Madman on a Drum by David Housewright

favor?”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œYou do a lot of favors like this, McKenzie?”
    â€œDepends on how you define ‘a lot.’ ”
    â€œDon’t go all Bill Clinton on me,” she said.
    â€œYes, I do a lot of favors for friends. Usually it’s no big deal. Sometimes it involves an element of, ahh…”
    â€œDanger?”
    â€œUncertainty.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause they can’t do it for themselves and I can.”
    â€œThey can’t call the cops? They can’t call—”
    â€œAn officer of the court?”
    Karen hesitated for a beat and said, “I guess I had that coming.”
    â€œNo, you didn’t,” I told her. “You’re just trying to do your job, and your job has rules.”
    â€œI’m guessing that you’re the guy who bends them.”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI told you.”
    â€œYou told me why people call you for favors. You didn’t tell me why you do them.”
    â€œI used to be a cop. I quit when I became independently wealthy. Only the thing is, I liked being a cop. I liked helping people. I saw a lot of terrible things when I was in harness; I was forced to do some of those terrible things myself, yet I always slept well at night. When my head hit the pillow and I looked back on the day, no matter how crummy the day was, I could always say, ‘The world’s a little bit better place because of what I did.’ It made me feel good; made me feel useful. I used to tell people that I liked being a cop so much that I would have done it even if they didn’t pay me. Now they don’t have to.”
    â€œSo you help friends, even at the risk of your own life, because you think you’re making the world a better place?”
    â€œSounds pretentious as all hell, doesn’t it?”
    â€œDepends on how you define ‘as all hell.’ ”
    Â 
    I am embarrassed to admit I was glad to finally leave Shelby’s home. It was as if a heavy, wet canvas tarp had been lifted from my shoulders. I felt like I could move again; I felt like I could breathe. When we hit the freeway, I powered down all the car windows and let the warm autumn air slap my face and ruffle my hair. Karen put her hand on the top of her head to keep her own hair from blowing about and gave me an impatient look. I ignored her. I understood Bobby’s frustration at sitting helplessly in his home. Only I was out and about, now. I was being useful.
    We took the Dale Street exit and turned north toward University Avenue. In the old days, this had been one of the most notorious intersections in St. Paul. When I first broke in with the cops, it embodied 20 percent of the city’s adult businesses, including all of its sexually oriented bookstores and movie theaters. It also accounted for over 70 percent of its prostitution arrests. That made it a political issue. To appease voters, the city bought out the X-rated Faust Theater for $1.8 million, and it eventually was transformed into the Rondo Community Outreach Library. The gay-oriented Flick Theater was replaced by a shopping mall. R&R Books was bought for $600,000 to make room for a commercial development, and a strip joint called the Belmont Club became the Western District headquarters of the St. Paul Police Department. Now neighbors don’t find as many condoms on their lawns and sidewalks as they used to, there are fewer sex acts performed by prostitutes and their johns on the street and in alleys, and girls going to school and young women coming from work aren’t as likely to be propositioned. Still, I kind of miss the old neighborhood. It had color, and St. Paul was becoming less and less colorful as we went along.
    I followed Karen’s directions and pulled into the parking lot of a store that sold and mounted brand-name tires under the banner of a well-advertised national chain. Before we left the car, Karen