by Nick Dorsey
The only problem with the plan? Tom had no idea how to play. That’s where Ray came in. The EMT was shaking his head now. “You can’t do that, you move your king there, that’s check again. Way I see it, you only have one move.”
“What is it?”
“I tell you, you won’t learn nothing.”
“Christ.” Then Tom saw it.
As soon as he moved his king forward Ray barked laughter and moved a knight. “Checkmate motherfucker.”
“Alright, alright. Take it easy.”
“You’re getting better, though.”
Tom perked up. “Yeah?”
Ray laughed again. “Nah, boy. You still suck.” But he reset the board.
Tom leaned back and took a sip of coffee from a styrofoam cup. “I had somebody come by the office today.”
Ray perked up. He liked hearing about Tom’s cases. The missing persons and background checks weren’t especially interesting, but now and then there was a cheating wife or husband. Something juicy. Ray said, “You got a live one?”
“Girl was asking for help. Didn’t really try to hire me, though.”
“So why is she in your office?”
“I don’t know. She’s scared of her husband.”
Ray shrugged. “Some people are scary.”
“I was thinking about going by her place. Check things out. Make sure she’s okay.”
Ray gave Tom a look that said he wasn’t mad, just disappointed. “Tom. You’re an alright guy.” He gestured at the board. “You can’t play the game to save your life, but you’re alright. Let me ask you this: I see a guy hanging around the poker tables, dropping signals to somebody in the game, I mean being obvious about it, do I tackle this guy?” Ray didn’t wait for an answer. “No! I get the pit boss.” Ray gestured to Tom’s gold suit jacket. “Or I find one of you golden girls, and you take care of it.”
“It’s not your job. I understand.”
“Do you? Going to stop by her house, that sounds like you don’t understand. You find somebody having a seizure or something, are you going to try and operate on the poor motherfucker or are you going to call me? You call me. Because that’s what I do. We got different people for different problems. Man says his girl is stepping out, they come to you and you go get all those dirty details.”
“It’s more than that.”
“You know what I mean, though. Now, a man beats up his wife, that’s not a Tom Connelly problem. It’s a problem, yeah, but it’s not yours. We got people for that. She needs to call the right people.” Ray gestured to the board. “You got time to lose another game?”
Tom decided he did.
Later, Tom left by the rear of the casino and walked across the circular drive, passing the smokers and beggars and into the muggy night air. He dialed and after a moment a voice growled at Tom, “It’s late.”
“Sorry, Granddad. How’s the family?”
On the other end of the line, Joe Hanks let out a long, well-worn sigh . “I tell you what, kids get older and they get mean, Tommy. This girl-listen to this-says she doesn’t want to go to college and doesn’t care what I think. Like she’s living on her own and doesn’t eat off my table.” There was some commotion on Joe’s end, then a door slammed. Joe chuckled. “They get mean, Tom. Just remember, kids get mean and you got to stay meaner. How you doing, Tommy? Been a minute.” It had been longer than that. Joe Hanks was Tom’s ex-partner at the NOPD and one of his oldest friends, but they had a history and not all of it was pleasant.
Tom said, “I’m okay.”
“How’s that boy?”
“Dennis is good. Tall for his age.”
“That’s how it starts, you say ‘Oh he’s big for his age’ then all of a sudden he’s nose to nose with you talkin’ about he’s not going to college.”
Tom laughed because he knew he should. There was a pause and then Tom got to it. “I’ve got a weird one for you.”
“I knew you weren’t calling to catch up.”
“A woman came by the office and asked me to kill her husband.”
A second stretched out between them. Finally, Joe said, “Well…shit. You take her up on it?”
“I was thinking about it.” Another silent second and then Tom said, “I’m joking.”
“Good.”
“She made it seem like he was beating her up. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? She look beat up?”
“No.”
“She say he’s beating her up?”
Tom shrugged in his gold coat as a breeze came in off the Mississippi River.“No.”
“So you’re giving me two options. I take you in for murdering this woman’s husband, or, and I’m just guessing, you want me to take this to the guys in Domestic Abuse tomorrow? This woman who doesn’t look beat up and doesn’t even claim it’s happening? Tommy. Jesus. Sounds like you got some white knight shit going on.”
