New Orleans Noir

told me that to begin with, I could have gone straight to Canal Boulevard.”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s your money.”
    Roach Man scooted to the edge of the seat, his antennae tuned. “They’re in a service alley behind one of the houses they’re gutting.”
    They crossed Canal Boulevard. Mike stopped at the General Diaz alley, but it was a dead end in the dark. The guy mumbled something that sounded like, “Motherfucking spics.”
    “What?”
    “You think we’d see a lantern in all this pitch black.”
    Mike rolled past the intersection of Filmore and Marshal Foch. Just before Argonne, they saw a soft glimmer of light, presumably from a lantern, a quarter-block down the alley.
    The guy opened the cab door. “I’ll be fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. If it’s gonna take any longer, I’ll come let you know.” Outside, he stood for a moment to zip up his cheap windbreaker. His new white sneakers shone in the dark. Even with the windows up, Mike could hear the crunch as he walked down the alley, the poisonous wasteland dried to a crisp in the drought since the hurricane.
    Mike decided to turn the taxi around so he’d be pointed back toward the interstate. The quicker he could get out of here the better. His lights picked up the sheetrock dust surrounding several houses as he made a wide circle at the intersection. The dust coated Argonne; a lot of house gutting going on back here. He could smell the dust in the air. He didn’t know if it meant people were trying to come back or trying to crowbar the money out of the insurance companies’ tight fists. The latest word was they wouldn’t pay off unless the house was gutted. What people were being put through, like puppets on a string.
    Mike parked at the mouth of the alley but left the engine running for the heat. He could make out the top edge of the carport where the light came from; he could see that it leaned sharply, but he didn’t notice anyone or any shadows, only a halo of light illuminating a small area of the alley.
    Mike didn’t like the finger of fear running up his spine. He had a bad feeling sitting out here in a dark ghost town with lots of good hiding places. He needed to be alert, to hear the slightest sound in the dark. He cut the engine, cracked his window open enough to hear a different quality of silence than that in the car, and pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck. Somehow his passenger was up to no good, maybe the whole bunch of them, whoever it was that found cover in the shambles of other people’s houses. Guilt rose in him like bile that he would have a payday, likely a good one, from this opportunist.
    The guilt stole into his awareness. If it wasn’t guilt about not making enough money, it was guilt about taking it from the wrong people, guilt about the way he made it. How did the straight-A Jesuit student, the kid with so much promise, end up driving a taxi at night? He rubbed his hand over his face, something he did so often now it was like a tic. The worst thing about driving the taxi, it gave him too much time to think. He wished he had a button on the side of his head he could turn to the OFF position.
    Behind him came a sharp crack that sounded like a pistol shot. His body jumped with enough force that he hit his head on the ceiling of the cab. He whipped around. Another crack and the limb of a dying camphor tree fell to the ground inches away from his rear bumper. He slumped into his seat, limp, wasted. As if he could stop his racing heart, he pressed his hand against his chest. He glanced down the empty alley, checked his watch. It had been fifteen minutes. Where was this guy? His heart wouldn’t slow down; his throat was tight. Christ, he thought he was going to die.
    Mike was afraid of death. He thought about it a lot and wondered if other people did. No one ever talked about it much, but then neither did he. Stories he’d heard about people dying for a few minutes before being pulled back into life—the white light, the feeling of peace, of someone, God, beckoning from the light-filled tunnel—he wanted to buy it. The nuns at Holy Cross, even the sometimes cynical Jesuits, had assured him there was an afterlife. But Mike feared death would be painful and messy and final. He would die and there would be nothing. When he was a boy, he would look into the sky, stare deeply into the heavens, his mind traveling into an infinity of nothing as long as he could stand it, before panic set in and he returned