The cache of weapons, Maureen recalled, was the big news. Automatic weapons, combat-ready weapons that probably should have been in Iraq or Afghanistan. An operation, she’d heard, that had tentacles stretching east to Atlanta and west to Houston, maybe even to Mexico and California. So many guns had been confiscated, rumor had it, that the feds had considered terrorism charges. The massive effort had brought about ninety days of quiet to the neighborhood. Nature does abhor a power vacuum, Maureen thought.
Josephine Street was a long, bloody, heartbreaking scar, Maureen thought, right through the Sixth, right through Central City. She couldn’t wait to get there.
“Anyway, here’s the kicker,” Preacher said. “I ask about Goody and Marques because, fuck it, I’m there, I’m out of the car. To my sheer fucking astonishment, the kid with the bat, he can’t get the words out fast enough. He don’t know no Marques, he says, but we can stop looking for Goody, because the boy’s hopped a bus back to his people in Baton Rouge. And that he was only headed elsewhere from there. Says he’s Goody’s second cousin, gave him the bus fare for Baton Rouge himself, took him down to the Greyhound station. Saw him get on the bus. Said he never heard of Bobby Scales, of course. Surprise.”
Maureen shook her head. “No, no, no. Of course he knows Scales. He’s telling you what Scales told him to say.”
“Why would Scales tell us anything?” Preacher asked. “How would he anticipate that we’d end up on Josephine Street and plant a message there? Why not let us keep looking for Goody and wasting our time? I believe this kid. I get the feeling it’s not us that Goody’s running from.”
“Right. Exactly. What if Scales wants us to stop looking? Makes it easier for him to go after Goody himself.”
“And why does he want to do that?”
“Atkinson thinks Mike-Mike was the shooter in the Wright case,” Maureen said. “She thinks it was Goody and Marques that tried getting rid of the Plymouth. Probably under orders from Scales. They fucked it up and now Scales is after them. He needs to clean up, get rid of all three of them.”
“She thinks this, Atkinson does?”
“Can we go back to Josephine Street and talk to the kid with the bat?”
“And ask him what?” Preacher said. “Anything he’s gonna tell us, he’s already told us. You’re the one that doesn’t trust him.”
“Do we have anything on him that we can use?” Maureen asked. “He have a record?”
“I ran his name after I talked to him. He took a shoplifting charge about three years ago, did his probation fair and square. Otherwise he came up clean.”
“You ask for ID? Make sure you got his real name?”
“And let him go back in the house, where I can’t see him? Try and follow him in and possibly create an incident? It’s not my job, it’s not our job, to make trouble where there isn’t any. I had no reason to treat that kid like a criminal. Even on that corner.”
“But you have a reason to treat Little E that way?”
“The same Little E that just got out of state prison? Everyone is different. Little E responds to a little heat, it opens him up. Like an oyster. It makes him feel dangerous.” Preacher lifted himself up off the car. “I’m not entirely pleased with your tone, Coughlin, by the way. I’m glad you’re eager to leave the nest, but some proper fucking respect, please.”
“I don’t like it, this Baton Rouge thing,” Maureen said. “I don’t buy it.”
“You don’t have to,” Preacher said, “but I don’t know that your delicate personal feelings change anything about any of this. When you make detective, then you can have feelings that matter. If it’s any consolation, if Goody is mixed up with a Josephine Street crew, new or old, by business, by blood relation, or whatever, he’s better off on a bus far outta town. He’s better off anywhere but here. Believe that.”
Preacher walked around the car to the driver’s side door. Maureen made a move for the passenger side. She stopped, remembering she was off for the day. She knew what Preacher would say next, and she didn’t want to hear it.
“Now go home,” Preacher said, “and rest up. Today’s been a good day. Let’s have another good one tomorrow. And do whatever it takes, do whoever it takes, to shave the edge off that Irish temper before you come back to work.”
He took a few steps back in Maureen’s direction, pointing his finger at her.
“And do not under any circumstances, Coughlin, for any fucking reason, let me hear that your skinny white ass was over on Josephine Street tonight. Not if you want to be anything more than a meter maid in this town. Understood?”
