New Orleans, July 4, 2006
BUD

The bar is deserted. No one in the joint but us. Everyone's out on the river. Fireworks. We prefer ours to be in here. Between us. She is so small in my arms. I move, she comes along. I shift, she responds.

We dance good together.

It's been just over a year since we started dancing slow together. It's been just over nine months since I moved in her place.

She is still a handful, I tell her. I am still a force to be reckoned with, she tells me.

We are watching over each now. We have to. No telling what's gonna happen next in this city. I always say, the Lord watches over those who deserve it; the rest of us are on our own.

I am still working insane hours and the criminals are winning again anyway. The National Guard rolled in a few weeks ago to patrol for looters and other assholes. They've freed us up but not much. We need to kick ass now. Get back in control. After the storm, bad stuff happened and not all of it was the bad guys attacking the good guys. That happened, sure. But the good guys got in some licks. And this city was safe for a while.

Another thing I always said from the beginning was this ... if we create a void, if we take out the native sons who deal drugs, then we have to realize we've created a void. We should have been better prepared for what will fill the void.

But we were tired.

You try holding this city together through what we've been through.

Bodies on the street. Looters. Flood. Wastelands through about three-fourths of the city. Months and months of slogging through flood muck in a city on its knees. Still finding bodies in the ruins.

Damn straight, the drugs started flowing again. Only this time, the war for territory was happening everywhere. No one was in charge. It was like the Wild West. Still is. The void is getting filled. The local perps by now are as psychotic as the rest of us. Outsiders are coming in to fight for territory.

We let that happen, then we are screwed and royally.

It's a war out there. Always has been. What's different is like everything else around here after the storm. There's no turning back. Whoever wins this war now, they are the ones in charge of this city.

I always was good in the war zone. It's like riding a bike. You never forget how.

But tonight ... tonight was a night off. A night to forget the war. Sometimes I'm out there and I cannot even remember that that is not all there is. That there is something else for me.

There is this ... dancing in the dark with her, fireworks going off.

ANN

He didn't give up on me. Fancy that. Guess that means I can't give up on him. Even though there are times I want to strangle him. He hogs the blankets. He works too many hours. He about choked to death when I threw out the polyester in his closet and made him go out and buy clothes that work down here in New Orleans.

I've never been happier to see anyone as I was when he finally showed up, two weeks after the storm. Even though he started yelling at me as soon as he saw me, angry because I had not evacuated my French Quarter apartment.

Who's laughing now, Buddy boy? Guess we both know it's that Quarter abode that's saved our asses, eh? Where would you be living now if not for me being clever enough to be living in one of the only areas of this great Crescent City that did not flood after Katrina, eh?

His place in Metairie took on about a foot or so of that murky brown water. That was enough though since it sat there for weeks. They shut the complex down for repairs.

He was living in his station those first few weeks anyway. I didn't know where he was, if he was safe. Civilians like me couldn't drive around back then. The only people on the road were cops and EMTs, media, soldiers ... and people you most definitely did not want to see. If they caught you driving around, the cops would deposit your ass at some disembarkation center up on the highway near Metairie and you'd be driven out of there, with no idea where they were sending you. If instead of the cops or military it was one of the bad guys that caught you out driving ... well, let's just say smart people didn't do it. Even the media was afraid to drive around without cops or soldiers escorting them.

But I heard reports about his station ... how they put up a sign calling it "Fort Apache" and I figured Bud was in the thick of it. I knew he was alive only because every day I'd walk over to the precinct in the Quarter and ask about his precinct over in Central City. No reports of any officers killed over at Fort Apache, they'd say to me. So for that day, each day, then I could just worry about me making it through to the next day.

It wasn't always easy but it wasn't really so awful, all things considered. At least I wasn't stuck on my roof, surrounded by flood waters, waiting for a helicopter or a boat to come by to rescue me. But I was like most other people who stayed during that time ... I was fully aware we were a half inch from total anarchy in that city early days. It was a very thin blue line that kept the city from imploding what with the fear, despair and anger.

I spent the first two nights in my apartment, hearing noises outside, no lights, no phones. I text messaged him constantly but I knew he wouldn't even know how to read them much less respond. I ended up banding together for safety with everyone left on our block. We'd stay together after dark, have communal meals, then take turns sitting up to watch for bad guys coming in to hurt us.

After a few days, I opened the bar back up. I had no new supplies, no ice, no good water. But I had beer and even warm, people drank it. Mostly, they wanted company and to know they were not alone.

Then one of them found out how to get ice. He got it from some crew among the national media hordes camped on Canal by the river. In exchange, I let them hang out in the bar, a little slice of heaven compared to what they were seeing out there every day. The bags of ice were their admission ticket; later, they started bringing the hard stuff. I never asked where they got it and they never offered to tell me. They were always welcome, even without the admission ticket, but the booze was sure appreciated by all of us.

