Crescent City Connection

I’m through throwing up.”
    “The brass want a Hollywood walk.”
    Skip made a face. “Oh, no.”
    “Buck up, Langdon, it’s your big moment. The media’s all notified. When do you want to do it?”
    Skip shrugged. “Oh, well. What can it hurt? Give me fifteen minutes to put on lipstick.”
    She was kidding about the lipstick, though she figured Cappello probably took her seriously. In her shoes, the sergeant—ever image-conscious—would have meant it.
    A Hollywood walk was basically a photo op. The prisoner had to be taken from Headquarters to what was now grandly called the Intake and Processing Center (“central lockup” in simpler days). This could easily be done without going outside, but that wasn’t sexy. When the superintendent of police got shot, the department damn well wanted everyone to know it got its man. Hence, a short walk from the garage door at the rear of Headquarters, about half a block up White Street, and over to the booking facility on Perdido.
    A short walk with more media people in attendance than there were cops in the building.
    Bazemore’s hands were cuffed behind him. Skip at one side, Boudreaux at the other, cameras everywhere. People eddied and swirled, shouting inane questions. Skip felt as if she’d been up for two days.
    Perhaps, she thought later, she should have been more alert. In retrospect she had no idea where her attention had been when she heard the shot.
    Bazemore stumbled and went down.
    Reporters scrambled, some tripping over wires and falling as well.
    Skip stared down at her prisoner for no more than a second— a split second, it couldn’t have been more—and immediately jerked her head up to the Broad Street overpass. A man was there, running. Traffic had slowed. But she had no shot, given the number of civilians both here and there.
    She simply watched, frozen, unbelieving, as the man ran, holding what was apparently a high-powered rifle.
    When they turned Bazemore over, his nose was gone.
    * * *
    Skip spent the next morning giving statements to other officers and avoiding giving any to the press. Cappello was handling that.
    The letter came with her other mail—the only piece that wasn’t junk, but she would have noticed it anyway. It was in a plain white business envelope, with her name and address neatly typed, plain as you please. The arresting part was in the upper left-hand corner, where the return address should have been. It was only two words: The Jury.
    It had been mailed the same day Nolan Bazemore was shot. Skip called Cappello. “Sylvia, come over here.” Cappello took one look and immediately came to the same conclusion Skip had. “Omigod. Let’s get the bomb squad. And the crime lab.”
    They left it there, not touching it, till the bomb squad had pronounced it safe and the lab had dusted. Then, carefully, and in the presence of witnesses, Skip slit it open and read.
    Dear Detective Langdon:
    We wish to congratulate you on your swift and excellent work in apprehending Nolan Bazemore, a blight on the city of New Orleans and indeed on the entire country, which used to be worth something. That’s right—used to be. This used to be a country where it was safe for old ladies to walk down the street in the middle of the day, where public schools were excellent and every child assured a good education, where neighbors took care of each other, cared about each other, and where crime was negligible. In the event a crime was committed, the criminal was entitled to a fair and speedy trial by a jury of his peers, twelve good men and true, and more often than not, justice was done. At any rate, we certainly expected it to be, and if it was not, we were surprised. We were shocked and we were outraged.
    To our eternal sadness, this is no longer true. We no longer permit our grandmothers to walk alone (or our children, for that matter), we accept the decrepitude of our schools, many of us carry guns against the rising tide of crime, and we do not expect justice. We have become a nation of cynics. We expect judges to sleep on the bench, juries to acquit, and lawyers to get rich.
    Why is this? It is because we do not care anymore. Because we are beyond caring. Because we do not see why we should care because we know the situation is hopeless.
Our
situation is hopeless.
    We are too defeated to have any hope.
    We know that the people selected to serve on juries will be poorly informed, poorly employed, possibly below average intelligence, and