The People's Police

by Norman Spinrad

  “But … but why would I want to…?”

  “Because you then sell clear title to all the property back to the folks like me for the princely sum of one dollar!”

  “But that’s outright thievery! Isn’t it, J. B.?” Governor Boudreau said, without exactly sounding outraged about it. “Could we really get away with it?”

  “Maybe, maybe not … but it sure would be a credible threat because it would all be tied up in the courts for years and years … so the Loan Lizards might just be amenable to an alternative they’d be in no position to refuse.…”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is retroactively index the dollar value of the mortgages and payments to the deflation rate and future inflation or deflation rate of the dollar.”

  “In English, please.…”

  “The whole reason millions like me are in the fiscal shitter in the first place is because we bought into low down payment mortgages denominated in fixed numbers of dollars, and when the buck got turned into the superbuck so did the numbers on the mortgages, meaning we owed five or ten times as much in buying power dollars as we bargained for and couldn’t hope to keep up the monthlies.…”

  “So the idea is to turn it around to what people thought they were buying into in the first place…?”

  “You got it, Governor.”

  “And the Loan Lizards might buy into it because—”

  “—because 20 percent of something is more than a 100 percent of nothing.”

  “Why J. B. Lafitte, that sounds like political blackmail.…”

  “Such an ugly word, Madam Governor.… Why not think of it as, shall we say, rough justice without the tar and feathers?”

  “Well … when you put it that way … I love it!”

  Well, the scenario might have been my idea, but while J. B. Lafitte might often enough be accused of being a little too big for his britches, I wasn’t so full of myself as to think I could actually write a speech like that, and Governor Boudreau even less so, so we hired a legal ghostwriter to do it, gave her three days to get it done, and scheduled the speech for Jackson Square, a much more media-friendly venue than the Baton Rouge Governor’s Mansion.

  28

  MaryLou Boudreau had never ridden in a helicopter before the flight down from Baton Rouge to the New Orleans Fairgrounds, and she had never ridden on a Mardi Gras Krewe float as the queen of a parade through cheering crowds, and now here she was, standing beside Colonel Terrence Hathaway in the back of a National Guard Hummer, leading a kind of Mardi Gras parade, waving to the cheering crowds lining both sides of Canal Street.

  Hathaway had given the bulk of his troops forty-eight-hour passes, withdrawing most of the military vehicles, so that the perpetual Canal Street parade was now more of a traditional secondary parade writ large and seemingly permanent, dominated by marching bands, homemade floats, costumed dancers, and just plain folks joining in.

  But plenty of the at-liberty Guardsmen in their uniforms were mixed in with the rest of the revelers, enjoying their unexpected popularity as heroes of New Orleans, and the ones he held back to ride the Hummers, decked out now in makeshift red-white-and-blue bunting to show the National Guard flag on this triumphant parade, were feeling no pain either, as women tossed them flowers, men handed them drinks and joints, people even tossed Mardi Gras throws up at the troops riding the Hummers.

  Bands on the sidewalks followed the parade along all the way down Canal to Bourbon Street, and when it turned left into the Quarter, a voice that was not a voice spoke to MaryLou inside her own head.

  Whoo-ee! What a parade!

  Erzuli! You’re not gonna—

  No way, hon’! You deserve this, sister! You were the greatest mount ever, girl, you’re the queen of this here parade, and this is your hour to enjoy riding your own horse.

  Bourbon Street was jam-packed all the way to St. Ann’s, so crowded sidewalk-to-sidewalk that a jazz band had to spontaneously jump out in front of the lead vehicle to slowly plow its way toward Jackson Square. People in costumes, people more than half naked, people dancing in the street to the music blaring out from the bars and saloons.

  People dancing as if … possessed?

  Is that the Supernatural Krewe out there…?

  Well, of course it is, you expect us to miss a party like this! Don’t we have a right to celebrate? Ain’t this our party too, if you don’t mind? And even if you do, hah, hah, hah!

  Not at all, Erzuli. You know, in a way, I missed y’all.

