhoe cleared it into a dumpster, if no telltale body parts fell out, that would be the end of it. Nope, Chad would be off to the dump, hopefully to be incinerated, and all Phillip would have to do was pretend he’d never seen or spoken to Chad again. Sure, they’d check his phone records and see that Chad had called, but all Phillip had to do was say they’d argued and Chad said he was going out in the Quarter. Besides, it would probably be days before anyone even noticed Chad was missing — and it wasn’t like the post-Katrina police force wasn’t already spread thin. Even before the storm, they weren’t exactly a ball of fire.

And Phillip was obviously a lot smarter than I’d given him credit for.

We left the car on Spain Street on a dark block on the lake side of St. Claude. I’d told Phillip to leave the windows down and the keys in the ignition. Someone would surely take that invitation to a free car. The police wouldn’t be looking for the vehicle for days, maybe even weeks — if ever. Maybe I could report the car stolen?

But that wouldn’t lead them back to Phillip.

Phillip got into my car and we pulled away from the curb. “Some adventure, huh?” he said, rolling down his window and lighting another cigarette. “Thanks, man.” He put his free hand on my inner thigh and stroked it, giving me the smile I’d seen him use a million times in bars. I knew exactly what that smile meant, and my blood ran cold. “Do you really think we’ll get away with it?”

“As long as you stick to your story and don’t freak when the police come by to interview you — if they ever do,” I replied, knowing that he wouldn’t freak. Oh no, he was much too clever for that. How could I have missed that before? If the body disposal went as planned, it could be days, even weeks, before anyone even notified the police. Chad worked as a waiter in a Quarter restaurant, and from all appearances, never seemed to have any friends. Who would miss him? He wouldn’t show up for work, they’d write him off — people tend to come and go quickly in New Orleans, especially now — and that would be the end of it. Unless a family member missed him, filed a missing-persons report, and really pressed the cops — which wouldn’t do much good, unless his family was wealthy and powerful.

You have to hate New Orleans sometimes.

As we drove down Claiborne, the one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was those bruises on Chad’s throat, and the two hours Phillip had waited before he called me. His story was a lie. No one freaks out and stays alone with a dead body for two hours. And I hadn’t heard anything. Sure, I’d had the iPod on pretty loud, but I’d heard their fights before. As for the bruise on his cheek, the cut lips — maybe he’d done that to himself somehow, as he tried to figure out a way to get me to help him. There was no way I would ever know what had finally pushed Phillip over the edge, why he’d decided that Chad had to die rather than just breaking things off with him. Or maybe the story he’d told me was partially true — maybe Chad had hit him, he’d fought back, knocked him down, and Chad had hit his head on the table on the way down. But Phillip had definitely finished him off by choking him.

I fell for his story like an idiot, worried as always about poor dumb Phillip in a jam, and now I am an accessory after the fact.

Just get home, get away from him, and make an anonymous call to the police, tip them off. As long as they find the body before it’s too late...

I glanced at Phillip. That was a good idea. Just get away from him and make the call.

Thank God I’d never followed up on the attraction I’d felt for him when he first moved in.

I pulled up in front of the house and turned the car off. I gave him a brittle smile. “Here we are.”

Phillip gave me that look again. “Thanks, Tony. You really are a good friend.” He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “Whew. Some night, huh?”

“Um, yeah.”

He got out of the car and stretched, his muscles flexing and rippling in the light from the streetlamp. Before, I would have admired their thickness and beauty. Now, all I could see was their strength, and it terrified me. “Man, I’m beat.” He gave me that smile again, and this time it curdled my blood. “Mind if I come in for a while? You have any pot? I could use some.”

Fuck!

“Phillip, I’m really wiped and just want to go to bed.” I faked a smile. “Wait here and I’ll roll you a joint.” I climbed the steps to my side of the house as quickly as I could. I unlocked the door and walked into my living room. The lights were still on; I hadn’t turned them off when I’d rushed over there. My computer screen glowed, my bag of weed still sitting there on my writing table where I’d left it. My hands shook as I reached into a drawer and pulled out my rolling papers. Just roll the damned thing and give it to him and then call the cops.

I jumped as the front door opened.

“Thanks, man,” Phillip said, as he shut the door behind him. “I know you’re tired, buddy, but I just need some company for a little while.”

I barked out a little laugh as I fumbled with the paper. “Yeah, it’s been kind of a weird night, huh?” Hurry, hurry, roll it and get him out of here.

“I’m really sorry, Tony,” Phillip said as I finished rolling the joint, licked it, and handed it over to him. “You’re such a good friend. I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you.”

That makes two of us, I thought. Just take your joint and get the fuck out of my house.

He sat down on the couch and stretched out, giving me that smile yet again. He patted the couch. “Why don’t you sit next to me, Tony?” He twirled the joint in his fingers. “Got a light?”

The easier to choke me? I swallowed and handed him the lighter. My heart was racing and I sat down, trying to keep my legs from touching his.

He took a long hit, held it in for a while, then blew it out in a plume. He offered me the joint, which I declined. He took another hit, pinched it out with his fingers, and put it on the coffee table. “You know what?”

“What?”

“I’ve always wondered about something but I never felt right asking.” He smiled at me.

Stay calm, keep cool, don’t alarm him in any way. “What’s that?”

“How come we’ve never hooked up?” I felt his arm slide around my shoulders, and out of the corner of my eye I saw his big hand on my shoulder.

I swallowed. “I–I don’t know.”

“I mean, I’ve seen how you look at me sometimes.” He leaned into me, his face close to mine. “Don’t you think I’m hot, Tony? Don’t you want to fuck me?”

Oh God, no, this isn’t happening. Get him out of here!

He kissed me on the cheek, his left hand moving to my chest.

“Phillip, no.” I tried to pull away from him, but he had a firm grip on my shoulder.

“You know you want it,” he whispered.

“No.” I pushed his hands off me and stood up. “I think you should leave.” I was shaking, my stomach churning.

He stood up as well, his face unreadable. “Come on, Tony.” He reached for me and put his arms around me, pulling me close.

“Let me go!” I tried pushing him away, but he just laughed and gripped me tighter, and as he pulled me in I knew he was stronger than me, and I wondered if this was the last thing Chad had seen before the hands went around his throat and started choking the life out of him, Phillip’s face moving in closer and closer as everything went dark and he slid to the floor... and my heart started pounding, this was it, I was going to die, he was going to kill me, too...

“Phillip, don’t!” Adrenaline coursed through my body as I planted my hands on his chest and shoved with every ounce of strength in my body.

He stumbled backwards, opened his mouth, his face shocked, and gasped, “Hey!” just as the back of his legs hit the coffee table.

I watched. It seemed as though time had slowed down, as though the entire world had somehow moved into slow motion.

He fell, his arms pinwheeling as he tried to catch himself.

The back of his head hit the edge of the mantelpiece with a sickening crunch.

And then he was sprawled on my floor, his head leaking.

He let out a sigh and his entire body went limp, his eyes staring at the ceiling.

“Oh. My. God,” I breathed, as I stepped forward and knelt down, placing my fingers on his carotid artery.

No heartbeat.

He was dead.

“I swear I didn’t mean to kill him!”

I sank down onto the floor in a stupor and started laughing hysterically.

Who was I going to call?

Loot by Julie Smith

Garden District

Mathilde’s in North Carolina with her husband when she hears about the hurricane — the one that’s finally going to fulfill the prophecy about filling the bowl New Orleans is built in. Uh-huh, sure. She’s been there a thousand times. She all but yawns.

Aren’t they all? goes through her mind.

