City of Secrets

by O'Neil De Noux

  The trajectory of the head shot is at a twenty degree angle downward, the shooter taller than the victim who is measured to be five feet-three inches in length. The trajectory of the chest wound is thirty percent down. Which one came first? No way to tell, both were potentially fatal as the chest wound went through her heart.

  Dr. Nelson recovers the bullet in the torso as it’s embedded the girl’s spine. It wasn’t in great shape but the unmistakable striations are there, lands and grooves gouged in the soft lead as the bullet scraped along minute imperfections in the barrel of murder weapon. As the autopsy concludes, Nelson declares the victim had been raped and takes swabs of her vagina to collect what appears to be semen.

  An NOPD patrol officer in a uniform that looks almost clean, steps up to Beau. He has a ‘5’ on his collar. Fifth District officer. His Ninth Ward stationhouse destroyed, this particular officer, sporting a name tag that reads ‘Marie’ looks to be barely twenty-one, minimum age for NOPD. Beau nods him over, sends him to find the other detective, one he’d seen hanging out at the airport. The hanger next door houses police from about thirty states as well as a few NOPD officers, those not heading to work off the cruise ships.

  Dr. Nelson sews up the body now.

  Someone has turned on one of the huge fans at the hanger entrance to blow away the smell from the deceased.

  Hell, this is a fresh kill.

  A rugged-looking black detective with a wide face, short cropped hair, full moustache, nods at Beau as he approaches. NOPD Intelligence Det. Felicity Jones wears a black-tee shirt like Beau’s except his has a silver NOPD badge emblazoned on the front. He also wears tactical pants and Reebok tennis shoes. Felicity is one of the old-time detectives who worked from the incredibly violent seventies and eighties along with Mason, Land, Kintyre – who broke in Beau – and the most dangerous homicide detective in NOPD history, the Sicilian legend himself, LaStanza.

  Beau brings him to the body, to the emblem.

  “Fuckin’ Brown Ravens,” Felicity snaps. “Street gang started on the west coast. Latinos at first but they’re multi-racial now. Drugs. Rape. Armed Robbery. Burglary. Stone fuckin’ hoodlums.” He shakes his head. “Gang initiation is to murder someone and leave their mark on the victim. We had another body last week, found next to the Industrial Canal, up by the lake. Young dude. Same emblem on his arm.”

  “Ravens aren’t brown,” Beau says.

  “Fuckin’ A. How you figure criminals?”

  Felicity looks at the dead girl’s face. “Where’d you find her?”

  Beau explains the Coast Guard Lighthouse.

  “Marking their territory. From the Industrial Canal along the lakefront all the way to the end of the city. Big swatch. Typically, they don’t live where they dump the bodies.”

  No use mentioning it, NOPD had no one up along the lake, except John Raven Beau when he’s at home. Roving National Guardsmen in Humvees rolled the streets and guarding construction workers at the Industrial Canal. Almost all of Lakeview had been flooded out, beyond City Park, all the way to the French Quarter.

  “Want something to eat?” Felicity asks as they move to the door of the hanger.

  “Just ate.”

  Behind them, medics return the body to its bag to be put in a refrigerated truck to be shipped to San Gabriel Woman’s Penitentiary where all the hurricane bodies are brought, even the ones from Hurricane Rita last month.

  Word is there were still a couple storms brewing in the Caribbean in this unrelenting hurricane season of 2005, the worst in recorded history, according to CNN. Damn Hurricane Rita last month destroyed Beau’s home town, the village of Cannes Bruleé off Vermilion Bay. Fuckin’ Rita was bigger than Katrina, an over-the-top Category 5, Rita was the third most intense hurricane in Atlantic Basin – ever. Striking the Louisiana-Texas border, Rita collapsed the seawall at the Industrial Canal a second time. Hell, the meteorologists went through the entire alphabet, twenty-six named storms and they’ve had a Hurricanes Alpha and Beta and still counting.

  What the fuck is this? Beau thinks as he heads for his Escalade. Now murders. It’s hell on earth. He answers himself. And tomorrow, like today will be near a hundred degrees with matching humidity.

  “How’s LaStanza?” Beau suddenly asks.

