“Do you know where Mr. Reilly is?” Mr. Levy asked her.

“All I know is he’s all over this morning’s paper. Where he oughta be is in a asylum. My nerves is shot to hell. When I moved next door to them people, I was signing my death warrant.”

“Does he live here alone? A woman answered the phone once when I called.”

“That musta been his momma. Her nerves is shot, too. She musta went to get him out the hospital or wherever they got him.”

“Do you know Mr. Reilly well?”

“Ever since he was a kid. His momma was sure proud of him. All the sisters at school loved him he was so precious. Look how he ended up, laying in a gutter. Well, they better start thinking about moving off my block. I can’t take it no more. They’ll really be arguing now.”

“Let me ask you something. You know Mr. Reilly well. Do you think he’s very irresponsible or maybe even dangerous?”

“What you want with him?” Miss Annie’s bleary eyes narrowed. “He’s in some other kinda trouble?”

“I’m Gus Levy. He used to work for me.”

“Yeah? You don’t say. That crazy Ignatius was sure proud of that job he had at that place. I useta hear him telling his momma how he was really making good. Yeah, he made good. A few weeks and he was fired. Well, if he worked for you, you really know him good.”

Had that poor Reilly kook really been proud of Levy Pants? He had always said that he was. That was one good sign of his insanity.

“Tell me. Hasn’t he been in trouble with the police? Doesn’t he have some kind of police record?”

“His momma had a policeman coming around her. A regular undercover agent. But not that Ignatius. For one thing his momma likes her little nip. I don’t see her drunk much lately, but for a while there she was really going good. One day I look out in the back yard and she had herself all tangled up in a wet sheet hanging off the line. Mister, it’s already took ten years off my life living next to them people. Noise! Banjos and trumpets and screaming and hollering and the TV. Them Reillys oughta go move out in the country somewheres on a farm. Every day I gotta take six, seven aspirin.” Miss Annie reached inside the neckline of her housedress to find some strap that had slipped from her shoulder. “Lemme tell you something. I gotta be fair. That Ignatius was okay until that big dog of his died. He had this big dog useta bark right under my window. That’s when my nerves first started to go. Then the dog dies. Well, I think, now maybe I’ll get me some peace and quiet. But no. Ignatius is got the dog laid out in his momma’s front parlor with some flowers stuck in its paw. That’s when him and his momma first started all that fighting. To tell you the truth, I think that’s when she started drinking. So Ignatius goes over to the priest and ax him to come say something over the dog. Ignatius was planning on some kinda funeral. You know? The priest says no, of course, and I think that’s when Ignatius left the Church. So big Ignatius puts on his own funeral. A big fat high school boy oughta know better. You see that cross?” Mr. Levy looked hopelessly at the rotting Celtic cross in the front yard. “That where it all happened. He had about two dozen little kids standing around in that yard watching him. And Ignatius had on a big cape like Superman and they was candles burning all over. The whole time his momma was screaming out the front door for him to throw the dog in the garbage can and get in the house. Well, that’s when things started going bad around here. Then Ignatius was at college for about ten years. His momma almost went broke. She even hadda sell the piana they had. Well, I didn’t mind that. You oughta seen this girl he picks up at college. I says to myself, ‘Well, good. Maybe that Ignatius is gonna get married and move out.’ Was I wrong. All they done is sit in his room. It seem like every night she and him was putting on a regular hootenanny. The things I useta hear through my window! ‘Put down that skirt.’ and ‘Get off my bed.’ And ‘How dare you? I’m a virgin.’ It was awful. I went on aspirins twenty-four hours a day. Well, that girl done left. I can’t blame her. She musta been funny to hang around with him anyways.” Miss Annie reached in the opposite direction for another strap. “Of all the houses in the city, how come I hadda move in here? Tell me that.”

Mr. Levy could think of no reason for her having moved to this particular location. But the Ignatius Reilly story had made him depressed, and he wished he were away from Constantinople Street.

“Well,” the woman rushed on, eager for the audience to hear her tale of suffering, “this stuff in the paper’s the last straw. Look at the bad publicity the block’s got now. If they start anything now, I’m gonna call up the police and get him put under a peace bond. I can’t take it no more. My nerves is shot to hell. Even when that Ignatius takes a bath, it sounds like a flood’s coming in my own house. I think all my pipes is busted. I’m too old. I had enough with them people.” Miss Annie glanced over Mr. Levy’s shoulder. “It’s been nice talking to you, mister. So long.”

She raced back into her house and slammed her shutters. Her sudden disappearance confused Mr. Levy as much as her strange biography of Mr. Reilly had. What a neighborhood. Levy’s Lodge had always been a barrier against knowing people like this. Then Mr. Levy saw the old Plymouth trying to dock at the curb, scraping its hubcaps against its moorings before finally coming to rest. In the rear seat he saw the silhouette of the big kook. A woman with maroon hair climbed down from the driver’s seat and called, “Okay, boy, get out that car!”

“Not until you clarify your relationship with that drooling old man,” the silhouette answered. “I thought that we had escaped from that degenerate old fascist. Apparently I was wrong. All along you’ve been carrying on an affair with him behind my back. You probably planted him there in front of D. H. Holmes. Now that I think of it you probably planted that mongoloid Mancuso there, too, to start this vicious cycle whirling. How unsuspecting, how ingenuous I’ve been. For weeks now I’ve been the dupe of a conspiracy. It’s all a plot!”

“Get down from that car!”

“You see?” Miss Annie said through her shutters. “They’re at it again.”

The rear car door swung rustily open and a bursting desert boot stepped down onto the running board. The kook’s head was bandaged. He looked tired and pale.

“I will not stay under the same roof with a loose woman. I’m shocked and hurt. My own mother. No wonder you’ve turned on me so savagely. I suspect that you are using me as a scapegoat for your own feelings of guilt.”

What a family, Mr. Levy thought. The mother did look like something of a floozie. He wondered why the undercover agent had wanted her.

“Shut up your dirty mouth,” the woman was screaming. “All this over a fine, decent man like Claude.”

“Fine man,” Ignatius snorted. “I knew you’d end like this when you started traveling around with those degenerates.”

Along the block a few people had come out on their steps. What a day this was going to be. Mr. Levy ran the risk of getting into a public scene with these wild people. His heartburn was spreading out to the limits of his chest.

The woman with the maroon hair had fallen to her knees and was asking the sky, “What I done wrong, God? Tell me, Lord. I been good.”

“You’re kneeling on Rex’s grave!” Ignatius shouted. “Now tell me what you and that debauched McCarthyite have been doing. You probably belong to some secret political cell. No wonder I’ve been bombarded with those witch hunt pamphlets. No wonder I was trailed last night. Where is the Battaglia matchmaker? Where is she? She must be lashed. This whole thing is a coup against me, a vicious scheme to get me out of the way. My God! That bird was doubtlessly trained by a band of fascists. They’ll try anything.”