Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead (11 page)

We looked at the men in white and then back at each other.

“I don't know,” I said.

“I don't think it's anything good,” the man said.

“No,” I said. “Me either.”

I thanked him again and went back to the corner. I watched the man in the cherry picker for a few minutes, but I couldn't quite see what he was doing up there. It looked like he was fixing something. But the power was still off for the whole block. Maybe he was trying to fix it.

Maybe. But no one was trying to fix the power anywhere else. And I doubted that one little transformer was why it was down.

Mysteries never end. But you can't solve them all. Not in one day, at least.

I drove toward the Magnolia Projects. The projects were closed. I didn't know if they'd been closed before or after the storm—like a lot of cities, New Orleans was shutting down its projects and sending people out into the world with Section 8 vouchers. Across the street was a blue shotgun house. The shotgun was missing its back wall. The side walls folded in where the back wall was missing.

On the porch was a young girl of maybe seventeen with a pretty face and black hair in a ponytail. Her legs dangled where stairs used to be. Next to her was a boy about twelve, just as pretty. The girl was smoking a cigarette, or a joint, passing it to the boy, who had a few drags before handing it back.

I parked the truck and got out and walked toward them. The girl watched me and the boy watched a tree on the street. The tree lay on its side, roots sticking out like arms. The girl smoked the cigarette. Up close I saw it was long and thin like a hand-rolled joint, but brown and wrinkled, as if it had been wet. Whatever they were smoking, it smelled sour. It wasn't pot. The girl handed it to the boy, ignoring me.

“Are you Lali?” I asked the girl.

She looked at me.

“Lali?” I asked again.

She nodded.

I gave her my spiel of who I was and what I was doing and what I wanted. She looked down at the ground beneath the porch while I talked. She didn't seem to be listening. They passed the cigarette back and forth.

“I ain't feel good,” she said when I was done. “I think I'm sick.”

Her accent was so thick I had to translate in my head as she spoke. She looked sick. She looked listless and her hair was dull and broken. If she was in Westchester she'd be on thirty different meds and seeing three kinds of therapists. Here, she got a folding house.

I asked her if she remembered seeing Andray that night.

“I dunno,” she said. She didn't look at me. “Andray? Shit, I
ain't seen him in, I don't know. Long time. During the storm? I see Terrell. That's who I see during the storm. Terrell and Trey. And Peanut too. I seen him.”

I pulled myself up on the porch and sat down next to her.

“Andray might be in trouble,” I said. “You might be his only alibi.”

She laughed. It sounded like nothing was funny and nothing ever had been.

“
Andray
,” she said. “
That
mothafucka.”

The boy reached into his pants and pulled out a .44 Magnum. I watched him. He didn't point the gun at me or Lali. He pointed it at the tree. Lali seemed not to notice.

“Shit,” she said. “I ain't remember nothing. That was fucked up. I ain't remember seeing Andray nowhere.”

“I'm not a cop,” I said to her. “I'm trying to keep Andray out of jail, not put him in.”

I explained the situation to her again. She didn't listen. She took a big hit off her cigarette and exhaled toward my face. It smelled sour and acidic.

“What is that, anyway?” I asked.

The boy shot the tree.

Lali and I both jumped in place. When the shot hit the tree a bunch of living things rushed out of it: squirrels ran in a panic across the street, pigeons flew away in terror. The boy fell back from the blast and a quick smile flashed across his face.

I reached over and grabbed the gun from the boy.

“Fuck,” he said. “I need that.”

He looked at me. He looked scared. I gave him back his gun.

“Them fuckers was laughing at me,” he said.

“The fuckers in the tree?” I said.

He nodded.

“Maybe,” I said, “they were just laughing.”

The boy furrowed his brow, weighing the possibilities.

I wrote down my phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Lali.

“Call me,” I said. “Please. If you remember anything.”

I gave her and the boy five twenties each. The boy laughed and looked something like happy for a second. Lali folded the bills up tight and put them in her pocket without looking.

I turned to look at her as I got in my car. She saw me looking and took the piece of paper with my name and number on it out of her pocket. Her eyes looked empty. It was like no one was home.

