Maureen moved up the driveway and squatted where the kid had dived under the house, shining her light into the crawl space. The flashlight beam caught a bright pair of eyes that flashed at her. A filthy feral cat hid under the house, hissing and baring its fangs at the intrusion. She spotted a couple more grungy cats deeper under the house, the three felines glaring at her like they were a punk band she’d caught shooting up in an alley. “Oh, my little friends, you’re not going to like the dogs, either.”
The cats, Maureen thought, would have the sense to get out from under the house when the dogs arrived. Her suspect, she feared, would have no such sense. She could see him. She saw the top of his head, the shoulders of his red T-shirt. His arms were out at his sides. She could kind of see his hands, not as well as she would’ve liked. The kid kept his face turned away from her, as if as long as he couldn’t see her, she wasn’t there, and this situation wasn’t happening. He was acting, she thought, like a child. Like the terrified child Hardin had described to her. She wanted to be sympathetic, but he was scared and cornered. Sympathy was dangerous.
“Let me see your hands,” she instructed. “Raise them off the ground, wiggle your fingers.”
The porch light came on, illuminating the driveway. Maureen stood. “Shit.”
The front door flew open. “What is going on out here?” A middle-aged woman dressed in black sweats and fuzzy pink slippers stormed out the door. She had a hammer in one hand. “What are you doing out here?”
“NOPD, ma’am,” Maureen said.
“I can see that. And you can call me Ms. Cleo.”
Maureen didn’t know what the woman had heard. She didn’t want to frighten her. “Ms. Cleo, there’s been an incident in the neighborhood.”
“It’s Mardi Gras,” the woman said. “Whole damn neighborhood is an incident.”
“I know that, ma’am, Ms. Cleo,” Maureen said, feeling dumber and more flustered by the second. Why was it nobody gave a shit that she was a cop? And you can call me Officer Coughlin, she wanted to say. But why make things any more hostile than they already were? “We’ve been pursuing a suspect through the neighborhood—”
“A suspect in what?”
At that moment, two NOPD Explorers skidded to a stop at opposite ends of the block, their blue lights flashing. Maureen could hear the squawking of the truck’s radios as an officer climbed out of each one, slamming the doors behind them. One of them was Cordts. The other was a very large officer who, unfortunately, wasn’t Hardin.
“Ms. Cleo,” Maureen said to the woman, “maybe you could put the hammer down.”
15
“Where is this motherfucker?” the large cop shouted.
He was tall and built like a defensive lineman, wide shoulders, narrow waist, thick thighs, six-four and two-twenty easy, which made him almost of Hardin’s stature. He walked with a conspicuous limp that was not part of his natural gait. Maureen couldn’t see his face, but she recognized his form, and his temper. Officer Jay Morello. Biggest gym rat in the Sixth District. Well, the second biggest now that Hardin had moved uptown. The problem with Morello, Maureen thought, was that while he had biceps comparable to Hardin’s, he did not have any of the sergeant’s wisdom or patience. Nearing twenty years on the job, he was usually lazy and indifferent, which meant he got pissed when he had to exert himself. She’d never seen it, but she’d heard that if properly provoked he went from zero to beat-down in under six seconds. She had a bad feeling about why he was limping.
“Coughlin,” Morello yelled. “Where is that motherfucker? I don’t see him. You better be right, he better be here.”
“What is his problem?” Ms. Cleo asked. “Does he not see me standing right here?”
“There was a shooting not long ago,” Maureen said, “a few blocks farther uptown. Right off the parade route. We think our suspect is hiding under your house.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I chased him under there.”
Maureen could see the woman wondering why anyone would run from her. Running from Morello made sense, but her? “There’s a man with a gun,” Ms. Cleo said, “under my house?”
“We think we have his gun,” Maureen said. “We recovered it at the scene, but we can’t say for sure. I can see him under there but he won’t talk to me.”
