by John Farrow
“No, sir,” Aldo briefed him. “Nobody hurt. Nothing—nothing of substance taken, sir.”
“Nothing of substance,” the detective repeated as he came into the room. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said to Sandra with a nod. He had a wide smile and teeth that gleamed. “Evening, sir,” he said to Cinq-Mars. Abruptly, surprisingly, he dismissed the two men in uniform. “I’ll take it from here,” he let them know.
When the door closed behind them, the new man pointed to Flores and said, “I don’t know you. You’re Security, right?” Again he smiled brightly, invitingly, as if welcoming everyone into the fold.
“Head of, sir. Everardo Flores.”
“Hmm. Yes. Sorry. We have met before. I’m—”
“Pascal Dupree,” Flores said. “I know who you are, sir.”
Dupree said nothing at first, expecting nothing less than recognition from Flores, yet seemed unimpressed by his own local fame. He grinned again and gestured to the tall retired detective. He asked Flores, “Do y’all know who he is?”
“Well,” Flores hesitated. “I know his name. I know he was on the job.”
Dupree nodded. He asked Flores to stay although the man had not shown any sign of leaving. Dupree stuck out his hand, “Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars, I’m guessing. Honored to meet you, sir. Sergeant Detective Pascal Dupree, New Orleans Police Department.”
“How do you do? I wasn’t expecting a detective for our little break-in.”
“Soon enough, sir, I’ll ask y’all what the hell you’re doing in New Orleans. But before we get to that, fill in the blanks for me, if you don’t mind, on what this kerfuffle is about.”
Cinq-Mars did so, briefly and succinctly, while Dupree flipped through a series of expressions that denoted his interest and at times his amazement. When the visiting detective was done, he said only, “I take it that y’all don’t know me?”
The Montreal cop was flummoxed. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
Dupree nodded, grinned, and looked over at Sandra. To her he said, “I’m the guy he came here to see.”
Suddenly, Cinq-Mars grasped the situation. He went to his suitcase again to dig out the notes he prepared from the FBI files that Bill Mathers had sent him, but even as he did so he was not expecting to find them. The wee notebook, especially purchased for the occasion, was gone.
“I can’t verify that,” Cinq-Mars told Dupree. “But your name rings a bell now. My notebook’s been stolen.”
“Is that significant?” the big man asked him.
“How do you mean?” He was thinking that the fellow’s broad smile kept him off his game. He couldn’t gauge why he was so happy and consequently couldn’t figure him out at all.
“Well, sir,” he said, although his inflection made it sound more like whale suh, “is there something in your notes that somebody who stole them from you will find significant?”
He thought about it, concluding, “Hard to say. I think most people would find my notes cryptic.”
“Cryptic,” Dupree repeated.
“I guess it would depend on who’s looking.”
The heavy black man changed the subject. “Are there many Duprees in your part of the world? You’re a Frenchman, right? It’s necessary to go back a ways, some would say a long ways, but there’s a trace of Cajun in me. My grandma on my mom’s side was a Filipina, about the only pure blood in me. But then my granddad, her husband, was a black-Cajun mix. My dad’s half black, my mom also has a white mom and a black father. One of those. So I’m a mongrel, but contrary to popular opinion I’m not some junkyard dog. I don’t inhale the breath of the dead. But I got enough of a trace of Cajun in my dancing shoes to earn the name Dupree. Some kind of French, no? Even though as you might tell from my accent, I hail from Mississippi. We all live complicated lives, don’t we?”
Cinq-Mars sat on the bed beside his wife. This man was beginning to sound like he did himself during an interrogation. Go all over the map in a discussion in order to tie the person up in his head and deliberately confound him then slice through to the heart of the matter. He wished he’d get to the heart of the matter.
“No Duprees where I come from,” Cinq-Mars told him. “But Dupuis. Dupree could easily be a corruption of that.”
“Corruption,” the detective repeated, and smiled.
“Like my name, Cinq-Mars, could be a corruption of Saint Marc, possibly. That’s one explanation. Or it can mean the fifth of March for some reason. Nobody’s one hundred percent sure.”
