City of Secrets

by O'Neil De Noux

  “No?”

  “Cajun food.”

  About sixteen firemen sit and mill around four long tables with at least a dozen women standing around another table lined with platters, pots, bowls each with a ladle inside.

  “Hey, are you Beau?” A big fireman calls out as Beau, Linda and Aligood step into the entrance of the hanger used by fire fighters. Beau counted fire engines outside from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Kansas and Kentucky.

  He nods.

  “Get in here. Bring your friends along.”

  Beau doesn’t like being stared at. When he played football in high school, he never took his helmet off until they were back in the field house. He can still hear the echo of the loud speaker at Abbeville Stadium, the announcer’s booming voice, “Touchdownnnnn – John Raven Beau!” John was pronounced ‘Jawn’. The first time the announcer called him Johnny Beau, his Papa went up and banged on the press box door, told the announcer his name was John Raven Beau. Period.

  “So, you de man, huh?” The big fireman stands and shakes Beau’s hand. “I’m Lee Touchard.”

  “Fuck,” Beau says, “I’m just a little hungry.”

  “Den you come to de right place.” Touchard waves to the food table. “We got tree type a gumbo, shrimp, crab, chicken. Got andouille jambalaya, pork jambalaya, venison etouffee brought by some gals from Opelousas and a big platter of de cochon de lait.”

  “And a lotta pretty women, I see.” Beau nods to the table.

  “Our wives, girlfriends. Dey don want us to have all de fun and dey know how to cook much better.”

  Linda did not look so out of place now. These women wore fitted jeans, a couple in short skirts, all wore make-up, pretty gals with ready smiles and bright eyes. Aligood looks as if he stepped into a heavenly place.

  Beau brings them to the table, picks up a plate and explains to the foreigners what they are about to eat. “Y’all know gumbo is a soup. Grab a bowl, put rice in and pour the gumbo over it. That’s etouffee.”

  “Huh? from Aligood.

  “More highly seasoned and less water than gumbo.” Also served over a bed of white rice, or jambalaya.

  Beau spots a pot of dirty rice, gets a big scoop of that.

  “What’s in that?” Linda asks. She edges Aligood out of the way to stand next to Beau.

  “Rice cooked with diced chicken livers and the holy trinity of Cajun ingredients – bell pepper, celery and onion.”

  Beau waits until he reaches the cochon de lait, suckling pig marinated, highly seasoned and cooked slowly over an open fire pit.

  “Got any sugar for the tea?” Aligood asks.

  “It’s already sweetened.”

  “It is?”

  “It always is down here.”

  They find an empty area at one of the tables and Beau has to keep nodding at the men who keep acknowledging him. He hears the word ‘three’ repeated. Story got around fast. Three dead men.

  A commotion at the food line draws Beau’s attention as Felicity Jones stands with a plate. Touchard and another fireman move over, jostling with Felicity. Two women give him a hug, a peck on the cheek before he can start down the food line.

  “The man’s a hit everywhere he goes.”

  Linda tries a scoop of etouffee, her eyes growing wide. She makes a yummy sound.

  “Detective Felicity Jones,” Beau explains, “One of the best homicide cops ever. Fearless. Got shot a couple times to prove it. He’s was part of LaStanza’s group from the bad old days.” He smiles. “Believe it or not, New Orleans had worse days than now when it came to crime. It’s been called ‘Hell on Earth’ many times in its history.”

  The cochon de lait is so damn good, spicy and tender with a crisp crust of pork skin.

  Beau adds, “Jones, Land, Kintyre, Mason, Snowood and especially LaStanza, the best detective in the city’s history. Retired now. Married a millionaire.”

  “Tough men for a tough city.” Linda comments.

  “Jodie Kintyre’s a woman. Still around. Pretty and smart, a deadly combination when she builds a case against a murderer. I’m the aberration. Homicide detectives build cases, not shoot people.”

  Felicity Jones steps up with two huge plates. He puts one in the center of the table. “Extras. Dig in.” He pats Beau’s back. “I heard you got three of them.”

  “Brown Ravens.”

  “Fuck. All right. I’m going in with you.”

  “Do we have anybody else here?

  “Just patrolmen. They moved most of the detectives to the Fourth District.”

