by Don Bruns
‘First of all, Detective, since August 29, 2005, everything we do in this city is under scrutiny. That hurricane did more than destroy people’s homes and lives. It brought out hundreds of journalists who were eager to bury New Orleans. Every news organization in the country wanted a piece of the tragedy we’d gone through. And they uncovered a lot of dirt. Still do.’ She nodded. ‘Second of all, Blake Rains tried to get me fired.’ Color rose in her cheeks. ‘The man questioned one of my autopsies involving a drug overdose. The deceased had been his friend. Then the son of a bitch offered a bribe if I fudged the report so I reported him. Needless to say, he wasn’t too happy about the situation and after threatening me numerous times he went public and called me a liar. The biggest prevaricator in the city. It wasn’t a pleasant time, Detective. I will never forget the man. He claimed I was out to destroy his career.’ Her words were icy cold and she stared at him.
‘She said, he said?’
‘It sounds like that, doesn’t it? But I’m still here, Detective Archer. Mr Rains was voted out of office three years ago. I think it ends with “she said”.’
‘I think it ends with a dead body,’ Archer said.
‘Of course you’re right. And I’m right too.’
‘How’s that?’
‘I always maintained that Blake Rains was heartless: the two gun shots destroyed that organ in his chest.’
‘I’ve got victim number four, Levy.’ Archer heard the sigh and sensed some pain on the other end of the call. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m sorry, Q. Sometimes it’s rough, you know. Rougher than others.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Yeah, you know. Look, I just took a call and what I’ve got here is a dead boyfriend, girlfriend and an ex-lover. Apparently the ex didn’t adjust to the current situation. Murder-suicide seemed to be the answer. It’s a bloody mess.’
It was Archer’s turn to be silent. Finally he spoke.
‘I appreciate the help you’re giving me on this case, Josh, but in one way you’ve got it easier on yours, my friend.’
‘How’s that? How the hell is this easier?’
‘You’ve got your killer. You know who did it. I still don’t have a clue.’
He grabbed the streetcar on Canal that would take him to the Quarter. It was easier than fighting traffic with a car, and they’d blocked off half the intersections in town for parades, big and small. A big black lady with an orange wraparound skirt, a flowery top and her hair wrapped up in a matching scarf climbed on at the next stop. She carried a large paper sack in each hand and she glared at him until he got the message and stood up, motioning for her to take his seat.
‘Thank you, honey.’ She smiled sweetly.
Two teenage boys with tight white T-shirts walked on, jeans rolled up at the ankle, and an old lady with a walker, yellow tennis balls on the bottom of the legs, worked her way up the three steps. A skinny black man, wearing tuxedo pants, a vest and a bowler chatted and laughed with the driver, and a ten-year-old girl in a pink party dress followed her grandma onto the car, never letting go of the older lady’s hand. Quite an assortment of characters. As they approached the Quarter, more people jumped on wearing masks, carnival hats and wigs, most headed to party central in the heart of the Big Easy. In Detroit, public transportation was somewhat threatening. This was a party.
Archer got off at Bourbon and half the maniacal cast of characters on his streetcar exited as well, following him, whooping, hollering and parading down the street. He dodged those he could and walked down to what was billed as the world’s best karaoke bar, the Cat’s Meow. Living in a small cottage, a former slave’s quarter directly behind the establishment, he could attest that if it wasn’t the best, it was probably the world’s loudest karaoke bar.
He ducked behind the balconied building and walked up the brick path to the cottage. Studying the door, he saw the inch-long piece of Scotch tape halfway up, stretched between the door jamb and the door. If someone entered, they wouldn’t notice the tape but it would have separated. As it was, it appeared to be undisturbed.
With one brother in jail and another on the run, Archer was especially careful. He was ultimately responsible for the conviction of them both, and his brother Jason, the fugitive, had shown up several times to threaten him, yet was always able to sneak away undetected. Archer spent every day looking over his shoulder.
