by Jimmy Fox
“I read the paper and watch TV,” Shelvin said.
“I realize I’m probably going over old ground with you here. What I’m sayin’ is, Balzar”–and here Bons Temps swiveled his tree-stump of a head to make sure no one was within earshot–“we all got certain little secrets best left unknown. Sometimes, the lines aren’t so clear, and we all crossed over ’em in our careers. You got to, to feed your family. Howya like that, them two pointin’ fingers, after what they done?” Bons Temps leaned forward to deliver these words, driving a fat index finger into Shelvin’s chest: “Least I never killed nobody for money, like them.”
Shelvin glanced down at the rubber-gloved finger and then up at the detective’s face. Something in Shelvin’s eyes made Bons Temps remove his finger and back off a few inches.
A new police superintendent had taken over in October 1994, with a mandate to clean up the notoriously corrupt department and end the city’s unwanted claim to the title of Murder Capital of America. At his Gallier Hall swearing-in celebration, the new chief received a briefing from an FBI agent on investigations and stings in progress to root out the vice rampaging within NOPD.
“Lotta things gonna change in the department, Balzar,” Bons Temps said, from a safer distance. “But one thing’ll always be the same: you need friends when the shit starts flyin’. I watch your back, you watch mine. That’s the way it works.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Shelvin said.
Bons Temps slapped Shelvin’s ox-like shoulders. “Good man. You a fast learner. They sure don’t grow ’em dumb up there in Natchitoches, do they?”
The detective removed a plastic bag of white powder from a pocket of his dark-blue, yellow-lettered rain parka and dropped it amid the rocks.
“Hey!” Bons Temps shouted to the others, “come look see what our Balzar done found!” He turned to Shelvin, a big grin on his face. “You right, Balzar. Sure does look like a drug deal gone sour. Guess it’s another cold case for the bottom drawer.”
*All excerpts from J. N. Herald, ed., The Diary of Ivanhoe Balzar: Mulatto Barber of Natchitoches
(New Orleans: Coldbread Press, 1997). The Plutarch Foundation in New Orleans possesses this extraordinary diary (Manuscript 895). Herald’s book has received awards and accolades from major genealogical societies and professional groups, and has been praised in academic and literary circles for outstanding scholarship.
