The People's Police

by Norman Spinrad

  “Who dat?” he inquired of the barfly on his right.

  “That there fox is Luella Johnson,” he was told in a tone of voice that in effect added, a belle of this here barroom, you mean you don’t know?

  Maybe half a head shorter than Luke was, hard to tell because she was wearing alligator-skin cowboy boots. Short-sleeved and reasonably tight-fitting forest green pantsuit like something Jane would dish herself out in on a dinner date with Tarzan. One modest gold chain necklace. Matching earrings. Dark brown skin almost black, but sharply quadroon Creole features. Black hair in loosely afro curls. No makeup. Emerald green eyes scanning the room like laser gunsights. Maybe twenty-five. Struttin’ into the Blue Meanie like she sure was sure of herself.

  “Who dat with her, looks old enough to be her daddy?”

  “Is her daddy…”

  “Sergeant Bruce Johnson,” added the guy on the left, and between them, they gave Luke the briefing.

  The Johnsons were sort of fading police aristocracy, cops at least three or four generations back. Bruce Johnson’s father had gotten as far as captain, his daddy had made lieutenant, and there were a scattering of lieutenants back a few generations on her mama’s side too, and more cops and occasional sergeants and lieutenants back there in the pedigree than Luke’s two informants had ever kept track of.

  “Don’t know him personal-like, but the story you hear is that ol’ Bruce coulda been a lieutenant at the least, but for some crazy reason he likes stayin’ a sergeant—”

  “Probably take the promotion for the pension boost just before he retires, no one’s that crazy, hah, hah, hah—”

  “That sweet thang’s his oldest daughter, got another one almost as tasty-lookin’ but not yet even sweet fifteen yet…”

  “And they Catholics too.”

  “Meanin’ what?”

  “Meanin’ don’t let your pecker get its hopes up too hard, Luke.”

  Whether or not it was Luke’s horny imagination that Luella Johnson was running her laser-sight eyes over him from time to time that night, he was certainly tracking her, but Daddy seemed to be holding her close, and even if he wasn’t, Luke had no idea of a workable pickup line, and so they didn’t actually meet until two weeks later.

  And it was Sergeant Johnson who made the intros.

  He and his daughter were already seated at a table when Luke entered the saloon and Luke was on his way to standing room at the bar when Johnson rose and made his way across the room to intercept his trajectory.

  “You already know who I am, son, and I already know who you are, so let’s forget about that all, an’ let me buy you the first round, ’cause my daughter been noticing you, and I been noticing you noticing her, an’ she wants to be introduced proper-like, and I ain’t got no objections.”

  And so saying, he ushered Luke to their table, ordered three Abita beers, and performed the informal formalities. “Luella, this here is Patrolman Luke Martin, Mr. Alligator Swamp Police, as if you didn’t know, an’ Luke, this here is my daughter Luella, as if we ain’t both caught you lookin’.”

  Luke would’ve been caught blushing had he been white although the color of his face did not conceal his tongue-tied embarrassment. But Luella Johnson just laughed and deflected it to her papa.

  “That’s my daddy, Luke, politically correct he’s not, silver-tongued neither, which is why he’s still a sergeant.”

  “Cotton-mouthed neither,” Bruce Johnson corrected, “an’ no desire to have to be, which is why I’m still a sergeant by choice.”

  “Daddy’s a proud card-carrying member of the police proletariat, Luke, no department politics for him, unlike his daddy, but don’t believe all his aw-shucks shit-kickin’, he’s—”

  “A proud card-carrying member of the police union, son. You been to a meeting yet?”

  “Uh … no.…”

  “Be happy to introduce you—”

  “Daddy’s a shop steward—”

  “Shop steward retired—”

  Luke had the feeling that this all was some kind of doin’ the family insider dozens, but what it all meant was beyond him, and he had no idea how to respond in a manner that would score him points where he wanted to score them, namely with Luella.

