Luke had a week to bask in the backslapping and free drinks and enhanced media stardom before the shit, whoever or whatever started throwing it, began hitting the fan.
24
You asking me whether the Swamp Alligators just couldn’t be let loose in the civilized and moneymaking quarters of New Orleans without succumbing to the temptations of their fetid criminal natures to rob and loot and generally do what comes natural when the police allowed them to rampage out of their cages, or whether it was ringers and agents provocateurs that started the riots?
Well, that was a political question from the git-go, no neutrals in that foxhole, and it’s been like that ever since.
There were many, and still are, who need no conspiracy theory to explain why human apes would inevitably go apeshit on their own. But the bill to send in the National Guard was scheduled for a vote the week it happened, and it was going to be close, and even if it did pass there weren’t going to be enough votes to overturn Mama Legba’s promised veto. So the rioting in New Orleans was not exactly the gift of the gods to the People’s Police, seeing as how it suddenly meant that the bill became sure to pass by a wide enough margin to overturn a Mama Legba veto.
So you’ll pardon a cynic like yours truly for believing that even if agents provocateurs might not have been needed, those in the process of trying to send in the National Guard would hardly have left the cashing-in on such a golden opportunity to their own reading of the law of the jungle.
Even at the time, I found it hard to blame the Alligators alone for the damage done to my saloon when the rioting spread out of Jackson Square and into the Quarter. It seemed more than a tad suspicious that it started independently around City Hall and in Jackson Square at the same time, as the sun was beginning to go down on two peaceful scenes, a reasonably orderly and organized political protest and the same sort of thing transformed into the kind of permanent happy carnival that was to give me the idea of the Eternal Mardi Gras much water down the Mississippi later.
A few fistfights break out, someone hits someone else with a bottle, someone snatches someone else’s roll of cash, someone kicks over a three-card monte table, someone pulls a knife, is that a gun, wise guys start copping feels, and it starts spreading from dozens of little independent ruckuses, and they pool together like the blood on a slaughterhouse floor, and the smell of it is in the air, and yeah, some of the Alligators snorting it do begin to go apeshit.
And once that happens, the People’s Police moves in to try and cool things out, which only makes it worse. The rioters—by now that’s what they are, and there are plenty of drunken tourists and drunkenly improper folks from New Orleans Proper among ’em now too—flee, or get chased by the cops, out of the Square and away from City Hall, up the adjacent feeder streets and spread out into the city, where there’s goodies in the store windows and booze in the liquor-store windows available for free if you’re willing to smash some glass, why not under the circumstances.…
And then the TV cameras show up, and everyone tries for their badass fifteen seconds of fame, and the cops are constrained to run around like chickens with their heads cut off ’cause this is chaos for coping with which there can’t be a plan, and you got looting and rioting in the Big Easy over no-one-really-knows-what and no one really cares.
Among the participants, that is. Up there in Baton Rouge, they cared a whole lot.
* * *
MaryLou Boudreau, aka Mama Legba, aka the Voodoo Queen Governor of Louisiana fretfully fingered the first legislation that had ever arrived on her desk for signature at a total loss for figuring out what in hell to do with it.
The legislature had used the news of the riots to ram through the bill requiring the National Guard to go down there and restore the rule of law and righteous civilization to the so-called Big Easy.
If she signed it, she would break her own word, and New Orleans was screwed. If she vetoed it, she’d be keeping her word, but New Orleans would be screwed anyway because according to Lafitte, there were now enough votes to easily override her veto. Nor could she sit on it and do nothing for very long with rioting running out of control in New Orleans, because the legislature would impeach her and get the lieutenant governor who took her place to sign it.
Seemed like no matter what she did or didn’t do, the legislature was going to send the National Guard into the city, and that was going to be like napalming a forest fire from helicopters. Even the middle class of the Big Easy, what was left of it, loathed the National Guard as redneck storm troopers practically from another country, besides which local police forces always went bugfuck or tried to at outside intrusions on their turf.
Why couldn’t the assholes see that?
Or worse still, maybe they did?
Well, what am I supposed to do now, Erzuli? Marylou Boudreau found herself pleading inside her own head out of force of habit as she sat there all alone in the gubernatorial hot seat waiting for Colonel Hathaway.
But Erzuli wasn’t there. Erzuli and the Supernatural Krewe had done a fast fade into the wings when the news of the rioting in New Orleans reached Baton Rouge.
What can I tell you, hon’, this wasn’t supposed to happen, Erzuli had told her. We’ve got our powers, and you’ve got your powers. We had the power to hold back a whole Hurricane Season, but we’re not any more perfect than you are, and especially when it comes to what you call politics and we call turf battle. And believe me or not, a lot of us are no happier with what Baron Samedi gone and done than you are. He’s maybe the strongest among us, but that don’t make him the smartest! He may be a wise guy, but that don’t make him wise. You know what he said about the mess he’s made?
I suppose you’re gonna tell me.
I’m the loa of death, am I not? The loa of necessary destruction.
Terrific!
