City of Secrets Page 3

  “What areas are those?”

  “Areas without lights.” Which means about seventy-five percent of the city at the moment. “Just don’t shoot me by accident.”

  “I’d like to put a radioman in with you.

  “Ride with me?”

  “You got a portable radio?”

  The radioman hustles from the second Humvee with two eight-inch portable radios, an M4 slung over his shoulder and a large backpack, which he puts on the floorboard of the Escalade’s back seat. Beau knows enough of military rank to see the heavy-set radioman is a Specialist-four.

  “Specialist Aligood,” the man announces as he climbs in. At least he keeps the M4 pointed skyward, propped between his knees as he fastens his seat belt.

  Beau introduces himself, shakes his hand, asks, “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four, sir.” Wide face and light brown hair when he takes off his hat. He doesn’t look twenty. He passes Beau a radio.

  “What’s your call number, sir?”

  “3124.”

  “No, on these radios. We’re Alpha platoon. I’m Alpha one-nine.”

  “I’ll be – Beau. Just Beau.”

  “There’s a Bravo, but no Beau.”

  “There is now.”

  “The lieutenant’s gonna want you to have a number, like Beau one-zero.”

  “What’s Avery’s call number?”

  “Alpha one-zero.”

  Beau calls Avery on the radio and the lieutenant answers immediately, must be holding the radio.

  “My call number will be – Beau. Ten-four?”

  “Roger. We say Roger.”

  “Good. Roger.”

  Beau slips his radio into one of the drink holders of the center console, smiles at Aligood. He props the blue light on the dash, starts up the engine, tells the guardsman, “I know y’all use ‘Roger’. Avery’s wound so tight getting me to not use ten-four, I slipped by without a number, didn’t I? Just Beau.” For some goofy reason, Beau is proud of himself.

  He leads the convoy to Lakeshore Drive and past the Coast Guard lighthouse. They continue as the road veers right to run beside the lake. Two raccoons scurry across the street in front of them, from the seawall to the levee and the ruined houses beyond.

  “Don’t see too many of them in Rhode Island,” Aligood says.

  Beau doesn’t want to hush him, doesn’t say it, but thinks - You won’t hear shit out there if you’re talking all the goddamn time. The AC is on in the Escalade, but Beau has all the windows half down.

  “A distant relative of mine fought at the Battle of New Orleans,” declares the Rhode Islander. At least Aligood is looking around as he talks. “You have any ancestors who fought there?

  Beau shakes his head. “I had ancestors at the Little Big Horn.”

  “With Custer?”

  “No, the other side.”

  “You’re Indian?”

  “Oglala Clan. Lakota, the true name of our tribe. Our enemies call us Sioux.”

  “What do you call yourself?” A direct man. Beau likes that.

  “Sioux. It sounds fiercer.” Beau raises a hand as he thinks he hears something, slows down as they approach Canal Boulevard. Whatever it is, it’s gone.

  “I’ll tell you one more thing about my family and then we need to quit talking. Can’t hear if we’re jabbering.”

  “OK.”

  “My great-great-great-great uncle was called Crazy Horse.”

  Aligood lets out a long, low whistle. Beau could be wrong on the number of ‘greats’ but it’s up there.

  Beau turns down Canal Boulevard and they take the four lane street into a world of nearly total devastation. Every house here flooded, some floated off their slabs, nearly all with markings on the door as they’d been checked for bodies, as well as a thick line around them like a belt, a water mark where the lake water had risen and remained for weeks before the pumps drained the city. A few skinny dogs peek at them from behind overturned cars, tumbled swing sets. The entire area is covered with a fine coating of dried mud. It is a brown world yet the dark green leaves of magnolia trees give a hint of color, along with the cypress trees that no amount of salt water could kill.

  Away from the salt water lake the smell of rot is stronger, dead foliage, dead animals, mildew. They turn left on Robert E. Lee Boulevard to run parallel to the lake, drive through Lakeview, neighborhood of upper middle class homes – once. They run past the back side of City Park and spot more coons, possums, a couple cats that do not look a bit hungry, unlike the dogs that scamper away from the convoy. Beau slows to a stop to let a mother duck and her seven ducklings cross the street.

