City Park in New Orleans’ Lakeview section of town is a wonderful mixture of where nature meets man. Clusters of oak, fern, pine, cypress, dogwood, birch, magnolia, and maple trees grow along beside meandering bayous that are intertwined among golf courses, tennis courts, a kiddy playground studded with rides, including a circular train track for children, a stadium for sporting events and concerts, a world-class museum, and the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Dotted throughout the fantastically tropical area is the kind of wildlife that Louisiana is famous for: ducks, geese, pelicans, raccoons, squirrels, nutria rats, beavers, an occasional alligator, and numerous other bird types, as well as a spectrum of various plants.

      Typically, one thinks of the buildings and social aspects of New Orleans, like the music, the food, the places, the feel, and the texture of its architecture borrowed from 17^th century Europe, and the people whose evolution produced descendants of pirates, pimps, prostitutes, deadbeats, derelicts, deadheads, hoo-has, hoes, heifers, scuttle bucks, and scalawags, and these descendants provide the wonderful flavor and unique blend of entertainers for which the place is known.

      This display of nature may be found only a few blocks from the center of town. Think of humidity and greenery! The park is a haven for the keen photographer wanting to capture unique Southern posturing, for lovers wanting to court, for gamesmen wanting to be teased, for golfers wanting a back nine close to the front 19 holes (the French Quarter), and for cultural addicts wanting to get a glimpse of famous art.

      The place is a 300-acre-wide area of south-southeastern Louisiana encased in the central part of town. Luscious green landscapes which sport the kind of yearlong beauty usually thought of as being found in the Caribbean islands coat the space. It is comfortable and friendly feeling, just the place for relaxation and rest. It has not been known as a place for murder or serial killings ... until now.

      Chapter 1

      

      Friday, late afternoon ...

      “I like what you’ve done here.”

      “Thanks to Rosalind and Celia, they put nice touches on the place. Just like back at the apartment. But most of the tasteful art and stylish layout are all me. All these selected pieces from around the world,” Luke gestured with false humility.

      “A ham, huh?”

      “Yea. Like my old man used to say, ‘Yes, a ham, a country ham!’”

      Matt ‘Smooth’ Harris exited the front secretarial area and headed down the three concrete stairwells of the building. As always, he moved with little effort and insisted that anyone who knew him for longer than a day call him ‘Smooth.’ He had been onboard to assist the new private investigator and had stayed on course and out of real trouble for the past six months.

      Their badinage lasted through any given day until some work was placed on the desk. It was the typical type of interaction among friends who had gotten from the point of solid commitment to steady resolve to be cut buddies after only a few weeks together. The teacher-preacher-pupil-church member relationship blossomed and brought the two in sync at a time that both needed it.

      Luke Jacobs’ character is best described as a mixture of a tamed, less extravagant James Bond and a not so ‘academically’ intelligent, pipe-smoking, chin-stroking Sherlock Holmes. He’s smart, clever, book wise, street wise and in shape. The qualities that he borrows from those famous sleuths are nicely balanced in a ‘fella’ with the warmth and sensitivity of a Southerner trapped in a keenly fit, sculptured body with the agility of a cat, given that he practices the modern-day Brazilian martial art, Capoeira.

      Luke’s office is in New Orleans’ very busy Mid-City section, adjacent to Bayou St. John. His office building is on the corner of Moss and Orleans, across the street on a diagonal from the American Can Company building, which was just bought and remodeled into condos. The neighborhood is in the central section, a mere ten minutes from the French Quarter, ten minutes from the airport, and fifteen minutes from the eastern section of New Orleans. It’s a mixture of homes, businesses, grassy neutral grounds, and waterways consisting of bayous and canals.

      Old ‘shot-gun’ double houses dot the major part of the landscape with the character of old-country, European influence. Luke converted one of those homes into his office, using one side of a double along its entire length, with the front areas devoted to secretarial space and the back two as his private eye area. The style is hard-nosed detective inlayed with high-tech modern posturing; i.e., computers, monitors, police scanners, large screen televisions, and video equipment. A 1930s Remington typewriter sits in the middle of his large oak desk, something he uses for reports with the taste of standard, hard-boiled investigations. He places the data on the desks of clients, police officers, newspaper editors, and television producers, as needed and required.

      “Got some work to do on that bayou case?”

      “Yes. They’ve asked that I look at the data. I’ll let you know what kind of role we’ll play ...”

      “Alright, captain.”

      “Going to meet for practice Sunday?” asked the lawyer-former assistant district attorney.

      “Sure thing, guy; that is, if you have the time and all ...”

      Luke had recently enjoyed some good press for solving a few high-profile police cases and figured his small team needed a weekend break. He had been happy to share some of the recent fame with his go-to guy. They had been working on strictly private matters, but were thrown into the limelight with coverage of their work by the Times Picayune staff team of Joe Sway and Swift Gardner. ‘Swift,’ is his given name, but Joe goes by his nickname, ‘Fingerprints,’ that he picked up while he lived and worked in New York. He’s said to have the uncanny ability to arrive at crimes scenes to gather information before the lab folks. The two have been jousting at the paper recently, competing for lead stories and steadily doing battle with words. Swift has the home court advantage, given that he was born here and has been doing the damn thing here the longest. ‘Fingerprints,’ a literary wunderkind, was brought down by his college buddy Luke to add some New York style to the place and to hang.

      The Luke Jacobs PI team was just now settling into a steady volume of cases, a few at the request of the police department. The mentor and mentee now actually enjoyed working and playing together. It hadn’t been like that from the start.

      “Can’t wait to see what Curtis has in store for us,” ‘Smooth’ responded as he continued motions to leave.

      “Yeah. Can’t wait. I’m going to head over there right after the morning paper comes. And, let’s play some chess in the afternoon.”

      “Hey, you’re gonna meet me for brunch at the Foundation Room tomorrow though, right? Saturday morning detectives’ brunch? Williams stressed that we go!”

      “Oh, yes. Almost forgot … ’round 11:00, eh?”

      Luke plays high stakes chess for fun (at a closed, almost secret, underground circuit at Harrah’s), runs daily (training for the upcoming first annual New Orleans marathon), works out by practicing Capoeira three days a week, chases and catches women, and gets chased by and caught by women. And, he is levelheaded about it all — levelheaded, that is, until this set of cases came his way. This match, however, gets personal when a friend is a victim!

      “Hope the private cases continue. It’s been nice doing some safe, steady work for regular folks.”

      Our PI has been asked on several occasions to assist with cases that the police have found to be particularly difficult. A buddy on the force, Detective M.L.C. Williams, usually makes the call.

      Luke’s best assistant, Matt Harris, is a hard-nosed, streetwise, tough guy, college dropout who does a great job of keeping the boss in check.