Good Junk

by Ed Kovacs

  Honey moved in to back me up as I changed to a wrist lock known as Kote Mawashi, also called a gooseneck lock. I wasn’t shy about applying pressure to his joint, and he yelped in pain as I stood him up and guided him toward the front door like a puppet on my string.

  “Damn, man, you don’t have to torture me!”

  He resisted, so I increased the pressure a bit and he relaxed.

  All of the customers watched, but no one said a thing or seemed remotely surprised or concerned that he was being escorted out against his will. That’s what friends are for. Only the bartender expressed an objection.

  “He owes for this drink! Fifteen bucks!” called out the bartender.

  “Just hold the drink for me, Billy, I’ll be right back.”

  “Yeah, he’ll get out in a couple years, I’m sure he’ll pay up then.” I reapplied some pressure.

  “There’s no need to get physical here, officer; I’m not resisting; I’m prepared to fully cooperate with the proper authorities if—”

  “Keep talking. I like that. You’re going to do a lot more of that.”

  Honey had my back as I took him outside, bent him over the hood of a car, and then cuffed him.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  I ignored the question and a quick pat-down revealed a 4-inch folder, handcuff key in a back pocket, a tiny screwdriver, and forty-two dollars in crumpled bills.

  “No cell phone, keys, wallet or ID.”

  “My own personal protest against the encroachment by governments and corporations against our constitutionally guaranteed privacy. My lack of keys are a repudiation of—”

  “Shut the hell up!”

  “You said you wanted me talking.”

  “I’ll cue you when I want your mouth to run,” I said.

  “Nothing like a jailhouse philosopher,” said Honey.

  “The unexamined life is not worth living, if you know what I mean. And as a matter of fact, yes, it was during a period of incarceration, but not by law enforcement—I prefer to refer to myself as being a political prisoner of conscience—that I began to espouse a—”

  “What’s your real name?” I asked.

  He seemed confused by the question. “Danny Doakes.”

  “Your full legal name,” said Honey. “The way it is on your birth certificate.”

  “Daniel Hawthorne Doakes. You didn’t know?” He seemed disappointed.

  “Why they call you Decon?”

  “It’s short for ‘Deconstruct.’ Are you familiar with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida?”

  “Want to know what I’m familiar with? I’ll show you.”

  I kept a tight grip on him as I pushed him around back where it was much darker, with little chance of being observed.

  “Hey, this is not kosher! Police brutality!” Decon yelled.

  Honey held him by the cuffs and wrenched them just a tad, enough to quiet him down as I performed a more- thorough search.

  “Decon Danny Doakes. I’m gonna shorten that to Three-D,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I like my name being reduced to some kind of pop culture shorthand, if you understand what I’m saying.”

  “I thought you were all about deconstructing things?” I held up a key to show Honey. “In his pants cuffs. Looks like a house key.”

  “It’s a gate key, and you clearly fail to grasp basic deconstructionist tenets.”

  “That’s probably true. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around nihilism.” Decon had a slim jim vehicle- opening tool tucked into his sock going up his calf. I tossed it on the cement. “Crap, we may have to strip-search this guy.”

  “Body cavity search behind a building? Not without latex gloves and a privacy screen.”

  “Who said body cavity search? Wishful thinking, Decon?” asked Honey.

  “You know, I asked if I was under arrest. And you haven’t identified yourselves.”

  “How much did you get for the stolen bronze piece?”

  “That’s a loaded question; it’s like saying, ‘How often do you molest choir boys?’”

  I looked him over carefully. Skinny as a rail, maybe five feet eleven, he couldn’t weigh more than 140 pounds at best, but I didn’t get a meth or crackhead vibe. Probably an ex-junkie, though. Jet-black, shiny, shoulder-length hair; black goatee with a few flecks of gray; pale-white skin; deep-set ocean blue eyes that suggested a soulfulness, intelligence, and sadness all at the same time.

  “You think we found you based on lack of evidence, counselor? We found you because we have enough to convict your ass,” I said.

  “You didn’t even know my name. Which pains me greatly. Partly,” he said to Honey, “because you are possibly the most beautiful woman in the city. But allow me to humor the both of you for a moment, if you can appreciate the situation. Assuming a person did do what you say, what are they looking at? Petty theft?”

  “Do you understand how pissed off people are at looters right now? You stole a plaque off a historic building. You’ll do serious time.”

  “And not for petty theft. Try felony looting. Carrying a concealed weapon. Possession of burglary tools. Resisting arrest.” Honey was running out of fingers counting the statutes.

  “What arrest? And what burglary tools?”

  “The slim jim and the screwdriver, Einstein. But I know you’re just an upstanding citizen, that’s why you had a handcuff key in your back pocket,” I said.

  Honey removed a police radio from her purse. “Dispatch, Detective Baybee, Homicide. I need you to run a wants and warrants on a Daniel Hawthorne Doakes, also known as Decon, spelled D- David, E-echo, C-Charlie, O-ocean, N-Nancy.”

  “Standby, detective,” said dispatch.

  “Homicide? Look, be reasonable,” pleaded Decon.

