“Shit, yeah, right to the point as always, Rooney.”

“Then again … maybe the feds are overreacting. Getting jumpy. Maybe their intel stinks, and they don’t want to look embarrassed if they’re wrong.”

“But what if their intel isn’t wrong?” he says. “Doesn’t mean we have to follow their lead, now, does it. But here we are, with our collective thumbs up our asses.”

I see the little girls still jumping rope and turn away so I don’t have to see their innocence and, yes, vulnerability. I say, “Yep, that sounds like the dysfunctional New Orleans Police Department I used to know and love.”

“The one and only,” he says.

I go to grab my hose to roll it up and put it away.

“No offense, Chief, I’m sure glad I’m no longer part of it.”

He narrows his eyes and gives me a cryptic look that stops me in place.

“Me, too,” he says. “That’s why I’m here.”

“How’s that?”

“Rooney, we need your help.”

CHAPTER 17

I’ve seen my former commanding officer make that face before. It used to mean he was about to give me an order he knew I wasn’t going to like. But now that he’s not my boss anymore, I don’t know what the hell it means.

“Hold on, Chief,” I start, but he cuts me off.

“Do I have to remind you what happened the last time the feds showed up to ‘help’ us through a major crisis?” he says, shaking his head in disgust. “How the hell did that work out for the Big Easy? Am I right?”

Of course he’s talking about Katrina. A brutal once-in-a-century hurricane that battered our city and changed it forever, leaving behind waterlogged corpses in the streets, thousands of destroyed homes and dreams, and neighborhoods that more than a decade later are still ghost towns. When it was all over, nearly two thousand New Orleanians had lost their lives, many of them women and children, and there are some who think that number is still too low. I remember drinking in a Bourbon Street bar one night, years ago during an anniversary event of Katrina, and one old-timer saying to the other, “You know what the difference is between New Orleans now and Nazi Germany in 1945? Back in ’45, the Americans treated Germany’s cities better after it was all over.”

Yeah, so there’s not much of a reservoir of trust and good feelings toward the feds.

But now, a major terrorist attack during Mardi Gras? The body count could dwarf the Katrina stats, make the memories of that killer storm seem pleasant in comparison.

“You don’t have to convince me,” I say. “But what kind of help are you talking about?”