The People's Police

by Norman Spinrad

  This of course was nothing but the truth, but telling the truth, especially when it was more down and dirty than simple, did not necessarily win you elections anywhere in the US of A, let alone the great state of Louisiana, so Brown was certainly getting the best of this one-sided political freestyle fight as Hurricane Season time approached.

  The first tropical storm of the Season turned into a Category 3 hurricane named Albert, which whacked Cuba pretty good but veered up the Atlantic Coast and pretty much turned into a pussycat by the time it hit Cape Hatteras. Barry made it to Category 4 and whirled up the Gulf of Mexico in the very general direction of the Louisiana Delta, but made landfall on the Florida Panhandle, and New Orleans got nothing worse than wind and rain and high water, turning the eastern Alligator Swamp into the usual Season-long bayou-veined marshland.

  Nothing to really talk about, and Montrose didn’t, sticking to his economic guns, but that didn’t stop Brown from preaching about it anyway, and keeping his own flannel mouth shut about the farm foreclosures goin’ on upstate, so as far as the polls went, nothing much was really happening, with Brown maintaining a lead over Montrose 41 to 31 with a bigger undecided than usual this early on in both the political season and the Hurricane Season. But with Carlo, as more or less expected by all sides, they started to turn into the same thing.

  Carlo was another Category 4, but this one seemed to be making a beeline track for what was left of the main bird-foot mouth of the Mississippi Delta, from which, even if it didn’t shove a major league Gulf flood tide up the river and turn Lake Pontchartrain into a seawater bay fit to overflow the northern Alligator Swamp into New Orleans Proper, would give the downriver levees a run for their money.

  But Carlo hung a left turn before that and came ashore between New Orleans and Shreveport, and closer to Shreveport, much of which ended up evacuated and underwater, while the Big Easy got nothing worse than fifty-mile-an-hour winds and a driving rain that made traffic impossible for a few days on the flooded streets and avenues, and didn’t even cut electricity at all.

  Well, of course, this wasn’t the first time a Category 4 had spared New Orleans, and during the usual Hurricane Season’s out of a dozen or score hurricanes stirred up, only a half dozen or so hit the city with direct haymakers. But this wasn’t the usual Hurricane Season, this was the Political Hurricane Season, and Brown played it for all it was worth.

  Which wasn’t as much as he had probably counted on when he denounced Sin City’s good fortune as the Devil delivering his part of the deal with his hell-spawned demons. This might have increased his upstate lead over Montrose, but it did not play very well in Shreveport and environs, especially when Shreveport’s mayor got airtime on Mama Legba denouncing Brown for making political whoopee out of his city’s disaster and half-seriously asking his Satanic Majesty to make the same deal with his constituency too. Montrose gained ground in the western Gulf Coast without having to say anything at all.

  David, though, worked its way up past Category 5, winds up to 150 mph, a wide son of a bitch too, turning Cuba and Puerto Rico into island-wide swamplands, turning westward to take out Merida and Vera Cruz with tidal bores before turning more northerly, and predicted to make landfall somewhere between Mobile and New Orleans wide enough to flood them both over the levees and into the towns.

  Mobile was small enough to more or less send its population making temporary tracks inland. But New Orleans wasn’t and couldn’t, and so didn’t, and all Mayor Bradford could do was Activate Plan A: close the schools, government offices, public transit, parks; close the streets to civilian traffic and so forth; pull the storm shutters down over the windows on all city buildings that had them; advise everyone who could to do likewise, stay indoors and pray without specifying to who or to what.

  Churches had the option to stay open as refuges. This being the Big Easy, where half the population at least could be relied upon to prefer facing a Category 5 hurricane lifting glasses to Bacchus as fast as we could fill them to praying to Jesus in the pews, so were the saloons.

  Plan A in New Orleans.

  A Plan B, the city didn’t have.