“No, I’m not doing anything. She came to me, I called you.”
“Tom.” Suddenly Hanks’ voice was quiet. Serious. “This sounds a little like the Champagne thing.”
Tom went quiet. A few years ago he had been hired to find a college student, Deborah Champagne. That job gave him tunnel vision, tweaked a nerve in him in a way that made everything else fade away. He ran all over the city looking for the girl, then wound up chasing her halfway around the world and nearly got himself killed in the bargain. He found the girl, but at the end of the case there had been bullets and death and after Tom managed to get out alive, he barely missed winding up in Orleans Parish Prison. Joe had a hand in keeping him outside, out in the real world.
Tom lost a lot then, but he was different now. He was sober and working.
He was different.
After a moment Tom said, “This isn’t that. She came to me. And this is me calling you, giving you the information. You do what you want with it. But there’s something there. She was off.”
Hanks was silent for a moment. Then he cursed and Tom heard him fumbling, then the click of a ballpoint pen. Hanks said, “Alright. What do you have? Name? Address?”
“Name. Adelfi. Sofia Adelfi.”
“Adelfi. Okay. No address?”
“Just a name.”
“You’re lucky I’m locked in my room right now with these mean kids roaming my halls, or I’d hang up and find something better to do. But here I am. I can see about an address, and maybe send a patrol car by, check on her?”
“That would be great, Joe. Thanks.”
Three days later Tom was making his rounds, cruising by the poker tables when he saw a familiar face. The woman was in her late 20s, with an angular jaw that was good looking but not soft. Busting out of a dark purple dress and sipping something clear with a lime on the rim.
She made a lap around the blackjack and moved on to the craps tables, stopping a few feet away from a crowded table where a man in a blue suit was on fire. The guy threw the dice and the crowd cheered. Everybody got paid. Tom moved to stand next to her and nodded when he caught her eye. Being nice. Congenial.
“ How you doing this evening, ma’am?”
She didn’t look at him. “Good. Thank you.” Like he was being dismissed.
Tom lowered his voice. “I remember you.”
“I don’t remember you.”
Tom didn’t react to that. He said, “Okay. We got your picture on a wall in the back, along with all the other working girls.” That got her attention. She gulped her drink, nervous now. “We know all you regulars. But as long as you’re not working, I’m not throwing you out. Okay? So finish your drink. Gamble, if you want. Just stay away from the whale at the craps table. Nothing for you there. You know that’s only going to get you into trouble.”
She peered up at Tom. “What if you just walk away? I could cut you in.” Tom shook his head. She considered him, then slid her drink onto an unmanned stool in front of a slot machine. She took his upper arm in both hands. “What if you never saw me at all, and you got yourself a litt
le half-and-half whenever you punch out?” She leaned against his arm and her smile was predatory.
Tom looked at her. “Half and..?” Then he got it. He let himself smile. “I’m good.” He pointed a finger at the ceiling. “And the eye in the sky already saw you. It sees all of us, saints and sinners alike.”
She rolled her eyes and stalked off. But not towards the craps table. She got a few feet away and turned her head and snorted at him like he didn’t understand the game she was playing, but he did. He just didn’t care. Then she was gone. Tom’s phone began to buzz in his pocket. He looked at the screen and then ducked into a staircase.
Joe Hanks growled at him from the phone. “Tommy?”
“Hey, Joe.”
“What’s that sound? Where the hell are you?”
“At the casino.”
“On a Sunday? You making any money?”
Tom grinned to himself as he made his way down the stairs. “Twelve an hour.”
“Wait, you’re working for the place?”
“Throwing out drunks, watching cash leave the cage.”
“No shit?”
Tom pushed his way through a door and out onto the ground floor level of the casino. “It’s not glamorous, but it’s steadier than the independent stuff.”
“The independent stuff. Detecting privately, you mean.”
“Yeah. Hey, I’m sorry about the other day, that woman. It was a weird meeting. I just wanted to make sure she was alright.”
