Which I never get to hear! What did I miss this time, what did Guede say, Erzuli?
Got off a real good one, hon’.
Erzuli cackled like the wicked witch of West Hollywood.
Just tell him to, and he’ll go out and peddle his butt inna gay bars!
10
While it wasn’t quite true that Luke Martin hadn’t been accustomed to public speaking, having made what mark he had as the mouthpiece and honcho of the Alligator Swamp Police, he had certainly never faced something like this.
There he sat, in full uniform, on a folding chair atop the stage of the roofed rotunda in the center of Duncan Square, facing City Hall, flanked by Big Joe Roody and Terry O’Day, the union’s public relations spokesman, and waiting to go on as the park filled to its boundaries with brother police officers.
Big Joe had told Luke and his father-in-law to spread the word of Luke’s crazy assignment to enforce a final eviction notice on himself in the Blue Meanie, and on the advice of O’Day had kept Luke away from the press for a week while word of mouth defused throughout the force.
Meanwhile, coordinated by O’Day, half a dozen cops facing eviction made appearances in the studio audience of Mama Legba and Her Supernatural Krewe, and one of them even got to plead for supernatural help, though it was greeted with boos and hisses from the audience and stonewalled by Mama Legba’s “loas,” whatever they really were.
So the press was well primed when O’Day announced that Big Joe Roody was calling an unprecedented outdoor official meeting of the Police Association of New Orleans right square in the face of City Hall, where Patrolman Martin Luther Martin would introduce a formal resolution to be voted on by the membership.
The cameras were there. The microphones were there. The upload trucks with their dish antennas were parked on the street right in front of City Hall and now the park was blue with cops and the shooting lights went on.
O’Day stood up and walked to the eastern part of the stage, where a forest of microphones and cameras had been positioned, so that the big sleazy sign announcing CITY HALL atop the otherwise pallid pastel-gray-and-green building would be clearly visible in the main shot throughout the coverage.
He nodded down at the press crouched at the foot of the rotunda with a thin-lipped little smile, then looked out over the lake of blue uniforms. “Y’all are not here to hear me, brothers,” he proclaimed, “and Joe Roody needs no introduction, so he’s not gonna get any from me!”
A modest ripple of laughter.
“So, over to you, Joe.”
Big Joe Roody rose from his chair and strode past O’Day returning to his seat, not exactly ponderously, but like a Saints lineman loping up to the line of scrimmage, and nodded to acknowledge the applause.
“For once I don’t think you’re here to listen to me make a speech, and so for once I’m not gonna make one,” Big Joe announced to more applause mixed with laughter. “And most of you probably know Officer Martin’s story, but for those who don’t, he’s gonna tell you. And since I’m technically not a voting member of the Police Association of New Orleans, he’s gonna read you the motion to do something about it, but just between me and y’all, I think you’ll know who wrote it. So, over to you, Officer Luke Martin!”
On cue, Luke gave Big Joe enough time to cross his path on the way to sitting down so that they could exchange high fives on his way to the microphones and cameras, and then there he was, in front of a couple of thousand fellow cops.
Smack dab in front of City Hall, and live on the Internet and radio and television.
The motion had been written out for him and he had the paper in his hand, and O’Day had written some bullshit script for him too, but Luke had given up trying to memorize it, besides which it had seemed about as dead to him as a deep-fried catfish.
He was on his own.
Or was he?
For as he stood there frozen for a long uncomfortable moment, hands began to rhythmically clap, feet began to stamp, like a baseball crowd calling for a grand slam from the clean-up hitter with the bases loaded, as his brother officers told him that they were with him. And maybe, just maybe, as pissed off as he was.
A damn victim for sure, but as he stood up there like a fuckin’ hero, like a tent-show preacher, like Mama fuckin’ Legba live on television, in front of an audience of his brothers, the thunder of pounding feet and the clap of demanding hands rolling over him and moving through him, Luke Martin felt a high unlike any he had ever imagined.
