The Devil in Her Way

by Bill Loehfelm

  “You told him?” Wright asked, showing real fear. “How could you do me like that?”

  “Tell on you?” Maureen asked. “Why would I … What is this, fourth fucking grade?”

  She reached into her pocket, pulled out the change from her coffee. Three crumpled ones. Not a lot of flex for her to work with.

  “What’re the body shop guys gonna do when they find out you’re putting them on the wrong side of Bobby Scales? Or when they find out you and your stolen goods led me to them, with detectives in tow for a peek at their inventory? Don’t look shocked, I’m a troublemaker that way. What if Bobby misses when he shoots at you and hits one of those kids? Or Mother Mayor?”

  “Aw, that’s low down.”

  Maureen raised her shoulders, her hands in the air, as if daring Wright to contest the truth of what she’d said.

  “Stop stealing,” she said, slipping Wright the bills from her pocket. “At least for today.”

  Wright tucked the money into the pocket of his pants as smooth and quick as if he’d picked the bills out of someone else’s pocket. It was the only graceful motion he’d made since Maureen had rolled up on him.

  “Close the hood on the car,” she said.

  Wright did as he was told and stepped over to the sidewalk. He clasped his hands behind his back. He had to be eager to bolt now, Maureen thought, for the fix, or for whatever Plan B he had for scoring enough cash to get the fix, but because he had taken the money, he waited to be officially dismissed. Maureen realized that without even trying she had started cultivating her first informant. May as well put him right to work, she thought.

  “Tell me what you know about Bobby Scales.”

  Wright rolled his shoulders, tried to gin up a charming grin. “C’mon, officer. What am I gonna know that you don’t?”

  “Humor me.”

  Wright took a deep breath. His eyes wandered over the block. “Due respect, but that ain’t a three-dollar question. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  “I’m good for more,” Maureen said. “Down the road.”

  Wright laughed at her. He offered his wrists. “I’d rather go to fucking lockup.”

  Maureen believed him. He was, in his way, telling her at least some of what she wanted to know: Scales was dangerous. “One question, then. Within your pay grade. Does Scales wear a shell necklace and a white headband? He a big fan of Bob Marley?”

  Wright shook his head. Maureen wasn’t sure if the headshake was her answer or Wright’s refusal to give one. She was out of cash. Because of Wright’s need, her time with him was short. Considering his history, she thought, they’d cross paths again soon. She’d do better next time.

  “This car,” Maureen said. “It’s off-limits. I don’t ever want to see you so much as look at it again. Understand?”

  Wright nodded, backing away down the sidewalk.

  “Tell me you understand,” Maureen said, following him, keeping within a few steps. She wanted him thinking she might still change her mind about busting him. “I don’t wanna be out here, chalking you up some night.”

  “I got it,” Wright said. “Don’t worry about me. Forget about me. I never even liked that car.” He turned and hustled away, headed in the same direction as the three kids. “Ain’t nobody got to worry about me.”

  5

  Maureen returned to the patrol car feeling like she wasn’t getting her money’s worth out of anybody. She wasn’t entirely sure that Preacher, still planted in the driver’s seat, had stayed awake during her encounter with Wright.

  She grabbed her coffee off the roof and climbed into the car. “Thanks for nothing, Preach.”

  “What’s gonna make you look tougher?” Preacher said, yawning. “Me huffin’ and puffin’ across the street, me screeching up in the car, lights and sirens wailing, or you handling things on your own? Which, by the way, you seem to have done admirably. I ain’t got nothing to prove. I’m all about you, Coughlin. Your personal growth, your success. That’s what matters here. That’s how a partnership works.”

  Preacher hit the lights to make them some space and pulled the car out into traffic.

  “I’m your training officer,” he said. “I can’t do the job for you. How will you learn if I’m always there to fall back on?”

  Maureen lifted the lid on her coffee, sipped. It was cold. She flicked the lid onto the floor of the car, rolled down her window, ignoring Preacher’s complaints about the heat, and dumped the coffee. She ground her teeth. Don’t do it, she told herself. Don’t send Preacher back to the boys’ club griping about this moody bitch he got saddled with; don’t give him that satisfaction.