From then on, things got better. We patched up the damage at the bar and then had a party. Some of the guys came and fixed the window that blew out on the floor below my apartment. We had another party.

And then Bud came back to me.

He was hot, dirty, tired, hollow eyed. Scared.

I've never seen him like that. I hope I never do again.

He yelled at me for a solid ten minutes about me staying instead of leaving. I kept asking if he had really wanted me to go to the Convention Center? Did he want me getting carjacked like was happening to those fools who tried to drive out early on? Did he think I wasn't smart enough to survive?

And that's when he cried.

One second he's yelling; the next he's clinging to me and crying. Just stroking my skin. Looking in my face. Unable to get the words out to say he loved me and that he was so grateful I was there, alive, with him, holding him. I heard him loud and clear.

After what he'd seen, he'd imagined so many things could have hurt me. He wanted me to move away for a while, until the city was safer.

We're the Wild West down here, I told him. We ain't letting the outlaws come take over the Quarter, I said. Did he not notice how many people were strapping heat and walking around like they stood between the bad guys and us?

He only stayed for a few hours. Long enough for him to yell, cry and then let me love him.

I was desperate to love him. He soaked it up. All of it. All of me.

It did something to me, witnessing him in that time. Most of all, holding him and loving him made me feel clean. Right down to my grubby soul.

Things were bad for a while where I was at, even so. Rough. Sad. But then they started getting better. I think one of the major turning points for me was the day Bud and Nate showed up at the bar with their suitcases. They'd gone into their apartments, packed what clothes they needed to work in for a few weeks, boxed up everything they could salvage before mold and looters got them.

They had decided, in their wisdom, that I'd store their boxes in the bar. They were moving onto a huge cruise ship that the Feds brought in and docked on the river not that far from the Quarter. The ship's rooms were for all the cops and fire fighters who had no place else to live.

Something like 80 percent of them had lost their homes. This was where they'd stay for a while but at least they would be able to live someplace safe and pretty nice if cramped.

So on this day, Bud and Nate are at the bar. I serve them both beers. They tell me their bright idea. Store their stuff here, move in one of the rooms on the ship. I kept giving Bud the eye. He didn't seem to notice. He's cute when he's dense that way because it only happens when he's being all mucho macho 1950s Ward Cleaver.

"Wendell, you are not living on a cruise ship at the port," I said to Bud. He gets this funny quirk in his eyes when I call him Wendell. "You're moving in with me."

He clears his throat. Looks at Nate, sidelong, you know? Like he's daring Nate to say anything.

I reached across the bar and put my hand in his. Leaned toward him. Whispered low and throaty, "Bud White. I am asking this only once. You turn me down and you are dead meat. Besides ... you've got that nice big gun ..."

That made him grin. Then Nate slammed his hand on the bar. "Hot damn. When's a woman gonna make me a proposition like that? What's wrong with me, I ask you?"

"Do you want it alphabetically or in order of importance?" I asked him.

"You know you love me, Annie, and that's the damned truth."

"I like you, Nate, sure. But it's Wendell I love. It's Wendell I dream of. It's Wendell I ..."

"Yeah. Fine. I'll come stay at your place until things settle down," Bud said, cutting in as I was just getting revved up into the mushy romantic guff he knows is me trying to make him blush in front of Nate.

"Well, if you can't be any more enthusiastic than that, maybe I'll ask Nate. He's got a gun, right? Is it as big as yours?"

"Annie ...," Bud growled, grabbing my elbow and yanking me halfway over the bar so he could put his mouth at my ear to say, "I got the only gun you're gonna be needing. We got that straight, baby?"

"Just tell me one thing," I whispered against his ear. "Tell me you're always going to do your best to come home to me."

"Always." His thumb stroked over the skin on the inner crook of my arm. "Home. With you. I like the sound of that."

So that's what we did.

He moved in. In my mind, it was not temporary. But if he moves out, I can understand that, too. People like Bud, doing the kind of work they do, they have to be with people all the time. Cheek and jowl. And every one of them is under stress. If he finds that he needs solitude, his own place, somewhere only he exists ... I will understand.

But having him with me ... it isn't always easy. But it is good.

He's work, sure. Lots of fireworks sometimes. But he is so far beyond worth it for the feeling I get when he comes in the bar after his shift and stays with me until closing time so he can walk me home. He's there for me. It's pretty nice.

Never thought I'd say that.

So here I am ... I have let my guard down with another man and know for damned sure I run the risk of hurting him.

BUD

In the beginning, just after K, as rough as it was physically, there came a time when we knew we had the upper hand. The military guys rounded up all the stragglers and got them out of the city.