“A storm like no one’s ever seen,” the weather guy says, “a storm that will leave the city devastated... a storm that...”

Blah blah and blah.

But finally, after ten more minutes of media hysteria, she catches on that this time it might be for real. Her first thought is for her home in the Garden District, the one that’s been in Tony’s family for three generations. Yet she knows there’s nothing she can do about that — if the storm takes it, so be it.

Her second thought is for her maid, Cherice Wardell, and Cherice’s husband, Charles.

Mathilde and Cherice have been together for twenty-two years. They’re like an old married couple. They’ve spent more time with each other than they have with their husbands. They’ve taken care of each other when one of them was ill. They’ve cooked for each other (though Cherice has cooked a good deal more for Mathilde). They’ve shopped together, they’ve argued, they’ve shared more secrets than either of them would be comfortable with if they thought about it. They simply chat, the way women do, and things come out, some things that probably shouldn’t. Cherice knows intimate facts about Mathilde’s sex life, for instance, things she likes to do with Tony, that Mathilde would never tell her white friends.

So Mathilde knows the Wardells plenty well enough to know they aren’t about to obey the evacuation order. They never leave when a storm’s on the way. They have two big dogs and nowhere to take them. Except for their two children, one of whom is in school in Alabama, and the other in California, the rest of their family lives in New Orleans. So there are no nearby relatives to shelter them. They either can’t afford hotels or think they can’t (though twice in the past Mathilde has offered to pay for their lodging if they’d only go). Only twice because only twice have Mathilde and Tony heeded the warnings themselves. In past years, before everyone worried so much about the disappearing wetlands and the weakened infrastructure, it was a point of honor for people in New Orleans to ride out hurricanes.

But Mathilde is well aware that this is not the case with the Wardells. This is no challenge to them. They simply don’t see the point of leaving. They prefer to play what Mathilde thinks of as Louisiana roulette. Having played it a few times herself, she knows all about it. The Wardells think the traffic will be terrible, that they’ll be in the car for seventeen, eighteen hours and still not find a hotel because everything from here to kingdom come’s going to be taken even if they could afford it.

“That storm’s not gon’ come,” Cherice always says. “You know it never does. Why I’m gon’ pack up these dogs and Charles and go God knows where? You know Mississippi gives me a headache. And I ain’t even gon’ mention Texas.”

To which Mathilde replied gravely one time, “This is your life you’re gambling with, Cherice.”

And Cherice said, “I think I’m just gon’ pray.”

But Mathilde will have to try harder this time, especially since she’s not there.

Cherice is not surprised to see Mathilde’s North Carolina number on her caller ID. “Hey, Mathilde,” she says. “How’s the weather in Highlands?”

“Cherice, listen. This is the Big One. This time, I mean it, I swear to God, you could be—”

“Uh-huh. Gamblin’ with my life and Charles’s. Listen, if it’s the Big One, I want to be here to see it. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Cherice, listen to me. I know I’m not going to convince you — you’re the pig-headedest woman I’ve ever seen. Just promise me something. Go to my house. Take the dogs. Ride it out at my house.”

“Take the dogs?” Cherice can’t believe what she’s hearing. Mathilde never lets her bring the dogs over, won’t let them inside her house. Hates dogs, has allergies, thinks they’ll pee on her furniture. She loves Mathilde, but Mathilde is a pain in the butt, and Cherice mentions this every chance she gets to anyone who’ll listen. Mathilde is picky and spoiled and needy. She’s good-hearted, sure, but she hates her precious routine disturbed.

Yet this same Mathilde Berteau has just told her to promise to take the dogs to her immaculate house. This is so sobering Cherice can hardly think what to say. “Well, I know you’re worried now.”

“Cherice. Promise me.”

Cherice hears panic in Mathilde’s voice. What can it hurt? she thinks. The bed in Mathilde’s guest room is a lot more comfortable than hers. Also, if the power goes out — and Cherice has no doubt that it will — she’ll have to go to Mathilde’s the day after the storm anyhow, to clean out the refrigerator.

Mathilde is ahead of her. “Listen, Cherice, I need you to go. I need you to clean out the refrigerator when the power goes. Also, we have a gas stove and you don’t. You can cook at my house. We still have those fish Tony caught a couple of weeks ago — they’re going to go to waste if you’re not there.”

Cherice is humbled. Not about the fish offer — that’s just like Mathilde, to offer something little when she wants something bigger. That’s small potatoes. What gets to her is the refrigerator thing — if Mathilde tells her she needs her for something, she’s bringing out the big guns. Mathilde’s a master manipulator, and Cherice has seen her pull this one a million times — but not usually on her. Mathilde does it when all else fails, and her instincts are damn good — it’s a lot easier to turn down a favor than to refuse to grant one. Cherice knows her employer like she knows Charles — better, maybe — but she still feels the pull of Mathilde’s flimsy ruse.

“I’ll clean your refrigerator, baby,” Cherice says carefully. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“Cherice, goddamnit, I’m worried about you!”

And Cherice gives in. “I know you are, baby. And Charles and I appreciate it, we really do. Tell you what — we gon’ do it. We gon’ go over there. I promise.” But she doesn’t know if she can actually talk Charles into it.

He surprises her by agreeing readily as soon as she mentions the part about the dogs. “Why not?” he says. “We can sleep in Mathilde and Tony’s big ol’ bed and watch television till the power goes out. Drink a beer and have the dogs with us. Ain’t like we have to drive to Mississippi or somethin’. And if the roof blows off, maybe we can save some of their stuff. That refrigerator ain’t all she’s got to worry about.”

“We’re not sleepin’ in their bed, Charles. The damn guest room’s like a palace, anyway — who you think you is?”

He laughs at her. “I know it, baby. Jus’ tryin’ to see how far I can push ya.”

So that Sunday they pack two changes of clothes, plenty for two days, and put the mutts in their crates. The only other things they take are dog food and beer. They don’t grab food for themselves because there’s plenty over at Mathilde’s, which they have to eat or it’ll go bad.

The first bands of the storm come late that night, and Charles does what he said he was going to — goes to bed with a beer and his dogs. But after he’s asleep, Cherice watches the storm from the window of the second-floor living room. The power doesn’t go off until early morning, and when the rain swirls, the lights glint on it. The wind howls like a hound. Big as it is, the house shakes. Looking out, Cherice sees a building collapse, a little coffee shop across the street, and realizes how well built the Berteaus’ house is. Her own is not. She prays that it will make it. But she knows she will be all right, and so will Charles and the dogs. She is not afraid because she is a Christian woman and she trusts that she will not be harmed.

But she does see the power of God in this. For the first time, she understands why people talk about being God-fearing instead of God-loving, something that’s always puzzled her. You better have God on your side, she thinks. You just better.

She watches the transformers blow one by one, up and down the street, and goes to bed when the power goes out, finding her way by flashlight, wondering what she’s going to wake up to.

The storm is still raging when she stirs, awakened by the smell of bacon. Charles has cooked breakfast, but he’s nowhere to be found. She prowls the house looking for him, and the dogs bark to tell her: third floor.

“Cherice,” he calls down. “Bring pots.”

She knows what’s happened: leaks. The Berteaus must have lost some shingles.

So she and Charles work for the next few hours, putting pots out, pushing furniture from the path of inrushing water, gathering up wet linens, trying to salvage and dry out papers and books, emptying the pots, replacing them. All morning the wind is dying, though. The thing is blowing through.

By 2 o’clock it’s a beautiful day. “Still a lot of work to do,” Charles says, sighing. “But I better go home first, see how our house is. I’ll come back and help you. We should sleep here again tonight.”

