Authors: Michael Allen Zell
4
D
elery stepped out of the Burger King at the foot of Robertson, right before it gradually rose to its elevated section. Desperate times, desperate measures, so the coffee would have to do. No way he'd touch the food, though.
He was parked with the cluster of squad cars right off Franklin, out of the way of oncoming traffic, but before two blue and whites turned sideways to block further ascent. Looking up the incline, he saw EMS, coroner's van, and a city vehicle.
Delery had read the 2011 Justice Department report released as the initial investigative part of the consent decree. Mayor Walter Vaccaro campaigned on cleaning up NOPD and invited in the feds, but he quickly reversed and spent hundreds of thousands of public dollars in legal fees fighting it.
The consent decree was happening, though.
Delery recalled the report as a severe evaluation that touched on unconstitutionality and major deficiencies across every aspect of policing. Use of force; general stops, searches, and arrests; discrimination; policies; recruitment; training and supervision; details, the supposed to be off-the-clock security jobs; evaluations and promotions; misconduct; and more.
It was no wonder crime levels were worsening. Despite some good officers, NOPD was often brutal and sloppy. A former colleague coined the term "malicious incompetence," and Delery thought that likely summed it up fairly well. New Orleans had a crime problem, but a broken police force didn't help.
Delery had no I.D. other than his Illinois driver's license and was an unknown, so the uniform standing between the two horizontally turned cars called to confirm access.
"Alright, you're good," the young cop said, chewing his gum.
Walking up the incline, Delery knew he was intruding on a place where everyone had their roles, cops and criminals both. He was invited to the dance, but it didn't mean a thing.
He couldn't help but be struck by the view. It reminded him of how he felt driving in on I-10 yesterday as it swooped into the downtown rooftops and cemeteries. In this case, a long train yard.
The EMS personnel were leaving since the body was clearly deceased. Two coroners were in the process of slowly prying a body from the guard rail it was fused to. The back of the corpse faced everyone else. One coroner held the upper body from the right side to keep the head and arms from slumping over the top while the other coroner pried from the left with what looked like a polite crowbar. A gurney sat empty at their feet.
"This is slow going. Nasty shit. We've got skin and a few internal organs coming loose. He's stuck to the metal," one of them called out to the array.
In a loose semi-circle around the body, two white shirts were in conversation, a couple casual but professionally dressed detectives were walking around separately, and a crime scene technician was taking photos of an overturned beige sofa that had a small orange-red rubber cone placed next to it. The cone read "1." A couple more evidence cones were in place.
On the periphery of the crime scene, a group of other first responders was casually chatting or tapping on their phones.
Everyone up there with Delery was male, except for one EMT and the technician shooting photos.
Delery approached the white shirts, directly facing the one who seemed to be in command. He quickly scanned the pockmarked man's star and crescent for confirmation.
"Yes, the captain," Delery observed. "P. Connell" was the name engraved on the brass name tag.
Captain Connell looked at his lieutenant, a light-skinned black man with freckled cheeks and reddish hair, then at his watch. Both could only be physically described as ample.
They knew who Delery was and why he was there before he extended his hand and introduced himself. The college egghead. And they had to make nice, to a certain extent.
Connell enveloped Delery's hand with a firm grip and fingers that felt like fingerling potatoes. He was spud-like in other ways too. Nose like a russet. Mouth like a yam. Ears like Yukon Golds. Eyelids like French fries. All of them the consistency of red potatoes getting redder while standing in full-on sun.
His demeanor was also starchy.
"We've been expecting you, Delery. Captain Patrick Connell's my name. This is Lieutenant James Alvar. You've been sleeping in your clothes. It's 8 'o clock on the dot. We've been working. Looks like a 30." Connell was testing him.
"Captain, I just got to town. The wrinkled clothes are only my current situation. Otherwise, I'd... "
"Save it."
"Sir, when you say 'a 30,' is that NOPD's code for homicide 1st degree? CPD, uh in Chicago, used 110."
