by Seth Pevey
She was dressed well, too well for the dank and dirty place, for sneaking and slinking around old abandoned places such as this. A plain green dress, unsullied and well-fitting, hung with its hem just down to cover the top of a pair of heavy leather work boots like a man working construction might wear. She wasn’t some squatter, living here in filthy isolation. Who, then? Melancon tried to trace a connection, taking her in with all the clarity that only sudden danger can bring. She was pretty, middle-aged, curvy but stern-faced and even a bit menacing around the eyebrows. Of course, the shotgun didn’t help. A deep-red wine-colored lipstick was smeared across her full lips.
Melancon felt his hand start to itch, to pull towards the revolver on his belt. But the woman had him completely dead to rights, so he stilled his fighting instinct and simply raised his palms high above his head, quietly cursing himself for his failures and inattention.
“Come here, baby,” the woman said to Andre. She had a singsong twang with gravel around its edges.
“No,” the boy replied.
Her eyes narrowed but the shotgun barrel sank a few inches, pointed now in the general direction of Melancon and company’s guts, poised to rearrange their insides with a simple twitch of her index finger.
“You’ve always had a memory on you, Andre. So smart, but you just look back at me like I’m a stranger. I wonder why that is. Maybe you just decided you’d go on and forget. Or maybe you’re just pretending. Pretending even to yourself, maybe. But I think you’re too smart not to know. Too smart not to know I’d be coming to get my baby. Ain’t that a fact?”
Andre shook his head.
“Let me help you remember, Andre.”
The boy again shook his head.
“Oh Lord…I…”
She paused, looking closely at him, took a deep breath and piped up with a high melody.
“I want…to be…in that number,” she sang.
Andre’s mouth opened; he took a step forward. He dropped his horn on the cracked cement, where it landed with a cymbal crash.
“Oh when the saints…go…marching….in.”
Andre took another step towards her. The woman rounded out her song with a soft, soulful flourish—the gravel in her had all disappeared and what was left was a choir-leading church voice.
“Mama?” Andre said.
“You got it.”
The two stared at each other for a long time.
“Come on, baby. We’re going home. We’re going where the grass grows, leave all of this noise and commotion behind. At least for a while. There ain’t nothing so bad a little time in God’s country can’t solve.”
Andre nodded. “Mama…,” he said.
“Still got that scar on your neck…just like me,” she said, pointing to a thin line that marred her well-kept skin along her jugular. “We’re survivors, Andre. You and me. We don’t need anybody else. And when you get ready to blow your horn, we’re going to be big. Your name up in lights, and me right there watching over you. Now how that sound?”
Andre’s brow had furrowed. He looked lost, confused, but he steadily crept towards the woman, searching her with his eyes.
“But first, I think we need to take care of your two friends here,” she said, hoisting the shotgun. “See, Andre…that’s the thing about city folks. They don’t know how to leave well enough alone. They don’t have enough meaning in their lives…they step around homeless people and what mess is in their own front yard, but they sure enough want to check up on whatever it is you’re doing yourself. Now, every time I step out onto my porch, do I want to be worried about them? About someone hunting me? Or trying to take you away? No, indeed. No, indeed. So, what I want you to do is this…walk over there, Andre. Take your horn with you and cover your eyes. Put your mouth to the mouthpiece and blow it as loud and as long as you—”
Andre shook his head, wiping fat tears away from his cheeks with the sleeve of the army jacket. “No, Mama. No,” he said.
“It’s going to be alright, baby, just wait over—”
A shot rang out in the darkness. Melancon winced, his whole life flashing before his eyes. He was certain the shotgun, pointed right at his belly, must have gone off. The ringing in his ears, the weakness of his knees, the memories and impressions of a long life rolling like a film reel behind his tightly closed eyes—surely he was in the lobby of the offices of certain death. Surely his final appointment had only just arrived.
But no, he could still feel his heart beating, though it had definitely skipped a beat or two. His guts still churned with inference, hunger, sorrow and desperation. His head, bald and haranguing as it was, was still attached to his body and in one piece.
