Pure Instinct (Instinct thriller series)

by Robert W. Walker

  The familiar phrase was like a red badge of courage to the young street punks of New Orleans. “Sounds like you're going to do some time now, kid. Hanging out with the wrong crowd, son.” God, he hated sounding like his father. “Come on. You can tell it to the judge.”

  Only now, coming out of the alley and handing the kid over to a uniformed officer, did Sincebaugh realize that he'd actually not seen either boy's weapon at the time he had struck out with the newspaper, and that neither of them had actually made a truly threatening gesture before he himself had acted on instinct. Alex knew that a smart lawyer could get either or both off, especially since there were no witnesses to the so-called “crime.” In point of fact, there had been no crime. Still, Sincebaugh knew that he was the only one who knew this, and that all he needed to do was call it a crime in progress.

  Yet there was one witness, Tully. He'd seen the whole thing, and by now the old man had pieced it together clearly enough in his mind that he'd provide the necessary details. And with the younger kid squealing so loudly, no one would be any the wiser. Still, Sincebaugh wondered: How did I know? Was it their movements? Their clothes? Their eyes? A combination of all of it? Or did it just come with years of experience on the force, a second sight or blue sense as some called it? Was it any different from the second sight which Dr. Kim Desinor purported to both have and control, or was there an intrinsic difference?

  Again he was reminded of Vietnam and how he had survived capture while better men had succumbed to an eternity there.

  Ben deYampert was almost home from Little League practice with his kids when he heard the radio call come over, instantly alert, recognizing his partner's involvement. It was as though Alex had gone out looking for trouble and found it, like he was playing James Arness in Gun smoke or something. Son of a bitch is just spoiling for trouble with Landry and the brass. It figured with all the anger he'd been bottling up inside and no place to loosen the cork. Something had to give.

  Ben rushed his kids home and didn't stop for so much as a biscuit or a kiss from Fiona, shouting that he had to take an emergency call. He heard one of his kids telling his wife it had something to do with Uncle Alex.

  Ben hadn't taken time to change out of his sweat-soaked coach's uniform. He worried the entire nine and a half miles through traffic to the scene, his siren blaring atop the family van.

  Was Alex flat on his back, a bullet hole in him? Would he be hauled off in an ambulance before Ben could get there? Was he critical? What was going on? Nobody seemed to know.

  Alex was a good partner and a fine man, someone Ben had confided in over the years, a man whose opinion he'd sought in all things, from purchasing his first home, to speaking to a divorce lawyer, to his daughter's taste in guys. They'd partnered together for so long, they'd become what cops calleid an old married couple. Ben had picked Alex as his partner after Alex's last partner, Keith Tyler, had been killed in a running gun battle, the wound opening up a grapefruit-sized hole in Tyler's head thanks to a single cop-killer bullet used by the backwater creeps that Alex and Tyler had gone after.

  Some said that Alex, in those days, had a death wish, and that Tyler's death was the result, that it was somehow on Alex's head, due to his irresponsibility, but Ben didn't believe it, and when he visited Alex in the hospital, he was doubly sure. Alex had taken two hits behind a Kevlar vest, but Alex had also taken out the men who had killed his partner, a pair of wild-eyed drug dealers. Ben greatly admired his partner and while Alex confided very little, Ben often found himself confiding a great deal, about his kids, his wife, problems at home, money woes, almost everything.

  Now he greatly feared for Sincy. No news was coming over the radio. No one could tell him what was going down, what had happened, nothing.

  He raced demon like to the scene.

  “You son of a bitch, Alex! You'd better be okay!”

  When his van couldn't get past the congested street filled with police cars, their strobes menacing the night, Ben leapt from the passenger seat and raced the half block remaining, huffing and out of breath before stopping just outside the big plate-glass window of the coffee shop and staring in, seeing that Alex was alive and well and calmly going over the shooting with Internal Affairs detectives inside. Ben took a deep breath and pushed through the door.

  “What the hell happened, Alex?”

  “Little simple armed robbery attempt's all.”

  “This camera operating?” asked one of the IAD officers.

