On that fateful Lundi Gras afternoon, a nebulous cloud hung over Mandina’s in Mid City, casting a shroud of peculiar gloom upon the streets, as if the city itself had grown tired of the carnival absurdities. Inside the waiters gradually churned through the dining room, hauling plates and doing their best to mollify the collective hangover and exhaustion which overcomes even the most esteemed reveler at this stage of the season. They moved slowly, like water through a bayou. The diners ate their heavy Italian dishes as if to fill a void left within them from countless days and nights in the streets and in the bars, drinking endlessly. The aroma of fried seafood hung in the swampy air of the restaurant. Detective Merden Herder stood at the bar drinking a Sazerac as he waited for a table to open up. He nursed a hangover from what had been a long night that was too eventful. He shifted from foot to foot to relieve a pain in his knee. Pain coursed through his body and the remedy would be a crab ball and some oyster soup. Mandina’s would serve him a panacea on that muggy afternoon.
The lugubrious detective took a swig of his vital elixir. Suddenly, he winced at the memory of last night with the long lists of events: the exhausting ending to his march in the Box of Wine parade with his old college chum, Byron, the shooting at the Bacchus parade, the subsequent stampede, and the death of Byron the drunkard in the chaos that ensued.
He would have been content to nurse his pain on his cocktail in peace, but it happened so that he would not be left alone. In strutted Katia Aldrova with her long platinum blonde hair waving behind her. She walked right up to the detective and cast interrogative words in his face, “Where have you been this whole time?”
“I’m attempting to salvage what little dignity remains after the debauchery of the previous evening,” he sighed. “What’s got you so worked up?”
“I don’t know, maybe it was the Bacchus shooting, or the stampede afterwards, or the fact that Byron is DEAD!”
“It’s a regrettable state of affairs, but he was his usual blackout self,” Merden retorted. “I can’t imagine he felt much of anything,” he dryly laughed.
Katia stared directly at the tired detective with her piercing steely blue Mormon eyes, and said, “Byron has yet to be buried in the earth and you are mocking him. Your penchant for frivolity and indifference remains as steadfast as ever.”
“I look at it with a more objective eye. The shooting at Terpsichore was regrettable, but it’s three blocks from the Popeye’s. We all could have seen that coming. Happens every year like clockwork.”
“Well we don’t get a stampede every year,” she cooly replied. “People were injured and Byron died!”
“I know he’s dead. I was in that crowd and I got out of there. Byron stumbled his last time. The stampede was unfortunate, but you never know what’s going to happen at Mardi Gras. You gotta stay on your toes. It would have been a terrible way to go, but at least his drunkenness saved him in that regard.”
“I didn’t say he was trampled to death,” she said to him flatly. “He died during the stampede, not because of it.”
“Well that’s news to me,” he droned, staring off in the distance thinking only of his need for seafood.
“You better pack your stuff up and get out there on the streets Mr. Detective,” she shrieked. “MERDEN HERDER, THE WORDer IS MURDER!”
Detective Merden Herder let out a long sigh as he realized he had another case on his hands. Now he would have to spend his Lundi Gras traveling about town in Mardi Gras traffic getting some answers. A silver lining, however, was that the inquiry should commence with the least geographically inconvenient soul. In fact the odds were quite high that she would be only a few blocks away and he needed a bird who could uplift his spirits. He silently lamented to himself that the crab ball would have to wait.
***
Merden, though his body protested with the groans of a rusty hinge, pressed onwards, three weary blocks, to Juan’s Flying Burrito. Sitting at the bar drinking a lemon berry frozen margarita was the illustrious Reverend Kiki. She had a fresh weave for the Carnival season and was wearing her Target best as she sipped on her frozen delight.
“I’m surprised to see you made it out of bed this morning,” she stated and then punctuated her words with a cackle. “Lord knows you had a long night and too much to drink yesterday.”
