James Sallis: Eye of the Cricket

"Janet: Lewis. And this is Janet's husband, Gene. Lew Griffin."

All shapes accounted for.

"You think we might come in for a minute, Lew? Won't keep you long."

I stepped back out of the doorway. Your perfect host. Meanwhile something German and very loud was playing on the radio I'd neglected to turn off when I went to bed. I turned down the volume.

"Please have a seat."

Still knew how to act when company came, after all this time.

Mr. and Mrs. Prue sat on the couch, Norm and his son in chairs close by.

"I guess I'm here as a kind of representative."Norm glanced at the Prues. "Speaking for a lot of your, our, neighbors.

"You may not know what's been going on, Lewis. Have to be busy with your teaching, and writing all those books-can't imagine how much time tliat takes. And I know you like to keep to yourself, of course, value your privacy. We respect that It's part of what makes the neighborhood work. Any community.

"So we apologize again for intruding on you."

He looked over at his son.

"And for waking you up," Raymond said.

"Can I get you folks anything?"

Four heads went no. Good. I didn't have anything to get them.

"Last few weeks there's been a team of robbers, purse snatchers, working the neighborhood. Kidsreally. Riding bikes and carrying guns. They held up one of the college girls down the street last week. Big house where all the students live? She waits tables in the Quarter two or three nights a week, took the streetcar home to Napoleon and was walking the rest of the way. Had the night's tips on her, just under a hundred dollars. Now, she thinks she remembers seeing them circle by once or twice before they pulled up at the curb, but at the time she didn't think anything of it. Who would? Then they pulled up by her, flashed the gun and told her to hand over her purse.

"There've been at least a couple more. Last night Janet and Gene were late for-some kind of alumni dinner, right?"

They nodded.

"Janet came out, got to the car and realized Gene wasn't behind her anymore, and went back in to check on him. He says he'll be right there, so she comes back out and stands by the car. Porch light's on. She doesn't remember seeing any bicycles going by, no. But all of a sudden, there they are. One of them's got a passenger on the back. He leans over-like Indians going from side to side on their ponies in old movies, she says afterwards-and snags her purse. Strap pulls tight and snaps, she reaches, but it's gone.

"I could use a glass of water, it's not too much trouble."

I brought him one from the kitchen. Even found a clean glass.

"We're talking black here, Lewis. You understand that? Black kids on bikes with guns, hitting their own neighborhood. Ours. Never mind the robberies, that's bad enough. But sooner or later someone they pull up beside's going to talk back, or else someone looking out his window is going to go get his gun, next thing you know we've got a street full of police cars."

"Okay, Norm, what do you want me to do?"

"I don't know. But everybody on the street knows you're a detective-"

"Used to be."

"Used to be, right. So anyway, they thought maybe you'd have some idea how we could get on top of this. Thought maybe you could check around, ask some questions."

"What kind of questions?"

"You'd know that better than us. Meanwhile, we're handing this out to everyone in a six-block radius."

He passed me a sheet of standard typing paper, computer generated.

IMPORTANT MEMO! DISTRIBUTE IMMEDIATELY! There has been a rash of armed robberies in this part of Uptown New Orleans in the last several weeks. At least 4–5 have happened in our area alone. The perpetrators are Negro male juveniles, 12–16 years old in school type uniforms-white shirts and khaki pants.* They go about in groups of 2–4 and are armed with at least one blue steel revolver. The time frame of the robberies is after school until 8 P.M. They " case " the area first-walking or riding bikes up and down the block-then approach the intended victim with a question, i.e., What time is it? Victims have been walking home or sitting on t heir front porches. WE MUST BE VIGILANT! Do not allow these juveniles to engage you in conversation-this is a DELAY TACTIC to SET YOU UP AS THEIR NEXT VICTIM! Be even more careful getting in and out of cars and entering your home. If you see a suspicious group of juveniles as described above, call 911 immediately.* NOTE: Pants may be gray in color.

"We've already handed out over a hundred of them," Norm said.

"Okay."

We do like to feel we're useful. Still, I couldn't help but think of all the grocery-store ads rolled into cones and tucked into my fence out front, restaurant to-go menus and housepainting specials rubber-banded to my door handle, real estate fliers stuffed illegally in my mailbox. Guys got half a cent apiece to distribute these and lived off the three or four dollars a day the work netted them. A Active economy held aloft by its own bootstraps, one that few people noticed or gave thought to.

"I'll keep an eye out, Norm. That's really all anyone can do-even the police."

"Good enough." He stood. So did the others.

"Thank you, Mr. Griffin," Mr. Prue said.

"We appreciate this," his wife confirmed.

Pillar of my community, for sure.

Norm's son lingered behind.

"Something I can do for you, Raymond?"

"Nah." He stood watching my rear wall. Anything happened back there, it wouldn't get past him. "My civics teacher says it was someone named Lew Griffin who stopped the guy that shot all those people from buildings back in the sixties."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Says he hunted the guy down and threw him off the top of one of the buildings."

"I think I heard about that."

"Yeah. Lots going on back then." Raymond looked at me. His father called from outside. "Don't guess that was you, huh."

"Must have been another Lew Griffin."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's what I said."

I shut the door behind him and turned up the music again. Bach, a prelude and fugue, Wanda Landowska at her monster harpsichord, plucking the world back into order.

Visitors gone, Bat shot down the stairs and sat mewing, waiting impatiently for me to provide an appropriate lap. No question which Lew Griffin he wanted.

The one that was here.

What I was doing was counting, reduced by circumstance (liberals would say) from loftier aspirations-social conscience, the humanities, the pursuit of literature-to simple mathematics.

There were 3 of them. I'd been hit 9 times, kicked 4.1 had 1 loose tooth. It was 1 o'clock. This was, would have been, my 3 stop.

I was also remembering: my mind in defense breaking free, floating above it all, recalling all those other times. Thinking that this sort of thing never happened to Proust, never sullied his remembrances. Give me a madeleine any day.

Maybe the things that happen to us are things we make happen, things we somehow attract.

Maybe all failures are failures of will.

Maybe I ought to stop getting my butt kicked.

Not that I held it against them personally. Fifty-year-old guy wearing a tie and coat, guy no one ever saw before, looks like a cop but he's not or he'd be flashing ID, shows up in the neighborhood asking questions. What else he gonna be but bad news, a repo man, skip chaser, collector of some kind? Sure as hell ain't from the IRS. And looks like he might have a few dollars on him, weighing him down? Civic-minded young brothel's just naturally gonna help the man out, provide him some answers. Natural as rain.

But enough's enough.

It was a trick, a technique, I hadn't had occasion to use in years. Like all technique, at first it happened instinctively. Only later did I ask myself just what was occurring and how. Then I broke it down, from initial impulse or stimulus to response and final result, prodding at disjointed segments, plotting the curve. Building a grammar. It had to be reproducible.