“Why should I stick my nose in Mama Legba’s problems in Baton Rouge? Brown’s not the governor, and why should I care that Montrose isn’t either?”
“Because it’s gonna be your membership’s asses if the legislature gets away with overruling her and sending in the Guard, Roody.”
Big Joe wasn’t born yesterday, and he quickly changed his tune when I explained what the Republican legislature was up to.
“I’ll call you back after I talk to our lawyers,” he told me, and hung up. A couple of hours later, he did. “It might be legal, and it might not, meaning the State Supreme Court might do the deciding, and we both know Louisiana has the best Supreme Court money can buy. We can’t let it get that far.”
“So how do we stop it?”
“Not with legal eagles, and not with clout in the Republican legislature, which I sure don’t have.… Looks like we’re forced to try moral suasion. Terrence Hathaway is supposed to be a true Christian with a broomstick up his ass, that’s the only pressure point we have, you gotta have Mama Legba try to trap him between Jesus and the legislature…”
“How is she supposed to do that?”
“Leave my name out of it,” Big Joe Roody said, but more or less told me. And I more or less told the governor, and she more or less told me it had more or less worked, though she didn’t know how, her “Supernatural Krewe” had gotten through to Hathaway when she wasn’t there or something, and I felt no need to ask the next question.
Handling the Born-Again Christian Commander of the Louisiana National Guard proved far easier than a bad boy from the Big Easy could have imagined. When I got through to him on the phone, he needed no coaxing and little preparation. I just sent him the script I had one of my barfly writers crank out in return for a week’s free drinks. I then set up a “chance meeting” with a news crew supposedly on the way to cover something else in front of the state legislature building across the street from the statue of Huey Long giving it the postmortem finger, which seemed only appropriate.
The reporter I had coached stuck a microphone in his face, followed her own script, and popped the question.
“Colonel Hathaway, would you send the National Guard into New Orleans if so ordered by the governor, yes or no?”
“The governor has publicly promised never to do that, so until she goes back on her word in public, that’s a question I don’t have to answer, and don’t want to answer, so I won’t.”
“But if the legislature passed a bill ordering you to do it?”
“I would imagine that Mama Legba would veto it.”
“And if the legislature overrides her veto?”
“You’re asking me if that’s within their legal powers? I’m no lawyer, that’s for the courts to decide.”
“And if the courts say it is?”
Good old Hathaway paid attention to the camera for the first time, and spoke to it as directed. “I am sworn to obey the orders of the duly constituted civil authority. But I try to be a good Christian, and it was Martin Luther King who made a lot of us realize that it could sometimes be necessary for a good Christian to break the law and suffer the consequences. I was also a cadet at West Point where we studied the campaigns of Julius Caesar. So I’ll tell you what they say he said before the Rubicon…”
He paused as directed, turned his back on the reporter, and delivered the line over his shoulder as he dashed away.
“I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.”
* * *
Mayor Bradford had delivered Luke Martin’s promotion to lieutenant as promised even though Montrose hadn’t been elected governor. After all, Brown hadn’t been elected either, and Mama Legba, who had been, had made it clear that she would actually make good on at least one of her many campaign promises and keep the National Guard out of New Orleans.
Nor was Luke really in ill favor with Montrose, who was a lock to be elected mayor of New Orleans in two years, and he wasn’t even on the shit list of Superintendent Mulligan, although that had a lot to do with his being the fair-haired boy of Big Joe Roody, and Mulligan being more or less under Big Joe’s thumb.
Thanks in large part to Luke, a growing number of local upstate forces were joining the new Police Association of Louisiana that Big Joe had created for the purpose of welcoming them into what had been the Police Association of New Orleans, which was now the largest and dominant chapter of the statewide police union of which he was also overall president.
And as the price of admission, the local chapters who wanted to join had to accept its formal policy of refusing to enforce any eviction notices on anyone period, and some of them were even buying into the voluntary police policy now called “No victim, no arrest,” though only the New Orleans Police Department had taken to officially lettering “People’s Police” on their vehicles.
