City of Secrets Read online

  She rolls her ass as she walks away. Beau grins at her. Men pay good money to see that ass when she’s up on stage. Ann’s been stripping for about six years now at Diamond Diane’s, one of the nicer clubs on Bourbon Street. Beau goes out on deck, sees Ann and Stu’s houseboat is across the pier now. Kate’s Delight, built before World War II in Hyannis Port, was once a fine yacht. Still seaworthy, it was a good old gal, bigger than Sad Lisa but Stu is a cook, Ann a stripper, and the boat needs a crew.

  Beau climbs into Reeboks, pulled on a tee-shirt, slides his badge and ID folder, stainless steel off-duty, .38 caliber Smith and Wesson in the 511 tactical runner’s pouch, pulls it around his shoulder to set it along his back like a back-pack, locks up and walks over to the high levee running along the lake on the Jefferson Parish side of the 17th Street Canal. This levee was too tall for even Katrina to over-top, but the bitch found a way to flood a good deal of East Jefferson through the canals that were supposed to drain the parish, would have, if the damn politicians hadn’t sent the pump station operators out of town, couldn’t get them back for weeks.

  He jogs the top of the levee for two miles, jogs back, sees no one. Only pelicans and gulls over the water, a couple mallards, a big fuckin’ cottonmouth sunning itself on a flat rock at the base of the levee. He stops, pulls his bag around for the .38, goes down the levee to get close to the snake that senses him, rises to coil and he takes off its head with one shot.

  One of the earliest lesson his Papa taught Beau was to never kill an animal unless you had to, either to eat it or in self-defense, except cottonmouths. Kill every one you see.

  “Dey got the devil in them. Meanest snake in the swamp.” Unlike a rattler, a cottonmouth water moccasin will bite you more than once because they are Lucifer’s pets.

  Stu’s red beans and rice is piping hot and spicy, the boudin – Cajun white sausage made with rice, pork, chicken, vegetables and plenty spices – is genuine enough for Beau’s taste.

  “We stopped by Morgan City on the way back.” Stu points to the boudin.

  “It’s still there?”

  Stu is a thick-set man with a pock-marked face that looks fiercer with the thick moustache, which Stu reports he has to shave before starting work tomorrow.

  “Gonna miss it, but Brennan’s, man.” He slaps Beau’s shoulder. “I finally get my shot.”

  Stu Burdon, born in Charity Hospital and raised in Bywater, had dreamed of cooking at one of the better restaurants in a city of great restaurants and Brennan’s is top of the line.

  “I been off the booze.” Stu has deep set brownish eyes. He smiles at Ann who smiles back as she gets up, goes to the oven for the bagettes she’s been warming up. She’s still in the wife-beater and pink panties. Beau watches as well as Stu, who adds, “How I got her and now this job is beyond me.”

  Ann comes back with the hot bread on a tray, a wily grin on her face and looking so much younger in the bright light streaming through the open windows.

  “God’s a comedian,” Beau says, which breaks up Stu. Ann asks what’s so funny.

  Later, Ann comes out in the same outfit at six p.m., when Specialist Aligood comes to tell Beau the Humvees have arrived.

  “Jesus!” Aligood nearly jumps when he turns and she’s on the pier hands on her hips.

  She smiles at him, looks at Beau and asks, “Can you take Stu to the airport with you? His brother left a car there for us.”

  “Sure.”

  Ann turns, rolls her hips at them and goes back to Kate’s Delight.

  Aligood waits until she’s aboard to look back at Beau who locks his door, hands the guardsman his ice chest.

  “Who is she?”

  “Just a local girl.”

  Aligood breaks in to a wide grin. “She walks around in her panties?”

  Beau edges him up on the pier to lock his gate. “Exhibitionism and New Orleans is a redundant statement.”

  Stu hurries behind them as they reach the parking lot and Beau tells Lt. Avery they have to go by the airport first.

  “We just came from there.”

  Ann comes rushing up, a pair of shorts in her hand, declares, “I’ll have to put these on when we reach the airport.”

  Avery’s head snaps around and he’s stone still now. Guardsmen tumble out of all three Humvees.

