City of Secrets Read online

  “Det. Beau. Is this a bullet hole?”

  Sure the fuck enough. Two neat holes, entry through the front bumper, left side of the Escalade and exit the front fender. How it didn’t hit the tire was a miracle. Beau finds a bullet grove along the roof of the SUV.

  “I knew they were shooting at us,” Aligood stammers.

  Yeah, but there’s one less Brown Raven. That man was stone-fuckin-dead.

  Part 2

  A Warrior Re-Arms

  It is called Bywater, a long neighborhood next to the river running from the Faubourg Marigny, the original residential subdivision below the original city which is now called the French Quarter, to the Ninth Ward next to the Industrial Canal. Except along the riverfront, most of Bywater’s one-story shotgun houses stand nestled along narrow streets, vintage 1870s and packed close together. Most were inundated by the big K bitch.

  Behind a long-abandoned warehouse along the river, four men and two women gather around a white SUV with the body of one of their own in the back seat.

  “Why’d you bring him here?” Amos Lander snarls at the others. He’s the leader, a forty year old native of Shreveport, a twice convicted felon – armed robbery and burglary. BK, before Katrina, Landers had been living in an abandoned shotgun house seven blocks from where he now stands. He’s black, doesn’t like that ‘African-American’ bullshit, stands six feet, weighs two-thirty, a hard, muscular man with a wide face and cold eyes that looks through people, as if he sees what’s behind them. He hasn’t shaved in a couple days, bathed either, wears a green tee-shirt and jeans, black steel-toed boots he stole from an uptown Walmart right after the storm.

  Amos sports his Brown Raven tattoo on his left cheek for everyone to see.

  Axel Smith, still groggy from a meth high, puts his hand on the side of the white SUV, thinks this is a pretty damn good short only they can’t keep it, not with that government sicker on the side.

  “Shit!” He pulls his hand off the car. Goddamn fingerprints. Now they’d have to wash the outside and burn the inside. Axel is twenty-eight he’s what the police would call a career criminal with four misdemeanor convictions and felony convictions for possession of methamphetamines, burglary and theft. At 5’8”, Axel is skinny and somewhat stooped. Bad posture growing up on a peanut farm outside Dothan, Alabama, where he lazied around while his father did the work. Axel had been living off whatever he could steal for two years BK. Alex’s Brown Raven tattoo is on the right side of his neck.

  Carlos Gonzales rubs his beard as he looks in at the body from the other side of the SUV. A huge 6’6” and over three hundred pounds, thirty year old Gonzales has thick black hair. A founder of the Brown Ravens, he was run out of L.A. by rivals after murdering two fellow Ravens. His Brown Raven tattoo is on the left side of his neck.

  Terez Huelva, a buxomly 5’10” woman with long black hair and a suntanned skin tone, is twenty-eight. From Santa Marta, Columbia, she migrated to L.A. via Puerto Rico and is Carlos’s woman, although she keeps eyeing Amos after he took a leak in front of her and showed her his ‘anaconda’ dick. Terez’s Brown Raven tattoo is at the base of her throat.

  So is the fresh tattoo sported by Ace Boody, nineteen year old life-long resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, a mid-level crack dealer BK. Arrested twice for murdering rivals, he brags about never standing trial because witnesses don’t dare testify in New Orleans. Ace is 6’3” tall and would have been a high school basketball star, with his hoops skills, only he quit school in the ninth grade.

  A small woman in the only clean tee-shirt in the bunch, and somewhat clean jeans, stands away from the SUV. Donna Elena Palma is twenty-five but looks like a teen-ager, grew up in Huachuca City, Arizona. After her mother ran off with a truck driver, Donna’s father took her and her brother to L.A. where he became a cop. She went to college, met a boy who was a Brown Raven. Two ex-boyfriends later, she’s wondering how the she ended up in New Orleans. She ain’t seen no Mardi Gras, no parties.

  Donna Elena doesn’t have a Brown Raven tattoo yet. She hasn’t killed anyone.

  Amos looks at Carlos now, asks again, “Why the fuck you bring him here?” He turns to Ace, “You sure you weren’t followed?”

  “We weren’t followed!” Ace thinks about cappin’ this mother-fucker. He has a nine-millimeter tucked it the back pocket of his jeans.

  Without looking up, Carlos says, “We gotta dump him in the river so they can’t find him and burn the car.”