  “Uh, you employed, Miz Johnson?” he said lamely, realizing how lame his words sounded even as they emerged from his mouth. “I mean—”

  But Luella Johnson favored him with another of her good-natured rescuing laughs. “Call me Luella,” she told him, “Miz Johnson is what the kids have to call me, an’ you don’t.”

  “You’ve got kids? You’re married? I mean—”

  Another of those Luella Johnson laughs. “I know what you mean. No, I’m not married, but I’ve got about thirty kids at last count—”

  “Huh?”

  Another gentle laugh at his expense. “I’m a schoolteacher.”

  “Uh, what do you teach?”

  “Third grade. And don’t say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “Funny you don’t look like a third-grade schoolteacher. And funny, too, Luke Martin, you don’t look like an Alligator up from the Swamp.”

  Luke managed to laugh with her and her daddy at that, but just barely.

  And so it went, namely nowhere really seriously the first time, or the second, or the third, always in the Blue Meanie, and always under the eyes of Daddy Johnson, both of them seeming to be leisurely checking Luke out, and in the process seeming to be briefing Luke on the Johnson family story, Luella’s place in it according to Sergeant Johnson, the place she wanted to have in it, which was not entirely the same thing, and conceivably how he just might figure into it if he passed muster.

  The Johnsons were a police family about as far back as such memory could go, which was even before the family name got anglicized from Jareau for vaguely practical reasons soon after the Louisiana Purchase, black Creoles from the very beginnings of New Orleans, meaning so-called free people of color, who had never been slaves even when Louisiana was part of the Confederacy, with some Irish blood in there somewhere, who had gravitated to the New Orleans police force about as soon as there was a police force to gravitate to.

  And “the Johnson police family” was not just Johnsons—that was the patrilineal line from way back when, but Johnson men had married into other such police families, and their women had married into the Johnsons, and though it was only backhandedly acknowledged, there was a bit of more recent white blood here and there in the crossbreeding.

  All this seemed to matter a great deal to Luella Johnson though not nearly as much to her father, apparently a bone of genteel contention between them, and while all this family police department ancestry seemed a tad ridiculous to a born and bred Swamp Alligator and more than a little pretentious, Luke could sort of grasp how it might be playing out by translating it to himself in gangbanger terms.

  After all, wasn’t he the one who had made what mark he had by translating the Experimental Community Outreach Unit into the Alligator Swamp Police?

  Think of the Johnsons as a gang with long-standing clout within the larger tribe that was the New Orleans Police Department, what with all those lieutenants and captains givin’ ’em bragging rights, and Luella a princess of the main line of the Johnson gang.

  Except that Bruce Johnson wasn’t at all interested in playing that game, and Luke could see why, ’cause both of them saw it as pretentious bullshit and to Luella’s daddy as sort of treason to his beat cop homies. Luella’s daddy was happy having risen to sergeant, which was about as far as a good true-blue cop could go without involving himself in department politics and worse still the greasy business and paper-bag passing and counting that went with it.

  To use a fancy word that Luke had acquired from Luella but still felt queasy about the concept let alone saying it out loud, Bruce Johnson was an idealist, which as near as Luke could tell, was someone who upon occasion acted against his own selfish interests because … because … well, because he believed it was right
according to some elusive “higher standard” Luella called “morality.”

  But Luella seemed to have a less simple attitude toward her father’s idealism, admiring it as a personal trait, but not at all pleased that it had prevented him from rising further in the police gang pecker order and therefore herself as the daughter of a captain or at least a lieutenant.

  What Luke Martin thought about this silly brand of bullshit, namely that it was silly bullshit, was not really the point as far as he was concerned, unconcerned as he was with becoming an “idealist” following a gang code that called itself “morality.”

  The point as far as he was concerned, was how to slide himself into it. Because Luella Johnson had become someone he definitely wanted to slide himself into in definitely self-interested terms.

  Finally Daddy Johnson allowed his darling daughter to enter the Blue Meanie all by her lonesome. But not for long: she made it quickly clear to Luke that having finally gained sufficient approval as a “cop and more or less a gentleman,” it was for the purpose of allowing the two of them to arrange to “date.”

