Jesus Burned

Chapter One

The 10-20:

At different times through its history, various parcels of Audubon Park’s three hundred and forty acres in New Orleans had been the site of the largest building in the world (the Main Exhibition Hall of the 1884 Cotton Centennial Exposition), as well as weekly slave auctions, numerous gentlemen’s duels, the country’s worse zoo, and suicides (the Suicide Oak).

In 1974, two hundred yards from the park’s Magazine Street entrance, two black tar basketball courts glowed dimly in the dark. The Park officially closed at 10 p.m., the tourists and local whites had left much earlier, but the Reverend Todd Mossbank had instituted the New Orleans Midnite Basketball League to help shepherd the area’s youth in their difficult journey from junior high to county jail, from the city’s education system to the state’s penal system.

///

Tucked beside and hidden by the rack of sagging bleachers, Brucia watched Jefferson The Sparrow Reed enjoying his status, sopping up the crowd’s subtle admiration. The smell of hoop—familiar but different, an outdoors, late night variant—hung in front of the light stanchions.

A leftie with a killer drop step—Brucia figured him to be Johnny Blue Bumpa—beat his man with a nice crossover dribble and drive, but then pulled up at fifteen feet for a fade-away jumper.

A kid, maybe fourteen, sitting one row behind the Sparrow, tapped him on his shoulder and said something. Brucia thought it might have been, See that, man, you be watching all that?

The Sparrow twisted back to the kid—obviously didn’t recognize him—and gave out a slow, drawn out, double syllabled Shit. Brucia heard the Sparrow add for clarity: Sure, sure, but he don’t mix, see? You gotta mix it. The man do that, be okay. Pull up like that, shit. He clear. Go in, just keep blowing by, that way, please.

Brucia stepped closer. The kid, grinning, pointed down to the blacktop and said, Don’t want to get his Flyers dirty, and he laughed.

The Sparrow gave him a Yeah, so he could get back to the game. As he twisted back toward the court, Brucia heard the kid announce, The Sparrow he knows. Status.

The kid tapped his hero’s shoulder again. Rev Mossbank here tonight?

I not seeing him.

How that Achilles, Sparrow?

Oh, I be back.

Take a while though, huh?

The heal heels, I be back. Take longer because of me getting so old.

Bored by the chatter, Brucia began walking the sideline, pretending he was just strolling with nowhere particular to go, knowing the Sparrow would spot him and know different. And just that quick, Brucia was sitting right there next to his target, there in the front row, as they both knew all along he would be. When sitting out an injury, the Sparrow always sat in the first row, where he could be seen; but not just because of muscle damage—his knees wouldn’t fit into the rows behind.

The cop took the brown paper-wrapped can of Budweiser out of Sparrow’s hand and took a tug at it, didn’t offer it back.

It was May, but the cop still had on his old leather pea coat, worn open, showing an Hawaiian shirt underneath. He kept his eyes on the ball movement as he grabbed hold of Sparrow’s bony shoulder, squeezed it and said, Jefferson. The Sparrow. I remember you. How long’s it been, man?

"Jef-fer-son, Pink."

What?

"You say Jef-fer-son my name, not like no President. I tell you that ten times today so far."

"Oh, sure, that’s right, I know that. Jefferson Reed, whatever it is you want, I’m with you on this. Jefferson. Reed. So I’m betting you tell your boys you’re related to Willis then, right, don’t you?"

Why? What?

Willis. The Knicks. Grambling. He’s from up there in Bernice, I do believe, but I’m sure you two’re related somehow, way back. Plantation days. Brucia knew the kid and others would be staring at his back now.

Who, to who am I? Ain’t no plantation day here, Pink.

The cop raised his voice rose a bit, but it was fake. Willis Reed, for goodness sake, your second cousin there. The New York Knicks, the MVP, up there doing things you never achieved, never came close to, what with your checkered past and all....

Shit, I don’t pay no mind to any that shit.