Cherice knows that their house has probably lost its roof, that they might have much worse damage than the Berteaus, maybe even flooding. He’s trying to spare her by offering to go alone.

“Let’s make some phone calls first,” she says.

They try to reach neighbors who rode out the storm at home, but no one answers, probably having not remembered, like Cherice and Charles, to buy car chargers. Indeed, they have only a little power left on their own cell phone, which Cherice uses to call Mathilde. The two women have the dodged-the-bullet talk that everyone in the dry neighborhoods has that day, the day before they find out the levees have breached.

Though they don’t yet know about the levees, Cherice nonetheless feels a terrible foreboding about her house, acutely needs to see how badly it’s damaged. She doesn’t have much hope that the streets will be clear enough to drive, but she and Charles go out in the yard anyhow to remove broken limbs from the driveway.

“Let’s listen to the car radio, see if we can get a report,” Cherice says, realizing they’ve been so preoccupied with saving the Berteaus’ possessions, they’ve forgotten to do this.

She opens the car door, is about to enter, when she feels Charles tense beside her. “Cherice,” he says.

She turns and sees what he sees: a gang of young men in hooded sweatshirts walking down the street, hands in their pockets. Looking for trouble.

Charles says, “You go on back in the house.”

Cherice doesn’t need to be told twice. She knows where Tony keeps his gun. She means to get it, but she’s so worried about Charles she turns back to look, and sees that he’s just standing by the car, hands in pockets, looking menacing. The young men pass by, but she goes for the gun anyway.

By the time she gets back, Charles is back inside, locking the door. “Damn looters,” he says. “Goddamn looters.” And his face is so sad Cherice wants to hug him, but it’s also so angry she knows better. “Why they gotta go and be this way?” he says.

They listen to the Berteaus’ little battery-powered radio and learn that there’s looting all over the city, crime is out of control. “Ain’t safe to go out,” Charles says grimly. “Can’t even get home to see about our property.”

She knows he’s sorry they came, that they didn’t stay home where they belonged. “I’m gon’ fix some lunch.”

So they eat and then go out in the backyard, and clean it up the best they can, even try to get some of the debris out of the swimming pool, but this is a losing battle. After a while they abandon the project, realizing that it’s a beautiful day and they have their dogs and they’re together. Even if their house is destroyed.

So they live in the moment. They try to forget the looting, though the sound of sirens is commonplace now. Instead of Tony’s fish, they barbecue some steaks that are quickly defrosting, and Cherice fixes some potato salad while the mayonnaise is still good. Because they got so little sleep the night before, and because there’s no electricity, they go to bed early.

Sometime in the night they awaken to a relentless thudding — no, a pounding on the Berteaus’ door. “I’m goin’,” Charles says grimly, and Cherice notices he tucks Tony’s gun into the jeans he pulls on.

She can’t just stay here and wait to see what happens. She creeps down the stairs behind him.

“Yeah?” Charles says through the door.

“I’m the next door neighbor,” a man says. “I’ve got Tony on the phone.”

Charles opens the door and takes the man’s cell phone. He listens for a while, every now and then saying, “Oh shit.” Or, “Oh God. No.” Cherice pulls on his elbow, mouthing What? to him, terrified. But he turns away, ignoring her, still listening, taking in whatever it is. Finally, he says, “Okay. We’ll leave first thing.”

Still ignoring Cherice, he gives the phone back to the neighbor. “You know about all this?” he says. The man only nods, and Cherice sees that he’s crying. Grown man, looks like an Uptown banker, white hair and everything, with tears running down his cheeks, biting his lip like a little kid.

She’s frantic. She’s grabbing at Charles, all but pinching him, desperately trying to get him to just finish up and tell her what’s going on. Finally, he turns around, and she’s never seen him look like this, like maybe one of their kids has died or something.

He says only, “Oh, baby,” and puts his arms around her. She feels his body buck, and realizes that he’s crying too, that he can’t hold it in anymore, whatever it is. Has one of their kids died?

Finally, he pulls himself together enough to tell her what’s happened — that the city is flooded, their neighborhood is destroyed, some of their neighbors are probably dead.

Their own children thought they were dead until they finally got Tony and Mathilde.

Cherice cannot take this in. She tries, but she just can’t. “Eighty percent of the city is underwater?” she repeats over and over. “How can that be?”

They live in a little brick house in New Orleans East, a house they worked hard to buy, that’s a stretch to maintain, but it’s worth it. They have a home, a little piece of something to call their own.

But now we don’t, Cherice thinks. It’s probably gone. We don’t have nothin’.

In the end, she can’t go that way. She reasons that an entire neighborhood can’t be destroyed, something’s got to be left, and maybe her house is. She wants to go see for herself.

“Cherice, you gotta pay attention,” Charles says. “Only way to go see it’s to swim. Or get a boat maybe. There’s people all over town on rooftops right now, waitin’ to be rescued. There’s still crazy lootin’ out there. The mayor wants everybody out of town.”

“That’s what he said before the storm.”

“He’s sayin’ it again. We goin’ to Highlands tomorrow.”

“Highlands?”

“Well, where else we gon’ go? Mathilde and Tony got room for us, they say come, get our bearings, then we’ll see. Besides, Mathilde wants us to bring her some things.”

There it is again — Mathilde asking a favor to get them to leave. So that’s how serious it is. Well, Cherice knew that, sort of. But it keeps surprising her, every time she thinks about it.

“How we gon’ get out with all that lootin’ goin’ on?” she says. “Might even be snipers.”

“Tony says the best way’s the bridge. We can just go on over to the West Bank — we leavin’ first thing in the morning. And I mean first thing — before anybody’s up and lootin’. Let’s try to get a few more hours sleep.”

Cherice knows this is impossible, but she agrees because she wants to be close to Charles, to hold him, even if neither of them sleeps.

De La Russe is in the parking lot at the Tchoupitoulas Wal-Mart, thinking this whole thing is a clusterfuck of undreamt-of proportions, really wanting to break some heads (and not all of them belonging to looters), when Jack Stevens arrives in a district car. Sergeant Stevens is a big ol’ redhead, always spewing the smart remarks, never taking a damn thing seriously, and today is no different.

“Hey, Del — think it’s the end of the world or what?”

De La Russe is not in the mood for this kind of crap. “There’s no goddamn chain of command here, Jack. Couple of officers came in, said they got orders to just let the looters have at it, but who am I s’posed to believe? Can’t get nobody on the radio, the phones, the goddamn cell phones—” He pauses, throws his own cell across the concrete parking lot. It lands with something more like a mousy skitter than a good solid thud.

He has quite a bit more to say on the subject, but Stevens interrupts. “What the hell you do that for?”

“Why I need the goddamn thing? Nobody’s gonna answer, nobody fuckin’ cares where I am, nobody’s where they’re supposed to be, and I can’t get nothin’ but a fuckin’ busy anyhow. Nothing around here... fuckin’... works! Don’t you... fuckin’... get it?”

“Del, my man, you seem a little stressed.”

De La Russe actually raises his nightstick.

“Hey. Take it easy; put that down, okay. Ya friend Jack’s here. We gon’ get through this thing together. All right, man?”

For a moment, De La Russe feels better, as if he isn’t alone in a world gone savage — looters busting into all the stores, proclaiming them “open for business”; whole families going in and coming out loaded down with televisions and blasters and power tools (as if there’s gonna be power anytime soon), right in front of half the police in the parish. Sure, De La Russe could follow procedure, order them out of there, holler, Freeze, asshole! like a normal day, but which one of ’em’s gonna listen? In the end, what’s he gonna do, shoot the place up? It’s not like he’s getting any backup from his brother officers and, as he’s just told Stevens, it’s not like he can get anybody on the goddamn phone anyway. Or the radio. Or anyhow at all.

