Nine Lives

by Dan Baum

  “Hell no. But what the hell else am I going to do?”

  “You ought to come see Cannatella,” Smiegel said. “He’s commanding the Sixth.” Tim had known Anthony Cannatella as a lieutenant. He was old-school NOPD, from a family of cops. Whatever else you might say about him, he was a cop’s cop, not a brownnosing bureaucrat.

  “I can’t …”

  “Tell you something about Cannatella,” Steve said. “When you got thirty years on the force, you can retire at full pay. Cannatella’s got thirty-seven. So he’s been working seven years for free.”

  “He’s not going to want a nine-fingered cripple.”

  “Come with me to the Sixth. We’ll hang out, and if Cannatella’s there, you can see him.”

  Tim left the liquor-license records on his desk and loped up the corridor after Steve. He could disappear for hours and nobody would notice.

  The Sixth District station was a tall, modern building on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It was spare, cheap, and impersonal, but at least in good repair. “Is that Timmy Bruneau?” a gravelly voice shouted, and a bear of a man charged toward him, arms thrown open wide. It was Cannatella, a little older and heavier than Bruneau remembered, wearing the white shirt of a district commander. He was built like a street-corner mailbox, with a hard, round belly, no neck, and a heavy dome of a head. He wrapped Tim in a backbreaker of a hug. “Come in, come in, son.” Cannatella pulled him into his office, sat him in a straight chair, and collapsed into his swivel chair. The desk was covered with snow globes, paperweights, and a statue of the leaning tower of Pisa. “Well!” Cannatella said happily.

  “Well?”

  “You happy at Records?”

  “Uh …”

  “Of course not! You’re the police! Listen. You got injured doing police work. Far as I’m concerned, you’re a hero.”

  “Thank you.” Tim picked up something heavy from Cannatella’s desk that was holding down a stack of papers. He bounced it in his hand.

  “I was at Charity the day you got hit. My wife, too. They had you on four; they figured you weren’t going to make it.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Of course not. We could hardly see you for all the bandages and tubes. So: What’s your plan?”

  “I’m pretty much stuck in Records.”

  Cannatella slammed his hand down on the desk. “You want to do police work, this is where we do it.”

  Tim looked at the weight he was jouncing in his hand: a box of AK-47 rounds.

  “Maybe not on the street right away, but we can do better than Records, for God’s sake. Come with me.”

  Limping along behind Cannatella, Tim noticed the captain wasn’t wearing a gun, not even the miniature Glock most brass carried. It was odd, because Cannatella was no desk jockey. He was out all the time. “Why don’t you wear a gun?”

  “Got one in the car,” Cannatella said. “But after all these years, if I can’t talk my way out of trouble …” He stopped and opened a door. A bald man in plainclothes sat at a desk. “This is Tony,” Cannatella said. The man raised a hand in greeting.

  “Basically, you’ll be going over reports on any case that results in arrest. You look the paperwork over, make sure it’s complete, and if not, you send the arresting officer back out for more information. I’m tired of guys walking because the paperwork’s bad.”

  It wasn’t police work, but it was a lot closer than cataloging liquor-license applications in the Records room.

  “You two should get along,” Cannatella said. “Tony here was shot in the head a couple years back.”

  BILLY GRACE

  2525 ST. CHARLES AVENUE

  Mardi Gras 2004

  Billy climbed out of bed while it was still dark. He hadn’t slept much. The week leading up to Mardi Gras was one long party—too much food, too much alcohol, too much yakety-yak—and through it all, a million details to nail down. Even now, as he padded downstairs in his pajamas, his right ear felt the ghost of the cell phone that had spent much of the week pressed there. Yet he was oddly relaxed, as though cruise control had delivered him safely past every precipice, as though his fall from grace in the tax-collection affair had loosened the flywheel that once kept him revving too high.

  He made himself a cup of coffee in the second-floor kitchen. Soon it would be a mob scene, as the Gumbo Shop delivered rectangular pans of étouffée, rice, debris, and gumbo, and his in-laws and children hurried to prepare for the hundred-odd people who would pass through the house on this day of days. Billy glanced at the clock. He needed to swing by the Rex den in a warehouse on Claiborne to make sure the floats were ready to be towed to Napoleon Avenue. Then he had to get uptown to the Cascade Stables in Audubon to collect the horse on which he’d lead the parade as captain of Rex. (Billy eschewed the tradition of having a black groom lead the captain, so all week he’d been practicing riding.) He’d have to be in costume—plumed hat, mask, and gold-braided cape—no later than eleven.