  She crushed the paper coffee cup in her fist and spiked it onto the floor. She left the window down, glaring across the car, daring Preacher to utter one more complaint. He didn’t.

  “Who’s Bobby Scales?” Maureen said.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Me.”

  “He done something we need to know about?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking about him. His name came up back there.”

  Preacher sighed, shaking his head. “Make sure you go right to the top brass about this guy, they love a probie getting investigative right out of the academy. Especially about an auto burglary interruptus with no arrest.”

  Maureen bit her bottom lip, looked away. Punch your FTO, she reminded herself, and you’re back to waiting tables. Swallow it. For now. He’s like your period. He’s temporary, necessary, and you’ll be glad that it happened when it’s over. Two more shifts. One, really, since this day was almost over. She could stand his foolishness for one more day.

  “What?” Preacher asked. “Am I harassing you again? Was it the interruptus?”

  “One of the kids mentioned Scales,” Maureen said. “That was his Plymouth that Wright was messing with. For the third time. I’m thinking maybe Scales is the guy in the shell necklace, from yesterday.”

  “Because this necklace guy seems like the type to get intense over a beat-down Plymouth that’s older than him?”

  “Okay. No.”

  “Listen, I’m sure this Scales character is grateful to you for protecting his property,” Preacher said. “It is your sacred appointed duty as an officer of the law. I’m sure he’s dropping a thank-you card in the mail as we speak, but remember this, ’cause it’ll save you a lot of time. Anyone we need to know out here, they will be revealed to us soon enough. They can’t fucking help it. It’s one of the great ironies of criminality types, they can’t stay away from the cops.”

  They idled at the busy intersection of Louisiana and St. Charles, waiting for the red light to change. Maureen watched a legless black man in a wobbly wheelchair push himself through the crosswalk in the direction of the twenty-four-hour Rite Aid, his gray-whiskered lips working over toothless gums. An old foam daiquiri cup was jammed in his crotch, the cup’s edges chewed. She knew there were dollar bills squashed into the bottom.

  That beat-down Plymouth, she thought, was not the car of a man who wanted people thinking him dangerous. Then again, Scales’s name made Wright bad nervous. More nervous than he’d gotten over her. Of course, Maureen would only take him to jail, which was another day in the life. Scales, on the other hand, might stomp his sorry ass over the car. Because Scales could whip some ass, that didn’t make him a criminal. And who in the neighborhood, on either side of the law, didn’t scare a thieving junkie like Wright? He lived his whole life afraid.

  “Do me a favor,” Maureen said, “and turn the car around.”

  “What for?”

  “I want to talk to Mother Mayor. Five minutes, tops. A couple of quick questions.”

  “What makes you think that woman will even open her door if you come knocking?”

  “How am I gonna know if I don’t try?”

  “Questions about what?” Preacher asked. “We established that Apartment D is not your gig. You missed your chance with that. Live with it.”

  “She acted funny when I was
talking to Wright,” Maureen said. “She gave me practically no shit.”

  “So you’ve got Mother all figured, after five weeks on the job. Congrats.” He shook his head. “Don’t be vague with me, Coughlin. Save the mystery shit for your boyfriend.”

  “I’d like to see what she knows about Scales, about the car, maybe.”

  “And if the subject of Apartment D comes up, well, so be it.” Preacher looked at her across the car. “Am I right?” He cracked a smile. “You think I’m new at this? You’re smart, and you’re crafty, Coughlin. I like that about you, but you’re still new.”

  “I swear on my brand-new badge,” Maureen said, raising her right hand, “that anything I learn about Apartment D, should the subject even come up, I will deliver willingly and joyfully to Quinn and Ruiz. I want to find out about Scales, and find out who that drummer kid is. I still think he’s got something on his mind.”

  “About Apartment D?” Preacher asked.

  Maureen shrugged. “That is where he first approached us.”

