City of Secrets Page 9

  “Where’s Donna?”

  “Her room.” Terez carries two cans of beer and heads for the room she shares with Carlos.

  Donna sleeps on a cot in a room she shares with no one. This part of the warehouse once held offices. A couple still have broken desks, but the place had been abandoned before Ace was born.

  Donna’s door is locked. He knocks on it lightly. No answer. He knocks again.

  “Go away,” her voice is raspy. “I got my gun now, mother-fucker!”

  “It’s Ace. We brought pizza.”

  “Go away!”

  Loud voices bring Ace back into the center of the warehouse where Carlos stands with the patch beneath his eye, can of beer in his left hand.

  “Say that again!”

  Jimmy’s face doesn’t react. The batty eyes move to Ace, then back to Carlos.

  “We did better than Oscar. We found him, only he gave us the slip. We need to use all the cars next time. He might spot one, but he won’t spot three.”

  Carlos steps closer, looking down at Jimmy now. “Tell me what the fuck happened.”

  So Jimmy tells him they spotted the black Escalade coming out of the airport and followed it to Audubon Park but lost it.

  “He didn’t follow you here, did he?”

  “He tried to but had to turn off and we lost him.”

  “You sure?

  Jimmy nods. “Go look for yourself. I’m getting some pizza.” No way that fat-ass is going out to look around.

  Ace is getting tired of this shit. With Amos gone and Carlos thinking he’s in charge, this is bullshit. He spots Terez carrying clothes out of the warehouse.

  “What’s happenin’?”

  Carlos just glares. Terez calls out, “We movin’ to Oscar’s auntie’s house.”

  Ace asks, “Where are Oscar and the Joses?”

  Meanwhile – Beau stands across St. Ferdinand Street from the warehouse. So damn dark he can see little. It should be getting close to dawn by now, but he feels a coolness in the air, smells rain. Clouds blot out the moon and stars. He’s always had good night vision, better than his Papa. When they hunted at night in the swamp, it was Beau’s eyes that picked out the gators and the game they hunted – feral pigs, coons, deer and swamp rabbits when in season.

  He finds an open gate and goes into the small yard of a shotgun house, moves to the side of its front porch and waits. Something moves on the porch. An animal. Beau waits. He is calm now, in tune with what is around him, senses focused, listening, watching, sniffing. The human sense of smell is not good. The strong odor of mildew and decayed wood is all he gets.

  Finally, the false dawn comes in a veil of grayness and he sees the animal is a cat on the far side of the porch, crouched and watching him. Three warehouses stand across the narrow street. He spies a pickup parked between two of the warehouses. As the false dawn fades he thinks the pickup might be gray.

  Wasn’t it a gray pickup in the shootout with the state trooper?

  It grows darker just before dawn and Beau moves quickly back up the street, the way he came. If there’s a lookout, Beau hopes to remain unseen in the darkness before the sun creeps over the eastern horizon. He makes it to the far side of the first of three warehouses in this block and moves along its side, reaching the base of the tall river levee as the light of dawn brings grayness to the land. He climbs the levee and moves along the other side, peeking over it as he goes.

  There’s light at the rear of the middle warehouse and as he eases that way he clearly sees the two pickups in the alley now, green one and gray one. There’s a black Ford van as well. They got ‘em parked with their rears to one another so the license plates can’t been spotted unless someone gets between them. That’s how Beau figures he caught a flicker of light, when they backed the green pickup in.

  He lies down and peeks over the top of the levee. About fifty yards away, if he stays long, when the light gets brighter, they’ll spot him, especially if they got someone in the upper floors. He waits. Patience is his. The rear bay door of the warehouse is missing, no one’s out on the loading dock. But soon the sun is up and he thinks he sees movement in a third floor window – the glass in the windows are mostly broken out. He crawls down the levee close to the river and uses the levee to shield him as he moves back beyond the first warehouse to cross the levee back to his Escalade.

  Beau wonders if he should go straight back to the airport, gather a posse, come back in the middle of the hot day. They been up all night, like him. Gotta be tired. He hears an engine as he crosses St. Ferdinand and barely makes it between two houses before the gray pickup comes barreling up the street, driven by a large black male, not the one from the green pickup. He’s about to go back out when he hears, then sees the black van follow. The driver looks Latino.

