faces told the story. Nick understood all this, but he had to get some sleep.
They shook on it.
After Nick had shoved the sniffling, apologetic Coldbread out, he was too tired to go to the trouble of going to bed. He turned out the lights and stretched out on the couch again. Coldbread’s gun poked him in the back. He fished it out of the cushions and tossed it across the dark room.
The gun discharged with a white flash and a sharp pop. Cursing the little incompetent bastard who couldn’t even be relied on to take his own weapon home with him, Nick found the revolver on the floor, figured out how to unload the other chambers, and then searched for the bullet hole, hoping it hadn’t traveled far enough to injure one his strange neighbors. Good thing it was only a .25 caliber.
For old time’s sake he kept on a bookcase shelf a casual group photograph of the English department from those happier days; he liked to remember whom he hated, whom he liked. The bullet had shattered the glass, and shot the cigarette right out of the mouth of a younger, thinner, but no-less-smug, Frederick the Usurper.
.
7
It was three days after Nick had hired Hawty Latimer.
He felt fifty, though he still had a good decade to go. A big cup of Styrofoam-tainted coffee and a sticky baked atrocity from an overpriced Quarter grocery were beginning to revive him as he maneuvered through the narrow, bustling streets. He kept his car in whining second gear and let it steer itself on the short straightaways. He wolfed his breakfast as he could, eyeing the scalding coffee sloshing between his legs, threatening to emasculate him. A juicy lawsuit waiting to happen…maybe, but the personal price was just too high, he decided, now holding the cup away from his vitals.
He was late, according to Hawty’s new office regime. As if on cue, city crews mangled the streets he needed. Familiar one-ways were now no-ways or other-ways.
The usual assortment of governmental, financial, and legal types strode down the sidewalks near his building, dollar signs of other people’s money in their eyes. The professional bums from nearby Camp Street had turned out for their cadging forays. A family of lost tourists also wandered about, the sevenish boy no doubt wishing he were back at home tormenting lizards, the mother wheeling a stroller occupied by an infant, the father scanning his guide book vainly searching for his bearings.
Nick lurched into one of his favorite tow-away zones.
He unthreateningly approached the lost family and directed them to the Aquarium. The man tried to tip him a couple of dollars. Had Dion been right? Did he actually look that bad off? He almost took the cash.
As he continued on toward his building, he saw two workmen at the front entrance. They were putting the finishing touches on a concrete ramp. The glowering type, they ignored his questions.
Inside, there was another young fellow, wearing a carpenter’s belt dangling dozens of tools; he was busy widening the door. And down the hall, Nick saw two other workers giving the freight elevator meaningful looks.
Must be Hawty’s doing; he recalled their first meeting, and her criticisms on the issue of access for the handicapped. Great! Her first week, and it looked like a coup plotted by a guerrilla city-council urban-renewal subcommittee. He wondered how long it would be before the leasing company decided he was too much trouble and booted him out on the street. Surely no one had looked at his lease lately; the rent was astonishingly low. He tried in vain to remember the name of the man he’d dealt with when he rented the place; he should call him, apologize for all this bother, abase himself, if need be. When guilty, always throw down the pity card.
He rubbed his aching forehead on the way up the stairs. Must have been that last glass of superb cognac after Coldbread’s revolver had gone off and kept him from sleeping for a few hours. Too jittery.
With his typical prodigality, he’d splurged a couple of hundred of his recently earned thousand dollars on a shopping spree at Martin’s Wine Cellar. With some of the rest he’d raided the fabulous “junk” shops along Magazine Street. In one, he found a suitcase for fifteen dollars filled with old photographs and letters; in another–for six dollars–he acquired an armload of turn-of-the-century Louisiana “mug books,” collections of biographical sketches and photos, in which one could be included for