Deadly Pedigree

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? The poor bastards were kneeling down, lookin’ right at their killer. Looks like somebody evened up a score here, big time.”

“Looks like a drug deal gone bad to me, man,” Shelvin replied, searching Bons Temps’ fog-obscured face for unasked questions. “But you’re the detective.”

Another detective summoned Bons Temps aside; they spoke together and examined notebooks by flashlight as a train thundered by on tracks beyond the warehouses.

Shelvin removed his flashlight from his belt and joined other officers in the search for evidence.

Soon the assistant coroner rose from his uncomfortable crouch and directed his team to bag the bodies and put them in the “meat wagon.” Then he began a stumbling climb up the rocky bank, cursing the lateness of the hour and the discourtesy of the victims in getting murdered here.

Bons Temps found Shelvin a few minutes later. “We just got positive ID on the victims,” he said. “Kirk Dagget and Harvey Baspo. I thought maybe that’s who they were, but from what was left of ’em, I couldn’t be sure. Names ring a bell with you?”

Shelvin didn’t answer.

“Let me refresh your memory. These guys were on the force. Uniforms, like you. In their spare time for extra dough they did strong-arm work for Artemis Holdings. Like we all do a little security work to make ends meet, you know? But these guys were real bad apples. Made us all look dirty. They got busted about a year ago, after the Armiger woman died and that genealogist gave the powers-that-be the leads they needed. I wouldn’t think you’d have any trouble remembering ’em, seeing as how they sliced and diced you and your brother.”

“Yeah,” Shelvin said, watching the two coroner’s men heft a body bag up the rocks, “I didn’t recognize them either…you got a point, here, Bons Temps, or what?”

Shelvin had pronounced Gus’s nickname right–a rare thing for a rookie cop–losing most of the ending consonants. Bons Temps seemed flattered.

“Matter of fact, I do. Lotta guys on the force probably think the shooter did us a favor, getting rid of these creeps. They had plenty of enemies; hell, they even screwed me on a transaction or two. The Feds cut ’em a sweetheart deal to spill their guts about their former co-workers–us. They been under house arrest all these months. Nobody’s seen ’em for a couple of days.”

“I read the paper and watch TV,” Shelvin said.

“I realize I’m probably going over old ground with you here. What I’m sayin’ is, Balzar”–and here Bons Temps swiveled his tree-stump of a head to make sure no one was within earshot–“we all got certain little secrets best left unknown. Sometimes, the lines aren’t so clear, and we all crossed over ’em in our careers. You got to, to feed your family. Howya like that, them two pointin’ fingers, after what they done?” Bons Temps leaned forward to deliver these words, driving a fat index finger into Shelvin’s chest: “Least I never killed nobody for money, like them.”

Shelvin glanced down at the rubber-gloved finger and then up at the detective’s face. Something in Shelvin’s eyes made Bons Temps remove his finger and back off a few inches.

A new police superintendent had taken over in October 1994, with a mandate to clean up the notoriously corrupt department and end the city’s unwanted claim to the title of Murder Capital of America. At his Gallier Hall swearing-in celebration, the new chief received a briefing from an FBI agent on investigations and stings in progress to root out the vice rampaging within NOPD.

“Lotta things gonna change in the department, Balzar,” Bons Temps said, from a safer distance. “But one thing’ll always be the same: you need friends when the shit starts flyin’. I watch your back, you watch mine. That’s the way it works.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Shelvin said.

Bons Temps slapped Shelvin’s ox-like shoulders. “Good man. You a fast learner. They sure don’t grow ’em dumb up there in Natchitoches, do they?”

The detective removed a plastic bag of white powder from a pocket of his dark-blue, yellow-lettered rain parka and dropped it amid the rocks.

“Hey!” Bons Temps shouted to the others, “come look see what our Balzar done found!” He turned to Shelvin, a big grin on his face. “You right, Balzar. Sure does look like a drug deal gone sour. Guess it’s another cold case for the bottom drawer.”





*All excerpts from J. N. Herald, ed., The Diary of Ivanhoe Balzar: Mulatto Barber of Natchitoches

(New Orleans: Coldbread Press, 1997). The Plutarch Foundation in New Orleans possesses this extraordinary diary (Manuscript 895). Herald’s book has received awards and accolades from major genealogical societies and professional groups, and has been praised in academic and literary circles for outstanding scholarship.