Personal Notes from SSA Walter Kruger, FBI - Oct 8-11, 2008

These past few days songs have been going round my head like stray socks in the dryer.  The first is that old song from kindergarten, ‘Life is but a dream'.  I think that sums up the past couple of months since being parachuted into this swamp turned Crescent City after half the Field Office were put onto administrative leave due to OPR investigations.

So what's going on?  First, we got a range war between two OC gangs - Farina on the LCN side vs Stenneau the ghost of the Bayous.  The wake up call from the dream came a few days ago when we had the chance to sweep up Boy Teche and his crew, a player in Stenneau's organisation.  Unfortunately he came and went before the cavalry from Baton Rouge could get here but just as we're pulling off post, 2 of his guys decide to use the local mini mart for target practice.  Net result was 2 dead bangers but not without drama and why they decided to light up the neighbours is still a mystery.

Next day, more bodies.  These ones over at Club Ampersand, a Farina owned nightclub where Ray Negro, his bodyguard and LCN friends, the Capelli brothers on forced vacation from New York met the wrong end of a bunch of shotguns, wielded as it turns out by Boy Teche and his gang.  Either these boys are dumb or just don't care.  They left plenty of physical evidence of their coming and going so we know who they are and have them bang to rights as and when we find them.

Of course, no sooner than Negro and friends are cooling off in the morgue, we get more bodies, this time on Stenneau's side.  Our guess is Farina's boys hit a cathouse run by a Stenneau frontman by the name of Jimmy Rattay.  Jimmy got his brains blown out on the front porch - no word on his missing doorman though but then those Bayous are deep...

So we got a stack of bodies and lots of word on the street.  We also got Team weirdness going on.  Pierce swears he saw people wearing masks peep in his window.  Greene missed a briefing session at the barn ‘cos he's obsessed with drawing pictures.  Devereux...well she sure as shit knows something she ain't telling and as for me, well I have a burglar who thinks it's fun to put a full scale marionette up in my bedroom and then remove it, while I am sleeping.  They also managed to wipe my camera phone of the picture I took of it before the next day too.  I am putting it down to stress. 

So, SAC Herlihy got the consiglieris together from Stenneau and Farina's gang - two attorneys of local note.  Farina was even good enough to show up himself.  Of course, I'd already doorstepped them.  Farina's man was pretty helpful, co-operative even.  Stenneau's man wouldn't even let me in the door.  Farina has a strange back story - turns out he never knew his pappy was Lucky Luciano Balboni until he was in his 40s, a product of one of the summers of love in the late ‘60s.  He spent his formative years becoming one of the better young assistant D.A.s in Alabama, until the past caught up with him.  Anyway, Herlihy's reading of the riot act was entertaining but unlikely to deliver ‘peace in our time' judging from reactions.

I said that Farina's side was helpful.  He sent us to see a geezer by the name of Pete Boselli.  This old coot is 102 and spends his golden years as a resident of a nursing home in Gulfport.  Boselli is ex-NOPD and had some intel on Stenneau although I don't know what to make of it.  Boselli was 18 in 1924 and fresh in the blues but he remembers a raid, led by one Inspector Legrasse against a cult in the Bayous led by a negro known only as Papa Screech. Boselli seemed to imply that Stenneau and Screech were connected and that Screech who was an old man in 1924 was still around today.  Senile?  Delusional?  Whatever, we need to check into this cult.  Also, Ray Negro's password for his office computer was ‘Legrasse', an interesting coincidence for someone who doesn't believe in coincidence.  Boselli's last words at our meeting - only 2 groups of folks ever stood up to Stenneau - the Feds and the Mob.

Anyway, all this stuff is on the back burner as a red ball came out of the blue.  A botched surveillance of a Chechen Muslim cell in Canada that's believed to be on the move with a dirty bomb.  So we're out rattling trees and arresting every guy with a beard.  Even had a stray NCIS agent assigned to the team to help cover the ground. RCMP and Homeland Security think these guys are in the final stages so the clock is ticking - literally.  Not surprisingly the local Farrakhanies are up in arms anytime someone lays a hand on their ‘brothers'.  So, we're off to Jackson Square to walk the crowd - see if any of our bombers would be dumb enough to show up there.  Everywhere I look there's that Yellow Sign on flyers nailed to the trees.  Y'know it's all over the city, been everywhere we've been.

There's that other song again - I think it's the Stones - ‘Time is on my side...'