'Why?'
'Not something you ask.'
Okay. I had another taste. 'What about the shooter?'
Marconi shrugged. 'He turns up, we want to talk to him. Where you from?'
I told him.
'You got snapping turtles up there, right? Big fuckers that look like rocks, move just about as fast. And once they bite down-it don't matter what on, a stick, your hand-they don't let go till it thunders. I figure you're like those turtles, get your beak onto something, you don't let go. No way you're gonna hold off looking for this woman.'
The maitre d' brought new glasses of single malt. Crystal. Stricdy Sunday best: I don't think regular folks in regular clothes and regular lives got them. We sat quiedy.
'Maybe this time I help you,' Jimmie said after a while.
'Sounds to me like any help rendered here, it would be mutual.'
'So we help one another, then.'
He slid a four-by-six photo across the table. Dana Es-may looked out at me.
'You understand how it is. Our people walk in down there, everything stops. They start asking questions, suddenly everybody's deaf and halfway out the door. You, it's different. You know the scene, people know you. Fifty a day plus expenses sound about right?'
'Couple of conditions. I report only to you-'
'No problem.'
'-and I say it's over, whatever the reason, it's over. No questions asked.'
'Don't see why not.'
I polished off my Scotch. When I was a kid, Mom made pitchers of Kool-Aid, poured it into bright-colored spun-aluminum glasses, green, gold, silver, blue. Other kids gulped theirs down in an instant. My own sat for half an hour as I sipped and savored. They never understood how I could do that.
'Anything you need, information, money, names, you only have to call. My private number's on the back of the photo.'
'Thanks. Better get to work, huh?'
I was almost to the door when he spoke.
'Appreciate what you did for my daughter, Griffin.'
The etiquette of these things dictated that I not mention it until he did; now I was free to ask.
'She okay, then? Still at home?'
'Nah. Was for a while. Says much as she loves me she can't be around me. Too much baggage's the way she puts it. Too much stuff cluttering up the shelves. Last I heard from her she's living with this older guy up in Jackson. Both of them got custom Harleys, his jet-black, hers pink, make their living, such as it is, hauling all this shit in a trailer-old army equipment, dolls, iron cookware-between flea markets. Talk about too much crap cluttering up the shelves. So how long's that gonna last? I don't see her much, or hear from her. Not direcdy. But at least I know she's alive. Thanks for coming in, Griffin.'
I had to wonder when was the last time Jimmie Marconi thanked someone.
Two guys had her back in die kitchen. They'd bent her forward over the table and kicked her legs apart and one of them, a congenital lowlife named Duke Heslep, was holding her there, hands pushed down on her shoulders, while the other one bucked in and out and whenever she made a sound pulled at the hair he'd wrapped in one fist.
Heslep's who I was looking for. Week before, when his trial date on an assault charge rolled up, he'd failed to show. Holding Heslep's bond, Frankie DeNoux wound up forfeiting, not the sort of story's end Frankie much cared for. So he commissioned a sequel, suggesting that I locate Mr. Heslep and remind him of his duty as a citizen.
Half a day of asking questions and making myself a general pain in the ass led me to an abandoned apartment house in the weblike tangle of streets just uptown of Lee Circle and riverside of St. Charles. The door stood open-off its hinges, in feet, and leaning against the wall. Inside there seemed to be two categories of bodies: those caught up in some contemporary version of the tarantella, and those stoned or otherwise semicomatose on couchs, stained mattresses and floor.
Largely unnoticed, I walked through the former and stepped over and around the latter to another open doorway rear left.
'Sweet young stuff, Duke. You gonna want some once I'm done.'
The one on the joyride had his back to me. Duke stared in fascination at the wavelike motion of the girl's buttocks when his friend drove into her. I was there beside them before they knew it.
'Who the fuck-' Duke began.
I grabbed his hair and slammed his face against the table, putting an end to his curiosity.
The other guy fell out of the girl as he stepped towards me. He landed a quick, hard jab with his left as his right came around for a hook-a great punch, but it quickly lost force since I now had a death grip on his privates. I hung on and squeezed. Hoped I was tight enough for him.
When finally it penetrated that tilings had changed, the girl, without moving any other portion of her anatomy, turned her head, face blank, pupils black buttons. Her eyes went from the hand I had clamped on the guy's privates to the one still pressing Duke's face against the table, blood from his broken nose pooling beneath. Then she looked at me.
'What do you like?'
Using his privates like the handle of a shotput, I threw Humper against the wall. He slid down it into a huddle, hugging himself and retching. Then I pulled Duke upright, hand still wrapped in his hair, and told him he was coming with me. Blood glopped onto his shirt when he nodded.
I marched him out through bodies and down the stairs. His eyes darted about looking halfheartedly for help he was not going to get. Only when we were outside did I realize the girl had followed us.
She'd come around enough to look confused by then, a definite improvement over the blankness I'd seen before. She was still pretty vague, though, and still naked, which even in New Orleans could be a problem.
'Take your clothes off,' I told Heslep.
We must have been quite the sight walking up Felicity to where I'd left the car, this white guy in underwear shirt and Jockey shorts, black socks and shoes, bleeding all over himself, spaced-out young woman holding up downsize pants with both hands as alternately she bounced off walls and staggered off the curb into the street, big buck nigger in black suit bringing up the rear.
I didn't want to diink about what would happen if a police car cruised by. Mostly, unless there was a specific call, they stayed out of this part of town.
'And that was Marconi's daughter?' Verne said. 'Anyone want more?'
I accepted the platter of ham and sweet potatoes as Mother said 'No thank you, dear.'
'Yeah. I didn't know it then, or for a longtime, really. Figured she was just another messed-up kid. Lots of them around those days. I called Frankie DeNoux to meet me downtown, dropped Heslep off at his new rent-free accommodations, then asked the girl if she had someplace, a home, a friend's place, where she could go. She looked up at me with these strange, hollow eyes.
'Sure,' she said, and started away. I watched her turn the corner.
Moments later, she was back. 'I don't,' she said. 'Not really.'
'Wait, let me guess. You took her home.'
I nodded.
'Lew picks up strays,' Verne said to my mother. 'Can't seem to help himself.'
'It was just for a few days. Once I got her settled in, she was out like a light. I didn't do much better myself, woke up fully dressed with my head on the kitchen table. I put her in touch with a friend of Don's who ran a halfway house. Went to see her a couple of times while she was there. Mosdy we'd sit and watch TV together. Then after she got out she started coming by my apartment once or twice a week. Never said much about what she was doing, where she was living.'
'And you didn't ask, of course.'
People want to tell me something, I listen. What they don't want to tell me is their business, I figurethey have reasons.
'What she did talk about a lot then was stuff she was reading, all these thoughts clambering about in her
