The People's Police

by Norman Spinrad

  “I told Joe what you told me and—”

  “I’m interested enough to be here,” Big Joe interrupted, “but skeptical enough to want this discussion over by lunchtime, unless of course your kitchen is open for lunch, and this joint serves seafood gumbo or crawfish étouffée or something else decent, and that’s on the house too.”

  Lafitte laughed. “Short and sweet, Joe, and anyway I don’t pay the cook to hang around here when there are no customers. The idea is that the police refuse to serve eviction notices on anyone and—”

  “And thereby clean the crap of arrogant selfishness off our boot heels and change our image to the heroes of the people. And keep you from losing this joint and the whorehouse you got in the Garden District.”

  “You got it.”

  “You insult me, Lafitte, you really think I got where I am by being so thick I couldn’t figure that out myself? You so naïve you need me to tell you why I can’t order my members to do that?”

  “You can call me J. B., and you got me wrong, Joe, I wasn’t born last Fat Tuesday, and I know damn well you weren’t either. In the first place, you’re the union leader not the police superintendent, so you can’t order your membership not to follow official orders—”

  “Not quite … J. B.… I just did, remember? Or there wouldn’t be this so-called police strike the Fat Cats and Loan Lizards are trying to get the mayor or the governor or the fuckin’ president to break with the State Police or the National Guard or the 82nd Airborne Division.”

  “But it’s not a real strike, now is it? I mean you’re just getting away with it because, after all, there’s not that much money involved in seizing the real estate of at most a few hundred cops compared to what would be at stake if nothing could be repossessed in all of New Orleans.”

  “You sure got that much right, J. B.,” Big Joe said, regarding Lafitte with what seemed to Luke to be much more interest. Luke too was becoming more and more interested, and particularly in why on Earth he was sitting here while the two of them went at each other. But he figured the best thing, at least for now, was to keep his trap shut, live and learn. Hopefully.…

  “If you called for another vote, one which advised your members not to—”

  “—serve eviction notices on anyone? No way, José. Yeah, it probably would pass, but what we’re not doing now is technically covered in the contract, and my membership is just following the letters like a slowdown, no one can say it isn’t legal. But refusing to follow orders when it’s not protected by the contract, that would be illegal, and the powers that be got enough at stake and enough on the judges in this town to get me and who the hell knows how many cops thrown in Angola. You got any idea how popular we’d be in prison?”

  “You got any idea how popular anyone running for governor in this election year would be if they were in favor of sending in the state troopers or the Guard to break a police strike that was protecting all of the people from being thrown out on the street?”

  “About the same…” muttered Big Joe Roody. “Except maybe they wouldn’t have to pack their own Vaseline.… Okay, you got my attention, J. B. And I guess I wouldn’t be here if you didn’t think you had a way I could call for such a thing and get away with it.…”

  “You don’t, he does,” J. B. Lafitte said, nodding in Luke’s direction.

  Luke had been sitting there quietly like a fly on the wall, trying to make sense of all this political bullshit, and trying to figure out what part he was supposed to play in it all, but now all three sets of eyes were on him, he was beginning to get the drift of it, and it was time he spoke up for himself before this went any further.

  “You want me to do something like I did in front of City Hall, right?” he said, not sure whether he was addressing this to Lafitte, or Roody, or both. “Make some speech you give me telling the whole force to refuse to obey an official order on my own hook, so it looks like my own idea, not yours.”

  “Smart boy,” said Big Joe Roody.

  “I don’t like it, Mr. Roody. I mean, you just said you didn’t think you could get away with that, and you’re Big Joe Roody, an’ I’m just Officer Nobody you want to play Officer Fall Guy.”

  “You’re already Officer Somebody, Luke Martin,” Lafitte reminded him.

  “As you just said, Martin,” O’Day pointed out, “you did something similar in front of City Hall and the whole city saw you do it on television.”

  “But like you said, Joe, you stood up and did it yourself, you’d have like as not ended up in Angola. And you’re Big Joe Roody.”