Look, MaryLou, okay, we got you into this, but you did sorta ask for it, didn’t you, and now you’re governor of Louisiana, and the show called Mama Legba and Her Supernatural Krewe is over, and your Supernatural Krewe would be way in over our heads if we had any. So you’re on your own, hon’.
It’s not fair! It’s not just! It’s not moral!
Fair? Just? Moral? Hey, we just don’t understand what those words mean, And maybe y’all don’t either.
And I was thinking you were my friend!
You were the best horse I ever had, and I been thinking we had a good long ride together. So I’m givin’ you back your freedom, MaryLou. You really gonna tell me you don’t want it?
* * *
“You’re going to have to command the operation whether I give you the order or the legislature does,” the governor told Colonel Hathaway, “so tell me what to do.”
Mama Legba didn’t look like a satanic Voodoo Queen now, she looked a lot more like a lost little girl who was in way over her head and knew it.
If Satan had been inside her, if the Prince of Darkness was responsible for this situation, it would seem to have gotten out of hand even as far as He was concerned, and He had fled the scene of His own crime.
This was just one more civilian leader dropping a mess of their own making into the lap of the military. “What are you asking me to tell you? My tactical plans for quelling the riots?”
The governor waved a sheath of paper in his face. “Whether I should sign this thing or not!” she screamed shrilly. “Whether I order you in or let the legislature do it, that’s what it’s down to!”
“Is it?” Hathaway found himself blurting. “From my perspective, what it’s going to come down to is whether I obey the order or not. I’ve left that an open question—just as you wanted me to, remember, Governor.”
“I can’t take any more of this shit!” the voice of MaryLou Boudreau cried forlornly. “I don’t know what to do and no one will tell me!”
“You should’ve thought of days like this when you ran for office.”
“You think I ever really wanted to be elected?”
And then the governor more
or less pulled herself together. “Okay, Colonel, two can play pass-the-hot-potato. As governor of the state of Louisiana, I’m officially giving you the order now. What are you going to do about it?”
I could just resign, Terrence Hathaway suddenly realized. But he couldn’t say it, he couldn’t say it because he couldn’t do it. The temptation was there, but no commanding officer could preserve his honor by walking away from a distasteful, dire, or even suicidal duty with the lives and property he had sworn an oath to protect at stake.
Besides which, they’d only appoint someone else to do it, and the result would be the same.
Or would it? He at least would escape blame for whatever that result would be.
Oh no I wouldn’t! Terrence told himself. Not the blight on my own soul!
For that had been a most un-Christian thought. No true Christian would hand over this cross to another! No true Christian with the responsibility and unwelcome opportunity to save the people of New Orleans from their own madness could walk away without trying. He might have thought an unthinkable thought, but doing the deed was doubly unthinkable.
His duty as an officer, and a Christian were the same, and that was some brave comfort, but what exactly was that in real world tactical terms?
“What are your orders?”
“I just told you, take the National Guard into New Orleans and stop the rioting!”
“Under what rules of engagement?”
It was a perfectly automatic next question for any commander to ask upon being ordered on a mission. But this time something else was resonating with Terrence Hathaway’s military mind, for in his Christian heart, he realized that rules of engagement had more than one aspect.
The military rules of engagement defined the limits of the force, weapons, and tactics to be used, and in a situation like this, also the level of acceptable collateral damage and casualties. But the Christian rules of engagement defined the collective good to be fought for and hopefully achieved by the military action, defined his moral duty.
And gaining that clarity of soul began to clarify Colonel Hathaway’s mind. “Neither of us wants to do this, but both of us know that it has to be done, besides which, we can’t stop it,” he told the governor. “But you and I, right here, right now, can, and should, set the rules of engagement.”
It was definitely MaryLou Beaudreau who gave him that look of a deer caught in the headlights.
“If you order the National Guard into New Orleans by your authority as governor, you set the rules of engagement,” Hathaway explained crisply but patiently, almost as he would to his own daughter. “If you don’t, the legislature will, and they’ll set rules of engagement which will be mass arrests, water cannon, whatever means necessary, arresting Luke Martin and the leadership of the People’s Police, bloodbath or not. And there are indications that the rioting may, shall we say, not have been entirely spontaneous.”
“Meaning what, Colonel Hathaway? I’m not sure I understand … Or maybe I don’t want to.…”
“Maybe I don’t want to understand either, but I’m afraid I do. Because I’m afraid that that’s what they really want me to do, and spontaneous or not, the rioting certainly seems to serve what seems to be their real purpose.…”
“To take control of the city away from the People’s Police in the name of restoring order and use it as cover to make the National Guard do what they won’t? Enforce all those foreclosures…?”
Hathaway nodded. “And perhaps even under martial law. And if the legislature gives the order, it sets the rules of engagement, and if it does, it could mean martial law. But if you set the rules of engagement right now, I will be legally and morally bound to obey them.”
MaryLou Boudreau seemed to be studying him for a long confused moment. But then she seemed to be beginning to understand. “Look, Colonel Hathaway, I know nothing about martial law, or rules of engagement, or any of this stuff,” she told him with a certain less than entirely sincere naïveté, “but you do. So why don’t you just suggest the rules of engagement and I’ll just give the order.”