  Billy drank his coffee, dressed, and crept downstairs as the sky brightened. Ivory was setting up the pots and burners for the crawfish boil. George was sweeping the metal bleachers in front. He didn’t look well—pale and splotchy. Billy could hear him breathing from across the yard. Nobody loved Mardi Gras, or the Rex organization, the way George did.

  All along the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground, people huddled in folding chairs, blankets wrapped around their shoulders, holding parade-watching spots. For as far as the eye could see, six-foot-tall stepladders sprouted from the grassy median, wheels like those off toy wagons bolted to the sides for easy dragging, makeshift wooden thrones nailed to the tops to hold children. Billy had never seen anything like New Orleans’s homemade mini-grandstands elsewhere, but then no other city had an event that would require them.

  “You ready?” Billy asked.

  “Suit’s all laid out,” George said.

  “You’ll be okay on the ladder? Liam or Robert could do it.”

  “Nah,” George said. “They don’t have the clothes.” He smiled and patted Billy’s arm, as though to say, let me be; there won’t be many more times I can enjoy the pleasure.

  Billy retrieved his bicycle from the carriage house, punched in the code for the big iron gate, and stood back as it creaked open with a bang. Emerging from the ivy-covered wall, he mounted the bike and turned right, away from familiar St. Charles Avenue, toward Carondelet Street. The Rex mansion, one of the premier addresses in the city, stood not two blocks from some of the most dangerous streets in New Orleans. Friends in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco went about their daily lives without ever seeing tumbledown houses, burglar-barred storefronts, or destitute people lounging on stoops. In New Orleans, no matter how much money you had in the bank, you looked on poverty every day.

  Billy pedaled up the shattered pavement of Second Street, through its notoriously violent intersection with Danneel. Up ahead, a car pulling a U-Haul trailer parked, and two black men climbed out. As Billy watched, they walked to the rear of the trailer and rolled up the gate. Billy hopped off his bike. A searing burst of yellow green—a man encased in feathers and plumes—climbed from the U-Haul, his hands raised to steady a four-foot-tall headdress. A smaller man—a boy—emerged behind him, wearing the same hallucinogenic shades of chartreuse. A third man jumped out, holding a standard, bright with ribbons, beads, and feathers: “Wild Magnolias.”

  Billy held his breath, as though bird-watching. Spy boy, flag boy, and chief. It had been years since he’d taken the time on Mardi Gras morning to go looking for Indians; in the swamp of middle-age duties, he’d forgotten the thrill.

  The Wild Magnolias’ spy boy trotted up Second Street. The flag boy followed, fluttering his primrose colors. The chief, his headdress fanning like a peacock’s halo, hung back with the men from the car, sipping beer.

  Billy mounted and rode up Second Street past them. “Good morning!” he called.

  “All right,” they said. Ahhite.

&nb
sp; Billy passed the flag boy, a coffee-colored Creole whose face gleamed with sweat. At the corner, Billy caught up to the spy boy, who was waving a canary green arm urgently up Saratoga Street. Coming toward them, about two blocks away, were half a dozen feathered-and-beaded men—dark blue with white, orange, and red. They looked wildly out of place among the sagging houses and beat-up cars. A small crowd in ordinary clothes followed, drumming and chanting.

  The Wild Magnolias’ flag boy turned back toward the chief and let out a sharp whistle. The chief set his beer bottle on the roof of the car, adjusted his fabulous headdress, and advanced.

  Billy backed away from the corner, to make room.

  The spy boy strutted up Saratoga Street, yelling, “Spy boy! Wild Magnolia spy boy!”

  The blue tribe hollered back, high, demented whoops, and the drummers chanted, “Nothin’ but trouble, nothin’ but trouble, nothin’ but trouble.”