As the head of the expanded union, Big Joe now had much more real power than Mulligan as police commissioner, and even the lame duck mayor couldn’t afford to cross him, as Roody had explained to Luke with no little relish.
“The union is now running the People’s Police because we really are the people’s police force now, protecting them from the Loan Lizards, and sticking to ‘No victim, no arrest.’ We’re now the heroes of the same people used to hate our guts!”
“We are the law, Joe? That’s legal?”
Big Joe had laughed. “Who’s going to arrest us? In the real world, the law is always whatever laws the police force in question chooses to enforce, not always what the political powers that be order the cops to enforce. But now that the people believe we’re on their side, they’re on our side, and as long as they are, the likes of Bradford and Montrose, let alone Mulligan, know better than to fuck with the union. The assholes in Baton Rouge may be calling it a police insurrection, but I say it’s a genuine popular revolution. Though of course, not in public!”
But when word came down from Baton Rouge that the legislature was actually going to vote on a bill to order the National Guard into New Orleans to replace the People’s Police on their own sacred turf, and the head counts showed it was going to be a close call, Big Joe Roody wasn’t so cocksure, and wasn’t about to count on the Voodoo Queen Governor to veto it, seeing as how there seemed to already be a move on to impeach her if she did.
“Time for us to do more than flex our political muscle,” he told Luke upon summoning him to his office. “Time to use it to kill that damned thing before it passes. Time to raise up mass demonstrations against it, the legislature, and the National Guard.”
“Now you really are talking revolution, aren’t you, Joe?”
“They give us the name, we gotta play the game,” Roody told him. “And if the rats downtown squeak too loud about anything we do, we just threaten to arrest a few of them chosen at random on corruption charges or perversion charges; it’s not as if our friendly madams and bordello owners haven’t slipped us plenty of juicy footage on all of them in return for services not rendered to the letter of the law.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Joe?”
“And why the hell not! The unions in this country have been having their asses kicked ever since Reagan broke the air traffic controllers, so why shouldn’t a hard-assed union leader like me enjoy finally doing his fair share of the ass-kicking!”
“How we gonna do it, Joe?” Luke asked, though he was afraid he already knew the answer. Nor did Big Joe surprise him.
“You’re gonna do it, Lieutenant Martin! Captain Martin if we keep the fucking Guard out of here. Bradford and Montrose will be falling all over themselves to do it to keep you from running against one of them in the next election.”
“And how am I supposed to do it?”
“No sweat, Luke, you’re a natural, and anyway, you’ll have a script whenever you think you need it. You’re a voice from the people, of the People’s Police, and for the people who don’t want the National Guard down here, which last time I looked was just about everyone. O’Day’ll get you all the c
overage you can eat, starting with a kickoff rally in front of City Hall, been there done that, now haven’t you, only this time it won’t just be cops in the audience!”
And so Lieutenant Martin Luther Martin once again found himself standing under the roof of the rotunda in Duncan Plaza park across from City Hall with a script the gist of which he had more or less memorized.
But this time the park wasn’t filled with cops, the cops had cordoned off the entire area between Loyola Avenue and LaSalle Street and between Gravier Street and Perdido Street, to traffic, and the whole area was filled with citizens brought out by mayoral proclamation and a press release from Governor Mama Legba, waving homemade placards as well as the official ones proclaiming “Support Your People’s Police,” and “No Victim, No Crime.” And the bouquet of microphones and thicket of cameras were a lot bigger than what Luke remembered.
“On behalf of the People’s Police I want to thank you for your support of our No Victim, No Crime policy, and I’m here to tell ya that we’re gonna continue to protect y’all from the real criminals instead of rousting folks who just wanna have fun and those of you makin’ a more or less honest living givin’ ’em what they want!”