“You know, I am also surprised. My very soul shrieks in protest. Mardi Gras revelry paints the streets in a riot of vulgarity and misadventure, but cruel fate has chained me to the infernal Detective Factory. Even on this day of bacchanalian excess, work, like a harpy with a clipboard, demands its pound of flesh.”
“That shouldn’t be legal, Mardi,” she replied sympathetically.
“Yet, here I am investigating the whole Byron debacle.”
“Oh yes, I may know something about that whole affair.” She beamed a coy smile.
“Care to clue me in?”
“Well I’m not saying I did it!” Kiki paused there, looked at him with wide open eyes, and then laughed again. “The poor fool, I reckon I saw him last.”
“In what unholy corner of this bacchanalian bog of trinkets and plastic beads did you last witness the unfortunate fellow?”
“Chained to John and Eliza’s golf cart. I think Raquel was the one that tied him to it with beads and Chelise helped her. You know I had brunch with my grand littles this morning, so I peaced out on y’all. I was not on the same level as that party. Y’all were clowning.”
“Ah, so you evacuated the premises just before the cacophony of gunfire serenaded the night?”
“Oh my God, I missed it by like 10 minutes! I finally escaped the traffic and was driving home when my phone started exploding with texts of friends asking if I was okay.”
“Byron wasn’t so lucky, and it appears neither am I. Now I’m traveling all around the city on Lundi Gras, when I should be nursing myself on Sazeracs and swamp Italian in Mid City.”
“Oh those crab balls are legit!”
“Kiki, you understand my pain then”, Detective Merden Herder said with a sardonic brow.
***
Trudging down Cleveland Ave like a weary Sisyphus burdened by existential angst, he was suddenly accosted by a most unwelcome assailant: sunshine! Peeking through the oppressive cloud-canopy, this celestial interloper dared to paint the February day in blush tones, courtesy of the blooming Japanese magnolias. The magnolias, flaunting their vibrant pinks, whispered a chilling reminder – the Crescent City, despite its spectral embrace of death, continued to bloom. A shiver, not of the cold, but of existential dread, coursed through him. The audacity of existence, even as he and his friends bore witness to mortality.
He approached his Detective Tesla parked in front of his old rental. It had been a long time since he lived in a dump like that.
Merden found himself taking the long way around town to the Lower Garden District. Thank the gods for Tchoupitoulas, he thought to himself, as it was free of the usual parade detritus. He pulled up next to John and Eliza’s house and in the window he was greeted by the yipping face of their chihuahua, Chong.
His knuckles met the oak door, delivering a resounding thump. This summons brought forth John, whose unfortunate affinity for the musical stylings of Bad Bunny, promised an evening of aural torment.
“Happy Lundi Gras,” John said to Merden as he walked in the door surveying the living room.
“Ahh yes, Happy Lundi Gras — or is it? Though the streets may pulse with bacchanalian glee, there is but one less drunken fool to rejoice,” Merden declared, his gaze sweeping across the room to settle on the prone form slumbering upon the couch. “Behold! Our blonde goddess Eliza, swathed in a cocoon of blankets, resembles nothing more than a glitter-encrusted chrysalis! One can only ponder if she succumbed to revelry’s embrace as well, with a face still shimmering from the night’s excesses. Alas, unlike the phoenix, her resurrection may not be quite so swift or glamorous.”
“Baby Byron is dead! WAHHHH,” she cried out shaking her legs. “That stampede was horrifying. I hate it,” she said with a pout on her face.
Chong, worked up by the commotion, circled Merden and let out a few barks.
“Chong, that isn’t how we talk to our guests,” she chided the Chihuahua as he returned to her cocoon, curling up.
“By some cosmic quirk, or perhaps sheer dumb luck, you find yourselves unscathed. Consider yourselves fortunate,” Merden said optimistically.
“Yeah, but my golf cart got wrecked by the stampede,” John complains. “You know that thing was so dope. It was a golf cart with self-driving. I paid extra for that. They’re made by Garia. They got some pretty sick carts. That thing is built like a Tesla, and it’s newer than yours,” he said with a smile. “Luckily, I found it early this morning when I went back after the streets were cleared. It could still drive, but it looks like a beater now.”