Sparrow, you just put ‘shit’ there on both ends of your sentence. That’s very good. I think what you just did there, they call a palindrome. Or a pachyderm. The cop finished Sparrow’s beer for him, leaned over and put the empty can down on the black top.

I pay you no mind.

To the NBA? No, I guess not, you don’t. Only to the U.K., huh, even though it’s been a while. Sure. And paying mind to all those lubricated, sedated bozos out here. The cop flipped his palm out toward the court action. Anyone any good out there? Bumpa maybe?

Yeah, I be watching the game. The Sparrow kept his eyes to the court, trying not to acknowledge the cop, knowing what was coming. The cop was staring at him.

You ever notice, Sparrow, that sneakers don’t squeak on blacktop, like they do in the gym? Makes the game missing something, don’t you think, you think? You been a gym rat in your time. You must know.

The Sparrow didn’t answer.

An errant crosscourt pass went through Blue Bumpa’s outstretched arms and skidded into the Sparrow’s hands. The long fingers, with the bones pressing through the coffee colored skin, took the ball in one hand, fake passed to his right while still palming the ball, laughed and no-look passed it back to Bumpa. The Sparrow grinned, turned halfway around to the bleachers. The kid, who had been quiet since the cop got there, called out, The fucken Sparrow to the crowd, showing slightly comical yet genuine appreciation.

In a P.A. type voice, the cop announced through cupped hands: They love the man here, folks, they adore him. Then, in a quieter tone, just above a whisper, See the ball, Sparrow, see the ball.

What?

I want you to point at the ball. Point out to me where the ball is, or ‘is at,’ I should say.

What for?

Point. I mean it. The cop talking like he meant it.

Sparrow pointed at the ball with his left arm, the one away from the cop.

The cop, looking out at the court, told him, Other arm.

As the Sparrow lifted his right arm to point, the cop drilled him in the ribs with his elbow. The Sparrow doubled over and coughed as the cop looked around at a crowd that hadn’t noticed. Bumpa had just been beaten left by a powerfully built player whose dunk rattled the chain link of the basket. The crowd was hooting its admiration.

The Sparrow straightened back up and asked, Shit, Pink, why that, what for now?

The cop said, "Detective Brucia. I don’t get your name wrong, do I?"

Shit, man, you gonna leave me with bruises with that tomorrow. Why that? Ain’t I been good to you? Ain’t I? I asking you, why that now? What for? Motherfucker.

Nothing, Brucia told him, absolutely nothing. That was for nothing, so pay attention. Did you get what I came here for me?

The Sparrow let out some air through his nose, looked around, hung his head, and said very quietly, Two Fang. Some cat name Two Fang.

Brucia turned back and looked around at the crowd, spotted a hoodlum drinking a Colt .45, pointed at it, motioned for it.

///

Four hours earlier, the Sparrow had been eating a slice of shrimp-covered pizza at a food and blues parlor on Claiborne Avenue. He had looked up and said, Oh, Christ, it’s Pinky the Pig, what now, it get my eyes start tearing up you come around here like this. Every time. Every damn time.

The Sparrow kept chewing, took a bite, looked down at his paper plate, stained red in splotches. He was nearly seven foot tall, his knees were straddling the center post of the pedestal table like it was a thin but submissive lover. He was wearing a Southern University sweatshirt, his eyes seemed to be burned out, blurred by chemicals.

The pink cop, standing over the table, leaning in a little, pointed at the plate to ask, What’d you call this dish, what’s it you’re eating there?

Pizza?

That’s a question you’re asking me, whether it’s pizza or not? Sparrow, you sound like you’re asking for corroboration, or else you got a dead Norwegian lost somewhere in your heritage.

What? You don’t got pizza where you come from, huh?

I haven’t had a decent slice of the pie since I left Levittown, and I doubt I’m about to, here in Bobby’s Bayou Shack, even though the sign says… the cop looked up to read, …‘New and Permanent Home of Fine Creole Cooking and the Best of New Orleans Blues.’

