He wipes his face with his right hand, lets out a deep sigh. “During a staff meeting of senior department heads a week ago, we got an unexpected visitor who made everyone sit up at attention.”

He grasps the lapels of his jacket and flips them back and forth. “From the feds. Dressed in a much nicer suit than mine.”

I drop the hose on the pavement, try to find a dry piece of my T-shirt to wipe my soaked hands, and fail.

“Who was he?”

“Special Agent Marcus Morgan, with the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. He was paying us a courtesy call. To let us poor peasants know that he and his team had come here to investigate a high-level terrorist threat alert against New Orleans. One that’s both credible and imminent.”

“Shit,” I say. “Now it makes sense. A week ago I was on Bourbon Street, saw two undercover cops scoping the crowd along with two tactical unit guys in full battle rattle. They wouldn’t say why they were out and about, only that some higher-ups were spooked.”

He nods. “Spooked. Yeah. How about scared shitless?”

There’s a spreading puddle of water from my hose going across the pavement. “Marlene and I also spotted two Black Hawk helicopters flying low and slow near the Garden District the other night. Part of the alert?”

He nods and says, “You may think you’re just cooking there, Chef Caleb, but you sure as hell are staying alert.”

“Did the feds say when we might get hit?”

He holds out his hands. “When else? During Mardi Gras. Nine days away. And we’re not talking one nut or two like the Orlando nightclub shooting or the Boston Marathon bombing. This? We could be dealing with an entire cell of professional, stone-cold killers who want to do as much death and destruction as possible.”

My God. Out here on the quiet morning streets of my dear Tremé, it seems like I’m in one of those nightmares where you see something dangerous and violent approaching you, and your legs can’t move, freezing you in place.

“Any indication how?”

He shrugs. “Take your pick. Suicide vests, IEDs, snipers, biological weapons like anthrax … the thing is, terrorist bastards are always one step ahead, weaponizing stuff that’s usually innocuous. Like box cutters, or razor blades, or sneakers, like that shoe bomber asshole in 2001. It’s all due to him that thousands of folks have to take their shoes off every day at airports.”

I say, “What’s our … I mean, besides the higher alert and more guys on the street, what’s the department’s action plan?”