by Jeff Gulvin
She sat up in bed. Those were distant memories, going back twenty-five years. She had had a life since then. This was a new emotion, but the sentiments were the same. Which was why she knew she was not imagining it, why her bowel suddenly irritated her, yet when she sat on the toilet nothing happened. She went downstairs and set the kettle to boil, but the artificial light and the chilled silence unnerved her, so she switched out the lights and made tea by the glow of the streetlamps. She sat in silence and waited, but nothing happened that night. How could it? With hindsight, nobody knew. Yet she sat there cupping a mug of hot tea, watching the silent phone on the wall. She waited for it to ring, to tell her what, she did not know. But she watched it, waiting until the moon died and the weak sun rose, casting night into wintered day. The phone did not ring and she went to work at the hospital, made her rounds, looked at the yellowed faces of bald-headed children, some dying, some not dying of cancer. That day she took in every detail of her surroundings, saw every face for what it was—a little life desperate not to be snuffed out. She took in the paint on the walls and the patterns and pictures the children had made, and every little bit of everything that made Great Ormond Street what it was. She took in every expression of pain, every hint of silent anguish. She watched parents being brave for their children, and her own pain was acute. She did not know why.
Throughout the day she thought of that other day in Vietnam, when the NVA came swarming across the border and the Americans were pulling out. Then later, when her mother shook her and her sister awake and told them to get dressed, and then very matter of factly that their father had been taken by the North Vietnamese, and that they had to get away. She never saw her father again, and her mother died on that accursed, wretched boat that should have sunk many times, but somehow did not. She and her sister arrived at Thorney Island naval base in England as both orphans and refugees.
The phone did not ring that night, but she did not sleep and in the end she phoned Paul in Cape Town. ‘Paul, it’s Jean. Look, I’m sorry to disturb you, but I’m worried.’ Paul Carey, her ex-husband, whom she had met at medical school, fallen in love with and married. They had split up, though, when their careers clashed. He wanted to take up a post in his native South Africa and she had just been offered a job as a paediatrician at Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children. Thomas had only been nine, but the separation had been amicable and they had only actually divorced two years ago, when Paul wanted to remarry.
‘What’s wrong, Jean?’
‘I don’t know. Have you heard from Tom?’
‘Not since a postcard last week. Why?’
‘I don’t know. I’m worried, that’s all.’
‘What about?’
‘I don’t know. Look, it’s probably nothing. I’m sorry, Paul.’
He was gentle. He had always been gentle. She missed him then. He told her not to worry, it was just a motherly thing and everything would be fine. Tom was grown up now, a man who could take care of himself, and he would be home, as he had planned, in a few days’ time. Jean said, of course he was right, and she put the phone down and went up to bed. She slept only fitfully and late the following afternoon she was summoned to the registrar’s office where two policemen were waiting to speak to her. As soon as she saw them, she knew.
Harrison watched her carefully as she told him, tears close but still under control. Jean looked at him then and realised she had just told a perfect stranger everything about her life and what she had just been through.
‘You’re Tom Carey’s mother,’ Harrison said quietly. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, mam.’ He sat back, pushed away his plate and plucked a cigarette from his pocket. ‘D’you mind?’
‘Not at all.’ She tried to smile. ‘So you see, this is my second time in New Orleans.’ Harrison lit the cigarette and blew smoke from the side of his mouth. ‘I thought the name was familiar.’ He folded his arms across his chest. Jean was looking at his tattoo. Her first visit had been during Mardi Gras, the streets heaving with drinking, eating, drug-taking, shouting revellers, which made her own silence all the more acute. She had stayed here at the Hotel Provincial because the only thing she knew about New Orleans was the French Quarter, and the sheriff’s department at St Charles Parish had come and collected her. The chief of deputies, Joe Kinsella, had driven her over the bridges of Highway 310 to Hahnville and the mortuary, where she had identified the body of her son.
‘Boxcar,’ Harrison said quietly. ‘A security guard found him at the Hahnville freight yard.’