  “Sure... sure,” said the old man, Tully. “We got the whole thing on video! I shoulda thunk of it myself. Now youse guys'll hafta see we're tellin' it just the way it happened. Right, Alex? Wonder if that I-Witness Video or maybe The Crusaders program would be interested in this?”

  Alex realized only too late that he'd painted himself into a corner.

  “Who knows, Tully.” Alex's reply came out flat and heartless, his fear of the tape rising in his constricted throat. He could only hope that the angle was with him, shielding his and the kid's hands.

  The IAD cop, a thin and sallow man with no upper lip named Hanson, asked Tully for a ladder. Ben sensed the sudden uneasiness in his partner.

  “You guys got what you want?” Ben barked at the IAD men.

  The other IAD man grumbled that they did, for now. “Then I'm going to buy the lieutenant here a drink. So, if you don't mind?”

  The IAD guy on the ladder fumbled about with the camera's mechanism near the ceiling. Finally, the machine released the tape, freeing the two IAD cops to leave. Hanson rushed out ahead of his partner, an even younger guy who gave Alex and Ben a sophomoric grin and a big thumbs-up sign, saying, “Looks like a good collar, Detective; fairly simple, cut and dried. We'll just file our reports. Say, aren't you the two guys who're on the trail of the Heart-Taker? Some disgusting creep, huh? Boy, what I'd pay to be in your shoes; real police work.

  This crap with IAD is driving my balls numb.”

  Alex and Ben exchanged a knowing look. Most IAD guys were so young and inexperienced because no cop wanted such duty, and so the NOPD had taken to putting its best and brightest and most recently finished Academy types directly into Internal Affairs. That way no one knew them and they had no conflicts of interest, or so the thinking went. Of course, the Department was losing in the long run.

  Big Ben nodded, smiled at the clean-shaven kid and said, “Maybe some day, kid. What's your name?”

  “Hirschenfeldt, sir.”

  “We'll keep you in mind when something comes open, Hirsch-felt, how's that?”

  Alex turned into the booth where most of his newspapers still lay, trying to hide the uncontrollable laughter erupting volcano like at Ben's nasty little tease.

  The IAD guy was all wide-eyed and smiling now, stumbling for the door like a lovesick suitor who'd just asked his secret love to go to the dance with him and been surprised with an acceptance.

  “Terrific...wow,” he sputtered, “great... really...” He backed from the coffee shop, the bell announcing his departure.

  Ben immediately turned to Alex. “Now, you want to tell your fat, old wife what the fuck happened here, Sincy?”

  16

  ... after they have... lost all this fear, they are so artless and so free with all they possess.... Of anything they have, if you ask them for it they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts.

  —Columbus

  Ben deYampert telephoned his wife Fiona, letting her know that all was well and that he and Alex were going to have a few beers and he'd be straight home from there. Ben insisted on taking Alex to a nearby tavern, a place called Maxine's, where the music was country and western, the clientele generally down on their luck and toasting to better days. Alex recognized the neighborhood—fairly seedy, the streets lined with shops of every size and stripe, signs littering the doorways and windows as far as the eye could see, all vying for attention and gaining none, save maybe the Root Mon's store. Root Heave
n. Alex pointed it out to Ben as they were entering Maxine's, and together they laughed at the memory associated with Root Heaven.

  Once inside and sipping dark Guinness beer, Alex asked Big, “You remember the call we got on that place?”

  Ben laughed heartily. “ 'I know where the hearts are bein' kept. And I know what they're doin' with 'em!' Slow down, lady, I told her. She almost busted a gut having to give me her name. Never did get an honest answer to that one.”

  “ 'Too 'fraid of the whoo-doo mon. Him make yo' life hell or him make yo' life heaven.' “

  “Took those damned shriveled, dried-up old hearts all the way downtown for Frank Wardlaw's inspection.”

  “Frank'll never let us forget that.”

  Ben, eyes watering with laugh tears, gulped his beer. “Turned out to be goddamned big buffalo hearts! Where you reckon the Root Mon got buffalo hearts, Alex?”

