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interest of
the person he was trying to protect, namely me.
    If that was the case and it actually had been
reported in the newspaper, maybe it would point me to the correct
place. I knew that idea was full of if’s and maybe’s, but it was
really my best option at this point. However, it was also something
that wasn’t going to happen at this hour. It would have to wait
until well after sunrise when I took my planned trip to the New
Orleans Public Library because the paper I needed would be nearly a
week old, and that would probably be the only place I could get my
hands on it, if at all.
    I actually felt my shoulders fall in a
physical response to the realization. The growing weariness had
been held at bay by sheer will, and that was now crumbling in the
face of failure. The extra high dose of aspirin I had taken wasn’t
helping either. While it was only doing a little to dull the edge
on my headache, it was definitely going a long way toward enhancing
my exhaustion. I caught myself yawning as I stood at the payphone
and knew what little energy I had left was draining from me as if
someone had just pulled a cork to let it out.
    Now that I had to postpone this nocturnal
quest, my thoughts were relegated to returning to my motel room, so
I could at least try to get a few hours sleep. I ripped the pages
from the phone book and stuffed them into my pocket, just in case,
then turned and started back toward my car. Before I made it as far
as the front bumper I stifled two more eye-squinting yawns.
    I stopped in my tracks and sighed heavily,
rubbed my forehead for a moment, then turned and aimed myself at
the door of the mini-mart. If I was even going to make it back to
the motel in one piece, I was going to need a cup of coffee.
     
    * * * * *
     
    “I jus’ started ‘em
fresh,” the man behind the counter offered as he watched me head
for the coffeemakers. “Dey should be ready in jus’ a coupl’a
minutes.”
    “Thanks,” I replied, giving him a nod as I
continued over to the stand where the brew was streaming from a
stained filter basket into an equally soiled carafe.
    Using what I saw as a judge, it was a safe
bet the coffee wasn’t going to be top-notch, so I pulled one of the
large cups from the stack and started prepping it with sugar
packets. After dumping in six, re-examining the size of the vessel
and adding another three, I began rooting through a tray of
flavored creamers. After finding a half-dozen that matched, I lined
them up then started peeling back the tops and dumping them in.
    The fatigue had now worked itself into every
nook and cranny of my being, so by the time I picked up the fourth
creamer, my hands had decided not to operate in accordance with
what my brain was telling them to do. Before I could manage to tear
back the foil top, I fumbled the small plastic container, and it
fell from my hand then rolled across the aisle floor. I turned and
knelt down to retrieve the escapee, and when I did, my eyes caught
a silvery glint of light bouncing from a somewhat familiar
shape.
    Wrapping one hand around the fugitive
condiment, I pushed my glasses up onto my nose with the other and
continued to kneel there, staring at the object. The gratuitous
trinket section was positioned immediately across from the coffee;
probably some marketing guru’s brilliant idea for how they could
move high-profit-margin, cheap plastic toys by catching junior’s
attention while the parent was getting a cup of java. I had no
doubt that it was effective to some extent because it now had my
undivided attention.
    Of course, I was focused on a particular
item. Dead in the middle of all of the junk was a peg which held
several blister cards, each of them containing a toy police badge,
whistle, and plastic handcuffs. Ben’s earlier comment rolled
through my foggy brain, “You ain’t packin’ a badge, so you’re just
another civilian ta’ them.”
    He was correct. But now, like some fateful
sign, here was a badge, and it