“Did you by any chance perceive any oddities lurking beneath its fiberglass exterior?”
“It was kinda wrecked by the stampede, but it was still in one piece aside from a cracked roof and missing bumper.”
“And you didn’t notice anything else? No dead drunkards tied up to it?”
“No, I did not”, John stated flatly as he stared back at Detective Merden.
“Mind if I have a look at the golf cart?”
“You can’t. I took it to that one golf cart repair shop on Magazine street.”
“I think I know the place.”
“Don’t leave Merden! We can’t risk losing anyone else,” Eliza cried out from the couch. “Besides, I made too much gazpacho, and I need your help finishing it.”
“I’ll have to take a go cup”, he replied as he walked towards the door. Eliza rose from the couch and poured the drink pitcher into a “Tuck’s Can’t Drive” cup with a splash of king cake vodka, and handed it to the detective as he headed out the door.
“One more thing,” she said to her departing guest with a smile. “Chelise and Raquel are at District. Maybe you’ll bump into them this afternoon.”
***
Detective Merden Herder walked towards Magazine in the direction he thought the golf cart repair shop was. However, it wasn’t long before he was passing District Donuts and saw the unmistakable red hair of Chelise Bonnabe through the front window. Next to her was a fatigued, but jolly Raquel Doggs wearing large glasses and sharing donuts with Chelise.
Merden Herden walked into the shop approaching the pair as he started forming lists of questions in his head to ask the pair. They were finishing a coconut cream donut they had split in two, and Raquel was busy cutting a King Cake Almond donut in half for the next course.
“Happy Lundi Gras Chelise. Happy Lundi Gras Dr. Doggs”, Merden greeted the two.
“Merden Herder”, exclaimed Raquel in a low tone as Chelise rose to give him a hug.
“What are you doing in the Lower Garden District,” Chelise asked Merden.
“Funny you should ask that,” Merden replied. “Perchance does your mind store the mysteries of the prior evening, or were they flushed out by the bag of Franzia?”
“Last night was… a lot,” Chelise said with a wavering inflection. A frown formed on Raquel’s face.
“I’m looking for some information on Byron,” Merden stated.
“Well you know Byron, sometimes he just drinks too much,” Chelise responded.
“Yes, I’m well aware. I had to drag him 10 blocks after Box of Wine. We crossed right where the shooting happened. He probably instigated it. If you only knew the fervor the crowd was in already, and even more so after our favorite wine-soaked parader bumped into each attendee along the way and stepped onto their hallowed blue tarps. The whole place was a powder keg looking for a spark.”
“We could see it in your eyes when you finally found us. You looked like you were in pain.”
“Oh, it was much more than pain, though that is neither here nor there. Now, I heard he was chained to a golf cart. Do you have any idea how he got like that?”
“That’s because Raquel tied him to it,” said Chelise.
“Yes, it was me. I did that,” Raquel said, raising her hand. “He was so drunk. He kept babbling some crazy story about a butler made out of bread who makes dough. And then he would just start speaking gibberish. Or maybe that was Gaelic – who knows?”
“Well, I think he was trying to speak Irish”, added Chelise.
“But it wasn’t Irish, he was drunk and it was pure gibberish,” Raquel replied.
“Nonsense. There is no sober person on earth that could discern the traditional Irish tongue from pure unadulterated gibberish. Besides, aren’t you bound by the hippocratic oath to do no harm,” Merden asked while staring quizzically at Raquel.
“I was protecting him! He was a danger to himself and I restrained him. And he wasn’t my patient – I was bound by no duties!”
Chelise admitted, “And I sorta helped. Not that the beads seemed to work really well. He kept escaping after each time we tied him down.”
“You know what really would have helped – handcuffs,” Raquel chimed in.