He felt the Power!
There sure wasn’t anything like this being peddled on the low down streets or the high-class coke dens either! He was more righteously pissed off than he had ever been in his life, he was more alive than he had ever been, this was was his moment in the spotlight, and he had the Power.
So he just rode it and let it carry him away.
“Well, a lotta y’all heard the first part a my story, just like yours, right, you buy a house on a police officer’s salary with some kinda help on a down payment and mortgage monthlies you figure no problem at the time. Seemed like they were giving it away, right, like the first hit from a street dealer, y’all know just what I mean, doncha? Sound familiar to you guys, now don’t it?”
Shouts and growls and right-ons.
“But when the dollar turns into the superbuck, when this Great Deflation shit hit the fan, we find the fuckin’ mortgage payment eats up just about our whole new salary, we can’t keep up the monthlies even if we starved our families to death. And who gets ordered to kick us out onna street, brothers? We do, that’s who!”
More shouts and growls, more ominous this time, no right-ons, and a loud chorus of boos. Luke took out a blank piece of paper and waved it like a battle flag.
“An’ then I get THIS FUCKIN’ THING!” he roared. “Go evict yourself, Luke Martin! Some son of a bitch maybe thought it was funny! Any a you think it’s funny?”
Dead silence.
“So I say, you go fuck yourselves, whoever you are! City Hall, Loan Lizards, Fat Cats and Polecats, I say up their asses, whoever, and however, and wherever, or whatever they are, who want to dump us out of our houses and into the shit laughing all the way to the banks they own themselves! I say there ain’t nothing lower crawling in the Mississippi mud than these motherfucking bloodsuckers, y’all know just what I mean, now doncha, except maybe a cop who would evict another cop for being one of their victims!”
The cheers were deafening, fit this time to maybe knock out some of the windows on City Hall, or for sure to be heard loud and clear through them. As instructed, Luke just stood there waiting for the signal from Terry O’Day to make the motion.
O’Day didn’t nod for what seemed to Luke like a glorious forever. When he finally did and Luke tossed away the phony eviction notice and whipped out the other piece of paper, the one with the formal motion written on it, and held it up for silence, he got it.
“I move that no officer of any rank in the New Orleans Police Department serve or enforce any eviction notice on any officer of any rank in the New Orleans Police Department,” he bellowed at the top of his lungs sound system or not, “or issue any order to do so, or take any punitive action against any officer of any rank in the New Orleans Police Department for refusing to obey any such order from any source whatsoever.”
Big Joe Roody strode to the microphones and shouted even louder above the tumult.
“Might I possible hear any seconds?” he inquired.
This was greeted by a unanimous uproar.
“Somehow I think we got a second or two,” said Big Joe. “So unless I hear any objections, I call the vote. Opposed?”
No one was crazy or brave enough or both to utter a word.
“I declare the motion passed by voice vote,” Big Joe declared. He paused, turned to face City Hall, raised his right arm and gave it a full upright middle finger salute. “Unanimously.”
* * *
Well, the big news was good news for cops facing eviction at po
lice gunpoint, but not exactly for J. B. Lafitte or anyone else in the same bucket of shit with me who wasn’t a member of Big Joe Roody’s union.
The media, and the mayor, and the various local chapters of the local Loan Lizards leaning on them, were calling it a “police strike,” but it wasn’t really a strike at all, since the cops were still doing everything they usually did, arresting the usual suspects, collecting the usual paper bags, keeping the Swamp Alligators out of the Quarter and New Orleans Proper, and so forth—everything except evicting each other.
Including still doing the dirty work when it came to evicting anyone else. If you were a cop, no cop would evict you; if you weren’t, tough titty, they were still throwing everyone else being foreclosed on out into the street, at gunpoint if need be.
Unsurprisingly enough to everyone except the New Orleans Police Department, which had always had about as much political street smarts as a Holy Roller preaching teetotalism on Bourbon Street, this did not exactly gain them popular support from John Q. Sucker, and the cops were not exactly gaining public support for their selfish little “strike.”
