The door swings open, in walks Reggie. Paul, on the stool next to me, gives him the once-over, shakes his head. “Man,” Paul whispers, “they say being black in the South is like being black twice. Being a dwarf, too? Man, what’s that like?”

Reggie’s eyes are bloodshot, yesterday’s clothes soiled. He stands, legs bowed, lets the door swing shut behind him. Give him a cowboy hat, it’s like he’s sizing up a Western saloon.

He’s got the swagger. He should. None of us have ever beat him at pool. Reggie plays up the angle for the newcomers, What, I’m just a dwarf AND a nigger, think you can’t beat me? Half-hour later your wallet’s lighter, and Reggie’s drunker.

First time I lost to him, I just shook my head. Maybe it’s his height. He sees things we don’t.

At the end of the bar, Reggie sidles up to Wayne, the meanest son of a bitch in the bar. Old rugby player from Wales. Reggie says, “My nigga.”

“My nigga,” says Wayne.

Billy, behind the bar, pulls out a Coke and an Abita, puts them side by side on the counter in front of me. “What’ll it be?” he asks in his thick Irish brogue.

“What time is it?”

“Uh,” checks the wall clock behind me, which I could’ve done. “Eight in the morning. What’ll it be?”

“You know me,” I say, “caffeine before alcohol.” Billy hands me a glass of ice. I pour the Coke over the cubes, down it like water. Already hot as a motherfucker outside. You’d think Billy could turn up the a/c. Cheap bastard. Billy waits. “Right,” I say, “guess I’ll have that beer now.”

Billy laughs and pops the top off. I take a swig, survey the crowd. Everybody’s baked. I’m always bringing up the rear.

Five televisions hang from the ceiling, various points, all with the pre-match commentary from across the pond. Ireland versus Switzerland. Onscreen, three fellows dressed for a night on Miami Beach break down the X’s and O’s. Billy’s got it turned down low, for now.

“What do you think they’re saying?” I ask Paul.

“I’m Scottish, who gives a fuck. What are they saying? Ireland are going to play like shite.”

I look around the bar. All familiar faces. The soccer fans in their jerseys, the neighborhood fellows, black, keeping to themselves by the pool table, watching us warily, wearily.

“Once again,” I say, “Louisiana’s Swiss community has let us down. Maybe they forgot to set their watches.”

At the end of the bar, other side of Reggie and Wayne, someone yells, “Fuck Switzerland!”

Hear hear, fuck Switzerland.

“Who plays after this?” I ask Billy.

“England versus Turkey.”

Again, from the end of the bar: “Fuck Turkey!”

Billy raises his glass with a hearty, “Fuck England!”

“Think you’ll have a good turnout?”

Billy shrugs. “Be plenty of English bastards,” he says, so the bastards hear it. “Don’t know of many Turks in the city. Wish I had a Turkish flag.”

The brothers hang back by the pool table, occasionally sending an emissary to the bar, whispering PBR orders like sweet nothings.

The Ireland game comes on. Reggie’s the only brother watching. He’s excited. “Fuck, I didn’t know they was any Irish niggas! Look at that one! Who that?”

Billy laughs. “Clinton Morrison.”

“Yeah! Clinton Morrison! Man, that ain’t no nigga name. The fuck?”

“He plays for shite.”

“Nigga plays for you, Billy!”

Wayne says, “Irish first, nigga second. Doubly fucked.”

“Nigga, you Irish.”

“Welsh, you dumb fuck.”

“Ain’t that worse than Irish? Welsh still answer to the Man, don’t they? Hell, it ain’t even the Man, it’s the fucking Queen.”

Wayne glares at him, doesn’t say anything.

“Yeah, Wayne, you think a dumb nigga don’t know nothin’ about history, huh? I fuckin’ went to school. Probably know just as much as you ignorant Welsh muthafuckas.”

Paul’s already up out of his chair, gets between Reggie and Wayne. Wayne’s got a short fuse. Rugby player, you know.

Reggie backs off. “Come on, Wayne, just fuckin’ with ya.”

Wayne forces a smile. “You’re lucky I like you, man.”

White guys in English jerseys begin pouring into the bar, waving Union Jacks, awaiting their game. Don’t ever bet the farm on Irish football. They play like shite. Switzerland wins it, two-nil.

Paul nods approvingly at the crowd, better part of a hundred, mostly English now. Waving flags, drinking Budweiser. “That’s a lot of English wankers,” says Paul.

It’s an hour until England-Turkey. The front door bursts open. A collective roar, singing as if in tongues, a wall of people wrapped in red flags, pours into the bar. We’re struck numb. The brothers in the corner, by the pool table, scurry out the back door.

Paul speaks first. “Fuck. Al-Qaeda.”

There has to be at least two hundred Turks, singing, yelling, waving flags. None of us can move. Literally. Try to fall down, you’ll stay upright. Fuck the fire code.

The Turks take over the pool table. They take over the dartboard. They pin Turkish flags up on the wall, over Celtic crosses, over printed lyrics to “Danny Boy,” over family photographs.

“Fuck,” Billy says, behind the bar. “Muslims. They don’t drink.”

Happily, not true. Like their English nemeses, it’s Budweiser all around.

I step outside for the fresh air. Two buses from Florida, Escambia County plates, parked in the left lane of Banks, next to the neutral ground. Florida?

More Turks are pouring out of the buses, singing.

It’s enough for me. Across the street there’s a birthday party. Some guy’s kids. They’ve got one of those giant inflatable jungle gyms — moonwalks is what they call them — out front, the kids, six of them, all of four or five years old, catapulting themselves to the top, back down, over and over, happy as hell. Man out front, drinking a High Life, I recognize from nights at the pub.

“Hey, man,” I holler, crossing the neutral ground, crossing Banks.

He calls back: “The hell’s going on over there?”

I reach his fence. “Turks. Fucking Turks.”

“Turks? Ragheads?”

“Well, you’d think. They all drink, though.”

“Oh,” he says, then “oh” again, as if, well, in that case, they must be all right. “Hey, it’s Sharonda’s birthday! She’s five. She’s right there, see her? Jumping up, there!”

Sharonda, on the descent, waves to her daddy.

I approach the giant plastic gym. “Sharonda! Your daddy says it’s your birthday! How old are you?”

“I... am...” She holds up her hand, giggles, counts fingers. “I’m FIVE!!”

The girls resume their jumping, higher now, to entertain the new guest. “Hey, man,” the daddy says, never can remember his name, “have a drink, huh?”

We go up the stairs to the front porch. Cooler in front, High Lifes. His lady’s sitting on a wooden rocker, glass of iced tea in hand. “How you doin’, baby?” she says to me.

“Pretty good. Congratulations on your daughter’s birthday.”

“Ohhh... I can’t believe she’s five. You got kids?”

“No. No wife either.”

She laughs. “’S wrong with you? You got cooties?”

“Lots of angry ex-girlfriends.”

We sit and watch the kids, quietly. The music coming out of the house, it’s kid music, something like Raffi. My man digs out two more High Lifes, pops the tops off, hands me one. He makes eye contact with his wife, says “Baby?” real quiet, but she shakes her head.

Across the street, the jerseys are gathered outside the front door in shock. Most of them have palms attached to ears, phones cradled between, shaking their heads, you won’t fucking believe what’s going on here.

A kid rides through the crowd, and I watch him lazily drift toward downtown; he fades out of sight. Kids are everywhere — street, neutral ground, sidewalk. Some are oblivious to the excitement at the pub, a few point and laugh. Makeshift hoops hang off second-floor porches, a few games of horse. The soccer jerseys stand out. Everyone’s got torn clothes, matches the paint peeling off crumbling houses.

I slap my friend on the back and rise. “You’re a lucky man,” I say.

He laughs. “Sometimes, man.” I catch the funny look he gives me before he turns his head.

I wish his wife a good day, and run downstairs to the kids in their jungle gym. “Hey, Sharonda, y’all want to make some noise?”

“YEAHHHHHH!!” The kids have been hitting the caffeine.

“Okay, look across the street. There, see the guy in the green shirt? That’s Billy. Everybody, on the count of three, yell Hi, Billy! Okay? One, two, THREE.”

It’s a hell of an uproar. Billy peers across the street, shakes his head and waves. As I cross the street, the kids take turns yelling at Billy again.

“Hey, Billy, so what’s the story?”

“Ah, mate, there’s too many fucking people in there.”

“And?”

He shakes his head, smiles. “What are ya gonna do? Drink faster!”

England-Turkey kicks off. The Turks shred their vocal cords, singing. I stand in the corner by the front door. Any trouble breaks out, quick exit.

Fifteen minutes into the game, the door swings open next to me. A bunch of the brothers who had run out after the Turkish invasion peer in. The one in front chews a plastic straw. “Shee-it,” he mutters, slams the door shut.

Drink faster. Billy tosses me another Abita, another, crowd just as packed but becoming less relevant. Halftime approaches. Penalty awarded to England. The Turks roar indignantly, deafeningly.

Paul moves next to me. “Christ,” he says, “all fucking hell.”

We tense up, awaiting the kick, the goal, the angry Turks to turn as one toward us. David Beckham takes the kick, sends it high into the stands above the posts. The Turks roar again, a gift from the heavens, and they sing aloud to them.

Paul sighs. “Thank God.”

Halftime. We move out onto the sidewalk. There’s rain. It’s light but getting heavier. Clouds darkening. My friend across the street is slowly gathering the kids, ushering them up the steps, into the house. He looks our way, waves. I raise my bottle.

I’ve lost interest in the game. I wander off to Telemachus Street, to my car. The brothers are out on their porch, safe from the rain, falling harder. They wave me up.

It’s not uncommon. Most evenings I come to the pub, I park at their house, hang out for a bit, bring up some forties. Good security. Nobody’s going to fuck with my car.

“I was just wondering who that ugly white motherfucker was.”

“Yeah? I was wondering who the blind black motherfucker was.”

They’ve got Juvenile pumping out of the house. He’s rapping about sets going up, the Third Ward, the UTP. The hell’s the UTP?

Rainfall hits the roof, a clatter of buckshot. The brothers offer me a Colt 45. Shit’s strong, goes down smooth. I’m lit. One of them’s up out of his chair, rapping over the sound of the rain, smacking an invisible ass in front of him, baby, let me see you do the rodeo.

The brothers whisper shit about their girlfriends, look over their shoulders, make sure they can’t hear. I offer up an ex-girlfriend, several months vintage. I say mine had a bigger ass.

Nah, man, white bitches don’t have no big asses!

Shit, this white bitch had an ass so big an astronaut could see it.

The rain lets up, enough. I’m on the sidewalk in the drizzle, back at the pub. Paul’s outside, cigarette in hand.

“What’s the score?” I ask.

“Nil-nil, mate. Almost over. Hope it stays a draw. Don’t want to have to fight the Turkish bastards.”

“Or English bastards.”

“Right. Not sure which ones smell worse.”

It’s the anticlimax we all craved. Fulltime, the Turks drift out of the bar onto their Florida buses. Some sing halfheartedly, most trudge by quickly, making rapid eye contact, then breaking it.

Naturally, the English stick around. They’re happier. They only need a draw to go on to the next round.

Soon, it’s just twenty of us. Shitfaced. Billy pours himself a draft Harp, leans on the bar. “Without a hitch. What a relief.”

