“What the fuck! Where is Cosmo Walker?” Bagmen shouted. “Rerun the film.”
The security manager brought up Cosmo Walker's file and clicked on a facial shot of him. “Let’s do face recognition. The computer will pick up a side view as well as a full view as he comes through the door.”
The video started with the first person walking out the room. The computer identified each inmate’s face and spelled his name at the bottom of the screen. It took about twenty seconds to go through all the prisoners.
Bagmen looked at the security manager as the last frame showed Trustee Kenton walking out and the door closing behind him.
CO Bagmen rubbed his face with both hands. “Cosmo never left the fucking room.”
“I showed Cosmo how to put the machines on the clean cycle, and then we stood behind the group in line to exit the laundry room. The same way we do every day,” Kenton said.
Begmen looked at him. “Where was Cosmo on the line?”
Kenton thought for a second. “He was standing to my left, and then the line moved, and I guess he got behind me.”
They viewed the camera on the inside of the laundry room. Cosmo stood next to Kenton, just like he said. Then Cosmo stepped behind Kenton as the line moved. Bagmen looked closer at the screen—the camera angle didn’t show Cosmo.
The security manager clicked through the frames again. “Cosmo is next to Kenton; now he is behind him. Fuck, the line moves, and the last person in line is Kenton.”
The camera angle was altered, and with a broad view of the room, Cosmo was still not screened by the cameras. The security manager assured them the camera was checked daily for vibration caused by the equipment. When all machines were running, walls shook, and over time the cameras would move. It was a problem they’d had for some time, but the manager guaranteed the camera was checked before work started each day.
Bagmen looked worried. “‘Checked before work starts’ is the problem. This camera moved during the workday, throwing it out of focus. Let’s go to the laundry room.”
Kenton led the group down the hallway with the keys to the room in his hand. There were no windows and only one door in the basement of the prison.
Bagmen pointed out, “The walls are cinder blocks. It wouldn’t be the first time someone chiseled a block out.”
“No way. I would have noticed. Hell, he would just exit into the recreational yard anyway,” Kenton said, and a guard reinforced that with a head nod.
“I didn’t say he was smart. I just said there is no way out but through a cinder block,” Bagmen said as they arrived at the laundry room door.
Kenton opened the door and turned the lights on as they scattered through the room, looking for a hole in the wall. The washer and dryer were still in cleaning cycle.
“Turn those machines off,” Bagmen shouted.
Kenton hit the stop button on the washer, and it slowly stopped spinning. He pressed the stop button on the dryer, and it came to an immediate halt with a loud wallop. The wallop caused everyone to look at the dryer. Confused, Kenton opened the dryer door, and Cosmo’s arm hung out the opening and seconds later his body followed, slamming to the ground.
Cosmo Walker lay on the floor of the laundry room, his face badly bruised, arms blistered, shirt and pants scorched, with his eyes wide open. Cosmo was dead.
CHAPTER 23
Josephine Walker had the same morning routine ever since she retired from Katz and Levy, a local drug store chain in New Orleans, some twenty-five years ago, where she worked the lunch counter most of her adult life and was known for her sandwich creativity. She retired when the store was remodeled, and the lunch counter replaced with what management called more profitable items.
When the lunch counter closed, Josephine was invited to work as a cook for a high-society New Orleans power couple and their children. Many of her friends thought it was a great opportunity. Not her. Preparing meals for wealthy people wasn’t her style. Josephine liked the lunch counter where she knew the customers by name. Some bent her ear about problems at home, boyfriends, or husbands. Not voicing her opinion and hearing through their personal glimpses of life often got her big tips.
The truth was Josephine didn’t want her private life on the street. For years she managed to keep the skeletons in her closet from being exposed, and working for some wealthy people might jeopardize her secrets. She started at the drug store when she was a teenager, and her problems grew over the years. Starting with a new employee may require some background check, and that was something Josephine was not willing to do.
Josephine was a young married woman of eighteen about to have a baby by a man she loved but hardly knew. He seldom worked, but they always had enough money to make it to the next payday. Her world came crashing down in the middle of the night when police broke down her front door and hauled her husband to jail for murder. She later learned from police reports and newspaper articles about his life in gangs and crime, something her father and others warned her about before marriage. She hated the thugs in the neighborhood. They sometimes tried to harass her, but she stood toe to toe with them and assured them she had a gun and wasn’t afraid to use it.
As hard as she tried to keep her son on the right side of the law growing up, he followed his father’s footsteps, as did her grandson, Cosmo.
So after retirement, nothing changed. She still got up every morning early and got fully dressed like she was going someplace. She lived on the corner of Esplanade Avenue and Frenchmen Street in a home her father built some seventy-five years ago, the only house she ever lived in other than the twenty months she was married. She swept leaves off the front entrance while her morning coffee brewed in the kitchen.
By eight a.m. Josephine sat on a chair covered with a blanket on the front porch. It didn't matter if it was cold or hot, she always had her coverage. She would watch the traffic go by and wave to people going off to work, rushing to catch a bus.
