Crescent City Connection

real good contacts.”
    “In the police department or the media?”
    “Both.”
    Daniel never knew if these things were true. Probably his dad had one contact in either the police department or the media. But who cared? He always seemed to know the right person in the right place. Either that or he had a lot more followers than Daniel imagined.
    “Now here’s a map of the area. The beauty of it’s that nobody, absolutely nobody’s going to be watching the Broad Street overpass. Assholes’ll be falling all over themselves to get their smug little faces on TV.” His dad pronounced it TEEvee, on purpose, Daniel thought, to belittle it. “You’ll have time for one shot. Just as they clear the edge of the building.”
    This was what he had come here for and what he wanted to do. All the same, Daniel felt his breathing go ragged.
    “And another thing,” his dad said. “In three days we’re moving all operations to New Orleans.”
    “What?”
    It was a rhetorical question that his father didn’t dignify with an answer.
    “Now get down the road, son. You’ve got plenty of time to find us a place before you have to get up on that overpass. Okay, let’s think now. We need something big enough for a lot of people—the four of us here and three or four more, say. And it has to be in a neighborhood where you wouldn’t notice white and black people together, all coming and going at the same address. And I guess that means a place with a lot of foot traffic, since
we’re
going to have a lot.” He closed his eyes. “Magazine Street. A nice duplex on Magazine Street. Or just off it. Irish Channel, anyway.”
    Daniel was getting into it. “No. Is Magazine Street a main drag? That’s the best. Nobody’ll notice a thing.”
    How am I going to find it in one day?
he wondered.
    In the end he hadn’t. He didn’t know New Orleans, for one thing, and for another, he didn’t want to miss his appointment on the overpass. He ended up staying overnight at a Holiday Inn.
    Holed up in his room, drinking some beer he’d bought, he watched himself on television, shooting Nolan Bazemore.
    Or rather he watched Bazemore fall dead and then saw himself leaving the scene, as the police would say. Some cameraman had been quick enough to catch him. But you couldn’t begin to see who he was—he was just another dude in a baseball cap and shades. He was cool, too, hardly even running, just walking fast.
    Still, it wasn’t nearly as much fun as television the next night—watching the reactions to the letter. He’d mailed it in New Orleans right before he did the hit.
    Various public officials said sober things about vigilante action and taking the law into your own hands—a shrink had opinions on the kind of crazies who’d do a thing like that. And one reporter had had a great idea. Gal named Jane Storey.
    Jane had done man-in-the-street interviews. A man in a business suit said, “These people are scary because they’re doing what a lot of us would like to.”
    A dignified black man dressed in a waiter’s uniform seemed as mad as Daniel’s dad had been: “This man, this Bazemore killed our only hope of gettin’ out of this mess we’re in.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that, it’s gone. I’m sorry, I think there’s a lot to what they’re sayin’. I’m sorry, I can’t say I disagree with ’em.” He shook his head, a sad look on his face that made Daniel think of the old expression “more in sorrow than in anger.”
    A woman in a pink power suit—Daniel was sure she was a liberal-assed lawyer who’d benefit mightily from a good fuck—said, “I thought it was just another group of racists when they killed Billy Hutchison. But… you know… the ACLU defends everyone from pornographers to Nazis if it has to, to protect the First Amendment. These people are like that—they couldn’t have picked more different enemies. They’ve proved to me, anyway, that they’re not racists and they’re making a point. I mean, you can’t say they’re not making a point. They’ve got something to say.”
    The camera turned to Jane, who said to the audience: “Too bad they felt they had to kill to be heard.”
    “Yeah!” Daniel shouted. “You got it, Jane, baby. Too damn bad, ain’t it? But, listen—otherwise, who’s gonna listen?”
    He couldn’t believe The Jury had so much support.
    That day, the day after the hit, Daddy called him into the office.
    “Okay, Daniel. Goddammit, okay. The Lord’s work