  Ya know what, hon’, we all kinda miss playin’ Mama Legba too!

  Right on St. Ann’s, past the church, and the parade came to a halt in front of the entrance to Jackson Square Park. National Guard troops formed the right side of an honor-guard aisle from the entrance to the base of the tall makeshift stage hiding the statue of Andy Jackson in the center of the park with People’s Police doing the honors on the left.

  MaryLou and Colonel Hathaway sashayed to the base of the red-white-and-blue-draped stage while a brass band played a Dixieland version of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and climbed up the ladder to the top as the crowd cheered.

  From where MaryLou now stood, it looked as if all New Orleans was there cheering. For as far as her eyes could see, within the gates of the park, in the pedestrian streets surrounding it on three sides, packing broad Decatur, lining the levee beyond, every space that could be filled was filled with cheering and waving humanity.

  Glancing at Colonel Hathaway, she was amused to see that he was standing there at rigid attention with a wooden expressionless face, as if scared shitless. For a moment, MaryLou Boudreau wondered why she wasn’t.

  But hey, hadn’t she been a street busker playing this very venue to crummier and far less enthusiastic audiences? Hadn’t she been a TV star called Mama Legba? Wasn’t she standing there as the Voodoo Queen Governor of Louisiana? If she wasn’t all of that in this golden moment in the spotlight, who was she?

  What’s to be afraid of, girl? The stage is all yours, and so are they!

  “Are we having a good time yet?” Mama Legba said into her hidden lavaliere mike, and the amplification turned it into a mighty roar.

  The crowd roared back, shook beer cans over their heads in salute, waved spliffs, roared back, and she knew that she had them.

  “Are we letting the good times roll?”

  Enough people shouted “Fuckin’A!” to allow it to be heard through the wall of joyous noise.

  “Three cheers for the People’s Police of New Orleans!”

  The cheers were enthusiastically forthcoming.

  That much had been entirely spontaneous, but now it was time to more or less follow the speech script she had more or less memorized.

  “I hereby proclaim that as long as I am governor of Louisiana neither the State Police nor the Louisiana National Guard will ever again be called into New Orleans to dispute, violate, or nullify the full policing authority of the People’s Police of New Orleans, including their refusal to be used to enforce eviction notices and their right to maintain the policy of no victim, no crime!”

  The cheers this time, were even louder.

  “And I will send to the legislature a bill legally extending the policy of no victim, no crime, and the nonenforcement of eviction notices by any police authority, to the entire state of Louisiana!”

  Not much more than polite applause to that one, not that she expected any more, given that this was New Orleans.

  “Not that we all expect what we’ve got right now in Baton Rouge to pass anything like that…”

  That laugh line was scripted, wasn’t very funny, and didn’t get much more than cynical snickers.

  MaryLou Boudreau, who was Governor Mama Legba, turned to Terrence Hathaway, who was commander of the Louisiana National Guard.

  “By the authority vested in me as governor of the state of Louisiana, I hereby order Colonel Terrence Hathaway, commander of the Louisiana National Guard, to withdraw his troops from the City of New Orleans.”
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  That much was in the speech script too, but Governor Mama Legba who was MaryLou Boudreau added a little ad lib of her own.

  “You’ve got ninety-six hours to do it, Colonel Hathaway,” she said, and turned to face her live and broadcast audience. “That gives y’all four days to show these boys a good time worthy of the City of New Orleans to thank them for a job so well done!”

  And then, when the cheering was done, it was time to get down to business.

  “Now, when I was running for governor of the great state of Louisiana and it was supposed to be a joke, and I knew I wouldn’t win, I could promise the sun, the moon, the stars, and free drinks on the house for everyone for ever and ever, without being accused of breaking those promises, and I seem to remember I also promised to save everyone in danger of being evicted from their houses or farms or places of business because of legal foreclosures on their mortgages. Well, thanks to the People’s Police of New Orleans, and Colonel Hathaway, and the Police Association of Louisiana, that’s one campaign promise I’ve actually been able to keep!”