“You think…” The woman hooked the hammer over the porch railing and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “You don’t even know if he has a gun.” She threw her hands in the air. “So am I a hostage now?”
“I don’t think he’s a threat to you,” Maureen said.
Morello again: “Coughlin, where is this piece of shit?”
“I wasn’t talking about the boy under my house being a threat to me,” Ms. Cleo said, raising her chin at Morello. “I’m not worried about him.”
“He’s under the house?” Morello said. “Nice.”
“I never mentioned anything about a boy,” Maureen said. “Did you see him go under there?”
“Don’t try that on me,” Ms. Cleo said. “One, two, three cops and more on the way, I’m sure. Who else could be under my house but some young black boy? Who else would y’all chase like this?”
“He shot three people,” Morello said. “A little girl, a teacher, and a lady who looks a lot like you. So, yeah, we chasin’ him.”
Maureen felt for the lady. The woman was as weary as she was aggravated. Five more days of Mardi Gras and half the city was already exhausted, she thought. Are we going to make it?
“Goddamn it,” Ms. Cleo said. “This is my one night off. I have to be back at that goddamn hotel for the next four goddamn days and now I gotta deal with you all? I hate Mardi Gras! Next year, I’m leaving town!”
“We’ll do the best we can,” Maureen said, “to get out of your hair as soon as possible. With as little drama as possible. For safety’s sake, it’s probably best if you stay inside until we can give the all clear.”
“I don’t even care,” the woman said. “There’s an old cat or two lives under there sometimes, when the weather gets bad and raw, like tonight. Try not to hurt her. Some of them’s older than you are, Officer.” She looked at Morello. “And don’t think I won’t be paying attention to what’s going on out here from inside the house.”
Before Maureen could reassure her that they’d be careful of the cat, the woman went back inside, turning off the porch light and slamming the door behind her.
“Thanks for nothing, lady,” Cordts said, appearing beside Maureen out of thin air, like a ghost. “It’s not like we could’ve used that light. People, you know?”
“That’s what you have to offer?” Maureen said, snapping at him then regretting it.
Speaking of ghosts, she thought, Cordts remained awfully sallow. She’d met a few officers who could steel themselves against anything, no matter how bloody or brutal, unless it happened to a child. Cordts was looking like one of those officers. He no longer had the wings tucked in his vest. Maureen was tempted to ask about them, but decided against raising the subject.
Cordts gestured at the house. Maureen could see his temper rising. “I’m just saying. She wants us out of here ASAP and she goes and makes our job that much more difficult. Does she even know what this punk did? What we want him for? Why we chased him under her house in the first place?” He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders. “Not very thoughtful of her, is all I’m saying. Not proactive. Not good community involvement.”
“Should you be out here?” she asked, trying to make it sound like a joke. He didn’t seem to get it. “Do you need to sit down?”
“Why are you asking me that?” Cordts said.
Maureen considered asking him to wait in the truck until she could figure out what to do with him. She didn’t know what she’d do if he said no, so she didn’t ask. Hopefully Wilburn was on his way and could offer help.
“Hey, I have some bad news,” Cordts said.
Maureen was worried that the little girl had died.
“Spit it out.”
“I’m pretty sure the TV crew found out where we are. I think they heard Hardin calling out the dogs, so to speak.”
Maureen looked around her. No sign of “Mardi Gras on Fire” yet. Morello limped past her up the driveway. She trotted after him, Cordts at her heels.
“I can’t get him to talk to me,” Maureen said.
Morello scoffed at her. “And why do you give a fuck what he’s got to say? I’ll tell you what he’ll say, save you the trouble. He’ll say he didn’t do it. Same thing they all say.”
Morello lowered himself to the ground, getting on his hands and knees in the driveway. He shined his flashlight into the crawl space. “There he is, that rat fucker. Yeah, that’s our guy. He matches the description. We got your punk ass. You hear me? We got you, bitch.”
