Crescent City Connection

it’s a bit of a shock to see the young men still in their Saturday night eyeshadow rush home at mid-morning to wash their faces for Easter lunch with their mothers.
    Since New Orleans is well known as the city where too much is not nearly enough, there are no fewer than three Easter parades, all in the French Quarter.
    The first one consists of a caravan of horse-drawn carriages making their way from Arnaud’s Restaurant to Jackson Square, where the occupants, ladies of fashion known as the Friends of Germaine Wells, alight to promenade before going to church at St. Louis Cathedral.
    There is irony in the name they have chosen, as Ms. Wells, daughter of Count Arnaud and the late owner of the restaurant bearing his name, was no lady, it is said. Or at least her friends were no gentlemen. To be perfectly honest, rumor has it Ms. Wells’s head was easily turned by a tattoo.
    That head, however, nearly always sported outrageous hats, hence the Easter connection. The ladies of the Friends go all out. Some go vintage, some contemporary, some head-to-toe purple, some delicate peach. And these are only their frocks. Hat diameters have been known to reach a good thirty inches, and chiropractors to retire on the resulting sore-neck proceeds.
    Before reaching the square, the ladies will have begun at Arnaud’s for hat-judging and a Bloody, and after church, they’ll return for brunch and more Bloodies.
    About that time, Chris Owens’s Easter parade begins. Ms. Owens is a Bourbon Street club owner and renowned dancer, though not a stripper. Be that as it may, she does bare quite a bit, and everyone agrees it’s a splendid-looking body for anyone, much less a woman said to be somewhat Tina Turner’s senior.
    Besides herself, Ms. Owens’s parade features a number of ladies, some in carriages, some in cars bedecked with pastel balloons, all wearing the requisite eye-popping hats. Many drip chiffon veiling, some sport bunny ears. These ladies, unlike Ms. Wells’s friends, cover a range of ages, from eight or nine to well over eighty, judging by appearances. Those in between frequently display ivory fields of bosom and unsubtle makeup. They throw nice beads to the masses.
    Around two o’clock, as the last of Ms. Owens’s carriages disappears down Bourbon Street, the day’s first drag queens begin to venture out. Theirs is the least formal parade of the day, consisting mostly of afternoon saunters between Good Friends Bar and the Rawhide. Full drag frequently occurs, with all its high-heel teetering, but the point, as in the other parades, is hats. The gentlemen’s hats can get outrageous (sometimes reaching three feet across), but for once, not that much more outrageous than those of their female counterparts. Easter’s an all-out kind of day for everyone. Biblically, it will be recalled, Easter signals renewal, resurrection, a rising of the spirit.
    For Skip Langdon, newly returned to work after a leave of absence, resuming her job as a homicide detective was more like Lent than Easter—more fitful than triumphant, more gray than sunny, more edgy foreboding than happy expectancy. In short, morale that spring in Homicide—indeed in the whole department—was so low she couldn’t close herself off.
    There were four detectives in the car—everyone in Sergeant Sylvia Cappello’s platoon—on their way to a crime scene: A sixty-two-year-old woman had opened her door to a barrage of gunfire.
    “D’y’all hear? Cooper’s leaving.” The speaker was young, cynical beyond his years and experience.
    “Shit. That makes three this week.”
    “Fuck. What we doing here? Let’s take a vote—anybody in this car wouldn’t be out of here if they could?”
    Another senseless shooting. Another resignation. Another hot, crowded ride because there was no money for more cars.
    Skip tried to turn her mind off. If the job wasn’t meaningful, what was? She wasn’t waiting to collect a pension. She was too young for that, didn’t have enough years in and didn’t want to go anyway. She’d gone back to work after what amounted to an involuntary leave of absence (though technically it hadn’t been) because she loved the work, because it was the only thing she’d found to do with her life that truly pleased her, that made her feel alive and healthy and useful.
    But the mayor, when new blood was so sorely needed, had appointed a superintendent who was no more than a political pal.
    The City Council had decreed that officers who