Quiet hangs over the establishment. The building sighs, and settles. Zombielike, we sit at the counter watching our drinks, unable to make the effort to lift them. I’ve developed a dark ring around my line of sight; tunnel vision. Too shit-faced to care.

The front door opens slowly, then four figures pour into the room, slamming it shut behind them.

The first thing that registers is the straw in his mouth. I notice it before I hear him. Everything appears at the end of the tunnel. He says, next to me, wet with rain, “Motherfucker, open the register!”

Hands grab me from behind, throw me to the floor. My palm hits the ground first, my head next. Distantly aware of impact. My wallet’s ripped out of the sucker pocket.

There’s yelling. I don’t move. I make careful observations of the grime on the bottom of Billy’s barstools. Mental note.

Paul’s down here too. He’s looking back at me, not at the barstools. Blood’s coming out of his ear. They threw him down hard. He’s not blinking. Shock.

Billy’s voice, from a long distance: “That’s all I’ve got.”

I think of that scene from Apocalypse Now on the boat, when they suddenly go crazy and shoot that family. That’s what happens now. I feel the explosions in the floor, barstools clattering to the ground, specks of red like schools of fish. Hearing’s gone but for the deafening beating of my heart.

I move my head, just enough. Blue jeans, baggy, riding low, striped boxers. The fucker who opened fire.

There’s no conscious decision made, no preparation. I drop him. My right leg comes up in a scissor kick, behind the knee, fucker goes down. I see the gun hit the wall behind me, but can’t hear a thing. I imagine a satisfying clatter.

I’m up. The three other dudes stand by the door, aghast. Can’t believe that white motherfucker dropped their boy. Boys, I can’t believe it either.

Behind the bar, Billy’s slumped over the cooler, green jersey spotted with red. He blinks, but I’m not sure if there’s anything there.

I rush the brothers by the door. They’re out ahead of me, into the wall of rain. Cold water streams across the street, up onto the sidewalk and neutral ground. They’re gone.

Ah, but not the guy I left back in the bar. With his gun.

Before I realize I’m running, I’m halfway down the street. Rain blows into my eyes. I’m going to fall. I’m going to trip. The last thing I’ll see through rain-washed eyes, black motherfucker with a gun.

Yet there’s my car, water coming up to the rims — shit, I got this far, maybe I’ll make it. I start to fumble for the keys.

Nah. I’ll never make it.

The brothers on the porch. I take the stairs two at a time, and I’m up, dry, they’re on either side of me rising slowly, eyes wide, mouths moving. Something registers behind me, and their hands dart into their waistbands.

Pieces brought up, aiming toward the bottom of the stairs.

I turn around.

There’s just the one, inside the gate. Straw firmly in mouth. The dude lowers his gun. For the first time, he looks me in the eye. He smiles.

The current in the street is steady, rainwater halfway up to the knees. The man with the gun looks down, as if noticing the water for the first time, then slowly follows the current in the direction he came from. A wall of rain hits the street, and he vanishes into it.

You only need two things to feel good at Newman School: Pappagallos that show your toe crack and a two-story brick house. Well, three things if you’re Jewish. If you’re Jewish, you have to go to Sunday school. I don’t have any of those things, but I can fake the third one. Thirty-seven out of sixty-two kids in my class at Newman are Jewish, if you count Carolyn and Shira, and strangely enough, you don’t think about them as being Jewish because they had bat mitzvahs. They also came from public school in seventh grade and are fat and don’t care. It was Carolyn, who goes to a synagogue I’ve never heard of, who told me just to say that I go to Gates of Prayer. It’s reform, but nobody’s ever heard of it.

I keep working on my mother to buy me Pappagallos, but she says I get my shoes free and I should brag about it instead of mope. My great-grandfather owned the Imperial Shoe Store, which is on the corner of Bourbon and Canal Streets, and my grandfather gets such a deep discount that he buys all my shoes. Imperial is one of those stores that sells sturdy shoes like Stride Rites. Okay, but I don’t understand why they waited until Capezios went out of style to get them in. I can have all the Capezios I want, now that I don’t want them.

I don’t think we’re poor, but I can’t really tell. We live in a house that’s actually old and pretty, but it’s wood and one-story so it doesn’t even matter that my grandmother pays for us to have a maid. Well, she pays twenty-five dollars a week, but after a while Rena wanted a raise, and my grandmother said no, so my father pays her extra every week, taking it out of what he would spend on dry cleaning his suit. That’s the way it is with my grandparents. My grandmother paid my tuition to Newman for kindergarten, and then she said she didn’t feel like it anymore, so I’ve been on scholarship ever since. Which means my daddy has to reveal his income every year. Newman is very low-key about it, but my mother’s not. I have to have very good grades. Which is pretty easy because this is more a school for rich kids than for smart kids, in spite of what the whole city thinks. I know for a fact that if your parents knew the admissions director when you were coming into kindergarten, she asked you which train was red and which one was black, and if you got it right, you were in. She came from a very old Jewish family and had nothing better to do than give admissions tests for Newman. She still does it.

There’s a slumber party at Louise Silverman’s house tonight, and I’m invited. I have been at this school for over ten years, and this is the first time I’m friends with all the snobbish girls. My mother is thrilled, and I am disgusted, but I’m also thrilled, to tell the truth. Louise lives on Octavia Street, and two of the other girls can actually walk to her house. Their houses look almost the same, and I think that’s a message to me that if you want to be the right kind of person, then you should have that kind of house. Brick two-story. A plain rectangle. My mother probably thinks so too, but my father is the manager of a supermarket, and she knows crummy shoes and Rena’s twenty-five dollars a week is probably her limit with her parents.

Louise and Meryl and both of the Lindas are failing Geometry. For a while, they took turns calling me up for homework help, then I started going over to their houses after school, and finally they quit pretending they could do anything without me. This is how I know people at Newman aren’t smart. For Monday’s homework we have to prove the congruence of the two triangles in a parallelogram. I’m headed over to Louise’s early and we’re going to work on it. She’ll just hand it over to the other three. They won’t be able to do it in Mrs. Walter’s class when she comes at them, and they won’t be able to do it on tests, and from what I’ve heard Mrs. Prescott will threaten them with public school, but at homework time they will think I’m giving them hope.

My mother has packed me my gold silk pajamas that my grandmother bought me on her last trip to Japan. “Those girls are going to be so jealous,” she says. I think there’s a chance she might be right, though I also think that even gold silk shoes from Japan would not hold up next to nice baby-blue leather Pappagallos.

I ask her to drop me off and not wait until someone opens the door. We have a 1956 Ford Fairlane sedan. I figure that if no one opens the door I can go ring another girl’s bell. It is better than being seen in a 1956 Ford Fairlane sedan.

Louise grabs my arm at the door and pulls me in, which is as close as she comes to affection. “We’ll do math right now,” she says, and I think she must see that I’m excited, too, by an idea I’ve come up with on the way over. If Mrs. Silverman sees this little lesson I’ve made up for Louise, she will decide I am the best girl in all of Newman School and should be the only one Louise is friends with. She might tell all the other mothers, and then I’ll be popular. These girls aren’t like me. They definitely plan to grow up to be just like their mothers.

While I pull my math book out of my overnight bag, I ask Louise to get me a couple of envelopes, please. She looks at me like I’ve asked her to get me cleaning supplies. This is not something she’s ever found necessary. “Mama!” she hollers, and goes running upstairs. Her mother comes down to the kitchen and rummages in a drawer in the butler’s pantry. These two-story brick houses fascinate me. They have rooms that make sense only for rich people who lived a hundred years ago, but they were actually built just ten years ago. I ask for scissors too. Louise’s maid stands at the sink watching us with her arms folded. She’s not doing anything but watching us. Her expression says she could do this geometry if someone asked her.

My wish comes true: Mrs. Silverman watches as I cut and fold and draw straight lines and prove beyond doubt the congruence of the triangles in a parallelogram. I even cut the envelope into the shape of a parallelogram despite the fact that a rectangle is already a sort of parallelogram, because I figure Louise and her mother aren’t going to follow that extra piece of information. They are as delighted as if I’ve just guessed which card they’ve pulled from a deck. Mrs. Silverman kisses my cheek with red lips, and I leave the mark because no other girl is going to have a print to match Mrs. Silverman’s tonight.

The maid is still standing at the sink around midnight when I pad into the kitchen to find a way not to cry. We are in our nightclothes, and everyone in her pink shortie pajamas has said how pretty mine are and has examined the little frog buttons closely so she can comment when I leave the room. Silk is so hot, and I don’t want to have perspiration stains under my arms. They will show so easily. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I really don’t. I feel sorry for Carolyn, who of course is not here. I feel sorry for the maid. I feel sorry for everybody. I must look pitiful.

“What’s a big old girl like you doing in baby nightclothes?” the maid says.

“They’re from Japan,” I say like a white person, and I suddenly don’t feel so bad.

Louise is the one making the calls. They are calling Negro cab companies and sending taxis to Carolyn’s house. “How you doin’?” she says, trying to sound colored. I think she sounds fifteen and stupid, but everyone else thinks it’s hysterical and is laughing into a pillow. “Yeah, I just got off work, you could pick me up?” She rifles through the school directory. This is why she’s flunking math. She can’t even hold Carolyn’s address in her head for two minutes. When she hangs up, they all start screeching with laughter.

“I thought you liked Negroes,” I whisper. Though right now I hate her maid.

Louise looks around to see whether she does or not. She draws blank stares. We all took Civics last year and Mr. Ralph taught us to love President Kennedy, and now all the girls except me have giant hair rollers on their heads so they can look like Mrs. Kennedy in the morning. That is supposed to mean we like Negroes. I explain that to Louise, and she agrees. She has a picture of him in her room. Rena has one in her kitchen, but I’ve never told Louise that. President Kennedy is very good-looking, she says, but why am I asking about Negroes?

Because it’s their cabs.

Oh, says Linda B., they’re out anyway. We’ll make Carolyn crazy. Remember Teal? I remember Teal. They called her all night every night until she was driven to public school in sixth grade.

And I think, I have a feeling you are going to be sitting in public school when Carolyn is up there in Trigonometry at

Newman. I’m having a good time. I’m inside my own head, but I like being in their company.

Linda B. is the one who makes the calls to Carolyn’s house. She thinks she can do a voice deep enough to be a boy our age, and she asks for Carolyn. “Oh God, she used the F word and all kinds of Jewish words,” Linda says, covering the receiver. “What’s a shwotzer?”

“It’s schvartze,” I say, “and it’s a derogatory word for Negroes.” Then I realize they are going to think I’m Jewish the way Carolyn and Shira are, so I have to explain really fast that if they paid attention to the way words are derived they’d notice that there are people at school named Schwartz, and that means “black,” so it’s just a form of a German word. I don’t mention that my father is from Germany, and that he’s been secretly teaching me German since I was three years old. Well, talking to me in German. You don’t teach a child. My mother doesn’t know.

All the girls trip all over themselves telling me how smart I am. I think this is different from my pajamas. This is not something they are going to talk about differently when I leave the room. I am smart, and that fact is unassailably good, and in their presence I am better than they are no matter what subject comes up, as long as it isn’t fashion.

