And So it Began

by Owen Mullen

  ‘Started at his toes and worked their way up. Didn’t stop until it was done. Skinned him alive then dumped him in the water for the ‘gators.’

  He paused and pointed. ‘That’s who you’re about to fuck with.’

  The ash on Julian Boutte’s cigarette was a tiny grey finger. His hand was steady. As steady as it had been in the bayou fifteen years ago after he’d given up on the idea of becoming the next Emeril Lagasse. And Fatso had it wrong; they’d taken the hide off Narcisse Foy in two long sessions, though on the second, he hadn’t known much about it. Boutte wondered what had happened to the knife; it would be perfect for trimming the fat on this moron.

  He flicked the ash on the carpet and followed it to the floor with his eyes. ‘It’s a myth.’

  The agent hooked his thumbs inside his belt and let his chins settle on his chest. ‘Maybe so. Maybe so. But what if it isn’t, Juli? You ready to die that hard? Oh, and just so we’re straight. If they come for you, I won’t stand in their way.’

  Boutte got out of his chair. ‘Anymore scary tales? No? I’m gonna shake hands with an old friend.’

  Alone, he revisited the plan. The next shift would arrive at seven a.m. Ten hours; more than enough time to cover the eighty miles to New Orleans.

  When he came back into the room, the agents were watching a quiz show on television. They paid no attention to their charge. Boutte walked up behind Maurice. He reached over the man’s shoulder, grabbed his gun from the holster and shot him in the neck, severing his spinal cord. His partner struggled to get his bulky frame out of the seat, fumbling for his weapon. A bullet in the knee ended his attempt.

  He howled and cried like a baby. ‘This is a mistake, Juli!’

  ‘Think so?’

  A second bullet destroyed the fat man’s other knee, and he roared.

  ‘Talking of mistakes, Sammy, what Narcisse got wasn’t Beppe’s idea.’

  Through the pain, the agent’s face twisted in disbelief. ‘You? You were there?’

  ‘Shame you never got to try my blackened cod. Some reckoned it was as good as the plate at the Commander’s Palace.’

  The third shot shattered the FBI agent’s collarbone. Boutte ignored the screams and took aim; he’d saved his head ‘til last.

  ‘Could be I’m in the wrong business. For sure one of us is.’

  2

  It rained during the night. Hard rain that cut the stifling air and drummed on the roof, then stopped as suddenly as it had started. But by that time, along with half of New Orleans, I was awake.

  Lowell sensed I was in the land of the living and padded through. ‘Good morning, mutt. When you gonna learn how to make coffee? That would be a trick I could use.’

  Some people had kids to save their relationship. I’d bought my fiancée, Ellen Ames, a dog: a tan mongrel with white paws and the deep eyes of an old soul. He was in a pet shop window in Basin when I saw him, and while his brothers and sisters rolled all over each other, he sat at the back – aloof and apart. His expression said he was too fucking cool for any of that shit. Unfortunately, the relationship didn’t work out, and when we split, Lowell wound up with me.

  Even as a pup, he was a creature of habit, starting every day the same, with porridge – no sugar, no milk. If it had been down to me, I would’ve fed him from a tin, like a regular dog. He had other ideas. I sipped black coffee, ate a bagel, and watched him lick the bowl clean, then he picked up my harmonica up in his teeth and dropped it at my feet – his way of saying he wanted us to cycle into the city.

  With me vamping on a harmonica on a holder round my neck and Lowell running along beside me and wagging his tail, I guess we were quite a sight. If I hit a bum note, he gave me a look; he’s got a good ear for this stuff. My sister Catherine swears I’m eccentric. I disagree, although a six-foot guy riding a bike and blowing the blues for a music-loving hound isn’t something you see very often.

  In the Quarter, shopkeepers were already setting-up for the next wave of tourists. Outside a café, a black cook with a cheroot hanging from his mouth leaned on the frame of the door. He smiled as we passed him, wiped a hand on his whites and shouted his appreciation. ‘Yeah! I hear you, brother!’