Some never made it out of the city. But they were not the ordinary stragglers. They were the baddest of the bad guys. Should I be proud to know this? Hell no. But the truth's the truth. It was better without them alive.

The day after fireworks lit up the levee to celebrate our nation's independence, I sleep in late. When I wake, sunlight is muted. The window has heavy shades. We both work nights; keeping the room as dark as possible in the day helps us sleep.

I reach for her body; it is an unconscious act on my part. But it is also a ritual to reach out for her, figure out where she is in the bed, bring her in close, leg over her, claim ownership. That's what she calls it ... that I'm establishing ownership. I used to think she was busting my balls; and she was, but she also said it turned her on. She may be many things but most of all, with me, she is a woman who needs a strong man. A man strong enough to stand in there and deal with her.

Me? I never did love a woman who wasn't able to be soft when she was being strong. I like a woman who stands on her own but knows how to need me. I don't mind rescuing a woman; I just like it when it feels mutual. And that we can move on from there.

Plus I like her to hold on to me, like I'm worth not ever letting go.

She is not in the bed. I rouse myself from that half sleep place mainly because I cannot find her anywhere on the mattress. I hear myself snort and then I sit up, scratching my balls and then rubbing my eyes. She is not here.

I sniff the air to determine if this means she's out cooking breakfast. Hey, a guy can dream, right? But today, there is only the scent of coffee brewing. I stumble, half blind, into the bathroom for relief then stumble, a little clearer eyed, into the kitchen. It is empty.

The coffee pot is half full. The newspaper is on the table, rumpled as evidence of her having been up long enough to have read it.

I am scratching absent mindedly at my belly, looking long and hard in the fridge, when she runs through the door. She is out of breath but soon she is giggling at me. I must be a sight. She is sweaty and her hair is pulled into a pony tail and she is jogging in place.

"How many times I tell you to wake me up if you're going running in the morning? Geez, woman, I'll go with you," I grump as she chuckles at me from the doorway.

"You hate to jog. As if I'd take you running the levee walk with me."

"I don't like you out there on your own."

"Wasn't on my own, love. Nate came with me."

"Nate?"

"Yeah. He came by ... girl trouble ... got the hots for one of the women at the bar. Wanted to talk. So we went running."

"Nate?"

"Nate."

"Girl trouble?"

"Bud ... Wendell ... you even awake yet? C'mon, sweetie, go back to bed and sleep in ... you don't have to be to work for hours yet. C'mon ... you're barely able to focus right now."

"Bed?" I am putting her on totally now. Acting the part.

Her little hands touch my arm and swing me away from the fridge. She shuts it up and pushes me toward the bedroom, shushing my protests, taking charge, thinking I am sleepwalking or something.

The bed comes closer. The sheets are all rumpled. Inviting. I can feel myself sinking in there before she pushes me over, shoving hard when I resist at the last minute. That puts her off balance when I give in and dive onto the top of the sheets.

My hand around her waist drags her down with me. As she struggles and gasps and giggles in reaction to what I'm doing, I roll her under me and nuzzle hard into her neck until I feel her leg snake in over my hip. She growls in my ear; her hands pull me in tighter. I am so hard her softness feels obscene. She shivers under me as I run my hand down the front of her shorts. I'm whispering in her ear ... about how much I want to taste her, how hard she's going to come for me, how many times I'll take her breath away ... nonsense words I don't ever plan, just saying what I think.

There's a moment ... I wish I could capture this forever. The way she smiles at me when I stop just to look down at her. The feeling in my gut when she says she loves me and I know she will never understand how a man feels to have those words given so freely when they can cost so damned much you never quit paying the tab.

And that's when my beeper goes off.

July 6, 2006
ANN

Someone wanted to watch the late news. We don't normally run the news anymore. Guess we just had enough of watching the news. Seems like it's always such a drag. Levees that aren't fixed yet. Dire predictions of drainage pumps that will not work when we need them. Power outages with every thunderstorm. Phones that still don't work in about half the city. Crime on the increase, jumping with a level of violence that is shocking for the times of peace we've had since the hurricane drove so many criminals out.

I call it news fatigue. We're saturated with it.

So I'm not really listening tonight. We turn on one of the local channels. By the time the news is over, the sound of the television is like a drone in the background. I don't think I am even aware of it except on some subliminal level.

I'm not the only one. Anyone who's listening is doing it only absentmindedly. Most everyone else is talking in small groups at the tables near the jukebox or involved in watching the pool tables. There's a pick up pool tourney on the two new tables we inherited from another bar that's decided not to stay open. Business in the bars that depended on tourists is down that bad.

What's saved us is that this bar always had more locals than tourists. But even we have been hurt a bit. I don't know what we'd do without the reporters who've begun hanging out here. They drink a lot and they have money to pay for what they drink. I like that kind of customer.

