No One Left to Burn

All Rights Reserved © 2001 by Ronald R. Willoughby

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Contents

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Epilogue

1

She nibbled on her full, slightly pouty lips that seemed to beg crush me. Taking my hands in hers, she softly squeezed my fingers and slowly blinked her half-closed heavy lidded bedroom eyes. After looking me square in the face for just a moment she matter- of-factly told me that if everything went all right that night, she was going to take me to bed and fuck my brains out. It was not a new expression, I know, but the shock of it coming from such a sweet young thing proved exceedingly provocative and left me speechless with my mouth hanging open.

She was Meagan Burton, the luscious free-spirited daughter of John Burton, my most recently acquired client. Anxious, hand wringing Papa Burton had hired me to locate his other equally luscious daughter, Lila, who had disappeared earlier in the week. He was convinced that Lila might be in some kind of trouble. I had been in one of my skeptic moods, and I wasn’t so sure. But then I wasn’t her daddy.

And me? My name is Rick Stevens. For five years I’ve been a private detective and self-proclaimed master sleuth. I’m primarily a freelance insurance claims investigator but occasionally the finder of the lost. And sometimes, if business is really slow, I’ll gladly accept a commission to expose a wandering spouse and unmask the licentious paramour. But enough.

Meagan continued to hold my hand lightly in hers, and I thought I saw the edges of her mouth wrinkle with just the hint of a modest smile. I shut my mouth, licked my lips and thought about what she had said.

Now obviously I didn’t really believe what she had spoken was at all possible, except the part about taking me to bed. She would have little trouble in that regard. But I knew there was no way, no matter what she did, that she could evacuate my cranial gray matter by engaging me in a night-long stretch of intense, aggressive coitus. Although I did experience several spaced out sensations of light-headedness during the evening, those moments were fleeting and few in number, and I could easily attribute them to the wine we drank. Nonetheless, I truly appreciate anyone who would strive as she did to live up to such a personal and demanding commitment with such lustful puissance.

And I guess I’d have to say that things went all right with her that night because she sure as hell tried her level best to be loyal to her vow.

That was last night in Pont-Rouge, Louisiana. Now I was alone in my dim car reminiscing and heading east toward New Orleans and home.

The rain that so violently blew across my path forty miles east of Pont-Rouge had just about stopped as I cruised past the sign that signaled the New Orleans City limits. A cluster of scudded clouds had hovered over my car for the last fifty or so soggy miles. The churning, rolling mass had stayed directly over me as I drove, as though the car and the low hanging gloom were hooked together with a tether. Occasionally the dense, dark, layered stratum would relieve itself and saturate the land beneath.

The apricot colored sun was again losing its scheduled struggle to stay above the horizon. The struggle that had, thank God, been lost day after day since time immemorial. Jesus, imagine if you will, the sun always glowing. No nights, no sunsets, no speckled, starry cover under which the young and the older, if they are so inclined, can park and spark and do whatever comes naturally. But old Sol wasn’t yet ready to throw in the towel. The sun’s streaking rays seemed to be grasping out toward the wet blacktop before me, searching for a handhold in its final attempt to remain above the peripheral rim.

Unlike the tiger paws of the Uniroyal tire that clawed into the road for traction, this crepuscular light had nothing to hold on to, so the gleaming streamers bounced back up from the glossy pavement to completely enshroud everything on the road with an immense blanket of saffron yellow.

The drive back to New Orleans from Pont-Rouge had been dull and uneventful, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that the highway was narrow and winding, the ride would have been a real snoozer. I tooled along past the international airport exit and it occurred to me how light the traffic was for a Friday night.

The lateness of the day allowed me to miss the irritations and frustrations of rush hour. That experience on I-10, whether heading east or west, usually has traffic locked up tighter than a dog trying to shit a peach pit. It’s not that I’d had the foresight to plan my arrival at that opportune time. It was just the series of events that caused a delayed arrival. The expression rush hour traffic is a real dichotomy. There is certainly no rushing during rush hour traffic. Instead, the streets are usually bumper-to- bumper with cars moving in slowly creeping lines.