When it seems that Carolyn has been tormented as close to going back to public school as is possible for one night, Linda R. says we need to play Secrets. Louise dims the lights, and we sit in a circle, and we drink Coke. There are eight of us, and we’re going clockwise, and since we started with Meryl, I have three people ahead of me before I have to think up something to tell. I figure I’ll decide on the basis of what they tell. My father likes to have what he calls private jokes with himself. I want to think up a private joke with myself. If I can think of a secret that they think is something they can hold against me, but really is something I can use against them, it’ll be a lot of fun.

Of course, Meryl has a crush on our English teacher and she had a dream last week that she went down to his French Quarter apartment and had sex with him. This is a complete lie. People don’t have night dreams that everyone in the room has daydreams about, especially when nobody really wants to do anything more with that man than kiss him. I pick this apart in my head. It’s a secret about her, and it’s one people can use in the halls. Louise tells that Becca in her fourth period French class came right out in the girls’ bathroom and said that her parents got a divorce because her mother was having an affair, not her father, even though it’s always the father who fucks around. Becca is an atheist, and she doesn’t care if she has any friends, but boys call her up anyway because she has huge breasts. She tells them no and goes out with Tulane boys. I’m not sure what to do with this for the purposes of tonight, but I am sure what to do with it for life in general. I’m going to quit pretending I’m anything but an atheist. My father hasn’t said so, but I know he’s one. He won’t affiliate with a synagogue because he says synagogues in New Orleans are really just churches without crucifixes. I think he’s just figured out that this God thing makes no sense. I know I have.

When it’s my turn, something makes me tell that I speak German. It will be a private joke with myself. Linda B. says I have to say something, and I say, “Du bist böse und hässlich,” which means, You are mean and ugly, but I tell them it means, You are smart and beautiful. Linda says it sounds like the way Carolyn’s mother talks, and everyone else chimes in, agreeing. Carolyn’s mother throws in maybe one word that sounds sort of German, I tell them, and they mull that over for a while, ask me to say something else. I take it on as a parlor trick: They ask for Boys think I’m sexy, and I give them back, “Männer denken dass Ich rieche wie Pferdescheisse,” which means, Boys think I smell like horse shit. Linda wants to know how I know how to speak German when I’ve been sitting in Newman all these years with all of them, and Newman hasn’t taught it to me. My father’s from Germany, I tell them. No, he’s not, they say. Nazis are from Germany. They start looking at me hard. My last name is Cooper. That’s not a Jewish name. It’s not a German name. It was Kuper until my father got to Ellis Island. I shouldn’t have to explain this.

“I’m Jewish, for Chrissakes,” I say, which I think is a pretty good joke, but they don’t get it.

“How do we know you’re not a Nazi?” Linda says.

“Because my grandmother was killed by the Nazis,” I say. I want to go home.

They all get quiet for a moment. They all have grandmothers who are just like their mothers.

Finally, Louise, who is in my European History class and getting a B without cheating, says, “If the Nazis killed her, how can she be your grandmother when she was dead before you were born? I mean, the war ended in, what, 1945?”

“Because my father had a mother, and that’s how you have a grandmother, no matter what,” I say. I’m feeling better. Newman is a remarkable school. All of these girls will go on to college. Though some are going to take a detour through public school.

“Prove it,” Louise says.

And I tell them, “There’s a bundle of letters in my parents’ bottom desk drawer.” I can read every one. In German. Right up to the very end.

“Okay, okay, so the mayor is looking to start a new antiterrorist task force and he only wants the cream of the crop from law enforcement.”

Tommy Mulligan had settled into his joke-telling stance, his back to the bar, elbows resting on the hammered copper surface. He faced his audience, seven or eight other cops and a few nurses, standing in a loose semicircle at the back of the crowded room. Thursday was nurses’ night at the Swamp Room, and the place was packed. Nurses’ night at a cop bar was always busy. Nurses’ night at a cop bar in the Irish Channel was very busy. Nurses’ night at the Swamp Room was a zoo.

“Which mayor?” someone asked.

“What?” Tommy said.

“Which mayor?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Not this bald prick.”

“Better than Barthelemy,” another said.

“So’s bin Laden.”

“Could it be Morial?” a nurse from Touro suggested.

“Screw him too. All the money in heaven for Comstat, but splits hairs about the goddamn raises.”

“It don’t matter which mayor,” Tommy said, sensing he was losing his audience. “It’s a joke. Let me tell the fuckin’ joke.”

Tommy had been hitting it heavy for the last hour, and his face was already flushed and sweaty. He’d reached that point in the evening where he thought he was the wittiest son of a bitch on God’s green earth, and that was usually Lew Haman’s cue to leave. But Lew wasn’t going anywhere quite yet tonight. He sat silently next to Tommy, his back to the others, facing the bar in the rear, its rows of bottles decorated with casually tossed toy stethoscopes and white garters.

The Swamp Room had been a real bucket of blood when Lew was a kid, with a large scratched and smoke-yellowed Plexiglas panel in the floor. Beneath it two alligators were kept in a tank that, as he thought about it now as an adult for the first time, had to have been woefully small for them. His father would let him come in to watch them be fed, and more than the feeding itself he remembered the horrendous stench when the panel was lifted.

The space where the Plexiglas had been was covered with stone tile now, and sometimes used as an impromptu tiny dance floor. The whole bar had been rehabbed about twenty years ago, just long enough that it was beginning to look shabby again.

“So he calls in two state troopers,” Tommy continued, “two FBI agents, and two New Orleans detectives.”

It was the awful end to an awful night, and Haman was not in the mood to indulge his partner’s humor. He drained his Jameson on the rocks and signaled the bartender silently to bring another. Seventeen years, he thought. Three to go. For the thousandth time lately he lamented joining the force so late in life. He’d come on an old man of thirty, and now he felt like a dinosaur at forty-seven, old even for a detective; and fuck that television Law and Order bullshit with fifty-five-year-olds running down gang-bangers in an alley. Everybody knew that if you hadn’t secured a desk job, you were an asshole to stay on past your early-, or at most mid-forties. You were an asshole or you were Lew Haman, with three years to go. Same thing, he decided.

“So the mayor takes all six guys, and he drives them upstate, somewhere in the woods, middle of fuckin’ nowhere. He tells them ‘Here’s your first test. Go into the woods and find a rabbit. Bring it back out here.’”

They had been only fifteen minutes from going off-duty when they got the call. Lew had planned to go straight home after work, to skip the Swamp Room, the nurses, the drinking. He made such plans often, and rarely adhered to them, but you never knew. It might have happened tonight. Then the call came in.

Two uniforms had been driving along Magazine Street toward Jackson when a short, heavyset Hispanic woman stepped off the curb into traffic and waved them down. She told them that two kids had just robbed her on Constance Street. One held her face tightly scrunched in his hand while the other cut the shoulder strap on her bag with a large knife. The one holding her face pushed her backwards unexpectedly, and she fell. Then they ran off, laughing.

The uniforms loaded her into the back of their car and started cruising the side streets. Within a few minutes she began screaming and gesturing at a kid in a hoodie and ghetto-slung pants walking up Fourth Street toward Laurel.

“That’s him,” she said. “The one that pushed my face.”

The uniforms jumped out and confronted the kid, and he reached one hand under his sweatshirt. One of the cops yelled, “Drop the knife!” then fired three times.

She vomited on Magazine Street.

She stumbled in. The sign read, Miss Mae’s. A bar. She and the other white girls, their angular faces melting and disobedient like a blade, a glacier. She and the other white girls, laughing, laughing and stumbling about on the corner of Magazine Street in Uptown New Orleans.

Yes, they laughed and stumbled about with their angular faces pointing eastward; everything about them — the whiteness of them collectively — caught the pupil of the eye and pinned it down. One of them, the girl on the edge of the crowd, stood dark-haired and falling apart; she spoke of her ex, the one who dumped her.

What was his name?

Schevoski, Schevoski was his name and she hated him now.

The tail end of her yellow hair stood away from her shoulders, parted in the middle; there was a strand in the corner of her mouth, her lips purred upward, as if she could not help but notice that she was the dying kind in the crowd; he had, indeed, dumped her, gone back to Russia or some other place where boys go when they’re done with you.

Where had she met him?

At the university, at Tulane, where she’d turned the corner of St. Charles and some other street she could not remember, now that she was drunk, now that she stood amidst the other Tulane girls with their Tulane bodies and wished, she wished she could evaporate.

Yes, now she remembered, she had turned the corner of Tulane and some other street and she wanted something to occur, something that girls her age wanted to happen without having to call out to it; help me, it whispered.

And there, Schevoski stood.

He had been pronouncing a singular word, like beast, and saw her, standing there before him; this is when he asked her: Can you? he asked in the beginning, but then, then when he saw how vulnerable she was, he said: Say it, beast.

Beast, she whispered. Beast.

How did he look to her now? Could she recall the drunken weave of his posture when she met him? It was that, that, that cooing sound he made, as if he were calling out to her, Come here, there is something I need you to do.

For no one needed her, not really.

Or was it that he had no face at all? Even when her friends asked her to describe the boy she’d come across at the corner of St. Charles and some other street, she could not remember — Napoleon, was it? — she could only say that he was from Russia and something had bitten her about the flesh.

He was invisible.

It was no wonder that because she had felt like this, that he was invisible, he wove around her a feeling of powerlessness. He had crept up behind her, just behind the ear, and let her go.

Now, now that she and the white girls stood near the edge of the jukebox at Miss Mae’s, they, too, cooed, as Schevoski had cooed, and lifted their angular faces upward; a water stain the shape of a guitar lay flat on the ceiling.

One of the girls whispered: Look where he died.

And they all laughed again when she whispered, Look where he died, all laughing and shouldering each other, as if they knew, inwardly, that this was Schevoski and that thing he called music; the beast was dead.

They looked at her, the broken-hearted girl who had driven them here, and yelled: Look where he died, Look where he died. Schevoski. Schevoski is dead!

Why had they been so cruel? the girl thought. Because she could not remember one street? One word? Because this water-stained guitar was his voice and mind? Why ever had she driven them here?

She leaned over the edge of the jukebox and vomited.

And the other white girls, the girls who had come to mock her in their drunkenness, shouted as she vomited: Schevoski! Schevoski is dead!

And she vomited and vomited, her index finger over the Bee Gees label of the jukebox, until her mouth grew immediate and she turned, held her stomach, and stumbled through the shouting girls and their exclamatory language, stumbled until she reached the wooden door of the bathroom, stumbled until everything she had eaten this morning came up.

Finally, her stomach was bare.

And the world seemed to spin around her and the water-stained guitar seemed to crawl upon the ceiling, follow her through the wooden door of this place and mock upon her the power of its language; Schevoski is dead. And you are dead. You, beast.

And the girls who she had driven here, the Tulane girls, as if they had suddenly become aware of their cruelty, took their fists and banged on the outer walls of the lavatory; they banged and their banging seemed to echo throughout Magazine Street and the city of New Orleans that there was a girl in the john and she was weak and her old man had dumped her and she brought us to this place so we could mock her, make her afraid, tear down these walls she had collapsed into and whatever it was she had left, we would take it. Everything would come true.

Her head spun inside the lavatory and the banging of the other girls from Tulane now began to bang inside her head and she could see them, each of them at once, their mouths open and childlike, swimming around in her heart and mind the torturous chaos of one’s not knowing how vulnerable, how thin she is.