  I pulled him a few steps away from Honey and turned his back to her. “You have two options and time is running out. Option one is to keep being a prick, get arrested and go to jail.”

  “Your partner is really hot. I mean, holy cow, check out that ass, if you know where I’m going.”

  The guy had more non-sequiturs than a coked-up millionaire socialite. Honey was actively engaged with the dispatcher, going back and forth, but I tuned it out, giving Decon my complete attention, as you would a gifted but disturbed child.

  “You know they’re holding a drink for me in there. An absinthe. Do you know much about absinthe?” Decon asked. “We could have a drink; you could tell me about my second option.”

  A part of me wanted to snap his spine on the spot, but Honey functioned as a governing device on my rage. If I were alone I would have right then pressed down on a pressure point and he would have screamed in agony and then told me what I needed to know.

  I didn’t like absinthe since I hate licorice, but Mr. Decon Danny Hawthorne Doakes was driving me to drink. Mercifully, Honey rejoined us.

  “That’s not his real name. That name is clean, not even a traffic ticket.”

  “Yeah, sorry, it’s not my real name. But I kind of like it. Danny Doakes. Sounds like I’m from around here, you know what I’m saying?”

  Honey and I looked at each other. “I have a fingerprint kit in the Bronco.” Honey knew I wanted to run his prints without taking him into a station. She nodded, and I kept a tight hold as I pushed him forward.

  “Where is your Bronco parked?” he asked.

  “In front of a bar where a couple dozen people would like to see you dead.”

  “Then let’s don’t go there. My prints will come back, same as my name. There won’t be anything. Unknown, if you understand my point.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “You know, detective,” Decon said, turning to Honey, “what are you doing in police work? Because you are absolutely stunning. When all this gets cleared up—”

  I jerked Decon to stop. “White Mercedes S550. Sunday morning, two A.M. Del Breaux and Ty Parks.”

  “The two dead guys? I read about it in the paper today.”

  “Where we
re you Sunday at two in the morning?”

  “Probably committing a misdemeanor somewhere.”

  “You saying you didn’t have anything to do with it?”

  “Please. Do I look like a killer?”

  “Killers don’t have any particular look. You didn’t know Breaux or Parks?”

  “I never met them.”

  “You never met Breaux, but you wanted to kill him, right? You talked openly about wanting to kill Del Breaux, and now he’s dead.”

  Decon’s eyes widened. “Oh, so you’re not really here for the looting charge, you’re following up on death threats. I said some things, but it was just trash talking, if you get what I’m saying. Kind of an unfortunate coincidence, really.”

  “What about all the other people you trash-talked about killing? Got some names for me?”

  “I was quoted out of context. I’m not a violent person.”

  “Is that so?”

  I uncuffed Decon and had him put his arms around a live oak that was just the right size. I recuffed him so he was embracing the tree and wouldn’t be going anywhere soon unless he had a chainsaw handy.

  “I like trees, but I’m not a tree-hugger, if you understand my point. Hey, there are ants on this tree!”

  Honey and I walked off out of earshot but never took our eyes off of him.

  “This guy is just a fast-talking, third-rate, drunken crook,” said Honey.

  “Harding said he was unbalanced, and that’s an understatement. But he knows something. And who’s to say he couldn’t pull a trigger?”

  “Let’s take him in. Book him as a John Doe on the looting charge.”

  I nodded. “You can pick up the bronze plate tomorrow at the scrap yard. He’s homeless, so better if we stick him behind bars for the theft, then we’ll know where to find him if it looks like he was involved in the Breaux case.”

  We crossed to Decon, I released him from the tree, and recuffed his hands behind his back.

  “I’m ready for a cocktail,” said Honey, sighing.

  I jerked our prisoner forward, and we moved along at a brisk pace toward the boozy mini-mall.

  “Mind if I join you for that drink?” asked Decon.

  We ignored him.

  “How much did the Jefferson brothers sell me out for?”

  We ignored him.

  “I don’t want to go to jail. I want to deal. And I have a lot of chips. Big chips. Maybe too big for NOPD.”

  We slowed him down a little bit.

  “What’s that’s supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “What I can give you is way out of your jurisdiction. You’d both be in way over your heads.”

  Echoes of Peter Danforth. I stopped him in his tracks.

  “So give it to us,” said Honey.

  “You need to keep me out of this,” insisted Decon.

  “That shouldn’t be too hard since we don’t know who the hell you are.”

  “It’s the feckless leaders, the corrupt bureaucrats who are bringing this country down.”

  “Not guys like you, huh?”

  “Come on, I’m chump change. But I have prayed to act as an instrument of karma, if you can entertain that concept. I don’t do what I do for great personal gain. You think I couldn’t score big if I wanted to with my background?”

  “What background?” Honey asked.

  But Decon kept his rant going. “I’m not greedy like the boys and girls selling off America’s secrets, selling our most sensitive military technologies to our enemies, if you know what I mean.”

  “Who’s doing that?”

  “Well, the very people who sold me out to you are part of it; I can tell you that.”

  More echoes of the Breaux case. He definitely had my attention now.

  “I’m trying to do the right thing. And my calling now is to act as a force for justice. This must be done, if you can appreciate my motivation.”

