The Axeman's Jazz

self-protective part of him pulled him back—and then he dreamed up the Axeman thing as a cover.”
    “Adam Abasolo,” said Hodges.
    Cindy Lou looked Abasolo in the eye. “You do look kind of dangerous.”
    Joe said, “Where do you think we should look for this creep?”
    “These organized types tend to move around. I think I’d check with the police departments in the immediate area—maybe there’ve been similar crimes.”
    Joe nodded. “We’d better do recent releases too.” He sighed. “And new arrests. Somebody with a similar record may have just gone to jail in another parish.”
    Since the letter had just arrived, Skip doubted it. But she knew it had to be checked. There’d be literally hundreds of names.
    They divided up sheriff’s offices, and Joe assigned Hodges to the State Department of Corrections. It was boring, tedious work. But it was the best bet they had.
    “I’ll have the veggie muff.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “It’s like a muffuletta without the poisons.”
    Sonny settled on a more conventional sandwich, and when they were seated on a bench outside, he with a Coke, she with bubbly water, he found himself wondering what the hell he was doing here. Every restaurant in the city was air-conditioned and they were eating outside.
    Di said, “What a gorgeous day! I’m so glad you came by. I probably wouldn’t have come out at all, all day long, if you hadn’t turned up. We miss so much staying inside, don’t you think?”
    “I guess we do. I would have missed you, anyway.” He was embarrassed the instant it was out. He had come by her house to figure out who she was, to leave a note, to try to make contact sometime in the future, but without much hope. She had been on her balcony watering her star jasmine, and on impulse he’d asked her to lunch.
    But then had begun the long negotiation that had ended in this odd nibbling on a bench outside a health-food deli on Esplanade. “I only eat live foods,” she had said.
    “Oysters?” That was all he could think of.
    She had laughed. “Sprouts and things.”
    “Is that a live veggie muff?” he said now. “I don’t see any sprouts.”
    She laughed again, a laugh like a flute. He thought of the nymph who had been named Syrinx after a musical instrument (or perhaps she had been enchanted and changed into one). “I say ‘live’ when I really mean ‘raw.’ Raw foods are live to me.”
    “Ah. Raw eggs. Steak tartare.”
    She made a face. “You’re teasing, right?”
    “Uh-huh. If you think a muffuletta’s poison, I guess you must be a vegetarian. Don’t you even eat dairy products?”
    She shook her head.
    “What’s the theory behind that?” He congratulated himself. He’d found a subject she liked; he was talking to her and she was answering, not treating him like a dope or a child.
    “Eating can change the world, did you know that? When you only eat live foods, like I do, the photosynthesis happens in your body and you begin to feel this energy. You feel all these cosmic connections.” She hugged herself. “Oh, Sonny, such a change is coming in the next ten years! We’re just at the beginning of it.”
    He was speechless, but she seemed to take his silence for rapt attention.
    “You have to understand that the plants are here for a purpose. The old way, eating animals, is going now, fading out—have you noticed?”
    “I do seem to know a lot more vegetarians nowadays.”
    She nodded. “The plants are here to teach us something, to enlighten us.”
    “Hey, listen, I went to Carrot U myself. First I had Professor Plum for Consciousness 101, but he was just an old fruit. Then I took Good Vibes from Dr. Zucchini, but he squashed all my ideas. So then I went out for the cornball team and life was just…” He paused, searching. “…a bowl of cherries.”
    She put a hand on his knee. “Sonny, you’re delightful, you know that?”
    He knew it was true. She brought out something in him, he didn’t know what. He could almost feel the flow of energy she talked about. Who was he to say she was wrong? Even he knew doctors knew nothing about nutrition. She talked like a Venusian, but maybe this elfin, slightly nutty woman knew more than he did. He could never have thought of all those puns with Missy. Being around Di energized him, kicked something into gear.
    “I’ll bet you’re a writer,” she said. “You’re so clever! A poet, maybe.”
    He preened. He wasn’t clever. He was smart, sure, like all the