There's four of them down at my end of the bar. They like Heinie's. I'm trying to arrange for a delivery of Abita on draft. I want to open their eyes to what we have in this area beyond beads and boobs at Mardi Gras. They are asking me why I left the biz. I can't get by with a glib answer; they will see through it.

Life, I say and shrug my shoulders. Bullshit, one of them sneers and sips his beer. 

They are looking at me. I hear the television blaring a commercial, because I am contemplating what I could answer them. I take a deep breath and admit the closest thing to the truth I have ever figured out. Burnout, I say. Two of them stare at the top of the bar. Another one looks at me like a deer in headlights. Burnout like you're getting ready to crash into, I say to them.

And that's the truth.

Because I do think they care too much, which is both one reason I like them but it's also why I think covering the recovery is taking a heavy toll. You don't walk through a city, reporting on such human misery and loss of people you can relate to, without it taking a real bite out of your soul. And some of them are not going to ever be able to go back to normal reporting again. And others will crash. A few will rise above.

Maybe it's because we're in that burned out lull of conversation that we hear it ... on the television ... a news bulletin. Our eyes swivel instantly to the screen. The image is of a city street at night ... it has to be a live shot, of course. Cop cars, lights flashing, parked in the middle of an intersection. I count six squad cars as the camera pans to the reporter, whose eyes glitter as light comes on her.

They are in an area of the city that could be one of several places. Actually, even the middle class areas are looking ratty in some areas, but these clapboard shotguns have some distinctive cast to them that makes me instantly think this is one of the areas that have yet to begin any real recovery even if there isn't a lot of debris on the road. You can tell there's no power out there yet because there're no lights on in any of the houses in the background. The orange X's of the post-flooding search teams glow in the refraction of the strobe lighting.

The reporter says she is in Central City on the scene of a multiple homicide. The camera pans as she talks about what she doesn't know yet. We see the legs of a man who is sprawled on the ground. His torso is hidden behind the tires of a car. It flashes through my mind to admire that they snuck a picture of a dead body on the news by carefully framing it to only show part of the body and not the part that would allow anyone to identify the person who was killed.

As the camera pans and zooms, we see cops gathered behind yellow tape. Some are taking notes, some standing around, some taking pictures of evidence, some conferring.

Central City.

I walk toward the television without realizing what I'm doing. One of my regulars puts a hand on mine as I trail it along the top of the bar.

Bud.

We are quiet, those of us near the bar. I am zoned; a part of me has even become hyperaware that the pool tables have gone quieter. They all know Bud and Nate. They know they work in Central City.

Next we see the reporter again as she introduces a spokesman for the NOPD. He tells her they are investigating a multiple murder. She asks if there are more dead than the five bodies they have seen.

"Jesus Christ."

"Five?"

"They were shot? For shit's sake. That must have been insane."

"Has to be drugs."

"Turf war."

The spokesman scowls for a moment. He must not have wanted to say how many were killed.

"When's the last time we had that many killed at once?"

"Years."

"It's getting fucking scary out there again."

"This sucks. Why did that kind have to come back here?"

The spokesman says there were five killed. Shot. At the intersection. They'd been in a car. It's 4 a.m. He says the shooting was about 3:30 a.m. He says the dead are all teenagers. Youngest one is 16.

"They should have been home with their moms," I say under my breath.

The reporter asks if it was drugs or a revenge killing or something else. The spokesman stares at her before answering. I think he will say 'something else' but instead he says they do not yet know enough to speculate.

"Has to be drugs."

"Absolutely."

I turn back and look at the four reporters at the bar. This, I think to myself, is what I want to know. It's what I always wanted to know: why. Why. Why, why. Maybe that's the reason I really became a reporter. But I know that's not all the truth. I can suddenly feel the itch to be out there, armed with nothing but the obsession to tell a story and my urge to find out the answers to my own questions.

A moment later, they are all hauling out their Blackberries. Trying to alert someone out there in their chain of network command that there is a story developing.

Imagine the news? The peace in the city of New Orleans was a false bubble ... they are back to their murderous ways down here in the river city. The Big Easy ain't so easy again.

I could write this story in my sleep. I can already taste it. If I were covering this ...

No. I'm not. Not any more. I'm not going to ever let myself want that again. Never.

My eyes shut and I breathe in deeply. I hear the television reporter talk with her anchor. The anchor asks ... when's the last time we had this many murders in one crime.

I could tell her to the day. 

"Is that Nate?"

"Look at him. Trying to look busy."

"Where's White?"

My eyes are back on the television. Someone points for me ... there's Nate. Where's Bud? But I already think I know who is pulling this investigation.

