Thomas Adcock - New Orleans Noir

Mike let it go. After all, this was the third night he’d parked outside Igor’s hoping to run into the guy again. He started driving. “Where to?”

“Lakeview, Mikey. We’re going to Lakeview. West End and Filmore.”

Mike turned into the St. Charles neutral ground, stopped on the streetcar tracks they said would be out of commission for a year. He jerked around in his seat. “Lakeview? There’s nothing out there.” He could hear his voice echoing back at the guy, heard the whine in it. He hated going into the devastated areas where the water had gone up to the roofs, moved houses off their foundations, killed anything it touched except the damned mold spores. They were everywhere, waiting to go into your lungs, attach to your sinuses, take over your body. When he and his wife had made the obligatory tour of destruction soon after they returned to New Orleans, it reminded him of that horror movie he wished he’d never seen, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He felt as if his body was being taken over, like one of the pod people, even when he wore a respirator.

“We need respirators,” he told the guy.

That got him a laugh. “It ain’t gonna kill you, Mikey. It’s the land of opportunity out there. Some of us sees it, some of us don’t. Don’t worry, you can stay in the car. It ain’t like I need a bodyguard.” He snorted a big laugh over that one.

Mike turned his attention back to the street. Anger filled his chest, turned his olive skin a shade darker. He knew the guy was taking a shot at his thin frame, his body that looked weak, his slouchy posture, rounded shoulders, a body type that could catch attention coupled with the right attitude, like the young Brando or James Dean. Especially if the man was strong, and Mike was stronger than he looked. His thinness was sinewy, his muscles taut like rope, and his grip — try to get out of his grip. Like that amped-up gutter kid a couple of weeks ago who reached over the seat to take Mike’s money pouch while he was making change. He grabbed the kid’s thick wrist. The kid twisted and pulled, but all his amphetamine energy couldn’t break Mike’s hold. The way he ran off clutching his arm to his chest, Mike might have broken a bone.

At heart Mike was not a violent man. The thought of violence of any kind, even verbal, horrified him. His wife had insisted he carry a gun when he drove the cab. She’d gotten so worked up about it that he’d given in, but he kept the gun in the trunk, in the wheel well.

He made the U-turn heading toward the interstate. He spoke with his head slightly to the right so his coated, low-pitched voice would travel to the backseat: “Yeah, but if you did need a bodyguard, I could be your man. I’m even licensed to carry a gun.”

The words sounded as empty to him as he knew they were, so he was surprised when the guy took him seriously. “That right? I guess you can’t be too careful driving a cab these days.” He shifted in his seat. In the rearview mirror Mike saw him lean forward. “You wear it on you?”

“No,” Mike said low, without turning his head. The blower in the dashboard muffled him.

“What’s that?”

“I said no, I don’t talk about where I keep the gun.”

The man leaned back. He laughed. “Yeah. You right, Mikey. Don’t talk about the gun. Just show it when you need it, huh?” He chuckled a little more, his mouth closed, like it was his own private joke.

Mike felt his face heat up again. Fuck him. He turned the blower up another notch.

Mike headed toward the St. Charles ramp. Traffic was light, not many cars waiting underneath the overpass to get onto the ramp. The lights didn’t work. One of them was on the ground. They were replaced by stop signs on short tripods. He stopped in the left lane behind a car that waited for a lone driver to cross the intersection in front of him. The car traveled slowly. In his peripheral vision, Mike saw a dark sedan pull behind the truck in the right lane. Mike knew the car without looking at it directly. It was his family car. His wife was at the wheel, no one in the passenger seat. He glanced; she glanced too, but turned away quicker than he did. He sensed the tension. Her mortification. He risked a look into the backseat. His daughter sat behind his wife, not looking his way, thank God. She had two friends with her, and she was reaching across one of them. He thought he could hear them laughing and talking through the glass, but he was only putting sounds to their animation. His head felt as though it was underwater. With effort he began to turn away, as though struggling against a current. His daughter, tight in her seat belt as she reached across to her friend, suddenly slammed herself hard against the seat back. He thought she would look at him then, but her head tipped backwards as she laughed. Her long gangly arms, arms like his, reached again, and the sedan moved up to where the truck had been. He could feel the sweat on his forehead. Twelve years old, the age of irreversible humiliation. His wife had told her never to tell anyone her father drove a cab.

“Hey, Mikey.”

Sweet Jesus, there was someone in the car with him.

“We never gonna get there unless you stop dreaming your life away, Mikey.”

“What?” He’d heard the guy perfectly. He touched the knob on the dash and turned the heat down as he eased off the brake. His wife was up the ramp before he reached the stop sign.

The moron in the back repeated his piece of sarcasm.

It had cut close to the bone. “I heard you the first time,” Mike said with a certain amount of viciousness, but he mumbled.

The man leaned forward saying, “What?” When Dean or Brando mumbled, no one said, What ?

Mike lifted his head to throw his voice behind him. “What kind of opportunities you got out in Lakeview at night?”

His wife must have taken the girls out to eat. It was funny how the people who’d come back didn’t seem to like staying home. The few restaurants open were more crowded than ever, as though everyone wanted to see who had dared to return, bump shoulders with them. He wondered where his son was. Talk about attitude.

“Whew, Mikey,” the guy was saying, “you really don’t want to go to Lakeview, do you?”

“I don’t care about going to Lakeview. I just asked you a question.”

“Okay, okay...” He started to say something else, but Mike broke in.

“Look. My name isn’t Mikey.” He pointed at the license. “Michael, see? Or Mike.”

“Okay, Michael it is.” He deepened his voice. “A little touchy, huh, Mi chael?” The dramatic tone was followed by a high-pitched, strangled chuckle way back in his throat. The guy was his own best audience. “Did you know that woman in the car back there or something?”

Mike’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror and made contact, a split second when all his anger, his attitude slipped away, gone through the looking glass, and left him slumped in the front seat of his taxi.

“My wife.” Out before he could stop it, as if he had no will left. He gave a short laugh.

“What’s the matter? She not talking to you?”

“Not much.” He nosed the taxi into the curve that took them toward Lakeview. “Not these days.”

“You mean, since the storm?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So the storm’s your fault?” That high strangled laugh again.

“No. Come on — everyone’s on edge since the storm.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t get it, do you? You’re not from here.” Mike looked in the rearview to see if the guy was shaking his head or something, some indication he’d heard him, but he was gazing out the side window. “Are you?”

“No.”

“Where’re you from?”

“Jersey.”

“Just down here to make a buck, huh?”