"Delery, this isn't Chicago. No, they say New Orleans is progressing. Progress is bleeding us dry, but progress it is. Regardless, here's what I need from you. Witnesses. Find them. Somebody out there saw something," he said, gesturing to the patchwork of train tracks, warehouses, empty lots, and houses below, leading to the river.
"Sir, Commander Jones said the vic is connected to a major robbery. How do we know that?"
"How do we know? Number one, the vic's wearing his Club Big Easy shirt. Partly anyway. Same place that was robbed. He was seen working bar last night. Two, his wallet contains a Louisiana driver's license in the name of Clint Olson. That one's legitimate. We've checked."
Connell wiped his brow. "Also has a California license in the name of Paul Grayson. That's the fake. Nothing else in the wallet. No credit cards. Nothing. Except for a couple thousand in cash. No phone either. He was keeping lean to get away. Or the men connected to his employer grabbed everything else. Either way he's connected."
"What about the couch? Could this have been a hit and run?"
"Do you know how many junk collectors drive around in rickety trucks full of crap, none of it secured? It's coincidental. No, Delery. What I see is a statement. They caught Olson, brought him out here, threatened to throw him over if he didn't talk, blowtorched his guts, and stuck him on the guard rail as an example to the rest of Olson's crew. Not that we can prove any of that."
"But sir... "
"Witnesses, Delery, witnesses," Connell thundered, before looking over at Alvar and dryly dropping, "He's lucky he doesn't have FIC's."
Delery excused himself and stepped away from the two men, understanding more than they thought. It was obvious to him that none of the others were about to walk down Robertson, loop around and under on the surface roads, trudging around in the heat and catching hell for waking people up on a Sunday morning. They had their narrative wrapped up. But how was it a path forward to solving the crime?
He also knew what FIC's were. Field Interview Cards. A key part of Chief Stewart's statistics-driven approach. According to the fed's report, officers were spending time on FIC quotas instead of policing.
Delery was unaware that NOPD had already put out an alert for witnesses in the vicinity to contact them immediately. He passed the two detectives conferring. They gave him blank looks with flashes of smugness, knowing he was on the way to do their job.
"I'll learn from this. There's something more to it," he emphasized to himself.
He was barely past them when one of the detectives made no effort to conceal his complaint. "The homies can shoot each other all day long, but I put a bullet in one of them, and it's the end of the fucking world."
Delery's heart sunk. The consent decree report again. Officers involved in shootings were temporarily assigned to the Homicide Division as a matter of practice so that their statements were effectively immunized. Actual investigations of the shootings were thus neutralized. And it was still happening.
"What the hell am I doing here? This isn't my home anymore. If I was in Chicago right now, I know exactly what I'd be doing. It wouldn't be this," he muttered to himself.
The young officer serving as sentry greeted Delery back at the surface road.
"Connell call you out on the wrinkled clothes?"
"Normally I wouldn't be looking like this, but yes he did," Delery admitted, being kind enough not to comment that the rookie's uniform blues were a size too large.
"Learn from it all, Bobby," he added to himself.
Instead of taking the quick route, he followed Port down a block before making one left back into the neighborhood and another to complete the horseshoe and find himself back where he'd started, but twenty feet below.
Immediately upon turning off of Villere onto St. Ferdinand, he'd trained his gaze upward on the coroners working away to loosen the body of Clint Olson from the guard rail so he could get the neighbors' perspective on the scene. He'd kept to the left side of the street and on the sidewalk until it disappeared and became a grassy graveled path.
Though it didn't look like a good area for witnesses, what with so much of it uninhabited and the homicide taking place out of eyesight, he thought it best to start under where it all happened and work his way from house to house.
Delery turned, the crime scene now just behind him, and took a few steps. His mouth opened slightly, he nodded in realization, and moved forward a bit more. He turned and faced upward.
"Get Captain Connell. There's blood here. A trail of it too," he yelled.
A few seconds later, the captain peered over the guard rail. He wasn't in the mood to be bothered.
"What is it, Delery?"
"Captain, there's a little pool of blood here. It trails off toward the neighborhood."
The reply was not at all what he anticipated.