A yelling had started—a desperate, pained, mournful wail. Was it coming from his own throat as he numbly went through his death throes? No: the yelling was coming from the woman.
The hem of her dress was wet now with blood, and her knees buckled as she sank to the cement. One of her hands remained on the shotgun, but the other worried her thigh. Melancon could now see the bone poking through the dress, the blood spouting forth in a great deluge of red.
Melancon regained himself as quickly as he was able and, seizing the moment, he grabbed both young people and yanked them into the darkness.
“Run,” he whispered, in between ten-gallon gasps of wet winter air.
That was what they did, the three of them sprinting down the root-broke pathways and past the attractions covered with kudzu, with more gunfire erupting at their backs as they went, hurrying them along through muck and frog puddles and shattered glass. The water splashed around their knees as they took no more pains to avoid it, unseen creatures slithering and leaping away from the three fugitives as they went.
Melancon did his best to lead them, but he wasn’t as quick as he had once been. Those cold, brittle knees made for hard going, and the two young men were soon far ahead, leaving him to follow as best he could. A few hundred yards into their mad dash, he found himself out of breath, doubled over with stomach pain. Luckily, he spotted Felix and Andre just ahead and darting into the open doorway of an abandoned building. He followed them into the blackness of concrete boulders and beer cans.
He found them inside behind a pile of trash, near the remnants of an old campfire. “That’s your mother?” he stammered, still unable to believe what he’d witnessed.
Andre slowly nodded.
His hand was now free to draw his pistol, and Melancon crouched by the doorway, listening to more bullets fly just outside. It sounded like a battlefield.
“Who’s shooting?” Felix asked. “They aren’t shooting at us, are they?”
“I don’t know, Felix. Just keep your head down. Keep an eye on Andre. Also, dial Janine,” Melancon said, suddenly clear-headed in the safety of the concrete room. He tossed his old flip phone at Felix, who barely managed to catch it in the darkness. “Tell her to get the NOPD out here, choppers with searchlights, the works.”
“Got it.”
As soon as Felix had delivered the message, Andre reached out and took the phone from his hand.
“Is this Janine? I’m ready to talk. I’ll talk as much as you want,” he said into the receiver.
Twenty-One
From up in the NOPD helicopter, Jazzland looked to Janine like one of the children’s toys pediatricians keep in their lobbies. Twisted loop-the-loops and colorful scaffold stuck up above miles of dark, wooden swampland—all of it cast in the city’s dramatic glow.
It was her first time hovering above this particular patch of earth, but she’d heard plenty about it, mostly in the form of bellyaching over the years from the salty patrolmen unlucky enough to find themselves on Jazzland duty. Rousting the teenage lovers, dare-maddened college kids, and occasional squatters was not a popular amusement among the officers. But while she hadn’t been to the park before, she’d been in this figurative position more than a few times now, and it was starting to wear a bit thin.
Somehow, regardless of how intensely she s
tonewalled him, it was always David Melancon that was standing at the center of her cases when the rubber hit the road. Her feelings for him, and their hot-and-cold history over the years, made his central involvement in all this complicated. Or was it vice versa? She admired him, but she also deeply disapproved of the way he went about things. It was an old way, too casual and reckless. It got results, but it left a lot of loose ends in the process—and she’d spend weeks afterwards retying all of those knots while he just bathed in the glory and “forgot” to fill out any paperwork. She would have admitted a small bit of envy over the way his gut always seemed to lead him to the right place. What she resented was the chore she always had of bailing him out when he got himself in far too deep, as she was preparing to do right at this moment.
They had begun to descend now, the wings bending the tops of the trees.
She pointed to the pilot. “Up there, on the coaster rail. Can you see him?”
When they got low enough, the figure of a human clinging to one dizzying rung was unmistakable. A man. She could even see his T-shirt billowing under the pressure of the chopper blades. When the spotlight hit him directly, he rolled over. It was then that the three of them—Janine, pilot, and an extra officer—could see that the man had a long rifle.