“Oh I get you, Detective. It’s just that that word—”
When he paused, Cinq-Mars repeated it for him, “Corruption.”
“It’s not a word nobody wants to say out loud in this town. Not in the company of a policeman.”
Sandra posed the question. “Why not?”
That great white-toothed grin again. “A few of our officers recently got sixty-five years each. Now that’ll be a good long stretch for them, don’t you think? Should teach them a lesson, no?”
“What did they do?” she asked.
“Ever heard of Danziger Bridge?” He carried on when she shook her head no. “A few of our officers killed innocent citizens there, just a week after Katrina. The victims were poor people. Hungry people. Folks without their homes. They were in a desperate plight. So our boys went down there and shot them. Killed two. Wounded a bunch of others. Four others. One young man was shot and as he lay dying an officer of the law went about kicking him. Really made him suffer before he died. He was a mentally challenged boy but some would apply that distinction to the cop. A few of our boys, not enough of them if it was up to me, got sixty-five years for that.”
Sandra had another question. “Why did the police shoot them?”
“Did I not explain that?” Before answering, Dupree shot a glance across at Everardo Flores, a look which Cinq-Mars interpreted as meaning, I don’t know you, but I’m going to say what I think in front of you anyway. “Why, ma’am, my fellow officers shot those people because they were poor, hungry, homeless, and scared, but mostly they shot them because they were black. The cops said they were shot at, opinion contradicted by the evidence, and by witnesses, including police witnesses.”
Everyone let the opinion settle in the room.
“I guess y’all don’t have such problems up there in Montreal,” Dupree said.
“I’m an American,” Sandra said, but Cinq-Mars did not know why she bothered to say that, and he wasn’t sure that Sandra knew why either.
Dupree was smiling, but with his mouth closed, the smile an effort now as he looked around at the other three. Then he said, “Corruption is not a word that sits well in a policeman’s head these days. It’s what they call the elephant in the room. Anytime you’re sitting down with an officer of the New Orleans Police Department, it’s the elephant in the room. But you, Cinq-Mars, y’all fought corruption in your own department. That’s your reputation. Good on you.”
“You have me at a disadvantage,” Cinq-Mars told him. “I don’t know how you do or why you do. How do you know anything about me? I was given your name, but I forgot it. At no time did I do a background check on you.”
“I’m the one who’s at a disadvantage, Detective Cinq-Mars.”
“How so?”
“Because I may know who y’all are, but I have no clue why the hell y’all are here. You might not know who I am, but who cares about that? I’m of no account. But y’all know why you’re here. I don’t. I’m the one, see, who’s wearing the disadvantage like shackles on his feet.”
Cinq-Mars noticed the man’s eyes shift as Sandra raised her fist in stifling a yawn. The day had been long and seemed endless. Detective Dupree released that buoyant, all-encompassing smile again. “Y’all traveled today, right?”
Sandra agreed with a nod.
“Y’all had a night on the town. Adventures! Beyond what you cared to experience. And yet, Detective, we have some things to talk about, no? Such as, what y’all are doing here.
Why has your arrival set off a fireworks within the New Orleans Police Department?”
“What?” Cinq-Mars barked.
Dupree seemed surprised by his reaction. “Don’t you know? Then we have things to talk about. That could be a dandy conversation. I only hope this has nothing to do with Danziger Bridge. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with that mess.”
“I’ve never heard of Danziger Bridge,” Cinq-Mars assured him.
“Y’all don’t watch the news? I thought you were retired. What else y’all got to do but watch the news? I guess New Orleans affairs are of no more interest in Montreal than Montreal is a concern to us. But the point is,” he hurried on before Cinq-Mars could interrupt, “we could go out, me and you. Your wife can get some shut-eye. I won’t keep him out all night, ma’am,” he said to her. “But if him and me can cover some ground, we all might sleep better afterward.”
Sandra and Émile glanced at each other, acknowledging that this was not the most romantic outcome to their evening. “I was going to change rooms,” Émile said.