‘You remember?’ She shook her head. ‘That surprises me. The sheriff over there told me that New Orleans had been the murder capital of the US a couple of years ago.’
‘New Orleans, yeah. But that was St Charles Parish, mam. Nobody gets killed in St Charles. It’s old families, traditional Southern folk. Besides, your boy was a tourist and that makes all the headlines.’ Jean looked beyond him then to the bar, where Dewey had switched off the basketball and was playing a blues tape. She paused, listening to the rhythm of the music for a moment, then looked out to the street but did not see any of the faces. Across the road, a lone trumpeter was playing. ‘I always liked Bruce Springsteen,’ she said absently. ‘I saw him at Wembley Stadium in 1987. Tom took me to see him playing solo a couple of years ago.’ She looked back at Harrison. ‘I’m sorry. I’m rambling.’
Harrison laid a hand over hers and squeezed. ‘No you’re not. Tell me—why did you come back?’
She sat back, shook her head and made an open-handed gesture. ‘I don’t know. When I was here last, I took Tom’s body home with me. He’s buried in London. But I know he didn’t kill himself and the sheriff’s office says the same. Tom never had a gun, nor access to one, and he had absolutely no reason to take his own life.’ She broke off, bit her lip and again tears threatened. ‘I had to come back. I don’t quite know why. I just can’t leave it where it is.’ She stopped again and sipped at her drink. ‘I just don’t know what to do or where to be. I look at all the parents at work, worried sick about their children, and my own child is gone. I can’t get my head round it. I think I should be in London, but it’s unresolved over here. I don’t know.’ She sighed. ‘In the end, I took a leave of absence from work, rented out my flat and just got on a plane. I flew here, checked into this hotel again, and now I’m here I don’t really know why.’
Harrison leaned his elbows on the table. ‘Have you spoken to Kinsella again?’
‘Not yet. I’m getting a cab out there tomorrow. He doesn’t sound very hopeful, though.’
‘He wouldn’t.’ Harrison made a face. ‘Jean, your boy was murdered in a boxcar on a freight train. Whoever did it could’ve been five states away within hours. There was no weapon recovered, no forensics to speak of, not that it would point to anyone, anyway. There’re hundreds of fingerprints in a boxcar.’
‘What I want to know is why he was in one in the first place.’
Lydia, the waitress, brought them some coffee and Harrison lit another cigarette.
‘What time are you seeing Joe?’
‘You know him?’
He hesitated, then hunched himself forward. ‘Yeah, I know him.’ He gave a brief glance around to see who might be listening, then told her he was an FBI agent.
Her eyebrows shot up.
‘I know. I look more like a hobo, but that’s part of my job.’ He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but hell, there you go. I know Kinsella pretty well. I’ve done some stuff with the homicide dicks out there in St Charles. Joe’s an ex-Fed and if there’s anything he can turn up, he will.’ He sat back again. ‘Got a pen?’
Jean fished in her handbag and brought out an address book and fountain pen. Harrison gave her his pager number and told her to call him any time she wanted to.
‘You never know,’ he said. ‘I might be able to help.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Pleasure.’ He stood up. ‘Jean, I’m really sorry for your loss.’ He paused
then. ‘How long are you gonna be in town?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How many people d’you know?’
She laughed then. ‘You and Dewey.’
Harrison squinted at the bar. ‘Well, Dewey’s a good guy. He’s the only person in town who knows what I really do. Everyone else just thinks I’m a bum. You need anything, you ask Dewey or call me. And be careful. New Orleans can be a really dangerous town.’
She nodded and looked up at him. ‘I think I know that already.’