  “But you’re not the head of the police union, kid, you’re not legally responsible for ordering anything because you don’t have the legal authority to do it. But you do have First Amendment rights to voice your own opinion.”

  “But if I don’t have the authority, what’s the point of—”

  “You don’t need any authority, ’cause you got the power!” Lafitte purred at him like a dope dealer making his pitch for your first hit of heroin. “You’re already the hero of your brother officers, and this is is gonna make you the hero of the people faster than you can repeat the Kingfish’s tried-and-true political platform, Soak the Fat Cats and Spread It Out Thin! Nobody ever lost an election in Louisiana running on that one!”

  “Running for office? Who said I want to run for office?”

  “No one, Luke, but every local politician is going to be so afraid that you might run against them that they’ll see to it that you make lieutenant to keep you from doing it. It’s a royal flush in spades, Luke, a hand that can’t be beaten.”

  “Lieutenant? I haven’t even made sergeant yet. And it seems like you’re asking me to make an example of myself by refusing to follow an order. I could be fired for cause or worse. Maybe much worse.”

  Lafitte turned to Roody. “Can you protect him?”

  It was Terry O’Day who answered. “We stage this right, and we arrange the right coverage, and he won’t need any union protection, the media will do the job for us, might even be able to get him on Mama Legba, why not, not a one-shot of the event, we keep him in front of the cameras for as long as we need to.”

  “What do you say to that, Luke?” asked Joe Roody.

  Luke thought about it hard, but not very long. If he said no, he’d be saying it to Big Joe Roody, not just this J. B. Lafitte or O’Day. Big Joe would be pissed off and he might never make sergeant, let alone lieutenant. Luella’s daddy would be pissed off.

  Luella would be very pissed off. Very, very pissed off.

  Put that way, what choice did he really have?

  This was, after all, the Big Easy, where if you wanted to get along, you had fuckin’ well better go along.

  But that should cut both ways, now shouldn’t it?

  “Lieutenant?” he asked, or more like it, demanded, looking straight into Big Joe Roody’s eyes without blinking. “You can guarantee that?”

  “Maybe. I’m the head of the union, not the police department, so I can’t promise you lieutenant, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But I can promise you sergeant. I’ve sure got enough grease to lubricate the machinery into coming up with that.”

  12

  O’Day did his job and I did mine, and by the time of the appointed hour, namely 6:00 P.M., prime time for local news coverage, there was a good enough media mob in front of Lafitte’s Landing; half a dozen camera crews, a couple of upload trucks with big round satellite dishes on the roofs, a dozen or so traditional print reporters.

  The appearance of cameras and microphones on Bourbon Street always attracted a good crowd of rubberneckers hoping to catch sight of some third-rate celebrity, or if they were really lucky, a movie star on a location shoot in New Orleans’ famous French Quarter, and of course I did not exactly discourage them from quenching their thirsts in my saloon while waiting for whatever they thought they were waiting for.

  But this time they were going to get their full fifteen minutes of airtime as
extras out on the street, since I had closed down the saloon right in the middle of the happy hour, which had them jabbering like magpies and buzzing like bees.

  We had agreed not to tell the press exactly what it was they were going to cover except that Luke Martin would make an appearance, but they would have had to have had a lot more than the usual free drinks on the house not to have figured out that it would have something to do with an eviction notice, seeing as how Lafitte’s Landing was closed at a time when every saloon in town that was able was open for happy-hour business.

  There was no cheering when a squad car pulled up and Martin—in full body armor and toting an ominous M35 assault rifle—climbed out with the fatal piece of paper in his hands, only a general disappointed and confused muttering from the rubberneckers, since most of these flash crowds were usually composed largely of tourists who didn’t realize that this was indeed a local celebrity.

  But the press crowded in and those who had them turned on their shooting lights as he marched up to the swinging doors where I had been waiting. O’Day and I had had a little disagreement on the script, but those who go along, get along, and I let him have his way with this cornball piece of business.