  Cheers, mixed with laughter, mixed with grunts, adding up to uncertain confusion.

  “So far,” said Mama Legba. “But it’s not permanent because it’s not legal. Nobody’s being evicted, but only because no police force will throw them out, but no one under foreclosure has legal title. Y’all can live in your houses, work your businesses, farm your land, but you don’t own them. Can’t sell them, can’t pass them on to your kids, and if some future governor wants to or some future legislature gets it passed, they can send in the National Guard to do the dirty work, and you will all be out on your asses!”

  Muttery grumbly silence.

  “Well, I’m gonna do something about it!” declared MaryLou Boudreau who was Governor Mama Legba. “I’m gonna give those greedy Loan Lizard sons of bitches the chance to do the right thing,” said Governor Mama Legba who was MaryLou Boudreau, “and if they don’t—”

  —sledgehammer blows riding up her navel to her chest—

  —the pop-pop-pop firecracker fusillade sound of high-powered rifles—

  —a ribbon of pain coming on like the stabbing of many knives—

  —screams, shouts, her knees buckling, coughing up blood, falling forward—

  —into the arms of Colonel Hathaway—

  —his stricken and furious face the last thing she saw—

  —as the darkness closed in—

  —and her head mercifully exploded.

  29

  The assassination of Mama Legba on live national television was probably a greater shock than even that of JFK, the quick series of high-powered rifle shots, her chest and belly suddenly spurting blood as she fell, Colonel Hathaway reaching out to catch her, the final shot smashing into her forehead spattering brains and blood, all seen not in some grainy black-and-white home-video, but in close-up high-definition color.

  The closest thing, I suppose, was the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11, hammered into people’s brains by endless repetition with days of nothing else on television. But there was something at least as powerful and somehow even more heartbreaking about that close-up of Colonel Hathaway, his uniform dripping gore, tears running down his cheek, his jaw clenched in rage, holding the broken bloody body of MaryLou Boudreau in his arms and carrying her to the lip of the stage, and then hoisting Mama Legba above his head with what seemed like superhuman hysterical strength.

  When the shock wore off the media started asking who had bought this obviously professional hit and why?

  Well, the obvious big winner was George Hockenberry, but no one could take that seriously because no one who had ever even heard of George Hockenberry could take him seriously.

  Who in hell was George Hockenberry?

  That was what most folks wanted to know.

  George Hockenberry was the former lieutenant governor and now governor of Louisiana, that’s who.

  And having Hockenberry suddenly become governor was for sure not the advent of a previously major player like Lyndon Johnson.

  Hockenberry had been an upstate state senator for more years than anyone could care to remember. No one cared to remember because Hockenberry had never done anything memorable, having risen to the unofficial status of Senate Republican Bagman a decade or two ago, and having been awarded the lieutenant governor nomination as a sort of gold watch. Being the long time distributor of corporate and grayer largesse, ol’ George was popular with his colleagues and the real world party leadership, but ol’ George was beginning to lose a few of his marbles, and the lieutenant governorship was a retirement home, an office he was likely to die in without doing any damage, requiring nothing more than collecting his salary, unless a sitting governor died in office before he did.

  But now she had.

  We soon got a good dose of what replaced her.

  New Orleans was in outraged mourning; he wouldn’t dare show his ass here, so his first public appearance the day after the assassination was before the legislature in Baton Rouge. He blamed the assassination of the Voodoo Queen Governor on anarchist communist Arab drug-dealing Mafia dons, or some such thing equally incoherent, and accused the “so-called People’s Police,” which he reminded us, sounded like something in the Soviet Union, which he seemed to have forgotten no longer existed, of colluding with these evil forces to bring about chaos in order to establish a godless atheist socialist dictatorship.

