Suddenly, Maureen found herself standing in the white light again. “Don’t you point that fucking camera at me.” The light moved away.
“Cortez,” Daniels said, “you keep that camera pointed right here. Where I tell you. We talked about this.”
Again Maureen was in the spotlight. “But you’re not local news, are you? Local TV?”
“We are not,” Daniels said. “We’re not local. Or news.”
“I live on the North Shore,” Cortez mumbled. “Born and raised.”
Hard as she was trying, Maureen couldn’t ignore the fact that Cortez was filming her. The microphone hovered overhead on the very edge of her peripheral vision. She couldn’t see it, and she couldn’t not see it, either. She couldn’t speak to Cortez without looking into the camera. She addressed him anyway, trying to look away from the lens and at the man. “This woman’s boyfriend was shot in the street less than an hour ago. C’mon, dude. Be a human being.”
“That’s why we’re talking to her,” Daniels said. “She’s a story.”
“She’s a person,” Maureen said, trying to turn away from the camera and talk to Laine Daniels. “Ma’am, can’t you interview her later? Christ, she still has his blood on her face. We, the police, need to talk to her.”
“Exactly, you’re not waiting until later,” Laine said.
“We’re not equals,” Maureen said. “We can help catch the person who shot her boyfriend.”
“You don’t think we can?” Laine asked.
“Did you film the shooting?” Maureen asked.
“We got here after you,” Laine said. “You were in the bar by the time we arrived.”
“Then, no, I don’t think you can help,” Maureen said. “Who the fuck are you? What are you even doing in the middle of my crime scene, harassing the witnesses?”
“Who are you?” Laine asked. “Let’s talk about you. This investigation seems very important to you. I hear a New York accent. I noticed you said ‘my’ crime scene. Are you a detective? I know everyone from every division is back in uniform for Mardi Gras.”
“Don’t try that shit on me. Pretending I’m a story.” Maureen pointed over Laine’s shoulder at the camera. “Get that thing off of me, I’m telling you. That microphone, too. Turn that off.” She should walk away, that was the best remedy. But she needed to question Susan. And she didn’t want to leave the poor woman to be picked over by these scavengers. She wanted to protect her. It took every ounce of strength she had not to threaten the camera crew with physical violence. She took a deep breath.
Be boring, she thought. If I can be boring, they’ll move the camera.
The blond skeleton spoke. “Yo. If we’re not shooting me, can I smoke a cigarette?”
“Just wait there, Donna. And don’t smoke, I’m not doing your lipstick again.”
“Hello?” Donna said. “I can do my own fucking lipstick, thank you.”
“For the last time,” Maureen said, “y’all are interfering with an in-progress police investigation. That is not within your rights. I will call over my supervisor. He’s much larger and even less friendly than me.”
Donna scoffed. “As if.”
“You asked who we are,” Laine said. “We’re a video production company. Journalists. New York. Hollywood. You’ve heard of the On Fire documentary series. That’s us. That’s what we do, what I do.”
“Yeah, you lost me,” Maureen said.
“I live in the Bywater,” the guy with the mic said. “My name is Larry. I just came to help out Cortez. I’m more of a music producer. Beats are really my thing.”
“Larry, please,” Laine said. “We talked about this. Not everyone wants to hear your résumé, especially while I’m paying you.”
“Technically, Cortez is paying me.”
“Out of what I’m paying him,” Laine said. “Now, please, Larry, mind the levels and let me work.”
“You need to leave our witness alone and go away,” Maureen said. “I can’t be clearer than that.”
“We do real-life, street-level journalism,” Laine said, ignoring her. “Gritty, real behind-the-scenes, in-the-dark-corners stuff. ‘South Beach on Fire,’ ‘Spring Break on Fire.’” She waited for Maureen to acknowledge the titles. “‘Burning Man on Fire.’”
“‘Burning Man on Fire’?”
“You saw that one?” Laine was smiling now. “That was one of my best.”
