Crescent City Detective

by Vito Zuppardo

  The Chow Hall was chatty. Cosmo tried to see what mood Felipe might be in that morning, but there were too many people standing around him. All he could see was the back of his head.

  Once breakfast was over, inmates sat in a holding area waiting for their name to be called to enter the visitors’ part of the building. Visiting started at nine o’clock in the morning until four in the afternoon, and you could have as many as five guests at one time for two hours. Some inmates would have family stretch out their visit with two people at a time so it would last all day. You stood in the holding area until a guard called your name and then walked to the front door. Cosmo stood near the door but knew his grandmother wasn’t going to get to the prison until maybe eleven that morning. It was a two-hour drive from New Orleans, and it took a while for her to get ready in the morning, and from what he remembered, Pastor Rosey wasn’t the fastest drive on the road.

  “Heads up,” a voice said as a man walked through the area to the front entrance, followed by Felipe and another bodyguard. They stood by the door guarded by a correctional officer who allowed Felipe to go in the visiting room before anyone else entered. Sometimes Felipe would sit in the room all day without a visitor just to show no one got in the visitors’ area before he did. Based on the freedom Felipe had in prison, you’d just as soon change the name to Felipe’s Inn, because he controlled most of the guards and was someone you had to fear.

  By nine a.m., a guard called Cosmo’s name. His heart was pounding. This was so much more than just a visit. He had to pull this off perfectly. His life depended on his performance, as well as his grandmother’s.

  Cosmo found his grandmother quickly in the room of about one hundred people. She was always the oldest person to visit. They sat across from each other and for the first few minutes they made small talk. He looked around, and Felipe had a visitor, one of his girlfriends. They sat close enough to Cosmo to see what was going on but not near enough to be able to hear what he might be saying to his grandma, especially with so many people in the room chatting.

  “Grandma. I need you to pay close attention to what I'm saying.”

  Grandma Walker was no stranger to prison. She had visited Cosmo’s father, her brother, and countless friends over the years. Prison life was in her husband’s family’s bloodline, and her neighborhood never rose above poverty, producing many penitentiary residents.

  “Lean forward and whisper anything, but don’t stop until I tell you,” Cosmo said.

  Grandma knew the routine, and it didn’t matter what the reason—she always followed directions and spoke softly. “Is this whisper okay?”

  “Yes. But a little hand motion,” Cosmo said.

  Josephine Walker took the cue and started repeating a prayer Pastor Rosey said at the beginning of every sermon. It took a minute depending on how fast you talked, and midway, Cosmo stopped her.

  “Look at me. Touch your face in concern and take a deep breath,” Cosmo said, slightly glancing Felipe’s way. It was working. He could now see Felipe’s face positioned in a way to see Cosmo’s actions with his grandma.

  “Excellent. Just a little more—then let me talk.”

  Grandma finished by grabbing the side of the table with each hand as she said the prayer as if she were pleading to Cosmo.

  “You did great. How have you been?” Cosmo asked.

  They talked for an hour, and Josephine got up and gave Cosmo a quick kiss on his cheek and said goodbye. Grandma Walker went to the exit door and waved to him.

  From across the room, Felipe shouted, “Goodbye, Josephine.”

  Cosmo’s head snapped back, thinking Felipe wouldn’t be so bold as to intimidate him in the open visiting area. She heard Felipe and was not going to show fear. She gawked at him the same way she did when he was a kid in the neighborhood. Josephine always said he was no good from the time he was born.

  Cosmo sat, waiting for Pastor Rosey to come in. It was important for Cosmo to talk to the pastor and also thank him for bringing his grandma to visit. Their time together was short, and Cosmo did most of the talking. Before the pastor left, he stood and put his hand on Cosmo’s shoulder and said a prayer. He hoped his prayers would protect him in jail. The pastor smiled, and Cosmo watched him exit the room before he got up to go back to his cell.

