The Great Beau Read online

  The Great Beau

  O’Neil De Noux

  © 2017 O’Neil De Noux

  Published by

  Big Kiss Productions

  New Orleans

  First Printing 2017

  For Isaac Musselwhite – Thanks for the lessons

  Cover Art © Vincent De Noux 2017

  The Great Beau is a work of fiction. The incidents and characters described herein are a product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Author Web Site: http://www.oneildenoux.com

  Twitter: ONeilDeNoux

  This is New Orleans, a number of years AK – After Katrina

  THE WOMAN WITH the bag of ice pressed against the side of her face won’t look at Beau when he steps into the kitchen. A bald headed man with a phone pressed against his ear, turns to the woman and says, “It’s still going to voicemail.”

  An SRT officer brushes past Beau who follows the black-clad officer through the kitchen to a den where other SRT men are set up next to a sliding glass door. One raises binoculars to his eyes and looks through the glass door. Special Response Team Commander Lenny Schanbein looks at Beau and cringes. Beau and Schanbein went through the academy together. Like his men, Schanbein wears a thick flak-vest over a black uniform, a black helmet on his head. They look like enraged insects. Beyond the officer with the binocs stands an officer with a sniper rifle.

  They’re in a small brick house in Lakeview, one that flooded during Katrina and has been pasted back together. Beau eases over to look through the glass door at a long yard with a hurricane fence and a shed with its double doors open where a man sits in a recliner. They all know the man, Mike Agrippa – sitting there in a white undershirt and gray shorts with a stainless steel revolver pressed to his right temple.

  Sergeant Mike Agrippa, now a police pistol range officer, had been Beau’s training officer back in the Second District when Beau was a rookie. Through long days handling fifteen, sixteen calls each shift, through steamy nights of sudden violence filled and the constant smell of blood – aggravated batteries and rape cases, burglaries and car thefts, domestic violences, armed robberies and fist fights, stabbings, cuttings and shootings – Mike turned Beau from a wide-eyed rookie into a wily and skilled patrol officer able to be at an advantage no matter the call.

  Schanbein’s voice breaks the quiet.

  “Who called Homicide?” He raises a hand to correct himself. “Wait. Sorry, it’s Chief Inspector Beau, fellas. CIU. Comical Investigations Unit.”

  Critical Investigations Unit but Beau says nothing. He and Schanbein have never gotten along. No particular reason. Some cops just don’t jell. Schanbein keeps looking at him.

  Beau’s face remains expressionless, finally speaks, “I was in the neighborhood. Saw all the pretty blue lights outside.”

  Schanbein’s craggy face almost breaks into a smile. He shrugs. “Well, let’s hope we don’t need you.”

  “How long’s he been barricaded?”

  “Over an hour.” Schanbein glances at his watch. “Seventy-one minutes exactly.”

  Beau nods over his shoulder back to the kitchen. “His wife?”

  “Yep.”

  Beau never met Mrs. Agrippa. Mike is not the social type. Neither is Beau.

  He takes a few moments to look around the den, realizing he knows little about the man. Is he a hunter? Likes to fish? Is he a sports fan? There are no clues in the room. No deer heads on the wall, no stuffed bass or fishing poles. No Saints posters. Just some framed prints – scenes of old New Orleans, two Dana De Noux tree scenes and black and a couple white pictures of ancient crypts and walled tombs of Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1.

  Chief Inspector John Raven Beau stands 6’2”, a lean man with the look of the hawk – sharp, deep set eyes and thin nose like a raptor, a predator for sure. His dark brown hair is too long for a cop, even a plainclothesman. He likes the unkempt look and the five o’clock shadow dusting his square jaw.

  “Who’s the stiff on the phone?” Beau asks.

  “Police psychiatrist.” Schanbein gives Beau a pained look. He’s exactly Beau’s height but heavier. He should be around 32, same age as Beau.