The beautiful city of New Orleans has only one main route of passage to get from the west side of town to the east side of town,

and that is the Interstate. Any perturbation, minor as it might be, caused by one of the jillion cars traveling the super highway, can wreak havoc on the flow of traffic. Something as common as a car with a flat tire can bring all traffic lanes to a complete standstill for miles. Then, and this really pisses you off if you’re in a hurry, for some reason all lanes going the opposite direction slow down to rubber-neck to see what the shit’s going on. Luckily, I had none of that and I traveled my route unimpeded to the exit off I-10 at Claiborne Avenue.

A blue-gray Cadillac of recent vintage caught my attention and I watched it with casual interest through the side view mirrors and through my rain splashed rear window. The Cadillac had been behind me and within sight for several miles. I had first seen the car sitting on the side of the road right after I’d pulled back onto the highway after making a pit stop at an Exxon station outside Luling. I hadn’t really paid that much attention to the car. Only enough to register its being there, even though it pulled out onto my lane just after I passed it and for several lengthy stretches, it had been just the two of us on the road. It’s interesting how the subconscious mind can weed out, with only slight perception, issues that it doesn’t consider relevant. But as I got closer to the central business district, the traffic began to build up and I noticed that the Cadillac was specifically maneuvered so that it managed to remain within a half dozen car lengths of me, even when I was weaving in and out to change lanes jockeying for position.

I was continuing to view the car behind me with increasing interest when I pulled off the Interstate onto Claiborne Avenue and then onto Canal Boulevard. My curiosity heightened even more when the headlights of the Cadillac remained in my rear view mirror as it also took the exit off the Interstate and followed the same route that I took onto Canal Boulevard. I won’t say that

I thought I was being followed, but it did occur to me that the envelope of coincidence was certainly being crowded. I pressed down on the accelerator and my car sped forward. As my speed suddenly increased, the car behind me faded slightly and then it too speeded up, closed the gap between us and then stayed with me. I eased up on the gas pedal and let my car slow down a bit. The car behind me also dropped back, but not nearly far enough back to suit me.

Up ahead I saw my turn off Canal Boulevard onto Robert E. Lee Boulevard coming. I had time to plan my next move, and I knew I was going to resolve the issue. I waited until the very last possible instant to make my turn. Without touching the brake pedal, which would have sent a bright red signal to the car behind, I spun the steering wheel hard to the right and held on with both hands. Luckily, there were no oncoming cars on Robert E. Lee, and I made the corner with only a little fishtailing of my rented Town Car. In the rearview mirror I saw the Cadillac shoot past the intersection without slowing, and I slightly relaxed the death grip I had on the steering wheel. Then I heard the shrill squealing sound of locked wheels skidding on the wet pavement. Shit, I thought. I scrunched my eyes shut and rubbed my hand over my face.

As I traveled down Robert E. Lee I increased my speed and closely monitored the rear view mirror with rapid, surprisingly nervous glances to see if the Cadillac backed up to make the turn. While I was watching the road behind me, my mind was aswarm with thought. Why would anyone want to tail me? If someone did want to, how would they know this rented car? Perhaps I had been followed all the way to Pont-Rouge and back. But why? What could the reason possibly be?

I was deep in speculation, trying to reckon with some degree of intellect what this strange episode might hold that was quickly

developing and could very soon befall me. I quickly thought about some of the cases I had worked in the past. Perhaps it’s an angry perp? Well, not likely, if they’re still in the can, and as far as I knew they were. An angry client? Well, not likely. They were all what I would call more than well satisfied with my results. Perhaps an angry husband? Well, I won’t rush to say not likely. The insurance claim investigations I do are generally done during the day. And so I have, on occasion, been required to call upon the lady of a house whilst her breadwinner is away. Now, as closely as I rallied my thoughts, there had been only a time or two when my search for the truth resulted in, well, you know what they say, don’t you? Discretion is the better part of valor. Yes, now you remember. Well, yours truly has an abundance of both. So I feel confident in saying not likely.

I had driven about two blocks on Robert E. Lee before the Cadillac reappeared. But now it seemed to be on a very serious mission. At least it looked that way to me, because it was moving way too fast for the residential area we were in. It was in short order, almost kissing my rear bumper.

