To Poison a Nation by Andrew Baker

Author:Andrew Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

7

Crucible

SHORTLY BEFORE THREE O’CLOCK ON FRIDAY AFTERnoon, July 27, 1900, an intriguing memo reached the Second Precinct stationhouse on the corner of Terpsichore and Chippewa Streets, where Sergeant Gabriel Porteous was preparing for another tense evening. The police veteran had been tested to his limits by the week’s events. After he earned praise for preventing bloodshed on Tuesday evening, Porteous was a pallbearer at his murdered comrade’s funeral the following afternoon, even as rumors swirled that his cowardly brother-in-law allowed the cop killer to escape. Later that evening, Porteous was unable to stop the mob that formed at Lee Circle and marched down St. Charles Avenue, which divided the precinct between its Garden District mansions and the working-class neighborhoods where officers were a more common presence. Given his personal stake in the frustrating search, Porteous was primed for action when the message arrived suggesting that Robert Charles was supposedly hiding somewhere in the overcrowded quarter bounded by railroad depots, lumberyards, and cotton presses.1

The information was sketchy, but it came from a promising source. The previous day, a black laborer named Fred Clark had given police a potential lead. On its face, the tip was no better than countless others that had poured into headquarters and sent officers scrambling on pointless searches, but Clark was a known snitch with a reputation as a “good negro” among detectives, someone who regularly supplied them with reliable information.2 According to Clark’s sources, Charles had a half-brother named Silas Jackson residing somewhere nearby. Word on the street was that his wife, Martha Jackson, knew something about the assassin’s whereabouts. It was thin, so much that police commanders waited over twelve hours to pass it along to the Second Precinct stationhouse. But despite the growing consensus that Charles had somehow fled New Orleans, the lead ultimately reached a sergeant who was particularly motivated. Porteous decided to investigate. Reporters would portray a dramatic scene, claiming the sergeant was handpicked for a life-threatening mission. Just as his murdered friend had done, Gabe Porteous responded with manly stoicism. “I know that it’ll be dangerous to get the negro, but that’s what I’m paid to do,” he declared. “It’s my duty to go—and I am going to do my duty.”3

The truth was a bit less stirring. When the message arrived on Friday afternoon, the stationhouse was almost deserted. Most of the patrolmen had returned home for early dinners, anticipating another long night to start the weekend. Others were walking beats, but Porteous was at the station, supported by one of the department’s most experienced officers. Corporal John Lally had begun his law enforcement career as a doorman in the suburbs, working his way through department ranks over more than two decades and earning a reputation as a brave and dependable man.4 With time to kill before sundown, both officers decided to investigate the late-breaking lead. They instructed the station’s clerk to send any returning patrolmen toward the neighborhood to reinforce them. According to reporters who interviewed police commanders, the decision to go it alone suggested that neither assigned much value to the tip.

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