Here? The Sparrow folded his slice over, took another bite. Yeah, I be sitting eating, eating, eyes on watering up, me thinking about you coming up, wondering where’s it all gonna lead somewhere. You know last time, where that get me? Let me eat in peace, please, officer.

Detective.

Officer.

The Sparrow kept chewing, wouldn’t look up at the cop.

If I had time for any bullshitting, Sparrow, I could. Not right now though.

The cop looked toward the stage; the blue spotlight soaking a skinny old guy at the piano, dark shades the size of English muffins, fingers like tentacles sweeping across the ivory. Yellow tee shirt with vertical stripes, a pen clicked to inside the neckline. Who’s that up there?

What, you George Shearing now? That Professor Longhair, boss. The Professor. Shit. You ain’t been here long enough, you don’t know that?

The sign says he’s Roy Bird. Or Ray Bird.

Same guy. Except it not really him. There be a lot of Professor Longhairs around. He just one of them, that’s all.

What?

Yeah.

Isn’t anything for real in this place, in this town?

Not much, Pink, we full of ghosts and goblins down here. Get used to it.

The cop listened to the music for a while. He doesn’t sound too much like a black man, now does he? He enunciates. He elucidates.

Sure he do. News to me he do that. I don’t even know what you mean. Ever.

The cop grabbed Sparrow’s shoulder, a bit hard. No, he does. Listen. Listen to the words.

News to me. That all news to me. Everything news to me. Get off me, man. He what? Does what?

He elucidates. Makes things clearer.

Yeah.

The Sparrow had put the slice down to grab at his stein of beer. Brucia picked up the paper plate, looked around, stooped over and placed it down on the black linoleum floor. The Sparrow said, Hey.

That’s what I’m here for, want you to do. Elucidate for me. Please.

Give me my pizza back, hole.

I will. I want your mouth to be clear first. Clean. That mozzarella they use, it tends to clog things up. Your words. Shit, it’s probably not even real mootz down here they use. Probably Kraft spray cheese, what’s that stuff, comes out of a toothpaste tube. Is that crayfish they put on top of it?

Yeah, well, taste good. I want it. Give me back. Sparrow leaned down toward the slice, but the cop used a hand to hold him away.

Soon as you enunciate for me. Soon as you elucidate. You know what that means, Sparrow?

Shit, sure, no, yeah. It mean I’m hungry. Don’t know what that means, I know what you means. I do.

Sure you do, Sparrow. I know you do.

So what you want? My eyes, she’s all reddish now from seeing you, plus now my stomach begins calling. Somebody gonna walk by, step on my pizza slice. Every time you walk in, Pinkie, every fucken time. Just tell me what.

I’m guarding it, I’ll guard it for you.

What?

Brucia pulled out a chair and sat down across the small table from the Sparrow. Brucia wasn’t quite six foot, but their knees were almost touching. There’s something new we been hearing about—Bella Seven, or Six, something like that—it’s going around, making people sick, you know what I mean?

From Biloxi.

Oh, yeah? Now see, I didn’t know that. I talk to you, Sparrow, I always learn something. You’re a fountainhead.

Fountain.

Yeah, whenever I drop by, I leave a more educated individual than when I first came in. That’s why I’m always dropping by. You don’t disappoint.

Yeah, that the reason I living for. Gimme my pizza.

Who’s bringing it in? The Domans? Fred and the Domans?

The Sparrow took a long suck of his Budweiser, his lips reaching an inch down on the neck, then spitting out a bit of liquid as he started talking. Oh, I tell you that, Pink, even if I know, I don’t though, even if I do, I tell you that, you promise to pick up the pieces of my arms and legs and lungs and prick off the alley floor, send them all to my Momma then? I give you her address. You do that? I don’t even know anyway, I just heard Biloxi, that be the end of it.

Brucia leaned over, looked down toward the paper plate on the floor. Getting cold. Getting mighty cold down there.