  What the fuck are they up to now? Looking for his Escalade? He decides to jump fences, move through back yards back to Decatur Street. No, they aren’t around. The Escalade is as he left it. He waits a little longer, moves carefully to it and checks as he pulls away from the curb, moving past St. Ferdinand to hang a left on Press Street up to St. Claude Avenue, left again and sees no vehicles.

  Hell, let them follow me. He slips on his extra-dark, vintage Ray Ban Balorama sunglasses heads back to the airport. These were the sunglasses Angie had given him. She’d found them in a nostalgia shop on Magazine, said they were from the Seventies.

  Beau’s plan is to muster some troops and hit the warehouse. Has to be the Ravens with the gray and green pickups. He hurriedly tops off the Escalade’s gas tank, pulls it over to the police warehouse, grabs a bottle of spring water from one of the huge ice chests just inside, pours some over her head, drinks some and is a little surprised when Linda Pickett steps up with a towel draped over her shoulders, hair looking darker now, all wet. She’s in an OD green tee-shirt and baggy, khaki military shorts that almost reach her knees. She wears camouflage flip-flops which starts Beau laughing.

  “What? No make-up? I just showered.” She glares at him. The woman doesn’t need makeup. Well, maybe just a little.

  He points to her feet. “What’s the point? You hunt in those? Your white toes give you away.”

  “Huh?” She looks down, “Oh.” She smiles. “Camo flip-flops.”

  “You on the day shift now?”

  “Getting ready to catch some zees.” She looks around him. “Did I miss something?”

  “Any NOPD around? Felicity?”

  “He just left for Baton Rouge. Crime Lab.” She nods back at the warehouse. “Gotta bunch of cops in there.”

  “Any from Louisiana?”

  “I don’t know. I’m about to bitch-slap a big Chicago cop who keeps leering at my ass.”

  Beau opens his mouth to tell her it’s a nice ass, but doesn’t say anything.

  “What?” She snatches the bottle of water from his hand, takes a sip. “I’m not a sex object.”

  He takes the bottle back. “Yes you are. All females not closely related to a man who are between eighteen and sixty are sex objects. Goes the other way around too. You haven’t hawked me out?”

  “No!”

  “I’m devastated.” He bops down the Ray Bans, gleeks her over the top, his eyes dancing. She takes the bottle back, sips again.

  “I found them,” he says.

  Her eyes narrow, serious now.

  “The Brown Ravens. They nest in a warehouse.”

  Specialist Aligood rushes up, calling over his shoulder to Lt. Avery, who approaches more slowly. Beau waits for both to get there.

  “The ass-holes we shot it out with. I found them.”

  Aligood bounces on his toes. Avery sighs, looks over his shoulder as a couple older officers approach.

  “How’s your wounded?” Beau asks, finishing off the water, seeing Linda heading for the ice chests.

  Avery explains his men are going to be fine, steps around Beau as a man a good three inches taller than Beau arrives. He’s got a star on his collar. The smaller man with him has
a silver oak leaf on his collar. A brigadier general and a lieutenant colonel.

  The smaller man tells Beau, “I’m Col. William Bradford and this is General William Sutherland, commanding officer of the Special Operations Brigade, Rhode Island National Guard.”

  The general looks a little like Harrison Ford, the older version, not the Star Wars Luke. No, Han Solo. He growls, “Are you Det. Ravenboo?”

  Beau extends his right hand. “Det. John Raven Beau, NOPD Homicide.”

  The general shakes his hand, squeezing hard.

  “We’re here to rescue people,” the general says, pulling his hand back, moving both fists to his sides. “Your department may tolerate gun slingers. My men didn’t come here to fight a battle.”

  Wait. An army that doesn’t want to fight a battle.

  “Are you blaming me because thugs shot at us?”

  The general takes a step closer to tower over Beau who does not step back. They are too close, the colonel easing around to get between them if necessary.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.” The general’s looking fierce. “You led my men straight into an ambush.”

  The man has a point.

