John Raven Beau

by O'Neil De Noux

  “It’s called good police work.”

  He shoves his glasses back up and settles in the seat. I tell him the plan. We’ll follow Mullet to see what uptown bars he frequents, maybe see who he hangs with. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll see who else lives with him. The place has three bikes parked out front.

  Gonzales pulls out his binoculars. “Can’t see any plates, except Mullet’s.” The bikes are pointed the wrong way.

  “So, how’d you find it?” Gonzales asks again. So I tell him and he laughs and agrees, it’s good to be good but better to be lucky. Six kids move into the playground and start tossing a football.

  “Think we can get a warrant?”

  I’m not sure if he’s serious or pulling my chain, so I say, “For what?”

  “To search Mullet’s. Maybe sneak in when he’s not there, come up with the gun or badges.”

  I tell him we don’t have enough to convince even the friendliest judge to give us a search warrant. Besides, once the neighbors see us go in, and they will, Mullet will know we know. If he’s our man.

  “Maybe we can convince Sandie to wear a wire. Get Mullet to incriminate himself.”

  I’ve run this by Sandie and she’s against it, big time.

  “I might have to let someone feel me up,” she said. “And my clothes are too skimpy. I’ll get caught.”

  The football bangs against the fence near us and one of the boys fetches it. He gives us a good stare. Without invisibility cloaks, Gonzales and I can do nothing but act as if it’s natural for two white boys to be parked in a plain-as-hell, four-door Chevrolet on So. Roman in the middle of the afternoon. Might as well be in a marked unit.

  “Good catch,” Gonzales says as one of the boys makes a one handed, running catch.

  “I was a running back. Didn’t catch many passes at Rummel.” Gonzales gleeks me again, peeking over the top of his sunglasses. “Believe it or not, I was all-district twice.”

  “I was all-state twice.”

  “No shit?” Gonzales sits up. “What position?”

  “Quarterback.”

  Gonzales removes his glasses. “You were an all-state quarterback. Which state?”

  “Here. Holy Ghost High School, Cannes Bruleé, Louisiana.”

  “Holy Ghost?” Gonzales’ voice is loud enough to get the boy’s attention. “Cannes what?”

  “Cannes Bruleé. It’s a village off Vermilion Bay.” I point to the boys who’ve stopped playing to watch us.

  Gonzales nods. “Village? You making this shit up, or what?”

  I crank up the engine.

  “Where we going?”

  The kids are moving our way slowly as I pull away. “We don’t wanna be the talk of the neighborhood.”

  Gonzales puts his sunglasses back on and gleeks the kids as we leave, then turns back to me. “All-state quarterback?

  “Holy Ghost is a 2A school. We won the state championship my junior and senior years.”

  Gonzales gives me a know-it-all look. “2A? OK.”

  That’s why he’s never heard of us. Archbishop Rummel and the other big Catholic schools in New Orleans are all 5A schools. Championship games on TV and all. I wheel the Caprice toward headquarters, taking our time.

  Gonzales still gives me this unbelieving look, as if he expects me to say I’m kidding any second. So I ask, “Did you play any college ball?”

  “Nope. You?”

  “LSU. Two years. Tore up my knee in spring practice my sophomore year.”

  Gonzales shakes his head. “You were a quarterback. At LSU?”

  “I wasn’t first string.”

  Gonzales folds his arms and tells me he’s going to check out this shit. I laugh. Hope I’m there to see his face when he calls the athletic department and finds it’s all true. An RTA bus pulls away from the curb and almost crashes into us. I brake hard and tap the siren as we breeze past. Fuckin’ ass-hole.

  “That school. Holy Ghost.” Gonzales pauses a moment. “Is that a senior high school?”

  Fuckin’ clown.

  We’re on Claiborne when Matt Sinclair calls me on the radio.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Just want to let you know Andrew Porter just made bail.”

  “Who?” I answer although the name’s vaguely familiar.

  “Your CI,” Sinclair reminds me and as soon as he says it I realize Andrew Porter is Felice’s old man.

  Jesus. Nearly fifty counts of burglary and he’s rolling out of Parish Prison.

  “What the fuck happened?” I ask Sinclair as I punch the accelerator.