She crumpled the piece of paper into a ball and threw it into the tree. The boy cocked his gun and shot it.

That was it for Andray's alibi. I went back to my truck and drove back to where I'd seen the cherry picker. He was gone, but those things do about forty with a tailwind and I knew he hadn't gone far.

I drove around in wide figure eights, weaving in and out of Dryades Street, now called Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, the main artery of the neighborhood and near the geographical center of the city. Central City was the heart of the intermediate zone. Dryades used to be a busy commercial street, where blacks and Jews and Asians and everyone else who wasn't white enough for Canal Street shopped. It was hard to believe now. Almost every storefront was shuttered and sealed. The only spots open on the long strip were a credit union, a dirty grocery store, a few art galleries drawn by the cheap rent, daycare joints that looked like nightmares, and places with names like
COMMUNITY POWER!
and
THRIVE!
and
FOOD ALLIANCE PROGRAM
. In front of the latter was a long line, snaking down the block and around the corner, men and women and children trying to be patient. It's hard to be patient when you're hungry. Boys hung out in threes and fours and fives on street corners, people in big trucks like mine stopping to buy what they were selling. Some of the boys laughed, being boys despite it all. Some looked somber and serious, trying to send a message.

Dryades had been named for the nymphs that lived in trees, sisters to the Muse streets a few blocks downtown. But even the nymphs were gone now, off to the Quarter to have fun, or at least have a drink.

I was on Danneel Street when a Crown Victoria, painted in brilliant electric blue metalflake and raised on double-size wheels, turned a corner behind me. I saw it in my rearview mirror as it came quickly around the corner and slowed down in front of four or five boys working on the corner. A boy leaned out of the car window on the sidewalk side.

In his hands was an AK-47.

By the time I realized what was going on it was too late to do anything about it.

I stepped on the gas as gunfire rang out from behind me. Everyone screamed. In the rearview mirror I watched as everyone ran or ducked or hid. The boys who had been on the corner—the targets, presumably—ran in every direction. No one was hit, as far as I saw—it seemed like an easy shot but in reality the driver was going too fast and the shooter didn't know how to handle his weapon.

I stopped about a block away. I knew I should keep driving away. I didn't. I heard a
ding
as a bullet nicked my fender. But I wasn't a target. The Crown Vic pulled up beside me on the right and quickly passed me, ignoring me and making a right turn.

They weren't running away. They were coming back for another pass. I looked behind me. The boys who hadn't run too far were coming back to life on the corner, laughing and enjoying their good luck.

I put the truck in reverse. I stopped thinking and backed up to the kids, rolling down my window as I did.

Three of the boys were back on the corner, laughing like you do when you're happy not to be dead. The boys saw me driving backwards down the street and looked at me, confused. One ran off, yelling “FIVE-OH” as he did, the universal call for cops.

There were two boys left, watching me speed down the street toward them in reverse. I stopped in front of them and put the car back into gear.

One of the boys was Andray Fairview. The other was the kid who'd been to see him in jail, the boy with the dreadlocks. For all I knew
he
was the one who'd peed on my truck.

I rolled down my window.

“They're coming back,” I called to Andray. “Get in the truck. They're coming back around.”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth the Crown Victoria turned the far corner.

I opened the door to the truck.

“GET IN,” I yelled at Andray. He looked around and saw that all the boys had run away except him and his friend. Andray and the other boy looked at each other. Andray looked at me and back at the boy. In his look was a plea.

Andray wouldn't leave the other boy.

“Both of you!” I screamed. “NOW!”

I felt cold on the back of my neck. Someone was going to die any second now.

Andray and the other boy ran the few steps to the truck and dove in the passenger window, pulling each other in behind them. I hit the gas and made a screeching left and drove toward St. Charles.

The boys panted in a tumbled heap beside me, limbs and trunks tied up in a pile. They pulled themselves apart and sat up. The boy who wasn't Andray pulled a nine millimeter out from his waistband and leaned out the window, gun in hand. I checked the rearview mirror. The Crown Victoria was a good block behind us.