Just then, she thought of Schevoski, thought of how she’d met him, how cunning he was to have met her there on the corner of St. Charles and that street she could not remember — she wasn’t the only one; now, now amidst the other girls from Tulane and the water-stained guitar, she remembered the photos of the other girls, the other exes, and the labels he had written underneath, all named after the streets on which he had met them — Elba, Dupre, Willow, General Pershing, Eden — and there, scribbled beneath her own name, on the corner of St. Charles and...

Now, now that these things had come to her, she looked up to where the water-stained guitar had been and did her own laughing. And the other girls from Tulane heard it, how powerful it was, and stepped away from the wooden door of the lavatory and stumbled, stumbled back to the abandoned jukebox, back to where the vomit had begun to swell.

Each of them noticed, one at a time and collectively, the image of the water-stained guitar: the Schevoski is dead! had now disappeared into the odorous air of Magazine and it was no matter, they were all dead, as the girl who’d brought them here was dead, as Schevoski was dead, like a blade, a glacier.

A beast.

Valentin St. Cyr crossed to Algiers on the ferry. It was the end of a hot day in May of 1905, and the fading sun reached out to paint the sky in bloody streaks and spread little points of light over the river like early stardust. Every so often, the wake of a barge would traverse the surface. Then the water got quiet again.

The ferry moved unperturbed through the green shifting swirls. Valentin leaned on the stern railing as the profile of New Orleans retreated. It was good to get out of the city, especially out of Storyville, if only for one night. To get paid for it made it even better, even if he dropped a few dollars while he went about running off the card cheat.

What was the character’s name again? McTier?

In any case, it was a Tuesday, and the red light district would be quiet. The Basin Street madams and the sporting women and their gentlemen callers could do without him for one night, and any problems would still be there when he got back.

Valentin spent a few moments patting his clothes in what must have looked like some sort of private genuflection. In fact, he was checking his weapons. The weight of his favored Iver Johnson revolver settled in the pocket of his light cotton suit jacket. His whalebone sap was lodged in the back pocket of his trousers, so that he could reach in with his right hand to swing it around with the force to roll up eyes and buckle knees. Finally, he kept a stiletto in a sheath strapped to his ankle, so it would be easy to grab if some rascal tried to drag him to the floor.

Not that he expected that sort of trouble tonight. He had handled cheapjack hustlers by the dozens. He wouldn’t be walking into a rough back-of-town saloon to encounter a sport down on his luck and desperate for a good score, a rounder who thought he owned the place, or, worst of all, some low-down, no-good son of a bitch on a cocaine jag who saw things that weren’t there, imagined everyone in the room was out to get him, and itched for an excuse to pull out his own weapon of choice and have at it.

There would be none of that tonight, or so said Valentin’s employer, Mr. Tom Anderson. This McTier fellow was just another loud-mouthed, bullying sort, which meant he was most likely a coward, and would quail and run as soon as someone showed up to beat his hand — someone like Valentin St. Cyr. Sometimes all it took was a cold-eyed stare to get a sharp to pick up his loose change and crooked cards or dice and clear out. Other times, a fellow made his exit with his bloody forehead in his hands. And every now and then, nothing but a promise of deadly violence would do. So far, it hadn’t gone any further than that.

Once the ferry docked, he stepped onto the pier and walked up the incline and through the narrow avenues of the little town until he found Evelina Street. When he arrived at the corner address, it was little more than a storefront that had been set up with a plank bar and some tables and chairs, not all of them matching. A ceiling fan creaked overhead and the floor was spread with dunes of sawdust that had gone dark with tobacco juice and spilled whiskey. The windows were open on two sides so the breezes off the river could carry away some of the smell. There was a trough in back that served as a toilet. It would take a hurricane to blow that stench away.

A Negro boy who was standing watch opened the door for Valentin, who tossed him a nickel and stepped over the threshold. Two working men leaned their elbows on the near end of the bar. Valentin stepped up and asked for Mr. Roy. The bartender, a tall and lank mulatto, pointed a finger toward the back of the room.

Settled behind the wooden table in the corner was Mr. Roy, a hugely fat man with broad African features and skin a mottled brown, as if he was suffering from some odd ailment. His hair was woolly and the whites of his eyes were a deep yellow, matching his large teeth. He wheezed on every breath and his body and clothes reeked of sweat.

Valentin had never seen him before and didn’t know if he was a lawman, a criminal, or a nobody. Valentin didn’t know much of anything, other than the fact that Anderson, “The King of Storyville,” owed the owner of this rundown establishment a debt, and that Valentin was there to pay it off.

He took a seat across the table from Mr. Roy, who gasped lightly though his mouth as he regarded his visitor. The mulatto came creeping from behind the bar with a bottle and a clean glass, then made a quick retreat — making Valentin wonder if his reputation had arrived there ahead of him.

There was no point in exchanging niceties, so Mr. Roy got right to the point.

“The fellow’s name is Eddie McTier,” he said, heaving like a tugboat. “He’s a guitar player and a gambler out of Georgia. He been in near every night. He busts in on every game, then cheats and takes all the money. Then he lies to cover it. When that don’t work, he starts talking that he’s fixing to pull his pistol. He must have took fifty dollars off my customers over here. Now no one wants to come around no more.”

Valentin was noncommittal. He recognized the type, one of an army of tramps who preyed in places like Algiers, within spitting distance of New Orleans, where he wouldn’t last a minute. That he was a guitar player signified nothing.

“Why don’t you just put him out?” he inquired.

“I tried that,” Mr. Roy huffed. “He just laughed in my face and spit on the floor, and then come right back in the next night. He says he ain’t broke no law, and so he has a right. He also say he be carryin’ some voodoo, ’count of playin’ the blues and all, and so nobody want to cross him. Anyway, the gentleman owns the property wants him out for good. He’s ruining business.”

For a moment, Valentin thought Mr. Roy was making a joke. What business would that be? But the fat man’s face was grave.

Valentin had seen this gambit before. If a fellow talked tough or bragged on his voodoo enough, people who should know better fall for the act. This McTier had everyone in the place believing he was a bad actor who wasn’t going anywhere until he was good and ready.

Valentin poured an inch of whiskey in his glass and drank it down. “What time does he come around?”

“Soon as the sun goes down. So any time now.”

Valentin picked up the bottle and the glass and nodded in the direction of the table in the other corner. “I’ll sit over there. He and I’ll play some cards. See if he tries to cheat on me.”

“Oh, he will,” Mr. Roy said.

“Then I’ll have reason to put him out.”

The fat man pursed his heavy lips. “Don’t go gettin’ yourself kilt over here.”

“Don’t plan to,” Valentin said. “But if anything starts, you make sure everybody stays the hell out of the way.”

He got up and moved to the table, so that he was for the moment hidden in shadow to everyone except the bartender and Mr. Roy, and only because they knew he was there. He drank one more short glass of whiskey. It was hot, and he wanted his wits about him.

Some minutes passed as the sun went all the way down over the river. Valentin let his thoughts wander until the boy who was standing guard stepped inside, rolled his eyes a certain way, then faded into the woodwork. Valentin smiled; the kid would himself make a decent rounder one day.

He heard Eddie McTier before he saw him. The windows were open all along the street side of the saloon and a raucous voice echoed from the next corner: jagged laughter, a blunt shout, and a couple raw curses. Valentin heard the thump of boots on the banquette and finished the liquor in his glass in one quick swallow. Then he leaned back a few inches from the table. The front door flapped rudely open and a short barrel of a black man pushed inside, dressed in brown trousers, a soiled white shirt, and a vest that had seen some dusty miles. A misshapen gray Stetson was cocked sideways on his head.

Eddie McTier stopped to glance around with a cunning sort of smile, almost a childish thing, as if pleased with himself and all he surveyed. He took the Kalamazoo guitar that was strapped on his back and set it in the corner next to the door. Then he let his oily eyes roam past Valentin, circle the saloon, and come back.

He stared into the corner, looking unsure. “Who the hell’s that?” he asked the bartender.

The bartender swallowed.

McTier smacked a palm on the bar and said, “Twine! You hear me?”

“Fellow come over from New Orleans,” Twine stuttered quickly. “He’s lookin’ for a game.”

McTier peered at the man at the back table. “That right, friend?” he called.

Valentin didn’t move or speak.

“You looking for a game or not?” McTier demanded.

Valentin leaned forward so that his face came out of the darkness and into the light. Without a word, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced a new deck of cards, which he tossed to the center of the table.

McTier peered at the faces as if looking for someone to let him in on the joke. All he got were averted eyes, so he started a slow stroll along the bar.

From the table in the opposite corner, Mr. Roy cleared his throat. “You ort to leave your pistol with Twine there.”

McTier cocked his head toward Mr. Roy and then swiveled it to look at the bartender. Twine didn’t make the slightest move.

“Let him hold onto it.”

All three men turned to toward Valentin. McTier was the only one who spoke. “And what are you carryin’ this evening, mister?” he asked.

“That ain’t none of your business,” Valentin said in an off-hand way.

There was another pause while Eddie McTier decided whether or not to take offense. It was as if an invisible artist had drawn invisible lines in the air, defining the two men and the cold drama that was being staged within those four clapboard walls. Twine stared between them, feeling sweat run from beneath his hair and down his forehead.

It took another few seconds for it to dawn on Eddie McTier that if he did anything except stand there, he’d be finished in Algiers and in New Orleans, for that matter. Meanwhile, Mr. Roy was idly imagining that he could have sold tickets to this event.

Valentin broke the silence. “Did you come to play cards or talk about firearms?”

McTier grinned with his gray, uneven teeth. He turned and called over his shoulder for Twine to bring him a pint and a glass. With a hitch of his shoulders, he pulled out the chair opposite the Creole and sat down.

“I come to play,” he said.

Valentin nodded. “That’s good,” he said. “But, so you understand, you cheat and you’re out.”

McTier had been reaching for the deck. Now his lazy hand stopped in midair. He cocked a quizzical eyebrow. “What’d you say?”

“I said if you cheat, you’re out. And you don’t come around here anymore.”

McTier let out a disbelieving little snicker. “Is that so? And who says if I cheat?”

“We’ll let God be the witness,” Valentin said, his mouth curving into a smile that his eyes didn’t share.

McTier hiked his eyebrows and snatched up the deck with a brusque motion. “God, huh? You gonna need God if you play cards with me. ’Cause I got the devil on my side. I brought some voodoo from Georgia y’all ain’t even heard of.”

Valentin gave him a dubious look, as if suffering some boastful child. “Put your money on the table,” he said. He reached into his own pocket, took out an envelope, opened it, and dumped out twenty gold dollars. He raised his eyes to meet McTier’s. “And I mean all of it,” he said.

McTier had three choices. He could get up out of the chair, leave, and never come back. He could play it straight and lose his poke. Or he could brazen it out and chop this Creole character into pieces.

While he waited for the guitar player to make up his mind, Valentin gazed past him toward the door, where two men in cheap suits and a young woman in a thin cotton dress had stopped to peer inside. They were whispering among themselves and the girl was staring as if she had never seen anything quite like him before. Once he caught her eye, her face broke into a smile that was shyly wicked.

Eddie McTier shifted his way into Valentin’s line of vision and rapped his knuckles on the table. “That’s it,” he said. There was a small cylinder of gold coins in front of him that looked to be at least the equal of Valentin’s own.