“Now, first thing we’re gon’ do is go in there and get you another phone,” Stevens says.

De La Russe knows what he means, and he’s not even shocked. What’s going on here is nothing short of the breakdown of society, and he thinks he’s going to have to roll with it. Something about having Stevens with him is kind of reassuring; he is a sergeant — not Del’s sergeant, but still, if he heard right, a sergeant in the New Orleans Police Department has just told him to go into Wal-Mart and loot himself a phone.

Just to be sure, he tries something out: “Loot one, you mean.”

“Hell no! We’re gonna commandeer you one.” And Stevens about kills himself laughing.

They hitch their trousers and push past several boiling little seas of people, seemingly working in groups, helping themselves to everything from baby food to fishing poles. Nobody even glances at their uniforms.

“Why are we bothering with the goddamn phone?” De La Russe asks. “Damn things don’t work anyhow.”

“Yeah, you right,” Stevens says. “But just in case.” He turns to the busy knot of looters on the small appliances aisle and grabs himself one at random — a woman. Just shoves an arm around her, gets up under her chin, and pulls her against his body. De La Russe sees her pupils dilate, her eyeballs about pop out of her head with fear. Stevens whispers something in her ear and she nods.

When he lets her go, she reaches in the pocket of her jeans and comes out with a cell phone, which she hands over, meek as you please. Stevens passes it to De La Russe. “Now ya back in business.” He swings his arms wide. “Anything else ya need?”

De La Russe feels sweat break out on his forehead. His scalp starts to prickle, and so do his toes. His heart speeds up a little. Weirdest part of all, he’s actually having a sexual reaction; he’s getting hard. Not all the way hard, just a little excited, like when he sees a woman he likes, maybe lights a cigarette for her, brushes her thigh, but that’s all, no kiss or anything. A woman who isn’t his wife but someone who’s not supposed to get him excited. This is how he feels now, except with sweat and prickles. Because he’s pretty sure this is not an idle question Stevens is asking. Thing about Stevens, there’s rumors about him. About how he makes stuff disappear from the property room, shakes suspects down for drugs, little stuff that tells you a lot.

Thing about De La Russe, he’s not above the same kind of thing. And he doesn’t need rumors, he’s been disciplined and everybody knows it. Yeah, he’s been clean since then, but he’s starting to feel this is something else again, this thing he’s looking at. This thing that’s nothing less than the breakdown of the social contract. It’s just occurring to him that people are going to profit from this, and they’re not just gonna be the Pampers-and-toothpaste thieves. He decides to get right down to it.

“What are you saying, sergeant?”

“Hell, Del, it’s the end of the world and you’re callin’ me sergeant — what’s up with that shit?” But he knows perfectly well.

De La Russe smiles. “I was just wondering if I heard you right.” He waits for an answer, not allowing the smile to fade. Keeping his teeth bared.

“Remember that little eBay bi’ness you told me you and ya wife was runnin’? How she goes to garage sales and finds things she can sell to collectors? And then you photograph ’em and get ’em on up online? Y’all still doin’ that?”

“Yeah. We still doin’ that. Why?”

Stevens looks at him like he’s nuts. “Why? Think about it, Del. You can sell just about anything on eBay.” He pauses, does the wide-open this-could-all-be-yours thing again. “And we got access to just about anything.”

De La Russe is getting his drift. His mind’s racing, going instantly to the problems and working on solutions. He shrugs. “Yeah? Where would we store it?”

“Glad you axed, bro. Just happens I already hooked up with a lieutenant who’s got a room at the Hyatt.” The Hyatt has become the department’s temporary headquarters. “He’s got access to a couple other rooms we could use. And I don’t mean hotel rooms. Storage rooms. Pretty big ones. We keep it there for now and when things get back to normal, somebody’s garage, maybe.”

De La Russe narrows his eyes. “What lieutenant?”

“Joe Dougald.”

The patrolman almost does a double take. “Joe Dougald? You’re dreaming. Guy’s a boy scout.”

Stevens hoots. “Yeah? Ya think so? I been doin’ deals with Joe for fifteen years. Trust me. We can trust him.”

De La Russe isn’t sure if he even trusts Stevens, much less Dougald, but what the hell, the regular rules just don’t seem to apply now that the apocalypse, or whatever this is, has come crashing in on them. And he’s got two kids in Catholic school, with college looming. That’s not going away.

He assesses the place. “Let’s start with little stuff that’s easy to carry. IPods, video games, stuff like that. Electronics, small appliances. Hey, do they have jewelry here?” He gives a little snort. Wal-Mart jewelry isn’t going to make them rich, even if it exists. “Watches, maybe?”

Stevens smiles as if he likes the way De La Russe is getting into this. “This ain’t the only store in town, ya know. And stores ain’t the only sources we got. You’re from the Second District, right? People there got real nice taste.”

De La Russe decides he’s just fallen into a real deal. Here they are, right this minute, he and Stevens, policing Wal-Mart and helping themselves while they’re at it. He sees how he can patrol his own district, get credit for coming to work, arrest a few of the real looters — the street guys — and help himself to whatever he wants while everybody’s still out of town. How come he hadn’t thought of it first?

It’s early the next day when De La Russe sees the black couple — oh, excuse him, the two African-Americans — packing up their car in front of the biggest-ass goddamn house in the Garden District, or so near it doesn’t matter. What the hell are they thinking? There aren’t any cops around here? He decides he’s really going to enjoy this.

He parks his car and strolls up all casual, like he’s just gonna talk to ’em. “How y’all?” Dicking with them.

They go rigid though. They know from the get-go he’s trouble, and it has to be because of their guilty little consciences. “What y’all doing?”

“Leavin’,” the man says. “Gettin’ out of town quick as we can. You want to see some ID? My wife works here and the owners are in North Carolina. So we rode out the storm here.” He starts to put his hand in his pocket, maybe to get the ID, and that gives De La Russe an excuse to slam him up against the car, like he thinks the guy’s going to go for a weapon.

He pats the man down, and sure enough, there is one. Doesn’t that just sweeten this whole deal. Worth a lot to a couple guys he knows. “You got a permit for this?”

The guy doesn’t answer, but his wife pipes up: “It’s not ours. It belongs to Tony. My employer. When the looters came...”

De La Russe smiles. “... ya thought it might be okay to steal ya boss’s gun, huh? You know how pathetic that story sounds? Know who I think the looters are? Yeah. Yeah, I guess ya do. Let’s see what else ya got here.”

The woman says, “My boss, Mathilde... she asked me to bring—”

“Mrs. Berteau,” the man says. “My wife works for Mathilde Berteau.”

“Right,” says De La Russe. “Y’all get in the backseat for a while.”

“What about...?” The woman’s already crying, knowing exactly what’s in store for her. He grabs her by the elbow and rassles her into the car, shoving her good, just for the fun of it.

“What about what?”

“Nothin’, I just...”

The husband is yelling now. “Listen, call the Berteaus. All you have to do is call ’em, goddammit! Just call ’em and let ’em tell you.”

“Like there was the least chance of that,” Cherice says ten months later. The encounter had led to the misery and indignity of incarceration for three days and two nights, plus the humiliation of being accused of looting — almost the hardest part to bear. But she has survived, she and Charles, to tell the story at a Fourth of July barbecue.

“Know why I was wastin’ my breath?” Charles chimes in. “’Cause that peckerwood was enjoyin’ himself. Wasn’t about to ruin his own good time.”