  “What else? A judge reduced his bond. And you can’t say fuck on the radio.”

  “10-4.” I wheel the Caprice up the overpass to I-10. “And thanks,” I tell Sinclair before slamming my radio down on the seat. Gonzales gives me a minute before asking what the fuck was that. So I tell him the old, familiar story. How, in New Orleans, no bond is high enough because there’s always another judge who’ll come along and reduce the bond. Fuckin’ judges. I swerve around a minivan doing twenty in the fast lane and Gonzales holds on.

  “Where we going?”

  “Gotta find Felice before Porter does.”

  “Felice who?”

  I glance at Gonzales who has both hands on the dash board.

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you about her.”

  As I weave my way through the usual mob of dumb-ass drivers, I tell Gonzales the Felice story.

  “So,” he says when he can get a word in. “What’re we gonna do with her when we find her? You got room on your boat for a boarder?”

  They’re dingbats

  Felice walks into the apartment, stops next to a plush, beige sofa and turns back to me.

  “You know I can’t afford this.” Her face is drawn, void of make-up, which makes her look even younger than usual. She wears a cut-off tee-shirt and faded jeans, white tennis shoes with frayed laces.

  Jodie moves around me and says, “I told you, it’s free.”

  “Nothin’s free, white girl.” Felice puts a fist on her hip and looks around the apartment.

  Jodie moves through the living room and opens the bedroom door. I see a king-sized brass bed inside. Prim in a light-yellow suit, Jodie’s perfect page-boy hangs around her pale face. The living room looks like a display in an upscale furniture store. Porcelain lamps with white smoky-glass shades, a cream-colored love seat, a coffee table and matching end tables of reddish-brown cherry wood. A huge entertainment center, also made of cherry wood, covers and entire wall. There’s a state-of-the-art stereo system and a Zenith TV with a screen that has to be thirty inches. Gonzales lets out a high-pitched whistle. He’s still wearing his sunglasses.

  Felice drops her bag and moves into the bedroom.

  Jodie shrugs. “Told you. LaStanza’s wife owns the building. No problem.”

  “She that rich?” Gonzales asks.

  “Yep.” Jodie goes on to explain how LaStanza married into old world money, how his wife’s family owns banks in Switzerland and Luxembourg. Not to mention the biggest bank in Louisiana.

  Then Jodie smiles and says, “Next time I’ll wear a black tee-shirt too.” She taps a finger on the fleur-de-lis emblem on Gonzales’ tee-shirt. My tee-shirt is solid black and the dress shirt I wear over it is navy blue. I hear the toilet flush beyond the bedroom. Felice comes out shaking her head.

  “How long am I supposed to stay here?”

  “Until we can think of something,” I tell her.

  “What you gonna do. Kill Andy?”

  No, I tell her. We’re going to have a talk with him. Make sure he knows that if anything happens to her, I’ll scalp him. See how he likes going around with a scar covering his entire head.

  “Yeah.” Felice gives me a I-don’t-fuckin-believe-anything-you-say look and plops on the sofa.

  I reach under my dress shirt to the scabbard next to where my Glock is tucked in the waistband of my jeans. I pull out my nine-inch, black, obsidian Sioux hunting knife, step over and
show Felice the sharp side of the blade.

  “Sioux knives are sharpened on one side only. See?” I twist the knife back and forth.

  Gonzales lets out another high-pitched whistle.

  Felice folds her arms and says, “We have another problem.”

  “What?”

  She looks away. “Your killer,” she says dryly.

  Turning back she doesn’t blink those large chocolate eyes as she stares into mine. Then she says, “Your killer’s name is Clyde.”

  •

  Sitting at my desk chair, I look at the clock on the far wall. It’s seven-thirty in the morning and I’m so tired my eyes burn. The vulture wavers in its perch above the star-and-crescent badge.

  “What day is this?” I ask my partner.

  Gonzales is dozing in the desk chair next to my desk.

  “It’s Thursday, you dummy.” Tim Rothman steps up and leans on the corner of my desk. “Guess it’s no sense asking you why the fuck we been called here. You don’t even know what day it is.” He moves away and asks, “Coffee?”