“‘Burning Man on Fire,’” Maureen said. “That doesn’t sound stupid to you?” Maureen chuckled. “I get it now. You’re a reality TV show, like the desperate housewives of the Jersey Shore, that kind of thing. Like the toothless guys who catch fish with their hands.” Laine’s smile vanished. “Let me guess, we’re doing ‘Mardi Gras on Fire’ right this very minute.”
“You’re one of the smart ones,” Donna whined from the bench. “We get it. Congrats on your awesomeness. Laine, honey, this lady won’t talk to me, I’m freezing my tits off, and I’m starting to nic fit. This sucks. Why is it raining?”
“There’s a major fucking parade three blocks away,” Maureen said. “Full-on, full-tilt Mardi Gras. Beads, bands, yelling and screaming under the live oaks. You’re missing it.”
“We got plenty of that.” Laine made a sweeping gesture over the scene. “You’re telling me this isn’t authentic Mardi Gras right here? The masquerade that people not from around here never get to see? Tell me this isn’t the real New Orleans. Tell me we’re not behind the curtain right now. Christ, this poor woman, she has her boyfriend’s blood on her face.”
“So y’all have been out on the route since when?” Maureen asked. “For the whole night of parades?”
Laine hesitated, suspicious of the questions. “More or less. Until the shooting happened. When we heard about that, we left the route and came this way.”
“Yeah, you know what,” Maureen said, “I think I’m going to need that camera. You might have footage of the shooter. We won’t know until we look.”
“Nice try,” Laine said, smiling. “We got here after, way after, the violence was over. I told you that. There’s no way we caught the shooting on video, and you know it.”
Donna stood, perfectly balanced on a pair of black spike-heeled boots. She zipped up her biker jacket with an angry flourish. “I’m freezing my ass off. I thought it was warm here. You told me this was the tropics. Practically the Caribbean, you said.” She slid a long, thin white cigarette from a gold pack. “I’m getting a fucking drink. A big drink. Inside.”
Laine pressed the heel of a hand into her forehead. “Sweet Jesus. Can we try working like professionals here?”
“You know where to find me, bitches. Peace.” Donna tottered by in her spike-heeled boots.
“Goddamn it, Donna.”
“Whatevs.”
The noise from inside the bar rushed out when Donna pulled the door open.
“Ever since that second goddamn sex tape she’s been unmanageable,” Laine said. She scratched her forehead. “I hired her because of the first one. That’s what I get. I am reaping the whirlwind.”
She turned back to Maureen. “Officer, the sheriff in Nevada tried this very same ‘seize the evidence’ routine on us. No dice. You want my footage? You get a court order. I promise you, TLC has more and better lawyers than the NOPD. And we both know nothing is happening in this town but Mardi Gras for the next week.”
“We’re gonna be on TLC?” Larry asked. “Holy shit. Yo, Cortez, I need more than a twenty bag from you if this shit’s gonna be on cable.”
“Holy shit, Larry, we’re standing here with a cop.”
Maureen felt a twinge of sympathy for Laine. Wilburn and Cordts were far from perfect, but they were light-years ahead of Cortez and Larry.
Laine pulled a small bottle of Tylenol from her vest pocket. She shook out a handful and swallowed them dry. She turned to Cortez and Larry, her shoulders slumped. “Get the camera off your shoulder for ten minutes, Cortez. Let me know when that dim-bulb cooze reappears out of the
bar. You know what? Fuck that. Larry, if she’s not out in five, you go in and get her. I’m going to that store across the street for a forty-ounce.”
Cortez turned off the spotlight and the camera, lowered it from his shoulder. He waved at Laine as she walked away. “Yeah, nothing for me, thanks. I’m good.”
“Yeah, me, too,” yelled Larry.
“She always like this?” Maureen asked Cortez.
“She used to be a journalist once,” he said, “made a kind of famous documentary, I think. Won an award for it. Maybe. She was bragging on it when she interviewed me but I wasn’t really listening. And I was high.”
“What was the film about?” Maureen asked. “The documentary?”
Cortez shook his head. “She doesn’t like to talk about it. No offense, my dad is a cop in Madisonville, and he doesn’t like how we bug y’all, and I don’t either, but Laine sees me talking to you without her around?” He shrugged and backed away from her. “It’s bottom feeding, but it’s a gig. And I need it. It’s Mardi Gras. Gotta make that paper while I can.”
