It was instantly followed by, “Police! Freeze!” The second voice was Cruz.
Beau peered around and saw his partner standing with her Beretta in the standard two-hand police grip, her knees bent slightly as she aimed her weapon at the closest man. The men had their weapons trained on her.
Beau flipped the safety back on his Beretta and holstered it, stood with his hands spread, and called out, “Over here."
Three of the men wheeled toward him.
"We're NOPD,” Beau said. “And there's more of us in the boats.” A bluff.
No one moved for three heart-thumping seconds before one of the men in back, one carrying a handgun, eased forward and said, “Beau? Is that you?"
The hair stood out on Beau's arms and the back of his neck.
"All right, everyone put your weapons down,” said the same man as he came forward, removing his night-vision goggles. Lieutenant Merten's eyes shone like bright agates as he stepped up to Beau. “What the hell are you doing here?"
Behind Merten the men lowered their weapons and began pulling off their goggles. Beau recognized a robbery detective and an old buddy from the Second who was now on the SWAT team. The fourth man looked young and Beau didn't know him. The fifth man, taller than the others, kept his goggles on. He was the only white man in the group.
"Put your weapon down, Juanita,” he called out, and Cruz slowly lowered her gun. Beau looked back at Merten and said, “Where'd you leave the latest one? Where it'll be found easily. So word'll get out. The criminals will know."
"Jesus, Beau. What are you doing?” Merten seemed in pain. He leaned closer. “I told you to stay by the airport."
"Only we know where to find our Most Wanted.” Beau's voice was deep and even, without emotion. “Only we know who they are, know they're bad enough to stay behind, too entrenched to evacuate. Wasn't hard to figure it had to be us."
"Is he solid?” from the fourth man, the young unknown face leering at Beau.
The fifth man finally removed his goggles and stepped forward. Beau felt a weakness momentarily in his knees. Assistant Superintendent Ashton Garner, the man most NOPD felt should be Chief of Police, the former head of the Training Academy who'd trained his men and women to be like brothers and sisters. It was Garner who made them all feel as if NOPD was family. Us against the world.
Garner tapped the fourth man on the shoulder as he passed and said, “He's as solid as they come. Notice he's saying we and us and not ‘y'all did this,’ isn't he?” Garner arrived next to Merten and stared Beau in the eyes. Beau gave him a poker-faced, lingering, emotionless stare in return.
"This is John Raven Beau,” Garner went on.
"Oh,” said the unknown man. “I hearda him. He's killed more'n us."
Killed, Beau thought, not executed, but he kept his mouth shut.
Merten shook his head. “Can't believe you brought the rookie."
Beau turned to him. “Looks like we're all in this now."
Garner took in a deep breath.
Beau stepped around them and moved to his partner, getting between her and the men, nodding for her to holster her weapon, which she did reluctantly. He turned back and told them where the boats were.
"We'll show you.” He led Cruz through them to the top of the levee.
No one moved behind them for a few moments before Merten and Garner came along. When they reached the spot where the speedboat was tied up, Beau pointed to it, then turned back to face his lieutenant and assistant superintendent. He waited until the stragglers arrived before he said, “That better be the last one."
"Who the hell are you to tell us that?” snapped the unknown man. “What is your major malfunction? Man, we nailed Abdon Jeffries, didn't we?” He raised the high-powered rifle in his hands, the one with the big scope. So this was the sniper, the triggerman.
Beau stared into Garner's eyes. “If I figured this out, someone else will. And there's no ‘us’ with the Feds. They'll nail every one of us, me and Cruz, too, because we know."
He waited for the recognition to come to Garner's eyes. He turned to Merten with, “So we're in this together and tonight's the last one."
Beau took Cruz by the arm and they went on to the pirogue, neither looking back. As they were climbing into the flat-bottom boat they heard the angry growl of the speedboat as it backed into the lake, growling louder as it pulled into the dark waters.
* * * *
Just after they'd passed the 17th Street Canal, they hit something in the water and the outboard died. Beau got it started but it wouldn't propel them. He raised it and saw why. They'd lost the propeller. So they grabbed the oars and rowed the pirogue over to the Bucktown levee, pulled it up on the grass, and shoved the anchor into the ground before going to the top of the levee to wait for dawn.