  At Dauphine, I chained the bike to the railing at the bottom of the wooden stairs and climbed to my one-room office. As usual, the paperboy had used the Times-Picayune to improve his throwing action; the newspaper lay at the door where it had landed. Inside, Lowell headed for his basket. First up, I phoned Stella. Usually, we spent the weekend together, but on Sunday night, a friend had needed her.

  ‘Hi, baby. Missed you last night. How’s your friend?’

  ‘Better. Hates every man born. Who can blame her?’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘Lucky for you.’

  We chatted for a while, then I made coffee and scanned the paper. Two copies of the Times-Picayune – one for home and one for the office – was overkill. But I like what I like.

  The news had moved on from the five-year-old kid abducted and murdered at a pageant up in Baton Rouge. At the time, details were scarce. I hadn’t read them, and I didn’t envy the detectives working on the case. That kind of stuff was one good reason for getting out of the NOPD.

  The start of the football season was still weeks away. I settled down with my current obsession: The Word Jumble. Today’s puzzle was a beauty. I read the letters aloud to Lowell.

  ‘REPDHAOTI. Any ideas?’

  He thought about it.

  ‘REPDHAOTI.’

  Lowell was better at this than me, but I preferred to get there by myself.

  Around ten-thirty, a call from Harry Love, a defence lawyer who hired me to do work for him from time to time, interrupted our attempts to crack it. Harry was a lawyer and a liar by trade, who tossed work my way – mostly uncovering information that wouldn’t appear in the usual background checks. He was a man of few words, who made a point of ending every conversation first, to let people know that in his world time was money; in mine, it was only time. Most of our talking was done over the phone. Harry knew as much about me as I did about him, which suited both of us.

  ‘How’s your dance card, Delaney?’

  ‘It could stand a little filling-in. What do you want?’

  ‘Just checking you’re still in business.’

  ‘Still am, Harry.’

  ‘Good to know. I’ll be in touch.’

  And he was gone.

  I went back to the Word Jumble, scribbling one failed attempt after another in the margin and crossing them out. Lowell stared from the comfort of his basket, telling me in his quiet way he thought I should be, at least, trying to keep the wolves from the door. Overreacting. We hadn’t died a winter yet, and I was doing what I was born to do: not very much.

  Three hours went by, before the phone rang a second time: Danny Fitzpatrick. Fitzy was a detective with the NOPD and played bass in our band. He didn’t bother with small talk.

  ‘An old friend of yours is back on the street.’

  ‘Yeah, who?’

  ‘Julian Boutte.’

  ‘Impossible. He’s in Angola.’

  ‘Not anymore. Made a deal in exchange for calling time on his old boss.’

  The trial had been front-page news for a week and a half. I hadn’t read it. As far as I was concerned, it was nothing to do with me. I was done.

  ‘You said back on the street.’

  ‘That’s right. They were keeping him in a safe house in Baton Rouge until he was needed. Never got that far. Boutte killed two Feds and busted out. What a shit storm that’s caused. Everybody’s been pulled in.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Last night. He’s here, and we both know why. Juli Boutte’s a Class-A bad guy with a grudge against the whole world, especially you. He’s a psycho. He’ll have obsessed about what you did to him every day he’s been inside. Testifying against his boss was a ploy to get to you.’

  I sighed, and Danny snapped at me. ‘Take this seriously,
Delaney.’

  ‘I am taking it seriously. But worrying never changed anything, did it?’

  ‘Says who? You’re the guy who put this nut’s brother in the ground, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  Fitzy faded. The voice in my head belonged to an old detective and the speech he’d made at his retirement party. “Sometimes, the line between good shit and bad shit is invisible. Can’t know which side you’re on until the game plays out.”

  I’ve always remembered that. And I hadn’t forgotten Julian Boutte, either.

  Seven Years Earlier

  On that sunny afternoon, the bad shit showed up first.

  My shift had finished, and I’d already dropped Danny off when the radio crackled an APB about a 2002 tan Oldsmobile with a broken headlight and three occupants – two African American males and a female. Suspected abduction. A minute later the Olds passed me heading towards the river. I called it in, made a U-turn and followed it all the way to Algiers and Behrman, north of Tall Timbers. For a while, I lost it then found it again, parked behind a shotgun shack on a patch of ratty grass that doubled as a garbage dump.

