The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

said. “The streets in the Quarter are supposed to be dry. I’m going to swing down toward Jackson Square—”
    “Stop!”
    “What is it?”
    “I just saw Clete Purcel. There, by the entrance.”
    Helen rolled down the window and squinted into the haze. The gush of superheated air through the window felt like steam blowing from the back of a commercial laundry. “What’s Clete doing?” she said.
    It took a moment for both of us to assimilate the scene taking place against the Convention Center wall. A huge, sunburned man, wearing filthy cream-colored slacks and a tropical shirt split at the shoulders, was trying to fit an inverted cardboard box over the body of an elderly white woman who was draped in a wheelchair. Her body was flaccid in death, and Clete could not get the box around her without knocking her out of the chair.
    “Hang on, Helen,” I said, and got out of the cruiser before she could reply.
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw her make a U-turn, pause briefly, and head toward the French Quarter, the rest of the caravan trailing behind her. But Helen was a good soul and she knew I would hook up with her soon, probably with Clete in tow. She also knew you don’t leave your friends behind, regardless of what the rest of the world is doing.
    I held the old woman upright in the wheelchair while Clete covered her head and upper body with the box. Then I smelled an odor from her clothes that brought back memories of a distant war that I wanted to forget.
    “You think that’s bad. Go inside the Center. All the plumbing is broken. There’re dead people piled in the corners. Street rats are shooting guns in there and raping anybody they want,” Clete said. “You got a spare piece?”
    “No, where’s your hideaway?”
    “Lost it on Royal, I think. A whole balcony came down on the street. I got hit with a flying flowerpot.” He wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the flat of his hand and stared out at the wreckage of the city and the looters sloshing through the streets, their arms loaded with whatever they could carry. “Who needs terrorists? Look at this shit, will you?”
     
    FOR THOSE WHO do not like to brood upon the possibility of simian ancestry in the human gene pool or who genuinely believe that societal virtue grows from a collective impulse in the human breast, the events of the next few days would offer their sensibilities poor comfort. Helen had been worried she would have to give up command of her department to either NOPD or state or federal authorities. That was the least of our problems. There was no higher command than ourselves. The command structure and communication system of NOPD had been destroyed by the storm. Four hundred to five hundred officers, roughly one third of the department, had bagged ass for higher ground. The command center NOPD had set up in a building off Canal Street had flooded. Much to their credit, the duty officers didn’t give up their positions and wandered in chest-deep water outside their building for two days. They had no food and no drinking water, and many were forced to relieve themselves in their clothes, their handheld radios held aloft to keep them dry.
    From a boat or any other elevated position, as far as the eye could see, New Orleans looked like a Caribbean city that had collapsed beneath the waves. The sun was merciless in the sky, the humidity like lines of ants crawling inside your clothes. The linear structure of a neighborhood could be recognized only by the green smudge of yard trees that cut the waterline and row upon row of rooftops dotted with people who perched on sloped shingles that scalded their hands.
    The smell was like none I ever experienced. The water was chocolate-brown, the surface glistening with a blue-green sheen of oil and industrial chemicals. Raw feces and used toilet paper issued from broken sewer lines. The gray, throat-gagging odor of decomposition permeated not only the air but everything we touched. The bodies of