She closed the cruiser door, keeping her eyes on Heath, who had stopped his approach when Maureen left the car.
She realized as she straightened her gun belt on her hips that her return to work, to the NOPD’s good graces—hell, there was no reason he couldn’t know about her work with the FBI—had spurred Solomon into action. Being a cop again made her a threat again. He’d waited to see if she’d quit the department and leave New Orleans like Ruiz had done. Instead, she had rubbed her continuing presence in his face. So Solomon had acted and had done so in the way that men like him preferred, through others, by putting those others’ baser instincts and desires to work for him. Leon Gage fancied himself a man with a cause and an army. Solomon Heath gave him an enemy. A target. Then he sat back safe and distant in his big house and watched the bodies drop.
But she must have done something right, Maureen thought, because here he finally was. The man himself, the man that neither the NOPD nor the FBI would touch, had come to face her in the street. He was twenty yards away. Closer to her now than he’d gotten with his golf club.
Those other two cops, Maureen decided, the ones who had died, Mays and Harrigan, they’d been collateral damage, camouflage and distraction for the Watchmen’s real intentions as they came after her and Preacher. In fact, she was pretty sure that Leon Gage had been setting her up for the kill that afternoon. She should have opened fire on that passing van. It had to be the van. Should’ve lit those fuckers up. Gage couldn’t take the shot at her himself, because if he did he couldn’t be sure he’d walk out of the café. Not in a place as popular with city law enforcement as L’il Dizzy’s. Maureen wouldn’t be the only one in there with a gun, which wasn’t something that Gage would know, but Heath would.
Heath gave the orders and Gage had escape plans, Maureen thought, because the so-called leaders never did the dirty work themselves. Gage, like Solomon, passed off the risk and the bloodshed to underlings. The ones who made the speeches never did the dying. Bin Laden didn’t pilot one of the planes. The guy who held the press conference wasn’t the one who climbed aboard the bus wearing the suicide vest, or the one who drove the car up to the embassy entrance. That job always went to the poor schmuck who the fake patriots and false prophets had convinced that dying in a bomb blast or a hail of bullets was the only thing worth living for. Only their death could make their lives worth anything in this world and the next. Solomon Heath and Leon Gage were those salesmen. In that way they were alike.
She’d picked Dizzy’s to irritate Gage, and in defiance of Detillier’s protestations, Maureen thought, and had quite likely saved her own life in the process. Had Solomon come outside to finish the job by himself, she wondered. Had she become worth that much to him? It had been a long time, she figured, since Solomon had done his own dirty work. Here she was, though, standing in the street as living proof that if you wanted something done right …
She watched as Solomon tucked the thermos under his left arm, jamming that hand into the pocket of his vest. He raised his other hand in a salute, telling her with the gesture that he’d come no farther without her permission. Maureen raised her hand and waved him closer. His leather soles scratched on the asphalt as he walked toward her.
Maureen knew that for Solomon, killing her and Preacher was the only way to make New Orleans safe for Caleb’s return. Once she and Preacher were dead, with Quinn dead and a discredited Ruiz fled to another state, there’d be no one left to link Caleb to the Watchmen and the New Orleans drug gangs they worked with to hide and move their guns for their war. She was sure by now that he knew Madison Leary, the one other threat to his son, was dead.
Solomon smiled at Maureen as he got closer, walking with both hands buried deep in his vest pockets. Here was a man, Maureen thought, who had never in his life thought twice about approaching a police officer with his hands in his pockets. And despite everything she thought she knew about him, she’d let him come this far without protest. Were he a twenty-year-old black man, she thought, she’d have asked to see his hands before he crossed the street. And this was a man she knew wanted her dead.
“Am I in danger?” Heath asked.
“Excuse me?”
“I asked, am I in danger?” He continued smiling. He had perfect teeth.
“And why would you think that?” Maureen said.
After a chuckle, Heath said, “Because there is a police officer parked outside my house in the middle of the night.”