The Sparrow said, Maybe include a little note for the lady. ‘Momma, you son give his ass away in service to the New Orleans Police Department. Here be his black ass back. We all proud of the boy.’ Maybe you include that, huh, with my pieces? For her? I do it myself, but I don’t write so good.

A U.K. man like yourself, you can’t even write? Didn’t they have labs for that, you were up there?

I don’t graduate.

No, you did not, Brucia said. Not at all, not even close.

The ersatz Professor Longhair had finished his set, was doing a stoop shouldered walk offstage, talking to a man holding a bright red guitar. As the guitar man put a long arm around the Professor’s shoulders, Brucia’s view of the stage was blocked by a huge chest and stomach, covered by a chain link vest, moving in, half a foot from his face.

Brucia studied the vest for a while, then threw a thumb in the direction of the chest behind it and asked the Sparrow, So Isaac Hayes here is up next, is he? The Longhair guy was just the opening? You know, his hair wasn’t all that long as it was, was it?

Two arms reached out from behind the vest toward Brucia, who held up a palm between them and said, Jeez, you know, you could lay a hand on me, Johnny, but I’d hate to have to take those hands and that vest back to the evidence locker. There’d be paperwork involved.

A voice from above the vest asked, This here’s the man on us, Sparrow?

Sparrow told him, A pink-white brother, he sitting here with a haircut like that and those tweed pants on, you ask me that? You sharp all right.

Brucia looked down at his pants. These are khaki’s. They’re all right. Don’t they fit good?

The vest told the Sparrow, He so skinny, puny looking, I figured him one of your customers. Too scrawny to be a cop.

The Sparrow smiled, said, Too pink, huh?

Brucia picked up the Sparrow’s plastic knife from the tabletop, poked it through the vest, pressing the dull point into the vest-man’s stomach. When you bought this fence and had your tailor alter it for you, I’m sure it fit right, you had the build to pull it off, but now just look at yourself. You can’t wear a thing like that with a gut hanging out like that. Now move along. Go see if Longhair needs a Coke or something, before he comes back on. Tell him we’re enjoying the show. Ask him to do that one about the bald chick again. It was amusing. Now leave, Isaac, the Sparrow and I have business, he wants to get back to his pizza.

The Sparrow said to the vest, It be okay, man. He be gone quick.

When the vest didn’t move, Brucia put down the plastic knife, took a pad out of his breast pocket and pretended to write in it with an imaginary pencil. You see what it is I’m doing here, Isaac? What it is? I got my pad out, I’m gonna write your name down, see? I’m writing. Isaac M. Hayes. Your name is in the book now, my book, which means it qualifies you for an entrance into a place in heaven, with Saint Peter, or else a sharp kick that’ll swell up your balls to the size of a pair of Portobello mushrooms, you understand now? Get out of here. The Sparrow and I are enunciating.

The Sparrow said, It be okay, Olaf, it all right.

After the vest had cursed at them both and left, Brucia asked, Olaf? His name’s Olaf? Actually?

Sparrow nodded, looked a little embarrassed.

Brucia asked him, So, who’s the Domans dealing with? They doing things themselves with this new Bella product, or they’re subcontracting it out, which?

I don’t say nothing about no Domans anyway. All I know…

You know what subcontracting means? They teach you that at Kentucky?

My pizza getting cold.

Let me ask you, Jefferson, I’m sure Coach Rupp made you guys go to class when you were there, or would it interfere with practice time, huh? I mean, this wasn’t the Shark out at Long Beach State, right, this was the great man Rupp, after all. So he made you specimens study or just read the playbook? Those who could read, anyway.

Fuck that.

Okay. Okay. Tell me what you know. So tell me. The Domans are carrying it in, their trucks I’m sure, union mules, highjacks extra, and then what? How’s it get into your supply closet after that? Tell me about it, Jefferson. Talk.

The Sparrow’s shoulders raised and fell, releasing air, a huge sigh. "Jef-fer-son."

What?

You know my name. Only P.A. guy ever got it right was at high school. I tell them that at U.K., never got them enough to care.