We traveled like that for another block with him drafting behind me. NASCAR driver and super star Richard Petty he ain’t, I thought. I tried to remain cool-headed while I rapidly glanced from the road in front and into the mirror at the car behind and then back again. But my alter ego, my evil twin like the one that lurks within each of us, would have no part of it. The other me, the one who doesn’t always remain calm and cool- headed, had become extremely miffed by the closeness of the car and the feeling that the other driver’s beady eyes were burning into the back of my skull.

I tapped the brake pedal in hopes that the Cadillac would back off. The flashing brake lights must have startled the shit out of the driver, because he set the binders and locked his wheels. The car skidded almost a full circle before he regained control of it, straightened it out, and was once again in hot pursuit.

The headlights on the car suddenly disappeared completely from my rearview mirror but moved as a blur in my side view mirror. It had swung into the left lane and I thought it was going to pass. As it came up along side me, it seemed to slow down a bit. It was too damn close to me. I could have reached out with my hand and touched its shiny blue paint.

With my first fleeting glance at the car beside me, I saw only an ugly but gleeful grin on the face of the man in the passenger seat who was peering back at me. I quickly turned my attention back to the road in front of me. I hit the brake a touch to slow down and eased my car farther over to the right side of the street. I wanted to give the lunatic more room and myself a little clearance as well. My peripheral vision detected significant movement in the other car. I took a second look at what was going on in the car that I thought was passing, but which obviously wasn’t, and couldn’t believe my goddamn eyes. The hair on my neck stood up stiff and my skin suddenly felt prickly as if I had just touched a bare, hot, electrical wire. I wouldn’t have been any more shocked if someone had shoved an electric cattle prod up my ass.

The window on the passenger side of the Cadillac was down, and not more than half a foot away from my left ear lobe was the business end of a 12-gauge shotgun. The muzzle of the gun that held my attention was, without a doubt, the biggest hole I’d looked into from six inches out in a long time. From where I was sitting, my point of view made the hole look almost big enough to crawl into.

What happened next was purely reflex action. My right foot slammed down on the brake pedal with almost enough force to

jam it through the floorboard and out onto the pavement below. My left foot twisted, and a streak of pain shot up to my scalp like a bolt of lightning. I tried desperately to free my left foot, which was bent at an odd angle, and caught under the brake pedal.

With total abandonment of my imprisoned pedicle, I dove to my right. As I lunged, I did it fast. And I did it without thinking. My dive was fast enough that I couldn’t stop myself, and my head crashed into the not-too-well padded dashboard. My forehead hit at an oblique angle and ricocheted off with a rebound that nearly ripped my noggin from my body.

The shotgun report that rang out in my tightly closed car was ear splitting. The charge delivered by the 12-gauge, blasted through the left window, passed through the space where my head had been only an instant before, and smashed out the right side window. The blast left the rancid odorous smell of spent gunpowder and the offensive stench of smoldering upholstery trailing in its flaming wake. Glass whistled around the inside of my car like mosquitoes buzzing over a stagnant Louisiana swamp in the suffocating, humid heat of summer.

My car swerved to the right completely out of control. No one was at the wheel. It hit the curb with sufficient force to fly back to the center of the street like it was attached to a length of bungee cord. It skittered across the centerline and smashed into the side of the Cadillac, sending out loud, unnerving sounds of ripping metal and shattering glass.

Again my car hurtled toward the curb, only this time with even greater velocity. This time it didn’t bounce back. Instead, the lumbering Town Car leaped the curb and crashed through a beautiful wrought iron fence. The car completed a rhythmic pirouette during its passage through the air and just missed a wide-open gate by only a few feet. It turned sideways as it skewed across the front lawn of a very large white frame house, skidded through a sea of lush St. Augustine grass that became uprooted, then came to rest in the middle of a lavish rose bed. The horticultural display, that must have taken many years and as many thorn pricks to cultivate, was instantly destroyed.

I listened to the squeal of tires when the Cadillac sped off, then I lay still with my eyes closed for what I thought was just a few moments. My conception of the time that passed was flawed. I had blacked out and what I had thought was just a few moments was really several minutes.