  17

  After Category 5 David and Category 4 Edward danced around New Orleans too, the online and print press in New Orleans starting doing positive features praising Mama Legba and her Supernatural Krewe of “loas,” while the Bible Belt press upstate continued to foam at the mouth against them.

  The police department, with no argument from Terry O’Day or Joe Roody, had thus far kept Luke under wraps, not wanting him to say anything to any form of the press unless and until they could figure out what that should be, and Luke who had no idea either certainly had no objection. But neither the department, nor O’Day, nor even Roody, could forever hold the press pack away from the guy who was either the hero of the People’s Police or the villain who sold what soul the Big Easy might ever have had to Lucifer.

  “So we better find out more about loas than what’s on TV and the blogsites, because that’s what they’re gonna throw at you first, last, and always,” Luella told him, and Luke could hardly disagree with that.

  Luke wasn’t very much for reading or researching on the Internet, but Luella, being an ex-schoolteacher, was, and she did the heavy lifting while he followed behind. There were tons of books, Web pages, blogsites, and whatever about loas, but they really didn’t agree on much of anything, except that voodoo, or voudou, or vudu—there wasn’t even any agreement on the spelling—was an ancient African religion or belief or superstition that came to America and particularly Louisiana, with the slave trade.

  That much Luella the schoolteacher could declare historical fact.

  “There are supposed to be these godlings or spirits for everything from the birds and the bees to to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, like Roman and Greeks polytheism.”

  That much Luella could declare “comparative anthropology.”

  But while Luella wasn’t exactly the most hard-core Catholic in New Orleans and New Orleans Catholicism was far from the most tight-assed in the world, she was enough of a Catholic to consider the idea that such supernatural spirits actually existed, superstition or psychosis or both and just maybe blasphemy too.

  “But I thought you believed in supernatural spirits, Luella.”

  “Say what?”

  “The, what do you call it, the Trinity? God the father spirit, Jesus the son spirit, and a third spirit even called the Holy Ghost.”

  “That’s different!”

  “How?”

  “Uh … because they’re manifestations of the One God.…”

  Luke had never thought about God or religion at all as a Swamp Alligator, not many people in the Swamp did, least of all his jailbird father and junkie mother, and even though he had been married in a Catholic ceremony, he hadn’t taken the religious part seriously, not even as seriously as Luella, which wasn’t all that much either. But now the question of whether supernatural spirits, good or evil, could or did exist had not only become political, not only become police business, but had become quite personal.

  So he had to think about such stuff now. And if there could be supernatural spirits like God and Jesus, let alone a Ghost, Holy or otherwise, why not loas?

  “But aren’t those preachers goin’ on about the loas being demons from Hell and the Devil an’ all? So how can they be saying I made a deal with evil spirits that they don’t believe exist?”

  “You saying you believe they really exist, Martin Luther Martin? You saying you really made a deal with supernatural spirits?”

  Luke sighed, shrugged, and sighed again.

  “I’m confused, Luella. The more I hear the Holy Rollers going on about my so-called deal with the demons of Hell an’ all to spare New Orleans from the worst of the Hurricane Season in return for the People’s Police going along to get along during Mardi Gras, it seems like just about the same deal I had the Alligator Swamp Police make with the gangbangers.”

  “Mama Legba’s loas are t
he same thing as gangbangers in the Alligator Swamp?”

  “No! Yes … I mean, the People’s Police’s part of the deal could just as well have been my own idea, and Mama Legba just a real good actress playing me along because she liked the idea of a Mad Mardi Gras too. She was a street act to begin with, wasn’t she? And it sure has helped her show-business career!”

  “Speaking as a Catholic, I must admit I sort of have to be believe that, don’t I?” Luella told him. “But.…”

  “But?”

  “But as you may have noticed, Luke, no hurricane has really hit New Orleans so far this whole Hurricane Season.”

  “So?”