  By the time they turn up Leon Simon to run through the shell of what once was the University of New Orleans, the daylight’s giving out. Beau turns into the campus and draws past the tall dormitories, brick buildings, to meander back to Lakeshore Drive.

  He points to the white art school, half its roof gone, most window broken. “Friend of mine used to pose nude for the art students.”

  “A professional model?”

  “No, a whore. Half-a-Hooker. Semi-pro prostitute. She liked to get naked in front of people and didn’t mind getting paid for it. Without all the cum.”

  Aligood stares at him real hard now.

  “Natural redhead. Said she liked getting all the boys worked up.”

  “Pretty?”

  “You know Jessica Love Hewitt?”

  “You mean Jennifer Love Hewitt.”

  “Whatever. My redhead made her look like a chubby boy.” Beau glances at Aligood. “Like you.” He gives up a half-smile.

  Aligood laughs. “I’m not chubby. I just got big bones.”

  “So did I, around that particular redhead.”

  For a few moments Beau sees Sandie posing naked, her back arched. Then he sees her hiding behind her refrigerator door as a fuck-head named Mullet shoots at her with a .357 magnum. Beau shot the bastard, didn’t kill him however, but almost scalped him.

  They turn right on Lakeshore Drive. By the time they reach the Industrial Canal, it is dark and Beau turns the convoy down toward the river. He decides to take the side streets of the upper Ninth Ward, lower middle class and low class houses, before they head to the wooden shotgun houses of Bywater where they finally spot a pick-up truck riding along.

  Thankfully, the Humvees have sirens to go with their blue lights.

  Beau grabs Aligood’s arm as the guardsman goes to get out.

  He leans out the window and orders the driver to get out of the pickup, which has a Tennessee license plate.

  A tall, skinny black dude, maybe thirty gets out, opens his arms.

  “Police!” Beau says as he gets out. “Step into my headlights.”

  The man obliges, says, “I didn’t know the army was pulling people over.”

  A second black guy gets out the other side of the pickup, followed by a white boy, all around the same age.

  “Cover them,” Beau tells Aligood.

  It doesn’t take long to determine these are sightseers of a sort. Construction workers from the Industrial Canal. Beau asks Avery to get his men to search the truck for weapons.

  Beau hands the driver back his driver’s license, says, “You’re either looking for drugs or pussy and there isn’t any in this neighborhood.” He points down a side-street. “Go down to St. Claude Avenue. Two blocks and turn right. You’ll run into the French Quarter. They have lights on there.”

  “We can go?”

  Beau just thought the man was naturally the nervous type, but from the relief in his voice, the man’s scared.

  “What? You thought we were gonna beat you up, or something?”

  The two black guys exchange a look, the white boy says, “Well …”

  “You watch too much TV.” Beau backs away. “This is a bad neighborhood. Full of fuckin’ thugs who will kill you for that pickup.”

  “That was fun,” Aligood says as he buckles up again.

  Beau tosses the guards
man a bottle of cold water, tells him, “Don’t point your weapon at someone unless you plan to shoot them. This isn’t Iraq. Americans don’t like guns pointed in their face.”

  “You said cover them.”

  Beau picks up the radio, calls Avery. “Let’s head to the airport for refueling.”

  Beau leads them through the city to Earhart Boulevard to take the Earhart Expressway through Jefferson Parish up to Airline Highway. They arrive just as supper is served, hot MREs and bottled water.

  As Beau gasses up the Escalade, he nods Lt. Avery over, suggests the guardsmen keep their weapons pointed skyward during traffic stops. “Seeing the profile of an M4 is intimidating enough.”

  Avery glances over at the specialist filling up his Humvee. “We always have the safety on. You keep your safety on, don’t you?”

  Avery pulls off his cap, runs a hand through his thick, blond hair, tells his men to chow down.

  Beau eats with the firemen, nine of them from Baton Rouge. All talk too much, about the horrible food, the stinking fuckin’ city and LSU football. New coach had them on a roll, 6-1, with only an overtime loss to Tennessee. Les Miles put back to back wins against #11 Florida and #16 Auburn.