Maureen got down on her hands and knees beside Morello, peering under the house. He was really going to do it, wasn’t he? Morello was going to make her feel sorry for this kid. He was going to make her protect him. The suspect had moved even deeper under the house.
“Yeah, you stay right there, rat fucker,” Morello said. “Stay right there. We got something for you. Oh yeah, we do.” He pushed himself to his hands and knees then struggled to his feet. “I thought these punks all talked to each other in lockup. I thought word gets around. How can he not know what comes next? Another stupid motherfucker.”
“What’s with the limp?” Cordts asked, unwrapping a piece of gum. He threw the wrapper in the street and it blew away in the breeze. Cordts didn’t chew the gum as much as grind it hard between his back teeth. Maureen watched the muscles in his face tense and flex. He compressed his jaw like he was fighting against something ugly crawling up his throat and out of his mouth.
“That piece of shit,” Morello said, “I’m out of the car, it’s parked and I’m just checking the backstreets behind the parade, and I spot him a few blocks from here, toward Downtown, in the Muses, by the dairy, looking all shifty and shit, and, plus, he matches the ’scrip to a T. Well, he sees me see him and instead of doing the right thing and stopping where I spot him, like I fucking told him, he rabbits. Trust me, I did it right. I gave him his chance to come quietly. But he decided different.
“I chased him for four blocks, both of us going full out, when I slip in this puddle of puke some drunk left behind and twist my fucking knee going down. It’s already swelling like a fucking grapefruit. Anyway, down there by Erato and Thalia the parade crowd is even denser than up here, it just gets worse and worse as you head for Lee Circle, and down that way, there’s five of us on every block, so he can’t run down there, right? So he doubles back this way, I guess,” turning to Maureen, “and runs right into you.”
“Maybe you should get off that knee,” Maureen said. “The cold and wet can’t be helping it any.”
“And do what?” Morello asked. “Sit in the truck and watch y’all have all the fun? Go to the nurse’s office until my mommy can come pick me up? Fuck that.”
“Forget I said anything,” Maureen said. “Fuck you and your knee, Morello.”
“Hey, hey, same team here, people,” Cordts said.
Maureen and Morello laughed at him. Cordts leaned down to peer under the house, his thumbs hooked in his gun belt. A twitch had his left eye jumping at the corner. “Him. He’s the problem. Him.”
Morello winced as he set more weight on his knee. Maureen saw his eyes water. He drew a sharp breath.
“I swear to Christ,” he said, “if this piece of shit costs me my Mardi Gras OT, I’m gonna wear his spine around my neck like fucking blinky beads. I’ll fucking kill him.”
Okay, Maureen thought, it was past time to get that kid out from under the house and get rid of him. “You know, I could fit under there. I could go get him. He’s no bigger than I am.”
“Oh, fuck that,” Morello said. “Don’t even get your pretty face dirty.”
He pointed down the street. Another Explorer pulled around his, bumping up on the sidewalk, and approached the house. Maureen read the large red letters painted along the back doors: CANINE UNIT.
16
“I’m so gonna enjoy this,” Morello said. “Long as that rat fucker doesn’t ruin it and crawl out on his own. They think sometimes the canine unit won’t actually come. Like we don’t really have one.”
“We didn’t for a while,” Cordts said. “After the storm.”
“We do now,” Morello said. “That’s all that matters.”
Maureen heard Cordts say, “Remember that bad news I mentioned.” He sucked his teeth, slapped his forehead. “Shit, I think I was supposed to pick up Wilburn before I drove over here. I heard you got this kid, I got excited.”
Looking like a mini-parade of five, with their bright spotlight leading the way, the camera crew from “Mardi Gras on Fire” marched up the block. They even had their own police escort. Wilburn. Chatting up Laine Daniels as they walked.
“Fuck me,” Maureen said. The presence of the camera crew changed things.
