Crescent City Connection

chastisements—I, the Lord God, have spoken.’”
    His voice dropped, and it was low and terrible. “God will be the instrument of her destruction and he will work through me and he will work now! Not soon. Not when all my petty plans are laid. He will work immediately! The female beast from the darkest corner of hell must be destroyed before we can proceed with our master plan—before justice can be done for the people of these great United States. She stands in our way and she must be removed.”
    Even to Daniel, he sounded nuts. All he could think was,
Thank God he’s mad at her instead of me.
    It could so easily have gone the other way.
    “We’ve got to escalate this Shavonne thing. Forget that fucking Dorise; forget all that finesse and careful planning. God doesn’t have time for that. God wants to act now.
    “Go get Shavonne. Go get her right now. Don’t even change your clothes. Just go get her.”
    “Uh… Daddy… I don’t actually think I know a Shavonne.”
    His father seized the heaviest thing at hand—the stapler on his desk—and threw it at him. It caught Daniel square in the forehead, in the spot damn-fool kids like his daughter called “the third eye.” The kind of pain it caused was something like a cut and something like a heavy blow and, oddly, something like a tickle, yet the way a tickle would be if it were the worst pain in the world.
    Daniel staggered backward, automatically throwing a hand up to his forehead. It came away wet and red. Blood filled his eyes. He hit a table leg and staggered. His father gave no sign that he noticed. Instead, he picked up his phone and said, “Get Dashan Jericho over here,” in a voice so thick with menace. Daniel feared for Dashan.
    His father looked at him again and for the first time seemed to notice the blood. He said, “Son, let me get you something for that.” He walked out of the room and came back with a towel. It was the first time in memory Daniel had known him to get something for himself, much less for someone else. “We’ve got to get you better,” he said. With one hand he handed the towel to Daniel, with the other he guided him into a chair. Daniel sat there applying pressure to his wound, feeling befogged and slightly nauseous, until Dashan arrived.
    Dashan began his greeting, which would have been, “Hey, Daddy,” Daniel thought, but he got no farther than the first “D.”
    “Dashan, where’s that little girl go to school?”
    “Shavonne?”
    “Of course, Shavonne. Look alive, son. Who’ve you been working on? You
have
been working, haven’t you, Dashan?”
    “Of course, Daddy. Dorise and I are thick as thieves.”
    “Well, I don’t give a shit about Dorise. Your assignment was to get as close as you could to Shavonne. Now, where’s she go to school?”
    “McDonogh Number Forty-three, Daddy. Her teacher is Mrs. Pearl Rivers, and the principal is Felix Pitre.”
    “Fine. Now you two boys go over there and hold it up at gunpoint. Get that kid and bring her here. You get followed and the Lord will take his vengeance.”
    “Daddy, there’s no need for that. I’ve been doing my work. Shavonne’ll leave with me. She loves me.”
    Daniel’s dad screamed. “Did you hear me, you jackass? Did I say use guns or didn’t I? What did I tell you?”
    “Yessir. You said use guns, Daddy. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
    “And I mean use guns. See that at least one shot is fired, you hear me? And nobody gets hurt and nobody gets followed.”
    “Yessir.”
    Daddy nodded. “Good. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”
    This last was so incongruous Daniel almost wondered if his dad was drunk.
    “Let’s go, Dashan.”
    “What happened, brother?” Meaning his wound.
    Daniel winced, knowing it would set Daddy off again. His father was around his desk before either of the others saw him move. “I’m going to kick both your butts.” He raised his foot and kicked Dashan into the wall. “Get up, boy,” he said to Daniel. “Now turn around.”
    In the car, on the way over to the school, Dashan said, “Man, you must have done something really bad. He’s so mad at you it’s getting on me.”
    “Well, my man, usually he is. But this time it’s not me he’s mad at. It’s somebody else.”
    “He sure is mad.”
    “Yeah. So we better not fuck up—what you know about burglary?”
    Dashan said, “Are you kidding? I’m a computer nerd.”
    “Okay. Let me think about