Josephine was a fixture of the neighborhood, and knew everyone within blocks of her house, mainly the hood rats and their awful family. She didn’t hate many people, but anyone associated with a gang she despised.
She often beat herself up for not selling the house after her mother and father died, to get out of the hood. Cosmo Senior was in jail at that time, and it might have changed the life of her grandson, Cosmo Junior. It was hard for a single woman raising a grandson to move from the paid home her father left—a guaranteed roof over her head for life.
Sweeping was useless, as leaves already started to blow back on her sidewalk, depending on how fast cars traveled down the street. She came from the kitchen with a cup of coffee and a pitcher of water. She placed the coffee cup on a small table next to her chair and took the pitcher and watered a few flowers she’d received from Cosmo’s funeral. Then she sat on her chair, adjusting the blanket loosely on her lap and read from her prayer book. It was all she could offer Cosmo now that he was gone.
Two kids with school uniforms passed and they shouted, “Good morning, Mrs. Josephine” as they ran to catch the school bus waiting at the corner.
“Good morning, baby,” she said. It troubled her to see these children grow up in this neighborhood. Few amounted to anything that she could recall. Most parents meant well, but poverty and cheap rent kept them from moving.
Josephine finished her coffee and headed to the kitchen for her second cup. To her surprise, Pastor Rosey came calling on her.
The pastor joined her for coffee, and they said a prayer together for Cosmo. Josephine picked up on the pastor’s awkwardness.
“What did I do to deserve a visit?” Josephine said.
Rosey smiled. “Well, you do make the best coffee in town,” he said.
“Thirty years of working that lunch counter, I learned a few things.”
“My mother took me to the drug store after school. I’d get the chicken salad sandwich. I’d put your chicken salad up against anyone. It was the best,” the pastor said.
Josephine
laughed. “That’s very sweet of you to say.” She patted his hand. “But that’s not why you came here today, is it?”
CHAPTER 24
Pastor Rosey was one of the few that made it out of the neighborhood, but he couldn’t fool Josephine when he had something on his mind.
The day the pastor and Josephine visited Cosmo in prison, he had slipped a note to Rosey. He asked not to give her the letter until after his death, which he felt was coming soon. Pastor Rosey was the only person he could trust with such information. If the guards got hold of the note, it would result in his instant death.
Rosey explained Cosmo didn’t want her to worry. It was something he had to work out alone and just didn’t want her name involved. But if something did happen to him, the letter was his goodbye to his grandmother.
She opened the sealed envelope and read it out loud for them both to hear.
Grandma,
If you’re reading this letter, I must have been killed in prison. I trust Pastor Rosey will go into more detail that I shared with him. It will never hold up in court, but my death was ordered by Felipe Cruz and carried out by one of his soldiers.
Thank you for all you have done for me. I know you did your best raising me, and I wish I had followed your advice.
Love
Cosmo
Josephine sat motionless with the note in her hand. She was shocked but yet not, knowing the life he’d lived. It was his choice to follow the path of his father and friends. She did the best she could and knew one day he would regret the decisions he made in life.
“Why did he feel someone would murder him?” she asked.
Pastor Rosey got up to put more sugar in his coffee, more of a stall to buy time. “Can I get you anything, Mrs. Josephine?”
She motioned no with a wave of her hand and focused back on the note.
He returned shortly and pulled his chair to an angle to see her face to face. “The best I can gather is Felipe. You know of him?”
She made a face. “I’ve known him since the day he was born. I still think he killed his mother. But not one witness would testify. The police could never make a case.”
Pastor Rosey could only repeat the few facts Cosmo shared with him in the short time they met. Felipe ordered the hit on nurse Kate, and Cosmo’s part was to start a fight at Central Lockup. It was some vendetta Felipe had against a Detective Mario. Cosmo believed he was the last person alive that knew Felipe gave the order.
“Mario was the only cop that tried to clean this hell hole up before he made detective and moved from Gang Enforcement,” Josephine said with a tear running down her face.
Josephine knew Mario from the days he worked in Gang Enforcement. He held quick meetings on the street corner, talking how thugs could break away from this life of crime, like getting in a work program on the other side of town away from the neighborhood. It was like a club for guys that wanted better. Some followed, but not Cosmo.
“I’m so sorry to have to be the messenger,” he said, taking Josephine’s hand.
Josephine heard every word the pastor said but watched an old Chev Impala freshly painted drive by for the second time. She wasn’t good at model years but knew it was a typical gang vehicle.
She smiled. “Pastor, it is the life Cosmo selected, and I can’t beat myself up over something I couldn’t control,” Josephine said.
The Chev made another run in front of her house. This time it stopped a few houses down. Josephine, frightened by the vehicle, told the pastor it was best to take their talk inside.
Out of nowhere, Hector appeared on the front step of Josephine’s porch, dressed in blue jeans and a long coat to his knees, standing with his hands in his jacket pocket. Hector was a thug from a teenager and always followed Felipe like a lost puppy.
“A little warm for a coat, huh, Hector?” Josephine said, sliding her hand under her blanket.
