Chapter 8
Crouching on the corner of Tulane and Broad streets, the New Orleans court house, with its fluted columns and imposing edifice – not to mention a large flight of stairs – barely lifted it above the dirty and noisy streets like a catatonic dinosaur, too tired to fling off the twin parasites of grime and corruption.
Behind it was the jail, where Chance had visited Father a few times. It was a comparatively modern building, with tiny window slits, and a small section of razor wire. Old public buildings and churches in Europe had gargoyles and monsters facing in all directions to protect the structure from unknown demons. Modern government buildings preferred search lights and cameras, also facing in all directions. Chance preferred the gargoyles.
He looked at the jail, and was transported back to 1976, to the disaster that was Pop’s arrest. He remembered sitting in the filthy, smoke-filled, noisy, and hot waiting room. There was nothing but the contempt of the guards – and the hateful stares of the other visitors- to make the long waits bearable.
The other visitors represented the absolute bottom of New Orleans society. Since New Orleans was a poor and crime ridden city, this was no small discomfort to Chance.
At fifteen, Chance had already reached his full height of four inches above six feet. But the last growing spurt was accompanied by an awkwardness – and lack of wardrobe – which did not impart any confidence in manner. His natural self consciousness was heightened here, as one of the very few caucasians, and the only one of his age.
Chance hated visiting Pop in that place. Getting money and gifts to him was difficult. The guards invariably sighed with exasperation, and gave you the feeling that delivering something to a prisoner was a big inconvenience, not part of their job, and just be thankful that we do it at all.
Pop’s requests were small. Some books to read. Maybe ten or twenty dollars. Some smaller clothes to wear, since he’d lost forty pounds since his arrest. Chance was the only one to visit regularly. He brought John D. MacDonald and Isaac Asimov paperbacks of his own. Bringing money was harder.
After each visit, Chance would take his time returning home. He was always hurt by what he saw. The questions he had were too numerous – and couldn’t be asked. Every conversation was monitored, and nothing about Pop’s current predicament should be spoken over the intercom.
There were long walks, and longer bus rides, where he tried to temper the discomfort and disgust at sharing air with drug addicts, robbers, murderers, and rapists. The visitors were not much better. The stink in the waiting room was as bad as a high school locker room. But the worst thing is that while Chance simply could not get accustomed to all the sorry excuses for humanity in that place – the rest of the prisoners and visitors seemed perfectly at home with their lot.
Even in that substrata dominated by illiteracy, addiction, and laziness; the various groups settled into their own layers of clans and cliques. Their shield against the world was that of defiant indifference to themselves and antagonism toward others.
Their anger at their situation was always directed outward. Never did they stop to think that perhaps there was culpability of their own that put them into a situation where they brought toddlers to a filthy jail to see absent fathers and brothers. Thus acclimating those same children that such a situation was normal.
What they had found when Katrina blasted through was that they were wholly unprepared for much of anything. Naturally they blamed everybody but themselves. It was the Mayor’s fault. It was the President’s fault. It was the Government’s fault.
Like the old song wailed, “But is it Johnny’s fault? OHHH NOOOOOO!”
Pop had a horrid pun he had used to describe these people, they were the “effluent society.”
Chance shook his head, inhaled sharply, and drove around the back of Broad. Finding a parking spot proved difficult. New Orleans may be much smaller in population now, but the court house seemed to be just as busy as it ever was.
Eventually, he walked across Broad, and climbed the vestigial steps to the main floor. Then he was directed to go right back downstairs into the basement where the records were kept.
All the records from before 1982 – there’s that year again – were not computerized or searchable online. You had to go to the courthouse and ask the clerks for the records from the archives.
The office was grimy, with the speckled off-white linoleum so popular with public institutions and insane asylums. The bored lady behind the tall counter looked aggrieved with the prospect of digging all the way back to 1976.
“You don’t have the docket number? Or even the exact date?” Her voice was high pitched and disbelieving. Her cadence was classic New Orleans dialect; it sounded like a cross between Brooklyn and Atlanta.
“No, I’m sorry. It was in 1975 or 1976. I have the name of the defendant.”
“What you need with that? It was so long ago!”
Chance had a prepared answer, “I’m writing a book.”
She rolled her eyes, like she’d heard this a thousand times before.
The clerk was a monstrously obese white woman with large black eyes. Reading glasses clung bravely onto the tip of her nose. She looked up with disbelief, showing the whites of her eyes. She was chewing on a hilite marker. For a moment, she looked exactly like one of those wartime pictures of Winston Churchill.
She poked her glasses with her middle finger and scratched her nose. “You have any idea how many files we got here? Why this case? Why not just pick any one?
It was his turn to get irritated, but he had to be careful. “Look, this was, um, a family member. I’m compiling the family genealogy and this is one of the more interesting episodes.”
“Hmph.” Still clearly unconvinced, she replied. “OK, I guess you got all the info here. You come back this afternoon and I should have something.” She took the marker from her mouth and began tapping it on the counter.
Fatigue and irritation crossed Chance’s face. Ms. Churchill seemed to have completely forgotten his presence as she carefully typed into the ancient computer with the marker. Chance had never been very graceful about dead time. But six years in the Navy taught him that prodding this woman would gain him nothing.