“No heavy ordnance. No provocative helicopters. No firing of live ammunition unless fired upon. No mass arrests where there is no mass violence. No enforcement of any law or regulation not currently being enforced by the People’s Police. No arrest of Martin or any other People’s Police officer.”
Governor Boudreau managed a fey little smile. “My, my, my, Colonel, a pacifist soldier.”
“A Christian soldier,” Colonel Hathaway corrected. “I’ll be commanding three thousand men or so if you authorize those numbers, and they’ll be armed with both lethal and nonlethal weapons.”
“Consider it so ordered,” said MaryLou Boudreau. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like to add one rule of engagement all my own.…”
“By all means, ma’am. You’re the governor.”
“You remain in command of the National Guard troops, but I order you to engage with the People’s Police. It’s still their city, not yours, not anyone else’s, and you are under their command, and not the other way around. And when the People’s Police tell you thank you very much, it’s time to leave, they throw you a great big farewell party, and you bring your boys home.”
“You mean we only serve as auxiliaries when called upon by the local police authorities?”
“You got it, Christian Soldier. How do you like it?”
“You know what,” said Terrence Hathaway with his first smile of the day, “I like it just fine.”
25
Superintendent Dick Mulligan made it abundantly clear to Captain Luke Martin that his appointment to “Deputy Assistant Chief of Police,” a position that had not existed before the governor ordered in the National Guard, was hardly a reward, not that he had to.
“You need the bullshit title which I’ve just invented because I’m appointing you the People’s Police liaison officer with the National Guard commander, and I’m appointing you because you created this mess and richly deserve to be our public fall guy. But don’t get the idea that you’re gonna be in command of anything, Martin. Your official job is to transmit my requests for National Guard backup to Hathaway, which will be as few and far between as possible. Your real job is to stick to Hathaway like a leech, appear to be the one giving the orders, and use the big mouth that stirred up the Alligators in the first place to somehow herd them back into the Swamp.”
“What Mulligan really told you is that he hasn’t a clue as to what to do,” Big Joe Roody told Luke, as if he had to. “And neither does Bradford or anyone else, me included. So the good news is you’re on you’re own. And the bad news is that you’re on your own.”
So much for official orders and helpful advice from Joe Roody, as Luke stood at the junction of the pedestrian entrance and the oval racetrack itself in the center of the Fairgrounds awaiting the imminent arrival of Colonel Hathaway and his troops.
At least the words from the birds around the Blue Meanie, paranoid or not, were a little more informative.
Cops who had been on duty when it happened agreed that the simultaneous outbreaks of rioting around Jackson Square and City Hall had been too well coordinated to be spontaneous, at least at first. A fistfight, maybe staged, a snatch-and-grab, tables overturned, knives being conspicuously flashed, and it was off to the races.
The department surveillance photos of Swamp Alligator gang members were fragmentary at best, since there were hardly any cameras posted in the Swamp, but not entirely nonexistent. But around Jackson Square there were plenty of cameras and even more so in the Business District and particularly anywhere near City Hall, so it was really odd that on opening day of the riots, there were virtually no matches.
The consensus was that Swamp Alligator gang members had not been present in any significant numbers and certainly not in organized groups when the rioting erupted, but there had been perhaps an unusual number of sightings of known professional perps of the sort that bounced in and out of Angola and would have been rea
dily available for modest fees and reduced sentences forked over by those with the power to do so.
Once the rioting became chaotic and the general looting by the great army of the unemployed and unemployable became general, organized teams of members of well-known Alligator gangs like the Fuck Yo Mothers, the Dirty Dicks, and the Vampire Bastards, some actually sporting the colors, emerged from the Swamp to take advantage of the cover of the general rioting by the needy and greedy to steal what could be stolen, and smash what could be smashed.
Consensus opinion was that certain interests who had the means to make the rioting happen made it happen and were pinning it on the Swamp Alligators in general.
Who might that be?
Whoever wanted the National Guard dispatched to New Orleans on the excuse of stopping it, of course. Whoever wanted to use the Guard to do the dirty work that the People’s Police wouldn’t do for them. Whoever delivered the paper bags to their flunkies in the state legislature. No one in the Blue Meanie wanted to embarrass themselves by asking the next question when the answer was so glaringly obvious.
The Fairgrounds had been the obvious and maybe only possible choice as the staging area for upward of three thousand troops. Up on the Gentilly Ridge, it was a straight shot down wide Esplanade Avenue to the French Quarter and with easy access to the Central Business District and the City Hall area too. Used to host outdoor music festivals, carnivals, and the like, it was mostly a big empty space when not full of tents, booths, stages, and other temporary structures, except for the horse-racing track in the center. It hadn’t been in use when the riots broke out, leaving the sanitary facilities for tens of thousands conveniently intact and empty.
And here came the National Guard, parading toward Luke around the racetrack, led by Colonel Hathaway dramatically standing ramrod straight in the back of an open Humvee as if there were a brass band behind him. There was no band, not even a bugler, no flag, no dress uniforms, just a seemingly endless curving line of Hummers, troop trucks, armored personnel carriers, motorcycles, busses, though at least no tanks or helicopter gunships.
The People's Police Page 19