“And that means danger to you,” Maureen said, “the presence of the police.”
“Has there been a threat against me?” Heath asked. “You’re out here to protect me from something. I was wondering what that is.”
“If you’re worried for your safety,” Maureen said, “why leave the house?”
Heath nodded. “I’m under surveillance?”
“Not as far as I know. But the bosses don’t tell me everything. I’m just a foot soldier.”
Heath looked over his shoulder. “We can have this conversation in a much warmer place, Officer. You’re welcome to come inside.”
“I’m fine right here,” Maureen said. “Thank you.”
“I saw the events of the day,” Heath said. “The whole city has by now, and the whole country, I’m sure. If not the world. Horrific beyond words. I don’t know what kind of statement those animals thought they were making. My heart goes out to you and your fellow officers. I understand that you and Sergeant Boyd are especially close?”
“He was my training officer,” Maureen said. “It’s probably unprofessional to admit it, but I take what happened to him very, very personally. Above and beyond even the murder of the other cops.”
“Odd that a man out of uniform was targeted,” Heath said, lowering his eyes, “when the other officers were in uniform and seemingly picked at random.”
“I wasn’t aware,” Maureen said, “that information had been made public.”
“You and I both know,” Heath said, raising his eyes to hers, “that I’m not stuck relying on WDSU for my information.”
“Is there anything you know, then,” Maureen said, “that maybe we don’t?”
He held out the thermos to her. “I brought this for you. For your vigil. It’s coffee. Good coffee.” He smiled. “It has a bit of the Irish in it. I hear you have a taste for that.”
“Thank you, I’m fine.”
“You mind if I do?” Heath asked.
“Be my guest,” Maureen said.
Heath set the thermos on the hood of the cruiser. He unscrewed the plastic cap. Maureen watched as he poured the coffee, steam rising into the cold night air like a genie from a lantern. He raised the cup to his lips, blew on it, eyebrows high on his forehead. Maureen sighed as the earthy roasted aroma of the coffee filled the air around her, the sharp wood-smoke tang of the whiskey dancing like heat lightning through the cloud of coffee. Her mouth watered.
Am I really this easy? she wondered.
Now that she was here, and had figured things out, what was stopping her, she wondered, from throwing Heath down in the street and arresting him? Or from beating him senseless like she had those other dangerous men. She had the ASP in her pocket. She unzipped her jacket and reached into that pocket. Nothing was stopping her, that was what. Specifically, the nothing she had to offer as evidence of his involvement in any conspiracy to kill cops, or of any wrongdoing whatsoever. She’d be the one in cuffs, not Solomon. Tonight she wasn’t an anonymous assailant.
Instead of the ASP, she produced her pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket.
If she got in trouble again, there’d be no cover-up this time, no mercy, no deals. She’d be lucky to make it to prison and not end up in the river. She lit up.
The other option, she thought, was killing him. They weren’t far from the river. They were out of range of his cameras. Most likely.
“Would you mind?” Heath asked.
Maureen held out the pack to him. “Wouldn’t have figured you for a cigarette smoker.”
>
Because of course you can do that, she thought. No problem. You can kill one of the five richest men in Louisiana, the mayor’s buddy, dump the body in the Mississippi, and walk away from it. She had killed before, but that was in a fight for her life. Sebastian’s flunky, who’d put her in the trunk of a car. And then Sebastian himself had his hands on her, was trying to murder her. Only one of them could live through those moments. Plain and simple like nothing she’d ever been through before or since. Now she was mixed up in something much more complicated. Everything about her life now was much more complicated.
Heath slid a cigarette from the box by pinching the filter. “It’s been a while. I do prefer cigars, but unless we’re going inside.” He shrugged. He put the cigarette in his lips and lowered the tip to the flame of Maureen’s lighter.
But was this situation truly so different, Maureen wondered, from what had happened on Staten Island with Frank Sebastian?