  Felicity chuckles. “At home with Lizette. They’d put in two large natural gas generators after the Hurricane Ivan scare. The only mansion lit up at night anywhere near Audubon Park. The family cook from the Louvier estate is there with some cousins, fixing meals three times a day for any passerby, guardsmen and cops mostly, but some homeless. I suspect many come to peek at Lizette. Since the storm she doesn’t wear a lot of clothes in this heat.”

  It’s Beau’s turn to chuckle. “She always wears skimpy outfits. How do they get food in?”

  “Easy when you’re a millionaire. They have satellite phones. Same trucks that deliver food to the animals at the zoo drop off beef, pork and chicken, you name it, huge sacks of rice, beans. I spent two nights there. You should go by.”

  “What’s Lizette? Thirty now?”

  “Twenty-nine.” Felicity rubs his temples. “Sometimes, I get a blue-veiner just thinking about her. Terrible of me. My old partner’s wife, but she brings the lust out in men. She’s been flashing her boobs at Mardi Gras for years.”

  “Could use a satellite phone.”

  “You tellin’ me? We tried carrier pigeons but they flew the fuck away from here, soon as we let them out of the cages.”

  He serious?

  NOPD radios did not work. Damn relay towers are down. No cell phones. Any phones, for that matter.

  They arrive at the Escalade and Beau opens the door. Felicity walks past, tells him to hold up a minute. He goes to an unmarked black Chevy Caprice, one of the few unmarked cars that survived the flood. He brings over a portable blue light that goes on the dash plugs and into the cigarette lighter switch. He hands it to Beau.

  “We’re still using runners. Cops in cars to deliver orders, messages, just like the cavalry days.”

  The intelligence detective holds open the door as Beau starts up the engine.

  “This one of the Caddys we ‘liberated’ from that dealership?”

  “Nope. Belongs to a friend.”

  Cops are already in trouble for raiding a Cadillac dealership as the storm surge rose in the city. Saved a couple dozen new Caddys, only the dealership didn’t appreciate the cops keeping them as long as they did. One Walmart owner opened his freezer to the police and fire departments to come get the meat before it spoiled, while another grocery store owner called the FBI from Baton Rouge when the cops did the same at his store. Next time, let it rot. Instead of helping with the anarchy in the city, damn FBI agents flew into the airport with orders to investigate the police.

  “They call it ‘ravening’,” Felicity explains. “Brown Ravens. You know, ‘seize prey and plunder’. I looked up the definition.”

  “You got casings, bullets from the first shooting?” Beau asks.

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll be back after you compare the bullets.”

  “You gonna go get ‘em all by yourself?”

  “It’s what I do best. You wanna come along?”

  “It’s tempting, but I’m assigned here.” Felicity closes the door, backs away. “I’ll tell your lieutenant I saw you.”

  “Tell him I’m staying nocturnal. Run with the ravens at night.” Beau smiles. “I’ll find ‘em. Scumbags are giving ravens a bad name.” He starts to pull away, calls back, “Thanks for the blue light.”

  Felicity taps the side of the Escalade, says, “John Raven Beau. Your mama named you right.”

  On his way home, Beau lets images of Lizette float into his mind. Lizette Louvier LaStanza, PhD, daughter of a man who owned three banks. An assistant professor of history at Loyola University and wife the most fearless man Beau knows, beyond himself, Lizette is a school boy’s wet dream, a dark haired New Orleans beauty, fair skin, light brown, topaz colored eyes,
breasts too large for her small frame, a gorgeous face and sexy-as-hell smile. And she likes to flash men. First time he met her, she wore a miniskirt and made sure he got a peek at her white panties.

  He parks the Escalade between two of the overturned cars in the marina parking lot, so it isn’t easily spotted. The car has an alarm, for what it’s worth. Nicest car Beau ever got to use for an extended period.

  It was the day he’d gotten his houseboat nestled into the marina, managed to get Sad Lisa hooked up to the three newly-installed natural gas generators in a warehouse built in the 1920s, the only building left standing along the marina. The generators were state-of-the-art, rotating one at a time, turning themselves on and off, providing more than enough electricity for Beau’s houseboat, for the whole marina. He hooked up a waterline to the large rain cistern atop. He won’t drink that water, but it was good for showering, washing dishes.