The black, murky cloak of unconsciousness began to slowly lift, and I found myself draped limply across the front seat of my car. I rolled my head over the edge and spit out the blood that filled my mouth. I lay there motionless, staring at a wet, red spot on the floor mat, and pondered the question, Well, Jesus Christ, Rick, what do you think? What the fuck is going on? Not once in the flickering of time that I lay there did the thought pass through my mind that if someone really had their mind set on dusting me, they could have easily shoved that shotgun into the car again and done it right. My mouth filled with blood again, and I got sick. Yes, I did. I got nasty sick. I puked, and then I puked some more. I puked until every muscle in my body was trembling. Each convulsion caused a burning pain in my ribs where my chest had slammed into the steering wheel. The piercing sting brought tears to my eyes. Finally, when there was nothing left to expel, I very gently blotted my swollen lips with my coat sleeve and mentally wrote off my new Austin Reed jacket.

I groped slowly for the door handle and pulled myself up and out of the car. My legs were as wobbly as a newborn colt’s, and I felt myself going down. I had to grab hold of the side of my car to remain standing. It would have been very easy to go on down and

stay there. That’s how I felt and that’s what I thought I really wanted to do, but something inside of me made my grip on the car tighten and I remained upright. After I had several gulps of fresh, moist air, I began to feel a little better. I hadn’t realized how tense I’d been during the fracas, but it began to come to me while I was standing next to my car looking down at my feet and occasionally spitting on my shoes. Slowly, like a fresh breeze, relief began to come over me. I felt the burdensome weight of fear lessen. I rolled my head from side to side and flexed my shoulders. And then, for the first time since I’d turned off Canal Boulevard, I started to relax. Soon I could think about what had just happened to me without my hands beginning to shake and my stomach trying to rebel. I was knee deep in the mounded bed of badly battered roses, doing my version of Lamaze, when I turned away from my car and began to survey the results of my recent encounter.

For a few moments I thought about what had happened out there in the street, on the usually serene Robert E. Lee Boulevard. I knew there had been other times when I had come close to buying the farm, but not as close as tonight. I also knew that if I’d been slower to duck or if that shooter’s reflexes had been quicker or his trigger finger a little more nimble, I would be growing cold on the stained front seat of the car that was holding me up.

Then, if things weren’t already bad enough, I’ll be a son of a bitch if it didn’t start to rain again. Oh well, I thought, what the shit. Nobody promised me a rose garden.

2

My car turned to its left after it jumped the curb and struck the fence broadside. All that remained of the once ornate and elegant wrought iron enclosure was a twisted, mangled mess. Two long, deep ruts gouged into the rich green lawn, and the twin furrows left by the car tires led straight into the elevated rose bed. The flowers still standing would never be straight again. The stems were either bent or broken and the buds and blossoms dangled at odd angles. They hung limply, looking as if they had been without water for weeks in the blazing sun. Right in the middle of this botanical setting, like a majestic king on his regal throne, sat my car. Andy Warhol couldn’t have designed it any better.

Foul smelling smoke from the smoldering upholstery drifted slowly out through the two missing windows. Crimson blood, supplied by my split and swollen lips, and by what felt like slightly loose incisors, was smeared all over the front seat. I was surprised at the amount of my life’s vital juice that had been lost. It looked as if the proverbial sacrificial lamb had been led to the slaughter. A clammy chill came over me as I realized that was just about what had happened, only instead, the offering had almost been me—not Lamb Chop.

From a distance of what I guessed to be maybe five or six blocks away, I could hear the eerie Gestapo-like sound of a police car siren. That didn’t take long, I thought. I never did see anyone come out of their house, but then, perhaps there was no need to. When you think about it, a 12-gauge shotgun blast, two cars bouncing off each other, and one car thrown crashing through an iron fence, I’m sure all created sufficient commotion to cause people to peek out from behind the security of their mini-blinds.

I was surprised though, and somewhat disappointed, that no one ventured out to scrutinize my well being because I could have been really fucked up.

The Cadillac kept going after our encounter, so my car was the only one at the scene. When the people who must have squinted out saw me out of my car and meandering about on unbroken limbs, they must have figured I didn’t need any emergency first aid. They considered the prudent thing to do was stay inside and call 911. They may have been right.