Harrison could not get Jean Carey out of his head, the trouble in her eyes, the terrible churning left in the wake of tragedy. He lay on his bed in his room on Toulouse and Burgundy, listening to a hooker arguing with the cab driver who had just dropped her, and thinking that she ought to just get along the street because he could be one of those cab drivers who rape or murder women if they get pissed off. Jean again in his head, the way she looked, the frailty yet strange depth of strength about her. He slept, and later in the night the wind got up, which brought the temperature down a fraction, and then it poured with rain and the wind blew it into his room. He woke to hear it, but did not close the window and in the morning there were puddles of water on the floor.
Harrison worked with the FBI’s special operations group and had been attached to the gang squad, or New Orleans gang task force as it was more formally known, for the past three weeks. The squad was FBI-led, but had people from the New Orleans police department and the Louisiana state police, as well as others like the ATF and Immigration.
In July of 1997, the level of gangbangers, dealing in heroin primarily, in some of the government-funded housing projects like Magnolia, The Caliope and St Thomas, was getting out of hand. People were being murdered left, right and centre and the politicians and the decent project-dwellers were at desperation point. Since then, the gang squad had left its mark, and a number of the really bad boys had been taken off the street.
Recently, they had been focusing on a particularly nasty twenty-two-year-old known as Little Nate. The gang squad reckoned he was behind at least nine unsolved homicides, and perhaps a half-dozen more, and they were trying to get him off the street. He ruled a four-block area of St Thomas—his ‘bricks’, as these guys liked to call it. Harrison had known little of the street gangs until he came to New Orleans. His undercover history had been with the Mafia and the militia, and the urban jungle was new to him in that sense. The squad had seconded in a real hardcase agent, called Swartz, from Chicago. He was a big guy who had won a football scholarship to college and had been with the Bureau for fifteen years now. Tom Kovalski, the ASAC up at the Washington field office, described him as one of the best street agents going and a really serious hunter. Swartz had taken out a whole chapter of Gangsta Disciples in Chicago. He had been responsible for getting a confidential informant into Little Nate’s operation and so far they had made enough controlled buys to get his cellphone number. Swartz and Matt Penny were working the case and they had written the affidavit for a Title 3 wire tap on his phone. Harrison had been drafted in from special ops for surveillance purposes. Harrison had been Penny’s partner on the drug squad for a while, and he liked Swartz. Swartz knew Harrison’s pedigree, probably the best UCA since Joe Pistone, and there was mutual respect between them.
This morning Harrison was due on surveillance for the second day in a row and had arranged to meet Cimino at the office. They were trying to get a handle on Little Nate’s heroin supplier. He had made a couple of phone calls to Dallas, then a number to small-town phone booths dotted around the South-West, but none of them made much sense to the listening FBI agents.
Cimino was sitting in the office Swartz shared with Penny, when Harrison arrived.
‘Hey, Linda,’ Harrison said to the secretary as he walked past. ‘How are ya, baby?’
‘Just fine. How are you doing?’
‘I’m OK.’ Harrison paused. He liked Linda. She was his age, maybe a bit younger—he doubted she was fifty yet—single again and worldly-wise, and had been with the squad since its inception. Mike Hammond, the supervisory agent, knew he could not do without her. Harrison squatted on the edge of her desk. ‘I met the mother of that Carey kid last night.’
‘Carey kid?’
‘Yeah. The English kid. You know, the freight train homicide. The cold case out in St Charles Parish.’
‘I didn’t know she was in town again.’
Harrison looked beyond her and nodded. ‘She’s a nice lady. I think she’s a bit lost.’ He shook his head. ‘Hell, hardly surprising.’
Cimino poked his head round Swartz’s door. ‘Hey, Johnny Buck. Your SWAT team leader wants to talk to you before we head out.’
Harrison got up off Linda’s desk. ‘So Matt Penny told me. Where’s he at?’
‘He said to tell you the squad room.’
Harrison took the elevator and paused by the organised crime squad section. Shawn Stone looked up at him. ‘Hey, hick,’ he said. ‘You looking for Gerry?’
Harrison nodded. ‘Word sure gets around, don’t it.’