  The Josephsons had sailed in from Hyannis Port with their yacht after the storm and decided they would leave right after checking out their uptown mansion that hadn’t flooded.

  “Use the Escalade,” Mrs. Josephson tossed Beau the keys. “It’s insured. Check out our house when you get a chance.”

  Mr. Josephson pointed his hand at Beau, index finger straight out, thumb high. He pulled the thumb down as if he was firing a gun. “Go take care of business.”

  Beau moves past his houseboat to the warehouse and unlocks the door, flips on the lights and looks around. Nothing amiss. The building is filled with stacked cartons of MREs, those pre-made military ration meals with self heating mechanisms, courtesy of the US Army. Cases of bottle water line one wall along with cans of beans, corn, Campbell’s soups, canned chili, cases of macaroni and cheese, cases of Newman spaghetti sauce – Beau was growing partial to the Marinara sauce – as well as peanut butter, preserves, pancake mixes, powdered milk, powdered eggs, sugar and artificial sweeteners like Equal and Splenda. He was surprised to find cases of honey, a couple dozen huge bags of dried dog food and cat food and three cases of Steen’s 100% pure sugar cane syrup made in Abbeville, not far from where Beau was raised. Thankfully Hurricane Rita hadn’t destroyed Abbeville, although she was roughed up pretty badly.

  The oversized refrigerator and freezer, nearly empty when the hurricane struck, Beau had cleaned out to put in what he’d hustled up from the airport after a group of gray haired Virginians from the Volunteers of America came with a tractor-trailer full of food for first responders. Beau opens the fridge for a carton of eggs, then goes into the freezer for a pack of turkey sausage, a bag of Ore-Ida frozen French fries and a box of Marie Callender’s chicken pot pies, which were pretty good with a little Tabasco sauce.

  He lifts the lid off a plastic barrel and grabs the scoop inside and pours dried Purina cat chow into the bowl just inside the door. He’s not sure how the cats are getting in the building, but when he spotted one inside last week, he decided if they could get in, mice and rats could, so he left food for the cats and they’ve been eating it. Rats would have already gotten into the foodstuffs, so he wanted cats around.

  There had been a colony of feral cats in Bucktown where his houseboat had been moored before the hurricane and here at the marina as well. Some had survived. He takes a scoop of cat food out to the bowl near his houseboat where the black cat had been eating and refills it.

  Beau flips off the lights in the warehouse, locks up, watches his step as he carries his food. His houseboat was named Sad Lisa when he bought it at an estate sale and he kept the name. Probably named for the Cat Stevens song. It wasn’t large but was incredibly comfortable. A home. Just like that old daubed Cajun cabin where he grew up with his Cajun father and Sioux mother.

  Beau grabs an Abita beer from the refrigerator and goes out to sit on the deck, allows the night breeze float over him, closes his eyes. It’s been a long day’s night. He lets his mind float back to his childhood, to long summers of fishing and hunting in the swamps, of riding in the pirogue with his Papa, nights listening to his mother tell tales of the great Sioux nation. The blood of warriors flows through John Raven Beau. He is a direct descendant of Little Hawk, brother of the great warrior chief of the Oglala Clan who was called Curly as a boy, but grew up to be called Crazy Horse.

  Beau was raised with dreams of leading warriors in battle against Custer and the Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn. Only he grew up to wear blue. Deep inside, he is a plains warrior, a lone wolf hunter of murderers. It doesn’t matter what color their skin, what tribe they come from. There’s a fire burning in Beau, a drive to do what others cannot. He will pursue these Brown Ravens relentlessly, catch the ones he can, kills the one who give him no choice.

  John Raven Beau has been in front of so many grand juries for killing killers, he jokes with his cop buddies who have never been in front of a grand jury that they have a director’s chair with Beau’s name stenciled on the back in the jury room.

  He opens his eyes, looks around, spots a gray striped cat at the food dish and it makes him feel good.

  •

  Beau realizes he’s awake and listening to the rain, but it’s a thunderclap that sends a shiver through Sad Lisa that opens his eyes. A fine mist of cooling, rainy air flows through the open porthole next to his bed and he looks out to see the water outside peppered by teeming rain that slaps the roof of his houseboat and clatters on the Marina’s aluminum awning running above the pier. He rolls over, picks up his black stainless steel Seiko, sees it’s almost four p.m. Time to get up.

