Crescent City Detective

by Vito Zuppardo

  Mario had called Kate twice only for the call to be intercepted by Amelia. She was always polite, and Mario felt Amelia had his best interests at heart. But it was the same story each time: Kate was in the shower or Kate was napping. Mario knew Kate just needed more time to process what had happened.

  Walking into the bedroom, it looked extra empty and dark. Kate always left the bedroom lamp on for him when she worked the night shift. There was no light on in the room or the smell of a scented candle Kate burned while getting dressed. The realization that she was gone and possibly never returning was starting to become too real, and that was something he didn’t want to dwell on, so he headed to the shower.

  Mario took his suit off and didn’t realize until the clothes were hanging over a chair that his outfit had picked up the awful smell of the lake water and dead bodies. He went to the kitchen and got a dry-cleaning bag and stuffed his clothes into the container. Then he smelled his tie and it went in the bag too. Pulling the drawstring tight on the top of the pre-labeled sack with his apartment number and name displayed, he marched out the front door. In his boxer shorts, he quickly ran down to the end of the hallway and dropped the bag in the laundry chute, rushing back to the apartment before being seen.

  It was the end of another dreadful day in the world of police work. If only a shower could wash away the memories of that day like it did for the smell trapped in his hair and on his body. No such luck for Mario. The memories would always be there, and it took washing his hair twice and squeezing nasal spray in his nose to eliminate the smell.

  Mario set his alarm clock and put his head on the pillow. From the smell, he was happy it was cleaning day. The in-house cleaning crew cleaned the condo and did the wash, which included fresh linens on the bed.

  What a treat, Mario thought as he rested his head on the pillow that still had the sweet-scented smell of laundry detergent. Hopefully, this was the night he would sleep until morning. Restful sleep was hopeful but not always guaranteed for a homicide detective.

  For the most part, Mario slept most nights, except when he was jolted awake by the occasional police car running up Magazine Street with sirens blaring. In the early morning, you could hear ships sounding horns as they rounded the bends of the Mississippi River. Mario referred to the sounds as the music of the French Quarter, and in time the noise became the routine sounds of living in a unique city like New Orleans.

  CHAPTER 40

  The first stop of the day was Mario’s office to pick up the envelope Olivia had left for him. Sometimes it could be an extended waiting period between signing in at the prison and the inmate being brought down to the questioning room. That would give him time to read over her report and see if it offered any useful information.

  He grabbed the envelope off his desk and was back in his car in no time on his way heading west to Calabar Prison. During that time of the morning, the bulk of the work traffic was going east into the city. His trip would take him through Baton Rouge and north to Saint Francisville. It was a beautiful town of about twenty-five hundred residents with several thousand violent criminals living just a few miles away. Mario felt the city names should have been changed and there should be arrows displayed that read “Good this way” pointing to Saint Francisville and “Evil this way” pointing to Calabar Prison.

  Louisiana was slowly surpassing all states in becoming number one in population… unfortunately, in prison occupancy. Calabar, the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, had over five thousand inmates. About 95 percent of the people serving time would die before serving their full sentence. Mario felt he had done his part in sending the most violent criminals to their final resting place.

  At times when going to Calabar, it felt like a family reunion. He helped put many of the people in what Mario called a Hillbilly Country Club, and when they saw him come through the gates, they would line up on the fence to shout welcoming messages.

  Mario would reply as always to their lovely remarks. “Fuck you too, asshole,” he would say under his breath, knowing he couldn’t engage with the prisoners.

  A caution blinking yellow light and a run-down gas station and convenience store was the last stop before you hit the twenty-two miles of road leading to the gates of Calabar. Traveling this distance, he brought along his cell phone pack with the battery that was larger than the phone itself. It was positioned in the passenger seat and took up half of the space. As his car came to a slow down at the yellow flashing light, the phone rang, scaring the hell out of him while he was in deep thought of how he was going to question Felipe Cruz. He reached for the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Detective?”