In just a few moments the police car came to an abrupt stop in front of the house on whose lawn my car was resting. Two men, one in uniform and one in civvies, crawled out from the front seat of the squad car. A third rather heavyset man in street clothes struggled out from the back seat. I recognized that man as Dan Marland.

Dan was a staff reporter for the Times Picayune newspaper and a darn good one at that. We had been pretty good friends ever since I opened my P.I. office in New Orleans. As a matter of fact, we were good enough friends that I had given him a key to my apartment. Dan’s two-year-old marriage had fallen apart about six months ago when he came home from work early one day and found his wife with her head between the legs of one of the tennis instructors from the Metairie Country Club. He cancelled his

membership and moved into a small apartment on the east side of Slidell, which is about forty miles east of the city. That’s a long drive if you have a hot, live one on the string, so, if I’m out of town and Dan has a hot date lined up, he sacks out at my place.

Dan’s a little younger than I am. The tale of the tape would show him to be thirty-two, standing six foot three and weighing in at two hundred forty pounds. He was built like a line backer. He graduated from the University of New Orleans School of Liberal Arts with a degree in English. A very good school, but it had no football team. If he’d attended a school with a program, he would have been a star football player and most likely would have been drafted into the NFL. The girls adored him. He was a big, lovable teddy bear with a baby face.

The first time I met Dan was the Monday before Mardi Gras about four years ago. We had been sitting at the bar in a little joint on Royal Street yakking about how lousy the fucking New Orleans Saints had been playing. After about three hours of swigging well Scotch we hooked up with two real fine looking babes who’d been sitting in the corner giving us the eye. We invested in a couple of drinks for them, and then the four of us took off for my apartment with great expectations. I was driving. We hadn’t gone more than a half-mile or so when I heard Dan’s explosive, reverberating bellow from the darkness of the back seat.

Holy shit! I don’t believe this! This girl has a dick! Jesus Christ, Rick, they’re fucking guys!

You may think us a couple of dumb shits, but don’t judge us until you’ve seen one of those beauties. Female impersonators who work the French Quarter can be damned good looking. Good looking enough that you can’t tell them from the real thing. They have nice legs and shapely bodies; they even have breasts for Chrissakes. Anyway, we beat the shit out of ‘em and dumped their asses at the Greyhound bus station on Loyola Avenue. We laugh about that night every time we’re together.

The officer coming from the passenger side of the black and white was Sergeant Alfonse Guidry of the New Orleans Police Department. If you took away the badge, his being a policeman would be the last occupation you’d guess for Guidry. He just didn’t look like a cop. Now I’m not sure how a cop is supposed to look, but whatever it is, as far as I was concerned, he didn’t have it. His face was slightly pocked with acne scars from his youth. He was probably thirty pounds overweight, but down here a little extra weight is not that unusual. One of the things New Orleans is famous for is its cuisine. The savory fried foods, which are indigenous to the bayou country, have caused many of those less attuned to the need for healthy eating habits to balloon at the waistline. His hair had thinned enough that the short-cropped style he wore made him look like the stereotypical Franciscan friar.

Guidry was strictly business and couldn’t wait to get to the action, whatever it was. He didn’t care. Whatever it was he was ready. He was also an obnoxious cocksucker. If I had to guess why, I’d say that it was most likely because he was still pissed off about being passed over for promotion. He had always fancied himself as the prize of the NOPD, and when Bob Arceneaux moved up to Lieutenant ahead of him, it really blew his mind. Ever since, he’s been a real sour motherfucker with a bad attitude, which are only two of the many reasons that he and I don’t get along. Like I said, he thinks he’s God’s gift overall, and I think he’s a first class asshole.

The uniformed cop was a rookie. I had seen him around a few times but I didn’t really know him. As they approached me I could tell by the way Guidry was hobbling, that his feet, made flat by

walking the street beat for so many years, were really giving him trouble. When he got close enough to see me standing next to the Lincoln, he formed a contemptuous sneer on his face that could have meant either hate or happiness; his hate for me or his happiness at seeing me in this situation. I know that someday, if the two of us keep brushing shoulders, I’m going to smear that sneer of his, and smear it right off his fucking face.

