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where it should have been.
    â€œDid you move this chair?” I asked Leon.
    â€œUh, no,” he said. “Was I supposed to?”
    I picked up the chair and checked the rug underneath it. The dents were deep. This chair lived here.
    I sat in the chair. If Leon looked straight ahead he saw the TV. But if
I
looked straight ahead I saw the bedroom.
    No. Not the bedroom. The bedroom window. I looked around, changed position. There was nothing to see from this chair except the bedroom window.
    I got up and went to the bedroom window. It had a little terrace that faced Bourbon Street. It was just big enough for two or three people to stand on. Next to it, coming up from the street, was a live oak tree. In the corner of the tiny terrace was a dead, potted bottle palm.
    I stepped through the window to the terrace. I stood still and quiet and closed my eyes. It was cold, and at first I shivered, but I breathed slowly until I wasn’t shivering anymore and I was just there.
    I heard cars far away. Sirens. Three blocks from here a Dalmatian-Lab mix barked, twice. I heard children crying. Bass-heavy rap shaking a car. The pop of a gun on North Rampart Street. The everyday sounds of the city.
    There was a clue here. I could feel it, like vertigo or a sunspot.
    Clues are the most misunderstood part of detection. Novice detectives think it’s about
finding
clues. But detective work is about
recognizing
clues.
    Clues are everywhere. But only some can see.
    I took a deep breath through my nose. I smelled food from the restaurant next door, smoke from a fireplace nearby, death, dirt from the potted plant—and something else. I breathed in again. Something grainy and earthy and good but musty, musky.
    I opened my eyes. I went to the corner of the terrace and pushed aside the dead palm. Behind it was a wooden bird feeder. Underneath was a little pile of black earth. I took a pinch of the earth and sniffed it.
    This was what I’d smelled. Decomposed sunflower seeds. The feeder had fallen off of the live oak tree next to it.
    â€œErk.”
    I looked up. In the tree, two or three feet away from me, was a small green parrot. He was about eight inches tall and a brilliant jungle green, with a creamy white beak. Under his wings two blue feathers peeked out, one on each side. His little feetgripped the branch, and he swayed slightly, as if he were drunk. But his eyes were sharp and sober.
    The bird cocked his head and looked at me.
    â€œErk?” he said.
    We looked at each other.
    â€œRestaurant’s closed, buddy,” I said. “Time to get a job.”
    But the bird didn’t move. He only looked at me with his funny little head moving from side to side. He looked like a clown with fat little clown pants on.
    Each clue you find is like a new pair of eyes. Now I looked around the street, and in the trees nearby I saw more birds: finches, pigeons, a female cardinal, a grackle on the ground by the door to the building. I hadn’t seen them before. But they were there.
    I went back inside.
    â€œHe fed birds,” I said to Leon. Leon was still on the sofa.
Love Connection
had morphed into
Family Feud
.
    Leon made a little face of disgust. People in New Orleans have a thing about birds.
    â€œOh. I forgot about that,” he said. “Those parrots. I think they’ve got some program going on to get rid of them. They’re an inverted species or whatever you call it.”
    â€œInvasive,” I said. “So are we.”
    â€œYeah. They eat crops,” Leon said.
    â€œUnlike us,” I said.
    He frowned. “They’re dirty,” he said. “They spread disease.”
    I looked at him.
    â€œThey’re from—” he began, then stopped. “They live in—”
    â€œI heard some of ’em are communists,” I said. “Watch out. Do you mind if I take fingerprints?”
    â€œFingerprints?” Leon said, confused. “They have