This man Heath, who is standing right here smoking one of your American Spirits, wants you dead. He’s different from Sebastian how? He deserves due process because he had other people pulling the trigger? Can you afford to wait that long? she wondered. Look at what he’s done already.
There’s one key thing to remember, though, she told herself. This idea that Solomon is the source, this theory that he’s using the Watchmen to kill you and Preacher to protect his son, viable as it sounds to you—right now, you’re the only one who has this idea. And you have no proof that it’s true and no one, with Preacher in the hospital, who you can take it to without ending up in that new jail or that river. Who would believe it?
Heath slurped his Irish coffee. “It does cool off quick out here.”
Gage had you one-on-one in L’il Dizzy’s, Maureen thought, and you walked away. You spent weeks alone and unprotected and no one came for you. From the outside, how does all that look? Suspicious as hell, Maureen thought. Maybe it was Coughlin, people might wonder, who told Gage and the Watchmen where to find Preacher.
Get a grip, Maureen, she told herself. You’re losing it. Stop thinking that way. Think like a cop, not like, not like … whatever else you’ve been thinking like.
Heath gestured at the thermos. “You’re sure?”
“I’m on duty,” Maureen said.
Killing Solomon Heath, she thought, wasn’t whipping some frat boy’s ass in the bushes to teach him a lesson. Killing a scion of the city, committing vigilante murder, she thought, even to save herself and avenge her fellow cops, doesn’t catch the other bad guys. It’s not self-defense because he came at you with Irish coffee and charm. Vengeance is not in the job description. And it’s a hell of a long way farther back from secret blood justice than it is from cracking somebody’s ribs in the dark. That’s supposing there is a way back. You’ve had a hard-enough time, she thought, finding your way back from the bank of the Arthur Kill.
“Who’s going to know you took a little nip besides you and me?” Heath asked.
Killing Solomon Heath solves nothing, she thought. Maybe it brings Caleb home, but who wants or needs him by then anyway, with the big fish gutted and grilled?
“And after a day like today,” Heath said, “who would begrudge you? This is New Orleans, after all.”
Taking out Solomon Heath does send a message to the Watchmen, Maureen thought. It shows how far the cops go to protect their own. She watched as Heath produced a second plastic cup from his vest pocket and set it on the hood of her cruiser. He unscrewed the thermos and poured. No. No, killing him wouldn’t send the right message, she thought, the coffee-whiskey aroma blooming into the air again.
Killing Solomon, she thought, shows how far one crazy cop would go to get her own sick version of revenge. Shit, she’d told the FBI she had it in for him. Killing him wouldn’t do the most important thing she needed to accomplish, which was put an end to the Watchmen and their war against the NOPD.
There had to be a way, a legit or at least passably legal way, to tie Solomon Heath to the Citizens and the Watchmen. To pull his whole house down on top of him.
She thought of Preacher and of his constant reminders of their true mission, of their real job. Catching bad guys.
She reached out and took the plastic cup from Heath, blew on its contents as he had.
Maureen got the feeling that once she and Preacher had been eliminated, Leon Gage wouldn’t last much longer. Their surviving the day probably kept him alive that night. Actually, he was a goner either way. Maybe he wouldn’t even survive the night. She wondered who Solomon had in the wings sharpening their claws against Gage. Solomon would find a way to turn Gage’s people against him and hang on to their loyalty for himself. Of course, the wet work would fall to others, someone weaker, ambitious, deluded. Someone broke. Heath wasn’t any better than the drug dealers outside the Washington Avenue grocery who Preacher had talked about at roll call last night. Killing. Conniving.
“You asked me about information,” Heath finally said. “If I had any.”
“I did.”
“Napoleon Gage. He is the man you should be looking for.”
Maureen laughed to herself. She wondered if Solomon would offer her the job of killing Gage. The pay would be good. Better than good. Was that why he’d gone after Preacher? To make her that much more willing to kill Gage? He’d get her or she’d get him. Either way, Solomon came out the winner. It made sense.