Brucia reached over and took a swig from the Sparrow’s Bud. "Is that like Thomas Jef-fer-son, our third President, or more like Jef-fer-son Davis, your first and only?"

Is my Momma’s idea, after her uncle. I disgusted with all this.

"Sparrow, Sparrow, you’re telling me you’re related to the third and first presidents of our various nations? I’m impressed. Seems to me a man with those kind of connections would have no problem worrying about a tinhorn operation like the Domans. They give you any trouble, you could bring the power of the federal government down on them. The power of two federal governments. Although I’m not sure if the Confederate States would have a federal government, only maybe just a confederate one, but either way."

The Sparrow hung his head low. I be getting disgusted, lost, and hungry.

Tell me what kind of price the Domans are getting for this new stuff.

The Sparrow was silent for ten seconds, the said, Depend on the shipment. Maybe ten, fifteen.

Kilos. Pounds.

Bags.

Pay right up?

Keep us warriors happy enough.

Keeps you street folks enough in fine linens and shitty pizza?

Guess so.

Brucia reached over and picked up the plate from the floor, stood up from the table. I’ll throw it out on my way out. Or give it to Isaac. He’d suck it in, go right to his belly. It’s shitty stuff anyway. I’ll get you, show you what real pie is at some point. I’ll send to New York or bring you some back when I go.

The Sparrow took the last sip of his Bud, smacked his lips like it hurt.

Brucia said to him, Look, Sparrow, here’s the central question. We know about the Domans, we know Fred, we know all that, I was just testing you. What I really want is: who they got in charge of the Corridor. That’s what we’re after, really. So, you let me know at the game tonight. Please. Be there with it. I now am asking you, ‘Please,’ Sparrow. As of now it’s, ‘Pretty please.’ I’ll see you there.

The Sparrow grinned, his right front tooth displaying some fake jewelry. Yeah, I be there, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I be there. But beside, I know what it is you really interested in, Pink, that I do.

You do? What’s that?

That fire. The fire, right?

The fire, huh, that’s what I’m really interested in, is it?

Yeah, sure you are.

///

Victim Statement: The Doorman

June 24, 1973, was Gay Pride Day in America, but none of us knew that at the time.

All I knew was that it is was another Sunday evening, Beer Blast Night at the UpStairs Lounge, and I was a five-foot, eight-inch, one hundred and twenty-eight pound Caucasian American with an ex-wife out in Denver who was serving supper and her watered-down wine to our son while telling him that his Dad was back in Louisiana sleeping with hermaphrodites.

And I needed a beer.

Gay Pride Day? This wasn’t the Stonewall, on the country’s right side wall, where you could slant your beret across your forehead and stroll through the Square on a sunny Sunday afternoon holding hands and passing among the pseudo-hip. This wasn’t the Castro District, left wall, where you could pin your pride on your white turtleneck for all the ersatz-cool to see.

Okay, this wasn’t Shithole Texas, either, but still, this was nothing more than New Orleans, sitting down there on our country’s subflooring, where ol’ Hickory had powered an alligator’s behind, and when he set the powder off, the gator lost his mind. New Orleans, where the parading Al Hurt had been hit in the mouth with a brick because some drunken Krewe member was out for cheap laughs and impulsive revenge on national icons. N.O., where when in doubt you shook your head No and kept your thing zipped tight in your pants, even during Mardi Gras.

Land of psychotic drunks and moronic revelers.

The Beer Blast spigot had been turned off a few hours before, so the cock-to-ass crowd, smelling of its anxious sweat and imminent semen, had thinned down to sixty-five hard core—that would be sixty-four plus me.

I should have headed home—a Murphy bed apartment on Madison, right below Jackson Square. Mannix was on, he’d be peeling out in his ’68 Tornado convertible, either chasing after bad guys or running from them. Mike Connors, with his jaw held tight and his Plato-issued bone structure no match for Steve McQueen’s cool, downshifting that Bullitt Mustang, the muscle car that had kicked off the