Crescent City Connection

stand up.”
    Bazemore wasn’t hurt and he wasn’t armed. But there was an MP5 on the floor of the truck that made Boudreaux grin. “That’s it, Nolan babe. Your ticket to Death Row.”
    “What are you talking about?” The older woman had her hands on her hips. She had a wash-’n’-wear perm and carried about sixty pounds of extra weight. Eighty, maybe. She looked as if she hadn’t exercised in a couple of decades.
    Bazemore said, “Mama. Go inside.”
    Nobody’s all bad
, Skip thought.
Everyone’s got a mama somewhere.
    But in the next few hours, during which she got to know Nolan Bazemore a great deal better than she wanted, she concluded he came close.
    While they waited for backup, Mrs. Bazemore cried and tore at a Kleenex. “My boy’s never done nothin’. It’s that trashy girl’s fault—that damn Joelle. I rue the day he ever met her.”
    Skip didn’t know that she’d ever heard the word “rue” spoken aloud. She said, “Why is that, Mrs. Bazemore?”
    “That whole stupid thing was her idea. She didn’t have the faintest idea what these Bazemores are like—Nolan and Edwin, both of ’em.”
    “What was her idea?”
    Bazemore said, “Mama, don’t you say a word. I don’t want you in trouble, now.”
    “Neither you or your daddy ever had a lick of sense.” She turned on her heel and went inside, leaving her son to fend for himself.
    Eventually they pried the story out of her.
    Nolan and his no-good girlfriend, Joelle, had come over for dinner the night Albert Goodlett’s appointment was announced. One of them—Mrs. Bazemore couldn’t remember which—said it was “time to give this town back to the white people.”
    She said, “Since niggers are responsible for the crime, it’s pretty stupid to go and give a nigger the job of stopping it, innit? Now, how hard is that to figure out? I mean, it don’t make no sense. Time after time, too. I think we’re all just damn tired of this, don’t you?”
    Skip said, “Go on.”
    “So Nolan said somebody ought to stop it. And that dumb Joelle said, ‘You think you’re man enough to do it?’ And his daddy said, ‘You better watch Nolan. You don’t know how crazy he is.’”
    The rest of it came out in the interrogation room, and it appeared everything his mother had said about Bazemore was true, and more:
You couldn’t imagine how crazy he was, or how reckless, or how twisted and dim-witted. He was more like a stray bullet than a loose cannon, faster and surer and scarier and a lot more deadly.
    First he waived his rights, saying the Miranda decision was a liberal tool for coddling criminals, and a white man couldn’t get a fair trial in this country nohow. Then he lit the cigarette Skip gave him and grinned. “I done it,” he said. “I done it and I’d do it again. I’d mow down every goddamn jungle-bunny cop and judge and politician in the country if I had time, and when I got done with that I’d start on the Jews. Anything else you want to know?”
    “Oh, my God.” Skip had spoken involuntarily. He sounded so nuts, she worried he’d get off on an insanity defense.
    Still, she and Jerry Boudreaux led him through the details, trying to pick holes in his story, making him fill in every gap. They ran his rap sheet and found he had a history of assault and one attempted rape.
    Then they brought Joelle in and questioned her. If anybody was ruing the day, it was she. Nolan beat her routinely, and also beat her four-year-old son; she wanted to leave, but didn’t have the money.
    Cappello called Skip into her office. “You’re not going to believe what they’ve been running on TV—his dad’s been giving interviews saying he supports his son no matter what he did because somebody has to stand up for white people.”
    Skip plopped down in Cappello’s extra chair. “Nobody’s that stupid. Everybody knows how that sounds—even the worst racist knows in his heart of hearts it won’t fly in public.”
    “Ed Bazemore says it’s time to blow the lid off all that.”
    “Hold it. His son gunned down an innocent man in front of his house. Surely he knows the kid’s gonna fry for it.”
    Cappello shrugged. “These are not normal people. Have you noticed that? Abasolo went to execute the search warrant on Bazemore’s apartment—said it was filthy, by the way—and found it full of white supremacist tracts and newspapers. Quite a few weapons, too.”
    “Great. I’m thrilled. Or I’m going to be thrilled as soon as