  I nod and close my weary eyes. My mind won’t let me doze. Flashbacks of the last few days blink behind my closed eye-lids, like a videotape on fast-forward. Felice told us she came up with the name Clyde at a bar on Chef Menteur Highway. Seems Clyde, a scrawny white male with black and gray hair, has been shooting his mouth off that he used a Colt Python .357 magnum to murder two cops. Not many people know a Python was the murder weapon. Clyde drives a Harley. Another fuckin’ biker.

  An exhaustive check of police records surfaced too many Clydes with criminal records to narrow our search. Not one Harley-Davidson is registered to a Clyde anywhere in Louisiana. Un-be-fuckin-lievable. Besides, Felice has never seen him. The men who told her Clyde was shooting off his mouth were typical bar flies, ugly men with red, drinkers noses.

  Clyde could be the ‘tall, thin white man with salt-and-pepper hair’ the witnesses described from the Cochran murder. Mullet could be the ‘heavy-set white male with black hair’ seen standing over the body of P. J. Stevens. Maybe, just maybe, we have two important pieces of this puzzle.

  Felice’s old man, Andrew Porter, is just as hard to find. Everyone, and I mean everyone, we talked with claimed he skipped town as soon as he made bail. We put some fear into his relatives, but they didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with the wonderful Mr. Porter either.

  Four o’clock this morning, I had coffee with a drunken Sandie back at Cafe Du Mondé. No, she hadn’t been to bars searching for Mullet. She’d been out with Scrumptious and partied ‘hard into the night’. That quote was followed by a loud, “Woo. Woo. Party time!” Which caused an elderly man at the next table to spill his coffee.

  I took her home and left a note for her, telling her we had to talk when she was sober. I didn’t dare give her Mullet’s address. No telling what she’d do. I’d feel a lot better if I had more control over my informants.

  Bob Kay’s voice brings me out of my trance. I blink open my eyes and see the office is full now. Two-L Willson glares at me from the coffee pot area. I’m too tired to think of anything to say to fuck with him. Three men in nice suits stand next to Bob Kay at the front of the office. Kay is trying to get everyone’s attention. Rothman taps my shoulder and points to the Styrofoam cup of coffee on my desk.

  “Gotta be Feds,” I nod toward the suits as I turn myself around and dig my sunglasses out of my briefcase. At least the light from the federal radiance won’t hurt my eyes.

  Kay introduces the nice suits as FBI special agents. “They have something important to announce,” Kay says as he steps aside.

  The tallest of the agents, a balding man who looks a lot like Patrick Stewart of the U.S.S. Enterprise, Next Generation, steps forward and announces the FBI has prepared a psychological profile of the killer in the recent shootings of police officers. I take a sip of coffee. It’s tar black and tastes like bottom-of-the-pot grunge. I take another hit.

  The tall agent holds up a sheet of paper. “This psychological profile of our killer is being passed out to one and all.” The other two agents start passing around sheets of paper.

  Rothman leans close to me. “Did he say our killer? Who invited these chumps, anyway?”

  I fight back a yawn and take another hit of coffee. I wish it were stronger. I want to taste grounds. “Hey,” I tell Rothman, “I thought psychological profiles were just for sex killers.”

  “Yeah, but this is the FBI. They can do anything.” His eyes bulge in mock surprise.

  The agent arrives with the sheets of paper and I wave him off.

  “I’m drinking,” I explain, raising the coffee cup. He puts a sheet on my desk and hands one to Rothman. The tall agent tells us, in simplistic sentences, as if we’re school kids, that the FBI has marshaled its mighty resources, resulting in the profile, which he reads to us, point by point.

  “Number One. Subject is a white male between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-two.”

  “Number Two. Subject lives in the greater metropolitan area.”

  Somebody in the back coughs and it’s contagious as several more officers cough louder. Fuck, we thought he lived in Detroit. Rising slowly, I dig my mug out of my desk drawer, move to the coffee machine to start up another pot.

  “Number Three. The subject is left handed.”

  Jesus. They are good.

  “Number Four. The subject is not religious.”

  Somebody laughs aloud.

  “Damn,” Tony Dunn shouts. “There goes my church surveillances.”