Luke paused for the shouts and applause, as the script suggested he should, and they came, along with shouts, the waving of placards and fists, and he couldn’t tell himself he didn’t enjoy it.
“And we all know who the real criminals are, now don’t we! The banks and the Loan Lizards swindled us with sweetheart loans turned to mortgages which no one works for a living can afford now that they turned the dollar into the superbuck! Stealin’ our houses and our shops and our farms and our land!”
Louder applause and cheers, angrier this time.
“Well, your People’s Police ain’t gonna let that happen here! Not now! Not ever!”
Foot stomping to that. And did he hear the chanting of his own name here and there too?
“Luke Martin! Luke Martin! LUKE MARTIN!”
Oh yes it was, and it was getting louder and louder.
That much was what they called on script, but you’re a voice from the people, wasn’t that what Big Joe had told him, of the People’s Police, and for the people, you’re a natural.
So why not be a natural? Why not just let her rip, and think about it later?
“Now there are upstate sewer rats and Holy Rollers in the best state legislature money can buy, owned hook, line, and stinker by the very same mofos wanna throw your asses into the streets so’s they can steal from you what they ain’t stolen already. And they’re fixin’ to send the National Guard into New Orleans to do the dirty work your People’s Police will never do for them. They hate New Orleans! They hate you! They hate you for knowing how to boogie! Because they hate boogying! Most of all they hate the People’s Police for letting it happen and protecting you from them!”
Whoo-ee!
Yeah, he could stay on script when it came to getting done what he was supposed to get done, but Big Joe had made it pretty clear that he didn’t care how what had to be said got said, so he could open up loud and clear however he wanted like a star rapper as long as he didn’t forget he was fronting for the People’s Police, not some musical act, that he was serving what he was learning to call with a straight face a political agenda.
“Now, Governor Mama Legba said loud and clear she’s not gonna do any such thing, she’s not gonna send in the National Guard, she’s gonna let the People’s Police be the People’s Police, she’s on our side, but in a few days from now the bought-and-paid-for legislature’s is gonna vote on a piece of shit to give them the power to send the Guard into New Orleans with orders to take back this city from your People’s Police and enforce their tight-assed upstate redneck version of every pissant law, rule, and regulation we’ve been keeping from hassling y’all. And arrest a bunch of your good People’s Police brothers and sisters for crimes against inhumanity. And throw thousands of you out of your homes.”
What he was saying was touching the required political bases, but the words and the music were his own rap, up through and out of him from someplace that had never been alive before.
“So it’s time to tell these mofos that anyone who dares to vote for that is gonna find his ass out in the street! Because you won’t vote for him next time around, and all the money in the world spent to bullshit you on election day won’t buy back his seat in the legislature. So your People’s Police are asking you to fill this park and Jackson Square twenty-four seven and let Baton Rouge know what’s good for them and what isn’t! Send ’em the message that if they vote to send the Guard in to mess with the Big Easy they can start collecting unemployment insurance and they had better not open their flannel mouths or show their pig faces in this city ever again!”
Luke paraded off the stage pumping his fist in the air and shouting, “No victim, No crime! Power to you! Power to the People! Power to your People’s Police!”
And while the words change every time he delivered The Speech, the message and the music stayed the same, and so did the exit line, and the more he did it, the easier it got, and the more fun it got to be, if that was what you could call what Martin Luther Martin was feeling, but if it was, it was a different kind of fun than Luke had ever had before.
Doing well by doing good!
No victim, No crime! Power to you! Power to the People! Power to your People’s Police!
They were selling T-shirts with the slogans to the locals all over town and even to tourists in the Quarter.
Luke Martin had not only found a cause he could wholeheartedly believe in for the first time in his life, he had found that there was nothing shameful about losing the sort of cynical innocence that would previously have soured his enjoyment of being the hero of a cause he believed in fighting for. No drug had ever given him a high like this! The look he saw in Luella’s eyes these days made him feel ten feet tall and the sex was off the scale.