  Beau steps back toward the kitchen. The stiff hangs up the phone and punches in a number as two more people crowd into the kitchen – a major and the police chaplain. Father Dennis Leonard moves to the wife and holds her free hand, the one not holding the bag of ice.

  Beau looks more closely at her. She’s in her forties, her face lined and her short brown hair just starting to gray. The wife’s voice quivers. “He never hit me before. Ever.” She starts crying, then quickly adds, “He came home angry last night and I started in on him about the cabinets this morning. Need fixing.” She wipes her eyes and takes in a deep breath. “He blew up. Blows up a lot. Yells but never, never hit me before –,” her voice fades and she adds, “ – now.”

  She readjusts the bag and Beau sees a bruise under her left eye.

  He steps out of the kitchen, back through the room with the SRT men and out the back door and keeps going, off the small back porch, across the lawn to the shed, slowing as he approaches.

  “Sarge?”

  Mike doesn’t move so Beau tries again. “Sarge!”

  His head turns Beau’s way and Beau nods, steps closer. Mike Agrippa’s eyes widen as Beau eases up to the shed and sits on a metal folding chair just inside the open doors. They’re about fifteen feet apart.

  “They sent you?”

  “Nobody sent me.”

  Mike looks across the yard to the sliding glass door, then back at Beau. “You’re – uh. You not supposed to get this close to … someone with a gun to his head.”

  “I know.”

  Beau looks around the shed. A red lawnmower is pressed into a corner with two gas cans and a weed eater, a rake and ladder against the back wall. Couple of white and red ice chests. A work table with a saw and stacks of tools all neat. Too clean to be a shed.

  “Why you here?”

  Beau looks back at Mike and says, “Came to sit with you.”

  Mike re-adjusts the gun’s muzzle against his temple and Beau sees it’s a .357 magnum revolver, its hammer cocked.

  “You come to a room with an expert marksman with a gun to his head and just wanna sit? You’re crazier than me.”

  “No one else was coming over.”

  Mike points his free hand at the cell phone in the arm rest. “They keep calling me.” He takes in a deep breath. “What if I take you with me?” His voice deepens, anger in it now.

  “What would be the point?”

  Mike takes in another deep breath and goose bumps rise on Beau’s arms. He can’t help staring into Mike’s eyes.

  He moves that gun I gotta jump and pray.

  Beau’s 9mm Glock G40 sits snug its carbon fiber holster on his right hip. He wears a black T-shirt and dark gray 511 tactical police pants with seven pockets and black Sketchers running shoes.

  The wildness in Mike’s eyes fades and one eye narrows at Beau.

  “OK,” he says. “Mister Big Shot Homicide Detective. You talk me outta this and you’re a big hero.”

  Beau just stares back.

  Mike’s sweating big time and it’s not hot at all. An almost cool early morning breeze from the lake flows over them.

  “They called Homicide?” he asks.

  “Nope.”

  “That’s right. CIU.”

  “I told you. Nobody called.”

  Mike keeps staring. “Yo
u just the cowboy they all wanna be, huh?”

  “Cowboy? Unfortunate word for me.”

  “Yeah. Sioux. Remember when I called you an Injun and you said something about scalping me.”

  Don’t remember that exactly but Beau usually warns people who call him Injun that it’s a racial slur before he shows them his obsidian knife, the one sharpened on one side only, the way plains warriors sharpen their knives to skin buffalo or take a scalp or two.

  The cell phone goes off and both jump.

  What’s that song?

  Mike glances at the screen but doesn’t touch the phone.

  Beau realizes ring tone is the theme from The Magnificent Seven.

  As soon as the phone goes silent, Beau’s iPhone starts up.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “What is that? French?”

  “French singer. The song’s called J’en Ai Marre.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “You got me. Caught the singer on You Tube, hot looking brunette.”

  Sweat steams down the side of Mike’s face, the pistol shimmies in his hand.

  “Why are you really here?”

  Beau looks toward the sliding door. “They’re all yakking over there, not knowing what the hell to do. I just thought one of us should come over and sit with you until you decide.”