  I empty two of the pre-packaged packs of coffee and chicory into the filter.

  “Number Five. The subject is single, however, if married, there is a great deal lot of stress in his married life.”

  “Yeah. He’s a fuckin’ killer!” Two-L finally says something intelligent.

  The Captain Picard look-a-like is unruffled. He waits for the chuckles to die down.

  “Number Six. The subject has a high school education, possibly some college.”

  College educated bikers. Why the fuck not? Could have gone to Auburn.

  “Number Seven. The subject is intelligent with an IQ between 120 and 130.”

  This is sounding more like science-fiction. I look back at the pot and it’s nearly full. I wipe out my mug. It was a gift from Jodie. It’s black with a neat red print that reads: If we’re not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?

  “Number Eight. The subject has a white collar job.”

  So much for my biker theory. I fill my mug and take a sip. It’s stronger and a little thicker than the grunge. All right. Weaving my way back to my desk, I see the FBI guys are winding down now. Sitting again, I lean back with my coffee and wait.

  Bob Kay takes over and assigns several men to work with the FBI and their profile. He looks my way but, thankfully, my sunglasses are enough to keep me out of that trick bag. I take another hit of coffee.

  The tall FBI guy steps forward again and asks if there are any questions about the profile. He seems perplexed that we have none. I look around and no one’s gonna do it. I can’t resist, so I pick up the sheet from my desk and raise my hand. He points a finger at me.

  “Excuse me, Captain Picard. Did you just beam down with this shit, or what?”

  Kay blanches. My comrades let out a long-held-in laugh, which reverberates. Gonzales finally wakes up and looks around as if he’s in a bad dream. Tony Dunn waits for everyone to catch their breath before he makes a gong sound, followed by a good imitation of a toilet flushing.

  “Hey, Beau?” Rothman shouts over the laughter. He has the coffee pot in hand. “What the fuck is this? Swamp piss?”

  •

  Before I go to work that evening, I find Angie at work, finally. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen her in a while, but she looks extra pretty. I don’t remember her uniform skirt being that short. Her legs look nice and sleek as she leads me to my seat. She’s done something to her hair. It looks fluffier. The sculptured lips,
painted in dark brown lipstick, smile nicely at me as I sit.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  She nods and tells me she’s been working mornings. At four p.m., I’m the only diner. I order the usual. She returns with my Barq’s, gives me a Marisa Tomei smile and says, “Are you still friends with Sharon Merraid like Mike Gonzales is friends with his old girlfriend?”

  “What?”

  “Like your partner. Do you just ‘hit her a lick every once in a while’?”

  The acid in my empty stomach churns. Her eyes stare intently at me. I let out a long sigh. “How do you know Sharon?” Instinctively, I’ve answered a question with a question. Lawyers have taught me that.

  “She’s been coming in here. We started talking about Sad Lisa. She’s very friendly.”

  Angie looks out the window, giving me a long look at her pretty face in profile. And it hits me again. She’s too young and too pretty and I’ve got too much shit going on in my life. Maybe I should just tell her yeah, I fucked Sharon. I’ll tell her Sharon is my occasional warm receptacle. I’ll say something stupid like that and run her off. But I don’t. Why? Because the way she asked. She’s interested in me. God knows why. My looks aren’t good enough to end my bad luck with women.

  Angie turns to me again and says, “Sharon thinks she’s still in love with you.”

  Jesus. What can I say? Do I give her the line Rhett Butler gave Scarlett when she told him she was in love with him? Do I say, “That’s her misfortune.”

  No. I’m no Rhett Butler. I tell her how it ended between Sharon and me.

  “She didn’t want me to be a cop. She wanted me to open a business, like a barber shop and we could live in back and I’d be there all the time.”

  Angie nods and puts her knee up on the bench across the table. Her skirt rises nicely.

  “It’s called nest building,” she tells me. “Women are nest builders. Men are hunter-gatherers. That’s why men hate to go to shopping malls with their girlfriends.”

  “Except your old boyfriend.”

  She almost smiles. Joe slides my plate on the counter and gives me a friendly wave. Angie retrieves my plate. As she returns, I tell her. “Hey. Maybe we could introduce Sharon to your old boyfriend.”