He climbed up and down the stairs again, and looked at the busy intersection. Tulane and Broad were virtually unchanged. For all the outward indications, this could be 1975, again. It was too early to go to the hotel. It was too hot to stand around here.
He decided to take some pictures; try to dredge up some memories. Even though New Orleans more resembled an armed military base at this point, it was still like a homecoming. Chance didn’t know anybody living here anymore, but his first skirmishes with adulthood had happened in this town. Maybe Igor’s was still around. Or Madmen’s.
He tried the latter first. ‘For Madmen Only’ was still there on St. Peter Street, next to Dauphine Street, one block away from Bourbon. The building was still a garish neon green color, just as Chance had remembered it from thirty years before. The interior was remarkably similar to his memory.
The wooden floor still had a scratchy, dusty feel, and the odor was a tortured battle between burned food and cigarette smoke, with a slight uncomfortable whiff of vomit.
Way back when, Mom and Chance lived in an old house that had been cut up into apartments, on Dauphine Street, a block from the Quarter, on the other side Esplanade. In 1976 Chance had become a regular at Madmen’s because of its pinball machine. Though he was only fifteen when he started coming in, nobody ever questioned him or asked for his ID – probably because he never ordered a drink. He was only there to play his all time favorite pinball machine: Captain Fantastic. It was a garish silver and purple machine with Elton John on the backplate, and double flippers on each side.
The number of quarters dropped into that machine was incalculable. Frequently, enough had been deposited that bus money went with it. In that case, he had to ride his bicycle through downtown and the length of Magazine street to get to school on the far side of the garden district.
Chance became an outstanding pinball player, and over a year period had won about a dozen of the weekly high score contests. The prize being a bottle of vodka. Even though Chance was recognized as a great player, he was but an apprentice compared to the Master of the Machine – a mechanic that worked at the Mercedes Dealership two blocks away. He who talked to the silver ball, whispering, “Jump Judy.” He had taken home probably thirty bottles, with the remaining few distributed to another half dozen players or so.
Chance and the mechanic had played head to head many times. The opponent attired in his blue work clothes, the large three pointed star over his left breast pocket, smoking a thin cigar, and sipping a single drink. One had to admire the subtle touch, and magnificent caress of the mechanic. If he had the same mastery of the cars under his care, then the dealership was truly blessed.
The very same dealership where Pop had made a wax impression of the key to a used Mercedes 300SEL 4.5 that he had test driven. The same car Chance had piloted across half the country as a fourteen year old. The brazenness of that act was still breathtaking.
An old saying, undoubtedly from Pop, flitted into Chance’s mind.
“It is easier to steal a canoe than a paddle.”
Today, the pinball machine was gone; replaced by a pair of video games. Both involved shooting bad guys on the screen with large red or blue plastic pistols, tethered to the console with a metal telephone cord.
He went over the far end of the bar, and took a seat by the chili pot. Chance was there when they first introduced that chili. It was awful. Here it was, still for sale thirty years later. Probably the original batch, too.
The bartender was short with a slight paunch, behind an open vest on top of a white T-shirt. A balding man with a long scraggly brown and grey beard, thick glasses, and a familiar look about him.
Just as he was about to ask, the bartender broke into a wide grin, showing a set of very white teeth, straight as a movie star’s. “Hello there, haven’t seen you, what twenty years? What the hell are you doing back here? Come to buy real estate? I got some water front if you’re interested! Lots of waterfront these days.” He laughed at his own joke.
Chance was completely flabbergasted that he was that easily recognized after so long. His face showed surprise, “Why yes, I’m flattered you remember me. You look familiar, but I can’t place you. How do your remember me?”
“Well, you were always on that pinball machine. I played too. But it didn’t seem to matter how good I did, you or that black dude would beat the snot out of my score. I could really have used some of that free booze, you know.”
“Oh, well, I didn’t really have a life back then.”
The bartender regarded him through thick magnifying lenses, then reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He didn’t offer one to Chance. “I’m not s’posed to be smoking in here, but what the fuck, eh? Nobody comes around here from downtown and harasses us anymore, they’re too busy in the Quarter these days, tryin’ to lure tourists back or sucking up to the Feds. You want somethin’ or you just wandering around the old stompin’ ground?”
“Sure, um, I guess I’ll take an Amaretto sour.”
Merriment spread beneath the hair and behind the glasses. “Ha, where’d you learn to drink that sissy shit? You want I should put a little umbrella in it? I think we’re out of little strawberries, though.” He straightened up. “Never mind, at least you’re drinking something with a little kick this time, that’s some progress at least.” He placed his cigarette behind the counter somewhere, and turned around to assemble the drink.
A little perturbed, Chance blurted out, “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
The bald man came back, splashed some juice into the tumbler and placed it on a napkin with a flourish. Then he raised his hands, palms toward Chance, as if to ward off Chance’s anger. “Hey, no offense, man.” Then he looked at Chance carefully, regarding him yet again with those huge bloodshot brown eyes. “No shit, you don’t remember me, do you?”