John Raven Beau

by O'Neil De Noux

  Pulling off my sunglasses, I ask my partner. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “Huh?” He’s dozing again.

  “What the fuck are all these people doing?”

  Gonzales takes off his sunglasses, seems to notice the crowd for the first time and chuckles. He puts his glasses back on and settles back in his seat.

  “Don’t you ever listen to the news?” he asks.

  God, I love a good quiz.

  “It’s National Night Out Against Crime.”

  “Oh, yeah. This ought to work. I guess the police can take the night off.” My sarcasm is barely past my lips when the loud report of a gunshot echoes behind us. I jump out of the car, my Glock in both hands as I crouch. A horde of people run past us. At the end of the block I see several adults jumping and shouting. A half dozen roller-bladers round the corner and head our way at full speed.

  Moving around the car to the sidewalk, I jog toward the corner. Gonzales is right behind me as we approach a screaming white woman. Two screaming black women see our guns and point to us, as they screech louder. Turning the corner, I spot two men holding down a large black man who has a blue steel revolver in his hand.

  “Police!” Gonzales shouts behind me. “Freeze!”

  I ease over and step on the hand holding the revolver. The man yelps when I reach down and twist the pistol from his hand. It takes a few minutes to discover our perpetrator, the man with the pistol, has taken a pot shot at the roller-bladers who had the audacity to steal some of the popcorn from the perpetrator’s large bowl on the table in front of his house.

  “I’m tired of them damn hooligans!”

  We pass the gunman to a uniformed officer who also heard the gunshot as he passed in his marked unit.

  “Hey,” the patrolman calls out. “Y’all ain’t handling this?”

  I point to my star-and-crescent badge, clipped to my belt above the left front pocket of my jeans.

  “Homicide,” I tell him. “See any dead people here?”

  With a disgusted look on his face, the patrolman walks to his car with the perpetrator.

  Gonzales chuckles. “Hope they don’t find a body.”

  “Some fuckin’ National Night Out Against Crime, huh?”

  “What you complaining about? You almost got to kill number five.”

  One of the roller-bladers is standing next to my open door.

  “I made sure no one stole anything from y’all car, officer,” he tells me, a smirk on his young, dark brown face. I look inside and our portable radios are still there. At least the car keys are in the front pocket of my jeans.

  “Thanks,” I tell the boy. “How was the popcorn?”

  “Very good,” he says as he wheels away. “I’m going for the rest.”

  We drive, carefully, past Pluto’s to set up on the other side of the bar. We have to watch for Sandie in our rear view mirrors now. I glance at my watch and it’s barely seven. The sun won’t be going down for another hour and a half, at least.

  “Some fuckin’ Night Out Against Crime,” I grumble again.

  Gonzales lets out a long breath. “Now, that’s something you don’t see every day.” He points straight ahead and I look out the windshield at a very large, naked man running toward us. I’m speechless. Behind the man is an equally large woman, also naked, also running toward us.

  Stumbling up to our car, the man leans his hands on the hood and gasps for breath. I climb out just as the woman arrives, puts her hands on the man’s back and struggles to catch her breath.

  The man looks at me and tries to speak. His face is contorted in pain and I hope to God he’s not having a fuckin’ heart attack, not on the hood of my car.

  “Call ...” The man struggles to speak.

  “Call ... police.”

  I point to my badge.

  He nods, bends his head as he takes in another deep breath, and raises a hand for me to wait. I look back and Gonzales is still in the car, gleeking us with his mouth open like an imbecile. It takes a minute but the man gets it out. They were robbed. Pointing up the street, he tells me there are others, victims at a private party.

  “They took our clothes,” the man adds as I hustle them into the back of my car. The man recovers enough to lead us to what looks like a walled garden at the corner of Camp and Pleasant Street. As we park, I notice the strong scent of body odor coming from the back seat.

  The man starts to get out and I ask him not to. “Just roll the windows down, OK?” My car’s gonna smell like a Ninth Ward dumpster.

  “They’re inside that gate.” The man points to a six foot wooden gate. “It’s a private park.”