  “Jesus.” The Fourth District. Algiers. Across the damn river. No flooding there.

  Aligood finishes his plate first and goes for seconds. Beau slides some of the cochon de lait Felicity brought to his plate.

  “I’d like you and Linda to ride with me out there,” Beau says. “We can talk about how it went down on the way.”

  He gets no argument but Linda looks pleased, says she’ll take Special Agent Isaak along.

  “The Glock worked very nicely.”

  She smiles.

  Aligood hustles back. “They all know you,” he tells Beau. Couple saw you play football in high school. The others know you by reputation. Man, those are your people.”

  Beau eats, tries to close it out. He thinks that maybe, when this Katrina shit is over, he should just take off. He just had Sad Lisa in dry dock. Is she seaworthy for a long trip? Take his houseboat to the Caribbean. Naw. She’s too small to take that far.

  “I looked up Shadow Warriors on the net,” Linda says. “Not much there, just about ferocious night attacks. Is that what your face paint was about?”

  Beau looks at her.

  “Your mother is Oglala, right?”

  “And my Papa was pure Boogaleé.”

  “Pure what?” There’s a smile on Linda’s face now.

  “Polite term for Coon-Ass, slang for a Cajun.”

  “That doesn’t sound nice.”

  Beau laughs. “We call ourselves that. My Papa used to tease me, calling me a true half-breed. Sioux from the waist up, Cajun from the waist down.”

  Linda likes that.

  “So one of my favorite organs is Cajun, the other Sioux.”

  Even Felicity chuckles at that. Aligood looks confused. Linda smiles again.

  “OK,” Aligood says. “I get the waist down organ, but what’s your second favorite organ.”

  “I have a Sioux brain.”

  Beau shuts up and is glad when everyone follows along and they finish their meal.

  The strains of a fiddle start up and they all look toward the rear of the warehouse where four men and two women begin to warm up their instruments. Fiddles, a bass, two accordions, a steel guitar.

  “Looks like we’re in for a little Fais Do Do.” Beau smiles at Linda. “Cajun dancing. I can show you the Cajun two-step.”

  “Why not?”

  They pick up, bring the dirty dishes to the end of the food table where a woman takes them and shoos them away as the music starts up. The music is loud, almost harsh, with a infectious beat, the accordions leading the melody. Five couples are already dancing. Cajuns are not shy people.

  Beau takes Linda’s left hand, leads her to the dance floor, pulls her to him and puts his right her on her hip as the driving strains of Jolie Blonde begins. And he leads her along. “It’s like mopping the floor with a towel under one foot and stepping on a cigarette butt with the other foot.”

  She laughs and draws those green eyes up to his to linger and he sees it, feels it. Their hands tighten.

  “Is that French?”

  “Sort of.”

  Beau can’t help thinking Katrina brought more than mayhem and death, she’d loosened the gods of chaos. Here he is, dancing with a pretty woman not long after killing three men. Is this what they mean by a Kafkaesque experience? A surreal distortion of life as it should be? Beau read The Trial in high school, The Metamorphosis as well, both recommended by a favorite teacher whose murde
r Beau had to solve when he grew up.

  That was definitely Kafkaesque.

  •

  Two Louisiana State Police Crime Lab Technicians step from their van and pull helmets with visors over their heads. They adjust each others valves on the breathing tanks on their backs before they look at Beau and wave for him to lead them into St. Vincent de Paul’s Cemetery. They clomp forward in jumpsuits and heavy boots and Beau looks at Linda now, then at Felicity who turns away because he’s laughing. Like Beau, he’s in all-black. So is Linda, her hair in a pony tail again.

  The lead tech looks at Beau and speaks through the microphone on his helmet, his voice sounding tinny, robotic, “We’ll go in first.”

  “You’re expecting plutonium?”

  The tech rolls his eyes. Aligood moves to the gate with a sledge hammer. Guardsman Garcia moves to cover him with his M4.

  “Hold up.” Beau says. The gate’s askew. He goes over and sees the lock’s been shattered already, turns back to the tech, asks, “Is that suit bullet proof?”

  “No.”

