The Second Chance Club by Jason Hardy

Author:Jason Hardy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN a product of hazard

Sometimes in the summer months we did our fieldwork at night. The temperature dipped after sunset, greatly decreasing your chances of dying of heatstroke under your bulletproof vest. This wasn’t to say that the nights were pleasant. Eighty-five with 100 percent humidity was the norm from May to August, and what you lost in heat by waiting till dusk you gained in mosquitoes. The best reason to go out at night was to see another side of offenders. People who stayed inside all day usually came out at night, and vice versa. The landscape changed. You saw different faces on the stoops as you dragged your Crown Vic from block to block.

Central City always buzzed after dark. The drug dealers worked the corners and the alleys. Ten-year-olds sped up the sidewalks on bicycles. Sixteen-year-olds slow-rolled down the streets hooting at girls or shouting insults at friends perched on the hoods of parked cars. The middle-aged people on the stoops drank beer. Little kids seated at their feet lapped at Push Pops and Tastee-Ice and bobbed their heads to the boom of house parties and car stereos and DJs set up on tailgates and truck beds. We always kept the windows down in the Crown Vic so that we didn’t miss anything. When we heard a siren we played the guessing game Cop Car or Ambulance?—although where you had one you almost always had the other.

The city’s most vocal critics, most of them local, often mention how rare it is to go to a New Orleans party and not hear a siren in the distance, as if our two specialties—fun and death—are doomed to share a wavelength, but Beth didn’t go in for any of that. When she heard the night music, she heard the city at its best. When she heard a siren, she heard lives being saved.

When we got to the Landry house, the brothers were sitting on the steps with their dogs. Once in a while neighbors would stop on their lawn for a beer. Most of the time the Landrys drank alone or with their mother. She was home that night, seated on the steps between her sons. She asked me what I thought of Ronald’s chances of beating the gun charge.

I’d already filled Beth in on this, and she took the liberty of answering for me. “He’s damn lucky. They don’t let gun stuff slide.”

“He didn’t know about the gun,” the Landrys’ mother said.

“If they let off all the people who say they didn’t know about the gun—”

The mother laughed. “You’ve got me there. But he’s my boy and I believe him.”

“I believe him, too,” Beth said. “And that’s a very good sign for him. As a rule I don’t believe anybody.”

The Landrys’ mother laughed again. Like her sons, she’d come to appreciate Beth’s sense of humor. “Y’all want to come in and see the puppies?” she said.

I was hoping for a quick stop, but Beth said that only a crazy person refused to go in and see the puppies, so I kept my mouth shut and followed her into the living room.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.