  The chiefs met at last, and Billy gripped the handlebars, ready to bolt at the first sight of a knife. The chiefs bobbed and postured like gigantic roosters as the circle of drummers and chanters closed around them, filling the street with a racketing rhythm. As far as Billy could see, he was the only non-participant watching. The two chiefs shrieked gibberish, thrusting their heads forward and straining the cords in their necks, morning sunlight glinting off their sweat-streaming faces. They dipped so close to each other that their feathered headdresses closed like a blue and chartreuse clamshell. The drumming and chanting grew louder and faster. Then suddenly, as the drumming and chanting climaxed and Billy expected the scene to explode in blood and gunfire, the racket ceased, and the chiefs fell into each other’s arms, laughing. Everybody dropped out of character: a bunch of sweaty guys standing on a street corner in outlandish suits.

  One of the drummers, an old man in a newsboy’s cap, came running over to Billy and handed him an open can of beer. “That’s how young men should fight!” he said. “With words! And with pretty!” He laughed, a high, ecstatic laugh. It had been a long time since Billy had drunk a beer at eight in the morning. It was cold and delicious.

  Holding the can in one hand and brimming with the Mardi Gras love, Billy continued up Second to La Salle, turning left toward Washington. Across the street from a sinister-looking housing project, Shakespeare Park—a wretched, balding expanse of grass and broken playground equipment—teemed with life and color. Indians who’d finished battling were drinking beer and retelling the tales; others were just getting into their costumes.

  Billy was no more than half a mile from the Rex mansion, and it was like being on another planet. He marveled that all the years he’d spent these early Mardi Gras hours preparing for grand parades and the black-tie ball, these parallel traditions, equally unique to New Orleans, were taking place in the funky parts of town. Across the park, an old man with coppery skin and high cheekbones was being helped into a peach and white headdress. His suit bulged in great geometric patterns, every millimeter crusted with swirls of beads. Such an old man, Billy thought, with strength to parade, in that enormous suit.

  The man looked oddly familiar. The crown swung up onto his head, bigger, grander, and more complicated than any other in the park. Billy recognized the face from countless Times-Picayune profiles. It was Tootie Montana.

  As chairman of the mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Committee, Billy had often thought of calling the great peacemaker, the inventor of a whole new art form, the Mardi Gras Indian honored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Somehow, though, he’d never gotten around to making the call. He walked over. “Mr. Montana?”

  The old man looked up impatiently. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Billy Grace.” He put out a hand, but Montana was tying something at his waist, and Billy drew back. “I’m captain of the Rex organization.”

  Tootie looked Billy up and down, and Billy felt his otherness: polo shirt, boat shoes. Tootie nodded.

  “I’m chair of the mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Committee.”

  “Yeah,” Tootie said. Then, to one of his assistants, “Get the crown back a hair.”

  “Everybody’s got a role in carnival,” Billy said. “You certainly do.”

  “What’s your name again?”

  “Bill. Bill Grace.” Tootie nodded, eyes rolling up toward the spreading headdress, hands raised, moving it left, right, centering it.

  “I read that you make a new suit every year. Boy, that’s great. We’ve been using the same suit over and over for years. I guess that’s the point. We have to take it in and let it out.”

  Tootie grunted, adjusting his headdress.

  “You and I have a lot of common interests,” Billy said. “We should get together.”

  “All right,” Tootie said. “That’s fine.” Billy didn’t know if he meant getting together or that the crown was right. Tootie stood up, a sun god, suddenly twice as tall as Billy.

  “I’m in the phone book, on Villere Street,” he said. “Allison Montana.” He put out a knobby hand, encased in feathers and marvelous beadwork, and Billy shook it.

  Four hours later, Billy was sitting on a folding chair in the Rex den, in tights, tunic, and plumed helmet, pulling on a mask, wondering if he’d dreamed the whole thing.

  BELINDA RAWLINS

  5972 DREUX AVENUE

  2004

  “I think you should see this one,” Belinda said, cupping the cell phone at her cheek.

  “Does it have space?”

  She could hear horns in the background, though it was past five o’clock. “I think you should see it,” she said, adding sternly, “Wilbert.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I hear you.”

  This was house number—what? Fifty? She was starting to feel like a hamster on a wheel. It was his dream to own a home. She was fine with renting, but Wilbert talked about only two things: band and a home.