Cruz lay on her back, hands behind her head, knees up. Beau sat cross-legged, like a plains warrior sitting around a campfire, and looked out at the lake. He faced the eastern horizon and waited. Motionless, except for breathing and blinking, Beau watched the horizon. He tried his best to keep his heart from racing, as it had when the shadowy figures had closed in on him on the levee. But his heart raced as he watched the horizon; goosebumps covered his arms.
John Raven Beau hadn't been frightened since he was a kid. There was no fear when he'd gunned down the men he'd chased, no fear when their bullets whizzed past his face with the sound of an angry hornet. As a child he'd been frightened, as most children, of wild sounds coming from the swamp at night, of imagined bogeymen. He'd been frightened when his grandfather told him about Coyote-man, the mythical enemy of the plains warriors, the Sioux and their cousins, the Cheyenne. Stories of the sly trickster who stole the breath from babies, leaving them cold and dead, of tricks played on battlefields when a warrior's bow broke or an arrow didn't run straight or a pony tripped on a gopher hole, sending its rider crashing to the ground. Coyote-man drew warriors to watery deaths in lakes and swollen rivers where their soul would never escape, for a warrior who drowned could never rise from the depths.
Beau knew better than to think it was Coyote-man who drew Katrina's hot winds to New Orleans, knew the myth was just that—a myth. But something drew the storm here. Something drew it from the gulf. Steering currents, or was it, after all, the rotted breath of Coyote-man that sucked the storm ashore? And was the trickster sitting on a rooftop cackling at Beau as he studied the horizon wondering if it would be the same sun rising in the east?
When the sun finally rose, with Juanita Cruz gently dozing next to him, Beau felt a hammering in his chest as he watched the sky turn from black to charcoal gray then lighten into reddish orange before streaming into yellow. It was the same sun and it made him feel as if his heart would collapse from the pain.
"What is it?” The voice came from a distance. “What is it?” It was a familiar voice. He turned to it but only saw a blur. He wiped his eyes and it was his partner, sitting up now, staring at him, her brows furrowed.
"Are you all right?” she asked.
Beau felt his head shake, felt his heart hurting so badly he wondered how he could breathe. He looked back at the sun. It should be off-kilter, askew, every object should be a fraction of an inch from its true place. Everything was wrong, but nothing looked wrong. It was the same sun.
He looked back at his partner and told her that.
"You're not making sense,” she said, brushing grass from her pants.
"Don't you see?” he heard himself say.
"No.” She looked him in the eye again and said, “You talking about back there? What they're doing, isn't it what we'd all like to do sometimes? Just clean house."
Beau felt himself shivering in the heated air. “On purpose,” he said. “They're even leaving the bodies to be found on purpose, so word'll get out."
"Sure,” Cruz said. “You said it. Word to the criminals. See what we can do when we want to."
The pain still shot through his heart but Beau could breathe now. He needed the breath to exp
lain. “We don't do that."
Cruz leaned back, a haughty look on her face. “You saying it's bad?"
"No. I'm saying we don't do that. We kill ... I killed ... when I had no choice. It was me or them. We don't execute people."
"It bothers you that Killboy's dead? That cop-shooting Abdon guy? I forget the third one."
"That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, hell, you said it: Everything's changed. The whole damn world's changed."
Cruz looked at him a long while before getting up and holding out her hand to pull him up. He grabbed it after a few seconds and she tugged him up. Beau looked back at the city, at the roofs protruding from brown water like cypress stumps in a bayou. He felt the stab again in his heart.
"Is that why you were crying?” Cruz asked.
"No. Yes. Maybe.” How could he explain it when he didn't know? A plains warrior didn't cry. They never showed their emotions like the white-eyes. Maybe it was his Cajun side. Certainly his father would not have hidden his emotions if he saw the great Louisiana city, la Nouvelle Orléans, inundated in brown water.