  Cosmo had mixed feeling as he walked past Felipe, making eye contact. This time Felipe showed interest in Cosmo’s nod. He noticed some street warriors from New Orleans cut Felipe’s girlfriend’s visiting time short ,and they may have been talking business. Felipe looked at Cosmo as he passed and was glared at by the thugs.

  One of the soldier's names was Hector and another Landon. Felipe leaned into Hector and said, “I don’t care if they have police watching her around the clock. This Kate bitch should have died in the hospital. Get it done. I hold my promises, and Mario will pay for his actions against me.” Felipe knew when and where he could talk. There were too many people in the room for a recording device to pick up what Felipe was saying. The prison sometimes planted mics in the visiting room under tables. Felipe’s bodyguards had checked four tables before he sat down, and never knowing what table he might select, recording Felipe was nearly impossible.

  They said their goodbyes, and Landon assured Felipe with a nod of his head that they would handle Kate to his satisfaction. Felipe pulled Hector by the arm and whispered into his ear. Hector was surprised as his eyes widened with fear.

  “Is there a problem? Hector, is there?” Felipe said, pulling his shirt sleeve.

  Hector took a second to respond. “No, boss, not a problem.”

  “Good, get it done,” Felipe said and walked out the room.

  Visiting hours were over, and the alarm sounded, indicating the Chow Hall was open. Cosmo stood, tray in hand, and at the end of the chow line were Felipe’s prison soldiers waiting. Escorted by two soldiers, Cosmo carried his food tray to a table where Felipe sat alone. Cosmo was told to take a seat across from Felipe. He did and started eating.

  Felipe slammed his hand down on the table. “You eat when I tell you.”

  Instantly Cosmo dropped his utensil.

  Felipe said, “What do you have for me?”

  Cosmo sat motionless, watching Felipe eat. “My grandmother has been approached by that detective, Mario. She lives on the corner by one of your flophouses on Frenchmen Street,” he said quickly so as not to piss him off any further.

  “I’m aware of her house,” he said, pulling a piece of bread apart.

  “This Mario guy wants her to write down the license plates of those expensive cars that come into the neighborhood,” Cosmo said with enthusiasm.

  “Who gives a fuck? All the cars are legit. Taxes, license plates, insurance.”

  Cosmo knew he had to come up with a better lie. Something that made Felipe wanting more information and most of all keeping himself safe.

  “They're watching those fancy cars that stop at your flophouse. You know, those big shot legit business guys with the white power habit. If they make an arrest, one will spill his guts.”

  “Your information is old. We stopped those big shots from coming into our neighborhood well over a year ago,” Felipe said, taking the last bite of what was a full plate of food. “You don’t have shit for me, do you?”

  Cosmo was shot down on everything—he was losing the war on information, the only thing that could keep him alive. Digging deep into his bag of bullshit, he told Felipe something of interest. Something no gangbanger could disregard no matter how much he thought he had control of his soldiers.

  “Detective Mario told my grandmother the police flipped one of your crew. This asshole has been supplying information to Gang Enforcement in New Orleans for months. She is close to finding out the name.”

  Felipe’s eyes were watery and red like the devil himself. “Those are strong words—you better have something to back it up with.”

  “Man, she is working this dick, and he’ll give the name up to my grandma. You’ll know soon who flip
ped on you.”

  Felipe didn’t say a word, and that was good in Cosmo’s mind. Felipe knew if someone flipped on him they could do a world of damage. It was a concern, and it showed on his face.

  “Get me a name,” Felipe said as he stood up and looked at Cosmo in his eyes. “Now you can eat,” he said, pushing Cosmo’s food plate towards him.

  The buzzer sounded, indicating dinner was over, and it was annoying. It seemed even louder, as the Chow Hall was mostly empty now. He took a bite of his so-called dessert, a dense, tasteless brownie, then threw it back into the plate. “How can you fuck up a brownie?” he said in disgust.

  “Let’s go,” the guard in the corner said to the few people left in the room.