“Get him back in the car,” I said to Andray. “NOW.”

Andray tugged at his friend's waistband and muttered something to him. The boy came back inside the car.

“Gimme your gun,” I said. The boy made a face like I was crazy. I checked the rearview again; the Crown Victoria was gaining on us. Soon we'd be in the Garden District, the one part of the city where some kind of peace was enforced—but it was only a matter of time before people started shooting each other there too, and today might be the day.

“GIVE IT TO ME!” I screamed.

Andray's eyes opened wide. He took the gun from the boy and gave it to me.

“Take the wheel,” I said to Andray. I suppose I should have
asked if he knew how to drive, but I didn't. He didn't. He took the wheel nonetheless and replaced my foot on the gas when we switched seats and the truck moved straight-ish-ly forward.

“Move,” I said to his friend, and we switched too, until I was all the way to the right.

Andray tried to drive. I tried to shoot. Carefully, keeping my head low, I steeled myself and as quickly as I could, raised up, leaned out the window, aimed at the Crown Victoria, and shot and kept shooting. As soon as the shots were out I pulled myself back into the truck and covered my head with my arms, and just in time: a bullet hit the side-view mirror, sending shattered plastic and glass on my hair and arms.

But I'd hit my mark. The front tires of the Crown Vic were blown, and fluids were leaking from the underside of the motor. The car skidded out and hit a parked car along the right side of the street. The driver slammed on the brakes and got out of the car, but it was too late. He wasn't catching up with us now. And no way was the shooter good enough to get us from a block away.

In the rearview mirror I saw the driver of the car who'd been following us. At the oldest, he was fourteen. He looked pissed off. But the shooter didn't look upset at all.

No one could be that bad of a shot. He had been less than ten feet away from Andray and his friends.

He was no killer. But he was trying.

When we crossed the border into the Garden District, Andray took his foot off the gas and let the car roll to a stop. I leaned across the other boy and shifted the gear to Park. On the still, empty street, we looked at each other.

We laughed. Almost being killed does strange things to you.

I took the gun I was holding, carefully wiped it down with my T-shirt, and handed it back to Andray's friend.

“Fuck,” he said.

I nodded in agreement.

We all laughed again.

From far away we heard sirens.

“Shit,” Dreadlock Boy said. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

Warrants, I figured. I switched places with Andray and drove the truck over to Magazine Street. I knew the cops in New Orleans, and if they responded to the shooting at all, it would be a quick drive around the neighborhood. They were unlikely to stop a white woman for—well, for anything really, but especially not in connection with a gang shooting in Central City. I asked Dreadlock Boy where I could drop him. He and Andray looked at each other. Deadlock Boy looked scared. Only then did I understand that Dreadlock Boy had been the target all along.

I'm not the world's greatest private dick for nothing.

First we drove to an empty block in the Irish Channel, where, after a quick stop at a hardware store for a wrench, me and Andray and Dreadlock Boy—who as it turned out was the infamous Terrell—switched the plate off my truck for one we nicked off an old man's Buick. Terrell, a smart boy, removed the side-view mirror from another truck like mine and switched those too. He also, with my permission, picked out a broken two-by-four from a pile of garbage and smashed in the other bumper. No one would think it was the same truck now. Now that he wasn't trying to be frightening, Terrell's good nature shone, and he grinned as he smashed up my truck.

“Should I do the other side?” he asked politely after he'd crushed the right side. “Or just leave it?”

We decided to just leave it.

The alterations to the car would clear us with the cops. As for the shooters, I didn't know. In most cities I wouldn't have worried about it much—we white ladies are pretty safe if we stick to our own neighborhoods, the beneficiaries of generations of racism whether we want it or not. No one is eager for the problems that come with shooting someone who might make the TV news. But in New Orleans, I was pretty sure that even a white lady getting murdered didn't merit much attention from the cops. A few days ago a white woman had been killed in By-water, shot in her home while she held her baby daughter in her arms. The rest of the country was in an uproar. In New Orleans it was just another murder.