  Down from the loft, he puts on a pot of coffee-and-chicory before taking a long shower. He’s getting used to soy milk in his café-au-lait. The soy comes in square cartons that needs no refrigeration until opened. He digs the turkey sausage from his small refrigerator to put on a skillet.

  He eats in his jockeys, listening to the portable radio. Sausage and pancakes with cane syrup and his usual extra-strong coffee. WWL Radio news station, he’s been listening to non-stop since Katrina. They stayed on the air through the storms and today report a human-interest story of a small group of kids who went trick-or-treating last night, uptown near the river where the city hadn’t flooded and some of the electricity is back on line.

  By the time he’s dressed and ready for work, the news update runs though a litany of problems, including the debate of turning the lower Ninth Ward into a green zone, one huge park. No more houses, no more drug dealers, squatters living in shotgun shanties. The people were still scattered in Houston, Atlanta, Memphis. Buy them out. Cheaper than rebuilding. He chuckles. No way that would work. There were too many decent folk living down there. It wasn’t all thugs, although it often seemed that way.

  He refills the cat food dishes, inside and outside the warehouse, checks to make sure nothing’s leaking in the old place. Beau re-checks his boat to make certain it’s locked up and clicks the lock on the iron gate of the fence that separates Sad Lisa from the pier, drapes his black tactical bag over his shoulder, small ice-chest in his left hand, and heads for the Escalade.

  For a moment, a memory flashes – him nearly collapsing from heat exhaustion at the airport after those first insane weeks after Katrina when he worked sixteen, eighteen hours a day. Now, even working at night, he takes water with him. Six icy bottles of spring water in the ice chest. Stuffed in the tactical bag are three extra magazines, a box of hydra-shock nine-millimeter rounds, the only ammo he carries, as well as six granola bars, four chocolate power bars, spray can of pepper spray, extra handcuffs, a folding knife and small first aid kit. A small flashlight is stuffed into an outside pocket, but he rarely used a light when his enemy do not.

  When the ATF agents at the airport tried to give him a taser, he’d laughed at them. “If I can’t beat the fuck out of them, I’ll just scalp ‘em.”

  Not surprising the pier is wet from the downpour. Huge puddles dot the parking lot. What is surprising are the three Humvees sitting between Beau and the Escalade. These have long whip-antennas and white striping around the sides with
large letters – Military Police. A thick-set guardsman steps from the lead vehicle, covers his blond hair with a camouflage baseball-type cap and steps around a puddle to Beau. He’s in the green and black camo fatigues and Beau wants to tell them they should be in the tan and brown desert version with all the dirt and mud here now. As soon as the man speaks, Beau realizes, more Rhode Islanders. On the man’s shoulder is the white and blue patch with the red piping, a knife crossed with an anchor.

  “Detective Beau, I’m First Lieutenant Adam Avery, 119th Military Police Company, Rhode Island National Guard.”

  They shake hands. Beau spots the man’s sidearm, a new 1910 model .45 semi-automatic.

  “We’ve been assigned to assist you with your night patrols.” Avery glances back at his vehicle where the driver is watching, so is the gunner atop with his machine gun pointed skyward.

  SAW. Squad Automatic Weapon, right? Beau keeps his face expressionless.

  “We’ve been working days, detective. We’re still in rescue mode here. Get people out of here.”

  Beau smiles coldly. “Exactly what we’re going to do. Get some people the fuck out of here.” He moves around the lieutenant for the Escalade. “In handcuffs or coffins.”

  “We don’t have arrest powers over civilians.”

  “No fuckin’ kiddin’. That’s why you need me, beside keeping you from getting lost.” Beau points to the machine gun. “You’re authorized to use that in self-defense.”

  Avery follows. “You think we’ll have to shoot back?”

  “You better, or I’ll be zipping you in a body bag.

  Beau unlocks the Escalade, looks back, says, “I could use a few good men.”

  The lieutenant nods.

  “Wait, that’s the Marine Corps motto, isn’t it?”

  Avery gives him a sour look.

  “We’re gonna stop and check suspicious vehicles.” Beau climbs in. “Which means any vehicle riding around at night in areas where no people supposed to be.”