  “They broke through the gate after I left. You have no weapons. If any of them are still in there, you think they’ll miss two ass-holes in orange spacesuits?”

  “Huh.”

  Beau withdraws his Glock, shoves the gate open and goes in first, Linda right behind with Felicity, who’s laughing so hard he can barely stagger along. They separate but keep close, try not to step on any of the shell casings and discover, as Beau suspected, the body is gone.

  He points to the puddle of blood, looks around, sees no drag mark.

  “They scooped him up, didn’t even drag him.”

  Beau sends the rest of the guardsmen to search the cemetery.

  “You’re look for insurgents, understand?”

  The guardsmen hunker down and move forward each covering the other as they progress through the maze of tombs, crypts and sepulchres.

  “No body?” The lead LSP tech stands with his hands open.

  “Just blood, shell casings and some bullet fragments, if you can find them.” Beau heads back out, finds Lt. Avery, tells him when they’re finished here they can join him at the warehouse. Beau calls out to Patrolman Ellis Roussel, the lone NOPD officer they found at the airport, tells him the location of the warehouse. Roussel was a rookie BK. Not a rookie anymore.

  “When the space cadets are finished here, bring them to the warehouse.”

  “Got it.” Roussel repeats Beau’s description, “The three warehouse where St. Ferdinand turns along the river.” He adds, “I know them. I grew up in Marigny.” The neighborhood next to Bywater.

  Guardsman Garcia comes out of the cemetery and catches Beau’s attention, points a thumb over his shoulder. “Um, those state police guys asked if you have an extra pen on you.”

  Felicity Jones falls back against the Escalade he’s laughing so hard.

  “No problem.” Beau pulls out one of the three ball points from his tactical pants and tosses it to Garcia. It takes a good half minute to get Felicity into the SUV so they can get the fuck out of there. Who ever heard of a cop without a pen?

  A few minutes later, he spots smoke ahead and sure enough, it’s the smoldering remains of the van. No dead guy inside. More smoke, darker and thicker behind the warehouse takes them around to see no dead body along the loading dock, just more blood. Smoke billows through the open doorway of the warehouse and the rear windows. They move off the loading dock.

  “What do they do with the bodies?” Beau asks Felicity.

  “Who the fuck knows?”

  Lt. Avery, who’d taken his Humvee along, pats Beau on the back. “No body. Nobody died. Right, detective?” Didn’t Beau tell Avery that after they lost the dead guy over on Robert E. Lee Boulevard?

  “No report and it didn’t happen, Adam. Correct?” Beau pats the lieutenant’s shoulder and it’s the first time Avery has smiled around Beau. He steps away to call his colonel on his radio, let him know his guardsmen are safe. Beau follows, gets his attention.

  “You might want to call the fire department. Water cannons from the big fireboats may just reach this place.”

  Beau had seen the fireboats at work right after Katrina. Shooting Mississippi River water over a hundred yards to douse a fire in Faubourg Marigny. To get away from the smoke, Beau moves to the levee, climbs it with Linda and Felicity, feels the sun beating on the top of his head. The river water is still high, will remain high until winter, thick muddy-brown water sliding toward the Gulf of Mexico. He spots a whirlpool dancing toward the shore before it twirls away. An uprooted tree floats past, its leaves still bright green, a recent kill by the mother of waters. He shades his eyes with his left hand from the sunlight glittering off the dark water.

  “The Ojibwe tribe, known to the white-eyes as the Algonquins, named her Misi-ziibi or ‘great river’.” He looks at Linda who has her eyes shaded. He adds, “The French named her Mississippi.”

  A shimmer of red catches Beau’s eye, a swatch of red on the leaf of a bush on the batture, the wild area beyond the levee and the river’s edge. He goes down, looks closely, sees more blood, red darkening to black under the sun now, sees deep footprints in the soggy grass, all way to the water.

  He looks back at Felicity. “They’re tossing the bodies into the river.”

  “No shit?”

  Beau points around. “Blood. Fresh footprints.”

  “Damn,” Felicity starts down the levee, slips and falls on his ass. Linda, who started down, stops, looks at Beau and laughs. Beau goes back, rips off three leaves with blood on them from two bushes, climbs to the top of the levee. Who knows? Maybe they can get DNA from the blood. Find out who the fuck he shot.