  “Oh, you like my Parisian panties?” Ann faces the guardsmen, reaches beneath her wife-beater and pulls the top of her panties down to show part of her bush, then pulls the panties back up, rolls her hips. “Y’all want to see it all, I strip at Diamond Diane’s, corner Bourbon and St. Louis.”

  She reaches over and taps Avery’s crotch with the back of her hand. “I think I’ll ride to the airport with the general here.” She climbs into the backseat of Avery’s Humvee as Stu arrives.

  Avery looks to Beau for help. Gets none.

  It isn’t until eleven p.m. do they get to do a little police work, pulling over a white pickup truck with Louisiana tags near the Fairgrounds race track. Mid-City. A middle-aged white male leans out of the passenger side of the truck and calls back. “You the police?”

  No shit. See the blue lights?

  Beau calls back, “NOPD!”

  “We just got robbed!”

  Beau meets the driver and passenger behind their pickup, spotlight from Avery’s Humvee bathing them.

  “When? Where?”

  “Just now.” The driver bounces as he speaks, another middle-aged white male points up Maurepas Street. “They went that way.”

  Beau sends Aligood to check the pickup. The guardsman looks confused.

  “For guns, bodies, drugs.”

  “We don’t got no drugs,” the driver snaps.

  “What did they look like?”

  “Three dudes in a black pickup truck with an orange hood,” the driver tells Beau.

  “Black dude, a white dude and a big Mexican, or South American,” this from the passenger.

  “They all got guns!”

  “What kind?”

  “Handgun. Tec-9. AK-47.”

  “What did they get from you?” Beau asks as he backs away.

  “Wallets. Cash. About two hundred.”

  Beau almost bumps into Lt. Avery, asks him to leave the third Humvee to take down these guy’s names and write a report. Get the story on paper. “Find out what these idiots were doing around here.” Then he says, “Follow me!”

  Aligood barely makes it back in time as the Escalade zooms up Maurepas Street, slowing at the corners.

  “Look right, I got the left.”

  The going is slow with debris in the street – awnings, a crepe myrtle tree, aluminum door. At Esplanade, Aligood spots taillights and Beau sees them turn right slowly just beyond Bayou St. John. Could be them. They’re taking Wisner Boulevard up toward the lake. He punches the accelerator, spotlight from Avery’s Humvee behind them swinging past them. By the time he reaches the boulevard, the taillights are at the top of the Wisner Overpass. They’re moving now. When he reaches the top of the overpass, the taillights have picked up even more speed, racing away now. Beau hits the bright lights on the SUV.

  The debris isn’t so bad now and the Escalade races up the dark street, Bayou St. John on the right, City Park on the left, like a black splotch. The moonlight reflects off the bayou and the area is almost lit. With the two spotlights rolling behind them, Beau knows he still has two Humvees with him.

  “What’s that chatter on the radios?”

  “The lieutenant’s kicking in the pursuit.”

  “To who?”

  Aligood hangs on as the Escalade goes airborne a few feet.

  Goddamn New Orleans streets.

  “They’re rolling three more Hummers from the airport and two ambulances.”

  Beau almost smiles. “Good thinking.”

  He’s losing ground as they cross Harrison Avenue but sees he’s picked up some by the time they reach Filmore. The pickup hits something in the road and when Beau arrives, sees it’s a palm trees he easily av
oids. When they reach Robert E. Lee Boulevard, he sees it’s a black pickup as it has to slow and still nearly rolls over trying to turn right on two wheels.

  Beau pumps the brakes and makes a clean turn, knows there are refrigerators in the road ahead, sees the pickup ram a metal garbage can, sparks flying as the can sails into the air. He sees the flashes a millisecond before the sounds – Ka-pow! Ka-pow! Ratta-ratta! Ratta-ratta!

  He swerves the Escalade left, flies over the neutral ground in the center of the wide boulevard, bouncing as it reaches the other side.

  “They’re shooting at us!”

  No shit!

  Beau’s flying down the wrong side of the boulevard, but there’s no traffic. He also knows there’s less debris over here. Avery’s Humvee is parallel to him now, still on the right side of the neutral ground and gunfire from the pickup is immediately returned from the machine gunner atop the Humvee, shaper in tone, resonating – Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Beau decelerates, keeping pace, let the big gun take effect.

