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G21 FICTION - DEATH TONE (Part 3 of 3): The serialization of the opening chapters of the rough draft for ROD AMIS's new novel, a New Orleans mystery.CONTINUED from Previous Edition
The corner whe re Jerome Washington was shot was one the worse ones in the district. There were vacant, overgrown lots now and a couple of abandoned houses on the block, just about to collapse under their own decay. The remaining houses had probably been built before Eisenhower was President of the United States and looked it. There were still visible blood stains in the pavement at more than one spot, graffiti on the walls of the abandoned houses, sidewalks that looked like an invitation to a bad fall.
"That blood stain there," Bartlett said, "that could have been Jerome. He was bleeding plenty bad when we rolled up on him. Took two slugs. One through and through in the neck, the other in the chest."
"But there's no ballistics report, right?"
"Right. We weren't the other only folks in town packing nines back then, either."
"Figures. It's a popular weapon."
"Yep."
"So it was your word against that of fifty=some 'witnesses' who say you had to be the guy?"
"That's about it."
"Not one person came forward during the police canvas of the block."
"Wasn't a lot of canvassing going on back then, I can tell you that. They didn't have the manpower. Unless some citizen came forward with a lead, it was just one of many shootings going over here back then."
"'The City that Care Forgot'," Harry quipped.
"Yeah. That's about it."
Harry nodded. He had learned over his years as an investigator that people in extreme situations - and nothing is more extreme than a homicide - tend to exaggerate the circumstances a bit. It was almost as if they felt the need to justify their behavior, no matter how bizarre, by explaining to you how the situation was something that no one else could have possibly experienced. He took that into account when talking with Colonel Beadle and he was taking that into account with Bartlett now.
Harry's experience was that, once you cut through the version of the truth you were being fed, the situation was usually a lot more mundane and the outcomes were always predictable. People ended up dead at the hands of other people for only three reasons: passion, greed and hate. Sometimes it would be a combination of two of the three but most often only one motive was needed. Everything Harry had heard and read thus far about the demise of Jerome Washington eliminated passion. It was either greed or hate and likely the latter.
"You notice if anyone in the crowd - what did you call them? 'Mushrooms?' - anyone of them strike you as suspicious? Seem on edge or antsy?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Trotter. I wasn't much payin' attention to the crowd. I was trying to keep Washington alive. You'd have to ask one of the other guys that question."
Driving back into New Orleans from Metairie after dropping Bartlett off, Harry realized that he was angry about this case. It was probably the worst assignment he had pulled in his entire damned career. There were too many damned potential suspects. It could have been one of the guys on Bartlett's detail, it could have been one of the "mushrooms" from the neighborhood who had taken a real or imagined slight from Washington at some time in the past, it could have been those New Orleans cops who just happened to roll up in the nick of time to save Bartlett's bacon, it could have been drug-related or a hate crime. Who knew?
He could try to locate those cops, of course, see if he could squeeze some information out of them. But what was the point? The last thing those guys would want to talk about was New Orleans, where over 300 homicides had had happened every year they had been part of NOPD. So what's so speciall about this one?
He could try canvassing the neighborhood, he supposed. But what would somebody tell a Yankee dick that they hadn't already given up to the locals?
He was angry,too, because he knew in his gut that being the new boy in the division meant that he would have to pull this Hell of a case. None of the senior people in C.I.D. would have wanted to touch it after the trail was months old. Napoleonic Code, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Who would toss his hand in the air to take that one? Hadn't these people down here heard of the Uniform Criminal Code or what?
Harry punched his hand on the top of the steering wheel of his rental car. You schmuck! What have you gotten us into this time, Stanley?
Hustler
Harry's 8:00 p.m. meet with Jack Murray was at the Larry Flynt's Hustler club in the French Quarter. That was Murray's idea and Harry had decided to go along with it, though he hadn't been in a tit bar since his days on Homicide in Rockford, before he was married to Mara. He wanted the guy to feel comfortable, hoping he would open up and maybe drop some fact about the case that would matter.
