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Forty-Six

Previously: After a late-night encounter with Lucas Budd, Emily and Michael snuck into the Budd house. After hearing his tale of an epic set-up at the hands of his friend Jerome Johnson, the two agreed to help Mr. Budd clear his name. Their first assignment was to get a mysterious document from Harry Sebastian, David's dad.

Emily and Michael couldn't put it off any longer: it was time for them to visit Harry Sebastian. So they made plans to hang out with David and then, on the damp evening of a wet Wednesday, they entered the Sebastian house through a side door, the one with the security keypad that every Gangmember knew the code for. David wasn't expecting them for another half an hour yet.

On their way to Mr. Sebastian's office, they passed through a hallway that Valerie Sebastian, David's mom, had apparently set up as an impromptu art gallery. The interior design of the large Sebastian house was ever-changing, and neither Michael nor Emily had ever seen this display before. The hallway lined with photographs of Lillian and David in romantic poses

These pictures were used in advertisements for Surroundings, Mrs. Sebastian's French Quarter "lifestyle boutique." Lillian had been appearing in the ads for about a year and a half, and David had started posing with her in the last six months or so.

David wasn't a bad choice for the ads: he was very pretty, and his blond hair and delicate features made him look more like Lillian's twin than Alexander. But he also looked like a teenager in a way that Lillian didn't, and everyone wondered why Valerie didn't use Lillian's boyfriend, the more mature-looking Michael, whose olive skin and dark curls would have contrasted and complemented Lillian's look.

The photos, in gauzy black & white, were blown up and placed inside heavy but plain wooden frames, then lined down the hallway at exact intervals. The ads, Valerie said, weren't just pictures, they were a story: here was a young beautiful couple in love and living a lifestyle that others dreamed of, a lifestyle that could be purchased at Surroundings.

Emily and Michael couldn't help but slow down and look at the pictures as they passed. They missed Lillian, they missed David (even though they were about to see him), and they missed the promise that these pictures represented. Michael, his languid and distant mask already in place, looked impassively at each one, but Emily shook her head as they moved down the hall.

"This is really sick," she whispered. "It's like David's mom is trying to prove something to guests. 'Of course my son likes girls...and here are the photographs to prove it.'"

Michael, of course, said nothing.

The last photograph in the hallway, the one leading out into a tastefully minimalistic sitting room, was the best of the series, and the one that was used most often in Valerie's ads. Lillian, wearing a modest blouse ($79) that exposed nothing, not even the hollow of her throat, sat on a brown leather settee ($1999), with David on the floor between her knees. Lillian's burgundy skirt ($215) was lifted demurely up to her knees and, leaning forward, she had slipped her hand down the front of David's partially-unbuttoned tuxedo shirt ($185). With eyes closed softly, David rested his cheek against her forearm, his mouth slightly open.

The focus of the shot, though, was Lillian's face, and the look of undisguised longing she gave the viewer. Without showing anything more than her shins, the photograph was almost indecent: her eyes were hooded and dark, her bangs fell across her face, and her full lips—clearly moistened moments before by her tongue—were parted and expectant. You could almost hear her breath, shallow and quick from desire.

It was an arresting image. The other pictures in the series were good photographs, but this was a classic. Valerie knew it: she ran the ad so often that she had to go out of her way to continue carrying the products featured. The photographer himself knew it: it was currently on the front page of his website, the first image visitors would see. Even random adults knew it: a modified version of the picture—with David cropped out and Lillian turned into a flatly colored illustration—was spotted by one of Litta'Bit's friends on a flier to promote a local club's DJ night.

At school there was the rumor that this picture had gotten Lillian discovered by an international modeling agency. It was said that she would soon be departing for New York, London, Paris, Munich. The truth wasn't nearly as exciting: a local talent agent had merely called to ask if she would consider modeling in ads for other New Orleans businesses. Lillian had declined.

Michael looked briefly at the photograph, then turned away. To anyone else, it would have seemed no different from the cursory, almost dismissive, inspections he'd given the other pictures, but Emily could tell that he didn't want to linger in front of this one. She saw the fleeting darkness come over his features, like the shadow of an airliner slipping quietly across the unchanging ground below.

Of course it hurt him...of course it did. When you saw the photo you sighed because the image seemed so tangible and real that it was easy to imagine, if only for a second, that lovely Lillian was speechless with desire for you. But only Michael, and Michael alone, had ever actually seen Lillian look like that. And now she was gone.

For just a second, as they left the hallway, Emily put her hand on the inside of Michael's arm. He didn't react, but he didn't pull away like he normally would have while in character. She squeezed his arm through the cotton of his thin button-up shirt, then let her hand drop. Following Michael across the sitting room, she felt sad for him (of course), and she felt jealous of Lillian, but she felt something else, too: pride in her ability to know when Michael was hurting, and in her ability to soothe him.

They paused at the bottom of a staircase and looked up at David's bedroom. It was only six-thirty, and he wasn't expecting them until seven. From behind his door they could hear softly muted drum machines. Michael nodded at Emily, and they continued on to Harry Sebastian's office.

They found David's dad on the couch, his feet propped up on the front of his desk. His tie was loose and his collar button was undone, and he was wearing house slippers styled to look like large oversize basketball shoes. An unlit cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. There was a stack of manila folders to his right and one open on his lap, but Harry Sebastian ignored them. He slowly shuffling a deck of cards and staring absently out the window.

"Yeah?" he said, the cigarette bobbing up and then back down. He didn't look over.

"Harry?" Emily said, because he had never allowed them to call him Mr. Sebastian. "Do you have a second?"

"Oh, shoot." Harry dropped his feet and set the cards on the small table by the couch. "Mike, Emmy! How are you? I thought you were David. He's the king of sneaking up on me while I'm working. Just between the three of us, I'm thinking about making him wear a bell when he's in the house."

"That's a great idea. You know how much he loves accessories."

Harry Sebastian threw back his head and laughed, his fedora almost tipping off. "Ha! That's great. He's in his room, I think, if you guys want to go on up..."

"Actually..." Emily said, looking quickly over her shoulder at Michael, who nodded at her, "we're here to see you."

"Oh! Well, come in, come in." Harry gathered up the files and looked around for a place to stack them, finally placing them on the side table, under the deck of cards. "We'll make it official, then: you guys sit over here, I'll take my place behind the desk like a real lawyer."

Michael and Emily came into the office and he shut the door behind them. The rest of the house was carefully designed by Valerie and her swarm of interior decorators to function as a backdrop for Surroundings' photoshoots, but Harry's office was the chaotic heart of the home. It belonged to him and him alone: every flat surface held precarious stacks of law journals and old notebooks and manila folders. Unframed movie posters (Animal House, Caddyshack, The Big Lebowski) and all-but-unused calendars from the last few years were scattered along the walls. The desk was a little too big for the room, but it held piles of opened mail, dirty coffee mugs, handheld video games, a broad assortment of paper scraps, and photos of David and Valerie. An Ole Miss bumper sticker and two receipts were taped to the wall beside his chair. Harry swore he knew where everything was, that he had a system.

"So, what's up?" He walked behind the desk but didn't sit down. His hands went to the back of his old faux-leather chair. "Speeding ticket, fender bender? Um...DUI?"

"No, no. Nothing like that." Emily glanced over at Michael. "Lucas Budd sent us. He says you have something of his."

"What?" Harry looked from Emily to Michael. He closed his eyes and opened them again. "What do you mean?"

"He said you'd be expecting us."

"Not us," Michael added, in the slow, bored, and slightly dreamy voice he used in public. "But someone."

Again, Harry looked at both of their faces, one at a time. His eyes drifted up to a spot somewhere on the wall behind them and his face grew pale.

"No. Oh no." Patting his pockets slowly, softly, he pulled out his pack of cigarettes. Only after he took one out did he seem to distantly realize he already had a cigarette in his mouth. He put both of them back in the pack. "Oh, Lucas, what have you done?"

His unsteady hand came up, crossed over his face, and he slowly removed his fedora. It dropped to his desk.

"He told us to say orchid," Michael said.

Harry glanced over at him, a scowl just behind his face. "Of course he did. Lucas loves all that cloak and dagger garbage. Orchid," he spat out.

Neither of the teenagers spoke.

"Is...is David involved?"

"No," Emily said quickly. "No, of course not."

Harry Sebastian sat down slowly behind his desk. He picked up his fedora for a second, then put it back down. "I don't...I don't know what Lucas promised you two, but you have no idea what you're playing with. No idea."

"Mr. Budd was framed."

Harry nodded. "Maybe he was, Michael. Knowing Jerome, there's a real good chance of that. But maybe he wasn't framed...Lucas was always a mysterious dude. And you know what? That's not even the point. Here's what the point really is: you two have no business getting involved in this. You're just...kids, you're in over your head. Please, for me...you have to just walk away."

"We made a promise," Emily said. "We have to help him."

"No…no. You have to help yourselves. And that means you get as far away from this as you can." Harry Sebastian blew air through his lips. "I hate to play, like, the parent card, but do you know how close I am to calling your folks?"

"Please don't. We trust you."

"I didn't say I was.” Harry looked over at Emily, almost hurt. “Listen: you can't believe Lucas, even if he's telling the truth. He's...he's the best lawyer I’ve ever seen. He'll convince you of anything. I mean, for God's sake, did he even tell you what this was about?"

