City of Secrets

by O'Neil De Noux

  Felicity takes off his tie, shoves it in his pocket, looks at Beau’s face.

  “You don’t have any more razors?”

  Beau smiles.

  “Fuck.” Felicity lets out a long breath. “Cops gotta steal clothes, food, cars from abandoned dealerships. Anything to survive, pull the department back together and now we get a group of gang-bangers from L.A., Diego.”

  Beau nods to the assortment of police cars from out of state, cops arriving all the time.

  “Shit, we send them in the city, they just get lost. No communications.” Felicity steps closer. “The desertions keep getting worse. We so far down, I don’t know if NOPD’ll ever come back.”

  Beau yawns. “Difference between a disaster and a catastrophe isn’t much.”

  Linda Pickett comes out of the police hanger, heads straight for them. She wears a dark blue tee-shirt with white ATF across her chest and a shoulder rig, tactical pants that look a lot better on her. She still wears that dark red lipstick, her hair in a pony tail again.

  “Mister Beau,” she calls out as she approaches. “Bad news. We still have no agents to spare and I’m under strict orders to remain at the airport.” She sighs as she arrives, puts her hands on her hips, looks around a moment, then back up into Beau’s eyes.

  “Mister Beau? I thought we’d gone beyond that.”

  She smiles slightly but she’s not happy today. “Your Lt. Avery’s been at it all day, trying to convince the high command to allow his men to accompany you.”

  She huffs. “I’m working on getting you an M4 or an M16.”

  Beau climbs in the Escalade. “Are you married, in love?”

  “What?”

  A smirk crawls on Felicity’s face.

  “If you aren’t, maybe we can have dinner, catch a movie?”

  It takes her a couple seconds to recover. “We’re in disaster-mode here. What theatre’s open?”

  This is what happens when Beau lets his Cajun side loose for a moment. He just thought of cooking up something, watching a flick on the DVD player in Sad Lisa, sitting with her on his sofa with Stella. And it’s there again, the familiar pain from high school. John Raven Beau, the all-state quarterback, good looking kid who couldn’t get a date to the senior prom because he was a swamp rat, a half-Indian able to attend Holy Ghost High because his tuition was paid by Catholic relief because he was poor. He didn’t realize that but learned in first grade when the kids told him. He knew his family didn’t even have a car.

  “Oh, John,” said the pretty brunette in his chemistry class when he asked her to a movie, “I like you, but I can’t go out with you.”

  This was echoed by other girls, including the very pretty, shy redhead with glasses in his history class. He took a chance, asked the head cheerleader to the prom. She just shook her head.

  “Sorry,” he tells Linda. “What was I thinking?” He closes the door and eases the Escalade away. Doesn’t look back, laughs at himself and his Sioux voice reminds him to harden his heart. A warrior does not feel sorry for himself.

  Linda Pickett turns to Felicity Jones, asks, “What was that about?”

  It’s his turn to laugh. “No need to be coy with me. If you don’t feel the attraction I see between you two, then I can’t help you.”

  Her face is getting red now.

  “We have agents coming. Truly. I don’t want him going out there alone.”

  “Where they coming from, China?”

  She blows a loose strand of hair from her eyes.

  Felicity stretches, tells her, “My cousin’s a St. Bernard Parish detective, says the day of the flood, he was pulled off the top of the sheriff’s substation in Arabi by men in boats. He asked who they were, not recognizing their uniforms and they said they were Mounties.” Felicity’s eyes go wide. “As in Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They started down before Katrina was even close to the coast.”

  Linda huffs again.

  “It’s been, what, two months and the feds are ‘sending reinforcements’. Kinda embarrassing havin’ Canadians here the day after, wouldn’t you say?”

  She raises her chin. “Mister Jones. Did it ever occur to you a Canadian would do just about anything to get away from Canada? Even come to a hurricane.”

  “Touché. Nice try changing the subject. We weren’t talking about reinforcements a minute ago. We were talking about Beau liking you. If you ain’t interested, tell him. If you want me to tell him, just say so. I know Beau. What you saw is as aggressive as he gets with a woman. He asked. He won’t bother you about it again.”