“That all of it?” Valentin asked.

“Every fucking dime,” McTier replied with a snide curl of his lip.

Twine stepped up to the table with a pint bottle of amber liquor in one hand and a short glass in the other. He placed them at McTier’s elbow and skipped away in a hurry.

McTier frowned at the bartender “How come everybody’s so damn skittish today?” he said. “Y’all are actin’ crazy.”

Valentin pushed the deck of cards across the table. “You deal,” he said.

McTier’s face pinched with distrust. He watched Valentin for a second, then fanned a thumb through the deck. Satisfied it was clean, he broke it in half and began to shuffle. “What’s your story, friend?” he inquired.

“No story,” Valentin said. “Just passing through and looking for a game. What about you?”

“What, ain’t nobody told you?”

“Told me what.”

“I come from Georgia. Place called Happy Valley. I heard they like the blues in New Orleans. So I come over and I’m here to stay.”

Valentin studied the sharp’s face, feigning a vague interest, and watched his hands at the same time. McTier was playing it straight so far, but he was talking faster and faster, an old trick that was a variation on the magician’s sleight of hand.

“I got me a woman back home in Thomson. Ain’t but fifteen years old.” He seemed to stumble for a moment. “Got me a child name of Willie. He’s blind.” Now he fell curiously silent for a few seconds, as if he had lost his way. Recovering, he poured his glass full and drank it halfway down. “But truth is, I got more women than I know what to do with,” he crowed as his hands got busy again. “I found me this here young Ethiopian gal and brought her along. I left her over across the river.”

“And what are you doing in Algiers?” Valentin asked.

McTier smiled and said, “Takin’ your money, friend.”

Valentin’s face lightened suddenly and he grinned as if the guitar player had just told a good joke. The whispers at the door stopped and even Mr. Roy halted his wheezing for a few seconds.

“I say somethin’ funny?” McTier asked.

“Deal,” Valentin said.

“I’ll deal all right,” McTier said, and began snapping cards.

Valentin caught the move on the first hand and let it go. It was the same with the second and third, and McTier, looking giddy, drank some more as he watched the Creole’s stack of coins shrink while his grew. A quarter-hour passed in this manner, and Mr. Roy, Twine, the two fellows at the bar, and the trio near the door were all looking at Valentin as if realizing that in fact he was a fool.

For Valentin, it was as easy as hooking a Mississippi catfish. Thinking he had a chump in his sights, and doing some showing off for the locals, McTier tried a more brazen ploy. This time the Creole’s left hand came down with the force of a guillotine to grab the guitar player’s wrist in an iron grip.

“What did I tell you?” Valentin’s voice, though soft, rang out in a room that had suddenly gone dead quiet.

McTier tried to bluff his way out. “What the hell? Take your goddamn paw off me!”

Valentin shrugged and let go, then used the free hand to tear away the cuff of McTier’s shirt, popping the link and revealing the card hidden there, an ace of spades. It would have come in handy on the next deal.

McTier lowered his forehead and his eyebrows dipped into a valley. He muttered something under his breath and a rank smell came off him. On the periphery of his vision, Valentin saw the two men standing in the doorway pull the girl back out onto the banquette as the rounders and Twine dropped from sight like ducks in a shooting gallery. Mr. Roy was too fat to move with any haste, so he just pushed his chair back into the corner as far as he could go, and watched.

McTier got to his feet, the torn cuff dangling. “This game’s over,” he said.

“Damn right,” Valentin countered.

The guitar player jerked a thumb. “Door’s right back there.”

Valentin smiled dimly. “I ain’t going anywhere.”

“Then I’ll take my money and leave.”

Valentin shook his head slowly and said, “No, you won’t.”

A silence fell with a dark weight. From the corner, Mr. Roy saw the way McTier’s face changed. He had made his last threat and it hadn’t worked. This time he had only two choices, to run away or stand and fight. Meanwhile, the Creole sat perfectly still, his hands on the table. Mr. Roy hadn’t even seen him blink.

McTier let out a sudden raw growl as his hand went across his torso to the waist of his trousers. He snapped out a long-barreled Stevens Tip-Up.22 and brought it around at the same moment that Valentin rose abruptly, knocking back his own chair. The bark of the pistol shook the glasses behind the bar and the slug whistled past Valentin’s temple so closely that he felt the wind as it thunked into a wall board behind his head.

In his arrogance, McTier had packed a single-shot revolver, never dreaming that he’d have to use it. It was a mistake, because now a second pistol cracked, and the guitar player stumbled back in two long strides, as if pulled by a rope. Both his hands came up and the.22 tumbled out of the right one. The hole in his chest was still smoking when his knees crumpled and he collapsed to the floor.

The last hollow echo died. Now flat on his back, McTier tried to raise himself, then collapsed back, coughed out a ragged breath, and went still as the blood from his chest welled and spread.

Mr. Roy let out a long, noisy wheeze. Three heads rose up from the cover of the bar and the two men and the young girl edged back into the doorway. The Negro boy who had so ably faded into the wall reappeared, his face cracking into a grin of amazement.

Twine leaned over the bar to stare down at the body. “Holy Jesus,” he said.

Valentin lowered the pistol, laid it on the table, and sat back down. He picked up the pint, poured some of McTier’s whiskey into his glass, and drank it down in a long, slow sip. He looked surprised and perhaps baffled, as if he had wandered in from outside.

Mr. Roy managed to push himself to his feet. “We can take care of it from here on.”

Valentin, coming to his senses, understood. They would remove McTier’s body and cover the shooting with the police, if they talked about it at all. He also understood that he needed to leave. “Give his guitar to someone who can use it,” he said.

Mr. Roy nodded his heavy head.

Valentin walked across the dirty sawdust floor and out onto the banquette, where the young girl’s dark round eyes locked on him with a sort of primitive wonder. She seemed to barely breath as he stepped past her and continued down Evelina Street without looking back. He arrived at the pier just in time to catch the last ferry.

She was looking for trouble and she was definitely going to find it. What was the girl thinking when she got dressed this morning? When she decided — days, weeks, maybe even months ago — that this was how she wanted to go out on Mardi Gras day? And not just out, but all the way up to Claiborne Avenue and Ernie K. Doe’s, where this kind of costume didn’t play. There were skeletons and Mardi Gras Indians and baby dolls, but it wasn’t a place where you saw a lot of people going for sexy or clever. That kind of thing was for back in the Quarter, maybe outside Café Brasil. It’s hard to find a line to cross on Mardi Gras day, much less cross it, but this girl had gone and done it. In all my years — I was nineteen then, but a hard nineteen — I’d only seen one Mardi Gras sight more disturbing, and that was a white boy who took a magic marker, a thick one, and stuck it through a piercing in his earlobe. Nothing more to his costume than that, a magic marker through his ear, street clothes, and a wild gaze. Even in the middle of a crowd, people granted him some distance, let me tell you.

The Mardi Gras I’m talking about now, this was three years ago, the year that people were saying that customs mattered, that we had to hold tight to our traditions. Big Chief Tootie Montana was still alive then, and he had called for the skeletons and the baby dolls to make a showing, and there was a pretty good turnout. But it wasn’t true old school, with the skeletons going to people’s houses and waking up children in their beds, telling them to do their homework and listen to their mamas. Once upon a time, the skeletons were fierce, coming in with old bones from the butcher’s shop, shaking the bloody hanks at sleeping children. Man, you do that to one of these kids today, he’s likely to come up with a gun, blow the skeleton back into the grave. Legends lose their steam, like everything else. What scared people once won’t scare them now.

Back to the girl. Everybody’s eyes kept going back to that girl. She was long and slinky, in a champagne-colored body stocking. And if it had been just the body stocking, if she had decided to be Eve to some boy’s Adam, glued a few leaves to the right parts, she wouldn’t have been so... disrupting. Funny how that goes, how pretending to be naked can be less inflaming than dressing up like something that’s not supposed to be sexy at all. No, this one, she had a pair of pointy ears high in her blond hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail. She had pale white-and-beige cowboy boots, the daintiest things you ever seen, and — this was what made me fear for her — a real tail of horsehair pinned to the end of her spine, swishing back and forth as she danced. Swish. Swish. Swish. And although she was skinny by my standards, she managed the trick of being skinny with curves, so that tail jutted out just so. Swish. Swish. Swish. I watched her, and I watched all the other men watching her, and I did not see how anyone could keep her safe if she stayed there, dancing into the night.

Back in school, when they lectured us on the straight-and-narrow, they told us that rape is a crime of violence. They told us that a woman isn’t looking for something just because she goes out in high heels and a bustier and a skirt that barely covers her. Or in a champagne-colored body stocking with a tail affixed. They told us that rape has nothing to do with sex. But sitting in Ernie K. Doe’s, drinking a Heineken, I couldn’t help but wonder if rape started as sex and then moved to violence when sex was denied. Look at me, look at me, look at me, the tail seemed to sing as it twitched back and forth. Yet Pony Girl’s downcast eyes, refusing to make eye contact even with her dancing partner, a plump cowgirl in a big red hat, sent a different message. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me. You do that to a dog with a steak, he bites you, and nobody says it’s the dog’s fault.

Yeah, I wanted her as much as anyone there. But I feared for her even more than I wanted her, saw where the night was going and wished I could protect her. Where she was from, she was probably used to getting away with such behavior. Maybe she would get away with it here, too, if only because she was such an obvious outsider. Not a capital-T tourist, not some college girl from Tallahassee or Birmingham who had gotten tired of showing her titties on Bourbon Street and needed a new thrill. But a tourist of sorts, the kind of girl who was so full of herself that she thought she always controlled things. She was counting on folks to be rational, which was a pretty big count on Mardi Gras day. People do odd things, especially when they’s masked.

I saw a man I knew only as Big Roy cross the threshold. Like most of us, he hadn’t bothered with a costume, but he could have come as a frog without much trouble. He had the face for it — pop eyes, broad, flat mouth. Big Roy was almost as wide as he was tall, but he wasn’t fat. I saw him looking at Pony Girl long and hard, and I decided I had to make my move. At worst, I was out for myself, trying to get close to her. But I was being a gentleman, too, looking out for her. You can be both. I know what was in my heart that day and, while it wasn’t all over pure, it was something better than most men would have offered her.

“Who you s’posed to be?” I asked after dancing awhile with her and her friend. I made a point of making it a threesome, of joining them, as opposed to trying to separate them from one another. That put them at ease, made them like me.

“A horse,” she said. “Duh.”

“Just any horse? Or a certain one?”

She smiled. “In fact, I am a particular horse. I’m Misty of Chincoteague.”

“Misty of where?”

“It’s an island off Virginia.” She was shouting in my ear, her breath warm and moist. “There are wild ponies, and every summer the volunteer firemen herd them together and cross them over to the mainland, where they’re auctioned off.”

“That where you from?”

“Chincoteague?”

“Virginia.”

“My family is from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. But I’m from here. I go to Tulane.”

The reference to college should have made me feel a little out of my league, or was supposed to, but somehow it made me feel bolder. “Going to college don’t you make you from somewhere, any more than a cat born in an oven can call itself a biscuit.”

“I love it here,” she said, throwing open her arms. Her breasts were small, but they were there, round little handfuls. “I’m never going to leave.”

