Hostage Situation at Pal's
by Bill Lavender

Pal's Lounge, the Bayou St. John's local, almost became tragically hip the other weekend. Bill Lavender was just down the street and drops the skinny. Thank god for the NOPD.

We'd gone to bed early and woke up to people yelling outside. Someone yelled "Kelly," and then some assorted jabbering and screams. We went to the front window and Suzanne was walking by with her headset on saying "yes, he has an automatic weapon, in Pal's Lounge, Rendon and Saint Philip, he's in the bar, yes he has a weapon. an assault rifle."

We sit in the dark with the window open and watch the situation develop. Actually, we can't see much, because Pal's is down the street on the same side, and we're not going to stick our heads out, but we can hear the yelling and occasionally someone runs by in front of us.

The first cop cars start to arrive about ten minutes later. A blue'n'white pulls up and stops in the middle of the street right in front of us, then another just behind it. And an unmarked car pulls up on the corner to our left, away from Pal's. A guy gets out of that car, goes to the trunk, and starts putting on his bulky SWAT gear. The cops in the marked cars in front of us do the same, then they split up and one of them crouches behind my truck and aims his machine gun down the street. His partner does the same from across the street.

They have on bullet-proof vests and all sorts of gear, including night-vision helmets with microphones and lights. They talk to each other across the street:

"Hey, Junior, is my position B-2 or B-3?"

"Hey, Junior, is my position B-2 or B-3?"

Junior answers, "I'm not sure."

"Well, where's Delta? That will tell us."

"I'm not sure about that either."

"Because if Delta is Saint Philip street, then we'd be B-3 and B-4, right?"

"I think so."

"But if Delta is Rendon street, what then?"

"I don't know. Which street does the door of the bar face?"

"Oh, you know, it's kind of on an angle. It doesn't directly face either one."

"No, I don't know. I've never seen it."

"You never been to Pal's?"

"No."

"OK. It's like on a 45 degree angle on the corner kind of thing."

"OK."

"All right. Let me call in." He speaks into his helmet mounted mike: "Confirm that Delta is Saint Philip street." Silence. "Please confirm that Delta is Saint Philip street." More silence. "OK Junior, command confirms Delta to be Saint Philip."

Junior replies, "OK. So then B-3, right?"

"I think so."

"Or are you B-3 and I'm B-2?"

"Yeah I think that's right."

Junior and the ostensible B-3 go silent and crouch down into efficient fighting positions as a pair of their comrades appear on the opposite side of the street, running along sideways behind two black shields. They look like some sort of art project in which rectangles march along the street instead of humans. Then two more cops come up and take a position in our front yard, scarcely ten feet in front of us. They talk in hushed tones to Junior and B-3 and also on the radio. Then one pulls out a cell phone and talks on that.

I decide to ask them what's going on, and at the same time alert them to the fact we're in the window, just to make sure they don't get startled and turn their phalanx of weaponry in our direction.

"What's going on?" I say.

"We don't know," one of them answers without so much as a glance in our direction.

They go back to their strategic planning.

After about an hour of watching this, we get bored and go to bed. The next day, of course, rumors ran rampant about what had happened. We got the idea a nut had barricaded himself inside with an uzi and several hostages, his girlfriend among them. As the day wore on and we heard the story several hundred more times, it became successively less dramatic. Finally, the next day, I ran into Linda who told me the straight story.

In our opinion, there are worse bathrooms to be barricaded in than Pal's.

Kelly's girlfriend came in upset and apparently having been beaten. Some of the girls in the bar took her into the bathroom to clean her up and calm her down. Then they left her in there. Then Kelly came into the bar carrying a pistol and a pellet gun. Apparently he pointed the pistol at his own head. Everyone freaked and ran out, leaving the unwitting girlfriend in the bathroom.

When the cops started showing up, Kelly got scared and barricaded himself in the storeroom. His girlfriend peeked out from the ladies' room-- where Kelly did not think of going-- saw he was gone, and ran out to the safety of the police. Several hours later the cops finally stormed the building and found Kelly cowering in the storeroom, with a pistol, a pellet gun, and no bullets.

We never heard what happened to Junior and B-3. And we never found out, for sure, where Delta was.

Bill Lavender is the publisher of Lavender Ink Press and a frequent contributor to NOLAFugees.com.