Well, well, well. I’ll be damned, he muttered. If it isn’t Rick Stevens, the world’s most fearless private detective. Just can’t keep your nose clean can you? What is it this time? You been in the bottle?

Can it, fat head, I said. This isn’t what you think it is. Some guy just tried to pop me. I’m lucky to be standing here talking to you.

I took a step back and then leaned back another. If the size of Guidry’s nose was any indication of its smelling abilities all could be lost. My body was still trying to chemically process all of the hooch I’d had to drink in the past twenty-four hours, and I knew that I must smell like a gin mill. If Guidry thought he could stick me with a DUI he’d be fucking deliriously ecstatic.

Well I’m glad someone was lucky. He said it with an annoying syrupy tone that made me feel like he really didn’t mean it.

As a general rule, I’m a pretty patient person, but Guidry possesses an inherent talent for trying that patience. He is especially good at it because he does it purposely. In legalese, that means with intent and malice aforethought. In short, I think he gets his jollies pissing me off. I was trying as best I could to hold on to the last few strands of my self-control. But alas, as hard as I tried, this evening’s events were just too much to cope with. I lost it. I stepped up real close to Guidry, disregarding the stench of booze I took with me. Our faces were almost touching when I growled, Guidry, you bastard! You dumb ignorant bastard! Someday I’m going to mash that huge beak you call a nose all over your goddamned face! His eyes only blinked and the sneer never wavered but remained pasted on his thick lips. He didn’t rattle easily.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see his companion nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, not knowing for sure what he should do. His movements were animated as he started toward where we were standing. His lower jaw was gaping and his mouth was in contention for being the biggest opening seen tonight, considering I’d seen St. Peter in the muzzle of that blunderbuss which had taken out the windows of my car and almost me with them. That is a slight stretch, but he did look befuddled.

Guidry took a step back after my short tirade, then, reached for me as he spoke. All right, Stevens, you son of a bitch, let’s go! He glanced at the rookie patrolman who had just managed to get his mouth shut, but who still appeared wide-eyed from all the current happenings, and snapped, Freddie, you drive. Me and Mr. Stevens will ride in the back.

Me in the back seat with Guidry? No fucking way. He would love to get me in the back seat with him. That way, if I even looked at him the wrong way or made an innocent move like to scratch my crotch or something, he’d have all the excuse he’d need to beat the shit out of me.

My jostle with Guidry had taken maybe two or three minutes. Four max. During this time Dan had been ambling around the scene snapping pictures. I mention this only because as I glanced over at Dan, who was now coming back to the police car, Guidry jerked hard on my right arm. As I spun my head around he jerked again, a little harder this time and snarled Goddamn you Stevens; I said let’s go! I’m taking your ass in. I’m tired of fucking with you.

Now to give you a little insight into part of my hidden personality, if there is something that really riles the shit out of me, it’s being pushed around by some cop who thinks he can take advantage of his salary-paying public. Alfonse Guidry is a cop who’s like that. Unfortunately, the NOPD has more than their fair share of pricks like Sergeant Guidry. I roughly snatched my arm away from his grasp and mimicked his stupid sneer as I said, Keep your goddamned hands off the threads, you tub of shit!

His apathetic sneer turned into a triumphant smile as he reached for me again. This is just what I’ve always wanted on you, Stevens. Now you’re going to top it all off by adding resisting arrest to the rest of the shit I’m going to charge you with. This must be my lucky day!

Son of a bitch! How I hated this asshole. I knew what I was about to do was wrong and could possibly get me into a ton of trouble; maybe even cost me my license. I didn’t really want to do it. Yes, I did. You bet your ass I wanted to do it. Dan saw what was about to happen and got his camera up just as my overhand right caught Guidry flush on the nose. Always before, only the urge, but now, reality. It mashed! As the blow landed the entire area was illuminated by the bright resplendence of Dan’s camera flash, and for an instant, I was blinded. Slowly my vision returned. When I regained my sight and my surroundings were discernable, I saw that blood had gone everywhere, Guidry had gone down, and Freddie had gone white. The fact that Freddie had gone white was the most startling, though, because you see, the rookie cop was black.