  They pushed the uneaten food from their dishes into a trash can and walked to the hallway in a single file, waiting for the line to move up the steep stairway to what they called home on the second floor.

  Cosmo didn’t feel all that comfortable and wasn’t sure Felipe believed every lie he’d told him. For now, he was safe inside his house, just him and his new, scared, fresh meat roommate.

  Early the next morning, a guard came to Cosmo. “Walker! Let’s go,” he shouted.

  Cosmo jumped a foot high from a dead sleep. He was not sure of the time but knew it had to be early morning since he didn’t hear or see anyone else stirring around.

  The guard was standing in front of his cell. The iron door opened. “Let’s go, you’re the one that put in for early morning work,” he said to Cosmo as he rubbed his eyes.

  “And what early morning work did I request?”

  “The laundry room,” the guard said.

  Cosmo reluctantly splashed some water on his face, put on his work boots, and walked with the guard. For a second he thought it would be best to run from the guard or punch him out, anything to get put back in the hole. If Felipe didn’t believe everything, Cosmo said the hole was the safest place for him at this time.

  Felipe is up to something, he thought.

  “I’m not eligible for work detail,” Cosmo cried out to the guard.

  The guard walked step for step with him. “You’ll love it down there in the winter. It’s nice and warm. Now—well, it’s hot as hell.”

  Cosmo walked with the guard to the Chow Hall. All workers got to eat before other inmates, which was a plus, since the food wasn’t picked over. The grits were not stiff as a board, and the eggs were still hot. They had fifteen minutes to eat, then were rounded up by guards and escorted to their trustee, Kenton, who oversaw the laundry detail for that cell block. Kenton was an inmate that earned trust with the prison and was given special privileges for his good behavior.

  Two other inmates trained with Cosmo, and it took all of one minute to tell them the process. The canvas cart labeled “1” was dirty clothes, and “2” contained clean clothes. You put clothes from one in the washer, and when finished, put them in the dryer. Once completed, you put the clean clothes in cart 2 and moved it to the folding table.

  The equipment was industrial size, massive compared to what you might see at home. There were six dryers and four washers. The dryers held up to two hundred pounds of wet towels and dried them in thirty minutes. With the industrial size came industrial noise, and everyone, including the guards, wore earplugs. Most of the time the guards watched from the doorway at the far end, away from the machines.

  Cosmo was anxious while doing his work. He kept his head up even when he was looking into a cart pulling clothes out. Between the noise and earplugs, if someone wanted to tell you something, you had to get their attention and just about shout or read their lips. That made it very easy for someone to attack you and no one would ever hear the struggle.

  The first break came after three hours, and a relief crew arrived while the morning crew took a thirty-minute rest. Cosmo looked around. No one was partially interested in him. No staring eyeballs were waiting for something to go down. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. Everyone was doing their job.

  It was all of nine a.m., and Cosmo felt he had been on the job for an entire day already. He tried to remember the last time he worked a real job, one that you punched a clock and at the end of the day you were tired but in an exciting way. While exhausted, a feeling of accomplishment came from working hard and getting well paid. That was a good feeling at the end of the week when you got your check. It was too many years ago and also depressing for Cosmo to go down memory lane. He focused on the television in the corner of the ceiling of the break room.

  It was too early to tell if he was going to like the laundry detail, but having a break room for only ten or fifteen people wasn’t bad. There was coffee, tea, bottled water, and even some snacks to keep you going until lunch. It wasn’t bad except for the lingering worry of why in the hell he was there. Who put him in a work detail? He didn’t think he was eligible to work.

  As Cosmo looked around the room and had a chance to actually see some of the inmates, he realized he only knew a few people. From the numbers on their shirt, they were from another cell block, and he’d never talked to them before. He had seen them in the halls maybe a few times and the visiting room, but never engaged in a conversation with them. They lived in an entirely different area of the prison. They even had different chow hall time and yard time. Making eye contact with a few guys and getting a slight head nod was all you could expect in prison.