She and Charles are living in Harvey now, in a rental, not a FEMA trailer, thank God, until they decide what to do about their gutted house. Their families have all heard the story many times over, but they’ve made new friends here on the West Bank, people they haven’t yet swapped Katrina yarns with. Right now they have the rapt attention of Wyvette Johnson and her boyfriend Brandin. Cherice didn’t catch his last name.

Wyvette gets tears in her eyes. “Mmmm. Mmmm. What about those poor dogs?”

This annoys Cherice, because it’s getting ahead of the way she usually tells it. But she says, “I nearly blurted out that they were there at the last minute... before he took us away. But I thought they’d have a better chance if he didn’t know about ’em. Last thing I wanted was to get my dogs stole by some redneck cop.” Here she lets a sly smile play across her face. “Anyhow, I knew once Mathilde knew they was still in the house, that was gon’ give her a extra reason to come get us out.”

“Not that she needed it,” Charles adds. “She was happy as a pig in shit to hear we’d been dragged off to jail. I mean, not jail, more like a chain-link cage, and then the actual Big House. I ended up at Angola, you believe that? The jail flooded, remember that? And then they turned the train station into a jail. Oh man, that was some Third World shit! Couldn’t get a phone call for nothin’, and like I say, they put you in a cage. But one thing — it was the only damn thing in the city that whole week that worked halfway right. Kept you there a couple days, shipped you right out to Angola. But they got the women out of there just about right away. So Cherice was up at St. Gabriel — you know, where the women’s prison is — in just about twenty-four hours flat. And after that, it wasn’t no problem. ’Cause they actually had working phones there.”

Wyvette is shaking her silky dreads. “I think I’m missin’ somethin’ here — did you say Mathilde was happy y’all were in jail?”

“Well, not exactly,” Cherice says. “She was outraged — ’specially since I’d been there for two days when they finally let me make the call. It’s just that outrage is her favorite state of mind. See, who Mathilde is — I gotta give you her number; every black person in Louisiana oughta have it on speed dial — who Mathilde is, she’s the toughest civil rights lawyer in the state. That’s why Charles made sure to say her name. But that white boy just said, ‘Right,’ like he didn’t believe us. Course, we knew for sure she was gon’ hunt him down and fry his ass. Or die tryin’. But that didn’t make it no better at the time. In the end, Mathilde made us famous though. Knew she would.”

“Yeah, but we wouldn’t’ve got on CNN if it hadn’t been for you,” Charles says, smiling at her. “Or in the New York Times neither.”

Wyvette and Brandin are about bug-eyed.

“See what happened,” Charles continues, “Cherice went on eBay and found Mathilde’s mama’s engagement ring, the main thing she wanted us to bring to Highlands. Those cops were so arrogant they just put it right up there. In front of God and everybody.”

“But how did you know to do that?” Wyvette asks, and Cherice thinks it’s a good question.

“I didn’t,” she says. “I just felt so bad for Mathilde I was tryin’ anything and everywhere. Anyhow, once we found the jewelry, the cops set up a sting, busted the whole crime ring — there was three of ’em. Found a whole garage full of stuff they hadn’t sold yet.”

Brandin shakes his head and waves his beer. “Lawless times. Lawless times we live in.”

And Cherice laughs. “Well, guess what? We got to do a little lootin’ of our own. You ever hear of Priscilla Smith-Fredericks? She’s some big Hollywood producer. Came out and asked if she could buy our story for fifteen thousand dollars, you believe that? Gonna do a TV movie about what happened to us. I should feel bad about it, but those people got way more money than sense.”

Right after the holiday, Marty Carrera of Mojo Mart Productions finds himself in a meeting with a young producer who has what sounds to him like a good idea. Priscilla Smith-Fredericks lays a hand on his wrist, which he doesn’t much care for, but he tries not to cringe.

“Marty,” she says. “I believe in this story. This is an important story to tell — a story about corruption, about courage, about one woman’s struggle for justice in an unjust world. But most of all, it’s the story of two women, two women who’ve been together for twenty-two years — one the maid, the other the boss — about the love they have for each other, the way their lives are inextricably meshed. In a good way.

“I want to do this picture for them and... well... for the whole state of Louisiana. You know what? That poor state’s been screwed enough different ways it could write a sequel to the Kama Sutra. It’s been screwed by FEMA, it’s been screwed by the Corps of Engineers, it’s been screwed by the administration, it’s been screwed by its own crooked officials... Everybody’s picking carrion off its bones. And those poor Wardells! I want to do this for the Wardells. Those people have a house to rebuild. They need the money and they need the... well, the lift. The vindication.”

Marty Carrera looks at the paperwork she’s given him. She proposes to pay the Wardells a $15,000 flat fee, which seems low to him. Standard would be about $75,000, plus a percentage of the gross and maybe a $10,000 “technical consultant” fee. He shuffles pages, wondering if she’s done what he suspects.

And yes, of course she has. She’s inflated her own fee at the expense of the Wardells. She thinks she should get $100,000 as an associate producer, about twice what the job is worth. And not only that, she wants to award the technical consultant’s fee to herself.

Marty is genuinely angry about this. She’s roused his sympathy for the wrongfully accused couple, and even for the beleaguered state, and he too believes the Wardells’ story — or more properly, Mathilde and Cherice’s story — would make a great movie for television.

However, he thinks Ms. Smith-Fredericks is a species of vermin. “After looking at the figures,” he says, “I think I can honestly say that you seem uniquely qualified to do a piece on looting.”

But she doesn’t catch his meaning. She’s so full of herself all she hears is what she wants to hear. She sticks out her hand to shake

Well, so be it, Marty thinks. I tried to warn her.

His production company doesn’t need her. So what if she found the story and brought it to him? He’s not obligated to... Well, he is, but...

“Marty,” she says, “we’re going to be great together.”

He shakes her hand absentmindedly, already thinking of ways to cut her out of the deal.

Angola South by Ace Atkins

Loyola Avenue

The child was small and black, shirtless, wearing only a filthy pair of Spider-Man pajama bottoms and carrying a skinned-up football. His fingers still felt numb from holding his mother’s hand all night and he now found himself standing on top of the interstate overpass looking down at a maze of swamped streets.

For a long time now, since the morning heat started shining hard off the top of the downtown buildings, he’d been watching the man with the gun.

The man was white and wearing green, a big plug of tobacco in his left cheek. To the child, it seemed his eyes were superhuman, taking in everything in their thick mirrored lenses and occasionally shouting to a group of shackled men who sat and slept.

He kept the gun tight in both hands and would walk from the beginning of the chain of men — bearded and smelling of rotten eggs and garbage — to the end, his boots making hollow sounds on the overpass. His steps seemed like a drum over the murmur of men and families who’d found refuge on the high ground.

By early afternoon, the child stood close to the railing, trying to catch the breeze that would sometimes come across his face, his eyes lazily opening and closing, watching the waves break and shift on top of the roadway and on the parched roofs of partially sunk buildings and shotgun houses.

He felt his fingers slip from the sweaty hand of his mother and he wandered, walking and swaying, toward the man with the gun.

The boy tugged at the rough material on his leg and the man stared down at him, his silver glass eyes shining an image of a grinning child back at him.

He looked at the twin images of himself and said: “Mister, when you gonna fix our city?”

Jack Estay woke at 5 a.m. to the sound of the big yellow locomotive’s engines chugging away and keeping the entire station juiced with power. He took the twelve-gauge from his lap, stood from where he’d fallen asleep in a chair the night before, and washed himself in the lavatory.