It took Cruz to say it aloud. “Tonight never happened. We're solid. There's no other choice.” She pointed to the construction site next to the canal. “Lets get some help with the motor. Maybe get a lift. Check on Joe and Sad Lisa."
Beau started to follow, but his legs wouldn't move. And he realized he knew why it bothered him. It was right there in front of his eyes. There was no going back. Nothing would ever be the same again.
This was New Orleans, A.K.
Copyright © 2006 O'Neil de Noux
THE CODE ON THE DOOR by Tony Fennelly
Edgar Allan Poe Award nominee Tony Fennelly came to New Orleans in 1969 and on her first night in town “spotted a beautiful French-speaking Cajun boy,” to whom she has now been married for over 30 years. Her Margo Fortier mystery series is set in NOLA, where the actress/writer returned after Katrina.
City officials are brag-ging that murders in New Orleans have gone way down since Katrina.
Yeah, big deal. Now, five months later, our population is still less than one-third of the pre-storm number. Fewer folks to kill and fewer ill-wishers to kill them. But while the crime rate has dropped here, it has hurtled upward in Houston and Baton Rouge where so many of our lowlifes landed.
With most of the drug dealers and gangsters still out of town, the usual shootings and stabbings over turf have given way to more sensible killings done by respectable people. I learned about one of those while waiting in line at a FEMA facility.
I chose the one in the Jewish Community Center on St. Charles Avenue because I could park nearby for free, and gathered documents proving my ownership of a once-great car, now a flooded-out derelict rusting in the driveway.
The door was guarded by a brawny employee of a private security contractor. I thought him overqualified for a job entailing no more serious a confrontation than, “Sir, would you please take that orange juice outside?” and was curious enough to elicit that he was only deployed here briefly between tours of Iraq. Well, good for him, I thought. I'd hate for all the muscles and military comportment to be wasted on the likes of us here.
I was settled in with a flier about sorting “hurricane-related debris” for pickup when I heard, “Hey, Margo Fortier!"
It was my Uptown friend, Caroline, waving her reptile purse from a middle row of chairs. She gave up her place in line to sit with me in the rear.
"Oh, Margo! I'm so glad you're back!"
That's the common greeting these days. We're all glad anyone is back, even if we didn't know them before.
"Almost two weeks,” I told her. “Julian is working at the LaBorde Gallery, cleaning flood-damaged artwork.—How did you ride out the storm?"
"Our insurance handled the damage, but it was awful for us.” Caroline fanned herself with a kidskin glove. “On August twenty-seventh, we saw the report that Katrina was coming and decided it was a good day to fly up to our summer place in Charlotte. Then we had to watch all that devastation on the cable news.” She clasped her hands. “We felt just terrible.—How about you and Julian?"
"Taillights on I-10, like the rest of the masses. We left the twenty-eighth with our dog and enough clothes for the three days we expected to be away."
"That's what everyone thought, three days. So where did you go when you couldn't return to New Orleans?"
"We had a choice,” I said. “Julian's Cajun cousin, Verbus, volunteered a camper on his farm in Turkey Creek. The road was a half-mile away through the cow field and we would always have to watch where we stepped."
"That doesn't sound very tempting."
"It doesn't. Then my brother Tom offered to put us up in New York City."
"New York City!” Caroline clapped her hands. “Yes!"
"...in a two-bedroom apartment he shares with his wife and teenaged daughters. We would get the couch in the living room."
"Oh.” Her hands dropped. “Well—how were those cows?"
"They mooed a lot."
She shrugged. “You were safe and dry, anyway.—Wasn't it terrible about old Angus Crawford?"
"Angus?” I sat up straight. “What happened to him?"
"The poor soul died in his house on Maya Street, like so many others."
"But he had a two-story!"
"I know."
"We tried to take him with us."
Julian and I were on our way out early that Sunday morning, him at the wheel and me beside him with the map. Catherine, our Catahoula hound, panted over our shoulders. A city bus passed us with a loudspeaker exhorting residents to climb aboard and be taken to a shelter at no cost. I didn't see anyone get on.