  “Are the robbers still around?” I ask as I climb out.

  “No.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Black,” the man says. “Young. Three of them. We heard a car leave after they took our money and clothes.”

  Gonzales follows me to the gate. I pull it open and peek in. There’s a well-tended garden to my left, a pool to my right with a large, latticework wooden shelter beyond where about twenty naked people stand huddled together.

  “Some fuckin’ night out against crime,” I tell my partner as we step into the small private park that smells of freshly cut grass.

  They are mostly couples, women hiding behind men who have their hands in front of their genitalia, thankfully. All stare at us as if we’re naked. A tall blond woman steps out from behind her skinny male companion, puts her hands on her hips and says, “What took you so long to get here?”

  It’s hard not to look at her oversized breasts. She has a neatly trimmed, blond bush and long, shapely legs.

  “We were on stakeout,” Gonzales says, sunglasses in hand now as he gives her a closer look.

  “That’s no excuse. Can’t you see we need help?”

  A gray-haired man inches forward, his pretty brunette companion keeping as close as she can to his back. She stares at me with large brown eyes, her pretty lips quivering in fear. I take off my dress shirt and pass it to the gray-haired man for her. As he hands it to her and she dons it quickly, I get a momentary peek at her slim, naked body.

  The skinny man snaps at the blond, telling her to get back and cover up. I notice the blond’s blue eyes for the first time as she tells him, “If they haven’t seen a naked woman before, it’s their problem!”

  The sound of screeching brakes turns me around. Just as I make it to the gate, I see two uniformed officers walking toward the front of my car. The naked large people are standing outside my car, arms folded.

  The nearest officer, a middle-aged black man with a thick moustache, sees me and holds his arms out, palms up. “What the fuck is this?” His name tag reads: Kolberg. Nice German name.

  “It gets better,” I tell him. I wave the large couple forward and invite the uniformed officers into the garden. The stunned look on their faces almost starts me laughing. As they take in the sights, I tell them how some enterprising street thugs had the audacity to take advantage of the National Night Out Against Crime. Both officers look at me as if I’m speaking Russian. I shrug and tell them they’re gonna need some jackets and blankets. Waving to my partner, I start back toward the gate.

  “Wait,” Kolberg calls out, “you leaving?”

  “You can call for a Robbery team.” I keep moving. “Get my shirt from the pretty lady with the brown eyes, OK?”

  “Y’all ain’t Robbery?”

  “Homicide,” Gonzales growls as he passes. “See any dead people here?”

  “Just the two that were outside a minute ago.”

  Real fuckin’ funny. Glancing back as I reach the gate, I see the blond woman standing in front of Kolberg, hands back on her hips as she chews him out.

  “Jesus, what a fuckin’ evening.” I readjust myself as I try to sit in behind the steering wheel. “All I fuckin’ need.”

  Gonzales jumps in and asks what’s wrong as I crank up the engine and drive us away.

  “What do you think? I g
ot a fuckin’ diamond cutter in my jeans.”

  Gonzales laughs.

  “And you didn’t get a hard-on looking at the blond or the pretty brunette?”

  He puts his sunglasses back on. “Yeah. But I already came in my jeans. I’m all limp now.”

  I almost run into two parked cars. Laughing so hard, I stop the Caprice in the center of the street.

  My partner gleeks me again and says, “What?”

  “All fuckin’ limp?”

  He grins, which causes me to laugh even harder. I finally get going again. Wiping tears from my eyes as we approach Pluto’s, I see Sandie standing in the middle of the street, her hands on her hips. She looks like a big canary in that yellow jumpsuit. I jam the brakes and struggle to put the car in park as my partner and I laugh so hard, we have trouble catching our breaths.

  Sandie walks up. Gonzales is slapping the dashboard and my side is killing me.

  She moves to my window. “What the hell’s so funny?”

  I try to tell her but can’t get past the word limp, which causes my partner to bounce in his seat as he roars, pointing a finger at me as if I’m the lunatic.

  Sandie climbs in the back seat and says, “What’s this smell?”

