Lenz in the alleys

The "second city" of alleys runs on low-grade mutual surveillance — and screens the lethal kind. Lenz keeps the crack-boys "in peripheral view" while performing not-seeing; a boy "made a gun of his thin hand, pretended to draw a slow bead. Like performing for the others"; everyone watches everyone and performs the watching. And the one set of watchers that matters goes wholly unmentioned and unseen: the A.F.R. acquisition teams "rolling through the streets and small streets and alleys of the unpleasant district" (147) hunting Subjects are working this exact network these same nights (same-night simultaneity is inference — 147's canvass is only question-mark-dated ?/12-14 Nov; flagged in the apparatus), and neither Lenz nor the boys nor the "Pretty, pretty, pretty" figure on the ground knows it. The visible theater of watching is the perfect screen for the invisible operation of watching.