  “To do it or not, right?”

  Beau nods.

  “One of us? Mike snarls. “You gonna start telling me we’re all family. Brother cops and all that shit.”

  Beau shakes his head slowly.

  “So what’s your plan, Mister Chief Inspector?”

  “Sit here a while.”

  The man’s messed up. His face looks pallid, his eyes bleary. He’s tired, drained. The man’s been beaten down. He’s gotta be fifty-something now. Been on the job a good twenty-five, thirty years.

  “My wife out there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How bad did I hurt her?”

  “She’s got a bag of ice against the side of her face. That’s all.”

  “Get outta here.” He snaps at Beau.

  Beau feels his heartbeat now and takes in a deep breath. He looks back out the sliding door.

  “I been down a while.” Mike’s voice is distant. “Long time. Tell my wife I love her.”

  “Tell her yourself.”

  He turns to Beau, the gun quivering in his hand. “You’re not gonna talk me outta this. There’s nothing you can say or do.” He closes his eyes and sucks in a deep breath. “I know all about suicide and temporary depression, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about that. The pain is real, man.” The eyes snap open. “And un … relenting.”

  “There’s medicines –”

  “I know!” He glares at Beau. “I know. Anti-anxiety pills. Anti-depressants. But they won’t cure me. Dulling it won’t end the pain.” He pulls the gun away from his temple and waves it over his head. “Only this will end the pain.”

  He gasps, takes in another breath and says, “I hit my wife, man. I hit her.”

  Mike shoves the muzzle against his temple and Beau hears his heart stammering in his ear as the seconds tick by, slow and purposeful.

  “I brought the anger. I took it out on her.” Mike’s eyes grow wet. “I let the cop into the house. I brought him in.” A tear starts down the man’s face. “I brought all the shit we do out there, all of it, into the house and took it out on her.”

  He leans back on the recliner and closes his eyes, the gun shaking again.

  “I been bringing the cop home for years. Yelling. Breaking things. But I never hit her. Ever.” His lips tremble. “Until now.”

  They both know the monster dwelling in them, how they use it in verbal confrontations with people, the cursing, the screaming at people to let it out so you don’t pummel some smart-ass to death. See too much shit and not able to do anything except slap handcuffs on wrists.

  Beau wants to say it but doesn’t. Mike knows it.

  We come out of the academy and it’s us against the bad guys. It doesn’t take long before it’s us against everyone who doesn’t wear blue. Everyone, even kin.

  “Must be easy for you,” Agrippa says. “How many you shot?”

  No. He thinks since I’ve been able to do what so many cops dream of doing, of personally ending a criminal’s career, I’ve found relief. But there’s no relief.

  “How many?”

  Beau answers in a whisper, “Too many.”

  “Remind me,” Mike says and that’s good. If he wants me to talk about it, if he wants to hear about it, maybe, just maybe they can pass some time, maybe this will … deflate.

  “You were there for the first. Dude in the cowboy outfit outside the Second District Station.”

  “I remember. Ten-gallon hat, leather vest, boots and spurs, two nickel-plated revolvers in a double holster rig. Shot at Rothman and some other cops. I got there late.”

  “Went up and dared three cops to draw. They laughed so he pulled out both six guns and peppered the front of the stationhouse. I dropped him with two shots. Caught hell for it. Indian kills cowboy.”

  Mike nods, eyes closed again. “There were more.”

  “Market Street.”

  “Murderer you caught in the old warehouse.”

  “Yep. Then the armed robber from the K&B, Carrollton and Claiborne, got into a running gun battle with ten units. Fifty-four shots fired by police. Three hit the robber. All mine. The next was a rape-in-progress call. Rapist charged at me with a butcher knife. Then I shot the man who shot Cassandra Smith.

  “Cop killer.”

  “Got him in Exchange Alley.”

  “That’s four.”

  “Then Bayou Sauvage.”

  “Don’t know that one.”

  “Another cop killer. Clyde Pailet.”

