All the Devil's Creatures by J.D. Barnett

around him in a suffocating miasma. Most of the houses stood empty, many a kilter, with the sinister FEMA markings on their doors—circled ‘x’ with numbers indicating the date someone searched the house (often a week or more after the storm) and the number of bodies found inside.
    When he made his way into wealthy, suburban Lakeview—Eileen’s neighborhood—he soon felt lost in the destroyed wasteland. Here, the devastation was total. No landmarks, few street signs still standing. The land once belonged to Lake Pontchatrain, and the Lake had exacted revenge. But the city (or, more likely, the property owners), had cleared most the rubble from the lots, and signs of stubborn rebuilding pierced the desolate emptiness of the flat moonscape.
    The darkness threatened to take him when he crossed the Industrial Canal into the Lower Ninth Ward. The land in the shadow of the levee breach looked scoured, worse than Lakeview. Further down river, a few lots were cleared but many more were piled high with ruins and debris. No signs of progress, no signs of life. Except—on a single block of Urquhart Street, a pair of shotgun cottages, recently reconstructed and raised high off the ground, with lights on. A middle aged black man waved down at him from the porch of one as he passed.
    He waved back. He had been numb and distracted (
Janie, the baby
) when the storm hit and hadn’t registered much emotion. No sense letting it get to him now.
    But back in the French Quarter, thinking back to that Ninth Ward stalwart on his raised porch …
    Marisol said, “Bourbon Street hasn’t changed.”
    They walked past a seedy little strip club, bouncer standing outside with a slutty girl on his arm, beckoning to every male that passed by. “I guess not,” Geoff said, but he knew that in subtle ways, the infamous street was different. At barely eight o’clock the crowd already had a sinister look that wouldn’t have come out till the wee hours in the old days when Geoff lived in the city. This early, the street should be full of retired couples off the cruise ships, families out to dinner, and conventioneers from around the country. But post-Katrina, immigrant laborers—and the rough men they worked for—trolled the street for flesh. As if the storm washed away the naughty-innocent adult playground patina that had built up over the decades of the tourist-based economy, and the working city returned—an open port standing on the edge of dangerous waters.
    They walked over a block to Royal Street.
    “Thanks for agreeing to come down on such short notice.”
    “No problem, Waltz. Thanks for the opportunity.”
    Royal boasted a few more tourists and locals—families and couples out to dinner. Some of the old haunts like Irene’s looked crowded, but the lines weren’t as long as he remembered.
    He paused at a sidewalk cafe in Pirate’s Alley. “T-Jacques won’t go on till midnight. What say we stop here for a drink before dinner?”
    She arched her eyebrows and walked in front of him through the open doorway to the bar. “What are you having?”
    “Sazarac—but I can get these.”
    She looked at him over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ll expense it.”
    He sat at an iron table on the sidewalk across from the cathedral garden. A few Goth kids lounged around—as if they had finally won their battle with the tourists for control of this end of the Quarter. She returned with the drinks—two sazaracs.
    “You ever had one of these?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Hope you like licorice.” He raised his glass slightly. “
Salud
. I only drink these in New Orleans.”
    She sipped. “Mmm, tasty. Bittersweet.” Geoff noticed a droplet of amber liquid clinging to her dark painted lower lip after she put down her glass. She dabbed it with a cocktail napkin and said: “So, Waltz. What are we out to accomplish tonight?”
    Each sip of the strong liquor brought Geoff closer to a pleasant numbness her question threatened to pierce.