  Luke had some idea of what that was supposed to mean, but little notion of how to go about it, his experience with the ladies having been confined to banging hookers, screwing drunken cop groupies, and the occasional one-night hookups that began in the bar and ended in bed with nothing of significance in-between, so that what was supposed to happen in-between was unknown territory.

  Luella, however, was apparently experienced in dancing this game and, teacher that she was, provided the necessary instructions. They spent about two months, which began to seem like two years of the blue balls to Luke, eating in restaurants, drinking modestly in jazz bars, walking hand-in-hand in the moonlight along the French Quarter levee, and otherwise enjoying one another’s company without it getting any further than a little kissing and cuddling, with him escorting her home to the family house and returning alone to his own digs afterward, more and more frustrated.

  Finally he had had enough, and after an Oysters Bienville and crawfish etoufée dinner washed down with a bottle of white wine and an uncharacteristic couple rounds of margaritas afterward, he was sufficiently lubricated to judge that she was too and summoned up the courage to ease into it in what he was sufficiently lubricated to believe was a “genteel” manner.

  “What we doin’, Luella?” he more or less demanded.

  “What you mean, Luke?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She favored him with one of those laughs that could disarm a meth-head serial killer with a hard-on. “We are doin’ what my daddy would say is courting.”

  “Courting? I don’t see no judge hangin’ ’round.”

  “But he’s there.”

  “What do you mean by that, Luella?”

  “You know what I mean, Luke.”

  Well, Luke grudgingly supposed he more or less did, having seen birds in the swamp dancing around each other like this before getting down to business, and even the nutria had a few little moves before banging like bunnies. But he was no swamp bird or rat—well, not exactly anymore—and had no time-tested move to proceed from the mating dance to the main event.

  “Well, yeah, maybe, like your daddy’s watching over your shoulder when he’s not even around, Catholic thing or something like that, ain’t it, but don’t you think it’s time for, uh … the … uh the ah…”

  “I know what you mean, Luke.”

  “Well?”

  A sly little laugh, a tilt of the head, a teasing tone of voice. “Well, I thought you’d never ask.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  And they laughed together, paid the tab, and caught a cab to Luke’s apartment. A pigpen it wasn’t: Luke didn’t eat there much and when he did it was mostly microwave and Mr. Coffee so there was no pile of dirty dishes in the sink, and he kept the place reasonably clean. The bedroom was just that, a room with a bed in it and not much else, unmade but with reasonably clean sheets, a bedside lamp on a table with a dimmer, and no evidence of prior female company.

  But for some reason Luella seemed nervous and spooked, not at all her usual style, glancing around at him, the bed, the toilet door. “Uh … I have to powder my nose.…”

  “Sorry, but I got no coke, hah, hah, hah.”

  The little joke seemed to go over like a fart in a barroom. She spun on her heels, opened the toilet door, dashed inside, and closed it behind her, leaving Luke befuddled as to what had suddenly gone wrong.

  Probably just had to take a piss real bad, yeah, that’s gotta be it, he told himself, so while she was at it, which began to seem longer than it should be, he undressed, lay back on the bed, and slipped a condom on to his all-too-ready cock like a cop and a gentleman.

  When she finally emerged, it seemed she was as ripe and ready as he was since she made her entrance into the bedroom entirely and enticingly naked, and looking even better with her clothes off, which was saying something, Luella being such a sharp and shapely dresser.

  But there was something strangely different about her—the confident wiseass sophisticate Luella in control of whatever situation just wasn’t there. She stood before the bed, nibbling at her lower lip and staring at his well-packaged pecker as if he had pulled his pistol on her or something.

  “What’s the matter, Luella?”

  “Nothing’s the matter,” she told him unconvincingly.

  “Well then…” he crooned, slapping the bed beside him invitingly.

  She knelt down on the back end of the bed and crawled hesitantly toward him on her hands and knees. He sat up, took her by the shoulders and, kissing her passionately, pulled her down on top of him, laying back again, and then rolling them over into the customary position.