“Good idea,” Dupree opined.
“The hotel can take care of that for you,” Flores interjected. “Check in at the front desk when you return. Mrs. Cinq-Mars, you can be in bed in ten minutes in your new room.”
He liked neither the cosiness of all this nor the hurry. The unknown aspect. But Cinq-Mars said, “Okay,” and Sandra nodded to confirm the right decision.
“I’ll show y’all a side of the real New Orleans,” Dupree enthused.
“Which means you don’t think I’ve seen it yet,” Cinq-Mars noted. He meant something by that, floating the opinion that Dupree may have done some earlier recognizance on his evening. But Dupree breezed on through the comment.
“How could you have? Is this your first time here, Detective? Yes? Then how could you have?”
ELEVEN
A keyhole dive on Bourbon Street, Sinners Too slumped near the corner of Bienville. Big black wood doors sealed off the premises during daylight hours, only to be turned back 180 degrees to admit patrons after dark. The name played off the marching saints of the famous song and the football team, but came across to many as cute. For that reason, or merely to be less inviting, no sign stood was visible on its faded brown façade. A patron had to know the joint to find it, and once inside, if he knew where to look, the name was located on a sticker affixed to a mirror. Dupree showed it to Cinq-Mars, proud as peach. The mirror reflected the bar, manned by a redheaded Irishman to whom Cinq-Mars was introduced and who seemed to be perpetually washing up as he worried who might be coming through the front door or returning out the rear toilet. The man grunted often and incessantly glanced around warily—and unnecessarily to Émile’s mind—and he judged his problem to be a Tourette’s tic.
The dark narrow space that the bar presented to the street kept tourists at bay and encouraged cautious locals to scorn the premises as well. Inside, the regular barflies were positioned on their familiar stools, calmly inebriated and somewhat intent but nothing serious. Solemn in their declarations, they exhibited only quiet, desultory affections for drink, for the air they breathed, and for the company they so faithfully embraced.
Cinq-Mars and Dupree settled into a side booth where no one, the former Montreal cop noted, could come up behind them. “A favorite haunt of yours? Or are you trying to psyche me out?”
Loud laughter burst from Detective Dupree. The sound struck Cinq-Mars as jolly and genuine, which gave credence to the detective’s repertoire of smiles. A joyful soul. He still had no clue how to take him. At this early juncture, to trust him was out of the question, but whether he should weigh the merits of his skepticism or let things ride until real evidence presented itself remained a puzzle.
“No psyche-out intended. I drink to modest excess, Émile.” On the way over, they had agreed to use each other’s given names, as opposed to their ranks or surnames. Émile could no longer abide being called sergeant-detective, and Dupree couldn’t pronounce Cinq-Mars in any acceptable form. His accent made it sound like a muffled scream, and after Émile spelled it for him, his pronunciation worsened. For his part, Dupree confessed to hating the diminutive “Sarge,” which he got all the time. “I like to stay afloat. Not that there’s a man in here who couldn’t put me to shame if we raced a bottle down, but I drink enough that I prefer to stay away from places where the righteous might find me. They’re a bore. I don’t know what attributes make up a child of God, but boring can’t be one of them. Thing is, neither the boring nor the righteous are likely to find me in here.”
Here, no drinks were called “Hurricanes.” In honor of the city, Cinq-Mars ordered bourbon, and Dupree joined him in that choice, adding a beer chaser.
“Drinking on your shift is not a problem here in corrupt New Orleans?”
Cinq-Mars thought he was chiding him gently, relaxing into their pending talk, but Dupree took it differently.
“I don’t taste the divine mistress when I’m working. Y’all can take that two ways.”
“Can I? How so?”
“If I take a sip it means I just booked off. It’s my way of saying so.”
Cinq-Mars chuckled lightly. “Okay. What’s the second way?”
“I don’t drink and work. Period.”
“You aren’t working now? You were in my hotel room.”