  The pickup hits a shopping cart, veers and clips a overturned car, spins and skids to a stop on the neutral ground. Men tumble out of it, a big man with dark clothes running across the street through the Escalade’s headlights. One of the men fires at Avery’s Humvee from the other side of the pickup. The machine gun returns fire and the man is tossed into the air. The Humvee passes the pickup and the machine gunner fires at a man running off to the right.

  Beau stops the Escalade, grabs the keys, goes around to the pickup. The body is twenty feet away, lying contorted on grass. Beau shines his small flashlight at the face of a white male, mid-twenties, sees a tattoo near the throat. A brown raven. This one’s not in Marks-a-lot. He presses his fingers against the man’s carotid. Nothing. He stands, sees it’s a skinny white guy. Early twenties.

  He looks over, sees Aligood still next to the Escalade. He walks past, says, “Stick with me.

  “Where we going?”

  “After the ass-hole who went across the street.” Beau keys the lock on the Escalade and takes off, flat out, across the neutral ground as Aligood hustles to keep up. They run up to a blond brick house where the man from the pickup truck ran. Gunfire behind them drives them both to the lawn of what once was a middle-class white brick house.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, SAW, tracks across the neutral ground to chew up trees in the open ground on the other side where the third man had disappeared.

  “What the fuck’s he shooting at?”

  Beau rises and runs to the blond brick house, peeks around the side as Aligood arrives behind him. The echo of the gunfire dies away and Beau hears a noise in the blond brick house. He lowers himself and moves around Aligood for the front door of the place, which faces the boulevard. The door is ajar. In the moonlight, he sees fresh footprints in the doorway. Beau backs away and hugs the brick wall to go around to the house’s back door, which is also open. Fresh footprints here and Beau pulls Aligood down just as bullets slap around them, splintering the door, shattering windows, slamming into the bricks.

  Pocka! Pocka! Pocka! Pocka! Fucking idiot sprays but doesn’t aim and Beau is flat on the ground as chips of brick fall on him. It’s coming from the rear of the next house but doesn’t peek until the firing stops.

  He whispers, “You hit?”

  “No … sir.”

  They crawl into the blackness of the back yard, realizing there are trees blocking the moonlight. The sound of glass shattering and the creak of a door pulled open gives Beau the impetus to rise and run to the next tree, a huge oak. He’s between the houses now, sees the white picket fence is mostly down between the back yard of the blond brick house and this two story red brick house. Aligood breathes heavily behind him.

  He motions for the guardsman to follow and goes down on his belly to slither through the broken fence all the way to the back door of the red brick house. Beau covers his right eye with the palm of his hand, whispers for Aligood to listen and watch.

  After a couple minutes, when his right eye is accustomed to the absolute darkness, he opens it, shuts his left eye and slips into the kitchen of the red brick house, puts his back against a wall and looks around with his right eye. The room is very dark but he sees it is empty and two doorways, one into a hall, another seems to open to a dining room. He’s about to ease back to the doorway to signal Aligood to come in when he hears shouting out front, then the Boom, Boom, Boom of the SAW.

  He goes back out and leads Aligood around the house to the front as the shooting stops.

  Avery’s Humvee is still behind the black pickup and Beau sees for the first time the pickup has an orange hood.

  The machine gunner is shouting to Lt. Avery standing next to the pickup. Avery lowers an M4 and shouts back. They are looking to their right and Beau looks that way as well, sees nothing, cups his hand around his mouth.

  “Did you get him?!”

  “Who’s there?” Avery points the damn M4 at the red brick house.

  “Beau! What the fuck you shooting at?”

  Avery cups his hand around his mouth. “The guy you were chasing. He ran that way!” Avery points across Robert E. Lee.

  Beau comes out from around the corner, Aligood behind. Beau shouts at the lieutenant, “Quit standing in the goddamn light.”

  He looks back at Aligood. “They didn’t teach you shit about night fighting, did they?”

  “They did, only we haven’t been issued our night vision goggles.”

  Jesus.

