Thrown-away Child

run?”
    “I heard all about that. Don’t amount to anything more vexing than toe jam. Anyhow, seems like to me that hanging one on Perry Duclat’s a stroke of luck, like killing two birds with one stone.”
    “What you care about skinning some jailbird? And how you come by knowing his name? You holding something out on me?”
    “Nothing of consequence you’d want to be responsible for knowing.”
    “Okay, but mind you don’t mix personal business in with this enterprise of ours. Big money’s riding on s making them neighborhoods empty. That’s hard enough to do without extra troubles.”
    “I don’t see troubles. What we got ahead of us is a simple job that takes simple tools, and the simple trick of finding the likeliest ones to... discourage.” î “Some trick.”
    “Right, it is. We just find the ones that can get hurt real bad—like turtles without their shells—and we do it. Only thing onlookers going to care about when the bodies start piling up is clearing the hell out of the area. Easy-peasy, our work’s done.”
    “Simple.”
    “Not to mention that killing’s the cheapest form of urban renewal.”
     

TWENTY-EIGHT

     
    Having no idea where Crozat Street was or how long it might take to get there, I waited for Huggy at halfpast five in the morning on the front steps under a yellow porch light that drew something I could only describe as flying cockroaches. I would later learn, to my horror, that my description was dead-on correct.
    Back inside, I had quietly telephoned for the taxi and left a lie on the refrigerator door. This was in the form of a note as to how I was off on an early stroll, which Ruby knows is not my habit.
    “Thanks for the repeat business,” Huggy said as I slid into the dewy vinyl backseat of his taxi. At least I hoped it was morning dew. Huggy flicked off the radio and dumped a half-smoked cigarette out the driver’s window. “You make out okay yesterday to Chartres Street where I took you?”
    “Just swell.”
    “That’s good. How’s the missus?”
    “Fine, thanks.” But I wondered, How was Ruby?
    Huggy turned fully around to look at me. Instead of asking my destination, he said, “Heard a good swifty from this DJ I was listening to.”
    “Oh?”
    “What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic, and a dyslexic?”
    “I give up.”
    “Guy who stays up all night wondering if there’s a dog.”
    “That’s real good, Huggy.” I searched my pants pocket for the paper slip Claude had given me last night. “Crozat Street, that’s where I have to be by seven o’clock.”
    Huggy looked at his wristwatch. “Why hell, this time of morning it’s only ten minutes from here. What you call me so early about?”
    “Just drive,” I said, glancing back at the house. Huggy put the taxi into gear and crept slowly away from the curb, so as not to disturb the dozing neighborhood. When he had turned onto Paris Avenue, heading east toward the first slant of sunlight, I had a bright idea and asked, “Had your breakfast yet, Huggy?”
    “No, sir.”
    “I’d like to talk to you about one or two things. The bacon and eggs are on me. Wherever you want.“
    “Well, there’s the Hummingbird Grill. Place is never closed, and reasonably nearby Crozat Street.” So Huggy took us to the Hummingbird. This was on St. Charles Boulevard, but according to Huggy not the St. Charles tourists knew.
    “See, for the polite crowd you got that there lovely streetcar goes through the better part of St. Charles, clear down to Tulane University,” he said, stopping his taxi in front of the Hummingbird, just south of Canal Street. “This part of St. Charles, it’s got the necessities of life for the downwardly mobile.”
    I glanced across the street. There was a Popeye’s chicken shack, not yet open for business. Pigeons and skels shared the garbage bin menu in the parking lot. Farther down, next to the YMCA, was a Price Busters shop selling cigarettes and hot dogs. This was between a pair of bars, one called the Mardi Gras, the other Michael’s C-Note. Thirsty ancient mariners and a few Harley-Davidson bikers were already stumbling in and out of both establishments.
    “Thought you wanted bacon and eggs,” Huggy said, tapping my shoulder, drawing my attention away from the bars.
    “I do. Let’s go.”
    The grill was on the street floor of the Hummingbird Hotel, the lobby of which was reached by climbing up a worn flight of red and gray linoleum stairs. Three