The rest of the night turns more firmly into early morning. I stick around after the day bartender shows up along with the cleaning crew. I sit at the bar, play solitaire. When it's daylight, I walk down to the little convenience store about three blocks away. I get an early paper. I am looking at the story of the murders as I walk back to my place.

No.

Our place.

He comes home about an hour later. He doesn't say a word to me when he comes in. Just puts his hand out and when I take it, he pulls me in to him. His hands barely skim my back. Up. Down. I have my arms around his neck. I feel the tension there. I whisper to him ... does he want a massage? He shakes his head but still doesn't speak.

Was it bad, I ask him? He nods into my shoulder and then his hands grasp in lightly around my elbows. He pulls my arms in over him tighter; kisses each crook of the arm in turn.

Where were their moms, I ask. He shakes his head. Drugs, I ask. He nods, once. Is this how it's going to all start all over again, I ask him, where we're killing each other as if we aren't still trying to get over a storm that tried to kill us. Haven't we learned to value our lives after that?

He takes my hand, leads me over to the big armchair. It's overstuffed and I got it mainly because he took a shine to it when we saw it once up on Magazine a little while before Katrina. I went back with one of the regulars from the bar the next day; loaded it into his truck. We wrestled it up the stairs. I put a huge bow on it and told Bud to never say I never did anything romantic for him. He had just got this soft look in his eyes. Ever since, it's been his chair. He watches television in that chair. He likes to drag me down on his lap, protesting and struggling, if I pass by within his reach.

But just now, I don't struggle. I let him pull me down as he settles in. I hold him, pressing his head to my breasts, bending my body to his. Long minutes go by. He is still not talking. I wonder if the murders scare him for their viciousness or if he is just mentally too worn out to even think straight.

So eventually, I slip down to my knees before him and begin undressing him. His jacket. His tie, shirt. Undershirt. I kiss his lips and then over his heart. He sits up then, leaning in on his knees, his hands just grazing the sides of my hips. That's all it takes. I feel his power. I know he could be brutal if he ever wanted because he has the power to do that. But he is so tender with me. Even if we get a little wild and rough, he is still tender.

"You are such a good man," I say softly. "I'm so lucky to have you in my life."

"You make me feel like a good man, honey."

"You know I love you, right?"

"Right."

I chuckle and his hand slips over my buttocks, pulling me in closer. I look up into his eyes. His warm eyes. The way he looks at me, so serious suddenly, as if a mask has come over him and all that shows through is need to connect totally with me, to leave the street behind, to be here where nothing can harm him. Where he lets nothing harm me.

My hands smooth over the rough stubble on his face. And then I lean up to kiss him.

And later, when we are lying sated in bed together and his knee is damp between my thighs, it feels somehow good to have that knee of his pressing in against where he's just been, as if he still lays claim to that part of me. I shiver at the thought of him and Nate having this high profile murder investigation in their laps. They are both worn out from the months we've been through. I hate that it's them who've drawn this case because I already know it's going to be intensely followed by every reporter, politician and police brass. And Bud for sure has no patience for any of them and that was before his patience was worn to a nib by the Katrina mess. And Nate is not much better even if he can hide it better than Bud.

But most of all, I have to be honest. I don't think it could be in better hands.

I just hope they don't do anything stupid ... even if that stupid thing is the right thing.

July 8, 2006
BUD

Some of the streets have gotten even meaner, like they are now ruled by men who have lost so much that they have a sick fury that will eat up anything that comes near. Nate and I know, right from the start, that whoever shot five boys riding around when they should have been tucked up in their beds was one mean son of a bitch.

Details of this crime tell us this was violence without remorse but with a message. And very personal. Someone knows who did it. Maybe didn't see it since the area's still mostly deserted. But someone knows the person who had this inside him ... this vendetta to stake his territory in the new frontier where the old drug kings have been taken off their thrones ... leaving the former jokers to fight for the turf before the really bad guys from out of town start rolling in to take over the vacuum. So someone knows who did this.

Nate and I already got a strong idea of what kind of person we're looking for. It's not a pro. It's a scary motherfucker who ain't afraid of anything. When we find him, and we will, he will not be afraid of us either. That's the ones a cop has to never forget are out there waiting on him to make a mistake, even a small one.

Our task is this: make someone talk. Make someone tell us who did these murders.

You jag these streets and you look in burned out eyes ... people are scared. They know who did it. Right now, they don't know if they're more scared he'll find out they snitched to us or if they're more scared we won't take him off the street.

We don't have to make them feel safe to tell us. We have to make them scared to not tell us.

Every day, we have returned to that corner in Central City. Some days, we get out of the car, walk around. Most days, we just stop and stare at where the blood of five young bangers has still not been washed away very well.

