Thrown-away Child

snoops around Cletus Tyler’s murder going to wind up in a bad way, meaning a country dog in the city.”
    “That’s a joke or a threat?”
    “Your call, I guess. A country dog noses around fences in a city where he don’t belong, that dog can’t win, Hippo says. Country dog runs, the other ones bite his ass. He sits still, they fuck him.”
    “Charming advice from the people’s choice.”
    I considered sharing the impressions I had of Alderman Giradoux by way of Huggy Louper. Then I thought better of it. Bougart and I were not quite partners. He was spoonfeeding me, which I would not call a gesture of full trust.
    “Yeah, it’s some kind of advice.” Bougart gave a tired look up and down Crozat Street. “Street like this one’s full of fences. You see them, Detective Hockaday?”
    “I see the fences. They’re invisible.”
    Bougart laughed, in a way that told me I had said the right thing. “As politicians go ’round here, just understand Hippo’s about the best we got. So long’s you stay on his good side.”
    “What’s happening on his other side?”
    “Hippo’s a big man. A big man throws a lot of shade.”
    I glanced up at the house Maybe Richard had pointed out to me. “How about Joe Never Smile up there? Is he likely to lead us into the sunlight?“
    “That’s for you to find out, Detective. I’m going along with you to make the introductions. Then I got to report to my station house for muster.”
    “What’s orphans, mutants, and misfits, Claude?“
    “Old Joe can tell you better than me.”
    “How do I get in touch with you?”
    “You don’t. I’ll be off duty by four, four-thirty. I’ll drop by Miz Violet’s after. I’ll be trying to pick up on what I can during my tour, which ain’t likely going to be much. So you pretty much in charge of things today, Neil.”
    “Making me the country dog.”
    “Well, being from New York, I’m counting on you to have a better nose than most for sniffing out truth.“
    “What’s truth mean around here?”
    “New Orleans truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. Maybe you never going to spot that rabbit fair and true. Maybe all you can do is circle around them brambles and say it’s in there someplace.”
    Maybe.
     

TWENTY-NINE

     
    Ruby shifted her hips, expecting to press up against her husband’s thighs. Nothing there. She threw back an arm touching only the cotton sheet. She did not have to open her eyes to know Hock was gone from bed.
    till muzzy from dreams during her first New Orleans night in so many years, and now feeling the viscous heat of Louisiana sunlight pouring through Mama’s lace window, Ruby thought, This is how it is being a tin wife—isn’t it? Half the mornings of your life, rising alone, trying not to wonder about too much.
    Back in New York, Ruby was acquainted with a woman named Inez, tin wife to the late Patrolman Egidio Ignacio Maldonado of the plainclothes anticrime unit in the Thirty-fourth Precinct of upper Manhattan. Eddy, he was called, before his young head was blasted off his shoulders one evening in Washington Heights by an even younger entrepreneur informally associated with the American pharmaceutical industry. Eddy’s wake at Our Lady of Lourdes in West Harlem was the first NYPD funeral Ruby had attended.
    It happened that Ruby and Hock (who wore his old shield, cap, and tight-fitting blues for the occasion) sat directly behind the black-clad widow that windy January day. Ruby could not take her eyes off Inez Maldonado, imagining herself on some future windy day in the same circumstances: front pew center, with the mayor on her left and the commissioner on her right, and Hock in a box dead ahead.
    Ruby sat up in bed, pushing aside the sheets and pillows and the lace coverlet. She rubbed her eyes and looked across the room to the clock on top of the bureau that said it was nearing seven.
    After a quick shower in the hallway bath, Ruby dressed and followed her nose downstairs toward the fresh coffee and chicory in the kitchen. Mama was sitting on the parlor couch she had slept in overnight, drinking coffee and looking at television. Her bedding was neatly folded and stacked on one end of the couch, and Mama had bathed and fixed herself for the day, apparently a day of work. She was wearing one of her blue polyester maid’s dresses and thick support hose.
    Ruby leaned over and kissed her mother’s cheek, which was smooth and smelling pleasantly of glycerine facial soap.
    “Morning, Ruby