Chelise declared, “The first thing I remember was sending off Kiki as she was being paged by her attorney in training — the one that stole her rug. Byron, the poor sap, was temporarily shackled like a runaway zeppelin to the golf cart. We figured he’d stay that way for at least a few minutes, so we marched onto the sidewalk to find Eliza, and that stoic John. We momentarily caught a glimpse of them exiting the Burger King port-a-pottys. And then…well, you know what happened next.”
“The stampede was so scary. The sound of the feet was super loud. It made me really nervous,” Raquel said in a frightened tone.
“Yes, and then it was over and we were all scattered. The police told everyone to keep walking. We couldn’t go back and get our stuff. I heard they had the tape up for hours,” said Chelise.
“Too bad you couldn’t get to Byron, Dr. Doggs,” Merden said with a coy smile.
Raquel retorted, “There was nothing I could do. I can’t treat trample victims with alcohol poisoning. I’m not an ER doctor, I’m a bird ophthalmologist, Merden.”
***
The gears spun in the detective’s head as he walked with purpose down Magazine in the afternoon sun. Good thing he put on his birch sap sunscreen that morning, he thought to himself. There are many witnesses who saw Byron alive, but no one witnessed his death. Was Katia, that tempestuous dame, prone to theatrical pronouncements, or was poor Byron the victim of some nefarious plot? Accounts kept pointing to the accursed golf cart, but the stampede that followed was as opaque as a bowl of gumbo. Now, if this contraption was some fancy-schmancy Tesla, perhaps it held the key – cameras capturing the truth amidst the chaos. One last stop, this detective thought, adjusting his rumpled suit, before consigning this whole absurdity to the annals of unsolved crimes. But pray tell, who was his next destination, and what secrets might it hold? He had one last stop before he could conclude this absurd investigation.
The front of the repair shop looked closed, so he walked around the back where they kept the wrecked golf carts. Fortuitously, he found a tattooed older man working on the very cart he was searching for. He recognized it by the Puerto Rico flag and Bad Bunny stickers that adorned the front.
“Happy Lundi Gras. I was over at my friend John’s and was passing this way. He asked me to check on the status of his golf cart. He wants to know if it’s a big wreck or a small one,” Detective Merden Herder introduced.
“Howdy”, the repairman said, turning around to greet the visitor. “Well, these Garia’s are pretty resilient, but getting caught in a stampede is never good for anything.”
“My friend Byron would likely agree,” Merden cynically interjected.
“Yup, well the internal components and mechanics are fine, but this will need a new roof and bumper, so it will probably take a week or two for those parts to arrive.”
Merden saw diagnostic equipment plugged in under the dashboard of the golf cart, and knew that his evidence was within reach.
“How did you test the internal components?” he asked, playing dumb.
“Well these things come with a million sensors in them these days. They are the Teslas of golf carts, ya know. This diagnostic tool runs checks on everything, and it came up green.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about getting one of these for parades. I love all the Uptown parades, and it would be great to have a cart like this to haul all my bags of stuff to the parade route.” He silently cringed internally at the absurdity of those words coming out of his mouth, but he had a part to play here as John’s friend.
“Lucky for you my friend, we are also a dealership. I don’t think I caught your name? I’m Phil.”
“Merden Herder, at your service. Do you have any brochures on the different models?”
“Yeah, I’ll run up to the front and grab a couple. Are you interested in any models other than the Garias? We sell a lot of different models.”
“I’ll take all the brochures you have for my research,” he chuckled as the repairman sauntered to the back door of the building. Now was his chance, he thought to himself. These electric vehicles normally require an account to pull any data from them, but when the diagnostic tool is plugged in all bets are off. He picked up the device and started scanning the various buttons below the screen. On the menu he found a data log dump option that should suit his needs. The diagnostic tool even had a usb slot. He pulled his handy, dandy drive from his pocket. He is never caught in the field without it. Merden plugged it in and started a log dump. Unfortunately, he thought this might take a while and the repairman could be back soon. His mind started racing to think of what distraction he could try next, but after another minute a beep from the device told him that the data dump was done. $15,000 for a golf cart and they cannot be bothered to invest in computer security, he sneered to himself. As he pulled out the drive the repair man came out the back door with hands for flyers.