“Ernie K. Doe’s?” I asked, as if I didn’t know what she meant.

“Yes,” she said, playing along. “I’m going to live here forever. I’m going to dance until I drop dead, like the girl in the red shoes.”

“Red shoes? You wearing cowboy boots.”

She and her friend laughed, and I knew it was at my expense, but it wasn’t a mean laughter. Not yet. They danced and they danced, and I began to think that she had been telling a literal truth, that she planned to dance until she expired. I offered her cool drinks, beers and sodas, but she shook her head; I asked if she wanted to go for a walk, but she just twirled away from me. To be truthful, she was wearing me out. But I was scared to leave her side because whenever I glanced in the corner, there was Big Roy, his pop eyes fixed on her, almost yellow in the dying light. I may have been a skinny nineteen-year-old in blue jeans and a Sean John T-shirt — this was back when Sean John was at its height — but I was her self-appointed knight. And even though she acted as if she didn’t need me, I knew she did.

Eventually she started to tire, fanning her face with her hands, overheated from the dancing and, I think, all those eyes trained on her. That Mardi Gras was cool and overcast, and even with the crush of bodies in Ernie K. Doe’s, it wasn’t particularly warm. But her cheeks were bright red, rosy, and there were patches of sweat forming on her leotard — two little stripes beneath her barely-there breasts, a dot below her tail and who knows where else.

Was she stupid and innocent, or stupid and knowing? That is, did she realize the effect she was having and think she could control it, or did she honestly not know? In my heart of hearts, I knew she was not an innocent girl, but I wanted to see her that way because that can be excused.

Seeing her steps slow, anticipating that she would need a drink now, Big Roy pressed up, dancing in a way that only a feared man could get away with, a sad little hopping affair. Not all black men can dance, but the ones who can’t usually know better than to try. Yet no one in this crowd would dare make fun of Big Roy, no matter how silly he looked.

Except her. She spun away, made a face at her cowgirl, pressing her lips together as if it was all she could do to keep from laughing. Big Roy’s face was stormy. He moved again, placing himself in her path, and she laughed out loud this time. Grabbing her cowgirl’s hand, she trotted to the bar and bought her own Heineken.

“Dyke,” Big Roy said, his eyes fixed on her tail.

“Yeah,” I said, hoping that agreement would calm him, that he would shake off the encounter. Myself, I didn’t get that vibe from her at all. She and Cowgirl were tight, but they weren’t like that, I didn’t think.

When Pony Girl and Cowgirl exited the bar, doing a little skipping step, Big Roy wasn’t too far behind. So I left, followed Big Roy as he followed those girls, wandering under the freeway, as if the whole thing were just a party put on for them. These girls were so full of themselves that they didn’t even stop and pay respect to the Big Chiefs they passed, just breezed by as if they saw such men every day. The farther they walked, the more I worried. Big Roy was all but stalking them, but they never looked back, never seemed to have noticed. And Big Roy was so fixed on them that I didn’t have to worry about him turning around and spotting me. Even so, I darted from strut to strut, keeping them in my sights. Night was falling.

They reached a car, a pale blue sedan — theirs, I guess — and it was only when I watched them trying to get into it that I began to think that the beers they had drunk had hit them awfully hard and fast. They weren’t big girls, after all, and they hadn’t eaten anything that I had seen. They giggled and stumbled, Cowgirl dropping her keys — Pony Girl didn’t have no place to keep keys — their movements wavy and slow. The pavement around the car was filthy with litter, but that didn’t stop Pony Girl from going down on her knees to look for the keys, sticking her tail high in the air. Even at that moment, I thought she had to know how enticing that tail was, how it called attention to itself.

It was then that Big Roy jumped on her. I don’t know what he was thinking. Maybe he assumed Cowgirl would run off, screaming for help — and wouldn’t find none for a while, because it took some time for screams to register on Mardi Gras day, to tell the difference between pleasure and fear. Maybe he thought rape could turn to sex, that if he just got started with Pony Girl, she’d like it. Maybe he meant to hurt them both, so it’s hard to be sorry for what happened to him. I guess the best answer is that he wasn’t thinking. This girl had made him angry, disrespected him, and he wanted some satisfaction for that.

But whatever Big Roy intended, I’m sure it played different in his head from what happened. Cowgirl jumped on his back, riding him, screaming and pulling at his hair. Pony Girl rolled away, bringing up those tiny boots and thrusting them at just the spot, so he was left gasping on all fours. They tell women to go for the eyes if they’s fighting, not to count on hitting that sweet spot, but if you can get it, nothing’s better. The girls had all the advantage they needed, all they had to do was find those keys and get out of there.

Instead, the girls attacked him again, rushing him, crazy bitches. They didn’t know the man they were dealing with, the things he’d done just because he could. Yet Big Roy went down like one of those inflatable clowns you box with, except he never popped back up. He went down and... I’ve never quite figured out what I saw just then, other than blood. Was there a knife? I tell you, I like to think so. If there wasn’t a knife, I don’t want to contemplate how they did what they did to Big Roy. Truth be told, I turned my face away after seeing that first spurt of blood geyser into the air, the way they pressed their faces and mouths toward it like greedy children, as if it were a fire hydrant being opened on a hot day. I crouched down and prayed that they wouldn’t see me, but I could still hear them. They laughed the whole time, a happy squealing sound. Again I thought of little kids playing, only this time at a party, whacking at one of those papier-mâché things. A piñata, that’s what you call it. They took Big Roy apart as if he were a piñata.

Their laughter and the other sounds died away, and I dared to look again. Chests heaving, they were standing over what looked like a bloody mound of clothes. They seemed quite pleased with themselves. To my amazement, Pony Girl peeled her leotard off then and there, so she was wearing nothing but the tights and the boots. She appeared to be starting on them as well, when she yelled out, in my direction: “What are you looking at?”

Behind the highway’s strut, praying I couldn’t be seen, I didn’t say anything.

“Is this what you wanted to see?” She opened her arms a little, did a shimmying dance so her breasts bounced, and Cowgirl laughed. I stayed in my crouch, calculating how hard it would be to get back to where the crowds were, where I would be safe. I could outrun them easy. But if they got in the car and came after me, I wouldn’t have much advantage.

The girls waited, as if they expected someone to come out and congratulate them. When I didn’t emerge, they went through Big Roy’s pockets, took the cash from his wallet. Once the body — if you could call it that — was picked clean of what little it had, Pony Girl popped the trunk of the car. She stripped the rest of the way, so she was briefly naked, a ghostly glow in the twilight. She stuffed her clothes, even her ears and her tail, in a garbage bag, then slipped on jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of running shoes. Cowgirl didn’t get all the way naked, but she put her red hat in the garbage bag, swapped her full skirt for a pair of shorts. They drove off, but not at all in a hurry. They drove with great deliberation, right over Big Roy’s body — and right past me, waving as they went.

I suppose they’s smart. I suppose they watch those television shows, know they need to get rid of every little scrap of clothing, that there’s no saving anything, not even those pretty boots, if they don’t want the crime to be traced back to them. I suppose they’ve done this before, or at least had planned it careful-like, given how prepared they were. I think they’ve done it since then, at least once or twice. At least, I’ve noticed the little stories in the Times-Picayune this year and last — a black man found dead on Mardi Gras day, pockets turned out. But the newspaper is scanty with the details of how the man got dead. Not shot, they say. A suspicious death, they say. But they don’t say whether it was a beating or a cutting or a hot shot or what. Makes me think they don’t know how to describe what’s happened to these men. Don’t know how, or don’t feel it would be proper, given that people might be eating while they’s reading.

Just like that, it’s become another legend, a story that people tell to scare the little ones, like the skeletons showing up at the foot of your bed and saying you have to do your homework and mind your parents. There are these girls, white devils, go dancing on Mardi Gras, looking for black men to rob and kill. The way most people tell the story, the girls go out dressed as demons or witches, but if you think about it, that wouldn’t play, would it? A man’s not going to follow a demon or a witch into the night. But he might be lured into a dark place by a fairy princess, or a cat — or a Cowgirl and her slinky Pony Girl, with a swatch of horsehair pinned to the tailbone.

“My God, Helen, did you kill him?” Father Fitzpatrick asked in horror.

He was a good-looking, tall, and well-built man with hair black as a crow’s feathers. He did have bad teeth, due mostly to his habit of getting into fistfights. Father Fitzpatrick insisted that we call him Billy and never Father unless he was in the church, and even then he looked pained when someone did.

He was seated on the steps of a very clean but small shotgun house that served as the temporary rectory of the Corpus Christi Church while the parishioners raised the money to build the real rectory. I stood in the shade fanning myself with a street car schedule.

“No, Billy, he moaned... and before I ran from the office, I saw him try to stand.”

“Good. He deserves to die, but not by you.”

“It’s not good. My temper has gotten me nothing but trouble. My father wants to send me to Baton Rouge.”

“Listen to him. You must know how vindictive Murphy can be. He can do most anything without remorse. He has no conscience, but he does have all the conviction of a man who speaks with the authority of Jesus Christ himself. If I see him on the street it’s unbearable. He mocks the priesthood and demeans it; and it’s shameful that no one will stand up to him.”

“So you must? No matter how awful Murphy is, you can’t think that beating him in the street will solve anything. Aren’t you afraid of losing your church or being defrocked?”

He laughed. “This from a woman who just bashed a man in the head. God knows the truth but waits. I trust in the Lord to guide and protect me. Or least to help me sober up before Mass.”

“Must you make light of everything?”

He shrugged. “Why are you afraid of Baton Rouge? It’s a fine town.”

“I won’t go to Baton Rouge. My father wants me to stay with relatives who I can’t tolerate.”

“Why can’t you tolerate them? From what I hear, they eat and dance in Baton Rouge just like they do here.”

“They drink and argue constantly. They have no culture.”

He poured himself another whiskey and laughed. “Sometimes I forget how haughty you are.”

“I am not haughty,” I said, and waved goodbye to him as I rushed to catch the trolley. I couldn’t help but like Father Fitzpatrick. He was a kind and worldly man who was ill-suited for the priesthood, and largely lived his life as though he wasn’t part of it. I knew that he frequented bars and gambling dens, and it was rumored that he had more than one female admirer, but he had a good heart and made sure that those who had need in the Seventh Ward were tended to, and that the Creoles and Negroes were treated with the same respect as the whites. The rumors that Father Fitzpatrick was on the way out of town were very hard to ignore, but until the day they ran him out of town, his rage at Murphy would be uncontrollable. It was only a matter of time before he’d get a couple too many whiskeys in him and walk the few blocks to Sacred Heart to bust Murphy’s eye once again, and this time Murphy would most certainly be ready for him.

There must be hundreds of kids who have wound up dead in the French Quarter. Eva Pierce was just one of them. Everywhere you walk in the neighborhood you see fliers about them taped to lampposts: Information Wanted or $5,000 Reward. And below is a blurry snapshot of some scruffy young person. After Eva’s body was discovered, bundled inside a blue Tommy Hilfiger comforter floating in Bayou St. John, the girl’s mother moved down here from Idaho or Iowa or Ohio — however you pronounce it — and blanketed the Quarter with those signs. She even printed her daughter’s last poem on the flier, but no dice. The fifteen hours between when Eva was last seen and when her body was found in the bayou remained a blank.