  John Raven Beau drives through the darkness, forcing thoughts of Linda Pickett’s pretty face from his mind to concentrate on the mission. He prowls the broken streets, makes two traffic stops, but goes home empty handed to a female whose excited to see him. Stella sits up in the same position, big green eyes looking at him when he comes in. Her food dish is empty and she’s drank some of the water, so she hasn’t been sitting there all day.

  He enters and she bounces over.

  •

  Carlos Rodriguez ain’t happy with what they’re telling him. Terez watches his hands ball up into fists, open up, then ball up again as he stands with Ace Boody and the new guy, the skinny white one named Jimmy, who apparently grew up around here.

  “If he ain’t stayin’ at the cruise ships,” growls Carlos. “Where the fuck’s he sleeping? In the fuckin’ SUV?”

  Ace raises a hand, says, “We followed an Escalade, turn out to be dark blue.”

  “You followed the wrong fuckin’ car and you smilin’?”

  “We found out where all the cop cars are getting their gas. The airport. They got hangers fulla cops, the army, police cars and fire engines and they all refuel there. We gonna stake it out tomorrow.”

  “That easy?”

  “Shit, they got over a thousand people lined up outside the airport, in tents, in cars, they go in every day to get water and food. Cars and trucks all over the fuckin’ place. We’ll fit right in.”

  Ace isn’t about to tell Carlos he thinks he spotted the black Escalade going in to fuel up just before dawn. He was out of position to follow. He won’t be next time. He’ll take Oscar’s green pickup. It ain’t been spotted yet. It just got there.

  Carlos touches the bandage on his face. Fucker still throbs. He looks at Jimmy, who has to be pushing forty, scraggly beard dotted with gray. “You. Can’t believe you came all the way from Diego and you brung no shit with you.”

  Jimmy looks at Ace, says, “We got stopped three times in Texas and twice in Louisiana. Highway patrols got the interstates locked down from the west.” He looks at Carlos. “I was waitin’ for you to ask, but you been all tied up with this cop. We got a load comin’ in with my cousin. He just got outta the army. He’s comin’ to be a Brown Raven.

  Donna Elena steps out of the warehouse, digs a Coke from one of the ice chests, goes back in. She got a great little ass in those jeans and Jimmy’s feeling horny as hell. He already asked Ace and knows she don’t give it away. Fuckin’ bitch. Ain’t even a Raven yet.

  Terez sees Carlos is ready to punch the shit outta someone.

  “Your cousin bringing shit with him?”

  “Coke and crack. He drives a hummer. Comin’ from Fort Rucker in Alabama. The shit came in through Panama City before the storm. He told me the army’s sending more helicopters here. They stationed at Rucker.”

  Jimmy taps Oscar’s arm. “We gotta get a better place than this to stay.”

  “I got connections,” says Oscar. “My auntie’s house. She in Atlanta.”

  Carlos keeps glaring at them. Where they going with this? Takin’ over? Telling them where to live?

  Oscar smiles, shows his two gold teeth. “It’s a duplex. Got a generator. All we need is gas and we got lights, air conditioning.”

  Even Carlos is fed up with the roach-infested warehouse. He snarls, “The shit coming from Alabama, it’s good shit?”

  “That’s why I’m here. Premium shit.” Jim
my’s finished talking, goes to get himself a beer from the ice chests.

  •

  Beau’s thinking tonight is worse than last night. He stopped six vehicles and no Ravens. No reports of car jacking and no more bodies. He knows they didn’t just go away. The lull before the storm. He doesn’t see Linda or Felicity when he gasses up at five a.m., but spots the green pickup tailing him before he’s four blocks from the airport. Driver and one passenger, the driver letting a car get between them now.

  This’ll be tricky without backup. Beau picks up the radio Aligood gave him and calls for anyone. No answer. He switches channels and realizes the battery’s dead. There are no streetlights, no traffic lights so Airline Drive has the right of way, no need to stop unless a car crosses in front and none does. Beau slowly increases speed, the pickup falling back but able to keep pace.

  As he closes on the parish line, Beau sees a fire station on the left that has lights on, slows and crosses over to it. He sees the green pickup continue on, probably to set up a little distance away.

  A fireman steps out of the station house.