9
With the camera crew dispersed, Maureen settled beside Susan on the bench. Neither of them said anything. She took a deep breath. She held it for half a minute, let it out slowly. Since the moment her butt had hit the bench she’d been fighting the urge to wilt from the heavy gravity of exhaustion. Where was the goddamn detective? There’d been no other calls for service that night. He or she, probably he, had literally nothing else to do. She hadn’t checked who it was before taking her spot on the parade route. Not that it mattered. He or she would get here when they got here. Detectives did their own thing, even when it wasn’t Mardi Gras.
Susan kept her eyes closed and leaned her head back against the building. As far as Maureen could tell, she had calmed. Her breathing was slow and deep. Her face looked jaundiced and wan, though, in the recessed yellow lights of the bar’s awning. Tendrils of smoke rose from the cigarette burning between her fingers. The rain had stopped, Maureen noticed, but the temperature continued to drop. She shook off a chill. She needed to get moving. She worried she’d fall asleep if she loitered much longer.
Maureen looked around again for Cordts but didn’t see him. She knew Wilburn hadn’t reached out to him. She spotted Wilburn across the street, talking to the woman in the yellow coat who had suffered the shoulder injury. He sat beside her on the curb. Wilburn had his notebook on his knee and his pen in hand, writing as the woman spoke to him. She talked with one hand buried in her long hair, squeezing her scalp. The EMTs stared blank-faced down the block at the passing parade. The two bicycle EMTs sat with them. The four of them smoked cigarettes. The woman had her arm in a makeshift sling and her coat draped over her uninjured shoulder like a cape. Guess that wound is feeling okay, Maureen thought. That would be a good thing, since the third ambulance had never arrived.
“You hanging in there?” Maureen asked, turning to Susan. “I’m sorry those people with the camera bothered you. You’re done with them.”
“The blond one said she was a reporter.”
“That’s a stretch,” Maureen said.
“They never even asked me my name.” Susan spoke with her eyes closed. “I took something, by the way. While you were in the bar. A pill. I had it with me. It’s pretty strong. I have a prescription. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You got a cotton candy fetish?”
Susan half opened one eye. “What?”
“Never mind,” Maureen said. “Cop joke. A bad one. I got some towels here and some water. You’ll want to clean up.”
Susan collected herself, shifting forward on the bench, crossing her feet at the ankles. She opened her eyes, blinking. Maureen could see her struggling to remain present.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Susan said. She tossed her cigarette in the gutter, frowning at the butt. “I don’t even smoke. I don’t even remember who gave me that.” She swallowed hard, looking at her hands. “The blood is starting to dry. I want to see him.”
“Hold out your hands,” Maureen said.
Susan did it, her hands trembling again. She didn’t even try to steady them. She tried to smile. “It’s always so cold for Muses. Every year. It’s like a curse. When can I go see Cordell?”
Maureen cracked open a water bottle, poured half of it over Susan’s hands. She watched as Susan dried her hands with a bar towel, rivulets of bloody water running across the dirty sidewalk into the gutter. Her knuckles were red and raw.
“Dakota told me to tell you that if you need anything,” Maureen said, “you go right to her.”
“She’s sweet,” Susan said. “It’s in my hair, isn’t it?”
Maureen conjured a sympathetic grin. She’d had days when she’d been as bloody as Susan. Bloodier. Blood was stickier than you’d think, tacky like paste, and the smell lingered throughout the night no matter how long you stood under a hot shower. You woke up tasting it in the morning. Only sunlight seemed to cure it, and sometimes even that wasn’t enough. She thought better of sharing her experience with Susan.
Maureen poured the rest of the water into a clean towel. “Lift your chin for me.”
Susan raised her chin, averting her eyes as Maureen wiped at the bloodstains along her jawline. The red streaks, to Maureen’s dismay, proved stubborn. She decided against grabbing Susan by the face. She wrinkled her nose and rubbed harder. Susan winced, clearing her throat. The towel Maureen used was cheap and the material was rough.