“Yeah, I understand. And I called Domestic, but I don’t know that they ever got out there… shit, what am I saying? I know they didn’t make it out to see her. I got some bad news there, Tommy.”
Tom stopped and watched an ancient man find the strength to pull the lever on a slot machine. He said, “Is she alright?”
Joe let out a breath. “Mrs. Adelfi, Tom? She’s locked up.”
“What for?”
“Murder. She shot her husband, Tom. He’s dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
T he girl behind the counter at CC’s Coffee House got Jeanette Perez’s order completely wrong. Her name was written right there on the cup, JEAN , even spelled correctly, but when she took a sip she tasted some sort of mocha and caramel something instead of the chai tea she had ordered. She thought about taking the cup back and making a fuss, but she had already taken a sip. That felt like a Rubicon crossed. The drink was now hers. Sure, the thing was almost a dessert, far too sweet and it probably had too much caffeine, but it wasn’t bad. She would make do.
Jean parked at Tulane Tower and walked up the street. It was just before nine on a Monday morning, cold and grey. Steam billowed up from the storm drains, a promise of heat from somewhere in the bowels of the city. Just not here. At least it wasn’t raining, though. Jean managed to drink half of the sweet mocha something, now the sugar was twisting her stomach into a knot and her eyes were vibrating from the caffeine. She grimaced and tossed the coffee in a metal-clad trash can before she crossed Broad Street. She reset her messenger bag on her shoulder and walked up to the CDC, Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.
Broad concrete steps led up to the courthouse. It had been built in the 1930s, a grand undertaking at a time when the country was dead broke. Jean thought about a defendant accused of a crime, any crime at all, walking up those steps. Up the steps and between those huge columns, then through the high and studded doors that looked like they should be attached to some medieval fortress. The stone. The height. The marble slabs veined with gold. The sheer density of the thing. If you didn’t have the money, if you didn’t know the system, and you found yourself walking up those steps accused of some crime, would you expect to be judged fairly? Would you believe that your person, an innocent-until-proven-guilty citizen of the great city of New Orleans, had a snow cone’s chance in hell? Or would you walk up those steps and between those huge columns and through those tall doors and supplicate yourself before the sheer grandiosity of the thing, submit to the mercy of the court, to the gears of the system that had been here long before you were born and would remain long after you were tried, convicted, jailed, and paroled?
Probably the latter, Jean thought. Why was she even thinking like this, getting into a bleeding-heart state of mind before court? Must have been the drink. The sugar and caffeine kicking an idling anti-establishment gear into full bore. She turned down the block and entered through the side of the building, through the attorney’s entrance.
Inside the parking garage, a metal detector beeped and a Sheriff’s Deputy lazily waved Jean on. She walked through the maze of the parking garage and stopped to lean against a blue pillar. Her heart was racing. She took a deep breath. Just the coffee, not her nerves. She wasn’t nervous. She closed her eyes and gulped in a dirty breath of air. She thought to herself, I’m a fighter. I’m a warrior. I’m a bad-ass bitch.
Again. If she was amped up, she might as well use the extra energy. Inhale through your nose. I’m a fighter.
Exhale through your mouth. I’m a warrior.
Inhale. Deeper. Exhale through your mouth. I’m a bad-ass bitch.
Jean opened her eyes. It was her third year as a Public Defender in the city. It was her first day without any oversight. No veteran attorneys like Eason Kandinsky looking over her shoulder. She was on her own. She was ready.
When Jean entered the courtroom, Karen from Client Services was waiting for her, with an open laptop. Karen was younger than Jean but somehow seemed more put-together in her dark suit and permed hair. More adult. She would be Jean’s right hand this morning. Client Services Division handled contacting families of the accused and coordinating bondsmen. If they were lucky, maybe they could even find a pre-trial program to get some of the lower-level offenses scrubbed. She handed Jean a stack of arrest reports and glanced down at Jean’s coat. “You had a problem this morning?”
Jean looked down and there it was, a thin streak of chocolate and espresso running down the tan lapel of her coat. Damn.
“Nobody will care,” Karen said. She faked a smile. You could always tell when Karen was faking. No teeth in that smile. More a manipulation of facial muscles that any indication of joy or, in this case, an attempt at consolation.