  The break was over, and Cosmo and his new work friends returned to the laundry room, and the relief team went to the mailroom and relieved those workers for thirty minutes.

  The team in the laundry room switched up job duties, and Cosmo moved from the washer to the dryer and others transferred to the folding table. They did that every hour, and it helped break up the repetition of doing the same job over and over.

  The workload started to slow up, indicating they were getting to the end of all the laundry for the day. As the last load went into the washer, the team helped and doubled up on folding. Finally, they finished the laundry—for that day.

  Trustee Kenton of the crew showed Cosmo how to clean the washer and dryer, which was nothing more than turning a dial to clean and setting the timer for thirty minutes. One thing that was important, Kenton explained, was the safety lock on the door of the dryer. It was important that the latch was secured because of the cleaning cycle bin turned at a much higher RPM. With higher revolutions per minutes, if not secured, the door could fly open and break off. The trustee explained why cleaning the machinery was necessary as the other inmates gathered in the middle of the room, waiting to be sent off to the cellblock.

  A guard at the entrance blew a whistle that could barely be heard over the noise of the washer and dryer. Kenton was right, the sound got louder on the machines’ cleaning cycle. The guard motioned for them to follow. They walked single file to the main hallway that led to the various buildings. Met by additional guards, they were escorted individually to their cells.

  It was two p.m., and inmates were returning from the afternoon yard break. They all stood inside their cells, waiting for the iron door to slide closed. The top tier was secured, and a guard walked by confirming the prisoners were in their cell. Throughout the level, you could hear the inmates reply with “yes, sir” as the guard said their name, establishing the prisoner was on lockdown.

  “Woodward, Elijah?” a guard standing near his door said.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied.

  “Walker, Cosmo,” the guard said. There was no answer.

  “Walker, Cosmo,” the guard said again, walking to the front of the cell. “Woodward, when is the last time you saw Walker?”

  “He was gone before I got up this morning.”

  The guard briskly walked to the end of the block and picked up a phone. It wasn’t uncommon for an inmate to be redirected to a work order, hospital visit, or some other reason. Seldom was a prisoner redirected without documentation, and it was a little tense when discovered. The first call you made was to the cell block correctional of
ficer, known as the CO. He sat at the end of the cell block in an air-conditioned room that watched over fifty inmates. His responsibility was to understand where an inmate was every second of the day.

  The officer was a seasoned professional guard, and he stayed calm as the CO, whose name was Ralph Bagmen, answered the intercom. “Cosmo Walker is not in his cell. Where was he redirected after work detail?”

  “Hold on,” the CO said as he looked through his redirect sheet. He didn’t panic when he couldn’t find Cosmo’s name and went down the list again. There was only half a page of names, maybe twenty listed on the redirect sheet, and Cosmo’s name was not among them.

  A siren went off in the cell block building. All doorways were automatically closed and could only be entered with an electronic identification card which every guard carried.

  Guards ran upstairs across catwalks above cells looking for any movement. The building was on full lockdown. Bagmen called the laundry room. There was no answer. He located Kenton, the trustee, in the administration office. Kenton told the CO the laundry was closed down at two p.m. when he and the inmates were walked out by guards.

  If a prisoner went missing for more than fifteen minutes, it was time to worry, and while Bagmen hated to call his supervisors, it was a process he had to follow. It wouldn’t take a genius to know something was wrong when the master control center saw an alarm light blinking on the monitor. By the time he made the call, his supervisor was well aware and had put the guards in the tower around the entire campus on high alert.

  Ralph Bagmen, joined by two guards and Trustee Kenton on the ground floor, led the way to the surveillance room. First stop was the cameras to track Cosmo’s steps from the point of leaving the laundry room. The film showed a guard at the front entrance and a second guard leading the inmates out of the laundry room. Kenton named every inmate that walked out the door. Then the most shocking thing came on the screen. Kenton walked out the room, and a guard followed, locking the laundry room entry behind him.