  Tiger Stadium. Beau tore up his knee there, spring game of his sophomore year. An unheralded quarterback who ran better than he threw, surprising the hell out of the coaches with his speed, elusiveness, before his knee got taken out. He never got his degree.

  Later – after two additional traffic stops but no Brown Ravens, they follow three fire engines to a house fire on Elysian Fields Avenue near what’s left of Brother Martin High School. The firemen keep the fire from spreading with the water in their engines. Still no water pressure. Beau is amazed how much water a fire engine carries.

  Eventually, they return to the lakefront and Aligood can’t keep quiet any longer.

  “Iraq wasn’t as bad as this. Sending them back into the stone age only put them back a couple years. Never thought I’d see a major American city wiped out like this.”

  “We’re not wiped out yet.”

  Aligood nods.

  As they pass the lighthouse, Beau yawns, says, “So, your unit was in Iraq?”

  “Desert Storm, but all we did was oversee POW camps.” Aligood yawns as well, then asks, “You ever been in combat?”

  “Just the Second and Sixth Districts.”

  Aligood pauses, then says, “I can’t figure out your sense of humor. If you’re being funny or making fun of me.”

  “It’s called the Bloody Sixth District for a reason. More murders than the rest of the city combined and we’ve been the Murder Capitol of America for a long time.”

  Beau turns off Lakeshore Drive for the marina.

  “You ever shoot anyone?”

  Beau tries not to snicker. “Y’all still sleeping at the airport?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They got some NOPD guys there. Ask them about me shooting people.” Beau turns into the marina, glancing over his shoulder. “We lost two hummers?”

  Surprisingly, Avery isn’t in the Humvee directly behind Beau.

  I better pay more attention to these guys.

  He backs the Escalade against the wall, climbs out. Aligood gets out and stretches.

  “I heard you tell the lieutenant about us getting lost. We get lost just about every day. This city’s streets are all cock-eyed.”

  Beau spots the missing Humvees pulling up now.

  “Impossible to get lost in New Orleans. Keep going straight and you’ll hit water. The river, the lake, the spillways eventually if you go all the way through Jefferson Parish, or the Rigolets in the east.”

  Avery come right over.

  “We ran over some weird creature.”

  “Tomorrow night, we start again at six p.m.” Beau holds up the portable radio. “You want this back?”

  Avery calls to his driver, then tells Beau they picked up a charger at the airport for him.

  “I see you have electricity. You wanna see this damn beast?”

  “You didn’t leave it?”

  “I never saw anything like this.” Avery backs toward his Humvee.

  His driver, a dark skinned , says, “I think it’s a beaver, sir.”

  “Beavers have fat tails.”

  Beau follows them over.

  “It’s a nutria. South American rodent. Not bad in gumbo.”

  “You eat this?” says the guardsman, whose name is Garcia.

  “Don’t your people eat stuff like this?” asks a grinning black guardsman with a name tag that reads Goins.

  “I’m from Chicago, you dumb ass.”

  Beau tells them nutria are pretty common around there.

  “They’re awfully big,” Goins says.

  “Look at them teeth!” this from Garcia.

  Back aboard Sad Lisa, Beau fixes a pot pie, opens a bag of Doritos, grabs an Abita beer and sits at his small table as the pie heats up. He thinks of Sandie posing for the art class but only for a moment. He remembers the face of another woman, one who meant a lot more to him then.

  She had dark brown hair and incredible blue-green aquamarine eyes, a full mouth, delicate lips that look sculptured. Angie Calogne was the New Orleans beauty. And it wasn’t just her sleek body and creamy skin, pale complexion she always enhanced with dark red lipstick. Her mind was a sharp as she was beautiful, kept him on his toes, a smart-aleck woman who missed nothing. She was a UNO student working part-time as a waitress right up the street, an old-fashioned diner called Flamingo’s Café that was later wiped out by Katrina, along with the rest of Bucktown.

  They were a couple for nearly two years before she’d had enough of his job, ran off to New York with a visiting professor from Columbia. Their final parting was the hardest night of Beau’s life. Some detective – he hadn’t a clue until she told him she was leaving, for good.