What bothered him most was that the ringleader of the drug operation, the leader of the gang that employed his two brothers, was a cop who still patrolled the streets of Detroit. His freedom came down to a simple lack of hard evidence. Bobby Mercer was a decorated, seasoned veteran of the DPD. When Archer turned on him, it was Archer who was forced out of town by not just Mercer’s drug ring, but his own brothers, Jason and Brian. The blue shield Archer called it. Cops banding together to protect their fellow cops, even when they were committing crimes. The murder of Archer’s wife, Denise, was a grim reminder how much certain people wanted him to shut up. Possibly for good. Since then he took care never to let his guard down, never to assume that he was in the clear.
Walking into the small cottage, he hung his jacket on a chair and placed his gun and holster on the bed. Opening the refrigerator, he frowned. It would be nice, just once to be hit with a blast of cold air, but his landlord hadn’t gotten around to dealing with the appliance, so he pulled out a tepid beer. Making a note to call the man one more time about the temperature, Archer scrolled his phone for messages.
A voicemail from headquarters got his attention immediately.
‘Detective, we’ve got a report on soil samples from the bottom of Blake Rains’s shoes. You were right. It doesn’t appear he was murdered at Six Flags.’ He smiled. Finally a clue.
He called the lab. ‘Samples don’t match at all?’
‘No. If he’d been walking around Six Flags, we’d have some of the crumbling concrete from the walkways. There’s some fill over there that doesn’t appear at all on the footwear. We’ve pretty much narrowed it down. We found samples on the soles of another victim’s shoes almost identical to those on this Rains guy’s loafers.’
Archer was quiet for a second. ‘Are you going to make me guess?’
‘I’d bet you’d be wrong.’
Somebody like Blake Rains, a former city government official, he might have been shot in the Warehouse District where the janitor was found. Office buildings, high end restaurants, places Rains might frequent. Or, maybe near the bridal shop where the female teller had been stabbed. Financial area, government buildings, retail stores …
‘I give up.’
‘Same soil as found on Hector Sanchez, the gangbanger in Little Woods up by Lake Ponchartrain.’
Archer took a swallow of the now warm beer. ‘What the hell do you suppose he was doing up there?’
‘I just report the facts, Q. I don’t analyze them.’
SIX
Gangsta Boy sneered at the young black teenager huddled on the worn carpeted floor.
‘What, you fifteen, sixteen?’ The broad-shouldered twenty-year-old lorded it over the scared kid, five years his junior. ‘What the fuck, my man. Simple request was to go out and sell five hundred dollars of street-value H. Now there are kids younger than you that would have jumped straight up to that task. Not you. You come back to me with half the fucking product, you know what I’m sayin’?’
‘Sir, I never, never done nothin’ like that before.’ The boy was crying, tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘I can learn, sir. Learn to earn. Please?’
A room air conditioner rattled in the grim hotel room.
‘Boy, I don’t hold out a lot of hope. Nasta Mafia, we do not, hear me, do not waste time on pieces of shit like you. Prime section of the city, quality horse and you fuck it up. I could give Tigre to a low-life spic and he’d have it gone in half an hour. A street nigger and he’d buy half of it for himself. Product would be gone, son.’
‘Give me another chance.’
His cell phone chirped and he pulled it from his bagg
y low-riding jeans. Listening for a moment, he finally spoke. ‘Strippers like H, my man. Makes ’em feel like sex on a stick when they be doin’ that pole thing. You make arrangements with Sydney at the club. Get those girls that fix, you hear, and don’t go light on the dose. You bring the cash here to the hotel.’
Looking back at the kid on the floor he said, ‘Sales is not your fucking forte.’ Gangsta Boy spit on the kid’s face, once, twice, and then kicked him in the ribs. ‘Get up, pussy boy. We gonna put you to work on construction. You be workin’ demolition in the Ninth Ward. You don’t make much money but you eat and stay in one of the condemned houses out there. It’s a roof, nigger. You report tomorrow, six a.m. Outside, in front of the bus. You be there, young man. You got a problem with that, I’ll solve it. Put a bullet in your brain, pussy boy. You never forget who you workin’ for. After a little rough love, put a bullet in your momma’s brain too you ever think about not showin’ up. Don’t forget, I know where Momma and the kids live. I know Momma very well. Intimate relationship, you understand. Your sisters too. You respect your family, you do what I say.’ He smiled down at the boy. ‘Now get outta here.’