  The light turned green. The legless man was only halfway across the street. A driver a few cars back leaned on his horn. Maureen told herself the honker couldn’t see the cause for the holdup: thus his behavior. He leaned on his horn again, this time longer. Maureen tensed, her hand drifting for the door handle. She could enlighten the impatient motherfucker as to the cause of the delay. She hated that shit. The selfishness. Because this prick and his car and his legs had somewhere to be. Didn’t everybody? Her ticket book sat on the cruiser’s dash. She had a mind to make Mr. Selfish a few minutes later and a few dollars lighter. Because of who she was now, she could do something about people like him. Right, she thought. As if that asshole was any more reachable than Norman Wright. As if he’d act differently in this situation the next time. He’d blame her, and the guy in the wheelchair. The horn again. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t enjoy breaking his balls.

  Before Maureen could make her move, Preacher hit the light bar and the honking stopped.

  “It’s a great way to shut people up,” Preacher said. “Especially minor people not worth getting out of the car for. Those lights have power. More than the badge, more than the gun, I think sometimes. You get out of the car with your ticket book, that shitheel will cry all over you about not knowing what he did wrong. But somehow, they always seem to know when the lights are for them.”

  He turned his eyes back to the road. The man in the wheelchair had stopped to fix his zipper. The police cruiser, lights going, shielded him from oncoming traffic. Cars squeezed by in the other lane.

  “You ever had a dog?” Preacher asked. “A good dog that knows better? Say its name once, loud and sharp, and that’s enough. A smart dog knows when it’s fucking up. The lights work like that. The master’s voice. Just another valuable tidbit for you. They come fast and furious sometimes.”

  Maureen watched two teenage boys in matching Xavier Prep polo shirts help the legless man, zipper difficulties corrected, thank God, maneuver his wheelchair onto the sidewalk. They turned away, though, returning to the bus stop when he started talking to them, smiling and shaking his cup.

  The old man safely landed, Preacher waited one more beat, as if daring another blast of the horn. He slowly rolled the patrol car into the intersection. Cars passed them now on either side, the drivers throwing dirty looks their way. She wasn’t used to it yet, Maureen decided, the public identity she now carried out into the streets every day. Nor had she adjusted to people hating her on sight because of that identity. She lived now with a new form of bigotry—everyone in that blue uniform was the same, and that one part of them, the uniform, trumped everything else, as if cop were a race and not a job.

  Preacher palmed the wheel, whistling Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” while making an illegal left through the busy intersection and onto St. Charles.

  Maureen craved a cigarette. “I need another cup of coffee.”

  “That high-octane shit you like,” Preacher said, “that they make with the espresso maker. The grocery on Sixth is where you get it?”

  “They close at six,” Maureen said. “It’s five after.”

  “They’ll do it for us,” Preacher said.

  “No. I hate doing that. I used to—”

  “Yeah, you used to wait tables,” Preacher said. “Yeah, you’ve mentioned that a time or two. But that ain’t you no more. That badge on your chest, don’t tell me you wear it for the salary. That’s the case, you must’ve been a shitty waitress. Let’s get you one of those nuclear coffees. On me. But you gotta go in and get it. And spot me a bag of Zapp’s for the ride back to the station.”

  “Okay, yeah, yeah,” Maureen agreed, mostly to shut him up.

  So she’d let him let her get herself a coffee. When she was in the service industry, she’d stayed late, done extra for cops, for firefighters, and for vets. It was a thing you did. It was neighborhood etiquette. Having cops hanging around at closing time when the cash was being counted was a good thing. It hadn’t stopped being a good thing because she was the cop and no longer the one wearing the apron. And this was her neighborhood now.

  “After we get coffee, before we go to the station,” Maureen said, “can we go back to Mother Mayor’s?”

  “Tomorrow,” Preacher said. “Shift’s over at seven and we got paperwork.”

  “It’s practically on the way.”

  “Tomorrow, Coughlin. I said tomorrow. People need our paperwork so they can go home. Night tour needs the car. Show some respect for the system.”