  “No troops will accompany you anymore, detective. I’ve spoken to the other commands as well. No more Humvees. No more troopers. You’re on your own.”

  Beau smiles coldly at the man. No need to say that’s the way he likes it.

  Linda’s back with two bottles of water, hands one to Beau.

  “Is that all, general?”

  The general raises a finger and is about to poke Beau’s chest, but hesitates as he sees Beau’s eyes change. Beau looks through the man’s eyes all the way to the back of his skull.

  I never broke a general’s finger before. Beau’s ready to snatch that finger if it pokes him.

  “You’re a dangerous man. I’d talk to your superiors if I could find any.”

  Beau opens his water, takes a hit and watches the general do a military about-face and march off. The colonel remains.

  “We can’t go with you, either,” Linda says softly. “One of our assistant directors is flying in this afternoon to appraise the situation.”

  Fuck it. Fuck ‘em all.

  “I’ve never seen the general this angry,” Col. Bradford had to have the last word as Beau started to move away.

  “He reminds me of another general.”

  “Who?”

  “George Armstrong Custer. Lot of bluster, except Custer had balls.”

  You’d think Beau slapped the colonel’s face. The man actually recoiled.

  Beau turns to Linda. “Custer was the only trooper we didn’t scalp at the battle. He had a child with a Cheyenne woman, so he was related to the Cheyenne and they are our cousins. We scalped the rest.”

  Bradford is really confused now.

  Beau nods at Aligood. “Tell him about my great uncle.”

  Linda follows him to the Escalade, asks, “You’re not going in alone?”

  “You have internet connection in there?” He nods to the warehouse.

  “Yeah.”

  “Look up ‘Lakota Shadow Warrior’.” He climbs in. “Unlike most of the clans, the Unkpapa, Minneconjou, even the Oglala attack in daylight, shadow warriors attack under cover of darkness.”

  He thinks of leaning over and kissing her, but the Sioux in him keeps the Cajun out of trouble and he just pulls away.

  “Wait!” Linda pulls a notepad from one of the fat pockets of her shorts. “Where is this nest?”

  “Middle warehouse along the river levee. St. Ferdinand Street.”

  She spreads her arms. “I can’t look that up on Google maps. What’s the address?”

  “Tell Felicity when he gets back. Anyone from NOPD knows what I’m talking about. Google maps? Is that from Sesame Street.”

  Time to go home. Beau is very careful, makes sure he isn’t followed. Unless they have a satellite, they don’t follow him home.

  Part 3

  A Warrior Becomes a Shadow

  Stella sits perched atop the closed toilet lid watching Beau apply darkening face-paint to this clean-shaven chin. He starts rubbing it on his cheeks.

  He explains to her, “The great plains warriors, the Sioux and Cheyenne painted themselves for battle, prepared themselves physically and emotionally because for the Sioux, the glory of battle brought out the best in a man and in battle, it was always a good day to die.”

  Stella’s coat looks extra fluffy as she twists her head from right to left, watching Beau transform from a not so white-skin man to a dark green and pitch black apparition.

  “They won’t see me. Understand?”

  She doesn’t seem to understand.

  He reaches over with his clean hand and pets her head. “I’ll be back.” He looks at the mirror and starts on the other side of his face. “If anything happens to me, little girl. Annie will take care of you. You remember her. Redhead with the killer body.”

  Stella just stares.

  Beau is in all-black again, no logo on this tee-shirt. He’s tucked his tactical pants into his black, canvas combat boots.

  “While the Cheyenne had their ferocious ‘dog soldiers’ who heralded their attacks with piercing war cries, feathered lances and rifles raised overhead, to become known as the scourge of the plains – the Sioux rarely make frontal attacks.”

  He reaches over and tickles her belly and she slaps at his hand.

  “Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, masters of the counter-attack, led their men into battle from misdirection, confusing their enemy, even the vaunted US Cavalry.”

  He finishes the last touches, his nose, around his eyes, his ears, then the outside of each hand.

  “Among the Sioux were a small band of warriors, brave men who attacked alone at night, leaving bodies in their wake.” He steps back and looks at a fearsome countenance in the mirror and for a moment remembers a scene from Apocalypse Now, Martin Sheen rising from the river with a similar face.