The man shielded his eyes with his free hand. Then, with an acrobatic bend of his lanky torso, he was gone. Janine caught just a flash of him shimmying down some support beam and then didn’t see him again. The officer behind her was already nervously yelling into his radio about an armed and dangerous suspect. The flashing lights of the police cars below showed that the ground cavalry had also arrived, and there was a mass of blue-blinking strobes swirling in a frenzy around the entryway. Though they couldn’t seem to access the parking lot, she could already make out a few uniformed officers walking into the park with long beams of light jerking suspiciously out in front of them.
The chopper circled, its spotlight shining down into a central square in the park. It hesitated there on some large figure and, seeing at last that it was nothing but a harmless statue, swung back out into the swamp again. Still no man with the long rifle.
Then, under the boughs of a great oak, he appeared. But he wasn’t firing or running or engaging the officers in a Mexican standoff, and he had taken no hostage. Instead, he was walking with his hands above his head towards the officers, the rifle nowhere to be seen.
“We got the son of a bitch,” the officer yelled over the whirling blades.
Janine grabbed his radio.
“Suspect appears to be surrendering. I repeat, he may be turning himself in.” She had to yell, getting little but white noise and static back. “Proceed with caution, but he appears unarmed. I repeat, he appears unarmed.”
The chopper made an even lower pass, keeping its light trained on the thin figure of the man. He had sunk to his knees now, a tight circle of officers closing around him. All of them were shouting orders, guns drawn and holding back ravenous German shepherds.
“We got him,” the radio finally said. “Suspect in custody.”
“He likes hot chocolate,” Melph Jones said to Janine. They sat across from each other in one of those white, joyless rooms filled with cameras.
“Oh, you know what he likes?”
Melph shrugged, rubbed an invisible blemish off the table with his big thumb. “He’s here, right? Y’all got him here? He’s probably cold and hungry. Give him some goddamn hot chocolate.”
She waited. Waiting usually worked best for her. Just give someone enough empty space and eventually they would start filling it. Don’t react to bluster or intimidation or stony silence—just wait. Nature hates a vacuum, and so do those under suspicion.
But Melph Jones didn’t seem like a textbook type of case, and maybe he didn’t care all that much about vacuums and long, pregnant pauses. Maybe he just wasn’t that type. He looked like he’d been through a bit of pressure in his life, and this wasn’t anything new. Maybe she was going about it all wrong. Even when he cursed, he did it calmly and with a sly grin on his face.
“You must know you’re facing multiple charges.”
Melph rubbed his face. “He is here, right? Andre? He’s alright?”
She didn’t answer his question, but he seemed to read it in her eyes.
“Yeah, he’s alright. He get his horn? I saw him drop it.”
Janine studied him closely. “You saw that through the scope of your rifle, I guess?”
There was one of those pauses again, lingering and interminable, while the two of them stared at each other.
“Can I get a cigarette?”
“You can’t smoke in here. What year do you think it is?”
Melph frowned. “Tell me your name again, honey.”
She blew some hot air out of her nose and counted to three.
“Janine. It damn sure ain’t honey.”
“Right. That was my mama’s name. It’s a pretty name. I always liked that one.”
She lowered her eyes, trying her best to peer into him, to pry the lid off this locked chest. There were so many questions, so many angles of approach.
“I tell you what, Janine-not-honey. You can get me my cigarettes or get me my lawyer, up to you. And another thing—”
He burst through the door just then. There was no knock, and she could hear him rounding off an argument with the officer who was meant to be guarding the entrance. David Melancon, full of piss and vinegar, tossed his fedora down on the table before she could get a word in. He then pulled up a spare seat to the table and straddled it, face-to-face with Melph Jones.
