“Say what?”
“Stand up before I yank you up by your ears.”
The taller one stood slowly and Savary, who towered over the man, patted him down.
“Man, you can’t just search us,” said the shorter one.
“I’m not searching your friend. I’m patting him down. Terry versus Ohio. Look it up. If a police officer has reasonable suspicion that a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, the officer can pat that person down for weapons. For officer safety as well.”
Savary found something. “That a cell phone and a wallet?”
The tall man nodded.
“Take them out. Let’s see some ID.”
The smaller one stood and raised his hands. Savary patted him down as well.
“What crime we did?”
Savary nodded to the large sign nailed to the wall of the warehouse which read POSTED-NO TRESPASSING.
“I don’t write the laws. I just enforce them.” As Savary jotted down their names, addresses, cell-phone numbers before passing their IDs and cell phones back, he asked about Jeanfreau’s and received the usual information. Nothing. He called in their names, had both run through the police computer. Both had records, but no felonies and nothing around the neighborhood. “Thank you for your cooperation.”
A tan Impala pulled up and Savary went around to the driver’s side to speak with his sergeant. Jodie Kintyre gleeked him over her cat-eyed sunglasses. It tickled Savary, because Jodie had wide-set, hazel, catlike eyes. She claimed Scottish descent, but there had to be some Asian blood in her genes with those eyes.
“Any luck?”
He laughed, stood back as she climbed out. Unlike most women cops, Jodie liked wearing skirt suits and wore them well. This one was beige. She left her jacket in the car as well, readjusting her shoulder rig with gold badge affixed. She was a striking woman in her forties with that shock of yellow-blond hair cut in a long pageboy. Jodie stood five-seven, her heels added a good inch, but she had to crane her neck to look up at Savary, who stood six-four.
“I’ll take this side of the street.” She clicked her ballpoint pen, flipped open her notebook, and moved to the two outside the laundromat. Savary crossed the street. A half-block down he ran into a distant cousin, Eddie Tauzin, who worked as a caretaker at the Audubon Zoo.
“On my way to work, my man.” Eddie slapped the big detective’s shoulder. “You gettin’ nobody to talk about it?”
Savary shook his head.
“Man, I been askin’ but no one sayin’ nothin’.”
He got a nod in response. “I appreciate your asking around.”
Eddie moved past, backing as he walked. “You know, I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.” He turned, spied Jodie across the street, and looked back at Savary. “I admire the comp’ny you keep.”
Reverend Tom Milton stepped out of his chapel with a large sponge in hand, spotted Savary, and gave him a knowing smile. The Sacred Congregation of the Good Lord occupied a two-story brick building two blocks from Jeanfreau’s.
“Hot enough for you, boy?” The reverend leaned over a bucket, dipped the sponge inside. Savary wiped his brow as Milton took the sponge to the picture window lining the front of his building, slapped it against the glass, and rubbed on the soapy water.
“Hear anything from your congregation?” It was the same question Savary had been asking.
“You know if I did, I’d be the first to call. You get any luck at your church?”
That brought a smile to Savary, a lapsed Catholic who hadn’t been to church, except for weddings and funerals, since he was a teenager.
“You want a bottle of water?” the reverend asked.
“No thanks.”
Milton reached over and patted Savary’s back as the detective went by. Hopefully, the man of the cloth would pass any information to Savary, who had asked the reverend to talk with the children of his congregation about the matter because kids hear and see more than anyone in a neighborhood. When Savary was a patrolman, Milton and some kids had helped him recover two stolen cars. But that was before Katrina.
Things were different now, AK-after Katrina. The hardcore criminals, who were some of the first to return, had reestablished themselves with a killing vengeance. The murder rate was back up top as new blood carved out drug territories, and the police department, as devastated as the neighborhoods, reeled in turmoil from lack of manpower, lack of leadership, lack of inspiration.
Savary linked up with Jodie back at her car and she actually had a line of perspiration on her upper lip. The fair-haired sergeant rarely perspired, even in the sweltering summer city.
“M.F. screwed this one up from the start.” She went on to her repeated diatribe against Detective Maurice Ferdinand, who had done absolutely nothing on the Jeanfreau case beyond overseeing the processing of the crime scene. M.F.’s recent transfer to the reorganized Vice Squad was welcomed by the rank and file of the Homicide Division. M.F. in the Vice Squad, always a joke in decadent New Orleans, was a classic example of the Peter Principle-a worker rising to the level of his incompetence. So much for a man who thought being called M.F. was cute.
“Know how I know it’s somebody local?” Savary asked.
Jodie narrowed her left eye as she looked up at him.
“All these people out here and no one saw anything. No one’s heard anything. You think a ghost flittered in here and shot old man Hudson? If it were a stranger, someone would tell me, ‘I saw him but don’t know who he is.’ But that’s not what we’re getting. No one saw anything because they know who he is.”
Neither detective had to say the word retaliation. Eyewitnesses, especially inner-city eyewitnesses, were at the top of the endangered species list in New Orleans. So much for the vaunted witness protection program.
Back at headquarters, Savary sat next to his Macintosh G5, donated by Apple to the department AK, typed in the hundred block of Jeanfreau’s Grocery, and searched the police database for any incidents that had occurred there over the last five years. As a boy, Savary had looked up the definition of felicity, discovering it meant “intense happiness.” Felicity Street was a real-life oxymoron.
In the five years AK, NOPD had received over one thousand calls along the twenty-four blocks of Felicity Street. In the last two years there had been two murders in the blocks around Jeanfreau’s-nine rapes, twelve aggravated batteries, eight burglaries, seven armed robberies, two carjackings, twenty-nine batteries… the list went on. Savary narrowed the search to Jeanfreau’s Grocery and discovered there were nine thefts, two armed robberies, two simple batteries, four disturbing-the-peace calls, and a peeping Tom reported there.
The only arrests on-site involved the two simple batteries-fistfights-and the peeping Tom case. A suspicious man standing outside Jeanfreau’s had a warrant out for his arrest for peeping Tom from Tangipahoa Parish. Jack Hudson was the victim of both armed robberies. Of the nine theft cases, five listed young African-American males as the culprits. Two were later arrested after pulling the same shoplifting stunt at other stores.
Savary stood and stretched. Time to get home, cook something up, and call his girls on the phone. Every night between six and seven, when he wasn’t working, Detective Joseph Savary called his ex-wife’s number and talked to his girls. Emily was nine and Carla four. Carla thought she could show her daddy things through the phone as if he could see what she pointed the receiver at. Last night she was talking about a drawing she’d done and said, “See, Daddy?”
“Yes, baby. I see it.”
Savary left headquarters, heading uptown to his small apartment near Audubon Park. He would pass his ex-wife’s house, the one he still paid the mortgage on, but would not stop. Joint custody in Louisiana meant his ex was the custodial parent, but he got his girls every other weekend and every other holiday. He fought for those visits even harder than he fought to solve murders. He barely knew his father. His girls would not suffer this.