  “Police,” Beau tells them. “You have a phone, radio?”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you go to fires?”

  “We watch and see if another engine goes by and we follow.”

  Another fireman comes out with two cans of Coke, offers one to Beau who shakes his head, thanks them and leaves. The green pickup remains out of sight until he turns down Carrollton Avenue and spots it again.

  This guy’s local. Knows the streets.

  He hits the brights on his lights and barrels down Carrollton, now a single lane, one way on either side of the neutral ground, the other lane piled with trash, higher than the Escalade. He passes twisted streetcar tracks on his left are still covered with debris, downed trees mostly, a few cars, garbage cans, more refrigerators. A lawn mower hangs in an oak tree.

  Someone nailed stop signs to saw horses at the intersection of Earhart Boulevard, Oak Street, St. Charles Avenue. When Beau turns left on Leake Avenue to run along the river levee, the green pickup hesitates but follows.

  No hiding down here. Huh, Ass-hole?”

  Turning left on Magazine Street, Beau takes the first right past Walnut Street, zooms past parking lots of the Audubon Zoo covered in great mounds of fallen tree branches, decaying leaves, twisted metal girders, fractured lawn chairs. He crosses the levee to Riverview Drive next to the dark Mississippi River. Avenger Park is completely dark on the left now. The black river glimmers in the moonlight, the water’s still high but this massive levee didn’t break. If it had, the city would be gone. For a moment Beau remembers meeting his first national guardsmen, right after the storm. From Ohio, their captain said something about the hurricane had come straight up the river, stopped the Mississippi, pushed her back over the levees.

  No hurricane – not Katrina, or Rita, a much stronger storm, could stop the Mississippi River, could back up the big muddy water. He quickly told the captain it was the lake levees. Lake Pontchartrain sitting above the city and Lake Borgne to the east, overran the levees and filled the great bowl. Surrounded by water and below sea level, New Orleans is a bowl waiting to be filled.

  It didn’t flood here. The highest part of the city lies against the river. Here it’s actually a few feet above sea level. The zoo didn’t flood either. Beau sees the green pickup following far behind now, must be worried he’s setting a trap, he turns left to head back to Magazine and waits until he’s over the levee and out of sight before gunning it to run past the zoo on the left now.

  It’s lit up by gas lamps, a dull yellow light. Most zookeepers stayed, the others coming back quickly to feed the animals. Not getting fed for a day or two wasn’t bad. Except for the big cats, of course. The squirrels, raccoons, possums and other indigenous critters who live in Audubon Park sought shelter in the zoo only to be quickly gobbled up by hungry felines. Tigers, leopards and jaguars had a feast of local cuisine. The primates are a different story. Without human visitors, without the bustle of people, they have become sullen, hunkered down, won’t come out of their dens. At least that’s what Beau heard.

  He spots the tunnel to the left, pumps the brakes hard, skids off the road, turns through the oaks to cut into the tunnel. The Escalade barely fits as this is the tunnel for the miniature train. He drives to the far end and kills his lights.

  This is the Second District, Ass-hole. I worked here five years.

  It takes longer than he figures for the green pickup to drive past and up to Magazine Street. It stops to let a car go past, then a truck.

  Where are these cars coming from?

  Good news for Beau as the pickup turns right on Magazine, a silver car passes and Beau pulls in behind the silver car whose headlights shows him the driver of the pickup is white the passenger black. The driver of the pickup pounds on the steering wheel.

  Yeah. You lost me. But I didn’t lose you.

  There are lights ahead. Like parts of the Quarter, this portion of Magazine Street has electricity. They pass the Second District Police Station with its huge gold star and crescent badge sculpture dangling above the doorway. Beau’s old stationhouse is open for business, but there are no cops out front as he passes. Dammit.

  The silver car pulls over and Beau has to drop back.

  Inside the green pickup Jimmy tells Ace. “OK. He fuckin’ dumped us. He’s cagy.” He looks back at the headlights a block behind. Dark SUV. Another pair of headlines cuts in. A yellow pickup truck. He sees the SUV turn left.

  Ace seethes next to the idiot. This cracker can’t drive worth shit.

