The Blood of Saints (Tom Connelly Book 2) Page 5

  He would have to figure out how to decouple the private investigator line from his personal line. Or just get a new line altogether. He wasn't sure if he would have to call someone to get his name removed from the phone book, he knew he would have to contact a few online lists of private investigators. His assistant, Sarah, would have known all this. She would have known how to list the desks and a filing cabinet for sale online, too. Tom didn’t even feel like charging for them. Whoever was able to move them could get them for free.

  Tom took the last mineral water out of the fridge. He considered the office for a moment. Clean, now, or cleaned out. Still dusty. And full of memories. He had consoled people in these rooms. He had told them hard truths, too, and even had a gun pulled on him, once. He wasn’t sorry to let some of those memories go.

  He turned off all the lights and locked the door.

  Tom managed to sleep for a few hours in the late afternoon. He woke up with dusk creeping in through his bedroom window and he woke up feeling good, recharged if not exactly a new man. He had a few boxes to get rid of, sure, but he was almost done. Tom Connelly, Detective, was a chapter of his life that he could close and be satisfied with the closing. He had done what he could while the money was good, and that was really what it was all about, right? The money. No money meant no reason to keep the place open.

  In his Taurus on the way to the casino, his thoughts turned to the future. The casino was a big organization, lots of positions. Lots of chances for advancement. Tom settled his car into the flow of traffic going downtown and thought that staying on at the casino would be good for him. Good for Dennis, too, if there came a time when he wanted to move back home.

  That evening he checked every ID and looked at each and every person in the face. Calmly. Cooly. One at a time. This was something he could do. Hello, how old are you, what's your address, have a nice day. Temporary interactions. Nothing he would be drawn into. Just the occasional drunken argument or a Tulane kid with a bad fake ID. That was alright. Fake IDs didn’t keep you awake at night.

  Tom wanted to ask Ray about Dennis’s chess game, ask him for tips, but the medic had the night off. Tom had a quick dinner and considered the chess app. He decided on the knight, his finger dragging the digital horse across the touchscreen, now in striking distance of Dennis’ bishop. Not a bad move, he thought. He put his phone away and began his rounds of the gaming floor.

  He walked through the cigarette smoke and chiming video arcade games with his eyes peeled, giving himself over to the job. Women in sparkling evening-wear and men in torn t-shirts played Black Jack across from one another. The ever-present bachelorette party chattered and howled with laughter, stumbling from one slot machine to the next. He saw at least a dozen minor infractions that would have allowed him to kick a gambler out of the casino. It was like giving out traffic tickets in that way. If a cop wanted to give you a ticket, you were getting a ticket. If you were behind the wheel the odds were good that what you were doing was most likely illegal one way or another.

  He stopped and folded his hands in front of his belt buckle. Something caught his eye. The bachelorette party had hovered around a machine for one moment and then moved on. Now there the white tongue of a winnings receipt was jutting from the bottom of the machine. Slot machines didn't give out money anymore, they don't spew cash or scatter coins all over your shoes like in the movies. Machines now issued receipts that you could redeem for real cash from the cashier behind his bulletproof glass. If you had the receipt the money was yours, however, if you left the receipt in the machine and walked away, as the bachelorette party had, the receipt became the property of the casino. And if you happened to wander by and see a wayward receipt and take the winnings for your own? Well, that was stealing from the casino itself.

  Now there was the slip of slick receipt tape hanging from the machine, waving in circulated air with the promise of free money to whoever was man enough to reach out and take it. It wasn’t long before someone found themselves up to the challenge. Tom watched a thin Asian man with his shirt tucked in walk over to the machine, ignoring Tom completely, and tear the receipt from the dispenser. The thin man began walking away.

  This must happen a dozen times a night. And who cared? The receipts were usually left for a reason, if they only offered a cent or ten, a dollar at most. The staff would confiscate the slips if they saw them dangling, but that was about all they would do. A stolen receipt wasn’t usually enough to interrupt the general happenings of the gaming floor.