That’s when the mother rang me. I’m listed in the Yellow Pages: Off-Duty Homicide Detective: Dead or Alive, Inc.

Mrs. Pierce met me under the bingo board at Fiorella’s restaurant at the French Market. It wasn’t my suggestion. I hadn’t been to the market since I was a kid, when my daddy used to take me on Saturday mornings to squabble with his wop relatives while we loaded up at a discount on their fruits and vegetables. On my daddy’s side I’m related to everyone who ever sold a pastry, an eggplant, or a bottle of dago red in the Quarter, and on my mother’s side to everyone who ever ran the numbers, pimped girls, or took a kickback. I peeked inside the rotting old market, but sure didn’t see any Italians or tomatoes. Now it’s just Chinese selling knock-off sunglasses to tourists.

Mrs. Pierce was short and round as a cannoli, with a stiff gray bouffant and a complexion like powdered sugar. With those cat’s-eye bifocals, she looked like someone who might be playing bingo at Fiorella’s. But when she opened her mouth... Twilight Zone. Mrs. Pierce said it wasn’t drugs or sex that did her daughter in, but — get this — poetry.

“And the police aren’t doing anything,” she said with a flat Midwestern whine that made me want to go suck a lemon.

“Look, lady, I’m a cop — Lieutenant Vincent Panarello, Sixth District — and the police have more trouble than they can handle in New Orleans. They don’t pay us much... I got a wife and three kids in Terrytown, so that’s why I moonlight as a detective.”

“My daughter loved moonlight.”

“I bet.”

“She read her own original poetry every Tuesday night at that rodent-infested bar on Esplanade Avenue called the Dragon’s Den.” She was twisting the wrapper from her straw into a noose.

“Yeah, that used to be Ruby Red’s in my day. A college joint, the floor all covered with sawdust and peanut shells.” I didn’t tell her how drunk I used to get there in high school with a fake ID. While I was going to night school at Tulane, Ruby Red’s was where I met my first wife Janice, may she rest in peace.

“Well, the place has gone beatniky.” Mrs. Pierce leaned forward, her eyes watering. “And do you know what I think, Lieutenant Panarello?’

“Shoot.”

“I think one of those poets murdered my daughter. One of those characters who read at the open mike. And that’s where I want you to start. To listen for clues when the poets read. Eventually one of them will give himself away.”

“Listening to the perms will cost you extra.” And so will the French Quarter, but I’d already averaged that in when I quoted her my fee.

“I’ll meet you there Tuesday at 9 p.m. It’s above that Thai restaurant. Just go through the alley—”

“I know how to get up there.” I could have climbed those worn wooden steps next to the crumbling brick wall in my sleep. That’s where I first kissed Janice. Funny, but she also wrote poems she read to me on the sagging wrought-iron balcony. The life I really wanted was the one I had planned with her. The life I settled for is the one I got.

Mrs. Pierce handed me a picture of her daughter, a list of her friends, and a check. I eyed the amount. Local bank.

“What your daughter do for a living?” I pushed back my chair, antsy to blow Fiorella’s. I could already smell the fried chicken grease on my clothes.

“Why, she was a poet and interpretive dancer.”

“Interpretive dancer. Gotcha.”

I studied the photo. Eva was about twenty-four, pretty, with skin as pale and powdery as a moth’s wing. But she was dressed in a ratty red sweater over a pink print dress over black sweatpants. Her dyed black hair was hanging in two stringy hanks of pigtail like a cocker spaniel’s ears. Who would want to kill her, I wondered, except the fashion police?

When I got down to the station I pulled the report. Eva was last seen at Molly’s bar on Decatur Street at 4 a.m. on a Tuesday, where she told her roommate, Pogo Lamont, that she was going home to feed their one-eyed dog named Welfare. They lived on Ursulines at Bourbon, upper slave quarter, uptown side. She never made it home. After an anonymous 911 tip, her body was hoisted out of the bayou at 7 p.m. the next evening. One clean shot through the temple, real professional. No forced sexual entry. Her purse was lying open on the grassy bank, surrounded by a gaggle of ducks trying to get at the bag of stale popcorn inside. A cell phone and twenty-five dollars were tucked in the bag, so the motive wasn’t robbery. Also inside the purse were a red lipstick, a flea collar, a black notebook filled with poems, two 10 mg. Valiums, an Ohio picture ID, a plastic straw that tested positive for cocaine residue, and a worn-out restraining order against Brack Self, a bartender and “performance artist” who turned out to have been locked up the whole time in Tampa for beating on his present girlfriend. That, and an Egyptian scarab, a petrified dung beetle supposed to be a symbol of immortality.

Which didn’t seem to have worked for Eva Pierce, poet and stripper.

Even though her mouth was empty, Rita savored the crunchy flavor of animal cookies, old-time animal cookies made with real vanilla. Her son laid out in a casket and here she was thinking about snacks. But that was because animal cookies were Sammy’s favorite.

When he was small, Rita would gallop the shapes up Sammy’s little round stomach, moving the crisply baked dough in bounding leaps. Usually the miniature animals ended up between Sammy’s laughing lips.

His fat cheeks dimpled with a grin, Sammy would squirm in Rita’s lap, turn and clap his small hands in glee as he chomped down on the golden tan figures. Sometimes he’d cry out in mock pain when a bear would take a really hard jump and end up bounding over his head into Rita’s mouth. Animal crackers and funerals.

Now little Gloria, twenty-three-and-a-half months old, sat in Rita’s lap. Tyronne sat silently next to her. Gloria squirmed briefly. Without really hearing a word he said, Rita patiently endured Pastor White droning on and on. Out of the corner of her eye, Rita stole a glance at Sammy’s corpse laying in the coffin. Absorbing that awful stillness, Rita’s instinct took over: She protectively hugged Gloria, bowed her dark face into the well-oiled coiffure of her daughter’s carefully cornrowed hair, and planted a silent kiss deep between the black, thick, kinky rows.

Rita was beginning to doubt life was worth living, worth sacrificing and saving... for what, to have children who get shot down? What sense did it make to be a mother and outlive your children?

Two deacons moved forward and flanked the coffin. Like passing through a room where the television is on but no one is watching and the sound is off, Rita was aware the men were there to lower the coffin lid, but she really paid no attention to the dark-suited sentinels. Rita had long ago said goodbye and there was no need to drag this out. The elder of the church-appointed guardians efficiently closed the blue velvet — trimmed coffin lid. Someone two rows to the rear of Rita uttered a soft but audible, “Oh, my Lord.” The lamentation cut clearly through the reverent silence that had settled on the small congregation. This was the end of the wake but only the beginning of a very long and sleepless night.

Friends and acquaintances shuffled slowly, very slowly, out of the sanctuary into the small vestibule where people lined up to script their condolences in one of Sammy’s school notebooks that had been set out on a podium. There was a pencil sitting in the middle of the book. A few people had signed in ballpoint pen, but most signatures (some were written in large block letters, others in an indecipherable cursive) were scripted with the pencil’s soft lead and seemed to fade immediately upon writing.

Rita looked up. No, that couldn’t be, she thought to herself. That couldn’t be Paul “Snowflake” Moore darkening the sanctity of her sorrow. Rita instantly shifted the sleeping weight of Gloria from her shoulder. Wordlessly, she handed Gloria to Tyronne. Tyronne had already seen Snowflake and knew a confrontation was in the making. In one seamless motion, as soon as Tyronne received Gloria into his large hands, he spun on his heels and handed Gloria to the first older woman he saw. By the time he turned back to Rita, she was already in Snowflake’s face.

“Get out of here!” Rita hissed between tightly clenched teeth. “You the—”

“I just come to pay my respects. I ain’t come to cause no trouble.”

“You don’t respect nobody.”

By now the packed anteroom crackled with dread. The woman who had taken Gloria scurried back into the sanctuary; just a few months ago she had witnessed a fight break out at a funeral.

Tyronne rushed behind Rita, who was oblivious to her backup towering above her. With the arrogance of power, Snowflake stoically stood his ground and impassively peered at Rita and Tyronne. The tension increased.

“Get out!” Rita screamed, and pushed Snowflake hard in his chest. Snowflake glowered. She was fortunate that this was a wake, that Sammy was her son and might even be related to him, fortunate that a lot of people were standing there watching, but most of all, fortunate that none of Snowflake’s usual retinue was surrounding him, because then Snowflake would have been bound, at the very least, to slap her down. As it was, Snowflake’s hand instinctively went to his.38 derringer, snug but ready in the waist-pocket of his vest.

The confrontation escalated so fast the onlookers barely had time to breathe in and out; a few of the younger men were in fact holding their breath. Surely Snowflake wasn’t going to accept being pushed around without doing something in retaliation.

Tyronne quickly stepped between the antagonists. “She’s upset, you understand. Please, leave her be. We appreciate your concern but it would be better, man, if you would leave.” Tyronne stared unflinchingly into the depths of Snowflake’s emotionless eyes. Snowflake stared back and pulled an empty hand out of his vest pocket.

Everybody except Tyronne, Snowflake, and Rita prematurely relaxed and let out a relieved breath.

“I said get out!” Rita screamed a second time. The deacon who had closed the coffin lid ran to the phone to dial 911. Half the people who had been standing around now quickly moved out, some exiting the front door, others retreating back into the sanctuary. Rita reached around Tyronne in another attempt to shove Snowflake toward the door.

The rest happened so quickly only Tyronne and Snowflake saw it all. Tyronne took a swift half-step to his right to cut off Rita, who was charging around him. He leaned backward briefly, pushing against her with his shoulders.

Snowflake’s left hand leapt with lizard rapidity to knock away Rita’s outstretched right arm, and in the process was detained by Tyronne’s right hand that gripped with a viselike strength and was surprisingly unyielding.

An onlooker moaned, “Oh, Lordy, no!”

“Get out!” Rita’s vehement command overpowered the onlooker’s exclamation.

Snowflake’s right hand had already come up with his gun at the ready. Tyronne stepped in so close to Snowflake that if he pulled the trigger there was no telling what direction the slug would travel: upward into the ceiling, upward into Tyronne’s chest, or upward into Snowflake’s jaw.

“He got a gun,” some young male voice blurted at the same time Rita was reaching to get around Tyronne so she could sink her nails into Snowflake’s smoothly groomed face. Snowflake pushed his right forearm against Tyronne’s chest, attempting to back him up and simultaneously free his left arm, which Tyronne held secure at the wrist. As is often the case in impromptu street fights, the peacemaker in the middle was the person in the most danger.

“Young man, please. Has there not been enough shooting and death?” the pastor asked in a calm but insistent voice, as he rushed through trying to get to where Rita, Tyronne, and Snowflake were locked in a tug-of-war.

Rita spit at Snowflake. She missed his face but a glob stuck to the top of his left shoulder. Some older lady fainted but no one paid her any mind because she was too far away from the focal point of the fight. The minister smothered Rita in his protective arms.

“Can’t you see this woman is grieving over her son?”

When Reverend White grabbed Rita, Tyronne bear-hugged Snowflake and spoke slowly and carefully into Snowflake’s ear: “I’m begging you, man. Please don’t shoot my wife. She’s so upset she ain’t got no idea what she’s doing. You can understand her only son is dead and she thinks you had something to do with it. You got the gun. If you got to shoot somebody, shoot me. But please don’t shoot my wife.”

