Free Messi@ by Andrei Codrescu Page B

Neither one of them heard the repeated click of Felicity’s Nikon only a few yards away in the parked Plymouth van.
    On the way back to the city, Felicity stopped for gas. When she pulled out of the Shell station, she thought that she recognized the brown, round face of the Pakistani in her rearview mirror. But then the red Olds fell back a couple of cars and she wasn’t sure. Being followed had so far been only a theoretical possibility in her budding detective career. Of course I’m being followed, she thought optimistically; it is the essence of the work. I follow, so I may be followed. Dictum. She repeated this mantra to herself, glancing anxiously in the rearview mirror, but she didn’t see the red Olds anymore. She was disappointed then. An unfollowed girl dick. Story of my life, she thought.
    And then she saw the Olds again, two cars behind. Life, she told herself, is quite simple, until it becomes complex, then simple again. Why should I be surprised that my instinct is right? Mullin is a reptile, and as such he stands for a principle, the reptile principle. Her reptile radar was flawless. And what is a reptile? she asked herself, making a surprise left onto a suburban side street. The big red car followed.
    A reptile is that which slithers while practicing the opposite of what it preaches. Most people lie, even Grandmère, bless her pure hard heart, but they lie innocently, as it were, out of necessity or self-preservation. A reptile lies with wicked pleasure; it spews oil as it lies; it creates conditions for evil. The Olds was now right behind her.
    The road she had taken cut through the heart of a vast Caucasian enclave, the repository of the decades-long white flight from the old city of New Orleans. This relatively new boulevard, crowded with Home Depots, Wal-Marts, Taco Bells, and Burger Kings, was already cracked and uneven, shoved up by the unsteady mud below. The Olds was still with her, and she could see its occupants quite clearly. The Pakistani was wearing shades. The driver had stripped down to a T-shirt that revealed two densely tattooed arms.
    PI Felicity wasn’t carrying her gun—there hadn’t been much point in taking one to a funeral. What did these goons of Mullin’s want with her? Why did they follow their boss to his dirty little assignation? If I were a reptile, thought Felicity, would I have myself followed and observed in the act? Maybe Mullin was such a perverted reptile that he couldn’t even enjoy filth without being watched. Or else these two had followed Mullin without his knowledge, for their own vile reasons, and had simply stumbled onto her. In that case, the creeps might not be out to get her. Maybe they just wanted the film.
    Felicity pulled into the gravel driveway of a house that sat on cement blocks in a futile effort to avoid the next flood. An American flag jutted out above a door with a David Duke for President sticker on it. An RV that must have cost three times what the house did sat majestically in the front yard, bearing the sticker IN CASE OF RAPTURE, THIS RV WILL BE UNMANNED. The Olds came to a crunchy stop behind Felicity.
    She waited as the two men got out simultaneously and walked toward her car. They were nearly there when the door of the house swung open and a bare-chested man bounced out and began firing a shotgun at them. Felicity ducked, and buckshot shattered her windshield. The bad guys ran back to their car and backed out, gravel flying. Felicity did the same. This time she followed the Olds, which was doing a determined eighty-five down the two-lane road.
    In the parking lot of the Clearview Shopping Mall the Olds came to a screeching stop in the shadow of Home Depot. Felicity was right behind it, squinting through her shattered windshield. She nearly hit the rear bumper before she, too, stopped. A man pushing a shopping cart full of flowerpots so large they obstructed his view bumped into her as she jumped out of the