The days we get out, walk around, talk it over ... those are the days I have a bad feeling about being in this neighborhood. Signs of life are infrequent and furtive. Any houses that have signs of post-K occupancy are the ones we check on these trips. Most are vagrants, no place to go in hurricane-destroyed New Orleans that has no public housing, no flop houses anymore. Some of the vagrants think this is like a land grab or something. Think if they take up residing in a place and no one comes to kick them out, maybe they can claim the house as theirs if this area ever gets some help rebuilding.

A lot of the guys taking over these ravaged shells are kids, set loose by parents who don't know how to be parents. We talk to these kids; most of their parents are still in Houston or Atlanta. School's out and apparently they don't care where their kids are spending their time for the summers. It's a shame, really.

But we don't got the luxury of being social service directors. We got one job ... find a killer.

Brass calls us in at least three times a day ... same question: how close to an arrest? We say things like, 'we're rousting everyone we can' and 'our normal snitches aren't back yet' and 'we're gonna get him' and 'just give us a little more manpower for door to doors.' They say things like, 'do what you have to do' and 'we're setting up a task force.'

Today, we are walking around. Nate keeps saying we need to think through the events of that night. I am sweating in this jacket but if I was wearing my old clothes from up north, I'd be melting. That makes me think of that day I came home after helping Nate move into the ship to find Ann waiting for me in the apartment with new shirts, pants and jackets all laying out on the couch. And that look on her face, like she was all ready to beat me up if I crossed her.

She'd gone to one of the clothing giveaways. All these charity groups had set up places for giving out clothing, furniture, stuff that was wiped away in the floods. She'd already tossed every jacket I had saved when I'd gone back to empty out the apartment. Most were fine, just a bit of mold that would come out with a good washing, I'd told her. I should have known that when she rolled her eyes that she didn't agree.

Next day, she walked to the big tents set up on Decatur in the Quarter where some group was giving away donated supplies and stuff. She'd spent hours finding me new clothes because she swore this summer would kill me if I wore polyester outside.

Okay, I can buy that, I suppose, since Nate's been telling me the same thing for a while. But my jackets? They were fine. Never wrinkled, took a beating, still looked fine. She'd replaced them with stuff I didn't want. Shirts I'd have never picked out. Ties that were ... well, actually, the ties were nice. I give her that. The pants? Not my style.

But it was too late since she'd tossed all my old stuff out before I got home.

I was angry over that for a while. I didn't like someone making decisions for me. You don't like the way I look? Tough. Look somewhere else then. She didn't have the right ... she wasn't in charge.

Nate said I was just sore because she was right. But that wasn't it.

Ann said she would never do something like that again. Never care that way. Never interfere. Never have an opinion. And I could just go fuck myself.

She's such a piece of work when she's mad at you. She can really freeze you out, too. It was kind of scary, seeing how we both reacted, both lashed out. But then, tempers have been hard to control with all we're still slugging through.

Eventually, we just stopped being angry with each other. I said one day that I had to admit, the new clothes were better than I expected in terms of working in them. The next day, she said she wasn't sure why she'd just taken over like that, since she didn't do things like that normally with a guy. It wasn't her style. I realized right then and there, she might have handled it clumsy, but she was looking out for me in her own way.

Like I try to look out for her. I am prickly to live with but I want to be someone a woman wants to build a nest for. I want to be the man who watches over his woman, gives her good things in life, respects her, protects her from the bad things, am there when they come along anyway to get her through them. I am old fashioned. I don't care. That's who I am.

"He shot the driver first," Nate is saying as we stand across from where the car smashed into a light pole.

"What were those punks doing driving an SUV like that?" I say, the millionth time we've plowed this.

"Drug business. What else they gonna spend the dough on?"

"What are they even doing back here? Their parents are all still in either Houston or Atlanta."

Nate shrugs. This does not bug him for he believes it is not a detail that will solve the crime. "It's happening all over, podnah, and you know it. School's out, these kids want to go cause trouble. Don't even try to tell me you didn't get into shit with your buddies in the summers."

"I didn't have buddies. Just fellow inmates in juvie."

He gives me that look of his. The one that says he's always getting caught short by the fact I had a childhood he cannot imagine. Nate and his upper middle class upbringing cannot fathom seeing your dad beat your mom to death. "You never got into trouble when you were in high school? That's what you want me to believe?"

"Trouble?"

"St. Wendell, eh?"

I shake my head. Look at my hands. They are steady. I realize the anger I feel is making me focus. "No saint. Never said I was."

"So ... if I was a kid, my mom's in some dinky apartment in Atlanta ... and my boys want to go back to New Orleans for a few days ..."

"This was more than a few days, Nate. They were squatting in a place five minutes from here."

"Yeah. So they were staying. Setting up shop."

"Moving into a territory they thought was open."

"Hooked up with a bigger fish ..."

"Selling his stuff ..."

"Taking his risks ..."

"And the shooter ..."

"The shooter was not happy at this."

