A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole Read Free Book Online

don't cost nothin."
    "Wha she go shoppin for? A whip?"
    "Don't ask me. Lana never tells me nothin. That Lana's a funny one." Darlene blew her nose daintily. "What I really wanna be is an exotic. I been practicing in my apartment on a routine. If I can get Lana to let me dance in here at night, I can get me a regular salary and quit hustling water on commission. Now that I think of it, I oughta get me some commission for what them people drank up in here last night. That old lady sure drank up a lotta beer. I don't see what Lana's got to complain about. Business is business. That fat man and his momma wasn't much worse than plenty we get in here. I think the thing got Lana was that funny green cap he had stock up on his head. When he was talking, he'd pull the earflap down, and when he was listening, he'd stick it up again. By the time Lana got here, everybody was hollering at him, so he had both flaps stuck out like wings. You know, it looked sorta funny."
    "And you say this fat cat travlin around with his momma?"
    Jones asked, making a mental association.
    "Uh huh." Darlene folded her handkerchief and slipped it into her bosom. "I sure hope they don't ever decide to hang around here again. I'll really be in trouble. Jesus." Darlene sounded worried. "Look, we better do something about this place before Lana comes back. But listen. Don't knock yourself out cleaning up this dump. I never seen it really clean since I been here. And it's so dark in here all the time, nobody can tell the difference. To hear Lana talk, you'd think this hole was the Ritz."
    Jones shot out a fresh cloud. Through his glasses he could hardly see anything at all.
    Patrolman Mancuso enjoyed riding the motorcycle up St.
    Charles Avenue. At the precinct he had borrowed a large and loud one that was all chromium and baby blue, and at the touch of a switch it could become a pinball machine of flashing, winking, blinking red and white lights. The siren, a cacophony of twelve crazed bobcats, was enough to make suspicious characters within a half-mile radius defecate in panic and rush for cover. Patrolman Mancuso's love for the motorcycle was platonically intense.
    The forces of evil generated by the hideous-and apparently impossible to uncover-underground of suspicious characters seemed remote to him this afternoon, though. The ancient oaks of St. Charles Avenue arched over the avenue like a canopy shielding him from the mild winter sun that splashed and sparkled on the chrome of the motorcycle. Although the days had lately been cold and damp, the afternoon had that sudden, surprising warmth that makes New Orleans winters gentle.
    Patrolman Mancuso appreciated the mildness, for he was wearing only a T-shirt and Bermuda shorts, the sergeant's costume selection for the day. The long red beard that hooked over his ears by means of wires did manage to warm his chest a little; he had snatched the beard from the locker while the sergeant wasn't looking.
    Patrolman Mancuso inhaled the moldy scent of the oaks and thought, in a romantic aside, that St. Charles Avenue must be the loveliest place in the world. From time to time he passed the slowly rocking streetcars that seemed to be leisurely moving toward no special destination, following their route through the old mansions on either side of the avenue.
    Everything looked so calm, so prosperous, so unsuspicious.
    On his own time he was going up to see that poor Widow Reilly. She had looked so pitiful crying in the middle of that wreck. The least he could do was try to help her.
    At Constantinople Street he turned toward the river, sputtering and growling through a declining neighborhood until he reached a block of houses built in the 1880s and 90s, wooden Gothic and Gilded Age relics that dripped carving and scrollwork. Boss Tweed suburban stereotypes separated by alleys so narrow that a yardstick could almost bridge them and fenced in by iron pikes and low walls of crumbling brick. The larger houses had become