  This house seemed perfect. It was a neat, single-story, redbrick ranch with white shutters and trim, set on a big grassy corner lot. A white picket fence would look good. It sat just across the bridge in New Orleans East, not far from where Wil’s ma lived. It made Belinda sad that Wil’s da, who had encouraged her in the search and helped her envision it, would never get to see it. Sometimes she believed that she felt Da’s death more than Wil, or maybe she’d just processed it more. “Da’s gone? Gone where?” Wil had asked when Lawrence reached them on Wil’s cell phone with the news. She’d watched Wil harden up like a Jell-O mold, eyes cold, jaw stiff, and he’d stayed that way all the way through the wake and funeral while Lawrence, and Ma, Belinda, and the children had cried and cried.

  After a while the Lexus pulled up, and Wil stepped out, smiling so wide that Belinda could see his broken front tooth. Little Curtis ran to him. Wil treated him so much nicer than Curtis’s own father, and he was around so much more, that Curtis had stopped calling him Mr. Wil and started calling him Dad.

  The realtor let them in, and Wil let out a long sigh. The living room was huge. “Nice,” he said. They walked through the eat-in kitchen. “Nice.” They looked in on two large bedrooms and a bathroom with a shower and tub. “Nice.”

  “Come see the rest,” the realtor said.

  “There’s more?” Wil squeezed Belinda’s shoulder. They walked through a spacious utility room and separate laundry room and into a master suite with a bedroom almost as big as the living room. The bathroom had a two-person Jacuzzi tub.

  Wil leaned over and whispered in Belinda’s ear. “We can get this for one forty?”

  Without a word, she handed him the flyer, the price printed across the top: one eighteen.

  Wil walked back into the living room and, to the surprise of Belinda and the realtor, lay down on the polished wood floor. He put his hands behind his head and sighed. “Write up the contract!” he shouted. Curtis threw himself on top of Wil and hugged him. “I wish Da could see this,” Wil said, smiling up at Belinda.

  JOYCE MONTANA

  MOTHER-IN-LAW LOUNGE

  2004

  Joyce put h
er hand over her mouth and giggled. High above Claiborne Avenue, on the outer wall of Ernie K. Doe’s Mother-in-Law Lounge, loomed a giant painted likeness of her face. “They said they was going to put Tootie up there!” she said.

  “Can’t have Tootie without you, Miss Joyce.” Fred Johnson pointed at Tootie’s likeness on the other end of the facade. “Nobody’s ever seen one without the other.”

  He had gotten her right—and Tootie and Ernie, too. She’d be looking down on Claiborne Avenue forever.

  Fred led Joyce under the I-10 overpass. The crowd was noisy in the great concrete vault. Joyce remembered the graceful oaks that once shaded the commercial center of black New Orleans, a tunnel of green spreading above the neutral ground. They’d cut those oaks down in the 1950s, put up the interstate, and ruined Claiborne Avenue. Only the ghosts of the businesses remained—Cohen’s Formal Shop, the Basin Street Club, the Bottom Line, Jackie & George’s—mostly boarded-up storefronts flanked by the raised highway. It always made Joyce a little sad to gather under the I-10.

  It was Super Sunday, a new, third occasion for the suits to come out. Indians were running every which way in so many colors that Joyce’s eyes hurt. The blare of Rebirth Brass Band echoed off the underside of the freeway. The rain stopped, and Fred excused himself to run ahead and help with the arrangements at Hunter’s Field. Joyce fell in behind the horse-drawn cart carrying Tootie. Tootie sat on a bench behind the driver, facing sideways and wearing a radiant orange suit—much like the first of his fancy suits, but more elaborate, more heavily beaded and sequined. His crown was propped on a chair beside him. On his head he wore only his black Indian-braid wig. He was still ropy strong, but age had chiseled his face gaunt, and dark spots spread across his copper-colored cheekbones. He looked sad to be riding, like a prisoner on his way to the guillotine. All year, as they’d worked on the suit, he’d called it his last. Nobody believed him, because he’d said it each year since he’d made Darryl chief of the Yellow Pocahontas. He no longer had the wind to walk, and he rubbed his armpit a lot, saying it burned inside. Not that he’d go to a doctor; he was happy with garlic water.