  “Howard, a little early for you to be up and around, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes and no. I had a late run with the limousine and about four this morning I picked up a couple at the private jet terminal.”

  “Must be nice,” Mario said.

  “Anyway, I dropped them at a house—well, an estate on Audubon Place—and going back, I passed the Fontenots’ residence. I saw a car circling the neighborhood. It was about five in the morning. I watched this car for a while, and it finally stopped. It was observing the Fontenots’ house.”

  “Son of a bitch! Fuck, I’m all the way up here ten minutes from Calabar,” Mario said.

  “No need to bother right now,” Howard said, and paused. “Kate walked out the house with a suitcase and got into her car. I hated to follow her, but when I saw that car that had been hanging around pull out behind her, I had to.

  “No problem. Good move, Howard. Where are you now?”

  “That’s the problem. I followed her until I had to stop and get gas. I mean, I was running on fumes. All I know is I’m on Highway eleven in Picayune, Mississippi.”

  Mario was familiar with the area and asked for some landmarks. Howard confirmed he was in a Walmart parking lot looking at a chicken joint across the street.

  Mario directed him to the second traffic light on Highway 11 and told him to turn right. Kate was apparently heading to a place her parents had in a community called Hideaway Lake. He directed Howard the rest of the way. “Call me when you get to the guard house, and I will direct you to the Fontenot home.”

  Mario stopped at the convenience store for a cup of coffee before driving up the highway to Calabar. He walked through the place, and three unsavory guys were seated at a small makeshift table and chairs drinking beer. With some empty beer bottles on the table and floor, it was obvious they had been drinking for a while. Sucking up the beer was a little skinny guy, a big man, and one that was just plain nasty looking. From the looks of them, they could qualify for membership at the Hillbilly Country Club.

  Mario kept an eye on the guys and started to pour a cup of coffee from the dirty glass coffee pot. You could tell that the burnt coffee had been sitting on the burner way too long just by the smell.

  Even the pot in the break room at the police station isn’t this dirty, Mario thought.

  “I’ll make some fresh coffee if you can wait a minute,” said the clerk, coming from behind the counter.

  “Sure,” Mario said, nodding his head.

  He was fired up from Howard’s call and should have left the beer drinkers alone. But that was him, a true blue detective protecting the city and judging people before they got to court. And he knew these guys must have broken some laws sometime in their life, so to Mario they were already guilty.

  “You guys left over from last night or just like beer for breakfast?”

  “What’s it to you?” said the skinny dude, giving Mario a nasty look.

  “The coffee is dripping, give it a minute,” the clerk said, stepping towards the counter.

  Mario stopped him. “Let me ask you a question. You can sell beer, I see from the faded paper license framed on your wall.”

  “Yes sir,” the clerk said.

  “But do you have a license for people to consume the beer on this property?”

  The cler
k looked at the three guys then back at Mario and paused. “No. I asked them twice not to drink in here.” He shook his head, looking down. “I just work here, sir.”

  The beer drinkers only a few feet away didn’t take kindly to Mario’s intrusion of their morning breakfast drink.

  “What’s your problem, pal?” said the bigger guy, standing up and making sure Mario knew he was ready for whatever he might throw at him.

  “Hold up, couch potato,” Mario said as he walked over to them. “You guys know the case details about Smith and Glock?”

  “What are you, some hotshot fucking attorney?” said the skinny guy, who seemed to be the leader of the crew.

  “No, not really. But the story of Smith and Glock goes like this. If you don’t get the fuck out of here, if Smith doesn’t get you, I assure you Glock will,” Mario said, pulling his coat back and exposing his shoulder holsters housing his 38 Smith & Wesson and a Glock 19 strapped to his side: his two most trusted friends.

  The three of them got up with beer bottles in hand and Mario slipped his hand on his Glock. They looked at him and reluctantly walked to the door.

