The Hanged Man's Song

sooner?”
    “Different kind of mentality at work,” I said. “This was really subtle. He floats a rumor, just a whisper out there, about this kid . . . puts it where Bobby will see it, but he can’t even really know that Bobby will see it. Then he lets Bobby do the investigation and make the approach.”
    “And he’s so good that Bobby can’t see through the bullshit.”
    I shook my head. “You know what? I bet there is a kid. I bet somebody went looking for a kid to use as bait. That the kid is real.”
    “So what now?”
    “New Orleans,” I said. “Talk to the kid. If there is a kid.”
    “And if she knows . . .”
    “She had to talk to somebody about the package and somebody had to see the return address. If she’s real, she knows the killer.”

Chapter Eight
    >>> LYMAN BOLE, the President’s national security advisor, resigned that evening after conferring with the President. We listened to an all-news radio station as we whistled back through the dark to the river, and the general opinion seemed to be that Bole’s public life was over. So here’s a lesson for all you frat boys: At this point in the life of the Republic, you better pick your indiscretions carefully.
    Back in Longstreet, we talked about New Orleans. I told LuEllen that there seemed to be no point in her coming along, but she insisted on it. She was bored, she said, and didn’t have anywork shaping up. And she liked New Orleans—maybe we could spend some time looking for a new condo up on the lake. If she didn’t live where she did, she said, she might live there.
    “Where do you live?” John asked.
    “Up north,” she said, and smiled.
    John thought he should go, because the computer girl was almost certainly black, and his being black might give him an edge in talking with her. Marvel didn’t like the idea of John going.
    “Kidd could probably talk to her better, geek to geek.”
    “I’m not a geek,” I said.
    “You’re a cutie, but you have geek-like thoughts,” Marvel said. She reached out and pinched one of my cheeks and shook it. She went back to John. “You know what the cops are like down there. You can get picked up for walking around black. You don’t want to get picked up.”
    “I won’t,” he said, with a little heat. “I’m tired of never going anywhere. And if we both go, I can talk to her black to black and Kidd can talk to her geek to geek.”
    “Sounds like a fuckin’ dance,” said LuEllen. “Dancin’ geek to geek.”
    They all laughed, and I said, “I’m getting pretty tired of this geek shit.”
    >>> AFTER some more talk, we decided to head down to New Orleans the next day, and at least take a look around. LuEllen went off to the bathroom before we headed out to our motel, and John went to kiss the kids good night. They’d been asleep for hours, but Marvel believed that they subliminally knew when theirfather had tucked them in—and Marvel caught me alone in the kitchen.
    “I’ve never said anything to anybody about this, Kidd, but when John was a young man he got into serious trouble,” she said. “He’d still be in prison if they’d caught him, but they didn’t—but they’ve got his fingerprints and his real name there with the FBI. If they catch him and get his fingerprints . . .”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “You take care of him,” she said, profoundly serious. “I’m putting it on you.”
    >>> WE WERE out of Longstreet at eight o’clock the next morning, still yawning and sleepy, and rolled into New Orleans in the middle of a steamy afternoon, with rain clouds building in the west. The car thermometer said it was 92 degrees on the freeway, and in the blacktop of an E-Z Way convenience store, where we stopped for water and Cokes, it felt closer to 100. The air was absolutely still, and completely saturated.
    In the same convenience store, I caught a few minutes of Fox News and what looked like a photograph of a man wearing desert camo and an American helmet pointing a pistol at the head of an Arab man in Middle Eastern robes. The Arab seemed to be reacting in shock, as though he’d just been shot—a photo something like the famous Viet Cong execution photo from the sixties. The sound was down, so I didn’t know what they were talking about.
    A skinny white kid was standing there, probably a skater because, even in the heat, he was wearing a black wool watch cap pulled all the way over his head, and I asked, “What’s going on?”
    “Shot that dude in