  Makes sense to Amos but he can’t admit it. Amos is supposed to be the leader, being a Louisiana man. The fuck with this original Brown Raven. Got his ass fuckin’ run outta California. Carlos is on Amos’s turf now.

  “So, you get anything?”

  “Six hundred twenty dollars,” Ace answers. Not bad for three boost jobs.

  Amos opens the glove box. “Anything in this wagon?”

  Ace lets Carlos tell him about the revolver he found. When Carlos doesn’t, Ace smiles to himself. These two big bastards are bound to kill each other and Axel’s too country-ass dumb to take over. Only without Jimmie-John, who lies dead in front of them, Ace won’t have much of a gang, which means more recruits.

  “The fuck kinda hole is this?” Amos seems to notice the big holes in Ricky-John’s body.

  “Machine gun from the national fuckin’ guard,” Carlos answers, standing back now.

  “How may did you kill?”

  “Six. Maybe seven.”

  Amos looks at Ace. “That true?”

  Ace shrugs. “I was too busy ducking and running.”

  They’re fuckin’ wit me. A big fist punches the side of the SUV. Amos sees he’s left a dent but won’t let them know his left hand throbs in pain. “Good. Guardsmen go home in body bags, they won’t be so volunteering to come down here.”

  “The guard ain’t the problem,” says Carlos as he goes over to Terez, fondles her left breast. “The police. That’s the problem.”

  “Police?” Amos is in an arguing mood. “What fuckin’ police?”

  “Tall one in a black Escalade. He’s the one ran us down.”

  “The fuck!” Amos looks at his homey again, but Ace ain’t giving up nothing. “What kinda fuckin’ cop.”

  “NOPD. Badge on his belt. Saw him good.”

  Amos sees something he’s never seen in Carlos’s eyes. Worry.

  “Fuck. New Orleans cops scattered all of the place, don’t know what the fuck.”

  Carlos grabs Terez’s right breast, starts fondling it, sees her breathing getting deeper as she tries not to smile. He focuses back at Amos, says, “This cop knows his business.”

  “Then we’ll just have to shoot his ass, won’t we?”

  Amos tells Carlos and Ace to take Ricky-John over the levee, toss him in the river, let the current take him.

  “Jimmie-John,” says Axel, drawing an angry glare.

  “Follow me in this piece of shit SUV we can’t use,” Carlos says. “We gonna burn it next to the canal.”

  “Gotta wash off the outside first,” says Axel. “Get off the fingerprints.

  “Let the women do that.”

  Amos yawns as his gang goes about what he said. At least he’ll get to set a fire. He loves setting fires.

  •

  Probably the excitement from the chase, but Beau has a hard time falling asleep, even after sunrise, but when he does it’s a nice, deep sleep. By the time he head to the airport to gas up the Escalade and meet his crew, he’s feeling pretty damn good – freshly shaved, freshly fed. Stu used some of the bland turkey sausage in the freezer to make a pretty damn good gumbo, Beau supplying genuine Cajun filé.

  On his way to the airport, Beau drives by the Josephson’s mansion on St. Charles Avenue. A three story Victorian painted pale yellow and set back from the avenue, a wide front yard that’s dotted with debris, natural mostly, branches, leaves, a dead palm tree. The doors have large dead-bolt locks and are secure. None of the windows are broken. He does not see a human anywhere in the area.

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nbsp; Once again Beau is in black-out, tee-shirt with a subdued gray star-and-crescent badge over his heart, black tactical pants, the only item that’ll break up the blackness is his silver star-and-crescent detective’s badge clipped to his belt just in front of his canvas holster on his right hip.

  At the airport, Intelligence Officer Felicity Jones comes out of the hanger with a pretty woman with long, honey-blond hair she’s pulling back in a pony tail as they approach. Her green eyes lock on Beau’s. She’s very pretty and wearing make-up, uncommon for a woman with a badge on her chest and a bulky gunbelt that looks like she borrowed from her father. She’s ATF.

  Felicity calls out, “Your pick-up with the orange hood was stolen from Arkansas a year ago.” He arrives as Beau puts away the gas pump nozzle, closes the gas cap.

  The woman’s still eye-balling Beau but her face gives nothing away. Beau does this automatically and wonders if she does as well.