"He told us he'd been framed by Mr. Johnson," Michael said. "And we needed to pick up a package from you to help him and his allies."

"His allies? Okay, maybe. But did he tell you what's in the package? I mean, do you guys think you're here to pick up, you know, evidence, something that’ll expose the conspiracy to the world? Or do you think it’s proof that he's innocent, at least? I mean, did he even tell you what was in the package?"

They didn't answer.

"No, of course he didn't. But I bet it didn't matter at the time because Lucas made you feel like you were part of a…secret fellowship, right?"

"That's not fair," Emily said.

"I don't mean it as an insult, Emily. I fell for it myself. That's why you're in my office right now." Harry looked at the ceiling for a moment, silently moving his lips. “It's nothing like what you think it is. It's not evidence, it's not proof. It's just a contract for a shady real estate deal, one that involves Lucas and Jerome. Not the only one they were involved in, probably not even the shadiest."

Michael sighed, as though the conversation bored him. "If it's so minor, why does Lucas care?"

"Because if Lucas gets the contract, he'll have a weapon to use against Jerome, even though he'll go down hard, too." Harry leaned forward. "But don't mistake me. The contract isn't why I'm scared for you...the fact that you're going against Jerome is what scares me. Have you guys been following the scandal at the S&WB?"

"A little."

"So this guy, Andrews, is being investigated for massive kickbacks. Which is fine, because he's guilty as hell, and everyone's known it for years. But a few weeks ago at a dinner--at a private dinner--he made a little joke about Jerome being behind the recent shake-up on the School Board. Just a joke...I don't even know if there was any truth to it. Hell, Andrews might not have even known if it was true."

"What did Mr. Johnson do to him?" Emily asked him.

"Nothing at all. Except this: behind the scenes, he let it be known that the Johnson Machine was no longer protecting him. That's it. Without the Machine behind him, the NOPD and the SBI and the Mayor's ethics committee moved in." Harry Sebastian pointed at each of them with his hands. "One joke, that's it. And what you guys are doing...it's not a joke."

Emily swallowed and looked over at Michael. He still had a slightly condescending half-smile on his face, but there was a hollowness to the expression. She looked back over at Harry.

"What's the contract about?"

He shook his head. "Who cares what the contract was about? Haven't you been listening to me?"

"But shouldn't we know what this is about, if it's so minor? I mean, maybe you're right and the contract is so nothing that we shouldn't risk messing with Mr. Johnson over it. But we won't be able to make that decision if you don't tell us what it's about."

"Young lady, let me know if you decide to apply to law school. I'll write you one hell of a recommendation letter." Harry Sebastian did something they weren't expecting: he laughed out loud, one quick barking Ha!

He cleared his throat. "Okay. There was some land. It was way over on the Westbank, almost out of the city, in the part of town where all the Vietnamese immigrants live."

"Like where Litta'Bit lives?"

"Sure, yeah. Right near there. It wasn't much, just a few empty acres of scrub land. But to some people...well, back before the Vietnamese moved in--like just after the Civil War--this land, it was given to former slaves. And the children and grandchildren of these slaves, they went into the city and invented jazz, they moved out to the country and invented the blues, and they went deeper into the bayou and invented zydeco. They invented New Orleans."

Harry paused for emphasis. His inner showman was overcoming the reluctance he'd felt to tell them about this.

“So one Vietnamese lady basically owns that entire part of town, and she decided she wanted to build some McMansions on the land, so she got City Council to support her. There were two exceptions: Councilman Lucas Budd and Councilman Jerome Johnson. They fought the development for weeks, even tried to get a memorial or a museum put on the land. But they lost...which was crazy, right? Because they never lose. So now there's this Vietnamese lady that nobody even knows anything about, and she just beat The Johnson Machine in head-to-head combat. Well, let's just say her stock rose quite a bit."

Emily started to say something, but then she seemed to think better of it.

“So one evening Lucas Budd and Jerome Johnson come over, and they’ve got someone with them: the Vietnamese lady. And they want me to look over a contract. Not a legal contract, just a little document they made to cover a partnership." Harry opened his hands, as though showing them the final reveal of a magic trick. "That's right: they were all in on it together. Lucas and Jerome fought the development while at the same time pulling strings on the Council to make sure it happened. That way they maintained their integrity, got their way on the Council, and helped make the Vietnamese lady a player in New Orleans politics. That's how deep Jerome thinks about stuff like this."

"But why?" Michael asked, glancing out the window. "A bribe?"

"Yeah, that's what I assumed at first, but when I read the contract over, I realized it was more than that: they weren't just helping the developer: they were the developers. They were investors, equal partners with the Vietnamese lady. This contract was a private agreement to keep them all honest. And they needed me to be a witness, since they obviously couldn't get it notarized. I mean, this was a document that tied Lucas and Jerome into some pretty serious ethical violations. Like prison serious."

He paused and raised his eyebrows. Outside, there was a slow rumble of thunder in the distance, and all three of them chuckled a little at the effect. Rain began hitting the windows again, one drop at a time.

"So. There were three copies of the contract: one for them, one for her, and one for me. And it wasn’t even a contract really…it was mutual blackmail. Both sides know that the other has the evidence to destroy them."

Emily raised her hand a little, then looked embarrassed. “Three? Why not four? One for Lucas and one for Jerome.”

“You don’t understand how closely tied the two of them were…they considered their alliance as a single unit. It’s possible that Jerome was pulling strings even then to cut Lucas out, but it’s just as likely that it never occurred to them to get two copies. Whichever it was, I verified that all three copies were identical and watched them sign it. You see, Emily, like you I wanted to feel like I was important enough to be a part of something bigger than myself. Like I was one of the secret conspirators, you know?"

"That's not how we feel," Emily said, but Michael interrupted her.

“How much did they offer you?”

Harry Sebastian looked over at Michael for a long time. "Three percent. It doesn't sound like a lot, but trust me, it was."

An arched eyebrow. "You turned them down?"

"I turned them down. I have enough clean money to last me for a good long time, I don't need dirty money on top of it. So I made a joke about them owing me one and watched them sign the contracts. The Vietnamese lady has one, and--since Lucas needs my copy--I'm guessing Jerome has the third one. I have the backup."

"Why doesn't Mr. Johnson try to get your copy, too?" Emily asked.

"I'm not entirely sure, but I have a few theories. Maybe he really did have nothing to do with Lucas Budd's arrest, and he knows that even if Lucas tries to sell him out to save his own butt, Lucas has no proof. Or maybe Jerome just has more important documents to worry about. I'm not naive enough to think that this was their only backdoor deal, just the only one I was asked to be a part of. And finally, maybe he just doesn't think Lucas is a threat and he’s let his guard down. Because frankly: is he a threat? I mean, no offense, but he has two teenagers out running errands for him.

"But the real reason? He doesn't have to get it. He thinks I won't do anything with it, because he knows I'm scared to death of him. After this thing with Lucas—assuming he did it, of course—the whole city is jumping at shadows. I mean, he straight-up destroyed Lucas.…took away his career, his reputation, his family. You have to understand, this was a message to everyone in New Orleans, especially anyone thinking about running against him for mayor. And the message wasn't just 'Look at what I can do'…it was 'Look at what I'm willing do.'”

Outside, it was raining again, the soft drops hitting the office window and streaking down the glass. “Just now you said that Mr. Johnson doesn’t think that you’ll do anything with the contract,” Emily said softly. “Does that mean you will or you won’t?”

Harry Sebastian looked up at her, his lips tight and thin. He made a fist, like he was going to hit his desk, but he put it back down slowly. “That’s what you just got out of all this? Listen to me: if Jerome was capable of doing this to Lucas, a guy he’s been friends with since grade school, think what he’d do to you, no matter who your daddy is. This isn't a game, Emily, this isn't putting on suits and mixing cocktails and acting all constipated. This is real.”

Harry took a deep breath and relaxed his fist. “Please, honey: walk away. I don’t care how deep into this you guys are, you can still get out. I can protect you…I’ll keep the contract, let Jerome know that if anything happens to either of you I’ll send it to every reporter in this area code…”

“You’re scared,” Michael said.

“You’re goddamn right I am. Haven’t you been listening? Jerome can-”

“No, not of Jerome. Of Lucas...you're afraid of letting him down. And you're afraid of letting go of the contract. It's the only power you have in this.”

“Please. Lucas doesn’t want this to come out any more than Jerome does.” Harry stared down at his desk and breathed loudly through his nose. Finally, he looked back up at them. “You know that this won’t just affect Lucas and Jerome, right? If it comes out, it’ll take out both of them, sure, but what about your friends? I mean, what about Robert?”

“And Litta’Bit,” Emily said. “Her mom is the other partner, right? The development, it's where they live?”

“She…yes. She is. So why are you doing this? None of us even know if Lucas was framed or not…you could be ruining the life of your friends to help a…a drug-addicted closeted pedophile.”

Emily’s voice was low, barely audible over the rain, but she didn't break eye contact with him. “Because if we help clear this mess up, the twins will come home.”

Harry closed his eyes and started to speak, but he didn’t say anything. He turned away from her and stared out the window across the room.