  He tells Stella, “These were shadow warriors – ‘the shadow that kills’ – terrorizing the great plains for over a century.”

  Stella follows him into the main cabin, scampers under the sofa as he checks his Glock, slips it into its holster. He has the baby Glock set cross-draw on his left hip, the obsidian knife in its sheath at the small of his back. He moves to the door, to the small ice-chest filled with bottled water covered in ice and his tactical bag with his small binoculars and extra ammo. He dims the light as Stella comes out from under the sofa dragging something red, oh, it’s a sock. Angie’s sock.

  “Keep it,” he tells Stella as she sits up with the sock in her mouth, big green eyes looking at him. He locks up. It is ten p.m., later than his usual time. He slept late, rested, ate, hydrated himself. Didn’t run today. He steeled himself for the mission. And yet, as he moves to the Escalade, his mind is distracted, brought back to Sad Lisa and the debris left behind by Angie. It still litters his cabin. Her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, a blue comb, tube of cocoa butter, bottle of cream rinse, a denim skirt and now a red sock.

  His plan is to approach St. Ferdinand Street from the opposite direction, parking the SUV behind a brick wall in the parking area of another long-abandoned warehouse, this one on narrow Architect Street, almost an alley just above Royal Street, three blocks from the Ravens’ warehouse.

  As he drives, he focuses his senses, seeing everything as he passes the empty streets, listening to the Escalade’s engine and tires snapping dead branches. Yet Angie comes to mind again. Thanks Stella. Angie doesn’t do this usually unless he’s trying to fall asleep, but now as he drives to take on these fuckers, she taps his shoulder, whispers in his ear and it’s as if he can feel her breath on his neck.

  He thought she was the one, had no clue it was waning, figured couples went through down times until she told him he didn’t spark her anymore. She found another spark. A visiting professor. Fuckin’ geek, no doubt, but geeks often get the girl. He shakes his head. Quit being maudlin ove
r this. Hell, this is the third girl he thought was the one. Beau laughs at himself, yet there’s a catch in his laughter.

  He parks and locks the SUV after putting on his bullet-proof flak vest, pulling the Velcro wraps tight. Damn thing won’t breathe a bit. He’s sweating before he sees both pickups are gone but the black van is there. Too dark to see its license plate. He moves along the levee and spots lights in the windows on the second floor. Someone sits at the end of the loading dock, back against the wall of the warehouse. Beau sets up atop the levee with a tree behind him so the wane moonlight reflecting off the Mississippi water won’t silhouette him.

  The smoker lights a gas lantern and he sees it’s a young woman with long dark hair and wearing a yellow tee-shirt and jeans. She has a black, semi-automatic pistol in her right hand that’s too big for the hand.

  Two men come out with another gas lantern, put it between them and her and sit watching her. Latino-looking dudes, one with a shotgun, one with an AK-47. Loud voices bounce across the fifty yards where Beau lies. The men speak in Spanish and the only word Beau catches is, “Puta!”

  She says nothing, watches them. The voices growl louder, angrier. The man with the shotgun heads toward her. She lifts the pistol. He rushes her and stops as she points the gun at him. It seems to jerk as she yanks on the trigger. Misfire? Not loaded? The men laugh. Shotgun man slaps the gun from her hand, she gets up and kicks him. He grabs her throat and Beau shoves his binoculars into his bag and moves now, keeping low in the blackness, Glock in hand. The man lifts the girl by the throat and she punches his hands and kicks at him.

  The man slams her against the wall and drops her, kicks her, goes back to his friend who hands him a bottle of Jack Daniels. He takes a long pull and Beau is there, close enough to smell the booze. He’s at the end of the loading bay but they can’t see him in the darkness.

  The man with the AK-47 goes into the warehouse, the shot-gunner takes another hit of Jack, the girl, coughing now, crawls toward the end of the loading dock. Beau’s maybe twenty feet from her but she doesn’t see him. She’s pretty and young and looks Latino, keeps crawling. Her eyes filled with tears, she looks right at Beau, has to see him now, but doesn’t react.