  “Don't ask me.”

  “Oughta be a law...”

  “Probably is...some where...”

  Alex thought back to the day they'd stepped into the Root Mon's world, to confront a lanky, huge-handed black man with a Jamaican accent and polished white teeth, two of them gold, each with an initial on it: R and M for Root Mon. Inside his shop hung every imaginable item from pegs and ceiling, half on and off shelves filled with vials, boxes, jars and baskets.

  “What yooooou gentlemens need for? Whatever it is, you come to de right mon.”

  “Hearts,” Alex had said.

  “I got plenty of demon, but what kind you need?”

  “What kind you got?”

  “Come on back to de back, Officers, and we see what we can find, mon.” He looked nervously around as if expecting someone to come rushing in. At that moment, someone did. It was a well-dressed TV newscaster whom Alex had seen many times before both on the tube and at crime scenes. She was generally a pain in the ass.

  “How the hell did you people find out about this call?” asked Ben, glaring at Edna Lowery of It Takes 2 News.

  “It's our business to find out,” she curtly replied as her camera team began to set up in the shop, one with a large but portable camcorder panning the amazing array of items found in the collection of herbs, spices, cures, medicinal potions and magic lotions.

  Alex knew at once that the entire call was a publicity ploy for the Root Mon's store. “You better have some recently hocked, hot hearts,” he warned the tall, smiling proprietor of the shop, who flicked on his CD player, rushed the camera and began a spiel like nothing Alex had ever heard before. He broke into a reggae singsong of poetry and commerce, further underscoring the bogus nature of the complaint that the store dealt in human hearts. The owner's “rap” went on and on, and he did a little dance for the cameras as he spoke of his Root Heaven, saying:

  “You carryin' a curse? Got urgent pain? / Can't make water? / Jus' you come down to Root Heaven, / the famous Root Mon's store!”

  “That's enough of that,” Alex began in his most serious detective's tone.

  But Big put up a hand and said, “No, Alex, I want to hear this.”

  The Root Mon smiled wide and continued, playing to the cameras. “Here's a broth, / here's a stew. / You want both, mon, / for what you gotta do. / You got needs? / Plannin' big sac-ro-fice? / We got seeds / and chickens on ice. / We got bugs, scrubs, herbs, / all kinna spice. / Need dem magic words? / Hav' a dose-a-crawlin' lice. / Eat a canna magic rice, / a pinch of snuff for dat oF wart, / jus”nough for de heart.”

  He was on a roll now, unstoppable.

  “Toad sweat'll get you up'n fit / with no shivers, shingles or sneeze. / Get whatever you please / wid heavenly ease.”

  As he droned on, Alex stepped through the curtained rear and began digging amid an amazing assortment of ancient and filthy artifacts stacked on shelves and boxes here too. From the other side of the curtain he could hear deYampert's amused laughter. Meanwhile, the camera panned from the proprietor to a huge wall sign which was a poetic listing of all the services and items provided his customers. Later that night, when Alex would see himself on the late newscast, they also flashed the big sign, which read:

  ROOT HEAVEN CREDO

  We got fat slugs

  and tobacco plugs.

  Got fuzzy cut worms

  for cuts, scrapes 'n burns.

  For fever it's de poltice

  and de crucifix Christ

  Got many things for stings:

  herbs, toots, roots 'n strings.

  Go-head, make your day

  wid dat fat bottle

  of turtle-nip spray.

  Toss the snake rattle

  over your left shoulder

  onto a big boulder

  beside a flowing river

  at the midnight hour.

  Get whatever you need.

  No talk, guilt or greed.

  Join de Root Club!

  Special on de belly rub.

  Special on de herb'n'potion.

  Jus' whisper who gets

  dis notion, dat lotion,

  hex on/off jus's you wish.

  Got stalks and stones

  minerals and bones,

  cat tails in pails

  wid good'n'plenty snails.

  Got a clip of royal bangs,

  eyelashes from Queens,

  nose hair from de King,

  Bob Marley's gol' ring...

  Take dat magic tobacco,

  wrap it in fine calico,

  tie it wid de cat gut.