  It takes several minutes before my partner and I can communicate intelligently.

  Sandie shakes her head. “When you two jack-asses are ready, I’ll tell you what Mullet told me before he drove off ten minutes ago.”

  It still takes me half a minute before I can ask, “OK What’d he say?”

  “He said he thought it was about time another cop got his brains blown out.”

  The laughter disappears instantly.

  Because he wore blue

  Mullet doesn’t come home that evening.

  The next morning, the ruthless summer sun bakes the interior of the Caprice as my partner and I sit beneath the large oak on So. Roman Street. I stare through the metal fences at Mullet’s house, but my eyes are so weary I can barely make out the place.

  “Where the fuck are they?” Gonzales stretches and looks behind the car for our relief. They should have been here and hour ago.

  As I look into the rear-view mirror, Jodie’s white LTD pulls up behind us. Climbing out, I stretch and move wearily to Jodie who rolls down her window and tells me she’s relieving us while the task force serves warrants.

  “Channard and Dunn will relieve me in a couple hours.”

  I thank her and start back to my car but turn back.

  “Warrants?”

  “The FBI guys have come up with information out of Desire.”

  Jesus. They’re searching the projects again. What did Gonzales call them? Cerebral? Stupid is more like it. Searching the city’s largest housing project when everyone knows white boys are doing this.

  It seems to take hours to drop off my partner and drive home. Buck bounces on deck and yips and runs in circles as I bring him inside and give him fresh food. As if in a daze, I go out and hose off the deck and put more dry dog food in Buck’s outside food dish and fresh water in his bowl.

  Racing back out on deck, Buck scampers to the gate and barks, his tail wagging. God I’m so tired, but I go in and get his leash, and my spare sunglasses and take him across Orpheum to the levee and let him run. I sit on the hot grass.

  Buck is already down by the rocks. I lean back and close my eyes. The sun is warm on my face and I roll on my side. When I was twenty, I could stay up all night and not feel a thing. Damn am I getting old or what?

  •

  It takes a few seconds to realize the wetness on my face is Buck licking me. I wake and look at my watch. It’s been two hours.

  “Come on, boy.” We move back to Sad Lisa and I plop down on the couch. No way I’m climbing to the loft. Just as I’m getting nice and comfortable, the phone rings. I catch it before the answering machine clicks in.

  “Hey, Babe. Did I wake you?” It’s Sharon.

  “Yes. Worked all night.” I bring the phone back to the couch.

  “I thought I’d come over.”

  “Not now,” I tell her. “I’m dead. I mean really dead.”

  She asks if I’ve been avoiding her. I haven’t returned her calls. Peeking at the answering machine I see the light blinking and can’t remember the last time I even checked the damn thing. Sharon goes on about our relationship, about commitments and other serious matters, only her words fade in a jumbled heap. She keeps talking and her voice lulls me, draws me into a nice dozing state.

  “Hey!” She wakes me. “Did you fall asleep on me?”

  “I told you. I’m dead.”

  She hangs up on me.

  Before I can put the phone on the floor it rings again.

  “Yes,” I snap. “What is it?”

  “You awake?” It’s Jodie and the catch in her voice causes me to sit up. I have to hold my head.

  “What is it?”

  “A Sixth District officer is missing.”

  A cold shower revives me enough to clear my eyes. As I brew extra strong coffee and chicory, I check my answering machine to see if Sandie or Felice have called. Sharon left three messages to go along with four hang-ups.

  I take the coffee with me. Racing past Flamingo’s I glance inside, but only Cecilia’s there. I slap my blue light up on my dash, hit the siren as I roll through the red light at Old Hammond Highway and hang a left, punching the Caprice as I fly into Orleans Parish. Before I reach headquarters, I hear it on the radio. Another Sixth District unit has found the missing officer’s car off Tchoupitoulas near the Washington Avenue Wharf. By the time I get there, it looks like a cop convention.