  “Hold up! Whoever is driving needs to ditch the beer. We don’t allow drinking and driving in Louisiana,” Mario said, keeping his coat pulled back for easy access to his gun—just in case one decided to be a hero.

  The big guy had rage in his eyes looking back at Mario as he dropped the beer bottle in the trash can. Licking his lips, he stared back at Mario as he pushed the glass door open and walked out.

  Mario got his coffee and went to the register and handed the clerk two bucks.

  “No, sir. The coffee is on me,” the clerk said with a smile.

  Mario gave him a wink and walked out to his car, looking around to make sure the hillbillies were gone.

  Mario was getting antsy waiting for Howard to call and glanced at the phone sitting in the passenger's seat as he started the engine. He felt Howard should have arrived at Hideaway Lake’s entrance by now—all he could do was wait for the call.

  Except for a few turns in the road and a hill or two, it was pretty much a straight run to Calabar Prison. You could tell you were getting close when you saw the inmates with orange jumpsuits working in the fields.

  Mario chuckled. “Trusted prisoners in a maximum-security prison? Now that is an oxymoron,” he mumbled to himself.

  The prison warden had his trusted few that worked on the farm growing corn, vegetables, and some fruit. They had cows, pigs, and several fields of sugar cane. Free land, help, and supervision—a farm with no expenses. The warden and his family and friends benefited and ate like kings, throwing the inmates that worked the farm a dinner a few times a month, making it a privilege to be selected to work on what the warden called Special Detail. As special as it could be with horseback guards carrying high-powered rifles watching your every move.

  Mario made it through two security checkpoints and parked his car in the area labeled Law Enforcement. It was a lot closer to the main entrance than the visitors’ parking lot.

  Opening the trunk, Mario placed his holsters with the guns in a steel locked box, along with his handcuffs, mace, and other police items he carried daily.

  The phone rang, and Mario ran around to the phone and answered.

  It was Howard; he got through the gates with no problem. When entering the grounds, he came across Kate and her car on the side of the road. The man who had followed Kate from New Orleans had fixed an apparent flat tire. Then he’d followed her to the house, carried her luggage inside, and returned to his car.

  Howard had observed the man just sitting in the car. He’d walked around the outer property and come up on the side of the car and surprised the guy. With a gun to his head, he showed Howard his ID—he worked security at the Fontenots’ building.

  Mario was pissed that her father would move her to a remote area and have a mall security guard for her protection. Just like Howard did, a professional killer could have gotten on the grounds and taken Kate and the security guy out and never been seen.

  Mario thanked Howard for his assistance and ended the call. For now, he had to focus on the task at hand and the reason he’d come to this godforsaken prison.

  “Good morning,” Mario said to the clerk as he signed in at the window where detectives, attorneys, and other law enforcement people showed identification to enter the prison.

  As usual, his trusted partner Truman had everything arranged, and he was soon sitting in a room waiting for the guards to bring Felipe Cruz down from his cell. Having a visitor’s request come from the New Orleans Police Department allowed Mario to give an unannounced visit to Felipe. The guards just went to his cell and plucked him out with no explanation. During the long walk from his cell to the visitor's room, Felipe had to wonder what was happening and that maybe he was losing control of his prison empire.

  Mario got comfortable waiting for Felipe and opened the envelope Olivia had left for him. There were some pictures and a lot of notes. He carefully reviewed them.

  Felipe walked into a secured meeting room escorted by two guards. Handcuffed and shackled around his feet, he moved slowly. The cuffs locked to a steel bar in the center of a table and the chains around his feet to the floor for added security. The guards watched him through a glass window while another guard brought Mario in the room. Felipe and Mario came face to face for the first time since they’d locked eyes at his trial some ten years ago.

  Felipe’s fear diminished a little when Mario came into the room.

  “It’s been a long time, Detective,” he said with his usual smirk on his face.

  “It’s been pleasurable knowing you’re locked up,” Mario greeted.