We stopped for some road food on Maya Street and happened to pass Angus Crawford's place. The old man himself was in the front yard picking up his lawn furniture, his thick brush of hair looking whiter than the Greek Revival house behind him. We knew him from our Civic Pride meetings as the most vocal of the anti-development faction.
Julian pulled up to the curb and waved.
"Mr. Crawford?! Is your son coming to pick you up?"
"Doug?! That flowerpot?!” The old man screwed up his face and spat in the grass. “I haven't talked to him in a year!"
"Never mind him, then.” I leaned out the window. “Throw a few things in a bag and ride with us!"
Catherine wagged a welcome, happy to have company in the backseat. I remember that Crawford just frowned and shook his head.
"We're driving north and west,” Julian persisted. “We'll take you anywhere you want to go: Gonzales? ... Baton Rouge? ... Alexandria?"
"I'm not going anywhere! I sat out Betsy and Camille right up there in my living room. I'll do the same for Katrina."
"But this will be three times the size,” I warned. “The mayor is calling it mandatory."
"No bald-headed mayor is going to make me leave my home!"
Then we watched him stride up his steps, across the porch, and back inside.
As Julian turned the wheel to head down toward I-10, I looked out the rear window. “I'm glad the old buzzard isn't coming along. He's so disagreeable."
"Yes, he could have ruined the disaster for all of us."
"But what if there is a flood, and the water gets in his house?"
"Then he'll just go upstairs."
We spent the next nine hours in evacuation traffic, being “counter-flowed” all over creation, and didn't think about Mr. Crawford again.
Now I turned back to Caroline. “We were hoping the old man's son, Doug, would drive by and carry him to safety."
"I'm sure he would have, but Doug Crawford was busy in Lakeview all week.” She fluttered her kidskin glove. “He and his friend Steve rode around in a flatbed boat, plucking people off their roofs. You might have seen them on the national news."
"Maybe we did. We watched the network coverage on a portable TV in our camper."
"That's the saddest part. By the time he and Steve rode their boat to his father's house,
some National Guards from New Jersey had already been there. The code was on the door."
"The code?"
"They had spray-painted a ‘1 D’ for ‘One Dead Inside.’ That's how Doug found out about his father. Isn't that the blackest irony? He had saved a hundred lives only to lose the one dearest to him."
* * * *
I drove home by way of South Claiborne. Feel like stopping at one of the dozens of fast-food places that line the avenue for a roast beef sandwich? Milkshake? Fried chicken? Pizza? Nyah, nyah, you can't have any of them. All of those franchises are closed and dark along with the drugstores, service stations, supermarkets ... everything.
You know what I miss most? Miss more than electricity? More than my microwave? More even than phone service so I wouldn't have to hike to the Fair Grinds cafe to read my e-mail? Traffic lights, that's what I miss. Most of them in the city are still down, so we observe the protocol of a four-way stop. Whoever hits the intersection first gets to go. But what if it's a tie to the intersection? What if it isn't clear who was first? What if someone doesn't want to wait his turn? I could get seriously killed around here.
I parked my car at the house, between piles of rubble, wrote out checks to pay some bills, and went walking through “Debris City” to the one post office that's still open, built high up near Bayou St. John. Why not wait for the mailman, you ask? What mailman? I haven't seen one on my block since August. Have you?
I waved to my neighbor, Thelma, who was still in her robe and sticking her head out her front door for a breath of fresh air. The flood didn't cause her any structural damage, but the mold growing in her house is making her sicker by the day.
I passed the horrendously expensive coffee place where a giant yellow banner declares “NOW OPEN” in foot-high letters. If a thirsty believer parks his car and hurries over to grab a hot morning java, he will see the banner's smaller print with the address of the company's other franchise way across town that actually is open. This location is closed, locked, and bare to the walls.
As he fumes and curses, the thwarted customer can read that the place across town is hiring “barristas.” From the name, one might surmise a “barrista” to be a little lawyer, or maybe someone who builds prisons for Chihuahuas. But it's actually a person who makes a living pouring horrendously expensive coffee.
EQMM, November 2006 Page 19