  “You are Jean-Baptist Lafitte, proprietor of this place of business?” Martin said loudly as I emerged into the press coverage.

  “I’m J. B. Lafitte, owner of Lafitte’s Landing.”

  “I am Officer Martin Luther Martin of the New Orleans Police Department, and this is a final eviction notice,” he said, shoving the thing dramatically under my nose, “and I am ordered to evict you from these premises.”

  Now came what I believed was the corny part, but which Terry O’Day had insisted would build dramatic tension that would prolong and enhance the coverage and make it look more like Luke was acting spontaneously. So I delivered my line, and don’t blame me for it, I didn’t write it.

  “Why don’t we come inside and discuss this over a beer or two like Southern gentlemen?”

  At which point, I did not quite bow, but bent slightly at the waist, and ushered him through the swinging doors like the maître d’ of my own saloon, which of course didn’t have one.

  There was no one inside except Terry O’Day, sitting at the bar without a drink, who commenced staring at his watch as we entered. “Five minutes,” he said, “should be just long enough to be credible, not long enough to lose the coverage.”

  “Just long enough to really have a beer,” Luke Martin suggested. “And since it’s on the house, ain’t it, how about a shot of tequila with it?”

  I shrugged, went behind the bar, and served up the drinks. O’Day, as usual, wasn’t having any; I, as was not usual, had a beer and a shot in my own bar too.

  We sat there saying nothing for the full five minutes—what was there to say?—until O’Day looked up at Luke, and nodded.

  “Break a leg, Martin.”

  Luke stared at him in befuddlement, so I shoved him in the general direction of the door, trotting along two steps behind him as he emerged into shooting lights and still camera flashes alone, and stood there blinking and blinded for a moment.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” he shouted a little too loudly. “How can I? How can I evict anyone from their houses or businesses for the same Loan Lizards who wanted me to kick myself and my family out into the street so they could steal our home? How can any cop kick another cop out of his home? We can’t! We won’t! An’ now we don’t!”

  This much was more or less according to O’Day’s script and Martin sounded like he was reading it off a teleprompter, and I had the feeling he knew it, and maybe that’s why he went off on his own.

  “So screw this!” he roared, tearing the eviction notice into small pieces and tossing them like Mardi Gras confetti toward the crowd and right at the cameras. “Screw the bastards tryin’ to turn your police force into their rent-a-cop pigs!”

  Unanimous loud cheers from the crowd, fist shakes, and right-ons, not only from the locals, but the tourists too, who after all, were going through much the same sort of shit all over the poor ol’ US of A.

  “That’s what I’m saying to the people of New Orleans, and that’s what I’m saying to my brothers in blue! Whose side are we on? The mofos out to stealin’ our homes an’ businesses an’ whatever else they can lay their dirty paws on, or the people pay the taxes that pay our salaries? Screw who? Screw them! Screw unto others before they screw us first! Any cop who serves an eviction notice here inna Big Easy is pissing on his own badge! Any cop lets himself be turned into a pig like that don’t deserve to wear one! And any cop who does ain’t no blue brother a mine!”

  Whoo-ee! Shouts and rebel yells, fists waving in the air, flashes goin’ off, and even reporters joining in, would you believe it! Whatever It was this boy had it!

  Boy? Just maybe a couple of minutes ago, but while ol’ J. B. had only seen something like this fewer times than he needed the fingers of one hand to count, I knew it when I saw it, who really wouldn’t, that moment when you see a boy cross over and become a man.

  “My full name is Martin Luther Martin, my daddy ain’t much, bein’ still inna joint and deserving it, but I guess he knew enough to know what it was supposed to mean long before I did, which is only now. Was a silly name, I thought, was a burden no one shoulda dropped on the back of some poor kid in the Alligator Swamp, but I gotta tell y’all, for the first time since I crawled my way up out of the Alligator Swamp I’m proud to carry it forward as far as I can! I’m proud to be standing here telling you that your police are on your side! I’m proud to be proud to be Officer Martin Luther Martin! Power to y’all! Power to y’all from your Police! Power to the People! Power to the People’s Police!”