At 5:15 he walked five men caught looting a Vietnamese restaurant (they’d been found eating dried shrimp and guzzling bottles of 33 beer) down the endless train platform and into the holding cells fashioned with chain link, metal bars, and concertina wire. In each of the sixteen cells there was one portable toilet.

Orleans Parish Prison sat filled with water, so it was the best they could do.

As Jack locked up and walked the line back to the old Amtrak station, men and women hollered and yelled. A homeless man on the way tried to piss on him, but his short quick stream stopped shy of Jack’s leg.

Jack looked at the man and spat some brown juice at the base of the cell.

Another guard called out to him about the next row of cells. “That one has AIDS,” the thick-bodied woman said. “Be careful.”

Most of the prisoners were looters, some stole cars, some broke into mansions, and about ten had tried to kill folks. Mainly taking shots at cops who were trying to rescue people from their swamped neighborhoods.

“Hey, Audie Murphy!” yelled a man with a long gray beard stained yellow. “Go suck a turd.”

Jack walked into the wide expanse of the train station, the newspaper racks selling a copy of USA Today from August 26, a picture of Martha Stewart on the cover with a big shit-eating grin on her face.

Welcome to Angola South read a cardboard sign by the door.

Jack got a break just before sundown.

He used his cell phone to call his father back on Grand Isle, a man who’d been left alone to pick through the wreckage of a shrimp company he’d owned since ’64, surviving even Hurricane Betsy. His dad told him that every boat they owned, the refrigerated warehouse, and their stilt house had all washed out into the Gulf.

“Say hello to Mama for me,” Jack said before ending the call and heading out in his truck along the river.

Jack rode through the city and drank a cold Budweiser, a cooler in the back of his Chevy loaded down with ice brought in by the Indiana National Guard. The radio carried nothing but news, so he shut it off and just drove slow out Canal Street past the carnival of TV trucks and reporters camped out on the neutral ground. At one point, he slowed, noticing a leg sticking out from under a tarp.

But raising his sunglasses, he saw it was only a mannequin. He glimpsed a couple of cameramen in the shadows laughing and pointing.

He drove on.

Rampart at Canal was the foot of the swamp, water all the way to Lake Pontchartrain. He turned around and crossed back through the Quarter, found higher ground and crossed Rampart further downriver, ending up at the corner of St. Louis and Tremé, right by the old housing projects, St. Louis Cemetery, and the looted-out Winn-Dixie. All along Tremé, tree branches and drowned cars filled the road. Birds and loose trash skittered in the warm breeze.

Jack polished off the Bud and pulled a plug of tobacco from his pouch. Sitting on his hood, he brushed off the brown pieces of Redman from his mustache and spit into the swampy water covering his truck tires.

The warm air was calm. The city completely still, with huge clouds above the Central Business District. A skinny, mangy dog wandered past him.

An old black man on a bicycle peddled through the foot-deep water and waved.

The only sound came from helicopters loaded down with machine guns passing over the Mississippi and the Lower Ninth Ward looking for bodies and looters. An old-fashioned Army Jeep passed, driving in reverse with a young kid in the passenger seat wearing an NOPD shirt and Chinese hat. He eyed down his rifle, scoped a bird on the cracked cemetery wall, and then, satisfied he had the shot, dropped the gun at his side.

Jack spit and smiled.

He wasn’t even back at the train station for his next shift when he saw the smoke curling and twisting like a mythical snake. Jack followed the smoke and called in on his handheld radio, arriving before the firetrucks at a block of row houses at Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard and Jackson Avenue. Two of them burned, crackling and popping as only ancient wood can. Hard and buckling, turning to coal-black smoke.

Six firetrucks. And then seven.

The sun set through leafless oaks, the light orange and slatted and broken through black smoke. A helicopter passed overhead and dropped a huge bucket of water on the dying buildings. The falling water stirred up dead leaves and stale wind and fell with a whoosh.

Dried pieces of debris and smoke blocked out the sun.

“So you were scared?” Jack asked the pretty girl from Indiana.

“Hell yes, I was scared,” she said.

It was the next day at sunset and they talked at an old convent in the Bywater near a statue of the Virgin Mary.

“They dropped us off in the middle of the night,” she said, smoking. Her hand shook a bit. “The water was up past the transport’s tires and you couldn’t see two feet in front of your face. No moon. Nothing.”

The girl was pretty. Blond and muscular with brown eyes. She wore camouflage but sat like a girl, on her butt with her knees pulled up to her chin. Jack met her when she’d delivered the ice.

He turned away when she exhaled.

“You want one?”

“I don’t smoke.”

She nodded. “So they dropped us off on the high ground,” she said. “When was that, a few weeks ago?”

“Last week.”

“Last week,” she repeated, thinking. “And they dropped us off, like I said. On the high ground. Well, we didn’t have orders or anything. We just sat there.”

“All night.”

“All night,” she said. “We could hear gunshots and people yelling. Families passing us on boats and little pool floats... So anyway, I finally fall asleep and I hear something at the edge of sleep. You know how that can go? Kind of a dream but you’re awake. And it’s a trudging sound through the water and this heavy breathing. I couldn’t see anything. It was so dark I wasn’t sure if it was just in my head.”

“What was it?”

“You’ll laugh at what I thought it was.”

“What did you think it was?”

“Demons.”

“What was it?”

“Horses.”

“You religious?” Jack asked.

The pretty Indiana girl stubbed out her cigarette on one of the statue’s base stones and tucked back on her uniform hat. “Not at all.”

At midnight there was a riot. A man who’d shot at the police from the top of the hot sauce factory in Mid-City had decided to lock himself in the portable toilet.

A few minutes before, he’d stuck his penis through one of the holes and told a female guard to “suck it” as he masturbated with his eyes rolling up in his head. Instead, she’d whacked it hard with a billy club and then two of the other inmates in an adjoining cell had started climbing the chain link and screaming at the guards.

The guards were able to mace the two on the walls but the man who’d started it all had run and shut himself in the toilet.

Jack said: “Give me the hose.”

Guards pulled the hose from the edge of the train platform and ran the nozzle to Jack.

“Turn it up.” And he unlocked the gate and walked inside and thumbed open the toilet’s door.

The flush of water blew the man against the back wall of the toilet and washed him outside in a long brown stream until he rolled and crawled to the far corner of the cell.

“Goddamn!” the man yelled, curling into a ball. Both hands on his privates, his brown pants at his knees.

“Turn it down,” Jack said.

You wrote a report, fingerprinted them, and then tagged them. Pink for federal cases, green for misdemeanors, and red, yellow, and blue for different kinds of felonies. They were locked up, given something to eat, and then shipped on buses by gun bulls out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola the next morning.

“Move ’em in, herd ’em out,” Jack always said.

A few days before, a two-time loser had driven a stolen car to the drop-off zone at the old Amtrak station, walked up to the front desk, and asked the warden for a one-way train ticket.

The warden, ten years on the job running Angola, asked for his driver’s license and registration, and it wasn’t but a second later that he nodded to Jack and another guard. “Yes sir. Yes sir. One-way ticket to Angola coming up.”

They took him to the platform and locked him in with a French Quarter street musician who’d been caught stuffing his pockets with cold medicine and NoDoz at what was left of the Walgreens on Canal.

The next day, transport carriers and Humvees passed by the Convention Center carrying soldiers with farm-boy grins and buzz cuts. They waved and smiled in a slow, steady parade, most of them carrying cameras and camcorders aimed at all the wreckage.

Jack watched another Humvee roll by the La Louisiane Ballroom — two skinny, goofy kids giving a thumbs-up — where the Guard held two prisoners. The officers came from Arkansas and rolled their own cigarettes and wore sunglasses like Jack.