  “So speaking as a Catholic, I don’t like believing it at all, but I have to admit that these nonexistent spirits, evil or otherwise, seem to have lived up to their end of the bargain, now haven’t they?”

  Like the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Luke suddenly realized. Whether they’re real or not out there up in heaven or some other place other than this world, might not even matter if you were a Catholic who really believed in them. Because then they were real inside your own head, real enough to like make you stay a virgin, or pray to a wooden cross, or give up meat for Lent.

  This, he knew, was a thought he damn well had better keep to himself. Thus far in their marriage he had avoided any arguments about religion, Jesus, God, or the Catholic Church by going along with whatever Luella and the Johnson family wanted him to go along with. And since he had never had a serious opinion about anything religious before, no problem, no sweat.

  So no point in getting into it now. But there was one crazy notion on a voodoo Web site that Luella had shown him that he couldn’t quite understand but couldn’t keep from rattling around in his brain, maybe just because he couldn’t understand it. Some scientists had discovered, or claimed they had discovered, or believed they had discovered, something they called “dark matter,” which couldn’t be seen, couldn’t be felt, had no weight, but still was there.

  But really real, not “supernatural.”

  Like the loas?

  Not “spirits” but creatures made of such stuff?

  He was still trying to get some kind of grasp on how something or someone could be real and not real at the same time, maybe like a part an actress was playing in a movie on TV, the part itself, not the actress, like Mama Legba and her loas maybe, when he was brought right back down to the heart-pounding down and dirty by a call from Terry O’Day.

  “You’re invited to a meeting tomorrow at eleven, Martin. This is not an invitation you can refuse.”

  “With whom?”

  “Can’t tell you that. You might slip and tell your wife. And she might slip and tell someone else.”

  “What’s with the fuckin’ spy-movie crap?”

  “You’ll find out when you get there.”

  “Where there?”

  “A taxi will pick you up. No gun. No uniform.”

  And O’Day hung up.

  Even though there was pelting wind-driven rain the next morning from the fringes of the latest hurricane to miss New Orleans, the taxi was on time, and took Luke on a spooky and scary ride through the nearly empty streets.

  When he asked the cabbie where they were going, the dude gave him a dirty laugh. “Hey, bro’, you don’t have to play the game with me, I ain’t about to tell your wife. You must either not be gettin’ any lately at home or be hornier than a barrel a monkeys onna Spanish Fly to be goin’ to a cathouse at eleven in the A.M. inna backwash of a Category 3!”

  “Say what?”

  But the cabbie just laughed and laughed, and when they got there, Luke saw why, there being a fancy three-story white house in the Garden District, overhung by tall wind-whipped trees, a covered porch all around the ground floor, balconies up top, filigree, phony columns an’ all.

  An upscale whorehouse known to everyone on the police force for the quality of its girls, its reputation for discretion, and for prices no cop under the rank of captain could think of affording.

  “Have a good time!” the cabbie told him.

  Somehow Luke doubted that he would.

  He was greeted at the door with a handshake and a big sincere-looking smile by none other than the owner of Lafitte’s Landing, J. B. Lafitte. “Welcome to my other, not at all humble, establishment, Sergeant Martin, in fact there are those who say it’s the best little whorehouse in New Orleans, and who am I to argue with them?”

  There was no one working the cloak room, so Lafitte did the honors himself with Luke’s rain gear. “I wouldn’t still be the impresario of this house of pleasure if not for you, so I owe you big-time, and anything and everything here is on the house any time you want.”

  Luke knew what he would have said to that before Luella, but he had resisted temptation ever since, though not on this level, and didn’t trust himself to say anything just now, so he smiled, nodded, and kept his mouth shut as Lafitte led him into the big ground-floor main salon.

  Lafitte laughed as Luke’s jaw dropped. “I know, I know, you don’t have to say it, it looks just like the Hollywood version of what a first-class bordello in the Big Easy is supposed to be. Well, that’s because that’s what it is. Even the rich, famous, powerful, and connected have fantasies of what a place like this is supposed to be created for them by show biz, so the real thing had better mimic the Hollywood version or they’re gonna be disappointed.”