Gerry Mackon, the SWAT team leader, worked white-collar crime with Jeff McGee who had recently joined them from Washington, where he had been permanently attached to the Hostage Rescue Team. They were both ex-marines and McGee was about as tough as anyone Harrison had ever come across. His hair was so grunt short it was sharp on top. The two of them were talking when Harrison came in. Mackon looked up at him, but did not smile.
‘You looking for me, TL?’ Harrison asked him.
‘Yeah.’ Mackon stood up and adjusted the jacket on the back of his chair. ‘I gotta check my car. You wanna walk with me?’
They went up to the parking lot and Harrison could feel the spider’s walk between his shoulder blades. This felt like something from school or the academy and he had an idea what was coming.
‘How you doing, JB?’ Mackon asked him as they climbed the stairs two at a time.
‘Fine, Gerry. Just fine.’
‘You busy on the gang squad?’
‘Always busy, Gerry.’
They went out into the car park, where they could feel the heat blasting across the city after the air-conditioned comfort of the office.
Mackon wiped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Guess you must fry in the back of that van.’
‘Fry and broil and roast. Yeah, it’s hot in there.’
‘Special ops keeps you on your toes though, huh?’
‘Gerry.’ Harrison plucked a cigarette from his shirt pocket and rolled it between his fingers. ‘You wanna get to the point. I’m due in St Thomas Project right now.’ He popped a match on his belt buckle.
‘Yeah. Sorry. Listen, it’s special ops I wanted to talk about.’
‘What about it?’
‘About how busy they keep you.’
Harrison cocked his head to one side, leaned and spat tobacco juice. ‘What’s your point, Gerry?’
‘Well, John, I figured you might wanna stand down from your SWAT duties for a while.’
Harrison stared at him. ‘You trying to tell me something, Gerry?’
‘No. I just thought that you were doing too much.’
‘You telling me I’m too old or something.’ Harrison stood taller and pushed his hair from where it fell across his face. ‘I passed my physical same as everyone else.’
‘I know, JB. I’m just saying. With you stuck out on spotter duty all the time, we might be one short on a SWAT roll.’
Harrison sucked on the cigarette. ‘That’s bullshit and you know it. I’ve been on special ops for six months now and I’ve never missed a SWAT roll. Fuck, I’ve never missed a SWAT roll in my life.’ He paused then. ‘You want McGee, don’t you?’ Mackon looked evenly back at him. ‘Come on, Gerry. Tell it how it is, for Christ’s sake. You want McGee, because he’s ex-HRT and he’s younger than I am.’
‘Twelve years younger, Johnny.’
Harrison turned then and leaned on the concrete parapet. ‘You should just spit
it out, man, instead of shovelling this crap down my throat.’
Mackon moved next to him. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know how else to put it. I’m not saying you’re too old. But Jeff’s got more SWAT knowledge on his own than our whole damn team put together. I need him, JB. It’s a matter of resource, is all.’
Harrison nodded slowly. ‘I know it.’ He breathed out heavily. ‘If you want me off the team, then I’m off it.’ He bit his lip and felt Mackon’s hand on his shoulder.
‘I’m sorry, buddy. You’re one of the best. I know it and you know it. But time comes to us all.’
Mackon left him alone then, and Harrison nipped away the butt of his cigarette and immediately lit another. Whenever he had not been undercover, no matter what field office he was attached to, he had always made the SWAT team. He thinned his eyes and stared across the city and thought back over the past couple of years. After his last undercover job he had been determined to quit altogether, but then there was some unfinished business with Jack Swann, an English police officer who he thought had been responsible for having his cover compromised while watching a militia leader. Harrison had decided to remain in the job just long enough to do something about that. Eventually, he found out it had not been Swann at all and he and the Englishman had become friends. Swann was due here in a week to lecture the joint terrorism task force at the Louisiana State University, at Baton Rouge. Harrison had not quit like he thought he would when everything was sorted out. He had realised that maybe the FBI was all he had. They would forcibly retire him at fifty-seven anyway and he had decided to remain till then.