She wondered if Solomon had an envelope full of money in the pocket of his khakis, and if he would offer it to her right then and there. Like a bounty. She wondered if she would take it. “We had that idea. Where to find him would be much more useful information.”
“What do you know about the man?” Solomon asked.
“Enough.”
“You really think so?” Heath said. “You don’t know enough to find him tonight, do you?”
“If not tonight, tomorrow,” Maureen said. “But we’ll get him. What I wonder about is what he’s going to tell us when we do.”
Heath shrugged. “I’d imagine the man has left town. Wouldn’t you? I would imagine that right now y’all have impressive resources at your disposal.”
“You and I both know,” Maureen said, “that you have a deeper well to draw from than we do.” She set the empty plastic cup on the car. She wasn’t feeling it yet, but the coffee had more than a little of the Irish in it.
“I’m not sure,” Heath said, “that I’m the kind of man you think I am.”
I know exactly the kind of man you are, Maureen thought. And there’s one very important thing about me that you don’t know. That nobody in New Orleans knows. The last one like you I met? The only things that remained of him were a black shoe and bloody, greasy gravy smeared like wet paint across the front of a speeding train.
Don’t tread on me, indeed.
“I know what kind of man you are,” she said. “And I know what kind of man your son is, too.”
“My son,” Solomon said, “is certainly not what you think he is, or what you have told people he is. He had nothing to do with what happened today. He’s had nothing to do with anything that’s happened to you. Those Watchmen people would kill him, too, if they could. I sent my son where he would be safe. There’s nothing more to it than that.” He set his empty coffee cup on the car, poured a refill.
“I’m out here talking to you because I want the same thing you do, Officer Coughlin. To see the Watchmen undone, before any more blood is shed. And there will be more. We’re on the same side, you and I. We always have been. I know Quinn tried convincing you of that.”
What struck Maureen, listening to him, was that Solomon believed everything he said to her. She knew firsthand that no limits existed to the fictions people could convince themselves were truth. A good detective, Maureen thought, considers every angle, every possibility, no matter how improbable. What if Solomon Heath was nothing more than a father trying to protect his son? What if he wasn’t, she thought, for the sake of argument, a criminal mastermind? If she didn’t all
ow for that possibility, she thought, she could waste a lot of time and energy, neither of which she had to spare, going after the wrong man. What if there wasn’t any evidence linking him to the Watchmen because he wasn’t connected to them?
“I brought Caleb into the family business, gave him properties to run. I gave him the River Garden development. I gave him Harmony Oaks. To teach him responsibility, how to be answerable and accountable to other people. To at least give him something to do besides running around the swamp with those crazy people.”
“Is this the part of the story,” Maureen said, “where you tell me he was never the same after his mother left New Orleans. Or was it Katrina? Was it the storm’s fault? Poor lost lamb, Caleb. Please.”
“You don’t think I warned Caleb away from those people?” Heath asked. “You don’t think I warned him of the consequences?”
“Posh digs in Dubai,” Maureen said. “Some consequences. He can’t do anything without you. Without your blessing or your money. You’ve rebuilt half the city. You build shit across the world. And you couldn’t get your son to find different friends? Ones who don’t want to be terrorists? You didn’t give a shit what your son did, until today. And even now I’m not so sure.”
“What makes you think you know anything about me and my family?” Solomon asked. “Because you stood outside a garden party looking in through the fence for a night? Because crooked, disturbed cops you knew nothing about told you stories?” Heath folded his arms, staring her down. “And you did everything, I’m sure, that your parents told you to do.”
Maureen laughed. “I smoked cigarettes and raided the liquor cabinet. I didn’t arm cop killers.”
Heath stared at her, solemn and angry.
She’d seen that look in a parent’s eye before, in dealings she’d had with parents worth a lot less money and with a lot less power than Heath. Parents who listened to the detective say right to their faces, “We have witnesses, we have the gun,” and who shook their heads and said, “Not my son.” Maybe certain things really were universal. What wasn’t universal, Maureen thought, was access to plane tickets to Dubai.
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