New Orleans Noir

dumb-cluck idea. I couldn’t tell the Father who would marry my kids and christen my grandbabies that I, a cop, was the accessory to a murder. Those poets that I’d listen to during the open mike, something like this was eating them up, too. Their girlfriends left them or their parents never loved them or they felt lonely and empty—I don’t know—they just needed to spill their guts and be heard. By anyone. Just heard . They didn’t tell it straight but in a symbolic way, you know, twisting it up enough so that it wouldn’t be only their story but everybody’s. So that’s what I’d been writing: what happened to me investigating Eva Pierce’s murder. And with Janice.
    Where it all went wrong and how I wound up feeling the way I did, as old, corrupt, and dirty as this French Quarter.
    I had to get it off my chest.
    Pogo stuck his face into the balcony, eyes popping out at the sight of me.
    “She’s a vile bitch,” he hissed, biting his lip. Then he waved me inside.
    Only about ten of the usual suspects were sprawled around the room. The first two poets went on forever. I was so wound up I couldn’t concentrate on a word they said.
    Finally, the clown with the leather cowboy hat held up the clipboard.
    “And here, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “is a rising star in the Quarter poetry scene. A man of the law who will grace us with his debut reading. He came to bust us, and now he’s one of us. Put your hands together to welcome Lieutenant Girlfriend.”
    Everyone clapped like crazy as I stepped onto the stage feeling like a horse’s ass. Pogo was jumping up and down, waving his arms like a cheerleader. I shuffled through the pages to get them in order. My voice caught as I started to speak.
    Miss Ping plinked an ice cube into a glass. The air conditioner coughed.
    Then a huge gray rat scurried across the room, stopped in the middle of the floor to take in the audience, and disappeared under the stage I was standing on.
    Everyone jumped to their feet.
    “Okay, you assholes, sit down,” I said, adjusting the mike. “That rat has to wait its turn just like all us other poets. This is called ‘Janice and Eva Swap Lipsticks in the Changing Room to Hell.’ I bet you lunkheads aren’t going to get it, but here goes.”

ALL I COULD DO WAS CRY
    BY KALAMU YA SALAAM
    Lower Ninth Ward
    E ven though her mouth was empty, Rita savored the crunchy flavor of animal cookies, old-time animal cookies made with real vanilla. Her son laid out in a casket and here she was thinking about snacks. But that was because animal cookies were Sammy’s favorite.
    When he was small, Rita would gallop the shapes up Sammy’s little round stomach, moving the crisply baked dough in bounding leaps. Usually the miniature animals ended up between Sammy’s laughing lips.
    His fat cheeks dimpled with a grin, Sammy would squirm in Rita’s lap, turn and clap his small hands in glee as he chomped down on the golden tan figures. Sometimes he’d cry out in mock pain when a bear would take a really hard jump and end up bounding over his head into Rita’s mouth. Animal crackers and funerals.
    Now little Gloria, twenty-three-and-a-half months old, sat in Rita’s lap. Tyronne sat silently next to her. Gloria squirmed briefly. Without really hearing a word he said, Rita patiently endured Pastor White droning on and on. Out of the corner of her eye, Rita stole a glance at Sammy’s corpse laying in the coffin. Absorbing that awful stillness, Rita’s instinct took over: She protectively hugged Gloria, bowed her dark face into the well-oiled coiffure of her daughter’s carefully cornrowed hair, and planted a silent kiss deep between the black, thick, kinky rows.
    Rita was beginning to doubt life was worth living, worth sacrificing and saving … for what, to have children who get shot down? What sense did it make to be a mother and outlive your children?
    Two deacons moved forward and flanked the coffin. Like passing through a room where the television is on but no one is watching and the sound is off, Rita was aware the men were there to lower the coffin lid, but she really paid no attention to the dark-suited sentinels. Rita had long ago said goodbye and there was no need to drag this out. The elder of the church-appointed guardians efficiently closed the blue velvet–trimmed coffin lid. Someone two rows to the rear of Rita uttered a soft but audible, “Oh, my Lord.” The lamentation cut clearly through the reverent silence