Though of course the banks and even more shysterly shady financial entities who were demanding that the mayor, or the governor, or somebody do something to collect their legal property were about as popular as the same Holy Roller preacher in a whorehouse.
So for the Democratic mayor to ask the Republican governor to send in the State Police to evict armed cops, even if the Powers That Be did own him too, would have been political suicide, even if it didn’t result in gunfights, which, given the bad blood between the New Orleans Police and the State Troopers, it probably would.
The governor, likewise of course in thrall to the local krewe of the Lizards of Wall Street, wasn’t running for reelection and might have done it if asked, but he was the lamest of ducks now in this this election year, and was planning to run for the next available Senate seat.
Lafitte’s Landing was no cop bar, but as in any such Bourbon Street establishment, the local cops enjoyed free hospitality in and out of uniform and the traditional monthly paper bags, only good public relations, so some of the regulars were cops and some of the cops were regulars, a cozy situation for the saloon business. So I got tipped off when the final foreclosure and eviction notice was about to be served.
Now ol’ J. B. had never been involved in party politics. Democratic and Republican hacks got free fucks in my Garden District whorehouse and free drinks in my Quarter bar within reason as insurance payment on the necessary favors when it came to liquor licenses, nonenforcement of closing times, whorehouse protection, and so forth, but that’s as deep as it got until I got into shit that these so-called political connections couldn’t or wouldn’t get me out of, namely the imminent loss of my saloon and my bordello, the very establishments that had been laying the freebies on these ingrate bastards all these years.
Wouldn’t you have been pissed off? Wouldn’t you have wanted to get even?
Wouldn’t you have considered it not only voodoo justice but a pure hoot to save your own enlightened self-interest doing it?
I had been doing a lot of thinking about this beforehand, as you might have imagined, and I had come up with a plan, a Hail Mary maybe, but I didn’t have a better idea. And anyway, I owed my friendly local policemen for the tip-off, now didn’t I?
It can get to be a pain and a little expensive because reporters, especially second- and third-rate ones, can drink like fish or state legislators as long as it’s free, but it’s a useful expense to keep little items about your Bourbon Street tourist attraction in the local media, and it’s for sure cheaper than buying advertising, which you can’t afford anyway.
And while I had no direct connection to Terry O’Day, I did have enough connections to the press folks who could get the PANO press maven to answer their calls and could therefore get him to answer mine.
“Now listen up, Brother O’Day,” I told him when I got him on the horn, “those who go along get along, and I got a deal for you that’s gonna be good for both ballclubs—”
“In plain English, if you can manage it, Mr. Lafitte, and I’m not your brother.”
“You will be, Mr. O’Day,” I told him patiently.
Even as just a voice on the phone, this guy rubbed me the wrong way and judging by how stupidly the union was handling their so-called strike, he didn’t exactly impress me as a public relations genius, but running saloons and bordellos in the Big Easy does teach you when to hold your nose and be diplomatic, so I laid it out as gently as I could so that his little pea brain could handle it.
“The word from the bird is that I’m shortly to be served the final eviction notice on my Bourbon Street saloon,” I told him.
“So?” O’Day said coldly.
“So I want your Poster Boy, Patrolman Luke Martin, sent to do the dirty work, in return for which I will arrange live press coverage.”
“You’re not making any sense, Lafitte, why would either of us want a thing like that?”
“Because I don’t want the eviction notice to be served, and he’s not gonna serve it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? You got about thirty seconds to give me a reason not to hang up on you.”
“Y’all been screwing up the relations of the New Orleans Police with the public big-time, O’Day, you’re getting your boys about as much popular support for this so-called police strike as Sherman got from the good old boys on his march through Georgia and I know how to turn it around.”
“Oh you do, do you?”
“Yeah, I do. I know how to turn the New Orleans Police into heroes of the people.”