Dan and I went over to the squad car and got into the back seat. Since the time the police arrived, Dan hadn’t said a word. Now he looked over at me with a broad panoramic smile and said, Beautiful, Rick. Absolutely spectacular.

I faked a half-assed smile back at him, although I was thinking that I might have blown it really good this time. Too late. I stuck my head out the car window and called to Freddie, who was still trying desperately to get Sergeant Guidry on his feet, Central lockup if you please.

3

I leaned back into the cushion of the rear seat of the police car and tried to relax. It took awhile, but finally I was able to put my brief skirmish with Guidry out of my mind. I watched the remnants of the beaded raindrops that slid slowly down the car’s windshield. They very quickly changed from a liquid spherical shape, to a wet flat form and then just to a misty splatter. I thought how sudden it was all happening. Think about it and you’ll see what I mean. Having trouble? If you can’t visualize it happening then try to hear it. Listen. Pop! Splat! Pop! Splat! Pop! Splat! Nothing yet you say? I told you it was fast. I also thought about how other things in our daily spiritual, emotional and physical experiences could change suddenly. Some of the changes are for the good and, sadly, some of the changes are for the not so good. I focused my eyes past the slithering water trails on the glass and looked out into the silent darkness at nothing in particular.

My thoughts drifted back over some of the many events of the past thirty-six hours and how they too, those many chance circumstances, had been the cause or effect of sudden changes.

The morning I started work on the Burton caper began like another one of those beautiful August days in New Orleans. As I strode through the Central Business District, I felt the warm radiant rays of the early morning sun as it erased the remains of the previous night’s semi-liquid fog. The deep blue, unclouded sky was clear of smog and filled with an abundance of clean, fresh air. I must add that it was also filled with an abundance of pigeons. Swooping, diving and gliding pigeons. These feathered critters can, in their own way, create quite a significant pollution problem. We who are earthbound must be alert and agile when strolling the sidewalks in the Central Business District. You must watch where you walk and where you stand if you pause to wait for a light or bus. What I’m talking about here is an abundance of bird shit. A fowl, nonchalantly roosting on the front ledge of a building, can literally scatter bomb the area with fecal matter.

It seemed to me however, that no one noticed the peril, except me that is, or cared about it for that matter. For in spite of the hazards, the sidewalks were elbow to elbow with an infinite number of high-stepping people.

Some were bright eyed and snappily dressed, and they looked like they might be young office employees scurrying on their way to their tenth floor offices to the jobs they liked so much. Some were not as bright-eyed and looked a lot less exuberant, more like they were on their way to jobs that they really thought should be taken and shoved somewhere. Others were shoppers with excitement glowing on their faces, showing the hope that what they wanted to buy was still in stock and that their size hadn’t been sold out. I saw shoppers who had lines of worry across their brows and a concerned look in their tired eyes. These are a special group of buyers who are bound by a common thread. One in particular caught my eye. As she trod past me I could see the despair in her face. I suspected she was wondering how she would fare the rest of the week after she spent her last twenty dollars at the Payless Shoe store on the small, unsuspecting but eager child

she dragged along to ensure a good fit. Some I saw, but thank God far less in number, were the forlorn homeless who felt miserable and without hope but didn’t know for sure why or how it had come to happen. But they weren’t high stepping. They had very likely spent the entire morning leaning against the same building wall, their schedule for the day already set just like the day before, nothing to do and nowhere to go. Sad but true. And then there were those you wouldn’t ever want to find yourself alone with in a dark alley.

This conglomeration of humanity with its multifarious ideas and emotions and goals and values has, by necessity, learned to co-exist. Particular ideologies have been blended, stirred and steeped and when the percolation is complete, the product is, for the most part, a society of reasonably stable individuals with a common goal. That goal is to live a comfortable and satisfying way of life. Not an unobtainable objective by any means. Not all who try are victorious in their endeavor, but those who do succeed have done so because they mustered the fortitude and possessed the stick-to-itiveness to put up with the daily grind and hassle, and they, having set their sights on the center ring of their success target, have become willing participants in the hustle and bustle that are two of the necessary and accepted constituents of our cultural evolution.