  Clyde was a swamp rat who drew Beau into the swamp. Big mistake against a man raised on Vermilion Bay. Half Sioux and Half Cajun John Raven Beau. Deadly combination that Pailet discovered.

  “Last one was Lee Circle.”

  “Page one in both papers. Prostitute case, right?”

  I don’t go into the shootings right after Katrina. The ones that never happened – officially. That wasn’t me, anyway. It was some sort of shadow-warrior, hunting down vermin. And as I sit here, I wonder if that’s what’s kept me from putting a gun against the side of my head. Has killing men let me release the pressure, let the steam out?

  “I never shot anyone,” he says.

  “Then you’re lucky.”

  Sergeant Mike Agrippa opens his eyes and smiles at Beau and the hair stands up on Beau’s arms.

  No. Don’t smile. Don’t –

  The explosion is loud in the confines of the shed and Beau feels like he’s been punched in the chest. The sound reverberates with blood and brains flying through the air. Mike’s body quivers and slowly slides to the floor. Beau realizes he’s surprised Mike actually did it. Didn’t think he’d go through with it. He steps over to see the top of Mike’s head gone and knows it’s no use.

  Footsteps rush in. Schanbein and two EMTs push by, one carrying a medical bag. Beau backs away, steps out and looks at the sliding door. The man with the binoculars stares at him and Beau turns his face to the bright sun rising in the East and closes his eyes. The ache in his chest deepens and he takes deep breaths, but not deep enough for anyone to notice. His right hand feels stiff and he opens and closes it.

  The widow stands in the back door of the house as he crosses the yard. She watches him though tear-filled eyes. He walks up and looks down into them and she slowly bows her head.

  “What happened?” asks the major.

  “Ask the guy with the binocs,” Beau says as he keeps looking the widow.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” This from the major. “I want a full report.” The major points to the psychiatrist. “Report to him for debriefing.”

  “I’ll put it in a daily.”

  “No daily report. I want a full report. You�
��re gonna be debriefed by the police psychiatrist.”

  Beau turns and focuses his deep set eyes on the major. “I don’t work for you.”

  The man takes a menacing step forward and Beau’s hands turn into fists.

  Come on, ass-hole.

  The major’s chin goes up. He’s a good five inches shorter than Beau.

  “That’s right. You answer only to the chief.”

  “You got that fuckin’ right.”

  A familiar face appears behind the major, an angry black face that growls, turns everyone to him. Lieutenant Dennis Merten says, “This is a Homicide Case. I’m in charge now and he’ll put it in a daily.”

  The widow’s hand grabs Beau’s hand.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He was sorry he hit you. He said he loved you.”

  She’s a strong woman, standing there staring at him, wiping the tears from her face.

  “They told me who you are. Why’d you go over there?”

  “Nobody else was going.”

  For now that’s it.

  Later, I’ll drop in on her and tell her about the cop we should never let into the house. I’ll tell her later.

  Two more police cars pull up as Beau steps over to his black GMC SUV. The pretty French singer Alizée starts singing the chorus of J’en Ai Marre again and Beau looks at the iPhone screen that reads – Janet Féroce.

  He answers right away, “Yes, Chief.”

  “You busy?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Can you meet me on Prytania, first house off Philip Street. Downtown-river side?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  She hangs up and Beau sees the time on the screen. 7:02 a.m. The Chief’s up early.

  TWO UNIFORMED OFFICERS stand just outside the black wrought iron gate in front of a three story, white mansion. Both wear dark sunglass with their sky blue shirts and navy blue pants, canvas gunbelts crowded with a double retention holster for the 9mm Glock semi-automatic pistol, canvas pouch with two sets of stainless steel handcuffs, canvas pouch with pepper spray, canvas holder with a black metal retractable Asp self-defense weapon, yellow taser in a cross-drawn holster, canvas pouch for their portable radio and canvas pouch for their smart phones. On their shirts, above their hearts is a silver star-and-crescent NOPD badge.