"His territory."

"So he thought."

"So the shooter ... he was not going to let them stick around, take over his area, his action."

"More than that, right? He was sending a message to the bigger fish ..."

"Yeah. That's right. That's what we were saying ... so it had to be a message that would be loud and crystal clear."

So far, we are on the same page. But every time we return here, it seems we are so busy looking for witnesses that we have not taken the time to just get the feel of the scene. To get it in our guts. To understand motivation and what else should be obvious if we think through what happened that night. This is why we are here. To get this crime in our gut.

"Right. So ... the shooter ... on foot? In a car?" We are going over it all again. Getting the visual again.

"On foot."

"Why?"

"If he was in a car, he had to be with someone to get the driver first."

"Maybe it was just a lucky shot."

"Yeah. But he was thinking about this, Bud. He wanted to take them all out. So he starts with the driver, waits for the car to crash. Then walks over and ..."

"And next, he gets the two who managed to get out of the car and try to run away."

"Then finishes off the other two, who must have been wounded already and couldn't get out."

"It took a while. This wasn't a case of him popping a cap into a guy and then running before the neighbors looked out. This took time to do. And made lots of noise."

"How did he know they were coming here?" Because we know this wasn't random. This wasn't a guy hanging on a corner who popped the first car who came by or happened to see guys he hated and popped them as they drove by. This was an ambush of sorts.

"They were coming to see him."

"Or he knew their routine and waited on them."

"Either way ..."

"Yeah. Exactly, podnah. Either way."

"And when he left ..."

"How did he leave?"

"Captain thinks he drove away."

"I'm not so sure."

"Let's work with that, then. Let's work with thinking he walked away instead of driving away. What's that give us?"

"This is his backyard. He owns this area. He's staking his own turf."

"We've talked to everyone around here. They won't tell us shit. And they know him. You know they do."

"We try again. Harder. Different."

This was the day we decided to scare people. To make them afraid of us. We wanted the word out among whatever people were in this area, whether they were vagrants or people trying to come back to their homes. We needed them talking about the crazy ass white detectives who were gonna do what it took to find the fucker killed those boys.

It started slow. Rousted a guy camped in a house maybe a half block away. Grabbed two 15 year olds said they were just out riding their bikes. But when we found Lakeesha in the second floor of a house next to the first guy is when we made our stand. She ratted out two junkies living across the street. They were also on the second floor. She said they were players. We put the squeeze on them. They didn't give us the name. But we knew they knew.

We brought them down to the station. It's still mostly a shell. No A/C. Interrogation rooms are real sweat boxes. We put them in holding cells, let other area punks moving in and out of the station see them there. Let them work up right to the edge of needing a hit so bad their bodies were gooey and shaky.

It didn't take them long. Each one spilled. They hadn't seen it go down, but they still knew who did it.

So now we had our name. We even knew where he was staying. What we didn't have was enough to prosecute, according to the rabbit shit DA. They wanted a witness or forensics. Getting forensics seemed our best option but without the gun ... without the perp's sneakers to match bloodied footprints ... well, we had to get things like that, the DA says.

That was going to be the trick. Get the evidence before the arrest. But how to get the evidence without an arrest? We put in for a search warrant that we knew we'd have to serve the first night when surveillance would let us know he was out of his place so we could go in.

That's how we left it when we went home.

ANN

The weirdest thing has happened. I am not sure why it's made me feel so good. Light. Like I have something of my own ... at last.

When the truth is, I don't. It's just a leftover memory from that other world that has shocked me to happen now, all this time later after I left there. I didn't think I was looking back there anymore but I suppose it's just impossible to wish away memories.

It all actually, in some cosmic way, is like karma ... that my old life as a reporter has set me up in this world for something to now happen to me here.

The bar has become a home away from home for a fair amount of the national media horde that's been coming in and out since K. Most of them stay over on Canal in the big hotels. This place is just far enough away, but still in the Quarter, to feel like a hideout to them. And they come with each other and they bring new arrivals and they come back to see us when they drop back in the city to check on how the recovery's going.

Which isn't that great but it's better, really. It's just that tourism is really down in the Quarter. We are hearing more and more about some of the small shops closing. They can't make it without tourists in the number we used to get. The bar's been really lucky since we were always more about locals and since the out of town media found us.

The owner of the bar wants out. He's tired. His kids want him to move away before another hurricane comes. He wants to find someone to buy this place. I don't have the cash or I would because I think it'll survive. I called Dino yesterday when the owner said he might have a buyer. A corporation looking for an investment. I think that would kill this place. Y'know? Take the spirit out. I called Dino and asked him if he was looking for an investment ... in the bar and in me and in my city. He's thinking about it. I told him not to wait too long. I'm not used to asking for favors but I do think this would be a good investment, since I'd stick around to run it for him so maybe it's not really a favor.

