Donny had filed a lawsuit once trying to protect the nutria of Houston from a countywide program to cull their population. He had a soft spot for urban wildlife, even those big greasy water rats, and he liked the challenge of asserting they had rights. The judge threw the case out at the first hearing, despite Donny’s epic briefing, but he refused the county attorney’s request for sanctions. At the time, Donny wondered if the case would have better odds if he had picked a more sympathetic animal. Now he wondered if the real trick would be to pick a smarter one. Imagine what would happen if you could win one of those cases.

The sunset was peaking as Donny walked back to the office, lighting up the skyline with an intense swath of pink working on purple. You could see the contrails of the transcontinental jets that still flew the affluent Europeans and Asians above the American flyover, laying their seams in the stratosphere like strands of cotton candy. Even the Reunion Tower looked good in that light, so good you could almost imagine it had been created by the French commies who lived there in the 1850s, instead of the 1970s Chamber of Commerce.

As he got a little farther, Donny could see the old Dallas County Courthouse there in the shadows of the tower. In the crazy light, the red sandstone forms from which it had been carved looked almost alive, even while—at the same time—the building looked like an ancient ruin. You could imagine when it was the biggest and most important building standing there on the banks of the river, as people cleared trees and built roads from what had been raw wilderness just a few generations earlier. That hallucinatory shimmer made you wonder what it would be in the generations to come. After us.

Donny’s twilight daydream of sentient raccoons taking over the ruins led to the revelation that to salvage his case he needed to go to New Orleans. The official story about the circumstances of Slider’s death didn’t add up. He might not be able to get justice for the kid’s parents, but he could at least get justice for Slider. And if private-security goons really killed him while he was helping a team of constables, there might be an easy opportunity to make their employer pay. New Orleans was also the one place where Donny knew people who might be able to step into Slider’s shoes. And the place where a different idea of the future was taking shape. Maybe even his own future, if he could talk his way back in.