The phone chirped again. ‘Yeah, yeah, this is Gangsta Boy. I can meet you at Chartres and St Louis, twenty minutes. You want snow, I’ll make it snow. How much?’ He listened for a moment, then whistled between his teeth. ‘That much? That’s winter snow. I can make that happen, yes I can.’
‘The East boys are cuttin’ in, Delroy. You’d best do somethin’. Cuttin’ up some spic ass in Little Woods ain’t exactly sendin’ a strong enough signal, you know what I’m sayin’? We gotta do a lot more than kill a couple of bangers from the other side. Tell me I’m wrong.’
Delroy Houston sat on the street corner of Bourbon and Dumaine in the Quarter, flipping a coin, over and over again.
‘Dushane, you are right as usual. Warhead Solja don’t take second place to some pissant niggers like Nasta Mafia. Turf is turf, brothah. Only so much room for so many gangs.’ Squinting his eyes, he looked closely at his lieutenant, proud of the young black man, yet worried about his taste for blood. Dushane White wore the unique badge of a long ugly scar on his cheek, evidence of a vicious knife fight. Dushane sat next to him so it seemed obvious that his man had won that fight.
A group of senior citizens walked by, one limped by with a cane and a woman in the group carried a poodle, dyed in pink, blue and yellow.
The two men shook their heads, arms folded, warding off the chill in the air.
‘Heads we go to war, my brother. Tails,’ he paused, ‘we go to war.’ Dushane chuckled. ‘What’s it gonna be, Delroy?’
Houston flipped the quarter one more time, letting it land on the sidewalk.
‘Heads.’
‘Like a stacked deck, I knew it all along.’ Dushane laughed out loud. ‘You say when and where, Delroy.’
‘You know,’ Houston said in a quiet voice, ‘we don’t just pick up and start jiving. There are some hurdles to clear, my man. Got to talk to some people, grease the skids, so to speak.’
‘You know we’ll be waitin’ for the word.’
‘You like this kill aspect of our gang. A little too much, Dushane. We got to study it first.’
The man reached up and stroked the scar on his cheek with his index finger, an unconscious gesture ever since the violent gang battle where he’d earned it, two years ago. ‘War is essential in every civilization, DH. It’s the way the world works. Without war we get fat and sloppy. Get rid of the weak and protect your turf. Or, stretch a little and take some of their turf. That’s what it’s all about.’
‘I know,’ Houston said. ‘I know, but I gotta consult. You know? The play is bigger than just protecting the turf, you understand. Bigger than that. Once we go all out, there’ll be hell to pay, my friend. Hell to pay. There are people who depend on what we do, so I got to clear it. Make sure that in the end, no matter what the end may be my friend, that our business is still there. We do answer to a higher authority, Dushane. I’m not even sure who that is, but trust me, there’s a higher authority. Don’t want to totally piss off the wrong people, you understand?’
There was something in the wind, in the cool air that blew through the quarter that rustled the colorful crinoline dresses of costumed revelers. It reminded Solange of a fine mist. You thought you could feel some moisture, but it wasn’t exactly sprinkling. As she walked home, she could almost smell it over the tempting odor of fried oysters and boiled shrimp emanating from the restaurants. A faint odor of sweet jasmine, maybe olive oil and cherries. It was unsettling, like watching a snake that you knew would strike. You just didn’t know when. And she thought about Marie Laveau, dancing at her rumored wild orgies with a snake wrapped around her oiled, naked body. The voodoo queen controlled her environment. The snake never struck. And maybe Solange Cordray needed to pay attention to controlling her environment. Not by dancing naked with a snake, but by paying attention to her surroundings. By concentrating on immediate concerns. Maybe Kathy Bavely was right. She needed to start paying attention to her own life, instead of being consumed by the lives of her clients.
She’d read about the Chill thrill kills, and she knew Quentin Archer was lead on the murders. And just the thought of those killings brought goosebumps to her dark skin. She needed to concentrate on the moment at hand. Work on control. She ducked as a woman in a short skirt, tights and feathered wings waved her arms in a crazy menacing dance directly in front of her, the lady’s feathered beaked headdress looking like an eagle. Two obese men followed her, wearing Hooters T-shirts and tight orange shorts. Below their cheap wigs of flowing golden locks their guts stuck out like ripe watermelons.