  “FBI’s got a shitload of fingerprints to sift through.” Felicity nods over his shoulder to the woman. “Special Agent Linda Pickett, ATF Dallas Field Office, this is the man you’ve been looking for. Detective John Raven Beau, Homicide.”

  Linda stands about 5’4”, petite, yet her uniform can’t hide the fact there’s a woman’s body inside. She’s either had her khakis tailored or she’s one of the few fortunate people whose uniform fits them like a glove. Beau had his uniforms tailored since his rookie days.

  “I have something for you,” Linda Pickett says. “Come this way.” She turns back to the hanger. Beau can’t fix her accent, but she’s not from Texas originally. He follows her, forcing himself not to look at her shapely butt, but realizes he must have because – he knows how shapely it is.

  She moves to a long table where other ATF agents, all men, move out of her way, a couple nod to Beau. She opens a black metal case and hands Beau a gun box.

  “Special made nine millimeter Glock Model G37. Carries seventeen rounds in the magazine.”

  The weapon has a mottled finish, black and gray camouflage coloring. Beau takes out the weapon, withdraws the magazine which has no bullets, opens the breech, shows SA Pickett it is empty, slips the magazine back in and slides the action forward. He points the empty weapon toward the ceiling and squeezes the trigger.

  “Smoothest action on the planet,” Linda says. “This is the NATO version. Military edition. Pre-sighted by experts. The most accurate handgun on earth.” She puts a fist on her hip, her chin up now. “It has recoil dampening. Very little kick, even with hydro-shock rounds.”

  “Kinda long.”

  “Extended barrel. Eight point one-five inches.”

  Up close he catches a whiff of light perfume. Just a hint.

  Linda hands him a box of ammunition. “Let’s fire it.”

  “Where?”

  She leads him out to a black Humvee where another ATF agent sits behind the wheel. Linda climbs in the shotgun position as Beau and Felicity climb in the back seat. They go around the hangers and take a road running next to the runways pointing west, all the way to the end where the levee divides Jefferson from St. Charles Parish. There are three silhouettes at the base of the levee, each with a clean POST target – Police Officer Standard Test target used for officers to qualify to carry their weapon.

  “We’re not going to run through the whole course,” Linda says as she passes Beau a pair of clear safety glasses and ear muffs. Felicity puts on muffs, as does Linda who points to the 25-yard line.”

  Beau loads the Glock. Seventeen in the magazine. He racks a round, pulls out the magazine and puts another in. Eighteen shots now. He steps to the line and the driver uses the PA to call out, “Fire in the Hole!”

  There’s no one near but you know never know.

  Beau takes his time. Squeezes off a round, then another and gets into a rhythm and fires all eighteen. They take a look. One is a half inch from the center mass inner circle. The rest inside. Linda lets out a low whistle. When they step back, the driver has loaded three additional magazines.

  Under a bright sun, with perspiration running down his face and his hands damp, Beau runs through the two boxes of fifty rounds. Some at 25-yards, some at 15-yards, some point-black at the 5-yard marker. The only shot out of center mass was from that first set.

  When they get back to the hanger, the ATF agents hand them icy bottles of water and a towel to wipe off their faces. There is only a hint of perspiration on Linda’s upper lip. Felicity looks like he was in a rainstorm.

  “I’m Agent Isaak,” a man with a face almost as dark as Felicity steps up to Beau with a clipboard. “Sign here.” It’s a standard POST firing test form.

  Linda says, “We know you didn’t go through the standard test, but the ATF is giving you a 120 score. What do you normally shoot?”

  “Beau shoots a 120,” Felicity says.

  “I shot a 118 once,” Beau tells him. “I sneezed at 25-yards.”

  Linda leads then back to the table where she sits and breaks down the Glock, showing Beau as she goes along, and cleans the weapon. He sits next to her.

  “The weapon’s stainless steel and polymer with a tenifer finish, stronger than steel, corrosion resistant. Its surface is light absorbing, non-reflective. Don’t lay it down in a dark room. You won’t find it.” She smiles for the first time and Beau thinks he’s seen her in a movie or two. Maybe not, but she reminds him of Ashley Judd.

  “I didn’t know Feds had a sense of humor.”

  Linda gives him that deadpan look again. “Remember Men in Black when Tommy Lee Jones was asked if Feds have a sense of humor and he said, ‘Not that we’re aware of’? Well, it’s true.” There a smile tickling the corner of her mouth but she fights it.

