House of Blues

House of Blues
A
Skip Langdon Novel
    Julie Smith
1995
    For Linda Buczek
because
this is her favorite

    l
    In New Orleans, as in many American cities, crime is
Topic A. The annual murder rate is somewhere around 4oo and climbing.
In addition, 2,000 people who do not die are shot each year.
    The detectives assigned to Homicide say there are no
fistfights anymore.
    The police, as is traditional in America in the
nineties, where people talk of little but crime, are overworked,
understaffed, and paid more like schoolteachers than CEOs.
    White people blame black people. Many carry guns.
    Blacks, many of whom are among the 2,400 killed or
wounded annually, feel as if they are under fire in more ways than
one. They also incline toward firearms.
    The economy, which was hit hard from the oil bust, is
still in disarray, but there is hope. The world's largest casino,
soon to be built, may create employment and draw the sort of tourist
the city so desperately needs—the sort that starts with F, soon
parted from his money. That is, the casino is soon to be built if the
wrangling over every tiny detail connected with its building and
operating is ever settled.
    The petty scam is so much a way of life throughout
the state that the natives shake their heads and tell the tourists,
"Louisiana doesn't tolerate corrupt politicians; it demands
them."
    In one gubernatorial election, a candidate perceived
as a dangerous racist ran against one of such unsavory reputation
that a bumper strip urged good liberals to "Vote for the crook;
it's important." Indeed, the winner himself remarked that
one-armed people had been unable to vote for him, since his
supporters needed one hand to hold their noses and another to pull
the lever.
    Yet despite crime and corruption, New Orleans remains
arguably the most beautiful American city; the most gracious; the
most charming.
    It is also the most eccentric. Walker Percy, one of
its most revered writers, noted that here "the tourist is apt to
see more nuns and naked women than he ever saw before," the
combination being the intriguing part. But eccentricity has its
perils: Louisiana has the usual drunk-driving laws, and New Orleans
more than its share of drunks—yet drive-in daiquiri stands abound
and flourish. On the other hand, the city's justly famous flamboyance
is also its best feature. As the neighborhoods change, as the Crips
and Bloods get bigger toeholds, as more and more middle-class mamas
start to pack pistols, this at least remains a constant. The drag
queen is welcome here, as is the voodoo queen, the queen of vampire
fiction, and the Queen of Carnival—as long as none of them bore
anybody.
    Like Mexico or the Caribbean, the city is an odd
mixture of the up-to-the-minute and the archaic—with a good deal
more emphasis on the latter.
    Yet perhaps even that is changing. A local
publication recently lamented that people hardly ever say they're
going out to "make groceries" anymore.
    Only rarely now is a sidewalk referred to as a
"banquette."
    Still, "neutral grounds" continue to divide
the streets, and a Mardi Gras trinket remains, not a string, but "a
pair" of beads. And some of the old customs survive. It used to
be that everyone cooked red beans and rice on Monday because this was
wash day—you could put your beans on and go about your business.
    Though the washing machine made the custom obsolete,
some of the restaurants still observe it. In at least one august and
unlikely household, that of Sugar and Arthur Hebert, it was revived
some years ago.
    Owner-operators of Hebert's ("A-Bear's,"
the menu tells tourists), a restaurant where the dish has never been
served, they convinced themselves at some point that they enjoyed
nothing so much as the simplest of fare after a week of serving up
Creole delicacies, and fell into the habit of consuming the dish
during their weekly family dinners—on Monday, because the
restaurant was closed then.
    Hebert's was one of the city's finest restaurants—of
the sort called "Creole," meaning the kind of
sophisticated, French-style cooking native to the city rather than
the country. In the bayous, it is sometimes thought, is where you'd
find the cuisine called "Cajun," unless you went to a city
restaurant specializing in it—K-Paul's, for instance. In reality,
however, many Cajun-style dishes are found in fine restaurants like
Hebert's. Creole cooking is such a mixture of styles and cultures it
can't really be classified. An excellent book on New Orleans