  From inside the house, a high-pitched laugh that didn’t make it past a giggle squeezed through the clapboard to where I crouched underneath the window. Across the yard, a barefoot kid, no more than five or six, dressed in washed-out overalls, stared at me with big, round almond eyes. I put a finger to my lips, hoping he was in the mood to play along, and took a look over the frame.

  In the middle of the room, tied to a chair, a woman who was probably in her mid-twenties – dark-skinned and stick-thin – glared terror at her kidnappers from sunken eyes strung-out on crystal meth. She was gagged, and her head had been crudely shaved. Clumps of hair lay on the floor, and the yellow shirt she’d been wearing hung from her waist, exposing sagging breasts that may have been beautiful before fear of losing her buzz became more important than eating. Two black men in jeans and vests drank beer from the bottle, one of them balancing a knife by the tip in the palm of his hand and smiling a glassy smile at his skill, while his bro boogied to hip-hop coming from a radio. They passed a joint between them big enough to choke a horse, clearly enjoying the groove, easy about what they were gonna do.

  Until that moment, I didn’t know Cedric and Julian Boutte from a hole in the wall.

  How much better if it had stayed that way.

  The guy with the knife moved towards the woman, gently taking her face in his hands, studying her like the lover he’d been or had wanted to be, then traced her cheek with the blade, drawing a thin red line from ear to jaw. Light glanced off the steel. He turned his attention to the other side and did the same. She trembled but didn’t cry out. I admired her courage.

  Cedric, the dancer, spoke. ‘Do her slow, Juli. Slooow.’

  He dragged the word to make his point and went into a moon-walk that wouldn’t have disgraced Michael Jackson. When he pivoted, I saw the gunmetal handle of the piece tucked into the back of his belt and realised it was going to go down hard. Over my shoulder, the street kid was still there. Before he got much older, those big eyes would see plenty of things no child should see.

  I pressed myself against the wall and listened for a police car in the distance, hearing instead the sound of a zillion insects carried on the warm air. In the house, the woman finally broke her silence. She screamed. The kid’s expression didn’t change, which told me all I needed to know about his life. The smart thing would be to wait for back-up. By that time, the woman would have a new face, and it wouldn’t matter anymore. Whatever she’d done, she didn’t deserve this.

  The door broke easily against my weight. I rolled on the bare board floor and came to a halt with my arms outstretched and my gun drawn.

  ‘Hands in the air! Now!’

  Dulled by the dope, Julian Boutte’s brow furrowed at the unexpected interruption. Boogie Man reacted faster. He reached behind his back for his weapon, and I fired a shot that blew a hole in his heart. Cedric had boogied his last boogie; he was dead when he hit the ground. His brother put his surprise aside long enough to topple the chair, with the woman in it, on top of me. Our heads cracked. Boutte took a step towards me and kicked my gun across the room.

  I got to my feet. There was no feeling in my hand; maybe my wrist was broken. Joy crept slowly across Boutte’s ugly mug. Somebody was going to die today; the woman had been his first pick, but he’d settle for me.

  The blade shimmered and flashed, missing my throat by inches. Boutte passed it from hand to hand, grinning like a maniac, and brought it in an arc that was intended to distract rather than find a target. Suddenly, he altered the direction and lunged forward. I stepped away. At first, I thought he’d missed, then I felt the back of my neck wet and the faint smell of metal told me he’d found his mark.

  Boutte’s expression hardened; he moved in to finish me off. The siren saved my life. Confusion twisted his features as he weighed his desire to kill me against escape. Self-preservation got the vote. Juli ran to the kitchen, dived through the glass into the afternoon sun and disappeared into Algiers.

  The uniforms arrived. Cordite hung in the shotgun, and I was cradling the woman’s head in my arms, whispering the usual BS about how it was going to be all right while she bled out all over my coat. Boutte had sliced her windpipe as the chair was going down. She was barely breathing when the medics took over.

  Outside, the street was crawling with cops. An ambulance, with its engine running and the back doors open, waited to take Boutte’s victim to hospital. I massaged my hand and saw the kid; he hadn’t moved. This was the world he lived in. Nothing in it was news to him.

