New Orleans Noir

of several roofers’ lists, not likely until spring, while Mike often spent the midnight hours covering the mold with toxic goop to keep it from getting the upper hand.
    Too many people hadn’t come back yet, or they couldn’t come back because they had no place to live. Mike did the work of two, sometimes three people at the shipping company, but his paycheck was still the same amount, as if nothing had happened. His initial gratitude had worn thin. Each night as he left his office to drive to the yard to claim his cab, to drive sometimes for two hours without a fare, to pick up irritable people who thought disaster warranted cheaper fares, he found it harder and harder to remind himself how lucky he was. Only the thought that he could have died, his family could have died, put him in the proper attitude of thankfulness. He had to be careful. The death thoughts could get hold of him in spite of his deeply rooted Catholic faith. They could take over his mind so that he wouldn’t hear someone talking to him.
    “Hey, Mikey,” the man said, “remember me? Mikey …? Hey. Mikey.” His breath fogged in the cool air as he leaned into the open passenger window.
    “Yeah, sure. The casino. Kenner.”
    Last week. Thursday night. The guy had flagged him as he drove by, same time, about 8:00, near the same place he was parked now, in front of Igor’s on St. Charles. He’d taken him out to the ’burbs because Harrah’s had been closed since the storm. He’d waited a couple of hours for him, then dropped him off at a worn-out building on Felicity Street, right off Prytania, where he had a room. “Up there,” the guy had said, and pointed to the second-floor balcony, rotting wood and rusted wrought iron that you’d think would have ripped clear away in the killer winds and landed on the avenue. The big wad of money he pulled out to pay Mike looked worth a week at the Pontchartrain Hotel. What did Mike care? It was the best money he’d taken in since the hurricane had wiped out the tourist trade.
    Mike turned around now as the guy dropped his big rear end on the backseat and pulled his legs in after him, the way a woman gets into a car. “The casino?”
    “Nah.” The guy’s short thick arm pulled the door closed and rocked the taxi. “We’re on another mission tonight, Mikey.”
    Mike frowned as he turned away to start the car. What’s with this Mikey ? he wanted to ask the guy. No one called him that, not even when he was a kid. Then he was the French Michel , his mother straight off the boat from Pau, France. He’d taken his fair share of abuse for having a girl’s name. So he’d changed it to Michael. His license on the dash of the cab read Michael Willet , clear as day. Now here comes this slick-haired, stubby guy with his big hard-looking tub, one of those guys who pushes his stomach way out front, uses it the way other people use authority, takes up space with it, likes taking up as much space as he can, likes his tub of lard because it gives him a kind of presence he could never have as a thin man. And thinks it’s cute to call him Mikey . Puts him in his place.
    Mike let it go. After all, this was the third night he’d parked outside Igor’s hoping to run into the guy again. He started driving. “Where to?”
    “Lakeview, Mikey. We’re going to Lakeview. West End and Filmore.”
    Mike turned into the St. Charles neutral ground, stopped on the streetcar tracks they said would be out of commission for a year. He jerked around in his seat. “Lakeview? There’s nothing out there.” He could hear his voice echoing back at the guy, heard the whine in it. He hated going into the devastated areas where the water had gone up to the roofs, moved houses off their foundations, killed anything it touched except the damned mold spores. They were everywhere, waiting to go into your lungs, attach to your sinuses, take over your body. When he and his wife had made the obligatory tour of destruction soon after they returned to New Orleans, it reminded him of that horror movie he wished he’d never seen, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He felt as if his body was being taken over, like one of the pod people, even when he wore a respirator.
    “We need respirators,” he told the guy.
    That got him a laugh. “It ain’t gonna kill you, Mikey. It’s the land of opportunity out there. Some of us sees it, some of us don’t. Don’t worry, you can stay in the car. It ain’t like I need a bodyguard.” He