  13

  Luke had made himself a hero with his brother cops all right, with anyone in New Orleans facing eviction, with PANO and Big Joe Roody, but certainly not with Mayor Douglas Bradford, a Democrat under heavy pressure from the Loan Lizards to demand that the lame duck Republican governor send in the State Police as strike breakers, or Police Superintendent Dick Mulligan, who found himself caught between City Hall and the union.

  “Sergeant was the best I could do for you right now, kid,” Joe told him. “Mulligan is shitting in his pants and Bradford is looking for a hole to disappear down into, and I had to play some real hardball just to get you that, not to mention just saving your ass. I had to make it clear to both of them that if the State Police showed their peckerwood pusses inside New Orleans to evict the good citizens or any shit came down on you, there would be a real police strike, and it would be a wildcat, and just as Mardi Gras was about to begin.”

  “What’s a wildcat?”

  “A spontaneous strike by union members not the result of an official strike vote that I’m not legally responsible for because I didn’t call for it, and I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to, which of course I don’t, something a bit like what you called for, kiddo.”

  “But then isn’t that a real wildcat strike already?”

  “That’s what Bradford said. You call that a strike? I told him. Any attempt to use the State Troopers to break it, and you’ll see what a real police strike is.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is no cops show up for work at all. No traffic control. No arrests. No crowd control. The Alligators coming up from the Swamp into the Zone and the Quarter as much as they please. During Mardi Gras.” Big Joe laughed. “You should have seen his face, Luke; he woulda turned white if he wasn’t white already.”

  So Big Joe Roody got Luke promoted to sergeant, but Luke learned that the New Orleans Police Department really had two honchos—Joe Roody, who commanded PANO at the pleasure of the union membership and Superintendent Mulligan, who sat at the top of the department chain of command.

  Roody had the power of threatening a strike, which was enough to protect Luke from any overt retaliation by Mulligan and get him his promotion, but Mulligan controlled duty assignments. So Sergeant Martin Luther Martin was assigned a des
k in the police public relations department where his duties were to sit behind a desk doing nothing, and his orders, not to be disobeyed, were to keep his big mouth shut unless and until official words were put into it. Or else.

  While this might be boring, it was the softest duty Luke had ever had or even imagined, being paid for doing nothing, and with a raise too, and it sure beat chasing down perps, handing out traffic tickets, and dealing with crazed junkies, and drunks who just might be packing, or worse still being called to deal with domestic violence.

  Those who go along, get along, and Sergeant Martin Luther Martin was getting along just fine, and lazing around listening to music, reading newspapers and magazines, watching TV on his phone screen, and sneaking sips of beer from the six-pack in his desk drawer and the occasional doobie in the alley, did not exactly seem a hard way to go along.

  At first.

  But Terry O’Day was doing his job, not that he really had to. Keeping the Poster Boy for the limited media-called “police strike” and what was beginning to really call itself the People’s Police away from the press might be within the powers of the police superintendent, but keeping the press from attacking the department and City Hall for “muzzling him” was not.

  Especially when Big Joe Roody was readily available and willing to bitch about it in interviews in order to keep the “wildcat” going and the State Police upstate where they belonged.

  So Luke found himself the baseball bat with which Roody was beating the mayor and the superintendent into submission and the hostage of the police department chain of command, in the news as a topic of contention, but unable to speak for himself.

  “So what, Luke?” Luella told him. “You’ve made sergeant, you’ve got the raise, you’re a public hero with a cushy desk job. What are you complaining about? What would you want to say anyway?”

  Luke couldn’t come up with an answer to that. What would he say? What could he say that he hadn’t said already? And why the fuck did he want to stand up there and say it in public? Although he could admit to himself that he did want to play hero of the people in front of the cameras and mikes again, he couldn’t figure out why.