Harry got there about 8:05 and found Murray sitting at one of the stages. He recognized him from his self-description. Five foot eleven inches, sandy hair, burly fellow with a barrel chest. He looked like somebody who was somebody else's bodyguard. Murray was still in his Blackhart uniform, complete with Kevlar vest. He was proud of what he did, obviously, and liked to flaunt it. That, in and of itself, made Harry leary of the guy right away.
Harry walked up and tapped the guy on the shoulder. "Murray? I'm Trotter. CID."
"I saved y'all a seat," Murray drawled.
"I appreciate it. But can we move back to a booth or a table to talk? I'm here on business after all."
"All the same to me, Mr. In-vestigator."
Once they'd settled into a spot where the blaring music from the stage was not as intense, Harry tried to size the guy up quickly. He looked young for the job. Might be in his early thirties but didn't look it.
"You know I'm the new guy on Steve Bartlett's case, right?"
"The Colonel filled me in. Said mebbe I could be of some he'p."
"Good. Let's start with that night. How did you end up being the first on the scene after Washington was shot?"
"We heard the gunfire. It was close to where Steve put down that cur. So we all rushed right over. Too much shootin' goin' on ovah there back then, I can tell ya' that."
"Okay. But I understand there was a problem with the crowd."
"Damned skippy! People comin' out of ever'where, sayin' we was the ones who did that guy. And it wasn't true! We was there to save his life!"
"I got you."
"You ain't from down hyah, are you, Mr. Trotter?"
"No. I'm from Connecticut."
"That explains the accent."
Harry didn't know he had one.
"You want a drink?" Murray asked him. "I can get y'all whatever ya' want. I already opened a tab."
"I wouldn't mind a High Life," Harry said.
"You been here before, ain't ya'? That's what all the locals order 'cause it's the cheapest drink in town."
"I guess that makes me a cheap date," Harry responded.
Murray guffawed. "I like you, Mr. Trotter, ya' know that? Y'all got a kind of dry sense of humor. Deadpan and all, I mean!"
"Thanks for noticing," Harry said.
"So's how can I he'p y'all get Steve-o and his fam'bly out of this world of hurt they is in?" Jack Murray flagged down a waitress and instructed her to bring his friend a High Life.
After she had traipsed off, Harry asked, "How long were you amd Bartlett on the team together?"
"Before this Washington thang? About a month, I guess."
"So you really didn't know the guy?"
"At Blackhart, you get moved around a lot. It's a big ole international operation. You just take your assignment and makes the best of it."
"What did you think about the guy?"
"Steve-o? He was okay. I little too by-the-damned-book for my tastes. Me, I say that rules are made to be broken - it's the end results what count. Steve-o didn't much cotton to that attitude, if y'all knows what I mean."
"So you weren't exa ctly friends?"
"Don't be puttin' words into my mouth, Mister. Steve was part of our team and a damned good security operative to boot! I liked him. We just didn't agree exactly on the fine points."
"Okay." Harry paused as the waitress deposited his beer and then walked off. "Okay. Tell me about that night."
"I know, bein' CID, you already read our statements and the police reports. Ain't much else to tell. Steve-o is being set up. End of story."
"And none of the others of you pumped the two rounds into Washington?" Harry challenged the guy.
"Fuck you! We ain't like that. We came down here to help. Any other questions?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. Where are you from, Murray?"
"Biloxi. What about you, Mr. Trotter? You look like you was a state trooper, am I right?"
"Sorry, no. Homicide detective."
"And before that, if you don't mind me asking."
"Ranger."
"That fits. You got a kindah cold-blooded air about ya'. Kindah like a snake's back. You can't rest your finger on it."
"Are we done with the vetting now?"
"If you say so."
"I do. Let's get back on track. You see anyone in that crowd that gathered that might have been the shooter? I hear you and Jones had to hold them off."