“And if you can’t help us," Emily said, "we’ll go to Ms. Hunyh. We thought we could trust you, we thought you’d be someone we could count on. But you’re not. This doesn’t even concern you, and you’re still not going to help us.”

Michael glanced quickly over at Emily, his eyebrows raised, but she shook her head at him, just a little.

“That’s fine, though. It’s okay. We were expecting it, really. Mr. Budd said this was a long shot anyway, that you probably wouldn’t come through when push came to shove.”

“Enough.” Harry turned back to her. “I see what you’re doing…just stop it. I never said I wasn’t going to help. I just wanted both of you to understand what you were getting involved in, and give you…give you the chance to get out. I’ll turn over the envelope. I won’t get in the way of your little adventure. But--fuck me, I sound just like a Dad--but I want you to know that I’m just so...disappointed in both of you.”

Neither of them spoke. Michael looked away, and eventually Emily did, too. With a sigh, Harry Sebastian pushed himself up from behind his desk.

“Stay here. The envelope isn’t in this room, it’ll take me a second to get it.” He walked around the desk. When his back was to them, Michael moved his hand over and quickly squeezed Emily’s for just a second.

Harry Sebastian opened the door, but he didn’t leave the office just yet. He paused in the doorway, then turned back to Emily and Michael with a desperate look.

“I’ll give it to you…I don’t care what you two do. But you promise me this: don’t you dare get David involved. Do you hear me? You leave my boy out of this.”

The rain continued to fall. “We promise,” Emily whispered.

Harry Sebastian looked into each of their faces once more, then turned and left the room.

Next Week: Litta'Bit counts to ten...

Forty-Five

It was her Rest Day, so Josephine didn't get up to run. Instead, she stayed in bed until she heard her mother go next door to Beaumonde at 8 am. She took a shower, one much longer and hotter than her usual morning shower--out of dread, however, not self-indulgence--then dried her hair thoroughly and put on the gray pencil skirt and plain white blouse she'd laid out the night before. It was time to look for a summer job.

She'd spent an agonizing ninety minutes putting together an appropriately simple job-hunting outfit. As a member of The Gang, Josephine had a closet full of thoroughly elegant and Proper outfits, and exactly none of them were suitable for dropping off job applications. Thanks to the efforts of the Budds, Josephine's wardrobe was perfect for a femme fatale in a '60s Italian spy movie, but not so great for a teenager trying to get hired at a smoothie place.

After getting dressed, Josephine went through the stack of papers she'd printed out the night before. She had resumes and cover letters, each carefully printed on heavy cotton paper, as well as the detailed itinerary she'd made for her day. Josephine had mapped the day out so she could hit the stores in the most efficient order: she'd start with the boutiques on Magazine Street, then move to the tourist places in the Quarter, and finally head out to the malls in the suburbs. This was probably the scariest thing Josephine had ever done, but having a plan seemed to make it a little bit better.

Her mother had left the keys to the car on the kitchen counter, along with a note--Abundans cautela non nocet--and Josephine checked everything one last time before she left: her clothes, her resume and cover letters, her hair, her hesitant traces of makeup. Unfortunately, she couldn't find any reason to put it off any longer, so she breathed deeply a few times and spoke to the mirror.

"You're going to do this," she said softly, then again louder: "You are going to do this. Don't be such a little bitch." This was a favorite phrase of her sister Catherine, deployed against her friends, family, and boyfriends whenever she felt that their courage didn't match up to her own superhuman taste for adventure. Josephine in particular was a frequent recipient of this taunt, and it had inevitably become part of her internal monologue.

She squared her shoulders and prepared herself to meet the terrifying tasks that waited for her. She hated meeting new people and couldn't stand talking about herself, and she'd be required to do both for just HOURS. However, Josephine was resolved to cure her summer boredom. She had to do this...she had to prove to herself she was capable of doing it.

So she got in her mother's Jaguar--this was Josephine's thirteenth time driving a car by herself, but she tried not to think of that as an omen--then she drove five blocks down to Mahogany, the Magazine Street home decor boutique that was first on her list.

•

A few hours later, Andre was on the patio of his house, finishing up his pre-run stretches. Andre wasn't a big fan of stretching: he He found it humiliating and, besides, he had a hazy memory of reading somewhere that research had proved that it wasn't actually very effective anyway and was probably one step above a folk remedy. (But mostly: stretches were hard and Andre was bad at them.) Now that his aunt was out of town, he'd whittled his before-run stretch routine to a handful of dispirited reaches and twists.

He'd made it four days as a a non-runner. During those four days, he sat around the house, wondering what he'd done all day before his aunt made him start running. But this morning as he was getting dressed (more out of habit more than necessity) he discovered that his black jeans, which had gotten microscopically less snug over the last two weeks, were now infinitesimally tighter again. He knew this was just a psychosomatic effect based on guilt, and he spent twenty minutes convincing himself that it was all in his head before finally giving up and just going running.

It was the heat of the day. Birds shifted uncomfortably on their branches, but had no energy to sing. A young black guy walked by, head down, an entire white t-shirt thrown limply over his head. Andre had a choice: he could run farther Uptown, passing out of the Garden District and behind Touro Hospital before turning around at Napoleon Avenue; or he could head towards Downtown, through the Lower Garden District, and into the Central Business District as far as Canal Street and the beginning of the Quarter. His aunt preferred the Downtown route because the scenery changed more often. Andre, though, preferred to go Uptown because there wasn't as much traffic or as many people to see him struggling along.

Today Andre felt like changing things up a little, so he headed towards Downtown. However, one block later, he remembered that he'd have to pass by a wretched outdoor summer concert series in the CBD. The "Hump Day Lunch Break," they called it, where cubicle ghosts could listen to weary nth-generation New Orleans music for an hour while slowly pushing Lunchables into their faces. So instead of going Downtown, Andre turned around and began jogging towards Napoleon Avenue, changing the course of both his jog and his summer.

Months later, he'd think about how such a simple decision--jogging Uptown instead of Downtown--had created such a profound effect on his life. He would wonder what other opportunities he'd missed out on, and what tragedies he'd unwittingly avoided, by making similar arbitrary choices. Andre knew such conjecture was banal in the extreme, but still, he couldn't help but think about it, when so much had changed in his life because one July afternoon he jogged one block, turned around, and jogged the other way.

But such philosophical thoughts weren't on Andre's mind that day, however....all he could focus on was not passing out. After a four-day break from running, he was having a rough time with his pace. Over the last few weeks, he'd worked up to jogging three blocks straight and walking one, but that Wednesday, after twenty minutes on the road, he was struggling to make it even two blocks before slowing down to a stumble. His breath was ragged, and he knew his running posture was embarrassing.

He tried to get into the stance his aunt had taught him: back straight, head up, forearms parallel with his waistband, thumbs all but touching his hipbone as his arms moved. Once he got his posture more or less correct, he began to focus on his breathing. Aunt Marissa had taught him to breath in a little on his first and second strides, then exhale on the third and fourth: in in, out out. He would count each step in his head, which not only helped him breath but helped him clear his mind, which seemed to be crucial to a good run. ...in in, out out...in in out out...in in out out...in in out out...in in out out...shit!

Up ahead of him, three blocks away, Josephine Brooks sliced around a street corner, sprinting at full speed directly towards him. Her long legs seemed to cover yards with each stride. It looked like she was leaving divots in the asphalt as she pushed off the ground.

She hurtled straight towards him, and would be standing where he was in seconds. Her hair was loose, galloping behind her as she ran. There was wildness in her eyes.

•

The first store on Josephine's list was Mahogany, a home decor boutique a few blocks from her home. Josephine parked across the street from the store and watched customers enter and leave. She wanted to wait until the store had no customers, so she didn't have to stand around, feeling awkward, until finally someone was free and she could ask to speak to the manager.

It took about five minutes before it seemed like the store was empty, and during that time, she proofread her resume for the hundredth time. With horror and disgust, she realized that, under Skills, she'd left out an Oxford comma. She considered going home and reprinting all of them, but she knew in her heart that this was just an excuse to put job-hunting off for another day. And that was no good, she knew it. So instead of fixing the typo, she minutely adjusted the paper clip holding the cover letter to the resume, took a deep breath, and walked across Magazine Street to Mahogany's front door.

...I'm Emily charming a stranger...I'm Litta'Bit flirting with a boy...I'm Lillian cocking an eyebrow and destroying the world ...

There was nobody in the store. Not just no customers, but no salespeople either. Josephine didn't know exactly what to do. She considered leaving and coming back later, but she forced herself to walk into the store and pretend to look at a collection of geometric bud vases arranged on a table.

There was laughter from the back, and Josephine looked up, as though caught. She could hear two women talking in the room behind the counter. Josephine shuffled to another table, this one displaying candles and tealight holders. She breathed deeply and tried to concentrate on the merchandise. There were too many mirrors in this store.

One of the ladies from the back walked by the door and saw Josephine. She was older, maybe thirty, and could have been the manager that Josephine needed to talk to. "Oh, hi...I didn't know you were out here. Can I help you with something?"

Josephine looked up at her, a $65 candle in her hand. She had heard what the lady had really said. Not "Do you need a hand finding something?" but "Can I help you?" As in: "What are you doing here? You don't belong in here."

Josephine glanced down at the floor and put the candle back on the table. "No. No thank you. Just looking around."