  “Now you didn’t drive for—what, three hours?—just to insult me.”

  Mario had thought long and hard about how he was going to approach Felipe and had a few ideas but not a real game plan. All he knew was that it was important for him to stay calm. If not Felipe, would have won control of the meeting.

  “No, you’re right, I didn’t drive up here to insult you,” Mario said, taking a seat across from him. Looking into Felipe’s eyes and roundness of his face, it was a close match to a picture he’d found in Olivia’s report.

  Felipe opened the questioning. “So, what’s up with a visit? Was my attorney advised regarding this meeting?”

  “Who cares?” Mario said, giving back the same smirk he saw in front of him and waiting for the reaction.

  Felipe shrugged his shoulders. Mario had quickly set the tone for the meeting and could see he was getting under Felipe’s skin.

  “Is my attorney coming? Is he aware you're here?”

  Mario rested his elbows on the table. “We can do this two ways. You can request your attorney, and I’ll drive back to New Orleans and go on with my life. You can go back to your cell and run your make-believe empire. The other way would be you shut the fuck up and listen because I just might have the deal of a lifetime for you.”

  Most people feared Felipe in jail or out and wouldn’t be alive the next day for talking to him that way. He knew Mario had the upper hand and sat staring at him.

  “I’m listening,” Felipe said, not breaking his composure.

  “We have two witnesses that will testify that you arranged the riot in Central Lockup to get Juice Boy and G-Man in the hospital to attack Kate,” Mario said, waiting for Felipe to blink or show some concern. “You recruited Willard Smith to assist with the assault. In the end, Angie Browning killed Juice Boy and G-Man, and surprisingly Angie died of an overdose.”

  Mario paused and waited for Felipe to respond. At first he hesitated, just folded his arms, staring not at Mario but through him. Mario knew he’d hit a nerve.

  “Wow! That’s a full mouth, of bullshit detective—and quite an imagination.”

  “Glad you are amused. A third witness can identify you as the one who authorized the killing of Pastor Rosey. You just didn’t expect Ms. Josephine Walker to pull a gun out and kill Hector,” Mari
o said, waiting for a reaction. None came.

  Nothing you could say would give an inkling of what Felipe might be thinking. He was and always would be a cold-hearted borderline serial killer. He would gun down one of his crew members just to make a point. Why they looked up to this psychopath was one of the many demons that troubled Mario.

  Felipe broke his silence. “And why does this concern me?”

  “Because I’m going to prove it and add a double homicide to your file. That, my friend, gets you put on death row, where you’ll sit in exile for twenty years until the warden injects you and ends your pathetic life.”

  There was something Mario said that struck a cord. There was a slight twitch on the left side of Felipe’s face. It was faint, but a tightness appeared when the words death row were said.

  He ran with that theory. “Yes, that’s right, death row. No contact with anyone. No TV, radio, library, and most of all your junkyard crew would have a new leader. You would be powerless. You would just as soon die on the first day than sit in an eight-by-eight cell for twenty years and die of natural causes or my preference, by order of the State of Louisiana.”

  Mario was on a roll. Felipe’s eyes wandered around the room. It meant he was thinking, speculating the possibilities of Mario’s threats. The one thing worse than being in Calabar Prison was being on death row. Everyone feared being cut off from the little luxuries you had in a cell versus death row.

  “Detective, why don’t you reach down and grab a pair of balls and ask me the question you came up here for?”

  Mario continued to pound him, reminding Felipe that death row meant an end to his visitors. The visits where his posse surrounded him and the guards looked the other way while Felipe and his girlfriend went at it in the corner of the visitors’ room. Death row inmates could have visitors, but they sat across from each other with a glass wired partition between them. There was so much wire between the glass panels, you could hardly make out who the visitor was on the other side. No contact, no touching, kissing, or ass grabbing—all the things Felipe looked forward to in prison. It was those things that kept Felipe going inside the prison walls, looking forward to the next visit.