This was her town. Born and raised. She wasn’t always proud of it, but New Orleans was in her blood. It was the fabric of her young life, the texture of her soul. The tourists, the crazy people who flew in from everywhere, thought it was Disney World for grown-ups. An adult fantasy paradise. In reality, NOLA was a living, breathing organism. With an unhealthy portion of bad germs. Two girls who could have been twins blocked her path and she moved onto the street, noting they wore nothing but body paint. And the temperature was still in the fifties. Weaving around a guitar player and his Labrador Retriever, the man wailing a blues song, the dog moaning in response, she walked the next short block with no interruptions.
Arriving at her shop she unlocked the door, hoping there would be no customers this late in the afternoon. Her hopes were dashed. A young couple with heavy coats and stocking hats followed her in. She turned, studying the two of them. They looked desperate and it was impossible to turn them away.
‘Can you do spells?’ the man asked.
‘Now is probably not a good time.’ She took off her jacket, and rubbed her hands for warmth.
‘We can pay you for your trouble. Whatever you want.’
I would hope, she thought. ‘Payment is in advance. I guess you are unable to have a child.’
The young woman spun around and stared at the man. ‘You’ve seen her before. You’ve told her. Right?’
‘No, I swear.’
‘We’ve never met,’ Solange said, staring at the girl. ‘I will cast a spell and make a gris-gris bag for you. If the spirits cooperate, you will be fertile. There are no guarantees, but I do have communication.’ And she realized, if she had communication, why was Ma still a wheelchair zombie? She felt connected, but often felt woefully inept, no matter how many successes she’d had.
SEVEN
The streets were filled with cop cars and cops. State troopers, sheriff deputies and NOPD. Several in almost every block. Security during Mardi Gras was paramount. Archer stepped around a green Polaris Task Force vehicle that looked like an army Jeep but only one-quarter the size and greeted the lady manning it. Recognizing a fellow officer, she nodded to him.
‘We’ve got a lot of strange vehicles on our force,’ she said. ‘You see this crazy Mardi Gras traffic? With this little beauty I can squeeze by on the side of th
e street. I do it every day. And over there we’ve got a lift vehicle. It’s got a crane. We can be two stories high in a minute. Gives us a broad view.’
Walking by a slim department-issued motorcycle, he passed under a balcony where twenty clean-cut men in dark suits threw plastic medallions to the crowds below. Probably members of one of the Krewes. Men, women and children scrambled to pick up the worthless coins.
Turning down Royal he walked to 801. The restaurant had become one of his favorites. A simple bar, tables and chairs with nothing fancy, but the food was great. Po boys, fried catfish, alligator sausage, fried crawfish tail. Delicious muffaletta on a Leidenheimer Italian bun brushed with garlic-infused olive oil, and filled with Italian salami, provolone cheese and olive salad. He’d memorized the menu item. It was probably the reason he’d put on three or four pounds since he moved here.
‘Your regular, sweety?’ The waitress handed him a Coke garnished with a slice of lime.
As much as he hated the familiar term ‘sweety’, it was nice that she knew him.
‘Sure.’ He forced a smiled.
She walked to the kitchen and he checked his cell phone. Fats Domino sang ‘Walking to New Orleans’ on the restaurant’s sound system as Archer checked his messages again. He glanced up to see an enormous woman, close to four hundred pounds at least, followed by her husband, maybe one fifty, pass by and sit in a booth behind him. They both were garbed in gaudy, green-purple-and-yellow costumes. Jack Spratt and his wife. Someone for everyone. It was meant to be.
Archer faced the door, sipping his Coke as the two strippers walked in. Dressed in street garb, sweats and knee-high boots, they were still definitely strippers. He’d met the blonde before.
‘Detective Q!’ Alexia Chantel walked over and hugged his neck. ‘Sandy, this is the detective I told you about. We met here a couple of weeks ago and I keep hoping he’ll stop by the club.’
Sandy nodded. It looked like the word ‘detective’ scared the hell out of the cute redhead.