  When Beau arrives at the pickup, he sees only Avery and one guardsman.

  “Where are your men?”

  Avery looks back at the second Humvee. “They followed you across the street.”

  Beau looks in the black pickup, see a Beretta nine-millimeter on the floorboard, the keys still in the ignition, asks Aligood to bring his big flashlight over, see if the missing wallets are in there. He goes over to take a look at the dead guy, finds a mess of blood, but no body.

  Avery’s with him, stammers. “He got away?”

  Beau doesn’t need a flashlight in the bright moonlight to see the drag marks in the grass, two sets of footprints and a rut in the dried mud beyond the grass. The four missing guardsmen come running up.

  “They dragged him off from right under your nose, lieutenant.”

  Beau is about to get everyone saddled up to search when a man in a hardhat comes walking up, hands held high.

  “Hello in the lights! You police?”

  The heavy set men wears a blue work shirt, heavy dungarees, pulls his yellow hardhat off his bald head and calls out, “Three ass holes just stole my SUV!”

  It takes a couple minutes to get the story out. This is a night construction supervisor from the Industrial Canal repair site who took Leon Simon Boulevard to get to Elysian Fields to access I-10 only drove past Elysian Fields and got lost, stopped to take a leak when two men carrying a third climbed into his white Ford Explorer, the government’s Ford Explorer actually. One of the men pointed an AK-47 at him as he ducked behind a bush before they took off.

  “Thought I was a dead man.” He’s in his fifties, pasty faced.

  “Only reason they didn’t, it would have alerted us,” Beau tells him.

  “Who are you?” The man looks at Beau now. He had been addressing Lt. Avery.

  “NOPD. The badge on my belt is a dead giveaway.” Along with the big POLICE on the front of my tee-shirt. “Which way did they go?”

  “I don’t know. I was ducking.”

  Surprisingly the three Humvees from the airport pull up with two ambulances. Beau asks Avery to get a tow truck to take the black pickup to the airport so that FBI forensic team that’s been playing games on the internet in the police hanger would have something to do.

  The construction supervisor keeps bemoaning his bad luck.

  Beau laughs at him. “You’re a lucky bastard. Those weren’t typical dumb thugs.”

  Lt. Avery asks, “How do you know that?”
>
  “They scatter in opposite directions and still find a way to link up and steal this guy’s truck, after they drag off their friend from right under our noses. Well, your nose, lieutenant.”

  Aligood tries to hand him a radio. “The Humvee we left with the robbery victims is lost.”

  Beau listens a moment, tells them to go to the nearest street sign and read it out to him.

  “Elysian Fields and Burgundy.” Beau snatches the radio from Aligood. “How the fuck they end up there?”

  He gets on the radio. “Are you on a four lane street?”

  “Roger.”

  “Good, you’re on Elysian Fields. Go to the next corner and read that sign to me.”

  It takes half a minute.

  “Dauphine.”

  “OK, you’re heading to the river. Turn around on Elysian Fields. Stay on it until you run into the interstate. Can’t miss it. I-10. Take a left. Head west and you’ll see the airport exit. We’ll meet you there.”

  “Roger. But Alpha one-zero requested we join you.”

  “You will. At the airport.” Beau hands the radio back to Aligood, “Tell them if they get lost again, call back.”

  Eventually Avery corners Beau, pulls him aside. “I’ll have to do a report on the kill.”

  “What kill?”

  “The one we blew up. The one they dragged away.”

  “This ain’t Iraq. Blood on the grass doesn’t count as a kill here. No body. Nobody died.”

  Avery blinks twice. “Are you serious, Det. Beau?”

  “Write what you wanna write. I was chasing a suspect when your dead man walked off, from what, thirty feet from your Humvee?” Beau pats the lieutenant on the back. “No report and it didn’t happen, Adam. Correct?”

  City of Secrets, stories whispered in dark corners. This is the start of our secrets. We killed a man tonight but there’s no police report, no autopsy, no record. As if nothing happened. And this is just the beginning.

  Beau smiles to himself. When was the last time he was involved in a shootout and didn’t fire his weapon? He gets a bottled water from the Escalade, tosses one to Aligood, who catches it and lets out a long whistle.