“This is my interrogation, David,” she started to say, but her lack of conviction was plain in her voice—she knew the man had the right to be here. At least from a moral standpoint. He’d followed this case since day one, been shot at, and finally produced the result they were all looking for vis-à-vis the safe return of young Andre. Still, if it weren’t for his decades on the force and war-forged connections with the old guard, she might have considered this the last straw, had him dragged out of the station and slept soundly over the whole matter. But she didn’t. Not yet, at least.
The bastard. The look he gave her, before he turned his full attention on Melph Jones, said he knew what she was thinking.
“Did you save my life?” Melancon asked. At first, Janine wondered if he was asking her. But that was not the case—the old detective had his bright blue eyes focused solely on the suspect.
Melph shrugged his shoulders and then raised his chin. “You find her yet?” he asked. “Dumb question, right? You wouldn’t be here if you’d found her.”
Melancon cast a glance at the corner of the room, where a camera blinked back at him. “No, they’re looking. But you know…a swamp at midnight isn’t a place where you can find much. But we will find her. Trust that. Cigarette?”
“Lord, yes.”
Melph was already reaching out a greedy hand, even before Melancon could produce the pack from his coat pocket. But when he saw the brand, Melph stopped short. His hand froze in midreach. The big palm turned upwards and then recoiled. The old detective placed the pack of smokes down in the center of the table, faceup, and crossed his arms.
“B&H?” Melph laughed—a short, breathless exhalation that was over as quickly as it began. Then he turned serious, his jaw hardening and his gaze leveling on David Melancon. “I don’t smoke menthol. Thanks, though.”
“I didn’t think so. But I bet you know someone that does. Now you didn’t answer my question, and it wasn’t rhetorical. Did you save my life?”
“She snuck right up on you. And you’re, what, supposed to be this tough guy detective? This old soldier? You wouldn’t have made it one day in—”
“I’m not supposed to be anything, now answer the question.” The two men were leaning into each other.
“Yeah…I suppose…I probably did save your life. She’d have killed you. Not a doubt in my mind. She’d have killed me too. She may have already. They still g
ot the chair at Angola far as I know.”
Melancon pulled out a ziplock bag containing two empty rifle shells, put them on the table next to the unopened cigarettes.
“When Janine here has the boys dust these shell casings for prints, whose prints is she going to find? Besides Andre’s, I mean. I assume they’re the same caliber as the rifle you used tonight. I even assume they were fired from the same gun.”
Melph scratched the side of his head and leaned far back in his chair. “Yeah.”
“I’m doing a lot of assuming here, but bear with me….can I also assume that these here…that they’re the casings from the murder of Renato Adai?”
Melph nodded. “I reckon so.”
Melancon slapped his hands down flat on the table. “So, yeah, I’m supposed to be this big detective, but I fail all the time. I failed tonight to protect the people I needed to, and without you I would have died. And right now, I’m having another massive failure. Failure to make heads or tails of you or what your involvement in all this is. I need you to start talking some sense, partner. Because—”
“You can’t be that stupid,” Melph interrupted.
Melancon got that faraway look in his eyes. “Try me,” he said.
Twenty-Two
That Janine didn’t like it much, but the old yat finally got him some decent cigarettes, let him smoke for a minute and collect his thoughts. Strong, tarry cigarettes. Coffin nails. Cowboy killers.
How magnanimous. Was this the good cop, bad cop type of deal? Whatever it was, it didn’t matter much. Melph was here, and he was ready. Just needed a little space to breathe before the big plunge, and now that he’d had it there was nothing else left but to jump in.
“Last summer,” Melph began, and could already feel the ears perking. “I met her last summer.”
What a summer.
He blew out bitter smoke and recalled, not without fondness, the shape of her body in that tight green dress, walking across the green grass towards him. The swing of her hip was like the crook in the river. Down by the Fly. A hot day. Everybody sweating, cooking food that they were too hot to eat. Ice-cold beer. A football was passed around and someone took it too seriously. A bunch of soldiers with no one to fight but each other. A support group he was part of. Guys that weren’t over it yet and might never be, trying to pretend life was normal and fine.