“No, sir, I was not. I was passing by. Just visiting. I came to your hotel room because the man flying in to see me about a cold case was reporting serious trouble to the police. That news got back to me. The man who has a rep for taking down his own police department called my police department to say his room had been invaded. That’s a curiosity to me. Wouldn’t it be to you, Émile?” He was speaking a lot, yet slowly, almost methodically, in deference to the music of the night and the calming effect of his drink. “I came to see you because people in my department, friends of mine, they know that I haven’t been sleeping so well lately, on account of y’all being on your way here, and because I worry about why a man like you is coming down here wanting to talk to the likes of me for who knows what reason. So they informed me that your name was in the news, that it jumped across the wire. I like to be informed and they do have my back on occasion. Émile, this whiskey I’m sipping—here I go now … ain’t that sweet?—this whiskey, sir, is going so smoothly down my gullet on my sweet time off. Don’t think otherwise. Because if you do, you’ll be wrong, and I got this feeling that you’re not the type to cozy up to being dead wrong too often.”
Cinq-Mars clinked the other man’s glass as a way to concede and apologize. “Here’s to free time and plain talk. Pascal, I don’t get what’s going on.”
“Call me Dupree. Pascal is not a name a go by much. My mama calls me Pascal, as do people just getting to know me on a familiar basis. I’m jumping the gun, but a man whom I like and respect right off the bat, a man with whom I may feel a kinship, that man should call me Dupree. So what is it that y’all don’t get? Why you were accosted?”
“That, too. But mainly why my presence registered with anybody down here, including with you.”
“You wanted to show up incognito?”
“Why would I? I never felt the need.”
“And if I say to you—Danziger Bridge—what do y’all say back?”
Cinq-Mars shrugged. “I’m ignorant. Only what you said. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Seriously? Maybe so. But appreciate that it has us all on edge around here. A public relations nightmare times ten.” Seated, relaxing, his big head easing back, Dupree displayed multiple chins and a bull neck. “Cops who go around shooting people on account of their tragic circumstances and the color of their skin, and then those among us who made some objection to that particular practice and assisted in the investigation, both sides, are on edge. You see my circumstances. But a person like myself, who’s gonna come out of the shadows and shoot me down on the streets now? It’s not only that I’m a moving target, I’m an obvious target. Too obvious. So if I take my leave
of absence from this world to go mingle with the saints and sinners who have gone before me, suspicions are going to be aroused before whatever dust I might disturb settles back over me, and who is going to think that my demise is anything but unjustified? A consequence of a situation. Folks of different stripes, some of whom have power, will want to know who pulled the trigger. On the other hand, if forces are aligned against me, if some folks want to take me down and some of those folks have power also, then they might seek another way, given everything that’s afoot. So. I hear that a cop from another force—hell, from another country—is coming down here to inquire about some cold case murders that I investigated years ago without much success after a screw-up and I’m thinking to myself, hold on, buddy, watch it now, this could be some strange- colored shit walking straight upright out of the john. Y’all follow me?”
“I do now,” Cinq-Mars assured him and sipped his whiskey. “I see your predicament. But I had no idea about all these preexisting circumstances.”
“So why y’all here?” The query was forthright, but Dupree tacked on a smile in any case, and once again Cinq-Mars did not know how to take the man.
“I wish I could simplify it for you,” he told him, “about as much as I wish I could simplify it for myself.”
“Complicated, is it? Try me out.”
Cinq-Mars leaned closer to him, not to make himself heard as it was a quiet bar on a relatively quiet night. Nor was he indicating that his words were about to be shared in the strictest confidence. But he leaned in closer to indicate that what he had to say would need to be contemplated and managed on an intimate level, if his words were going to be understood at all. “If I knew why I was here, Dupree, I probably would not be here.”
Cinq-Mars had expected that the New Orleans detective might request further clarification, that in thinking it through his mind might short-circuit and leave him stuck in a mental loop, in a maze, with no way out. That was his intention, perhaps. But the man cottoned on quickly. He understood how a dilemma could draw a man in and not let him escape with his skin still attached.