  At the top of the levee now, he still can’t see flames in the warehouse, but the smoke’s getting thicker. A slow moving fire. Hopefully the boats can get here to keep it from spreading. He looks at the warehouses on either side, wonders if any of them are in there, aiming a fuckin’ AK at him. He steps away from the others, cups his hands around his mouth, shouts –

  “The name is Beau! John! Raven! Beau! NOPD!” He takes in a deep breath. “That’s right! One of those rogue killer-cops! And I won’t stop until I shoot every one of you!” He waits.

  Fuckers can’t shoot worth shit. Maybe they’ll give themselves away.

  He heads back down and Felicity says, “That why we went up on the levee?”

  Beau shakes his head. “Wanted to show her the river, thought about maybe the raging water, the sun, the exhaustion – ” Beau stops, leans forward, puts his hands on his knees and starts laughing.”

  “What?” Linda asks.

  He looks at her. “I lost my train of thought.”

  Avery waves the Humvees to park down the street and the two LSP techs come clomping over. Beau hands over the leaves with the blood.

  “Y’all better hurry if you want to get fingerprint from inside the warehouse.”

  “Huh?”

  He leaves them, goes to the Escalade, digs a bottled water from the cooler, sees only Linda has come along, Felicity talking with the techs. He tosses a bottle to Linda, each takes a long pull of spring water.

  “Ice cold Coors would be more like it,” she says, those eyes working his again.

  “Drink a lotta Coors in Texas?”

  “I was born and raised in Oregon. Went to U of O in Eugene.”

  “Where’d you pick up the Texas twang?”

  “I have a Texas twang?”

  Maybe its the brace of icy water, or maybe the heat of the sun, or the inevitable exhaustion from the gunfight, hell he’d shot three men, but Beau feels lightheaded.

  No! A shadow warrior shows no weakness, especially to the white-eyes.

  He leans back against the side of the Escalade and closes his eyes.

  “You all right?”

  He nods slowly. His arms tingling now, his legs wobbly. He should sit, put his head between his knees. But no. Not John Raven Beau. He just breathes in slowly and concentrates
on his breathing. The blinking lights before his eyes grow dimmer and eventually he feels the strength in his legs, arms. He blinks his eyes open, sees Felicity’s dark face, perspiration running down his cheeks.

  “There you are.” Felicity goes to the cooler, pulls out a water.

  “Was that like a warrior trance?” Linda asks. She looks miffed.

  “No,” Beau smiles. “I can’t remember ever feeling this exhausted.”

  He pushes away from the SUV, tells Felicity he can take over, pulls out his keys and Linda snatches them from his hand. She goes over to Avery talks to him, comes back.

  “I’m driving you home. Aligood will follow.” She climbed behind the wheel. “Get in, Sitting Bull.”

  Beau closes the back door, goes around and gets in.

  “You know where you’re going?”

  “Aligood will lead me.” She nods to the Humvee pulling into the street. “Lean back and close your eyes again. I like you best when you’re asleep.”

  “All the girls say that.”

  She pokes his knee.

  Beau closes his eyes and leans the seat back a little, letting the AC flow over his face now. A few minutes later, he tells her, “Sitting Bull was Unkpapa. I told you, I’m Oglala. Little Hawk.”

  “Haven’t heard of him.”

  “He was at the Little Big Horn with his brother Crazy Horse.”

  Linda almost lets him fall asleep before she adds, “Only famous person in our family was John Crawley who fought at the Battle of New Orleans, of all thing. At least my father tells me. I guess I should look it up.”

  “Jesus,” Beau says. “You and Aligood both had relatives at the Battle of New Orleans. I wonder what the odds are on that?”

  Aligood and Linda insist on helping Beau carry his gear, ice-chest, down the pier to Sad Lisa. A cool breeze floats in from the lake. Dark rain clouds hover over the gray-green water as Beau unlocks the gate to his houseboat.

  Linda shakes her head. “Nobody lives on a houseboat except in movies. ”

  Aligood adds, “I been meaning to ask. It seems kinda small.”

  “Stella likes it.”

  Linda’s head snaps to Beau.

  A good reaction. She’s interested.