'Thank you, Mr. Griffin,' Mr. Prue said.
'We appreciate this,' his wife confirmed.
Pillar of my community, for sure.
Norm's son lingered behind.
'Something I can do for you, Raymond?'
'Nah.' He stood watching my rear wall. Anything happened back there, it wouldn't get past him. 'My civics teacher says it was someone named Lew Griffin who stopped the guy that shot all those people from buildings back in the sixties.'
'Mmm-hmm.'
'Says he hunted the guy down and threw him off the top of one of the buildings.'
'I think I heard about that.'
'Yeah. Lots going on back then.' Raymond looked at me. His father called from outside. 'Don't guess that was you, huh.'
'Must have been another Lew Griffin.'
'Yeah. Yeah, that's what I said.'
I shut the door behind him and turned up the music again. Bach, a prelude and fugue, Wanda Landowska at her monster harpsichord, plucking the world back into order.
Visitors gone, Bat shot down the stairs and sat mewing, waiting impatiently for me to provide an appropriate lap. No question which Lew Griffin he wanted.
The one that was here.
7
What I was doing was counting, reduced by circumstance (liberals would say) from loftier aspirations-social conscience, the humanities, the pursuit of literature-to simple mathematics.
There were 3 of them. I'd been hit 9 times, kicked 4.1 had 1 loose tooth. It was 1 o'clock. This was, would have been, my 3 stop.
I was also remembering: my mind in defense breaking free, floating above it all, recalling all those other times. Thinking that this sort of thing never happened to Proust, never sullied his remembrances. Give me a madeleine any day.
Maybe the things that happen to us are things we make happen, things we somehow attract.
Maybe all failures are failures of will.
Maybe I ought to stop getting my butt kicked.
Not that I held it against them personally. Fifty-year-old guy wearing a tie and coat, guy no one ever saw before, looks like a cop but he's not or he'd be flashing ID, shows up in the neighborhood asking questions. What else he gonna be but bad news, a repo man, skip chaser, collector of some kind? Sure as hell ain't from the IRS. And looks like he might have a few dollars on him, weighing him down? Civic-minded young brothel's just naturally gonna help the man out, provide him some answers. Natural as rain.
But enough's enough.
It was a trick, a technique, I hadn't had occasion to use in years. Like all technique, at first it happened instinctively. Only later did I ask myself just what was occurring and how. Then I broke it down, from initial impulse or stimulus to response and final result, prodding at disjointed segments, plotting the curve. Building a grammar. It had to be reproducible.
You reach down and find the rage, the frustration, defeat and despair, find that black pool just beneath the world's surface that never goes away. You find it, you bring it up, you use it. For a while it takes you over. You become its vehicle. What voodoo practitioners call a horse.
I turned onto my back, grunted with pain, gasped and held my breath. They all pulled back a moment, and when the one at my feet leaned in for a closer look, I kicked him between the legs. Then spun on my back and took another's legs out from under him as he was looking up to see what happened to his man. That left one standing- but only till I'd slammed my foot straight into the side of his knee. The others would get up, in time. He wouldn't. The second guy was already trying to get up. I gave the side of his head a light kick.
Afterwards, this strange serenity comes over you. The vessel's emptied, no more fright-or-fiight, but adrenaline's still got your senses racked up high. Everything's incredibly sharp, clear, intense. The world shimmers. You hear breathing from an upstairs apartment, a birdsong blocks away. You see patterns of sunlight in the air around you. You hear a cat moving, crouched down low, against the wall. Sirens screaming miles away in the CBD. Boat horns on the river.
That's how it was as I walked back up through the Marigny and Quarter towards Canal, senses ratcheting down like a car on a jack. In others' faces I saw the ordinary world returning. On a clock's face I saw it was almost two.
Morning had been narrative oatmeal: all expository lumps. I'd got home from the hospital planning on a few hours' sleep before I dropped by the school to patch things up and took another shot at tracking down Shon Delany. Never in my life had I wanted a drink more. I settled for coffee. No way caffeine was going to keep me awake. I'd have slept through the Inquisition.
But I only slept through thirty minutes. Fumbling for the phone. Seeing my coffee cup, still full, on the floor by the bed.
I'd been promising myself for some time that I was going to go buy furniture, a bureau or two maybe, bookshelves, some kind of table for beside the bed. A lifetime spent tucking belongings underarm and moving on leaves odd habits. I'd lived here now for over ten years. Chances were fair I'd stay awhile.
'Lew?'
I realized I hadn't said anything. I'd just picked up the phone and lay there with it to my ear, listening.
'Mmmmhn.'
Much better. Civility rears its shaggy head.
'Want me to call back?'
'You at work?'
'Yeah. City's funny that way, likes me to show up on a more or less regular basis.'
'Give me five minutes.'
'They're yours.'
I drank the cold, grayish coffee, splashed water on my face and stood at the window for a couple of minutes watching the world hunch its shoulders towards another day. Since it was Thursday, garbage was set out near the street for collection. A woman in a motorized wheelchair rolled from can to can, combing through each, pulling out select items that she dropped in a canvas bag strapped to the back of the chair.
Don, wonder of wonders, was actually at his desk and answered when I called back.
'Must be a slow day.'
'Aren't they all. I just said the hell with it, I'm taking a break. Sit here and watch the goddamn storm go on happening.'
'They still tiying to kill everybody in the city?'
New Orleans had clocked 421 murders for the year thus far. Even the folk out in Jefferson Parish were getting concerned, as violence spilled towards their precious suburbs. I kept expecting them to announce any day that they were putting up a wall.
Don grunted. 'This rate, it'll take them what, ten, twelve years till no one's left? Hang on, Lew.' He spoke brusquely to someone, then was back. 'Wanted to let you know nothing's come in on the prints or photo. Not that I expected anything, this soon.' His voice rose suddenly. 'You want to wait a fucking minute? What, you think this is my lunch, I'm eating the fucking phone? No. 7*11find you.
'You still there, Lew?'
'Yeswr.'
'Cute. Okay, I talked to the officer who took the call, but he couldn't tell me much of anything we don't already have. Call came in, nine-one-one, at nine-fourteen, from the driver of the sanitation truck. No real evidence