Whoo-ee!
Doing well by doing good?
Luke was about ready to have it tattooed on his own lucky ass!
* * *
Occupying Duncan Plaza and Jackson Square was not in the script Luke Martin had been handed but an over-the-top ad lib that raised the ante big-time. Like one of those Occupy Wall Street or Whatever sit-in protests back in the day, but on steroids and Big Easy style.
The People’s Police kept not only Duncan Plaza but all the streets around City Hall closed to traffic night and day and the people kept them filled night and day, not pitching tents and sleeping over, but parading in and out in waves, with posters and banners and all, but also to the music of shifts of street bands, and even some name secondary parade acts.
Three sides of Jackson Square had long since been turned into pedestrian streets, but now the People’s Police had closed the whole block of Decatur, the main drag between the Square and the levee, to vehicular traffic too, creating a real mess in the heart of the Quarter. They kept the gates to the Square open twenty-four seven but banned camping out to allow room for the day and night Mad Mardi Gras block party jamming the park, the surrounding pedestrian streets, and Decatur.
Barbecue stands, gumbo stands, beer, whiskey, tequila, moonshine, and mixed drinks in paper cups, loose joints by the handful, hookers in and half out of porn gear, bands and musicians everywhere competing for attention and drawing costumed dancers—sex, drugs, rock and roll, with the People’s Police lookin’ on collecting cheers, applause, free drinks, and doobies.
No one seemed to know who had done it, but a high stage had been erected on a pipe framework right over the statue of Andrew Jackson in the center of the park, hiding it with red-white-and-blue drapery and the best bands by some mysterious popular choices took turns playing atop of it, accompanied by amateur naked ladies and naked gents.
After checking out the scene, I came up with what the media ended up calling the “Heads On Spears” game. Yup, it was ol’ J. B.’s idea, and the Pissing and Moaning Society was happy to pay for it, see
ing as how the party was overflowing out into the whole Quarter and the overflow was taking lucrative refuge in our welcoming establishments.
We put up a forest of poles tipped with outsize cartoon papier-mâché spearheads around the bottom of the stage. On each pole was the name and picture of a state legislator with the ol’ red crossed-circle stop sign around their heads, though here it was also a target crosshairs for the rotten eggs and tomatoes and putrid fruit that people were encouraged to throw at them for the TV cameras, though the People’s Police did draw the line at shit.
Would it have been enough to kill the bill making its way to a vote in the state legislature?
New Orleans and like-minded environs like to think so, but we all always seemed to forget that there are more people out there in the rest of the state who had as much fear and loathing for the wicked ways of the Big Easy as we had for these Bible Belt rednecks, which we of course never called them to their faces when they snuck down here for a sin break.
The truth was that it was still going to be a close thing. Upstate legislators’ votes were needed to defeat the bill to invade the city with National Guard storm troopers, as Martin and the like were so diplomatically putting it.
This was not gaining many upstate votes, but Big Joe Roody’s rebranded Police Association of Louisiana was working, or maybe creating, a grass-roots cop-brotherhood statewise, and if not that many of the upstate cops were buying into “No Victim, No Crime,” more and more local forces had adopted no foreclosures as official policy, and wherever they were, voting in the legislature to send the Guard into anywhere to serve as rent-a-cops for the Loan Lizards would be political suicide.
Even if the bill passed there wouldn’t have been the votes to overturn Mama Legba’s veto, that’s the way J. B. Lafitte sees it. But we’ll never know, now will we? Because Luke Martin went and dumped a mess of live alligators into the nicely simmering gumbo and it overboiled right out of the pot.
23
Luke had been invited or summoned or whatever he might want to call it to Baton Rouge by a personal phone call from the governor herself, MaryLou Boudreau, Mama Legba in human person, not some loa, an honor of a kind, but also a plea for help. So how could he refuse or want to, which he didn’t, and even if he did, Luella would never let him hear the end of it.
The People's Police Page 17