The saleswoman stayed behind the counter, so Josephine pretended to look at a beaded pillow. It felt like the lady was suspicious, watching her closely, but Josephine didn't dare look up to see if this was true. She wondered if she should buy something; she was afraid that the woman thought she was stealing. Oh my god, I come in to apply for a job and I end up arrested on suspicion of shoplifting...

But Josephine couldn't summon the courage to go up to the counter--and also there didn't seem to be anything for sale under thirty dollars--so she just mumbled a goodbye and escaped out onto the street.

Okay, so that was a disaster. But, as she got in the car, Josephine told herself that the first store was just a warm-up. She was still getting a feel for her task, and the next store would be better, and the next store would be better than that, and soon she would be an expert. It was like running: one foot in front of the other.

But when Josephine arrived at the next place on her list, a high-design clothing store that looked like an art gallery, she just parked in front, watched the customers come and go, and never got out of her car. She told herself she didn't like the sort of people she saw shopping there--frightening college girls who cut their own hair--but she knew this was just an excuse: she was still upset about what happened at Mahogany and too scared to go in.

So she drove down Magazine Street, stopping in front of the next three stores on her list but not once making it out of the car. Soon she found herself circling Whole Foods again and again, trying to force herself to go in and ask for an application. She was crying a little now, the thin tears probably ruining the whisp of eye makeup she'd put on, and she knew it was no good, no good, no good. She had failed herself again.

She slunk off into the deserted residential side streets and found a place to pull over where no one would pass by and see a young girl wiping her eyes in the front of her mother's Jaguar. She sat sniffling in the almost-silence of the air conditioner's hum. Josephine hit the steering wheel once, then again, then two more times, crying out with a frustrated yelp with each blow. She was useless, she was worthless, she needed to dry her eyes and prove that she could do this. But even as she yelled at herself to get it together and try again, she knew she wouldn't be able to. Job-hunting was over.

She didn't even need to a job, anyway, and if she wanted one she didn't have to hunt around. She could just ask her grandfather or David's mom or even Andre--through his father--to give her part-time work, and any of them would. The idea of picking up the phone and making that phone call had been appalling last night, but now that she was parked on a side street, crying, with a resume half-crumpled on her lap...well, it was still appalling, but she couldn't quite remember why.

But that wasn't the point. It wasn't about the job, it was about being bored, bored beyond boredom. And it wasn't even about that, either: mostly she had wanted to prove to herself that she could do this, that she could meet people and hold her own in a conversation, the way the rest of The Gang could. The way normal people could.

Alexander often joked that Josephine needing therapy, but in fact Josephine had been to see therapists before. The first time was a couple of sessions when she was a kid, after her father died. Then, three years ago, Josephine dedicated herself to mastering her diabetes through diet and exercise, and her mother--fueled by Catherine not minding her own business as usual--began to worry that Josephine actually had an eating disorder, and asked her to talk to someone "just to be sure."

Josephine carefully planned for the meeting, and went in nervously clutching her workout schedule, food diary, and fitness plan. It wasn't necessary: the therapist, himself a runner, knew that it was possible for a teenage girl to be focused on being fit without it being a symptom of a troubled body image. He chatted with her a bit and confirmed that Josephine just wanted to stay healthy, for healthy reasons, and was going about it in a healthy way. All he asked was that she meet with her pediatrician, because most nutrition books are written with adult, not teenage, metabolisms in mind.

Josephine was relieved, so relieved in fact that she didn't even notice that the therapist had gently steered the conversation towards the non-fitness aspects of her life. Later, she realized how sneaky he'd been: he could tell that Josephine was uncomfortable talking about herself, so he faced away from her a little, never making eye contact, and only asked oblique impersonal questions, as though they were just chatting about a theoretical teenage girl they both knew. Without even realizing she was doing it, Josephine began cautiously opening up to the doctor in a way she did to no one else, except sometimes David. She talked about how she felt about her friends, and her feelings about her mother and her relationship with her sister. But what Josephine really wanted to ask him about was why she was so shy, why every interaction with another person left her ashamed and flushed and hatefully disappointed in herself, why she always stammered and hyperventilated no matter how much she wanted be a normal girl in a normal conversation. But she hadn't been able to ask him any of this...she was too shy.

Josephine looked at herself in the rearview mirror of the Jaguar, at her red eyes and wet cheeks. She didn't cry very often--this was the first time since her mother and Catherine had gotten into a huge fight on the day before Christmas Eve--but when she did, she could never stop herself from looking in the mirror, to see what she looked like when she wept. It was upsetting to see, but there was also something deeply satisfying about it that she never understood.

There was nothing in her mother's glove compartment to dry her eyes with. Buried under some papers in the console was an individually-wrapped maxi-pad that Josephine briefly considered using--it was certainly absorbent--but she quickly decided that this was too hinky. Besides, what if somebody walked by and saw her wiping a sanitary napkin across her face?

She chuckled shakily at this, swiping her cheeks with the back of her hands, then pulled the car out onto the street. She knew what she'd do: she'd go running, get in an extra sprint workout, even though it was her Rest Day. Yes. Running always made her feel better. When she sprinted through the neighborhoods of her city, the world became sculpture, and the people just statues, and she alone was alive and moving. She wasn't Josephine when she ran...no, wait: she was Josephine. She was the real Josephine, the one she was scared to be the rest of the day, the one who could speak up, the one who looked at the world and what she faced and responded not with a blush or a stammer but with a shrug and a "Fuck it."

This plan to find a job had just been another attempt to prove that she could be that girl, that better Josephine, all the time. She had tried so many times before in her life and had always disappointed herself: two summers ago, in LA with her sister; last summer with Leonard. Now this summer with job-hunting and her other idea, the one about Lucas Budd and Emily and Michael. She's already failed at the first, and she was too frightened to do much more about the second than obsessively jog, every day, past their houses.

Still driving, she began sobbing once more, this time much harder. Her tears, which had been just a mist before, gathered and rolled down her cheeks. There was a sound coming from her throat, but she didn't know she was making it. Josephine didn't stop driving, she didn't pull over, she just drove on through the back streets towards her home. She was weeping so hard her chest hurt...she had failed again. There was another, more perfect Josephine buried inside of her, and she had failed again to help her find a way out. How much longer could she stay in there, how many more times could Josephine fail her, before she turned her back and retreated into nothing?

•

Luckily for Andre, he was just in front of Pedo Priest Park, so--after a half-second of panic, he ran out of the street and hunkered down quickly behind the statue in the center of the park. He was pretty sure Josephine hadn't seen him, but he wasn't certain. She been about three blocks away when she cut around the corner, and it's not like she'd be expecting to bump into Andre out jogging in the street. He just had to wait here until she passed, and then a few minutes more just to be certain, then he could sneak home and never go running again. He tried to listen for the sound of her feet as she flew past, but St. Charles was a couple blocks away, and there was too much traffic to hear her.

The weeks he'd been running, it had never occurred to him that he'd run into her on the street like this. She ran early in the morning, he ran in the afternoon, and he was pretty sure she took a different route than he did. Of course, now that he was hiding, shivering, behind a statue and waiting for her to pass, he realized how empty and useless all of those arguments were, and how foolish it had been to put his faith in any of them.

(As he ran, he would sometimes mull over a cherished scenario in his mind about what it would be like to run into her: it would be at the end of the summer, after he could jog for miles and miles without walking, and she'd see him and stop in front of him and then they'd jog together at last, and every morning from then on, it would be their little secret that no one else in The Gang needed to know about. It was ridiculous, he saw, and it pained him to think about the time he'd spent while jogging, thinking about it.)

She couldn't see him...not now, not yet. He was crouched painfully behind the statue, trying to steady his breathing and his heart from the interrupted run and also from his nerves. The statue he hid behind depicted a kindly African-American priest counseling a young boy and girl who were on their knees praying. It had been built in a simpler time, when all it represented was a lovely monument to a beloved clergyman. However, it was now a favorite of New Orleans teenagers because seen through cruder modern eyes, the statue from a certain angle seemed to depict a lewd act made all the worse for the beatific expression on the priest's face. Andre, though panicked, looked up and read, for the first time in his life, the dedication at the bottom of the statue:

In loving memory of
Father Fitzwilliam Johnson
1936-1985
"Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

Fitzwilliam Johnson. "Holy shit," Andre whispered. All these years smirking at The Statue Of Pedo Priest Park and he'd never known that it was one of Robert's ancestors. He wondered if even Robert knew.

Andre relaxed a little. Clearly Josephine would have passed by the park by now, but he'd wait, his back to the statue's granite base, just to be sure. Andre sighed, shaking his head. How demeaning...hiding behind this statue like a child. He turned around and dropped slowly to the ground.

Josephine was standing at his feet. Of course. She must have circled around and came up the back of the park. Meaning that she'd been standing there for just minutes, not saying a word, as he hugged the granite and waited for her to pass by.

Andre didn't react, or at least he tried not to. When he turned around and saw her Sauconys on the grass before him, he didn't look up at her, just shrugged, as though he had been expecting her to be there. "Hey, Josephine," he said.

"What are you doing?" There was a edge to her voice that he'd certainly never heard before. He wanted to look up, but he made himself just shrug and continue looking down at the grass.