  When he tries to remember their steamy nights together, the lines of her lovely face, the smell of her hair, the curves of her body bathed in perspiration as they made love, he keeps returning to that final scene. Her standing just in the doorway and wearing a white blouse and faded jeans, hands in her back pockets.

  “What’s that?” her voice quivering. “Tears?” Her voice rose. “Now? There’s tears in your eyes? Well, it’s too late for that.” She couldn’t stop the tears in her eyes. She wiped them and he looked at her through blurry eyes.

  “Oh, John,” were her last words and she turned and left. It’s better the last scene is blurry. It keeps coming back with such clarity, sometimes like a punch in the chest and he still reaches for her when he wakes in the middle of the night.

  Beau goes to sleep as the sun rises but does not dream of Angie Calogne or Sandie or any woman. It is like a scene from a movie that plays in Beau’s subconscious – what’s it called? REM sleep, deep slumber with rapid eye movements behind closed eyelids. The dream begins as always with a wide, golden prairie where three Sioux warriors race their ponies, their long, black hair streaming behind them. The Sioux are stripped to the waist, chests and faces streaked with bright war paint, white feathers in their hair.

  Cousins of the Cheyenne, these are fierce braves, enemies of the Arapaho, the Crow and the white man. They have lived in the forests and plains since the dawn of their tribe. Teton Sioux ‘Dwellers on the Prairie’ who prefer to call themselves Lakota, the westernmost of the Sioux tribes, known for their hunting skills and warrior culture. These particular riders are of the Oglala Clan.

  Ahead of the three are six Crow warriors, black feathers in their hair. Caught hunting on Sioux land they race to get away. When the Oglala heard Crows were on their land, a war party took off, attacked immediately. Never turn away from the enemy. Always show him your face. Show him your spear and your arrows. Show him the way to the afterlife.

  A Crow’s horse stumbles and he tumbles hard to the ground. The other Crows pull up but only for a moment as the lead Sioux raises his spear, the war cry echoing from his lips, “Hiyaaa! Hiyaaa!”<
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  The five Crows still on horseback leave their companion, who hurriedly strings an arrow in his bow as the Sioux close on him. He raises it just as two arrows sink into his chest and he quivers and falls straight back as the lead Sioux pulls his pony to stop near the dead Crow. He raises his hand and the other two Sioux slow their horses and come close.

  The lead Sioux tells them the Crow died a brave man, let his brothers take his body. These Crow will never return to Sioux land. He turns his horse around and moves off, the other two following. He is a handsome man with chiseled features, his face painted with stripes, his body dotted with white spots. He raises his battle lance high overhead. He has Beau’s face.

  He is twenty years old. As a boy he was known as Curly. After he led his famous wild charge against the Arapaho, he became Crazy Horse. He will lead another charge, another day, on a dusty Montana plain near the Little Big Horn River against a man called Custer. Crazy Horse paints white dots on his body, signifying hail stones, for when he attacks, he comes as a storm.

  Beau sits up in bed, too early to get up, rolls over and goes back to sleep a dreamless sleep.

  Later, there is a knock on his door.

  “Beau? You in there, Baby?”

  The sunlight is so bright through the porthole he has to squint at his watch. Three forty-five p.m. That was a long sleep.

  “Ann?”

  “Yeah, Baby. You up?”

  “Yeah. Be right there.”

  He slips into a pair of shorts, opens the door to a tall woman with strawberry blond hair tied back in a pony tail. Ann Treadway is a couple years older than Beau and wears a gray, man’s undershirt – a wife-beater that doesn’t cover her pink panties. She’s barefoot and wears no make-up but still looks gorgeous.

  “Just came to tell you we’re back.”

  She reaches over and hugs him, pressing those full breasts against his naked chest.

  “Why?”

  She pulls away, give him a long look.

  “Gotta get back to work, Baby. The club’s up and runnin’ and Stu’s finally gettin’ a shot at Brennan’s. Two of their cooks haven’t come back.” She retreats a step. “Stu’s fixin’ red beans and rice. We picked up some boudin on our way in.” She reaches over, taps his flat stomach. “You lost weight. Come eat in about an hour.”