“I hate to ask you this,” Maureen said as she worked at the stains. “But is there anything you can tell us about who did this? Dakota said you and Cordell live in the neighborhood. Anyone hassling you lately?”
“What?” Susan said, not looking at Maureen, jaw muscles tensing. “Because Dell’s black, he’s mixed up in some shit? That’s what you’re asking?”
It’s not that he’s black, Maureen wanted to say, it’s that someone shot him. “Most people who get shot in this town, it’s someone they know who did it.”
“So it’s Dell’s fault he got shot?” Susan leaned away from the scrubbing, raising her hand to say “enough” and taking the towel from Maureen.
“You mentioned when I first arrived,” Maureen said, “that you felt Dell had been targeted by whoever shot him. I’m wondering why you said that.”
“I don’t even remember saying that,” Susan said. “And if I did, it’s only because the shots were so close to us. Dell is from here, he’s a music teacher, at two different middle schools. Charter schools, I’ll have you know. He used to teach the fifth grade before that. He’s not some gangster.”
Maureen shook her head. “That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what I meant. We want to catch who did this, as soon as possible. We need as much information as we can possibly get to do that. What did you see right before it happened? What did you hear? Maybe Dell pissed someone off by accident recently. He might not have even known he was doing it. Think back about the past couple of weeks. He take someone’s parking space? Complain about someone’s dog? Did he call us about a party, about one of his neighbors?”
“Seriously?”
“It doesn’t take much,” Maureen said. “Did Dell catch anyone’s attention for the wrong reasons? For something both of y’all might’ve thought was silly?”
“Like for walking through a black neighborhood with a white girl on his arm?” Susan asked. “We’ve been dating for two years. I know all Dell’s people. This isn’t such a bad neighborhood. Thanks, Officer. Thanks for your help.” She sounded more dismissive than grateful. She looked at the bloody towel in her hands, dropped it on the sidewalk. She swallowed hard, once then again. Maureen could tell she was trying to rein in her emotions. She wanted to help. Maureen gave her time, left a quiet void for Susan to fill.
“There was yelling,” Susan said. She drew in a deep breath. “And then there were these explosions, the gunshots. They were so fucking loud. I can’t believe I’m not deaf. I screamed and ducked and Dell, he was behind me, kind o
f, he always walks slower than me, I’m always waiting for him to catch up to me, and so the shots came and he just, he just … he grabbed me kind of around the waist then he crumpled into the street. The blood was pumping out of him so fast. And then everyone around us was screaming, people running everywhere. It was over as soon as it happened. Then Dell was bleeding in the street, and everyone was running away from us. Nobody would help us.”
“So there was yelling,” Maureen said firmly, redirecting Susan’s thoughts away from Dell’s blood, “right before the shots. Like whoo-hoo party yelling? Or more like an argument? A fight? Was it two people fighting? A group of people?”
Susan closed her eyes trying to remember what she’d heard. Maureen let her sit and think.
“Not a group of voices,” Susan said. “It wasn’t like that. One person. He yelled someone’s name, or the name of something.” She nodded her head, eyes closed, the memory clarifying as she let it come to her. “Yeah, now that I think of it, he could’ve been yelling at us, for our attention, or for Dell. There was music coming from the bar, but not too loud, like, yeah, someone yelled something from behind us, like an announcement.” She sat up straight, eyes wide open, surprised at her recall. “Three-N-G, niggah! That was it. Three-N-G, niggah, then bam, bam, bam.” She swallowed again.
“You’re sure?” Maureen asked.
“There were more shots than that,” Susan said. “A lot more than three. I’m not sure how many. Sounded like a hundred.”
“You’re sure about the words, what was said?” Maureen asked. She recognized 3NG as a shorter name for the Third and Galvez Boys, a long-standing gang of local drug dealers. And killers. Their name was a start. A good one. “Are you sure about that?”
“I’m sure,” Susan said. “Yeah, yeah, the voice jumped out at us. Like a little dog barking real loud. I was thinking what the fuck is his problem when the gunshots started.”
“You didn’t turn to look at who was yelling at you?”
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