  The walls were all red velvet flocking and gilded framing. The floor was some kind of deep red wood. There was a stage at the far end with a full jazz band setup and enough room left for scores of strippers or porn queens or whatever to strut their stuff. Subtly curved brass bars with black marble tops embraced the room like hookers’ welcoming arms. Couches, easy chairs, and tables were placed around the room, but leaving plenty of space in the middle for a dance floor.

  The salon was the full three stories high and two tiers of interior balconies with cafe tables mirrored the ones outside, reachable by two dramatic spiral staircases. The ceiling featured a vast Roman orgy scene whose participants did not quite resemble movie stars living and dead closely enough to risk lawsuits.

  Poleaxed by the setting for a long moment, Luke’s first take was that it was empty. But then he saw that it wasn’t. Then he saw that there were five men sitting at a round table toward the back of the room. Then as Lafitte led him toward them and he saw who they were, his next take was awe.

  Terry O’Day.

  Big Joe Roody.

  Police Superintendent Dick Mulligan,

  Mayor Douglas Bradford.

  Elvis Gleason Montrose.

  What the fuck is going on?

  Two heavyweight politicians, the top cop, the head of the union, his media man, and an empty seat at the table that could only be his.

  Whatever it was, Luke had the feeling that a fancy whorehouse was going to turn out to be just where a meeting like this belonged.

  Montrose glanced briefly at Lafitte, who nodded and disappeared up the nearest spiral staircase. It was easy enough to see who was running things, and after all he was the rooster atop this political pecker order, but it was Superintendent Mulligan who spoke first while Luke was still sitting down, as if to remind the rest of them that Luke was under his command.

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I ordered you here, Sergeant Martin.”

  “I sure am!” Luke blurted. But Mulligan wasn’t in uniform and neither was he, and the order or invitation, or whatever it was, had come from O’Day, meaning the union, not the Department. “You did?”

  “No, he didn’t,” said Elvis Gleason Montrose.

  Luke glanced at Roody. Big Joe shrugged and nodded no.

  “I did, Sergeant. Martin,” said the Democratic candidate for governor of Louisiana. Everyone in Louisiana had probably seen him on various screens more than they cared to by now, Luke included, but he had never seen anyone that high up the political ladder in the flesh before.

  As a media image, Elvis Gleason Montrose
was an immaculately clad suit with somewhat longish hair over a high forehead, piercing blue eyes, and a confident expression frozen on a smoothly unwrinkled face. In the flesh on this gray stormy morning in a deserted whorehouse, he wore dark blue sweats, his eyes were watery, he looked ten years older and twenty pounds heavier, the high forehead was revealed as a receding hairline, and the confident expression seemed plastic and phony.

  “So I’ll get right to the point,” Montrose said. “I need your help.”

  The way the man looked and the way that he said it convinced Luke that he meant it, but he couldn’t imagine how, so he didn’t react at all.

  This did not seem to faze Montrose. As your usual long-winded mush-mouthed New Orleans politician, he probably didn’t care to be interupted once he had your attention and went into a campaign speech or the long-winded answer to an interviewer’s question even when it was supposed to be yes or no. Especially when it was supposed to be yes or no.

  “Now, you are probably asking yourself what can a mere police sergeant do to help a candidate for governor of the great state of Louisiana—”

  “I wouldn’t quite put it that way,” Luke blurted. “I mean, I’m not asking myself anything at all, sir. I’m asking you why you’re asking me for help.”

  Big Joe choked back a laugh. Montrose seemed to make a difficult but successful attempt to choke down a comeback, obviously pissed-off, but not wanting to get into the dozens with someone he was asking for help, whatever the fuck that might be. Luke imagined that this was probably a skill a politician had to have to get anywhere in his line of work.