I must tell you that I thoroughly enjoy my current life style. Yes, I know, there are some areas that I would agree have some room for improvement. But who among us could honestly say otherwise. But if I had to rate it on a scale from one to ten, it would come in as a strong eight. Therefore, my involvement in winning that elusive and often seemingly futile contest to achieve the idyllic utopia is this: the hustle I occasionally have, but the bustle, well, that I merely look at.

I approached my office, which is a one-man operation located on the second floor of the Spenser Building, at the corner of Baronne and Gravier streets, and as I did, I looked up at the frosted glass panel of the heavy oak door. Across the panel in two inch, bold, black script was painted, R. Stevens, Private Investigations. The R, which you already know stands for Rick, is what my friends call me. People who are not my friends, and that number seems to increase daily at an astonishing rate, call me various other names. Monikers like prick, asshole, fuck head, et cetera. Some of the etceteras are really so crass that I’d rather not even mention them in this penning.

Although being a private eye has sometimes had its bad moments, and sometimes its bad days and sometimes its bad weeks, the past five years that I have been at this job have reinforced my convictions of a couple of things. First of all, it beats the hell out of working the Special Intelligence Detachment for the military police, which I did for three years while I was in Uncle Sam’s Army. Secondly, but with a few exceptions that are, namely, fame, fortune, and an almost never ending source of chicks, I enjoy private investigations work almost as much as I enjoyed my four years with the Dallas Cowboys. Well, maybe I don’t really enjoy P-eyeing more. Maybe its just that back then, when I was with the Cowboys, what I didn’t enjoy at all was dragging my weary ass out of bed on Monday mornings after a game on Sunday. You talk about hurting. Shit. I used to ache so bad I swear I could feel my hair growing. Like microscopic drills they were, as each little strand of bristle augured its way up through my skin. And each week it seemed, as the season progressed, it got harder to get up on Monday morning than it had been the previous week. Finally, the coup d’etat! It got to the point toward the end of the season where nothing would get up. I know if you think about that you’ll know what I mean. Nothing would get up. To say that this physical malady played havoc with my social affairs would be the understatement of the year.

Perchance you’ve never taken much time to think about it, but as you will notice, there is a vast difference in the meaning of a statement just by the way you arrange the same five words.

For example, let us say that you have a problem if it’s hard to get up. But believe me bucko you have no idea what real problems are until you’ve experienced a situation when you are with a beautiful, sexual woman, in the proper setting with candle light and champagne and you fail to get it up hard. Like I said before, you’ve probably not given it too much thought. And now that I have, I guess I’d have to agree with your time management technique.

Pro football is definitely a rough, bruising, cod-jarring sport. Well, no shit. Just pause for a moment and consider all the safety equipment that is necessary to play for Chrissake. First of all there is the scientifically engineered plastic helmet that is constructed of a molded chemical compound strong enough that almost allows it to stop the slug from a thirty ought six. It has a steel grid like apparatus mounted across the face area to prevent the old schnoz from getting whacked. Looking out from the inside of it is like looking out through jail cell bars. And that, if the truth were known, is what a lot of the players should be doing.

The helmet is obviously a piece of gear that is worn to protect your head and also any brains you might have inside—although there couldn’t be too many in there, because if there were, you wouldn’t be out on the field in the first place. You would be up in the stands drinking a beer and watching the game.

A form fitting plastic mouthpiece must be inserted to prevent irrevocable damage to the lips, teeth and tongue. If forgotten for

only one play it is quite possible that the girls you date might find your kissing technique to be a real turn off.

Shoulder pads are strapped on that cause the wearer to instantly bulk up to gargantuan proportions. Then there are the hip pads and the thigh pads that protect the tender areas of bone and muscle that are the points of contact when the body is flung at another player with relentless, careless abandon. We must not forget the metal knee braces that some wear to prevent the hinged limb from bending in the wrong direction and which work as designed most of the time, but not always. Oh yeah, let’s not forget to remember the jock strap and the very crucial nut cup.

So those who say pro football is a tough way to make a buck are right on. The game can and often does result in fractured fibulae or cracked clavicles or any one of the many other physical and muscular mutilations that are possible when the human body is subjected to such