The NOPD was about to send two big dogs under that house, Maureen thought, to drag that boy out from underneath it with their teeth. She didn’t exactly feel bad for the kid. He’d fare better with the dogs than he would with Morello, and he had most likely shot three people. But there would be vicious growling and loud barking for everyone to see. Then there would be screaming. There might be blood. From the sound of it, there would be cheering from Morello. And the whole sordid mess would be caught on camera. It would be gripping TV, or Internet video or whatever, Maureen knew, and it would also make the NOPD look like a bunch of savages in front of the entire world.
Nobody but “Mardi Gras on Fire” comes out a winner here, Maureen thought.
She racked her brain for a better way to do things. She had nothing. Maybe, if she was careful, she could keep herself off camera.
She watched as the canine officer, a dark-haired woman not much older or bigger than Maureen whose name tag read MORRISON, opened the back of the Explorer and led the dogs as they jumped down into the street. They were, Maureen had to admit, gorgeous, noble animals—tall, powerful, bright-eyed, black-haired shepherds—the best-looking cops she had ever seen, and she found herself much more concerned about their safety than that of the young man under the house.
The TV crew was only half a block away. There was no way they were getting that kid out before the crew arrived with the camera rolling. It was probably rolling as they made their approach.
“Give me half a minute,” Maureen said. She walked up the driveway. Morello stopped her. “What’re you doing?”
“Let’s give him one more chance to come out,” Maureen said.
“Fuck him,” Morello said. “He had his chance to cooperate and then some. Don’t wear yourself out on this asshole, Coughlin.”
She glanced at the camera crew. “You see what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about protecting him. I want to protect us from them.”
Maureen walked to the house. She got down on her hands and knees. She flashed her light under the house, trying to get the kid’s attention. “Listen to me, very carefully. The canine officer is here. The dogs are ready. This is your last chance to come out.”
The kid yelled something, but Maureen couldn’t tell what it was he’d said. His voice was muffled in the dirt.
“Enough,” Morello said. “You gave him more than he deserved, Cogs, I’ll back you on that. You’ve done it by the book. You’re a good cop, but you can’t reason with stupid.”
Maureen and Morello backed out of the driveway. Maureen looked at the dogs. She gave Morrison a shrug. “I tried.”
“You did,” Morrison said.
Using a raised hand, she made the dogs sit. They watched her intently. Maureen figured she could set off a mat of firecrackers and it wouldn’t break their focus. I wish I could concentrate like that, Maureen thought, on anything.
Morrison shouted a single command. “Blaffen!”
The dogs jumped to their feet,
erupting into an explosion of barks and snarls so savage and wild that Maureen nearly jumped out of her boots. Her knees went watery and the hair on her arms stood straight up. The dogs, however, did not move from their handler’s side. They raised their ruckus where they stood. Morello laughed and cheered.
From under the house came a panicked yelling, barely audible over the dogs. Maureen could hear Morello’s celebration turn into disappointed swearing. She got Morrison’s attention and drew her finger across her throat. The officer raised her hand again and the dogs went silent and sat, their pink tongues lolling out over their white teeth. The handler fed them each a treat.
The kid’s pleading voice grew louder as he crawled their way, desperate to get out from under the house rather than have the dogs sent in after him.
“That was amazing,” Maureen said. “What did you say to them?”
“‘Speak,’” Morrison said. “They’re Belgian. They get their commands in Dutch.” The canine officer surveyed the surroundings, obviously proud of commanding the most efficient, most effective, best-behaved, and most handsome cops on the scene. “I haven’t had to send them into that muck once since I taught them that trick.”
“And where is the fucking fun in that?” Morello asked.
Morrison ignored him. “I think they know they don’t have to get baths if they don’t go under the house.” The dogs sat at her feet, panting, pleased with themselves. “So they put extra effort into their performance.”
“They scared the shit out of me,” Maureen said. “Damn.”
Morrison scratched one then the other behind the ears. “Don’t think they don’t know it.” She opened the back of the truck. The dogs jumped into the Explorer. “They love what they do. Shepherds love to have jobs. Like people, they want work to do.”
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