"Them folks? No way. They was as scared as jack rabbits until they decided they had a beef against us."
"Four white guys standing over a dead Black man's body. Don't' see as how you could blame 'em."
"You weren't there. And Jones is a brother himself. You saw his file."
"Nope. I didn't. Bartlett is the only one on the hook, so his is the only file released to CID. The rest of you got a bye."
"Thank God for that."
"You have anything you can tell me that might help Bartlett's case?"
"I seen too many of you CID guys come down here and act like y'all know what's going on. Guess what? You don't. Nobody knew jack shit from New Orleans until this Katrina shit happened. It was just all Mardi Gras and bonton roulay. But you know what? This is like a third world damned country down here, right at the end of the Mississippi River. America didn't give a shit then and y 'all don't give a shit now. That's what I'm thinkin'."
"Nice talking to you, Mr. Murray. Thanks for the beer. Enjoy the show."
Harry got up from his chair and left the club.
The first call Harry got on Wednessday morning was from Colonel Beadle. It came as he was drinking his coffee and finishing off the breakfast he had ordered from room service.
"Good morning, Colonel," Harry said. "How can I help you?"
"How'd it go yesterday, ole Son?" Beadle's voice came back through the receiver.
"I was just checking the lay of the land. Still need to do that with the DA's office."
"When you meeting with them?"
"Tomorrow at one."
"Awwright. It's that Labotreux woman, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"She's not as nice as she seems, if you know what I mean, Son. She's a snake in lamb's clothing. Be careful."
"I understand, sir. I'll be on my guard."
"And about yestahd'y?"
"I got a sense of our guys."
"What did you think of Bartlett?"
"Seems like a straight shooter to me."
"And Murray?"
Harry didn't answer right away. He knew he was new to Blackhart and needed to be politic. "Interesting guy. I wasn't sure what to make of him."
"Don't mince words with me, Son!" Beadle shot back. "Murray's a wingnut, pure and simple. That ole boy is a loose cannon who wouldn't work out anywheres than in an overseas assignment where most of the folks wouldn't have to listen to the crap he's spewin' and there would be no titty bars around for him to waste his damned pay check! If it was up to me ---"
"Sir?"
"Nuthin', Trotter. I'm sorry. Forget all about that. He give you any information or what?"
"Or what, sir. Talking to the guy was a waste of time."
"I got ya. Where ya goin' next?"
"Today? I was thinking that it was time to look into Jerome Washington's history before this shooting. Maybe I could gain some insight there."
"You are a detective, aren't you, Trotter?"
"Rumor has it, sir."
"Good luck, Son."
"Thank you, sir. I'll keep you informed."
"I appreciate that, Trotter. Good huntin'."
Just Us
It dawned on Harry, driving out to Kesha Washington's house, Jerome's sister's, that he had not talked to a single Black person since coming to New Orleans. He had read that the city had been sixty percent Black pre-Katrina but you couldn't prove that by him now. He had seen a few Blacks, sure, hotel maids, people working in the back of restaurants, some hopeless drunks out in Algiers, but nowhere near what you might expect.
If anything, looking at the housing renovations he passed, or the crowds gathered around the tacquerias, New Orleans looked like cities you would expect to see in the southwest of the country. A healthy smattering of Latinos was in force. Other than that, it was all White. No Asians to speak of. A few Middle Eastern types in the convenience stores. If New Orleans had been a Black city before, it certainly wasn't anymore. It was changing to brown in the way a creeping vine changes as it grows up the side of a house.
Consciously trying to get away from this line of thinking, in the quirky way that Harry Trotter's mind worked, two ideas popped in simultaneously. The first was that he had no idea, from the slapdash documentation in his file, if Jerome Washington had a middle name. The other thought was about the protocol that seemed to evolve where we always knew the middle name of a perp. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald. Who had come up with this idea? Was giving the full name of a notorious perpetrator some kind of badge of shame insuring that no family sharing the same last name would ever give it to their child, a kind of Judas thing, Harry wondered.