  For the record, the woman didn’t make it.

  The impatience in Danny’s voice brought me back into the now.

  ‘Are you even listening? Don’t underestimate this guy. In Boutte’s crazy head, you fucked his life up.’

  ‘It was the other way ‘round.’

  ‘He doesn’t see it that way. Until we get him, I’m putting a couple of men on you.’

  ‘Think you’re overreacting.’

  Fitz quit trying to convince me and went quiet. When he spoke again, he was closer to the truth than I wanted to admit. ‘You seem less than surprised. Like you’ve been expecting him to come after you.’

  ‘Sooner or later, the circle gets squared.’

  Metaphysics didn’t impress him.

  ‘Get that from Deepak Chopra? It’s total bullshit. Juli Boutte has carried a grudge against you for seven years.’

  ‘Yeah? He can join the club.’

  His frustration boiled over. ‘Do the right thing. Do right, Delaney.’

  ‘Ever known me do anything else?’

  That was when line went dead.

  3

  The car park filled from early Saturday morning. Harassed parents streamed from stationary vehicles trailing nervous performers, lugging bags, costumes on hangers protected by cellophane, and the rest of their brood. The event itself was a local affair. Overhead, clear skies promised a fine summer day, the oppressive humidity of recent weeks gone for now. Katie Renaldi lifted herself up onto the back seat between her mom and her gran. Both women held on to her; neither tried to stop her climb. This was a big day for her. It was unrealistic to expect her to sit quietly when she could see children making their way to the venue.

  North of Burgundy Street in the St Claude district, the community centre looked exactly like a hundred others. Constructed in the 1970s, it was difficult to believe the architect had billed anyone for his services. Functional described it kindly, rectangular, more accurately. It was a giant, sub-divided shoebox with a pitch roof. The windows, whenever they disturbed the charmless character of the structure, were small, square and barred. An occasional graffiti scrawl of misspelled obscenity brought some relief to the blandness of the design. Katie’s dad slowed to manoeuvre past uptight parents and hyper kids. Here and there, a man trailed along, dragged into the vortex by the force of female will. Bob Renaldi saw none of th
is. He had his own uptight-parent thing going on and silently asked God to let Katie have a good one.

  When the car stopped, everybody got out. Gran Russell’s exit was a good deal more deliberate than her granddaughter’s. Katie jumped on the spot, all energy and anticipation. Bob opened the trunk and removed the paraphernalia of pageantry and waited on his own set of instructions from Eadie.

  Katie said, ‘We’re here, Gran.’

  Her grandmother straightened, patted her clothes and looked clear-eyed at the ugly building, outdated and old before its time. Her reply was a ‘Well’ that dripped doubt but dropped short of articulating the deep misgivings she’d had when Eadie had told her about Katie and the pageants.

  ‘Come on, Mama.’

  Eadie was terse. She felt under pressure – from her mother who lived to disapprove, and from herself for ever suggesting the goddamned thing in the first place. To put the tin lid on it, her period was two days late. Just something else to chew at her this morning. Fuck! Why did she ever think this was a good idea?

  Katie skipped and ran ahead. The grown-ups followed at a more sluggish pace, slowed by the lethargy of conflicting emotions. They entered through glass doors lined with metal wire under a sign saying, “Community Centre.” Bob Renaldi looked round the multi-purpose facility, tried to stay positive and saw the kind of activity they’d expected: adults and children, some as young as three, milled around an open door.

  A blonde woman about forty, in black jeans and a white T-shirt, balanced reading glasses on the end of her nose. A long thin white-on-black name tag gave her status as “Registration Secretary.” She smiled when Eadie Renaldi approached her.

  ‘Hi, honey. Have you booked a place in the competition?’

  ‘No, I only heard it was happening a few days ago.’

  The woman nodded and smiled at Katie holding her father’s hand, half-hidden behind her gran. ‘No problem. Can I have your name?’

  ‘Renaldi.’

  Bob left public Q and A exchanges to his wife; that way, it got done how Eadie liked it.