"Oh, you know...it's a nice day, thought I'd get out of the house, go sit on the ground for a while." He plucked up some grass and sprinkled it back through his fingers. "Hey, you'll never guess who this is a statue of."

"Why are you dressed like that? Are you making fun of me?" Now her voice sounded shocked, hurt, and Andre had to look up at her.

He knew it was beyond corny to say "all he could see was her eyes," but for now at least it was true. Later he'd notice her thin workout clothes, and the way her whole body--up from the legs, through the shoulders, and down to the arms--still swayed in the soft subtle rhythm of a run, as though she were weightlessly navigating undetectable currents of air. But right now her eyes held his attention. Andre had often seen Josephine appalled, had occasionally saw her mortified, but he'd never seen her devastated, he'd never seen her fierce. It was too much, he wanted to look away again, but he didn't dare.

"What? Why would you say that? Josephine..."

"Why are you dressed like that?" Her mouth was thin, colorless, and set in place with anger or dismay or both. "I just jogged by your house a few minutes ago. You saw me. You saw me and you put on those clothes. You want to make fun of the way I run."

"So I see you three blocks away and hide behind Pedo Priest? That's, like, the worst prank ever." He swallowed and looked up, over his sweaty glasses, and into the blurry cloudless sky beyond. Andre shook his head at her, softened his face. Sarcasm was his native language, but he knew this was no place for it. "Josephine, listen: I've been running in the afternoon. I'm a...I'm a runner now, I guess. Remember my Aunt Marissa? She visited me a few weeks ago and made me start running and I somehow failed to give it up unlike, you know, everything else in my life. I wasn't, I swear I wasn't, making fun of you in some bizarro way."

Josephine's mouth relaxed just a little and she blinked down at him. "Why do you want to run?" Her voice was no longer hurt, but it wasn't her own voice, either.

"Because...Jesus, you want me to say it? Because I'm, I'm chubby, okay? And I don't want to be anymore."

"Why else?"

"Why else...? Isn't that enough? Because it's the one athletic thing I've ever done in my life that I actually sorta enjoy." Andre said, and Josephine just waited. "Because it makes me feel good. Not when I'm doing it, but afterwards. Like I've accomplished something, like the day hasn't been a waste."

Josephine looked down at him for a long time. Even silent, she wasn't herself. He'd never seen her like this...even her body language was different, more forceful. Finally, she asked him again, only a little softer: "Why else?"

Because I wanted you to find me and be proud of me. "Because, I don't know, because I was bored. The twins are gone, probably forever, let's admit it, and The Gang's broken up and...and Emily and Michael are hanging out together, and Robert and Litta'Bit of course, and you and David. It's like everyone has somebody to be with except me, and I'm stuck down in my basement all day. So I run."

"You were bored," she whispered with a dry chuckle. She looked away, watching a bread truck pass by, slowly swaying on its axles from the uneven pavement of the New Orleans street. Josephine worked her jaw back and forth a little as she watched it pass; it was a small action, but one so foreign to her. Who was this girl standing above Andre?

He snuck a look up at the rest of her. Her shorts were loose, tiny, high-cut on the sides, exposing most of her lean thighs. The white cotton sports bra was basically just a headband with straps, and it was tight across her thin chest. Andre didn't understand: this was a girl who got wide-eyed and flustered if the twins made her wear a top with a neckline, yet when she ran she was pretty much nude. He could tell this wasn't a one-day outfit, either, because her skin was a deep tan everywhere he looked. Josephine had long hair, and it was loose on her shoulders and back. This was the first time he'd ever seen her hair down...it was longer and thicker than he'd imagined. Other girls pulled their hair back when they ran, but Josephine, who always wore a ponytail no matter how much the girls in The Gang begged her to take it down, let it loose when she ran.

This is important: when Andre looked up at her, he didn't see a modest introvert suddenly revealed as a secret beauty. Josephine wasn't a flower waiting to bloom...she was plain. Andre knew this was a brutal thing to admit, but it was true (and besides, it hadn't mattered to him in years.)

Josephine wasn't ugly, she wasn't even unattractive, especially after the girls did her makeup and forced her to wear the clothes that they'd picked out for her. But she would never have the profound effect on boys the way that Lillian did (breathless yearning and desperate poetry), or the way that Emily did (mad crushes and hopeless daydreams), or the way that Litta'Bit did (boners).

This was about something deeper. Above him, even though her lean and muscled body was on display, Josephine was no longer shy or awkward. She was casually aggressive in the way she held herself and in the way she talked to him. He didn't understand.

Josephine turned back and looked down at him, still on the ground at her feet. A sort of furious peace had come over her face. She chuckled again and shook her head slowly. "Okay, fuck it. Let's go."

"What does that mean?" he whispered. He'd never heard her curse before; in fact, he'd never heard her laugh before...

"Let's go...come on. You want to run, and I'm a runner, and it makes no sense, the two of us not running together. Get up."

Andre struggled up to his feet, embarrassed that after a month his gut still got in his way. "Are you sure?"

She ignored him, cocked her head towards the street, and began walking out of the park. The slightly curled ends of her hair swung gently between her shoulder blades."Okay. Today, we're gonna walk one block, jog one block."

"That's how my aunt started me, too, but I'm up to jogging three blocks, walking one."

Josephine shielded the sun from her eyes with her hand. "How long?"

"Not long...forty minutes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Twenty-five on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

Josephine nodded. "Okay, well, if you're running three blocks at a time for forty minutes, you're ready to let loose. So we're going to change things up a little. Today's your long day?"

"Yeah."

"Good. That watch has a stopwatch on it, right? Okay, the idea is simple-" Her shoulders dropped. "What?"

"I'm not laughing at you! I promise. It's just, I don't know, something about the way you said 'the idea is simple'...you sounded like Alexander just then."

She actually rolled her eyes at him--another new facial expression!--but he saw something else playing at the corner of her lips: a proud, shy grin. "Pay attention: we're gonna start running, and when we do, you start your stopwatch. We're gonna run for forty minutes today. Whenever you want to stop, just stop. We'll walk as long as you want. But when you're walking, your stopwatch is stopped. Okay? I don't care how long it takes you, you owe me forty minutes of running today."

"That's a lot of running."

"It's okay. You have all afternoon, all evening, all night if you need it. We'll get there."

"Fantastic." Andre laughed. "I quit."

Josephine turned back to him and raised her hand to touch his arm, but lowered it again before reaching him. Her posture changed just slightly, and there, peeking through, was the Josephine he knew. Andre didn't know what had brought about today's change in her, but he saw now that it was slipping away. Already her eyes began cutting away when she spoke, and her voice was losing the definition it had a few minutes before.

"Andre, listen," she said softly. "You want to do this, right? And...and you've tried to do it on your own, but you've never been able to. So...you have to fight, okay, you have to fight to make it real this time, no matter how easy it would be to go back, because this might be your last chance. Failure isn't an option, Andre, it's a...it's a lifestyle, you know? You're seventeen already, and I'll be seventeen in a couple of weeks. We're about to become the people we're gonna be for the rest of our lives, and we have to fight to make sure that person is someone we want to be. So, if you fight, I promise I'll fight, too. And we can, you know, we can fight together. Okay?"

"Okay." He swallowed, and looked away from her. The world around him shivered from the heat rising off the pavement. "Um, I was just joking about quitting."

"Good." She smiled a little--bashful now--and turned her back on him again. She began walking slowly, waiting for him to pass her. "Then let's run. You set the pace."

He passed her. "Okay. I usually walk a block or two first."

"I said run." She was forcing her voice to be light now, even carefree. In the corner of his eye, he saw her raise her hand, hesitantly at first, but then with more confidence. She pinched the fat at the back of his arm and twisted hard, the way only someone with a sister could. "Run."

"Ow!" Andre began trotting a little, rubbing the back of his arm. He looked around to see if anyone else had heard him yelp, but no one had: they were the only two people in the world. "For Christ's sake, Josephine."

Josephine raised her hand again. Andre ran.

Forty-Six >>>

Forty-Four

Detective Ron Maglione lingered in the elevator bank of The Citadel Center, a 50-story skyscraper standing just to the side of New Orleans' downtown business district. He yawned into the palm of his hand.

The concierge had summoned the upper floor express elevator for him, but it was a busy Thursday afternoon and there was a wait. The concierge must have seen Maglione discreetly flash his badge at the security desk in the lobby, because he brought Maglione away from the rest of the people waiting with him and placed him, alone, in front of a set of doors. He wanted to tell the concierge he didn't need his own elevator, but the guy staring out at him from the corner of his eye, his face blank with fear and certainty, like a jackrabbit powerless to flee the hawk-shaped shadow growing swiftly larger around it.

The concierge probably had a thimbleful of coke in his back pocket—minus a sniff or two, judging by the sweat around his collar—and was convinced that Maglione was here to place a large hand on his shoulder, whisper to him about not making a scene, and lead him gently out of the lobby.

Instead, Maglione just yawned again and continued waiting. On a better day he might have tried to talk to the guy, amuse himself by stoking his paranoia a little, but he was tired. He didn’t just work long hours, his work was spread throughout the day and into the night, so that even six hours of sleep was a luxury.

Sometimes Maglione felt like he’d been tired since the day he got out of the academy, certainly since he’d made detective. Maglione tried to think back to any point in his adult life when he’d felt truly well-rested, and the only time he could remember was more than a decade ago.