  Maureen said nothing, chewing her bottom lip as she gazed out the window. Bobby Scales was just a name, not an immediate danger or an impending threat. She could let it go till tomorrow. She glanced over at Preacher. As if she had a choice.

  Traffic bunched on St. Charles and Preacher slowed the cruiser. Storm clouds were rolling in from across the river, weighing heavily on the city like Maureen’s bulletproof vest weighed on her. The hot, heavy air filling the police car smelled of growth and decay, of what Maureen imagined might be the scent of dead flesh anointed with exotic oils, or some terminally ill harem girl, sick on the inside but gorgeous to the eyes and tasty on the tongue.

  She slipped off her shades, wiped at the perspiration under her eyes with her fingertips.

  Man, she thought, it’s too fucking hot in this town. A deep inhalation told her she stank.

  6

  Late that night, frightened awake by nightmares, Maureen sat in bed, naked in the dark, chain-smoking, the red glow of her cigarette the only light in the room. She’d kicked the top sheet onto the floor, where it lay in a tangled ball. Despite the smoke, she could smell all around her the phantom scent of blood as fresh and strong in her nose as a puddle of spilled paint. She felt the imaginary blood slicking and sticking to her, like the sweat she wore at work these days as a second, liquid skin.

  She didn’t need to remember her nightmares to know what they were about.

  When she awoke smelling blood, she had dreamed of Sebastian.

  She pressed her back against the wall, splayed her legs out in front of her. The damp backs of her knees stuck to the bottom sheet in the heat. The window unit didn’t work worth a damn unless she ran it all day and night on high, but then it rattled like an old bus. The blinds glowed in faint yellow squares from the streetlights outside, and she watched for shadows moving behind the blinds, her cell phone gripped tight in one fist. Beads of perspiration trickled down between her breasts as she took deep, steady breaths. Opening the windows, with their screens full of holes, only let in mosquitoes. And those other things. The flying cockroaches. Loud as bottle caps hitting the windowpanes, flying around in the dark all night. It didn’t help that the building’s handyman stored the garbage cans right under her windows.

  She could hear the roaches out there now, tapping like the fat fingers of someone trying to attract her to the glass.

  Five blocks away, somewhere out on St. Charles Avenue, a streetcar rattled along the neutral gr
ound. Uncanny, really, she thought, how those old trolleys could sound like the commuter trains that ran across Staten Island. Weird. Like spirits rattling their chains. She shivered. She felt too old to be afraid of the dark. She’d had a night-light once, a plastic ladybug her father had given her, but she’d thrown it away long before she’d moved. What she really wanted to do was get out of bed and get her gun.

  These days she either woke in the night terrified or woke in the morning halfway to furious. Sometimes she woke up like that for days on end. Some weeks, she wondered if her bed even had a right side to wake up on. It wasn’t how she wanted to feel, and she hated the raw fury that swirled inside her. The rage was like a virus—she could feel the jagged-edged individual cells drifting around inside her veins. Most of the time she hated it. Sometimes she loved it. She wished it away and then lamented when it left, feeling empty inside to the point of tears.

  At first, she had tried not to bring the bad feelings to work, but they proved too useful to leave home. The anger was like an engine humming inside her, a second, stronger heart. On the job, she could let her feelings run riot on the inside, she figured, as long as she controlled what she did, and as long as she controlled what she allowed other people to see. There were times she was good at all that, other times not so much.

  She opened her cell. At some point in the night, Patrick had called. There was a message. She didn’t listen to it. She had someone else on her mind right then. Two in the morning. That meant three a.m. back in New York. He might be up, might have his cell on and handy. He was as much an insomniac as Maureen. If he didn’t answer, no harm done. She found his number and hit SEND. It took him only two rings to answer, as if he’d been waiting.

  “Evening, Officer,” Nat Waters said. “I had a feeling it was you.”

  “Am I that predictable?”

  “Spend a few decades as a detective,” Waters said, “and you learn some things about people.”