Anyway, I've been worrying this over but I haven't mentioned it to Bud. He's got plenty on his plate with the big murder investigation. But I have to admit that I'm feeling the weight of things a lot lately. Bud's shut down more. Even if he reaches for me, he's shut down. Scares me. I feel for him. Don't know what to do except accept him as he is right now. And then all this with the bar maybe being sold to some Yanks, y'know?

I have this feeling in my chest that bad things are gathering and I'm so sick of change. I just want something to stay as it was, something to be normal again. That's all.

So then this totally weird thing happens today. I'm at the bar, only half listening to conversations around me. Then I notice this voice that's so familiar. And when I look up, it's Leo. He's just yakking with some other reporters and doesn't even notice me. I cannot believe he's here, in my bar, in the flesh.

I say his name, slap his elbow to get his attention. He just looks at me. Like he doesn't have a clue who I am.

Of course he doesn't know me. Not in this world. He did in my old world ... one of my favorite photojournalists in that world. I worked with him for a while on the newspaper in D.C. He's an old friend ... back there. But here? Here, she never worked the jobs I did. She never met Leo.

He thought I was hitting on him. I just said I recognized his byline. Leo's sharp. He couldn't let that go ... he asked how I even knew his name. Someone pointed you out, I lied. He narrowed his eyes at me. But he must have figured, well, how else would I know him.

It's just that it's so fucking cool to see him. Like someone from my past is here again. Someone I cared about. Someone I own the memory of. Someone I am dying to hang on to, like a talisman that there are good times around the corner if I just believe in the serendipitous charms of this city that have brought Leo into my life again.

In one hour, we seemed to be friends. Maybe the core of a person doesn't change from world to world, I got to thinking. Later, when Bud and Nate came by, I introduced them. Nate kind of glanced through Leo, much more interested in Leo's colleague who worked at the same paper, a reporter named Margaret. Bud looked through Leo, like he was establishing that Leo was insignificant in Bud's world. When I tried to get us into a three-way conversation, Bud was distant, gruff. Annoyed. His inner caveman came out. I told him who Leo was when we were walking home through an essentially deserted Quarter. I couldn't see him blush in the semi-dark. But I think he felt like he'd stepped in it with me.

Don't you trust me, I asked him. He shrugged his shoulders, looked off, pretending he noticed something suspicious on the next block. You do trust me, right, I pressed. Yeah, he grunted, just don't trust other men. But now that you know who Leo is, you're okay, right, I asked him, tugging on his hand until he looked down at me. Yeah, he said.

But it was the tone of that simple monosyllabic response. Like he was smiling inside. Knowing I wasn't going to stop on this. That this mattered to me. That he found it funny that it mattered.

"You know what I'm thinking?" I asked him as we stopped stalking along and started strolling.

"I bet I'm in trouble," he said and I pinched his elbow.

"No. I'm thinking about how Leo is probably no more like Leo than I am like Ann. Or you're like Bud. Or Terry is like ..." I paused and swallowed. I so rarely even said his name but it sounded normal. Like it didn't hurt to say it. "I wonder what part of this Leo is not quite like the Leo I knew in my world."

"Why would it matter? Not like you're gonna be buddies here, is it?"

"Well, that's just it, Wendell. I am really, really anxious to get to be his friend again."

"Why?"

"I don't know. It just is really important to me. Maybe I've come to see that it matters that you stop throwing away chances to have as many friends as you can."

"Just remember who you go home with at the end of the day."

"Hey ... you gonna tell me how the investigation's going? You seem more ... I don't know ... did you catch a break tonight?"

And this is when he told me. About the suspect. About his dozen prior arrests, including two assaults and drug charges. About how careful they had to be so they got him cold. And I listened to him lay out the case as we walked the rest of the block and trudged up the stairs and sat drinking beers because I knew neither of us could sleep just then. I turned out the lights eventually. Lit some candles. Opened the shades. Put my head on his lap and listened to him talk about the ideas he had for keeping new drug kings from establishing their kingdoms. How Nate and he were going to put it down on paper, present it to the Captain.

I knew that last part was Nate's idea. Nate knew the way to play that system better than Bud. Well, Bud might have known how but he'd not have done it unless Nate prodded him to do it with him. Bud would have kept his opinions to himself otherwise because he wouldn't have thought the brass would have listened to him.

And as I listened to him and his hand stroked my hair and he sipped beer, I watched outside the window as the sun came out. A new day, I thought to myself, and suddenly it all seemed hopeful again. For both of us. And I thought about how it was such a simple happiness to have Bud talk to me about work and his ideas. To know deep inside that this man trusted me. And needed me.

Maybe change wasn't always bad, I was thinking as I drifted off to sleep.