“Y’all got to clean this up?” Jack asked.

“Good God Almighty, I hope to hell not.”

Jack eyed the mess and walked under the shaded outdoor roof. There were: folding chairs and MRE packs, spoiling milk and open Heineken bottles, inflatable mattresses, CDs, overnight cases, water jugs and suitcases, rotting food and bottles of urine and piles upon piles of garbage, a faded World War II veteran’s hat, baby blankets and some kid’s New York Giants helmet, jumper cables, unopened bottles of Corona, and hotel beach chairs.

A chopper’s propellers beat overhead and along the Mississippi.

Jack picked up the vet’s hat, studied the gold pins, and placed it back, softly, on the chair.

In an old pile of dog food sat an empty bottle of champagne. Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin. Forty-five-dollar label.

There were millions of flies and the foul smell of rotting food and human waste. Jack reached into his pocket for a bandana and covered his mouth. He felt lunch back up in his throat.

From the other side of the building, one of the Army men yelled: “It’s a grand ol’ ballroom, ain’t it?”

There was better cell phone coverage up on the overpass, and even though I-10 didn’t go anywhere, Jack would drive his truck up there, heading north toward the airport until the water started coming up at the Metairie Cemetery. And he’d sit there and call his dad and talk about busted boats and files lost at sea and insurance folks who wouldn’t respond to messages. Mostly he’d eat MREs with the sun going down, occasionally giving directions to rescue workers from other states who didn’t know the damn interstate was closed.

It was a week or so after the storm when he felt that bullet zip by his ear and heard the sharp report of a pistol.

He rolled off the hood and found his footing.

Reaching into the passenger seat, he pulled out a rifle and duck-walked back behind the concrete barrier. He didn’t have field glasses or a scope but could pick out the rough-shadowed shape in the sun setting through the endless marble mausoleums.

Another shot pinged off the concrete.

With breath held, he took aim and shot.

He heard a scream.

Jack jumped over the barricade and moved across the interstate and into the waist-deep water, rifle in the crook of his arm, his eyes following the shadowed shape through the rows of crypts and canals of golden water under oaks.

The water grew up to his chest and he waded into the city, breathing hard, and stopped to listen, slowing down his heart and lungs, hearing that splashing frantic sound in the distance, and then he turned and took in another row of mausoleums, another grand monument to wealth, another angel, another sphinx, another proud man in marble staring down with sad dead eyes.

He lost the sound.

He heard birds and a siren, and standing there he knew he was lost. He could not see the road or even find it. He only saw the sun, the giant glowing orb of light painting everything orange and gold and making all the dead things shine so soft.

Jack spat some tobacco juice into the stale water and walked, wiping his mustache with the back of his hand, following the rows. Past a giant monument to the lost Confederate dead and then past a small statue of a fat man holding a quill pen.

The light was dull orange now. The bearded trees giving long shadows.

The sound of birds.

And then a sucking sound of rotten, slow breath.

He turned blind down a waist-deep path. In the shadows, only the thinnest sliver of gold light ran down the middle of the still brown water, almost an arrow.

At the top step of a marble crypt sat a young boy, maybe ten, holding his swollen belly, covered in blood. He breathed thick and hard and wet and he watched Jack come down the waterway and soon emerge on a bottom step, and then another, until the man grew tall and towered above him.

Jack placed his rifle on the last step. His clothes dripping.

The boy pushed himself against the locked glass doors to the long-dead family, each of their names and dates of life written in gold on marble.

Jack took off his shirt and pressed it to the boy’s stomach. He reached for his radio but it had been shorted out. “I’ll fix it,” he said to the boy, even as the long shadows covered the lost cove. “I’ll fix it.”

Jack stayed there until the boy’s head grew cool in the dark, a soft green-marbled moon shining on the cemetery water like silver.

Marigny Triangle by Eric Overmyer

Faubourg Marigny

Ask me, things started to go to shit way before the hurricane. The Pizza Kitchen killings, for instance. Well, what would you have done? One of your coworkers, that sullen kid from the Iberville projects, that dishwasher you hired, him, he was a friend of a friend and needed a break, knocks on the door as you’re getting ready to open for lunch, him and a couple of his equally sullen, hunched-up, shifty friends, course you let ’em in. And then he pulls a nine and ties you and everybody else in the place up, and executes all y’all with a shot to the backa the head using a raw peeled potato as a silencer, for eighty-eight dollars and change. And somebody else, who got lucky and missed her bus and was a little late to work that day, finds five bodies a few minutes later, still warm and oozing.

And this on a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend morning, clear blue Creole sky in the French Quarter, for God’s sake, well, felt like the beginning of the end to me. Maybe more so ’cause it was a rare day off for me, and I’m taking the kids on a little stroll through the Quarter, pointing out this and that historic feature, and the difference between a slave quarters and a garçonnière, and I get the call to get on over there, sorry ’bout your day off, Reynolds, and I say, nah, I don’t need no address, I’m lookin’ at it, mac — and I am, standing across the street, taking in the crowd and the cop cars and emergency vehicles, and when I can’t bear it no more, looking up again at the soft blue Louisiana sky, trying to put the two together.

Or maybe it was when those kids popped that priest, Father Peterson, off his bike further down in the Marigny, almost to Bywater. Out for a sunset ride, beloved in the neighborhood, and these punks just whacked the padre for kicks, far as we know, wasn’t like nobody was ever arrested. And this sorta shit’s why the town was deserted after dark in most neighborhoods long before the hurricane tore it up — and talking about that, parts of this town were always so raggedy-assed, you’d be hard-pressed to know what piece of decrepitude was there before or after Katrina: St. Claude, Tremé, St. Roch, St. Bernard, Central City, Desire. I mean, I defy you to tell me—

Or maybe it was Officer Antoinette Frank that broke my particular camel’s back, where she and her cousin lit up her partner and the Vietnamese family they both moonlit for as part-time after-dark security. A police officer, sworn to serve and protect. She was that family’s guardian angel, and she did them like that — and again, all for a few bucks, supposedly. The cousin said she thought they kept gold bullion in the back room, them being Vietnamese and all. Maybe. But who’d be that stupid? And what the real reason was, how’ll we ever know? She’s still on death row, Officer Frank, and the hurricane probably gave her another five years of undeserved life at least, delaying as it did every judicial proceeding large or small in the great state of Louisiana. And her, we know she done her daddy, too, filed a missing person’s on him and moved right into his house, and they found his bones under it and didn’t even bother to charge her with that.

You smell that? I don’t mean that slop in the footlocker — a smell I could never possibly describe to a civilian, except to say you gotta burn your clothes after a crime scene like this. Never wear nothing you wanna hold onto to a crime scene, I tell the rooks. Nah. I mean that — the night air. Sweet. Jasmine. Confederate jasmine.

Now, I’m a Seventh Ward, all the way. That’s the Creole ward, y’all, the Mighty Seventh. And I always lived in the Seventh Ward — always. Where I live since the hurricane, my mama’s house. I mean, same house I come up in on Dauphine Street in the Marigny, the Triangle, between Touro and Pauger — a double camelback with a screened-in side gallery, that we all piled into since our place in Gentilly had thirteen inches of water in it... on the second floor. I lie in bed, windows thrown open in the nice weather, I can smell the jasmine, the coffee roasting down along the river, hear the carriages rattling home at night after a day in the tourist trade, the clack clack of the mules’ hooves. I just lie there, I can hear the train whistle way down in the Bywater. Can hear the ferry boat horns out on the river. The out-of-tune calliope on the Creole Queen. All kinds of birds. The rain rattling in the gutters. The wind whipping the palm fronds. I don’t know. Place makes my heart ache. Way it smells, way it sounds. Way it looks. No place as pretty and sad as New Orleans. Depending on if the sun’s shining or not. You ever notice that? Sun’s out, ain’t no prettier place on earth. No place more... resplendent. But gray and gloomy, cloudy, rainy, this town is so shabby, dreary, and downright depressing, makes you wanna take morphine and die. As the old song goes.