  His first move was to declare martial law, and his first order under it was for the National Guard to remain in New Orleans to restore an order that had long since been restored, enforce the letter of every cotton-pickin’ law on the books, and arrest Police Superintendent Dick Mulligan, Deputy Assistant Police Chief Martin Luther Martin, Joe Roody, anyone else above the rank of lieutenant in the People’s Police wearing their uniform in public and attempting to play cops and robbers, and if he opened his Democrat mouth about it, Mayor Douglas Bradford too.

  The lunatic had inherited control of the asylum.

  For the next twenty-four hours the city waited fearfully to see what Hathaway would say, what the National Guard would do, while Colonel Hathaway arrested nobody, and said nothing except that he was proceeding with standard redeployment preparations, whatever that was supposed to mean.

  While this was not going on, it became clear that Governor Hockenberry was not in control of anything or anyone including himself, but had simply graduated from being the senatorial bagman for the Louisiana chapter of the Powers That Be into being their puppet-show lead.

  An emergency bill sailed through the legislature giving Hathaway forty-eight hours to begin making the arrests required under Hockenberry’s martial law order, enforce the letter of all laws as God and the property rights of the Loan Lizards intended, or be removed as commander of the National Guard.

  Coup who?

  Coup you, suckers!

  * * *

  “What are you gonna do, arrest us?” Luke Martin asked Colonel Hathaway as he, Hathaway, and Big Joe Roody sat at a corner table in the Blue Meanie, closed down this morning to host this needfully secret meeting. “And Superintendent Mulligan too?”

  “That’s my orders, Luke,” Terrence Hathaway told him. “Instead, here I am, sneaking off to have a beer with y’all.”

  “At least you’re not one of those born-again teetotalers,” Big Joe said.

  Hathaway grimaced. “This situation would drive Carry Nation herself into the bottom of the whiskey jar. What am I going to do? What are you going to do if I try to arrest you?”

  Luke had been pondering the answer to that one since Fuckinberry had declared martial law without coming up with an answer.

  Hathaway sighed, shrugged. “The real operational question is what are the People’s Police going to do if I try to carry out the governor’s orders?”

  “Meaning what would Mulligan order?”

  “Please!” Hathaway said. “We all know that Superintendent Mulligan will do what it takes to keep his job and his butt out o
f the stockade. That’s why you’re here, Mr. Roody, and he isn’t.”

  “Meaning what am I going to tell my membership to do?”

  Hathaway nodded.

  Big Joe put it to Luke. “Speaking as an officer in the People’s Police but a member in good standing in the Police Association of Louisiana, New Orleans chapter, what would you do if Mulligan ordered you to surrender and I said resist?”

  “You mean, which side am I on?”

  “I mean, which side are you on. Which side would your brother officers be on?”

  “Yours or Dick Mulligan’s?”

  “Mine or Dick Mulligan’s.”

  “You have to ask that, Joe?”

  “I’ve got to ask someone, Luke.…”

  Luke thought about it. He thought about what Luella would probably say now. He thought about what his son would say about him years later, whatever happened. He thought what the kid in the Alligator Swamp would have wanted him to say then, what that boy inside him wanted him to say now. He thought of what the people of New Orleans would say. He thought what the cops of a previously despised police force would say in the packed Blue Meanie.

  Who was he kidding?

  There was only one choice.

  “No retreat, Joe, no surrender.”

  * * *

  Terrence Hathaway both knew and feared what Luke Martin’s answer would have to be as soon as Roody had asked the question. He had come to respect this young police officer, believed that he was a man of honor, if not, or not yet, a Christian. And as a man who strove to be both, Terrence Hathaway would have been disappointed in him had he answered otherwise.

  But that answer had put him in the most terrible quandry he had ever faced as an officer and a Christian, as a Christian soldier as MaryLou Boudreau had once called him.

  As an officer in the United States Army, he had sworn an oath to obey the orders of the chain of command reaching up out of the army all the way to the president, no matter how repugnant, or indeed stupid and counterproductive, he found them personally. Without military honor dependent on fealty to that oath, no democracy could long survive the scorn of the military for policies of the elected civil authority, as had been proven over and over again in the past throughout Latin America, Africa, and indeed most of human history.