  “That Donna Elena bitch,” Jimmy says. “I’m gonna take my turn with her when we get back.”

  Ace tries to be nice. Jimmy’s got two guns on him, both nine-millimeters and worse is the fuckin’ weird eyes, all batty, looking around. He has a bad feeling about this.

  Jimmy laughs. “Oscar and the Joses already doin’ her.”

  “What you mean, already?”

  “When you left and that Axel took off in the other pickup with the chubby Terez, they gonna fuck the piss outta the bitch.”

  “Carlos won’t stand for it.”

  Jimmy laughs. “Carlos is in on it. Hadda get Terez outta the way and you saw how charged up she got to get into action.”

  Ace feels the acid in his belly, then told himself to calm down. He’d been thinking Donna Elena Palma was a muff-diver anyway, the way she didn’t want nothing to do with any man. But he can’t help feeling bad.

  “Ravens don’t rape each other.”

  Jimmy shrugs. “She ain’t killed nobody. Ain’t a Raven yet.”

  John Raven Beau has driven these streets so many times as a patrolman, he knows every curve, every turn of the odd streets of a city built along a wide crescent along the river. He parallels the green pickup through the Garden District and the Lower Garden District, CBD, all the way to more lights. The French Quarter, a bright oasis where barrooms are open again, strip clubs, cafés and some of the restaurants as well, people milling in the streets.

  The green pickup turns down Iberville for Decatur Street where less people walk the street. There are plenty cars here and Ace Boody doesn’t spot the SUV tailing him, keeping a couple cars between them. He spots a pizza stand at the edge of the French Market and pulls over.

  Beau rolls past as the driver jumps out, gets a good look at the skinny white man, sees the passenger sitting there, staring straight ahead like a zombie. He parks down Decatur, kills his lights and sinks down in the seat. Twenty minutes later the green pickup rolls past, the driver jabbering at the passenger whose got his eyes closed as they ride past the Escalade. Fortunately, a white Toyota follows the pickup and Beau is able to ease in behind. The pickup moves quickly as the driver of the Toyota’s head turns from side to side.

  Tennessee plate. Fuckin’ tourist.

  He loses sight of the pickup’s taillights by the time he reaches Barracks Street as the Toyota finally turns off.
He accelerates and continues on Decatur, just hoping he’ll spot them. He looks up and down the cross streets. At Elysian Fields, he spots taillights up the avenue but it’s not a pickup. He continues on Decatur. Crossing Franklin Avenue, he spots another vehicle up the street, stops and is about to turn when the vehicle turns and he sees its white. He stays on Decatur.

  This is Bywater, part of the Ninth Ward, with small, wooden houses, mostly shotguns lined side by side along narrow one-way streets. Part of the ‘Sliver By The River’ – higher ground that didn’t flood, Bywater has no electricity and only a few people have come back after the storm. Abandoned cars line the streets. No streetlights but several of the houses have lights. Beau hears an occasional generator. He glances both ways at each corner and a flicker of light off to his right at St. Ferdinand Street catches his eye.

  He stops, kills his lights and eases the Escalade down the street. He’s a block from the river here and facing a line of warehouses abandoned long ago. Red brick hulks along the riverfront, jammed against the high levee, most of these buildings are five, six stories. Beau feels the hair standing on his arms now, stops the SUV and backs up to the intersection again. He parks the Escalade between a junked van and a black pickup with two tires missing. He listens for a minute before getting out, pulling on the flak vest. He locks the doors manually and withdraws the Glock as he moves to the corner.

  Banquette. The word bounces in his brain and he drives it away as his eyes scours the area for any movement. Banquette. In New Orleans, where things are done differently on purpose, sidewalks are called banquettes. When it rains, the sidewalks, always higher than the street, serve as banks as the street fill with water. The building at the corner was a grocery store BK. Its door gone, windows broken out, Beau doesn’t have to see inside to know it’s been looted. Moving on the balls of his feet he steps around the corner and starts toward the river. Less than a hundred yards away, he spies the green pickup slowly pull between two defunct warehouses not fifty yards from the levee.

  Ace notices the gray pickup is back. He goes straight into the rear of their warehouse, nearly runs into Terez in the dim light.