  “Talk straight or the next stop is Fifth District Station,” said Honey impatiently.

  “High-end weaponry. Super-small drones, prototype mines with advanced high-explosive signatures, advanced avionics, nuclear-sub electronics, grenade launchers that look like they’re from the future, exploding cell phones—”

  Honey gave me a look like she wasn’t having any of it.

  “Crates and crates of the stuff over the last months,” said Decon speaking quickly now, as if racing to get it all out. “Rockets, odd-looking guns, none of it had standard military designation stamps or data plates. That’s why I assume they were prototypes, and—”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Where exactly did you see this fantastic arsenal?”

  “In a green cargo container protected by a Doberman pinscher at Scrap Brothers in the Ninth Ward.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We all sat at a rear corner table back in Millie’s Lounge. On the jukebox Sade sang one of her eighties hits about a smooth operator, which seemed appropriate considering the guy Honey and I sat across from. As Decon relished his absinthe, Honey and I knocked back Crown and Cokes.

  “If you don’t work at Scrap Brothers anymore, how would you know there’s weaponry in the green container there right now?”

  “I’m no longer employed there, but I’m a regular visitor.”

  “And the Jefferson brothers just let you look around?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? I’d probably be dead if they knew.”

  “So the weapons are in both of those containers where the dog is?”

  “No, only the green container. The silver container is welded shut. I have no idea what’s in that one.”

  Honey didn’t make much of an attempt to hide her exasperation. And she was tired and getting bored. She didn’t buy his story, and maybe even Decon sensed this.

  “Look, I go in late at night, on a pretty regular basis, if you understand what I’m saying. Not just Scrap Brothers, but a lot of the yards. I make small change selling scrap. So if I need some scrap to sell, what better place to get it than at another scrap yard? I first found out about the military equipment in the container when I worked for Leroy and Jimmy. I’ve checked it regularly ever since.”

  “Why?”

  “Information is power. Power is money. I like to make money.”

  “What about the Doberman?”

  “I’m an ex-junkie. The dog is still hooked.”

  “You dose the dog?”

  “Ten minutes, he’s out. I lift the stuff from a vet’s office.”

  Honey had a dog named Chance and she loved canines. She locked her eyes on Decon and shook her head scornfully.

  “You told FBI Agent Harding about these weapons and she didn’t get a search warrant?” I asked.

  “I never told her the location of the weapons. I told her the names of some individuals committing federal crimes. And, yeah, Breaux was on the list. But not the other guy, Parks.”

  “Why didn’t you give her the weapons location?”

  “I was testing her and she failed.”

  “Testing her?” asked Honey.

  “I didn’t know if the FBI was part of the plot or not. They are. She dropped the whole thing.”

  “What other names are on your list?”

  “Take a look at the weapons first. Then I’ll give you the names.”

  “The names of the people you want dead,” I stated.

  “I want what they’re doing stopped. I don’t want them dead, although I’m not sure it would be any great loss to the human race if they expired.”

  Honey shot me a look confirming that she was thinking what I was thinking: the guy was a whack job. That had been my knee-jerk reaction. And yet Harding had told me she’d been unofficially ordered to drop the investigation initially spurred by Decon. Why? Breaux had been up to no good, there was no denying that, and maybe futuristic weapons were being developed out at Michoud. Were some of them now stored in a container in the scrap yard? Leroy Jefferson had pulled a pistol on me in front of those locked containers after I had inquired ab
out its contents.

  “If you’re wasting our time, if there’s nothing revealing in that cargo container—”

  “You’ll book me for looting. I understand. And as much as I would like to have another absinthe, I suggest we go to Scrap Brothers right now. I have a couple of doses for the dog in the false heel of my shoe—you missed it during your search.”

  I looked at Decon and couldn’t help but smile, then I turned to Honey. “You should go home and get some sleep.”

  “No. I’m curious what he’ll look like when you finish with him.”

  The brothers only kept the Doberman chained during business hours, and he now sprawled unconscious by the office door. Honey watched as I picked the hockey-puck-style padlock on the green cargo container at Scrap Brothers. I’d picked the padlock on the front gates and left Decon handcuffed to the exterior driver’s-side door handle of the Bronco parked out on the street in front of Honey’s unmarked unit.

  I wrenched up the dual levers, jerked them to the right, and pulled open the heavy steel right-side door. The wooden-floored container looked empty, but there was something way in the back. I turned on my SureFire flashlight and Honey and I entered the long steel box that felt many degrees warmer than outside. At the far end I shined light on a wooden pallet. A single piece of metal, about twelve inches-by-eighteen inches, rested securely in a frame, like the kind of frames that hold auto windshields or panes of glass. The whole pallet was shrink-wrapped with clear plastic.

  “What do you make of this?”

  “Sheet of some kind of metal,” said Honey.

  “Valuable, whatever it is, to get such special care.”

  “Breaux was an exotic-materials specialist. Could this be some kind of sample?”

  “If Breaux stole it from Michoud, maybe that would be what Salerno’s investigation was about.” I swung the beam over to several large ultra-modern locked crates. “Ever seen crates like this?”

  “Can’t say I have.”