  Finna fine ol' cemetery,

  dig dare a big rut,

  an' quick bury it up.

  Wid dat per-scription filled,

  you got your enemy killed...

  Fix you up wid a hex sign!

  Tack to the nearest pine.

  Throw a magic lotion

  into the closest ocean.

  Come back for more

  when you're cravin'

  de additional cure

  from your Root Heaven...

  COME TO ROOT

  HEAVEN

  “Guard your fleas. Curses comes in threes, / missy! Get even how eva you can, / and Glory be, see me, mon. / So, ifn you wants / to regain de health, life an' prosperity, / den listens to me! / forget dat 7-Eleven, mon, / get yow-self to my Root Heaven!”

  He finished with a flurry and a full, rich laugh. Ben deYampert and the camera crew joined in the laughter, several of them poking about the curious shop as Alex announced, “Are these the hearts you got us down here for? You got anything fresher?”

  This only cracked everyone in the place up. After the laughter, the Root Mon, Anton Eugene “Mystick Ruler” Dupree, said, “You want fresh, you got to go to de butcher, mon.”

  Everyone laughed heartily again.

  Anton Eugene approached Alex, grabbed up two of the larger hearts and said, “Mostly dese are use for grinding into powder.”

  “Powder?”

  “Big hearts like dese help the fine ol' wife dat's gone slack wid the rheumatoy back. Also for ill odors and to end de ol' man's snores.” Ben, tonight on his bar stool, remembered every line and every laugh from the time in Root Heaven as it all came back to him now. Alex had to catch him when he fell off the bar stool while they both helplessly laughed together.

  “Newspapers and TV guys had a lot of fun with that one too,” Alex added. “Come on. Take yourself home. I've got to get some sleep myself.”

  “You're okay then, Alex?”

  “What's not to be okay about, Ben?”

  “Nothing... everything... hell, life.”

  “Life's a bitch.”

  “Got that right.”

  They said their good nights back at Tully's place, which by now was dark and empty, closed at past midnight. Alex located his car and drove home, the voice of the Root Mon playing in his head. They'd played out the voodoo angle on the Hearts case, and if anyone had his ear to the voodoo grapevine, it was Anton Eugene. “Try de KKK, maybe,” was Anton Eugene's last suggestion on the day they'd returned his buffalo h
earts to him.

  The music at the Blue Heron was ear-wrenchingly loud, wonderful for private conversation. It was also a terrific place to meet old friends and make new friends in more ways than one. It wasn't unusual for Thommie Whiley, a.k.a. Mademoiselle Marie Dumond, to be approached by a stranger, but seldom one as good-looking as the one across the table from him now. He thought it a little quirky, the way their conversation had gone from the drinks the guy had bought him and the band to a dead guy he'd known only briefly a year ago, a guy named Victor Surette. He wondered if the pickup was a ruse, if this guy was an undercover cop or something, looking for dirt among the gay and transvestite world of the French Quarter; the guy knew immediately, even though Thommie was in full regalia as Marie, that he was hitting on a cross-dresser, as if he had some sixth sense about such matters.

  But suddenly all such suspicion was put at bay when the guy said, “I'm Vicki Surette's brother, EmanueL”

  “His what?”

  “You didn't know he had a brother?”

  “No, I swear, I had no idea....”

  “I'm surprised; you might've guessed. Look closely, the high cheekbones.”

  Their conversation was fimneled through the cacophony of noise coming from the band, the wailing sounds of Janis Joplin and Judy Garland wannabes and female impersonators, live on stage, the house packed so full that to communicate you had to shout, yet no one could possibly overhear any single conversation, unless the table were perhaps bugged—and even then it would take a sound expert to clarify the words from the cascade of gibberish all around them. But somehow Thommie Whiley could hear every word spoken by the guy who'd

  asked to buy him a drink, the guy now claiming to be Victor Surette's brother, Emanuel.

  “Well, I heard a guy took his apartment soon after his death,” Thommie said, “but no... I never knew you were his brother, no... and nobody around here seems to know anything about you either.”