*

Maglione had been off on a Sunday night, driving home from the video store, when he passed a Domestic Disturbance on the sidewalk near the Stop 'n' Shop on Claiborne, right out in the open. A guy—dark but not too dark: maybe mixed race, maybe Latino—was slapping the everliving shit out of a black girl, and she was barely defending herself.

“Unbelievable,” Maglione said out loud, more exasperated than incredulous, and pulled the unmarked Caprice Classic over beside them. (God, how Maglione missed those old boxy Caprices, the last truly great American car.)

He got out of his car calmly and patted his pocket to make sure the extra key was there, then locked and closed the door with the engine still running, a habit his father had taught him.

“Mind your own business, pardner,” the man said, but Ron Maglione didn’t answer him. Everything in the world felt right, like he was following a script only he knew. The man didn't flinch at all, too busy cussing him to see the beautifully delivered roundhouse Ron Maglione deployed against his face.

Maglione had been a semi-professional boxer before joining the police force, but few of the punches he’d ever thrown in his career had felt as good, as solid, as that one. He felt the jaw break under his knuckles, knew the man was out cold even before his head had finished snapping back. Even back then, Ron Maglione’s job required so few duties that could be described as purely good and useful, but surely this was one of them.

He turned back to the girl. He knew his lines: he’d put her in the back of his car, call in the arrest, then take her statement and offer to get her a ride to her family or a shelter. He expected—like a chump, like a damn rookie—her gratitude. “Blimp,” she said, just as she pushed a distressingly long fingernail file into his abdomen.

Maglione staggered back. The black plastic handle, all that was visible of the file, became covered in thick blood. His blood. He stopped himself from pulling the blade out. It hurt on the inside.

“Why’d you do that?” he asked in shocked surprise.

“Fat.”

He stumbled his way back to the driver’s side, tried the door and found it locked, then dug into his pocket for the key. There was blood on the door handle, blood on the jeans he wore only on his days off. This pair was new, he’d only worn them twice before, and now they were ruined. Number one rule of dealing with Domestics: separate them first. Separate them first.

Ron Maglione pulled out onto the deserted street and, picking up the suddenly slick microphone, called in to the overnight uptown dispatch.

“Hey, Ronnie Sweater,” Charlie said back. “I thought it was your night off.”

“Charlie, it’s a 10-8, a 10-8.”

Charlie sucked in his breath, and when he spoke again all emotion was left behind. “All right, everyone clear the air. This is a 10-8. Repeat, clear the air immediately. Come back, Ronnie.”

Maglione nudged the Caprice back into his lane. He remembered the times a 10-8 had come in while he was at the station, how everyone froze, staring to their radios to hear what had happened to the injured officer, then flew madly towards him. “Delachaise and Claiborne, proceeding…west, I guess. I got a 36-something…I can’t remember the codes. I been stabbed, Charlie. This girl, she stabbed me.”

“Oh, Ron…you got stabbed? Pull over, I got units all around you. Jesus Christ. Is it still in you? You didn’t pull it out, did you?”

“It’s okay, Charlie. I’m six blocks from the Baptist Hospital. Call the emergency room, let ‘em know I’m coming. I’ll be there in a minute.”

All around him, in the distance, he could hear sirens firing up. Every member of the New Orleans Police Department within a five mile radius was screaming towards the Baptist. What a pain in the ass, Maglione thought with half-closed eyes. Charlie mumbled something urgent to an operator, then came back. “You with me, Ronnie? Where you at now?”

The steering wheel was hard to hold on to, and blood was pooling under his lap on the seat, making it feel like he’d wet himself. “Claiborne and Milan. I’m almost there.”

“You’re slurring your words, Ron. Look, just put it in park, right in the middle of the street. I’ll have someone there in seconds.”

Maglione doesn’t remember the rest of the trip, but he somehow made it to the Baptist Hospital and up the emergency ramp, bouncing like a pinball off the sides twice before coming to a stop. When the paramedics got him out of the car, he’d asked the ER doctors “Can I pass out now?” and, after getting their permission, drifted off.

He woke up a day and a half later. The fingernail file had nicked an artery and then, when he sat down in the car, pierced his bladder. The dirt from under her fingernails had caused an infection that they were still fighting. “Nobody give this girl a real weapon,” was the most common joke.

They never found the girl or the guy, hadn’t even known what to look for or where to look. And Ron Maglione was in trouble again, of course, back then he was always in trouble: for not calling it in beforehand, for not following Domestic Disturbance procedures, for not calling for back-up, for excessive force (even though the only proof they had of this was his own story), for driving on a public street in his condition, for damaging his patrol car and the hospital. He even had to pay to have the blood in his car cleaned out.

But Ron Maglione didn’t care that much. All he knew was that he got to sleep for 36 hours, and then spent a week in the hospital dozing off and on with no beeper, no phone calls, and no alarm clock.

The infection cleared up, but he was kept in the hospital a few more days for observation, and the nurses kept slipping him a sleeping pill every night with a wink. He suspected he was being kept at the hospital so that his superiors could finish dotting the Ts and crossing the Is of his official reprimands.

Towards the end of his stay he awoke to find that he had two visitors—one white, one black, both in suits—sitting at the small table by the window. The clock said 6:30, and outside the sky was bruised with color, but Maglione had lost track of day and night and didn't know if he was seeing the beginning of a sunrise or the last evidence of a sunset.

"Detective Maglione," the black man said, looking up from the copy of the Times-Picayune he'd been looking through. He had an efficient smile and a voice that simulated warmth. "You're awake, good. You're not in any pain, are you?"

"No. No, sir." Maglione recognized him, of course. It was Jerome Johnson, Mayor Thomas' right hand man. He'd just announced his candidacy for City Council about a month before.

The white guy, Assistant District Attorney Lucas Budd, had been reading from the free Bible that had been sitting for a week, untouched, on the dresser. He held up a finger and began to read. "'And out of the desert came Ron The Baptist, preaching Repent ye, and turn away from sin. The axe is laid unto the root and every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit will be hewn down, and cast into the fire. The day of reckoning is close at hand.’ So what do you think? It's a lot catchier, right?"

Johnson nodded over at his associate and smiled thinly. "He's trying to give you a new nickname."

"Yeah, what is this people are calling you? Ronnie Sweater? Because you sweat a lot? It's disgusting."

Maglione closed and opened his eyes. Lucas Budd and Jerome Johnson were in his hospital room, arguing about his nickname. He was pretty sure he was hallucinating, but he played along. "No, no...it's because of my last name. Maglione is Italian: ‘Sweater.’ Like the clothes."

Budd shrugged. "Okay, fair enough. But still, it's unpoetic. 'Ronnie Sweater,' it doesn't scan right. The syllables are all wrong."

"So he's trying to get people to call you Ron The Baptist instead." Jerome Johnson tugged at the fabric of his pant leg.

"It’s about more than the nickname. It’s about respect. Look, Detective...all the guys out on the street, I've been talkin' to them, you know what they're saying? They're saying you were out on your night off, you saw some creep beating on a woman, and you took care of business. The patrolmen, the other detectives? They got a lot of respect for that. You even drove yourself to the hospital. That's real police." He pronounced it the way cops did: real PO-lice. "And now you're up here in the hospital and the big boys, the ones who haven't been at a crime scene in years, they want your head on a platter for it."

"Like John The Baptist," Jerome Johnson explained.

"Exactly. Now, a lot of your colleagues don't think it's right, and I don't think it's right, and Jerome here doesn't think it's right either."

Jerome Johnson hit the newspaper softly against his slacks, and nodded once in agreement, his lips firm with conviction. "You know, Detective Maglione, when Lucas and I were in law school we'd go over to the boxing matches across the river. We saw you fight a few times."

"Did we ever. You're tough, Ron...and more important, you're tenacious. What was that fight where you got knocked down, what was it? Eight times?"

"Just seven. Against Joe Dumaine."

"That's right, Lapalco Joe. You just kept getting back up. They should have called the fight after the third time...after the seventh the whole crowd was chanting 'Stay down'—we thought we were watching a suicide—but then when you got back up all of us, even Jerome here, went so nuts I thought the roof of the Civic Center was going to come off."

Maglione nodded for him. "Thank you, sir. I don't remember anything after my fourth trip to the mat."

"Doesn't matter. What matters is you got back up. You didn't win the fight, but by God you were on your feet when they announced it."

Jerome Johnson started to speak, then stopped himself, pursed his lips, and started again. "Lucas and I are here today because that's a character trait that we’d like to see more of in the NOPD."

"Look, we'll cut to the chase. I know a lieutenant was by here earlier in the week, detailing exactly what was going to happen to you once you got out of here. Well, you can forget about that. It's off the table."

Ron looked from one to the other. "What do mean? Why?"

Jerome Johnson laughed for the first and only time during his visit. "You have a lot to learn, Detective. When City Hall tells you to forget about something, you don't ask 'why.'"

"Ron, we took care of it, that's all you need to know. We don't need guys like you putting themselves on the line and then getting shit on for it. You walk out of here tomorrow, the next day, it's like nothing happened. You were on vacation for a week. We couldn't get you a hero's citation, but this is good enough, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

On the table was a manila file folder that Jerome Johnson picked up and showed to Ron. "We've been looking through your service record, Detective. You won't be offended if I say that it's not terribly distinguished, will you?"