  Tonight was different. Tom had closed one chapter of life. He was hyper-focused on the gaming floor. And technically, the man walking away was stealing from the casino. The eye in the sky, the cameras poorly hidden in the ceiling tiles, had seen the man take it, and they had seen Tom watch him do it. If Tom wanted to make a go of working the floor long-term, he couldn’t let these things slide. Especially not when it happened right in front of his face.

  He walked calmly but quickly to the thin man, who wasn’t in any rush. Just meandering along, shoes scuffing the thin carpet, examining the slip.

  “Excuse me, sir, can I talk with you?” Tom brought two fingers up and touched the man’s shoulder, just enough to let him know he was there.

  The man turned and frowned deeply and kept walking. Tom clenched his jaw. Couldn’t the guy see his gold coat? That was a clear sign of a casino employee. Who would wear the coat if they didn’t have to? He followed the guy.

  “Sir.” Tom’s hand lept out before he could stop it, grabbing the man’s shoulder. The thin man spun and rattled off a few words in a language Tom couldn’t understand.

  “Sir, you didn’t place that bet, so I’m going to need that receipt.”

  “No.” The thin man balled the slip up and stuffed it in his pocket. He spoke again, but not to Tom. A voice answered behind him. He turned and saw two young men standing there, glowering at him. The one with the stubbly beard spoke to the thin man who had stolen the winnings receipt, while the other one stepped into Tom’s space. He was broad and dour and Tom realized maybe he hadn’t identified himself as a casino employee. Maybe to them, he was just a man in a suit hassling their friend.

  “I’m with casino security, and he took a winnings receipt that wasn’t his.”

  The guy with the stubble was now leading the thin away. Tom tried to step around the man in front of him, but the guy stepped towards him and said something.

  “Get out of my way.” Tom’s teeth were clenched.

  “I guess he only speaks Vietnamese.” That was someone new. Both Tom and the man blocking his path turned to the newcomer. He was in a blue sport coat and sported short dreadlocks. His beard was neatly trimmed on the sides but growing out on his chin. He was young, too. He didn’t look old enough to be in the casino, even with that beard.

  Tom said, “What?”

  “My cousin married a Vietnamese girl. I don’t get much of it but he keeps calling you, ‘white man’ in a way that’s not friendly.”

  The guy blocking Tom’s path spat something at him and walked away. Tom forgot the kid with the beard and started after the three men, started after that stolen receipt.

  “Are you Tom Connelly?” That stopped Tom. He turned back to the kid.

  “Who are you?”

  “Patton Brooks, I’m with the Public Defenders Office. I’ve been trying to call you all day.” The kid stuck out his hand. Tom ignored it.

  “What?”

  “The floor manager said you’d be here.” Patton brought his hand back in and waited while Tom looked at him, then at the men disappearing into the chimes and lights of the gaming floor.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” Tom said.

  “Sure. I’ll wait right here. You go chase down that old man for stealing a dollar from a slot machine. Sofia Adelfi’s not going anywhere, anyway.”

  Tom almost turned back to the gaming floor, but he caught himself.

  Tom studied the kid for a moment. Then he said, “What about her?”<
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  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A fter lunch, Jean walked back down Tulane Avenue with Karen from Client Services. Karen was wrapped up in scarf and peacoat, still holding on to winter fashion even with spring bearing down on them. It was still cool, but cool enough to be inviting rather than uncomfortable. Jean was mulling over taking off her sport coat, but she thought that would be unprofessional. Not that professionalism was a top priority at the PDO. Here at Tulane Tower, where the PDO was headquartered, they were more focused on getting through the day.

  “How was your meeting with Juanita this morning?” Karen eyed her, probably knowing that any meeting with Juanita Commes, the Head Public Defender, couldn’t have gone well. She had whiffed the Sofia Adelfi case and whiffed it big. The DA’s office had accepted the charges against Sofia Adelfi in just under three weeks, which was record time. The period between being arrested and being indicted was called the 701 period, and this was maybe the shortest 701 in history. The DA also let loose with both barrels. They charged Sofia Adelfi with First-Degree Murder.