If I believed in karma I’d be worried I’d come back as one of those mules. Those carriage mules. I would just hate like hell to come back as a mule.

It is a beautiful night. Despite this shit here. Sweet and soft, balmy. Dark. I know that sounds odd to say. The night is dark. But it is. Here in New Orleans, it is really dark. One or two things I know about New Orleans. The nights are darker here. I don’t mean that metaphorically. I’m not talking about human darkness. About evil, or shit. I’m talking about the quality of the night. The feel. I been everywhere, all over this country. The Gulf of Mexico. Jamaica. I’m telling you. I seen a lot of darkness, stayed up a lot of nights. It’s just a fact. The nights are darker here. Palpably darker. And thicker. You can reach out and stroke the darkness. Touch it. Run your hand over it, like somebody’s skin, or a piece of soft cloth. Got a soft feel to it, New Orleans nights. The nights are always soft here. No matter what else has happened. No matter what kind of horror show. The nights are always soft. I can’t tell you how many times, how many blood-stained crime scenes I been privy to, how many murders. I just stepped away, stepped outside, into the night, and been struck by how thick and soft and sweet and downright dark the nights are here. Struck dumb. It’s a mystery.

This, this here, ain’t no mystery. Run of the mill lover’s quarrel. Guy’s wife and her girlfriend — by which I mean, her girlfriend, her lesbian lover — decided they were tired of him. The three of them get to drinking and fooling around — fuckin’ and fightin’, really, what it amounts to — and one of them whacks him over the head with a hammer two times and then the pair of them stuff him in this here footlocker, pour cement in the damn thing, and push it out on the back porch. A few days go by, and a neighbor gets to smelling something ripe, drops a dime on them. And here I am. Do I know why, exactly? No. But I know what.

It ain’t like TV. Most of the time, you do know who. You don’t know why, maybe, and you don’t care. Means and opportunity is all that matters. That thing about motive? Fuck motive. People kill each other for no damn reason at all.

One or two other things I know about New Orleans. Termites and hurricanes. The intro and the outro, how it starts and how it ends. The micro and the macro. That’s what gonna do New Orleans in. Not crime. Not fucked-up terminal stupidity like we got ourselves here. Termites and hurricanes. If you could beam me forward a hundred years from now, set me down right here in this spot a hundred years in the future, it wouldn’t be here. No sir. Not just this house here, this rundown half of a double, lower Marigny, Spain Street shotgun. I mean New Orleans. Not here. Nothing. Just cypress swamp again. Malaria mosquitoes and alligators. Gulf water maybe, far as the eye can see, the Mississippi finally jumping its banks like it’s been wanting to ever since it can remember, over to the Atchafalaya. Just nutria and gators and skeeters. But New Orleans? Not a chance. Gone like the lost city of Pompeii. Drowned like Atlantis. The termites and the hurricanes gonna take care of all this shit. The lost city of New Orleans.

Fifty years from now, I live that long, I’ll be fishing off my roof.

Not that I don’t love New Orleans. I do. But I’m a pessimist, I guess, especially about the capacity of human beings to solve their problems. Comes with the territory, I believe. Being a homicide detective. Makes you a little bit cynical about the human capacity. Makes you think maybe people ain’t real bright. Otherwise why would they do the things they do? To themselves and others. Why would they live the way they do? Now there’s a mystery for you. Not this sorry situation. All that’s left to figure about this is which one hit him, and get the other to cop a plea and turn against her girlfriend to get a little something off the top of her sentence.

What else I know about New Orleans? One or two things. They got some scruffy white people here. Scary looking. Take these three. Just beat to shit, generally. I mean, the dead guy, the vic, literally. One of the women, the girlfriend, five-nine, two-fifty, told the parish deputies she was a man, and they believed her. And the other one, the wife. Kinda scrawny and twitchy. And why on earth didn’t they get rid of the body? Oh, they were fixin’ to, but just “hadn’t got around to it.” Even bought some fishing poles. They were gonna take the footlocker out in the Gulf and dump it overboard. Plus, they got to drinkin’, to fuckin’ and fightin’ again, one thing and another, and just plum lost track of the time.

One or two other things I know about New Orleans is the pull of the past. Never been anywhere the past had such a pull on a person as here. If I had me a time machine, I’d wear it out, me, and I wouldn’t be hitting no future button, no, no, no. Even if there was one. No, I’d dial me up old New Orleans. The French Opera House. Storyville. Lulu White’s Mahogany Hall. The New Basin Canal. Not even that far back. I’d be just as happy to hitch a ride back to the ’50s. South Rampart Street honky tonks and gin joints and every mobbed-up club in town before that self-righteous prick Jim Garrison shut them all down. Not that I could go in those places back then, not through the front door anyway. But still. All the glorious past.

So much gone now, so much vanished. The Dew Drop Inn. Old Chinatown where City Hall is now. The amusement parks at Pontchartrain Beach and Milneburg and Old Spanish Fort and Lincoln Beach. North Claiborne before they tore up the old oak trees with bulldozers and rammed the interstate down our throats. Funny they didn’t run it through Uptown, ain’t it? I suppose I could use that time machine to go forward to when somebody apologizes for that, huh? I could set it for, let’s see, turn the dial to When Hell Freezes Over. I’ll be there.

We used to all picnic on Mardi Gras day on North Claiborne, wait for the Indians to congregate. Still do, but instead of under the live oak trees, now it’s in the shade of the freeway. Pathetic, huh? We’re stubborn, or stupid. Set in our ways.

So much gone. I’d give anything to see the glorious past of New Orleans. The octoroon balls. The slave market. Congo Square. I’d wanna see all that. One of the perks of this job, it teaches you not to flinch. The glorious and horrible past of New Orleans. Almost makes you believe in karma, doesn’t it? This beautiful place, paradise on earth, the City That Care Forgot, built on blood and tears and human misery.

I sometimes wonder if maybe that’s why this job keeps me so busy. In the words of that great Southern writer, the past ain’t never past, is it? But you knew that, didn’t you? Don’t need me to tell you. We all know that. No excuse, anyway. You can’t be blaming karma when you kill somebody. You can’t go crying about history when you blow some old lady away. Shoot some tourist in a cemetery, just some ordinary nobody checking out our great and glorious past. But still, I get to thinking sometimes, wondering when the past is gonna run its course here in the Crescent City. Wondering when we ever gonna get past the past.

Oh, I’d give that time machine a workout. Doesn’t have to be so far back. I’d settle for thirty years ago, when the parades still snaked through the Quarter on Mardi Gras day. Hell, I’d settle for last Saturday night, about 10 o’clock, when all this bullshit went down.

I mean, it’s not a mystery, exactly, but I’d still like to know. What was said. Did they plan to do him, the two of them? Did he know that she was more than just his wife’s friend? Did he come home and catch them going at it? Or maybe he was into it and they weren’t? Or they weren’t anymore? How long, in the words of that old song, had this been going on, anyway? Kind of case that keeps them speculating at work, you know?

Homicide. Our day starts when your day ends. Some of us have that on a T-shirt. Baseball cap. People say it ain’t respectful. But you gotta have a sense of humor in this job. I know that too.