"No, sir, not at all. I've messed up a bunch, and I'll probably mess up a bunch more."

Johnson nodded deeply. "That's good, that's good. Own your shortcomings." He opened the folder for a moment, then let it fall shut again. "Of course, it wasn't all your fault, was it? A lot of this…wheel-spinning has to do with your talents being wasted."

"Exactly," Lucas Budd said. "A man with your qualities, your abilities, checking pawn shops every week for stolen merchandise? Quote-unquote investigating car thefts? It's not right."

Maglione didn't say anything.

"So we created a new position for you, you start it in a week. Right now we're just calling you a Special Liason, but we'll come up with something better, especially if Jerome finds a way to get elected next month."

Johnson crossed his legs. "We're not pushing you, Detective...you can say no if you want and go right back to your old job. But the sort of work we have in mind requires a special touch, and we think you've got what we're looking for. All we ask is that you think about it."

"I don’t have to think about it. Do whatever you need to do to make it happen." Maglione’s voice was thick. The sleeping pills in his system were making him groggy again, turning all of this slippery and insubstantial, and he clenched his teeth so he didn't have to yawn in their faces. "Besides, I owe you guys now, right?"

The last thing he heard before tripping heavily back into sleep was Lucas Budd laugh out loud. "See, Jerome? He's a quick learner."

The next morning Maglione was discharged and he waited in the sunshine in front of the Baptist hospital for the patrol car he'd requested, wearing the clothes his sister had brought him. The conversation hadn't been a dream; his partner told him that a bright shiny transfer order, signed by Mayor Thomas himself, was waiting on his desk. Ron Maglione smiled to himself, even though he had no idea what his new job entailed. He smiled because the sun was out and glowing on the maples and he felt fully-rested, totally awake, and ready for whatever was awaiting him.

And that had been fifteen years ago.

*

The express elevator's doors slid open and revealed the Law Offices Of Harry Sebastian in all its casual glory. Every time he visited Harry's office, Maglione questioned the choices he’d made in life...the exact response Sebastian's downtown office was designed to elicit. The elevator up to the 43rd floor opened right in his lobby, and as the doors slid open visitors saw three things all at once:

First was the office itself, which made the business look less like a law firm and more like a successful advertising agency's converted warehouse offices. The walls were exposed brick, decorated with tasteful black & white photographs of New Orleans artifacts shot in extreme close-up: a pile of Mardi Gras beads, a Hubig's pie wrapper, an old Meyer's Pharmacy sign. Overhead, exposed pipes ran between thick wooden beams that had been sanded and stained a dark reddish brown.

It was like no other law office you'd ever been in, and this was exactly what Harry Sebastian, who styled himself as being like no other lawyer you'd ever met, was going for. Maglione knew Harry had paid a lot of money to get this effect, too; the office looked like a loving renovation, but it was all expensive artifice. This was the 43rd floor of a mirrored skyscraper, it's not like the walls were really brick or supported by wood timbers. The bricks were probably an inch thick at most, and the heavy beams were actually hollowed-out timbers attached to the ceiling with hidden screws.

(Maglione, who could never quite turn off the cop part of his brain, realized these empty beams would be a pretty genius place to hide contraband. If his business here today went really south, he'd have to remember to add the fake ceiling beams to the eventual search warrant.)

The next thing visitors noticed when stepping off the elevator was the receptionist's desk, which was so big and elaborate that it was more of a wooden fortress. It enclosed the receptionist completely in low carved walls, accessible only through knee-high doors. In a previous life it had been a 19th century clerk's station in a courtroom before being discovered in an Lake Charles antique store by Harry's wife and meticulously restored by a team of antiquarians. A specialist came by once a month to check the finish and to polish the wood until it shined so brightly it could cast a shadow.

Harry's receptionists were always precise and efficient young ladies, maybe two years out of college, with delicately thin eyeglasses and haircuts that looked like a stylist trimmed each individual strand one at a time. They were all frighteningly good at their job, routing office visitors and phone calls with the smooth grace of a Tai Chi master. The faces changed every year or so, but each new receptionist took the departed’s place seamlessly, as though she inherited the experience and knowledge of all her predecessors instantly.

Maglione had no idea where Harry found these girls or where they went after they left his law firm, because he never saw women like this anywhere else in New Orleans. He tried to picture them away from that desk and he never could. He decided they were part of a secret sisterhood, selected at birth according to arcane methods then raised in the dark secrets of the Receptionist Arts. They spent ten years traveling from front desk to front desk of whatever elite businessman could afford their cabal's pricy services, then retired back to the shadowy nunneries of their Order to spend the rest of their lives training the next generation of receptionists...

Damn, I should write this stuff down.

"Good morning, Detective. Is he expecting you?" He'd never seen this one before—a redhead whose lovely face had less pigment than Maglione's inner thigh—but of course she somehow already knew everything about him. Then again, it wasn't like Ron Maglione could ever go undercover: everything about him, from his sports coat to his haircut to his broad-shouldered thick-gutted physique screamed police detective at top volume.

"No, no, just in the neighborhood."

"I'll let him know you're here."

There were two other men in the waiting area with him. One was a young guy, probably a Tulane kid spending the summer in town, with the sour and arrogant look of the hungover. The other was a middle-aged black guy with his arm in a sling, who glared at the hardwood floor of the lobby, mouthing a slow but constant stream of silent words. Here was DUI and Personal Injury, the twin pillars of Harry Sebastian's empire.

Ron turned his attention away from them, though, drawn into the third feature of the lobby every visitor was struck by when they first arrived: the incredible view of the city offered by the floor-to-ceiling windows that made up the far wall of the entire office.

The Citadel Center was a few blocks off to the side of New Orleans' central business district, so the view of the other downtown skyscrapers was remarkable: they were just far enough away that they didn’t block out the vista, but so close that there was no way to ignore their massive size.

Two of Harry's employees passed in front of the window, both of them flipping through printouts as they walked, neither of them even looking up to see the city spread out beneath them. Maglione spent all of his days down in the streets below, and he couldn't imagine ever getting so used to this view that he would ever walk right by it without at least glancing out. You can get used to anything.

He moved past the reception area and stood up against the window. Directly across the street from the Citadel Center was the Superdome, and from this angle the sheer size of the thing was tremendous: the white canopy of the dome swelled up just beneath his feet and took up almost a quarter of the view. Maglione's baby sister had been born on the day the Superdome opened, all those years ago, and her baby book held the two never-used tickets his father had spent almost an entire paycheck on. Instead, he had to watch the game at the hospital, feeding dimes into a B&W set with ten-year-old Ronnie on his lap, but he always said it was the best game he ever attended.

Beyond the Dome was the huge Crescent City Connection bridge, as tall as many of the downtown buildings, high enough to let ocean-going ships pass under its span on the way up to Baton Rouge. It was three o'clock on a Thursday, and the Mississippi River was busy with freighters and tugboats and ferries, and it glowed bright gold in the afternoon sun despite the filth underneath.

Traffic was just starting to pick up down below him. Maglione watched the cars poke around, stopping and starting, and he saw how modern and clean New Orleans looked from up here, just another 21st century American city. From up here it looked like a real city...from up here you'd never guess that it belonged to neither this century nor this country: built in a swamp on the banks of the most dangerous river in America; susceptible to hurricanes, tropical storms, tornadoes, floods, and fires; infested with rats, thumb-sized cockroaches, toxic caterpillars, alligators, and nutria; surrounded by noveau riche hillbillies and God-fearing shitkickers who would push the city into the Gulf Of Mexico if they thought Louisiana could survive without the tax revenue; and ran by genuinely evil mofos who’d gladly burn the whole thing down themselves if they thought they could get either votes or profit out of it.

Maglione closed his eyes but resisted the temptation to put his forehead against the cool glass. He didn't mean it, he didn't mean any of it. He loved New Orleans, he was just in a bad mood because of what he was about to do. And he was tired. He was always tired.

High heels clicked behind him as the receptionist returned to her desk. Harry Sebastian, wearing suspenders, was standing in the hallway with his trademark fedora was pushed back on his head. "There he is...Ron The Baptist."

"Hey, Harry."

Harry's eyes narrowed and his voice got raspy. "What are pennies made of?"

"Copper."

"What kind?"

Maglione chuckled. "Dirty copper."

Harry clapped him on the back, smiling broadly. Their exchange was dialogue from some old gangster movie, Maglione couldn't remember which one, with James Cagney or maybe Spencer Tracy. Harry had shown him the clip on YouTube during one of Maglione's earlier visits to the office, and now he wanted to recite it every time they got together.

On the way back to Harry’s private office, they passed more of Harry's employees, young lawyers in jeans and tennis shoes. Harry took great pride in running a casual office with no dress code, where everyone—including himself—was on a first name basis. Maglione saw, however, that the "no dress code" culture was just as strict as any other. There were no suits, no ties, but also no shorts and no t-shirts. For an office without a dress code, everyone looked surprisingly similar: all the lawyers wore immaculate jeans, collared shirts with the sleeves rolled, and brown or black lace-ups. There was a dress code, just not one that was ever spoken of.