  He nibbled at her titties a bit, kissed her long and deep while massaging her sweet ass, went through it all again several times, without getting much of a response, though it wasn’t like she was pushing him away either. So he shrugged to himself, and slipped it in—no problem there, she seemed ready enough.

  He went at it long and hard, but pausing when he got to his own edge and pacing himself like a gentleman was supposed to do, waiting for her to catch up. It was hard to tell whether she was or she wasn’t—she grunted and came back at him, she moaned and screamed a little, her body started twitching and shaking. Luke had banged enough hos to be familiar with females detached from the fucking in question, but this wasn’t like that. She seemed to be trying hard to be there, to finally come and grant him permission to do likewise, but there was something, well, desperate or phony or something else he couldn’t understand about it.

  But finally she spasmed and screamed loud and collapsed softly beneath him as he allowed himself what by now was more relief than pleasure. He lay there atop her, looking into her eyes and trying to figure out what had been going on behind them. They were shining with contentment, her lips were smiling, and she finally favored him with a long tender kiss, then rolled him off of her, and snuggled up under his shoulder.

  All this without a word being spoken.

  “Well, at last that’s over,” she finally told him, but with a happy sigh and a great big smile.

  “Well, you’re glad that’s over! What the fuck is that?”

  And she laughed that Luella laugh right in his face.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t guessed.”

  “Guessed what?”

  She slid her hand down his chest, grabbed his dick, and shook it at him.

  There was blood on the condom.

  “I was a virgin.”

  7

  Mama Legba, the television star, would claim to have been “born on a bayou,” why not, the lyrical line rang the musical bell of everyone south of Baton Rouge so it was good for the image, as it had been when she was no more than a street act in the Quarter, and it played even better on the air as the self-styled Voodoo Queen of Louisiana.

  And it was technically true. MaryLou Boudreau had been her own self-creation for about as long a
s she could remember, and she had indeed been born on a bayou in Saint Bernard Parish, or anyway what was left of one, and yes, to a Creole mama and a Cajun papa, and all that jazz, as the official press bio had it. But Mom and Pop hadn’t exactly been the offspring of umpteen generations of zydeco musicians keeping the faith in the swampland of beloved folkie lore.

  They grew up in bayou country, all right, but as children of a skanky hippie commune inhabited by the addled descendents of the debris of the ’60s Summer of Love, growing bad grass and stunted vegetables, collecting food stamps, and whatever else they could scam out of whatever governments, while being stoned to the gills twenty-four seven.

  Mom and Pop escaped to the Big Easy soon after MaryLou was born to a lowlife highlife in the Quarter: bartending, waitressing, singing badly and playing banjo and guitar worse for street change around Jackson Square so they could keep telling themselves they were in show business, dealing a little this and that on the side maybe. MaryLou Boudreau didn’t ask and they didn’t tell.

  They had made her a part of the act once she was old enough to walk and pass a hat, cheaper than hiring a monkey, and cuter anyway. But such innocent cuteness couldn’t last forever, and certainly not past grade school, and seeing as how she had trouble carrying a tune and couldn’t learn to play a musical instrument beyond the kazoo, in order to emulate her parents and kid herself that she was also in show business, her contribution to the family act consisted of dressing as tightly and skimpily as the loosely enforced law would allow to display her ripening nubility, dance rather clumsily to the music, and pass the hat beneath her wriggling pootie.

  After high school she found that any kind of job beyond occasional waitressing or bartending was no more available than it had been for Mom and Pop. She couldn’t even dance well enough to land gigs stripping in any but the lowest dive, and even if she were willing to descend to hooking, which she wasn’t, even there the competition would be stiff.

  So it was a life of waitressing and bartending—and when things got bad, even occasional dishwashing—and the family act around Jefferson Square when the evenings were free from employment, which was more often than not, and more often than not doin’ their stuff in weekend Secondary Parades when the weather was good and one was to be found.