“After which you’ll do what, walk on water?”
“Look, O’Day, whoever thought up that pissant strike motion in front of City Hall didn’t get it.”
“Was Joe Roody who thought it up, Lafitte. You wanna try to tell Big Joe how he got it wrong?”
“I’m gonna tell you, Brother O’Day, so you can tell him and get some of the credit, which I can imagine you just might need with your boss right now. Namely that the police protecting only cops from eviction while doing the evil bidding of the bloodsucking bankers when it comes to kicking ordinary citizens out into the street is an I’m all right jack attitude not exactly winning your union members any popularity contests.”
“I need you to tell me that…?” O’Day grunted sourly.
“Maybe not, but it seems you need ol’ J. B. to tell you how to fix it.”
A long silence.
“I’m still listening,” O’Day told me with quite a different attitude.
“The police refuse to evict anyone,” I told him. “Including, of course, yours truly, and you go public with it.”
“Holy shit!”
“That’s holy shit, of course, now ain’t it, Terry?”
“Maybe … but the politics … I don’t know … you have no idea.…”
“Oh, I think I do. Why don’t you have a little talk with Joe Roody about it? And I tell you what, you can tell him we sort of cooked this up together, and when talks to me, and he will want to, I won’t contradict you”
“I do appreciate that … Brother Lafitte.”
“Those who go along, get along, Brother O’Day.”
11
Luke Martin had had his share of Bourbon Street duty, but never at a time like this: before noon, with the bars and strip joints and sex shows all closed, and the mobs of drunken tourists sleeping it off, and the balconies overhanging the mostly deserted sidewalks empty except for a few bleary hookers sipping coffee and clearing their heads in the open air.
Joe Roody had not exactly ordered him to this meeting in Lafitte’s Landing, since he was a union leader not a police officer, and Luke had been instructed to show up out of uniform, but in practice it amounted to the same thing: a cop did not say no to Big Joe Roody.
Nor would Roody tell him what in hell this was about. All Luke could get out of him when he asked was “Continuing to save y
our ass, maybe, kid, among our own collective behinds.”
Lafitte’s Landing’s street front was some kind of phony old wooden sailboat thing, though the wood at least was real and really weathered by who knew how many Hurricane Seasons, with western movie swinging doors, crossed swords above them, and skull and crossbones flags over the the name sign flanking some old dude wearing a pirate hat, though no parrot was in evidence.
Inside it was much longer that it was wide, with a bar with stools along one wall, a food-service counter and the toilets along the other, and a presently empty stage in back. The rest of the big room was filled with tables and chairs, over which hung phony rough-hewn candelabras and disco balls.
The only person in the room was a guy maybe in his late fifties or early sixties, clean-shaven, but with a mess of just short of collar-length curly salt-and-pepper hair, hard brown eyes, shaggy brows, a permanent-looking little smart-ass grin, and wearing a black silk jacket over a white ruffled shirt and green string-tie, looking more like a movie riverboat gambler than any bartender.
Nevertheless, he had produced two steins and drawn the beers by the time Luke made his way over. “I’m Jean-Baptiste Lafitte, and the drinks are on the house this morning, Officer Martin,” he drawled in a rapid-fire rap, “and don’t say you don’t need one this early, you will, Luke, and you might as start callin’ me J. B. like everyone else ’cause you and me are gonna get real familiar.”
And before Luke could do much more than get his mouth open, Big Joe Roody, trailed by Terry O’Day, barged into the saloon like a tugboat charging up the Mississippi and up to the bar.
“Have a beer on the house, Joe. You too, of course, Terry.”
“Don’t mind if I do, and as long as it’s on the house, I’ll have a shot of straight malt too, Laphroaig if you’ve got it.”
“Pass,” said O’Day. “I get the feeling one of us better stay sober.”
Those who had them took their drinks over to a table, and O’Day, who didn’t, spoke first, but hardly got a word in before Joe Roody took over.
The People's Police Page 8