“What do you want, son?” the Pastor asked.
Hector stepped onto the porch and looked down the street to his right and then to his left where the Chev was parked.
“Your buddies are still there. Is that what you’re looking for?” Josephine said, reaching her hand between the seat pillow and the side of her chair.
“You should not have visited Cosmo in prison,” Hector said.
“And why is that?” Josephine boldly asked.
Pastor Rosey stood up, a more prominent man in size than Hector, who came from the streets of New Orleans too. Rosey was from the neighborhood and he had followed the church and not a life of crime. He said, “You need to leave.”
“You need to stay right there, preacher boy,” Hector said, pointing what looked like a gun at the pastor from the hand he had in his coat pocket. He looked down the street again for the Chev. The car backed up in the middle of the street and stopped in front of Josephine's house. “Felipe said you two have to go.”
With that said, the pastor jumped at Hector. A gunshot went off, and a bullet went through Hector’s coat pocket, hitting the pastor in the stomach, dropping him to the ground.
Hector swiftly pulled the gun from his pocket and pointed it at Josephine.
She put her left hand in the air and said, “Before you kill me.”
That slight hesitation by Hector gave her the opportunity she needed, and she took it, firing a shot from the gun she held under her cover.The bullet hit him in the chest, pushing him back two steps. Hector balanced himself and started to raise his weapon. Josephine pulled her Smith Wesson 38 from under the blanket and fired two more shots, sending Hector backward down the steps to land on the sidewalk.
She rushed to the end of the porch and pointed the gun at the Chev in the street.
“Make a move, Landon, and I’ll take you down too,” Josephine screamed, knowing Landon had to be in the car, for him and Hector were indeed partners in crime. The vehicle left quickly, side-swiping another vehicle and running the traffic light at the corner.
Rushing into the house, Josephine got to the telephone and dialed 911.
“What’s your emergency?” an operator asked, answering on the first ring.
“My friend has been shot.” Dropping the phone, she rushed out to attend to Pastor Rosey.
CHAPTER 25
You could hear police sirens blaring in the distance. The sound was coming from different directions towards Josephine’s home. She felt some relief knowing help was on the way as she held Pastor Rosey’s head in her lap, watching the blood pour from his stomach. With the gang’s flophouse only two blocks away, indeed the word had spread already that she’d killed one of their brothers. It was just a matter of time, and that could mean minutes, before the gang would take their revenge out on her.
With an emergency call like the one she’d made, the police had to take it seriously, something they didn’t always do in that part of town. Two police units came screaming up Esplanade Avenue and made a turn at the corner, stopping in front of Josephine’s house. Within seconds another police car and paramedics showed up.
Josephine’s heart was pounding out of her chest. She had often sat on the porch with her gun under the blanket for protection. It was more like a security measure, and she never thought she would ever have to use the weapon. Her father, Oscar Johnson, gave her the gun years earlier just before he died, telling her, “If you put your finger on the trigger, prepare to use the weapon.”
Everything was happening in slow motion. Josephine watched the police jump out cars and rush up the front steps. Rolling to her side, she let the paramedics handle the pastor. She sat there disoriented, watching people move slowly and other times fast, taking care of the two victims.
“Ma’am, let me help you up,” the policemen said, pulling her up by her arms, allowing paramedics to attend to Pastor Rosey.
“You can call the wagon for this one,” a paramedic said, confirming Hector was dead.
Another medic worked on Rosey, holding pressure on his stomach to slow the bleeding.
“Is he alive?” Jose
phine asked.
“Barely,” the person working on Pastor Rosey said. “Let’s get him on a stretcher.”
A policeman talked into a two-way radio he had attached to his shoulder. “Alert the hospital we are on our way—male gunshot to the upper stomach. We need a full crew waiting.”
“Let’s go!” the Medic shouted as they carried the stretcher off the porch and stepped over Hector’s body to put Pastor Rosey into the ambulance.
Once an officer confirmed the emergency call, the police dispatch sent several police units to the area. The streets were blocked by police cars stopping traffic from passing in front of Josephine’s house, and the crowd that was starting to form on the road was pushed back onto the median. A second paramedic team showed up, confirming Josephine wasn’t injured but very shaken up by the ordeal. The paramedic let the police start their investigation and suggested they give her a little time to calm down.
“She has been through a traumatic ordeal and is up in age. She might not be ready to give a statement,” the nurse with the crew told an officer.
The first police officers to arrive were responsible for interviewing about the details of what happened at the scene, then the chief assigned a detective team to the case.
“Mrs. Josephine, I’m Officer Burk, and this is my partner, Officer Westgate,” the policeman said as they pulled up a chair at the kitchen table and sat across from Josephine. “We found a gun on your bed—fired three times. Is this the gun you shot the two men with?”
Josephine’s eyes opened wide. “No!”
“No, it’s not your gun?” Burk asked.
“No, I didn’t shoot Pastor Rosey.”
“Now which one is Pastor Rosey,” Westgate asked as both officers wrote her answers in their memo pads.
Crescent City Detective Page 17