"Of course there's blood down there. Plenty of blood up here too. The vic's leaned over a guard rail. Some of it dripped down."
"But sir, there's no spatter here. If it was dripping from up there, don't you think it'd look differently down here?"
"You know, I expected more from you. One of two things is clear. Number one, the vic's bleeding out, some falls below, and an animal walks through it, spreading the trail. There are strays all over the place. Two, there's no connection with that blood and the vic's. Look where you're standing. Custom made spot for a drug deal gone bad. Probably one of the train hoppers who think this city is Mayberry with better music. Trust me, no connection."
"Sir, with all due respect, this seems... "
"You just got to town, Delery. It might surprise you, but down here in the South, we do know a few things."
"I'm a native New Orleanian, but that's beside the point."
Connell erupted.
"Goddamn, Delery. Have you thought through the narrative you're spinning? Either the vic is up here, he drips, and the blood tip toes down the street, or they pull the guy dripping away and hoist him up here. Maybe in this fine piece of furniture. Those scenarios sound probable to you? My men put that kind of malarkey in a report, I'd tear it up. Your teaching have that lack of rigor? The commander promised you'd be a credit, but it's not looking like that. My technician is staying up here where she's got work to do. I don't want to hear another word of it."
At that he turned and vanished from sight. Delery was astonished, both at the tongue-lashing he'd received and that potential evidence was so blatantly ignored.
He realized why he ultimately said yes to Commander Jones. Theories, stats, and lecterns were his world. He craved stepping out of it and into the street, testing his mettle. It was intoxicating. And he knew there was something to what he'd discovered.
He muttered, "Is Connell only after a tidy report? Doesn't want the rest of the vic's crew found? The money too. The captain isn't lax, so the question is who he's really working for."
The call from the commander was ordered by Chief Stewart. It wouldn't have been made otherwise. Something wasn't quite right, though, and it picked at him.
For now, he had blood to follow. Conveniently it led toward the people to interview, but the houses didn't begin until over halfway through the block.
So much graffiti in this area. The figure he'd just seen on the support column. All the rusted out ramshackle buildings on either side of the train tracks covered with it. None of it very interesting. Common.
Delery stayed off to the side of the sporadic dried blood trail.
The first house he came to had a hippie van with Vermont plates parked in front. Weeds were overgrown and hemming in the house on both sides. Little items like beer bottles, crawfish shells, an old Atari joystick, and random pieces of wadded up clothing dotted the exterior ground. Banana trees barely taller than the weeds separated the house from its boarded-up neighbor.
His notebook and pen were at the ready. Closest riverside house to the crime scene. Delery suspected the inhabitants didn't go to bed early.
The door and two windows had colorful handmade art objects hanging from the outside. Privacy wasn't provided by curtains.
Delery knew blocks like this, where no one had curtains, at least those formally labeled as such. Instead, these people, like so many others, make do. They use a bed sheet, bath towel, tin foil, long skirt, military surplus blanket, or maybe a beach towel redeemed from collecting Marlboro Miles. He'd even seen an old rug used, apparently nailed up to hold its weight. They make do.
Delery knocked twice firmly, stepped back down off of the stoop, and took one more step back for good measure.
"People rarely come knocking here," he thought. "Door's as likely to be answered by somebody with a gun as not answered at all."
He understood it, though. Self preservation. The type of defensive living many people have no idea exists. An environment where you have to be continually on your guard from those who want to pick your bones or smash them up.
In New Orleans neighborhoods like this one, gun ownership was a given for precisely this reason. Not for political nonsense or to do anyone harm. Merely to protect what was yours, and that included the lives of your family.
Delery himself wasn't a gun owner, saw no need, and planned to leave his utility knife tucked away, but he grew up in a similar block. Not quite as rough looking, but one where he quickly learned the rules.
He knew he no longer had the remnant of any New Orleans accent. The flat Midwesternese of Fort Wayne followed by the crisp Chicago version had taken care of that. Delery was fully aware that he looked wrinkled and sounded like an outsider. He relished getting his hands dirty though, so he was ready to dive in.