Deadly Pedigree - By Jimmy Fox Page 0,93

and is spreding. I hear some folks died over near Isle Brevelle. Froze hard last nite and killed three old cows to tuf to eat even. Loaned Logan Younce $6, for two plows, at small intrist because he is my friend. Tom Oliviette has proposed to me a part of a barge that he want to run. I don’t know if I am willing or not. Cut ten heads today, which is about rite for the time. Folks got to go to Church. My prentice cut just four, tho. Erasmus is coming up to three now. All the world is afore that child. I won’t let the Past stand in his way. He can chuse his own Futur the Good Lord tended him to have.*

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31

January 1, 1995–3:16 a.m.

From a shadowy canyon of deserted warehouses, stacked rail-sea containers, and barbed-wire fencing, police cars shot blinding spotlights down a rocky embankment to the crime scene below. Two bodies lay in thick, clammy fog at the edge of the Mississippi River, halfway between the French Quarter and the Industrial Canal.

Emergency lights flashed alternating blue and red spasms of diffuse illumination on the crime scene, enveloping the living and the dead alike in a disorienting plasma, as if the fog were a contagion spreading the violence that had occurred here across the city, to cling to the beloved architecture and ancient trees, to suck life from the hallowed traditions, to infect the souls of unsuspecting, innocent residents and tourists.

Muted revelry of diehard New Year’s Eve celebrants in the Quarter reached the cold ears of NOPD uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives, paramedics, and crime-lab technicians as they worked the murders. Two men had been shot at close range. No witnesses, no suspects, just a nameless phone tip.

Dark river water visible near the bank eddied into man-sized whirlpools and unexpectedly flowed backward in isolated pockets; toxic foam the color of dead eyes scudded across the turbulence; unidentifiable shapes lumbered by just under the surface.

A tall black cop stood apart from the methodical dance of evidence gathering. The star-and-crescent badge over his heart reflected the pulsing glow of the emergency lights. In short-sleeves despite the damp chill, his shaved head bare, he clenched and unclenched his big fists like a fighter just before a bout, or just after a knockout victory. Vicious scars scored his thick, ropy forearms. He seemed transfixed by the Orleans Parish assistant coroner’s examination of the blood-caked bodies of the two dead men sprawled like broken kites on gray boulders lapped by the river. His jaw muscles rippling, he brought his right hand to his neck and rubbed under the collar of his light-blue uniform shirt.

A beefy white detective by the name of Gus Roulé found footing on the rocks next to the black cop. Everyone called Gus “Bons Temps,” after Louisiana’s Cajun-inspired unofficial motto: Laissez les bons temps rouler!, or “Let the good times roll!”

“You don’t look so hot, Balzar,” said Bons Temps. “What’s wrong, you never seen a stiff with half its head missin’?”

“Maybe more of them than you, man,” Shelvin replied, without looking at the detective. “More than I can count, in the Gulf War.”

“No shit?” the detective said, easing off his gibing tone of superiority. “I was in Nam, myself. Long, long time ago. You wouldn’t recognize me.” He laughed, slapping his bulging stomach. “Sometimes I think this damn city’s worse…so, Balzar, what the hell you doing here? My information is you’re Sixth District.”

The ‘Bloody Sixth,’ it was called, encompassing the Magnolia and St. Thomas housing projects, war zones festering with such mayhem that cops drove their cruisers to calls rather than present themselves as easy targets in the open courtyards.

“Got detailed to the Eighth up until Mardi Gras,” Shelvin said. “Like I told your partner, I heard the call on my radio, figured I could get here as quick as anybody else. Over in the Quarter, most of our professional criminals already gone to bed; all them other folks just too messed up at this time of night to do anything real bad.”

The detective grinned and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, you right. I been wantin’ to meet you, Balzar. Word goin’ round is you don’t take no shit from nobody. They say you haven’t missed a collar yet.”

“Well, tonight could be a first for me, then.”

“Could be. Whoever did this got away clean. Execution style. No way we’ll ever find the gun, but it was a big one. Forty-five, probably. If only that ole river could talk, huh?