  I spot Jodie’s blond hair from a half block away as I park on Tchoupitoulas. Gonzales is with her. He wears another black Saints tee-shirt and jeans. She’s in a white blouse and black skirt, her nine-millimeter in a black canvas holster rig. Dennis Merten, wearing an ill-fitting brown suit, moves to cut me off. The perpetual scowl on his dark face seems furrowed into a permanence.

  I slow down and ask him, “Anything yet?”

  He shakes his head and rubs his chin and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him unshaven. Jodie sees me and waves me forward. I step away from my lieutenant who growls. “You enjoying the vacation, or what?”

  I must be exhausted because it takes me a few steps to realize. He’s been up to his ass in regular murders while I’ve been sitting on my ass on useless stakeouts. I look back at him and shrug.

  “We’re spreading out,” Jodie says as she moves past me. She waves her hand around. “Search every fuckin’ building.”

  I go back and ask Merten if he’ll go with me. Without a word, he leads the way to the nearest abandoned warehouse. We find a boarded-up side door with several wooden planks missing. Merten kicks in more planks and we go inside. Thankfully, he has a flashlight. So I follow him across the empty first floor. All we find, all the way to the third floor, is trash, empty soft drinks cans and fast food bags.

  We can’t even break into the next warehouse, which has steel plates covering its windows and doors. Merten wipes his sweaty brow with his coat sleeve as he leads me to yet another abandoned warehouse. My light blue PANO tee-shirt is soaked and my faded jeans already streaked with grease and dirt.

  When Jodie calls me on the radio, just as Merten and I have found a window to climb into the third warehouse, I feel a sickness in my stomach. She asks me to 10-19 her position, then tells me she’s a block up Tchoupitoulas from my car. I hurry over and see a crowd of blue outside a two story brown brick building. Along the side of the building, in faded white paint, is a sign that reads: Studebaker of New Orleans Parts and Service.

  Kay towers over the crowd as he stands next to an iron gate. He sees me and calls me forward. I press my way through the crowd of cops. Kay points to the gate and tells me to go in. He stops Merten behind me and starts talking about a thorough canvass.

  Moving through the partially open gate, I see the FBI’s Captain Picard step into a doorway at the far end of a wid
e alcove. He’s followed by three more men in prim suits, each carrying a silver metal case. I follow them to a stairwell and up to the second floor. With most of the high windows broken out, the wide second floor is bathed in bright sunlight. I stop in the doorway and take in the surreal scene.

  Carefully watching where they step, the four feds take a roundabout route to where Jodie stands a good thirty yards away, her back to me. Two uniformed officers stand off to her left. One looks like he’s crying. My gaze moves to Jodie’s right to a crumpled figure slumped on the filthy floor. His powder-blue NOPD shirt is streaked red and black with coagulated blood. Dusty sunlight, streaking from above, illuminates the body in a macabre heavenly light.

  I remain in the doorway and study the area. It doesn’t take long for me to see footprints in the dirt. I go down on my haunches. Looks like three sets entered the room and two sets returned to the doorway.

  The men with the silver cases lay them on the floor in the far corner. One pulls out a camera while another pulls out a tape measure. Jodie leads the two patrol officers my way, walking along the walls back to me. We step back out of the doorway as the camera flashes. I don’t have to watch to know the cameraman is taking long distance pictures from each corner. Carefully he will move forward for close-ups of the body.

  Jodie instructs the officers to go downstairs and each write a follow-up report as to what they saw when they discovered the body. Her face is flushed, her hair unruly. Unlike me, there’s not a hint of perspiration on her as she quietly tells me the officer’s name was Peter James, two years out of the academy. His nine-millimeter is still in its holster. They used his own handcuffs to manacle his hands behind his back. Looks like he was shot twice in the head by a large caliber weapon. The top if his head is blown off.

  The hum of a hand-held vacuum cleaner sounds behind us and we step back into the room. The cameraman is bent over the footprints and takes a close-up photo. A sound behind us turns me around as three additional men in nice suits reach the doorway. Each carries another silver case.

  Jodie slowly leads me downstairs where Kay and Gonzales wait with Tony Dunn and Elmer Fudd Channard.