Snowflake’s gun was pinned between the two men.

“Will everyone please either leave out the front door or join me in the sanctuary where we will pray for sister Rita?” Reverend White picked Rita up and dragged her out of immediate danger. Supporting her with firm grips under her arms, two ushers grabbed the woman who had briefly fainted and spirited her out into the welcome chill of the night air.

The whole scene had been acted out so quickly, it seemed like a blur of simultaneous motion. Within ninety- five seconds, Snowflake and Tyronne were alone in the forlorn vestibule.

“Thank you,” Tyronne said as he stepped back half a step, reached into his lapel pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and gently dabbed Rita’s spittle off Snowflake’s cashmere jacket. “Thank you.”

It sounded so, so insane, but that was all Tyronne could think to say to the man standing in the receiving area of the church holding a loaded gun gleaming beneath the chandelier lights. From inside the sanctuary, the Twenty-third Psalm seeped through the swinging doors. Reverend White led and the assembled congregation responded with a tremulous sincerity.

“... Yeh, though I walk through...”

Kentucky Williams owns a Bible?” Benjamin January cast a doubtful glance catty-corner across the trampled muck of the Broadhorn Saloon’s yard to the shabby building’s open back door. The Broadhorn was a substantial building for this part of New Orleans, a neighborhood known quite accurately as the Swamp. Constructed of the lumber from dismantled flatboats, it stood a story-and-a-half tall and boasted not only porches but a privy, though the four whores who worked out of it did so in a line of sheds that straggled away into the trees of the true swamp — the ciprière — beyond. Under the brilliant winter sunlight the bullet-pocked planks and unspeakably puddled weeds looked every bit as grimy and rough-hewn as the establishment’s proprietress, who a few moments before had bellowed out the back door for January to come in: She needed his services.

“Last night some suck-arse bastard tried to steal my Bible!” she shouted at January.

“In many ways that’s the most surprising element of last night’s fracas,” remarked January’s friend and fellow musician Hannibal Sefton, fishing in the pocket of his dilapidated frock-coat for a bottle of opium-laced sherry. “It was her uncle’s — another surprise, since I’d always assumed that, like the Athenian hero Erechtheus, she was birthed from the earth itself. It’s in no way a remarkable volume: printed in Philadelphia thirty or forty years ago by a Bible society. The frontier was flooded with them when families started taking up lands in the Mississippi and Alabama territories.”

He had risen from the bottom step of the ladder he was sitting on when January emerged from the trees. January had reason to approach the Broadhorn cautiously: Even at 9:30 on a Tuesday morning there were men drunk enough to take violent exception to a man of January’s color appearing in the vicinity of white men’s chosen watering holes. January stayed away from the Swamp when he could. Only Hannibal’s note had brought him that morning.

“I thought myself something might have been hidden in it,” Hannibal went on, as they crossed the goo of the yard to the saloon’s rear door. “Pages cut out to make a hollow, or something of the kind. I can’t imagine anyone in the Broadhorn ever opened the book. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. For whatever reason, the thief was prepared to do murder to get it.”

January paused on the saloon’s sagging rear porch, trying to see into the impenetrable gloom within. Born a slave, one of the first things he’d learned in early childhood was that there was “buckra territory” — in his case, the front part of his master’s house — where a black child would be thrashed for setting foot. Even after his mulatto mother had been freed and they’d gone to live in New Orleans, he’d still been forbidden to use the front entrance of the house her white protector had given her.

In the Swamp, it was as much as a black man’s life was worth to go into a saloon patronized by the white crews of the flatboats and keelboats that came down the river with their cargoes of furs, pigs, and corn. The black prostitutes would be tolerated in most saloons in that insalubrious district that sprawled from the upper end of Girod Street along the back of the town to the canal and the cemeteries. But the only black who was truly able to come and go freely in the Broadhorn was Delly, a sweet-tempered, simpleminded girl of seventeen whose buck teeth, skewed jaw, and prominent facial moles had relegated her to the role of washing cups and doing as much cleaning up as the Broadhorn ever got.

It was Delly who lay on the narrow bed in Kentucky Williams’s room behind the bar. Williams yelled, “Git the hell in here, Ben, what you doin’, wipin’ your goddamn feet?” and January followed her voice into that tiny cubicle, which appeared to do duty as the Broadhorn’s storeroom as well. Williams sat at the foot of the bed, a big-boned white woman wearing what the black whores called a good-time dress, a faded calico mother-hubbard whose front was splashed and blotted now with crusted brown blood. One sleeve was torn and a makeshift bandage, also spotted from a seeping wound underneath, ringed her right forearm. “Gimme your dope, Hannibal,” she added more quietly, holding out her uninjured hand, and Hannibal passed over his bottle of opium-laced sherry without a word.

The girl Delly lay quietly on the bed, her face wrapped in several bar rags and what looked like somebody else’s torn-up mother-hubbard bound around her chest and shoulder.

“Dumb bitch tried to pull him off me,” growled Williams to January, gently holding the bottle to Delly’s lips. “Can you swallow a little of this, honey? Easy... not too much... that’s my good girl.” She patted Delly’s hand encouragingly. “Didn’t think I could goddamn take care of myself.” She took the cigar out of her mouth for a gulp of the sherry, then passed the bottle back to Hannibal. “How bad’s she hurt, Ben? She be all right?”

Hannibal’s note had said, Bring your kit, so January had brought the battered leather case of probes, forceps, fleams, and scalpels that his mentor in New Orleans had given him back in 1817, when he’d left to study medicine in Paris — little realizing at that time how useless it was for a black man to attempt to practice medicine on whites, even in that land of liberté, egalité, etc. Oddly enough, in the two years since his return to New Orleans in 1833, he’d found himself acquiring a clientele after all: unfortunately, all of it among the poorest class of freed (or runaway) slaves, who couldn’t afford the mainly light-complected physicians patronized by the better-off free colored artisans.

January had long ago resigned himself to the fact that he was going to be playing piano for his living the rest of his life.

In addition to the tools of his one-time trade, he’d brought vials of camphor and opium, and bundles of herbs recommended by his voodoo-priestess sister and various “root doctors” — freed and slave — in the countryside. One of these he held out to Hannibal.

“Can you get some boiling water from the Turkey Buzzard, and steep about a quarter of this in it?”

The Turkey Buzzard stood about a hundred feet from the Broadhorn, and combined the usual Swamp amenities of barroom, gambling parlor, and bordello with about a dozen beds for hire in three or four chambers, qualifying it as a hotel. It boasted a kitchen of sorts, and a dining room that served up grits, beans, and whatever mules might have given up the ghost the previous day — occasionally varied if an alligator happened to get too far from the canal at a time when the patrons were sober enough to hit it.

“Did you put anything on this, Mrs. Williams?” January asked, gingerly beginning to unwrap the bandages on Delly’s face.

“Like what?” The proprietress pulled her snarly light-brown hair back into a knot on her nape. “My daddy said duck shit an’ cobwebs was good for cuts, but I was goddamned if I’d go huntin’ for a duck in the middle of the night. ’Sides, that was just for little cuts, not a big hack like he gave her. There’s ducks down at the turnin’ basin by the cemetery, though, if you need—”

“My teachers swore by brandy.” January flinched a little as the bandages stuck, then came away from the split mess of brow and cheek. Though crusted almost shut with blood, Delly’s brown eyes blinked up at him unharmed.

“You mean brandy-brandy?” asked Williams doubtfully. “Or the tonsil varnish me an’ Railspike make out of tobacco juice an’ red pepper?”

“Brandy-brandy, if you’ve got it.”

Williams fished in a broken goods box under the bed. “You want Lemercier or Saint-Valbert?”

Stifling the urge to inquire how bottles of France’s finest had wound up in the back room of a New Orleans bucket shop, January asked instead, “What happened here?” as he took the bottle and gently began to clean the wounds with its contents. “And how do you know the thief was trying to steal your uncle’s Bible? What happened to the thief, by the way?”

“Absquatulated, the pusillanimous fuckard.” Williams perched back on the bed at his side and took a thoughtful swig of the Lemercier. “Lit out of here like I’d stuck a burnin’ fuse up his arse. I marked him good, though. And I know he was tryin’ to steal my Bible ’cause he come in here an’ tried to buy it yesterday afternoon.”

“Buy it?”

“Yeah. I thought it was queer.” She took the cigar from her mouth and blew a thoughtful cloud, lashless blue eyes narrowing in their tangle of lines and crusted paint. January would have guessed the saloonkeeper’s age at forty or so — his own — had he not known how quickly the harsh life of the riverfront dives aged a woman: She was probably a decade younger than she looked, and unlikely to live a decade longer.

“This po’-faced jasper comes in here yesterday afternoon, just as I got the doors open. Asks for rum an’ stands here sippin’ at it — who wants to taste it, fer God’s sake?” She took another gulp of the Lemercier, and passed it back to January to daub on the long knife rake that slashed across Delly’s right pectoral and down the side of her breast. Delly herself lay listening, jaw gritted hard, her eyeballs drifting now and then from the opium. January guessed she wasn’t used to it, from the way one swallow seemed to have dulled the pain.

On the other hand, of course, Hannibal’s favored brand was quadruple-strength Black Drop that would knock out a horse.

Now Delly whispered, “You said he was a ringer, ma’am.”

“That I did, honey.” Williams squeezed the girl’s hand again. “That I did. He was dressed rough, like most of the hard cases that come in here — plug hat, Conestoga boots — but he wore it like he didn’t want to touch the insides of his clothes with his body. His hands was clean, too. You could tell he hadn’t never done hard work with ’em, not like hau-lin’ on a line or pole-walkin’ a boat up a bayou. His hair, too, clean an’ cut short, an’ he had one of them sissy little beards, just around his mouth. Well, he coulda been a gambler, an’ it wasn’t none of my laundry to wash.” She shrugged. “But then he starts an argument with the next man who comes in — Snag-Face Rawlin, that was — pushin’ on about some-thin’ in the Bible, like who was the first King of Israel or somethin’ like that. Next thing I know, he asks me, do I have a Bible to settle the question? Snag-Face is sayin’, Oh, hell, what’s it matter? But this stranger just won’t quit, an’ wants to settle the question—”

“Herod,” whispered Delly through teeth clenched against the pain, as January quickly cleaned out the wound on her chest with the hot herbal wash Hannibal brought in. “Was Herod the first king of Israel?”

“That was it. He pushed a bet onto Snag-Face — fifty cents Herod was. And when I guess Herod wasn’t, he said all damn an’ blast, an’ would I sell him the Bible so’s he wouldn’t make that kind of fool mistake again? I said no, it was my uncle’s Bible. He offered me five dollars for it, and when I said no, he offered me ten.”

January’s eyebrows shot up. Cheaply printed evangelical Bibles could be purchased for twenty-five cents, new.

Williams ground out her cigar under her heel. “So I figured, when my door creaks open in the dead of night an’ some plug-ugly with a handkerchief tied over his face holds a gun on me an’ says, Gimme the Bible, I’m guessin’ it was the same po’-faced bastard with the sissy beard.”

January finished tying off the stitches and took from his satchel clean rags for a bandage. “I think I’d like a look at this Bible.”

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.

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...

The rain will never stop.

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.

“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?

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.

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?”

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.