  “She moved it to this afternoon,” Jean said.

  Karen clucked her tongue and shook her head and Jean had to agree with her. Morning meetings with Juanita meant you were a priority. Two cups of coffee and the Head Defender was sharp. A meeting after lunch would be a sluggish affair, something to do while she digested a carb-heavy lunch. Late afternoon meetings would be frantic and completely unproductive, if they weren’t canceled outright, with Juanita hustling to finish the day’s work before a prompt exit to beat rush hour.

  They moved into the shadow of Tulane Tower and under the veranda. Karen opened the door and Jean followed.

  Tulane Tower was a ten-story cube situated on the corner of Tulane and Broad, floors six and seven of which were occupied by the Public Defenders Office. Inside the building was old but clean, with the public high school or Department of Motor Vehicles air of an official government space. Jean waved at the security guard standing vigil over the building’s small coffee shop and waited with Karen for the elevators.

  “What about the arresting officers?” She spoke that aloud, interrupting Karen’s furious texting.

  “Which?”

  “Adelfi.”

  Karen shrugged. The elevator dinged and they entered the metal box. It was at least as old as Jean.

  “She’s got no family here, just in-laws, and they weren’t too helpful,” Karen said, not being too helpful herself.

  “No, I said the officers.” Jean pushed the button for the Seventh floor. There were a few offices and conference rooms and an empty office supply room on the Sixth floor, but everyone else was on the seventh. The rest of the building was occupied by various other government offices, most of them having business with the Criminal District Court, right across the street. Right there, where you couldn’t forget who the bosses were.

  The offices for Court Intervention were upstairs and included the Domestic Violence Intervention Program, Drug Court, and Veterans Court. Certain probation offices occupied the building, too. The Public Defenders were housed right below Court Intervention. Like maybe the city saw their office was a perfunctory way-station. The accused almost had to hit every floor; Defense, Intervention, then probation. Their sentencing was a predetermined affair. They weren’t innocent until proven guilty, they were on the New Orleans assembly line, the line that made ex-cons, unless somebody could throw a huge lever and shut the whole thing down, shut it all down every time, for every human that she interviewed in that soundproof plastic cube. Jean knew she shouldn’t think of it like that, but it seemed too coincidental to be otherwise. There was, after all, something to the fact that the District Attorney had his own brand-new office building a few blocks away while the Public Defenders occupied two floors of a building that was going on forty years old.

  Karen was talking. “I’ve got so many cases I can’t keep up with all the arresting officers. It’s not my job, anyway. Patton was on that.”

  “The arresting officers were, I think, Quarles and Pennybacker.”

  “I don’t know those people.”

  “I haven’t heard of Quarles before. But Penny…”

  “Pennybacker is familiar. Yeah, brutality complaints,” Karen clapped her hands as she stepped off the elevator. “Yes. that’s him. Heavy hands.”

  Jean paused as the elevators closed behind her. “That’s something. And the guy who claimed Sofia wanted to kill her husband? He was involved in a shooting during the storm. The Huey P. Long bridge thing.” She had looked for information on Connelly after magistrate court the same morning she was saddled with the Adelfi case. It wasn’t hard to find, the Connelly thing had been on the front page of every newspaper in Louisiana way back when. Right after Hurricane Katrina, there had been an officer-involved shooting on this side of the Huey P. It had ended with one dead teenager and a detective, Tom Connelly, resigning from the force. No charges for the detective, of course. Now, this guy was showing up in her case.

  Karen was back texting. “The bridge thing. Wait, he shot that kid?” Said without even looking up from her phone.

  “Yeah. What do you know about that?”

  “Just what I saw on the news. I’m not an investigator. Good luck in your meeting,” Karen said as she walked past an empty reception desk, leaving Jean there alone.

  Jean tugged at the back of her shirt, shivering as a puff of cooler air rolled up her back. “Right. Well, thanks for jogging my memory.”

  Jean walked down the hall and tried to make the facts fit into some sort of cohesive structure. The Huey P. Long shooting. There might be something there.