He certainly had never met anyone named Judas in his lifetime.
Women perps got off easy, Harry thought then. He couldn't imagine that there was a living person in America who knew what "Squeaky" Fromme's actual first name was, let alone if she had a middle.
All of this flotsam was racing through Harry's mind, he knew, because he was nervous about his sit down with Kesha Washington. He always felt that way about digging into a victim's past, even though he knew it was essential to a thorough investigation. It was like putting the vic on trial because they had been done. It never sat well with him, even after all these years.
He shook that thought out of his mind quickly.
It was replaced by his thinking about Blacks and New Orleans and America.
Suddenly he was back in lock-up in Rockford, Connecticut. He was sitting across from this guy he had put away, a Black guy. The guy was lecturing Harry about the criminal justice system in America.
"What I be reading?" the guy, a man named Wilson, was saying. "One third of all Black males is in the criminal justice system right now? Justice, you say. You been in the joint? Look around you. It's just us.
"That sure seems to me like one way to disseminate a community. What you think, Trotter?"
The copy of the death certificate in Harry's file told him that Kesha Washington had been the person the coroner called down to identify Jerome's body. She was listed as his only living next of kin. Jerome had been twenty-seven when he died. Kesha was his older sister and the record showed that she lives two blocks away from where Jerome had last resided.
Harry heaved a sigh when he pulled the rental car up to the curb in front of her house. He wished his mind hadn't been working overtime before he got here.
Kesha was a handsome woman in her early thirties. Tall, lean, long-legged, Harry couldn't help but notice. Her dark eyes sparkled. But her expression was not entirely welcoming.
"Thanks for agreeing to talk to me," Har ry said.
"I ain't got a lot of time," she informed him, once they were seated in her living room. "I gots to be to work in two hours."
"I won't take up much of your time," Harry said. "I only need to ask you a few questions about Jerome, your brother."
"So's you can get that White boy off?"
"So I can get to the truth and find out why your brother was killed.," Harry said.
"You make it sound real nice."
"Can you tell me if Jerome had any enemies?"
"Who ain't got enemies? It's part of livin'."
"You know what I mean, Ma'am. Someone with a reason to want to see him dead."
"Listen here, Mister. My brother was a good boy. Went to Mass every week. And smart as a whip! He even graduated high school. Then he got taken on at the Hotel Sonesta. In the Quarters? Yes, indeed.
"They liked Jerome at his work and promoted him more than once. Peoples here in the neighborhood liked Jerome, too. Nobody wanted to hurt him."
"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but someone did hurt him."
Kesha Washington's defiant eyes went moist for just a moment. She shook the sadness out of her head. "I know that," she said softly."Folks say it was them peckerwoods from that security company. Them cowboys y'all sent down here to get us back in line."
"They think they came here to help you get back on your feet. To make the city safe again."
"Whatever."
"When was the last time you saw Jerome?"
"About three days befo'. He was all excited about some new deal he thought he would be a part of with one of them muckdy mucks down in the Quarters. This man he called 'Melly Mel.'"
"Melly Mel?"
"Yeah. Some guy with a Jewish last name. Siegel or something like that. I don't remember.
"All I know is that Jerome had some hook up with him. He said it was going to be big. Ya' see, this Melly Mel fellah, he married into some money family that owns all these jernts down on Bourbon Street and 'round there. They let him run the places and the people in them places. Big money, ya' know?
"Jerome say they was from back when the Marcello Family was the big muckdy mucks in the Quarters and they went toe-to-toe with 'em. Well, the Marcellos is gone and these folks is still around. So Jerome was all excited about making this hook up, ya' hear me?"
"Did he tell you what kind of hook up it was."
"Naw. That mightah jinxed it. He just talked about his time hangin' with Melly Mel and what a crazy guy he was."
"Crazy how?"
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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