Despite the casual atmosphere, though, Harry's law firm was well-known in the legal world of New Orleans for being fiercely competitive and dispiriting. The work wasn't exciting, and could even be depressing as hell, so Harry preferred to hire fresh young lawyers more than willing to spend eleven hours a day in a cubicle fighting on the phone with insurance companies. Every spring Harry hired something like the top 90% of Tulane Law graduates; the best of them eventually became trial lawyers, the rest were gotten rid of to make way for the next class. A judge once told Maglione there were only two kinds of personal injury lawyers in New Orleans: those who worked for Harry Sebastian and those who'd been fired by him.

"How's your bride? Her business doing well?" Valerie Sebastian, Harry's wife, had a "lifestyle boutique" in the Quarter that sold clothes, jewelry, and home decor to other Notable Wives like herself. Someone had broken into the store just before Christmas, and NOPD barely investigated, just said it was probably a couple of addicts and scratched out a police report for her insurance claim. Maglione helped Harry out and did a little extracurricular snooping, even though he secretly thought the NOPD's lazy guess was probably the correct one. He discovered, to his genuine surprise, that the robbery was an actual whodunit: there WERE two addicts behind it, yeah, but one of them was Valerie's assistant manager, who had planned the break-in, carried it out with her boyfriend, and did an almost flawless job of making it look like a random smash ‘n’ grab. Almost.

"Oh, Val’s place is doing gangbusters business, let me tell you, Ron. Last month was her most profitable one yet...she was only in the red by about three grand." Harry shrugged. "Look, she has something to do, she's not in my hair all day, and I catch a healthy tax break on her losses every year...trust me, the money I sink into that place is money well-spent."

They were inside Harry's windowless private office now. The big office from all the late-night commercials—Harry sitting on the edge of his desk with the Superdome behind him as he tore up an insurance company's insultingly paltry check—was only used to impress colleagues, business partners, and the more lucrative of his clients. Harry did most of his work in this smaller office off to the side, which held a desk and a couch and was as sparsely decorated like a dorm room.

Harry gestured to the couch, but before Maglione sat down he half-turned and pushed the door to the office closed. If Harry noticed, he took it in stride. "How about that nephew of yours, is he keeping it under the speed limit?"

About a year before, Maglione's nephew had somehow gotten a ticket way across the lake in Mandeville, where Maglione didn't have any favors owed to him (or at least none that he wanted to call in over a speeding ticket), but Harry made a single two-minute phone call and the ticket vanished.

"Well, I've been driving a white hatchback around, if that tells you anything."

Harry shook his head. "You're kidding me."

"The goof got arrested for street racing. Can you believe that...racing a Honda? It makes no sense. And, hey, you wanna know the worst part?"

"What's that?"

"The little creep lost the race, and I had fifty bucks on him."

Harry laughed, and leaned back in chair so he could prop his feet up on the desk. "Hey, Ron, you want anything to drink? I got a mini-fridge right beside you that's pretty well stocked up."

"Nah, I appreciate it, but I'm only here for a second."

"So what's up?"

"Oh, it's nothing, I just wanted to give you a head's up about something." Maglione fished a few index cards out of his jacket pocket. "And don't worry about it, because I already deaded it. But you know that task force that's doing the Lucas Budd investigation? They recorded a phone call the other night from Lucas—I mean 'recorded' like they wrote down the time and duration of the call, not, you know, recorded. Anyway, they looked up the number he called and it was a cell phone registered in your name."

Harry was a good lawyer, Maglione had to admit: he didn't flinch or even react much, aside from furrowing his brow a little.

"How do they know it was actually from Lucas?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I said, too. You know these task force guys: teach a bunch of jock traffic cops how to trace a phone call and all of a sudden they think they're in the CIA."

"I don't know what to tell you, Ronnie, other than I haven't talked to the guy since...gosh, I don't know, that Gaudioso fundraiser back in March, maybe?"

Maglione laughed and shook his head. "Hey, look, I know you're not in a conspiracy with Lucas Budd. Hell, even if you were, it's none of my business. That's not what this is about. I just wanted you to know that, one, it popped up and, two, I squashed it."

Harry nodded deeply at the detective on the couch. "And I appreciate it. But I'd still like to get to the bottom of it. Are you sure it was my personal phone?"

"Nope, and that's exactly what I told them, too. 'Both of these guys are successful lawyers, they probably have fifteen cell phones each that are registered in their names. Who knows what number the guy called. These dumb fucks don't understand anything about relay towers, didn't stop to find out where the call actually originated from. I said, 'Look, Harry's kid has been friends with the Budd kids since they were in cribs together. Maybe that pretty little Budd girl is in Lafayette feeling lonely, decides to call the Sebastian boy and get him to drive out to Lafayette for a quickie, we don't know.'"

Harry chuckled. "Could be, could be. He hasn't mentioned hearing from the twins, but it's possible."

"The point is, there's a million different innocent reasons. It doesn't matter...I made it a dead issue. I'm not here to get to the bottom of it, I'm just here because I figured you'd want to know it happened."

Harry Sebastian brought his wingtipped feet down from the table one at a time. Slap...slap. "Well, Ron, I want you to know that I truly appreciate it. I owe you one."

Maglione waved it away. "It was nothing. I watch out for my friends."

Friends? Later, this would be the only thing he regretted: the two of them had a history together, Harry had done some secret business for Maglione's bosses in the past, and they enjoyed each other's company. They were friendly, but they weren't really friends, and invoking the word in the middle of this crummy business was a low blow.

"I'm just doing everything I can to protect the innocent on this one. This Lucas Budd case is a monster—a hungry monster—and when it goes to trial it's just going to devour everything in its path."

The two of them were standing up now. Harry seemed distracted. "Yeah, it's gonna be a bitch all right."

"And anyone with even the slightest connection to Budd, especially after his arrest, is just going to get demolished, no matter how big they are. The word going around is that the FBI is about to get involved…we might have our fun and games down here, but once shit goes Federal we're all on the hook."

Harry Sebastian nodded, looking at Maglione's face but not quite looking into his eyes.

"So when a whisper about someone I know starts going around, you better believe I'm gonna put that to bed with a quickness. Especially someone like you, Harry, who I know has the good sense to stay the fuck away from Lucas Budd at all costs, you know?"

Harry kept nodding, lost in thought.

"You know what I mean, Harry?"

The lawyer blinked slowly and made eye contact with Maglione. "Yeah, I know what you mean," he said in a low voice.

"I'm glad to hear it."

But Harry Sebastian was a natural lawyer, and he was his old self again almost immediately. He squeezed Maglione on the shoulder as he walked him to the door of the office. "Listen, thanks for watching out for me, again. I really do appreciate it. I don't want the people you're working for to think I have anything do with this."

Maglione paused in the doorway, pushing index cards back into his jacket. "The only people I’m working for are the people of New Orleans.”

Harry smiled at this, the corners of his mouth going sour. "Keep saying it, Ron. Maybe we'll both start to believe it."

*

Maglione walked back to the reception area alone, feeling loathsome, with his hands pushed deep into his jacket pockets. He slowly rotated his jaw from one side to the other.

He couldn't really say why he felt the way he did: it hadn't taken him long to figure out that Harry wasn't really in league with Lucas Budd, and what little he was involved with had just been scared out of him. That was good news, right? It meant one less potential confederate for Budd and it meant that Harry, the guy he'd just called his friend, was safe.

But still...but still, as Maglione walked back down the brick-lined hallway, he couldn't help but think that these kind of tasks were too delicate for his clumsy paws. This Budd business was no damn good.

"Have a good afternoon, Detective," the blonde receptionist said as he passed, not looking up from her Day Planner.

Maglione turned back to her. "Hey, can I ask you a question?"

"Of course." She looked up and smiled, straightening her glasses. Most people, a detective starts asking them questions and it's like you just sent them to the principal's office. Not her, though...her face was as open and innocent as the winter sun.

"It's Saturday night: you wanna go out, you wanna have a little fun. Where do you go?"

"I'm sorry?" She tilted her head to the side, still smiling, probably thinking this was the setup for a joke. In ‘sorry’ he heard a slight Midwestern rounding of the vowels; maybe Wisconsin, maybe Minnesota.

"Don't worry, I'm not asking you out, I'm just wondering...look, you gotta buy groceries, right? Where do you go?" His voice was too loud, he realized too late. "How come I never see you at Schweggman's? How come I never see you at gas stations, banks, bus stops?"

Now she was confused, looking over her shoulder with a slowly fading smile. A young lawyer, around 25, looked up from the copier and drifted closer to the desk, maybe about to come between Maglione and the receptionist.

Maglione squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. "Listen, forget it. I was out of line. I'm investigating a...case, a girl about your age. I thought...never mind. Sorry."

"Good luck, Detective."

"Yeah, thanks." He was already turned away, moving towards the elevators now. "Keep Harry in line for me."

Thank God the elevator was fast. He waited only about ten seconds, the whole time refusing to turn around while the "what was that all about?" glances shot back and forth. He heard the young lawyer say "huh," with a wary laughing voice, but Maglione kept looking straight ahead until those doors opened.

He just needed to get some sleep. That was all, just some sleep. He pressed Lobby and left this world of glass and steel behind, descending back to the streets where he belonged.

Forty-Five >>>