  Isaak returns with his clipboard, hands it to Beau, points to the bottom of a different form, “Sign here, please.” It’s a federal gun registration form. “There’s two.” He places another gun box on the table, opens it and a nine-millimeter subcompact baby Glock is in there with the same mottled camouflage finish. This one holds eleven in the magazine.

  The Glocks have grips that feel as if they’re coated in a light glue. Beau asks and Isaak explains, “The grips are a kevlar-ceramic mix with pinion resin, a semi-adhesive. No matter how wet your hand gets, it won’t slip. The resin will wear down after a couple years. I’ll give you a bottle. You just reapply.”

  Linda says, “These weapons aren’t issued to you, Detective. They are gifts, from a grant the ATF has for officers under siege in a disaster. We thought you could use better weapons.”

  “I did fine with my Beretta.”

  Linda looks at Felicity. “Notice he used the past tense. He catches on quickly.” To Beau now, “You don’t like the Glock?”

  Beau pulls out his pen and signs the forms. “I like it very much.” The Glock is amazing, the smoothest firing handgun he’s ever shot and most accurate.

  “These holsters,” says Isaak as he pulls four holsters out of another box, “are carbon fiber with Serpa active retention system that automatically locks the weapon as its holstered.” There are three for the baby Glock, one for the hip like the one for the special made Model G37, the other a cross-draw so he can carry the subcompact on his left side and an ankle-holster to wear it as a back-up. Isaak stacks twenty boxes of hydro-shock ammunition. Beau almost chuckles, but what the hell, he might need every round. He has five boxes stashed around Sad Lisa and two in the glove box of the Escalade.

  Linda hands the cleaned Glock to Beau who puts it together, disassembles it, puts it back together. Isaak and Felicity help him load the four magazines, while he and Linda load three for the baby Glock. Their eyes play with each other and he sees something in hers, something almost wicked.

  “You said you were looking for me.”

  “Huh?”

  “First thing you told me, what an hour or so a go?”

  There’s the smile again. She puts her elbow up on the table, cups her chin in her hand. “I didn’t say that. Det. Jones said that. The first thing
I told you was ‘I have something for you’.”

  There’s that wicked look again. She has Beau’s heart beating, looking into his eyes now.

  Shuffling boots turns Beau to see Aligood and three guardsmen coming in, Lt. Avery and others standing outside. Aligood leads them up, smiles at Linda, says, “I guess it’s true what they say about a Frenchmen, huh Det. Beau?”

  Lord, I don’t want to hear this.

  “If there’s a pretty woman around, she’ll be with the Frenchman.”

  Linda’s face turns deadpan again. She does that almost as good as I do.

  Beau says, “That’s completely true, Specialist Aligood. You and your men can help me with this gear.” Beau stands, takes off his gunbelt to switch holsters.

  Linda asks, “What kind of knife is that?”

  “Sioux. It’s obsidian.”

  She touches the bone handle. “Felicity here’s told us all about you.”

  Beau looks at Felicity who grins.

  “Is she coming with us tonight?” asks Aligood as Beau finishes slipping his baby Glock into the ankle holster to work his pants leg down.

  “No.” He holsters his Glock 37. “We’re on our own tonight.” He looks back at Linda who’s still sitting, thanks her and Isaak, standing next to her.

  “See you around,” Linda tells him.

  “Yeah.” He nods to her and gets the hell out. At least he’ll have a few minutes to get her off his mind and focus on the job before he gets back to the city. That is until Aligood climbs in and says, “I just found out who you are.”

  •

  After dark, as Beau wheels the Escalade along City Park Avenue, past the carcass of Delgado Community College, the headlights pick up a black cat crossing the road ahead of them.

  “Shouldn’t we turn off?” asks Aligood. “That’s bad luck.”

  “Maybe to you, white man, but all cats are good luck. So are owls.”

  A pack of dogs crosses the street and head into City Park. A few of the palm trees died under the salt water from the lake that stood here for a couple weeks, but the ancient live oaks are fine, their long Spanish moss rising slightly with a warm breeze this evening. Those dogs were once pets, left abandoned by owners who thought they’d be back in a day or two. Hunger gnawing at their bellies, there had been reports of attacks on people already. The Humvee behind Beau swings its spotlight to the fine houses on the right now and two raccoons scramble through a broken window to wreck havoc inside a three story mansion.