Jean was about to ask her why she brought it up when she noticed how thin the stack of reports was.
“Hey. Where’s the rest?”
“That’s all I have. I don’t know what to do with the rest of them.” Together, they looked across the courtroom at the defendants. They had each been arrested over the weekend and now faced their first appearance in court. One row of women in burgundy jumpsuits, three rows of men in orange jumpsuits. O.P.S.O. stenciled in black across the back of the jumpsuits. All seated in what would be a jury box during an actual trial. All shackled, hands and feet. White and black and brown faces, but mostly black. But there were too many of them.
Jean said, “I’ve got twenty reports here, but there’s at least thirty clients there.”
Karen held her hands out in a “Don’t blame me,” gesture.
Jean sighed and tossed the reports on her desk. She walked out into the courtroom, said hello to the Deputies, then turned to face the shackled men and women.
Once again, she tried to imagine the world through their eyes. They hadn’t come through the front doors, under the columns that she had. They had been bused in from the parish prison and come in through the back. But now they were in court. A green room with wooden paneling that reminded Jean of a hunting lodge, only instead of a taxidermied deer head there was a huge seal of the Louisiana Judiciary hanging on the wall. A pelican with wings outstretched, the words Union, Justice, and Confidence set beneath it. The sparsely-filled gallery for the audience against one wall, with the desks for prosecution and defense in front of them. Then a podium that they would not use, not today. And all that in front of the bench. Jean thought it looked a bit too much like a throne, seated high above everyone. After she had seen the way a few judges handed down sentences seemingly without rhyme
or reason, she thought her suspicions confirmed. Her mind went back to words on that seal. Union. Justice. Confidence.
I am a bad-ass bitch.
She tried to look hard. Stone-faced. Hoping the rows of her new clients would believe everything on that seal. What they saw was a woman in her late twenties in a tan suit standing in front of them. Jean was on the short side, which made her seem younger than she was. She hoped the hard look would make her seem tougher than she was. She hoped they wouldn’t notice the chocolate stain on her suit jacket.
She held out both her hands as though she was trying to silence a rowdy class. “Alright, we’ve got about a half-hour until court starts, so we need to start right away. I’m Jean Perez from the New Orleans Public Defenders Office, and I’m going to represent you today.”
From the back row, someone said, “I got a lawyer.”
Jean inhaled. “Okay, we’ll talk about that in a minute. Right now I need y’all to listen up. Stop talking about your cases. Doesn’t matter what they are, all that talk stops now. Don’t talk with guards or your cellie or your cousin. You only talk to me. y'all understand?” Murmurs from the crowd, which was about what she expected. “Today I’m not going to argue your cases. This is just a bond hearing, I’m going to get your bond-that’s bail money-as low as possible so you can get out. Alright?” Mutters from the men in jumpsuits. “Okay. I’m going to meet you one at a time. In the box.” She walked back to the defense’s desk and grabbed her arrest reports. She read the name on the top sheet. “Craig Adams, you’re first.”
The box was a closet-sized room of clear plastic partitioned in half right next to the jury box. Jean was on one side and her client would be on the other. It wasn’t soundproof and it wasn’t all that private, but it was what Jean had. She walked in and closed the door and began flipping through the Adams, Craig arrest report. She passed over his record and made it to the back page, the gist, the arresting officer’s narrative of events that led up the arrest. Sunday evening. Adams was walking downtown, meeting with a white male. Officer Jenkins noticed the smell of marijuana, approached and asked to search Adams’ bag… Adams was maybe not the brightest, so he said yes. Of course Officer Jenkins looks in and there it is, Adams’ whole inventory. Dozens of little baggies full of marijuana. Officer Jenkins says at least an ounce. That’s quite a bit. Adams should have known better. Six months and five-hundred dollars, if we’re talking first offense. But not with everything divvied up for resale. That’s possession, intent to distribute. That’s years inside now, instead of the six months. And thousands of dollars in fines instead of hundreds. Unless this isn’t a first offense. If this is number two or three things could get tricky.