“We actually have a ton of options here. We are the premier golf cart dealership in the greater New Orleans area,” the repairman turned salesman said as he handed Merden a hefty stack of papers.
Merden accepted the stack from his hand and said, “Oh, I just remembered I have to go pick up my friend Paxton from Cooter Browns. Sorry to rush out of here, but thanks for all the brochures. We’ll be in touch.”
He wondered to himself if his lie was believable, but did not actually care that much. He had some data to analyze, so he hopped in his detective Tesla and sped back to his office in Gentilly. It was best to get out of the Garden District before Orpheus started setting up.
Reviewing the files he was pleased to see that the video data from all the cameras in the last 24 hours was included in his dataset. He began watching them and finally learned the grisly truth of Byron’s demise. He was so tired, but now he had to do one more report before he would be freed of his Detective duties and could go back to enjoying Mardi Gras. Ah the Zulu coconuts will be flying, he thought, in the brief period he allowed for pleasant thoughts. He groaned as he shifted in his chair and started typing up his findings.
***
The next day Detective Merden Herder was at Zulu with the Reverend Kiki and her aunt. The sun was bright; it was a warm day in February. Mardi Gras Indians danced past them followed by a brass brand. Drinking a relaxing seltzer, Merden thought to himself about the last couple days. It was almost as cursed as Mardi Gras 2020.
“I finally got some sleep after closing the case,” he told a Kiki who was straining under her bounty of beads while holding up a foam cup of daiquiri.
“Well I’m surprised you closed it so fast,” she chortled, “but then again it’s you. Mr. Detective, best in the business.”
“It takes a keen eye and a lot of drinks to do it well,” he replied with a touch of pride.
“So what happened to our dear, precious Byron?”
“You might not want to know, but I’ll tell you anyway, so I don’t have to be the only one who bears this knowledge. It turns out that the poor fool got so drunk he couldn’t stand up anymore, and that was before the stampede. I found him in the video shifting back and forth on the golf cart seat until he was freed of the beads Raqel and Chelise tied him up with. He proceeded to fall on the ground next to the cart and didn’t get up again. The stampede must have confused the golf cart’s cameras, because once it started happening around the golf cart, the self-driving started moving the cart forward and backwards to escape it. At that point, Byron was underneath the cart and that was what turned out his lights. The rest of the cameras’ footage shows everyone clearing out after the stampede had ended. The golf cart drives forward and bounces once all four wheels are on the ground, and it is no longer on top of his dead body. Then it did something weird. It drove about a block away from everything down the empty street, turned a corner, and stopped. It didn’t move until a couple hours later when it was driven to the repair shop by John. At that point the scene was cleared and there wasn’t any sign of Byron.”
“Umm what? That’s horrible,” Kiki gasped upon hearing the narrative. “You mean to say that he died crushed by a self-driving golf cart in the middle of a stampede?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m not exactly sure what type of AI they were using in that golf cart. A Tesla knows not to drive over a person, I guess the golf cart is a couple years behind and cannot tell when it’s on top of someone. Furthermore, if my Tesla got in an accident, the self-driving turns off, and it would cease to move.The gall of that golf cart, having a mind like an alligator in heat! That damned, sneaky contraption had me thinking it was possessed by the ghost of Jean Lafitte himself! And I fear these lesser quality ‘AI’ automobiles the other car companies are peddling will be keen to do the same.”
A float slowly rolled by with a flurry of throws. A coconut bounced between the crowd’s feet and landed right underneath Kiki. She bent forward to pick it up and said, “Will you look at that, a Zulu coconut. That looks like the last float. I gotta say goodbye to my aunt, but I’m heading to the Marigny next to meet up with some friends. Want to join, Mardi?”
He took a long look at her, before issuing his reply, “You know Kiki, that sounds like a great Mardi Gras, but I will have to skip this year. It’s been a long 24 hours and I just don’t have it in me. Besides, I got a date with a crab ball.”
The End