  Juanita Commes’ office was in a corner of the building that looked out over the city. Not looking out over the courthouse. No, Juanita would never have been caught brooding out her window at the CDC. Or brooding at all. She was too friendly. Everyone loved Juanita. Even the DA’s office. No one was afraid of Juanita, either. Especially the DA’s office. That was a problem, as far as Jean was concerned. If you were about to be put through the meat grinder that was New Orleans’ criminal justice system, you wanted someone with a sledgehammer, someone who was going to smash the grinder and sell it for parts. You did not want Juanita, who was going to call you “Baby” and “Darling” and hold your hand as you were ground down by the machine.

  Jean knocked on her open door and Juanita ushered her inside. The Head Defender was poised with her pen over a stack of papers, glasses balanced on the tip of her nose as she read. Her dress was near muumuu sized and radiated a bright pattern designed to hypnotize, as far as Jean could guess. She took a seat next to a huge framed photo of Juanita with her husband, both surrounded by a hoard of grandchildren.

  “One second, baby.” Juanita made a few small notes and then slipped her glasses off and smiled, and she really was likable. “How’s your day going so far?”

  “Alright. Tracking a few things down.”

  “How’s the Mulraney case going?”

  “I filed motions this morning.”

  “But how’s it going?”

  “The assault is going to stick. Interfering with a police investigation was thrown out.”

  “Good for you. You need anything there?”

  “I’m covered. Nancy in investigations is great.”

  “She’s been here almost as long as I have, she should be great. And the Robinson thing?”

  Jean looked at the ceiling for a moment. The Robinson case was one that had been a top priority for her before the Adefli case came across her desk. A third strike drug offense. Kile Robinson was arrested with large quantities of both marijuana and cocaine. Intent to distribute. Jean could have worked with that, but Kile was also carrying a firearm. You didn’t have to register your firearm in Louisiana, but it was illegal for a convicted felon like Kile to carry one. The court would not be merciful. The problem was that Jean liked Kile Robinson, he was smart and funny and she had gotten to know his family, his sisters and grandmother, and she liked them, too.


  “I don’t have a clear strategy for the Robinson thing.” Jean wasn’t talking about a strategy for court. She was talking about breaking the bad news to his family.

  Juanita nodded and sighed. “You’re going to have to lay it all out for the folks. Don’t make them think they’re getting their baby brother back in two weeks.”

  Jean nodded.

  “You got time in the conference room to have them all in, have a little family meeting?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, you let us know when you need it.” Juanita meant her assistant. Jean would never bother the head defender with something as pedestrian as reserving a conference room to let a family know one of their own was going to jail for a very long time.

  Jean hesitated. She was about to bring up the Adelfi case when Juanita waved her off. “Don’t forget, we’re going to have a group meeting tomorrow A.M. to poke holes in Kandinski’s double homicide.”

  “Sure.”

  Juanita waved again and Jean found herself out in the hallway. She turned and saw that her boss was, once again, poised over her endless paperwork, glasses perched precariously on the edge of her nose.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  J ean walked through the maze of the seventh floor, her shoes whispering over the low carpet. She rounded a corner and cut through the cubicle farm that housed a half dozen private investigators the PDO kept on salary to work cases. Past Karen and the other social workers in the Client Services Division making endless calls to notify family members of the accused, placate angry bosses and shift managers who were wondering where their employees were, and arrange bail bondsmen.

  She turned another corner and walked down a narrow hall lined with offices. Most young attorneys were crammed two or three to an office. Further down the hall the offices opened up, with more senior attorneys getting their own space.

  Jean’s office had two desks, but her office mate had recently moved on to the private sector. He only lasted three years, just barely finishing out the initial contract that the PDO asked of its new hires. For some, even three was too long a time in a job that worked them too hard and paid them too little. Those that made it five or six years in at Tulane Tower were already veteran Public Defenders, though after Hurricane Katrina the offices had cleared out, many of the old guard walked and were replaced by new, green attorneys that the city anxiously overworked.