“Yeah.” Maureen knew better than to deny that the idea had crossed her mind.
“That is a fucking order, soldier. Do you believe it?”
“Yes, sir. I believe.”
Mike-Mike was dead. Goody was gone. She thought of Marques.
And then there was one.
26
Maureen sat on a bench inside Jackson Square, near the tiered black fountain, listening to its falling water in the shade of the blooming crepe myrtles. The lost petals of their tiny pink flowers carpeted the benches and the paths through the square. Over the crepe myrtles loomed the wide, dark-leaved live oaks. Birds sang short songs in the branches overhead. A good breeze blew in off the river, rustling the leaves of the live oaks and cooling Maureen’s bare shoulders, relaxing her. She watched the sparrows and the squirrels as they scavenged watchful and wary underneath the empty benches. When she stretched her arms, she felt a sting on her back, right between her shoulder blades. Running around outside all afternoon, she’d gotten a sunburn. The park smelled like sweet olive and honeysuckle, but the breeze also carried tangy whiffs of the beast-of-burden-and-urine smell of the horse-drawn carriages lining up outside the square along Decatur Street. Alas, Maureen thought, no place is perfect.
She sipped her Café du Monde frozen au lait, which was the closest thing in this world to ambrosia, she’d decided. If ever another storm came, she was taking every weapon she could find and setting up camp outside Café du Monde. She’d defend the place to the last. She set her coffee down beside her and lit a cigarette. She stretched her legs, hanging her elbows over the back of the bench. Not a bad place for a nap. A bad time for it, though. She’d go to bed tonight right after dark, sleep the sleep of the dead. She was so looking forward to it.
Outside the gates of the square, on the flagstone plaza in front of St. Louis Cathedral, the listless members of a ragtag brass band stood in a loose circle, wet towels on the backs of their necks, dented horns in hand, chatting around a plastic pickle bucket. They’d played maybe half a song since Maureen had arrived twenty minutes ago. Not a lot of people to play for. She wondered if the guys hanging around without instruments laughing and cutting up got a share of the money in the pickle bucket, what there would be of it, on a day like today. Maybe they were management, Maureen thought. The shoeshine guy left his post outside the empty, open-fronted tourist-trap restaurant and joined in the conversation. A skinny gray cat wound itself through his legs as he walked.
Yawning, Maureen watched what few brave and/or foolish tourists visited New Orleans in August as they milled about the square. Most were European. She heard British accents, some Italian, some French. Others were Americans. She didn’t need to hear them talk. They had the fattest shopping bags and the biggest, whitest sneakers. Maureen knew she was far from what a native New Orleanian would consider a local, but at least she didn’t look like one of these pasty, doe-eyed folks shuffling around the square.
Wherever they were from, as if preprogrammed, all the tourists took multiple pictures around the Andrew Jackson statue in the center of the square. Then they took a few more huddled together in front of the regal St. Louis Cathedral, their possessions hanging loose on their shoulders and in their hands. The big statue of the hat-waving war-hero president on horseback was the one everyone flocked to, the one on every other postcard, but Maureen preferred the newer French Market monument to Joan of Ar
c, the Maid of Orleans. Joan sat on horseback, too, upright and proud in glorious sun-spattering bronze. Instead of waving her hat as if trying to rally a college-football crowd, Joan manned her post at the front of the cavalry charge while holding high a weapon, a bannered lance. Maureen loved the warrior part of the story. The young-martyr part she tried not to think about. The virgin part didn’t apply.
As Maureen watched, the sweating and smiling tourists couldn’t hand their cameras and their phones over to passing strangers fast enough. Big handbags, big shopping bags, jewelry hanging loose from their wrists and ears and throats, wallets bursting from back pockets. She wanted to shout, could you people look any more like a bunch of victims in waiting? At least make it a challenge, make the crooks earn it.
She watched as a heavy man in khaki shorts bent forward to hand his daughter coins for the fountain. His wallet stuck halfway out of his back pocket. Talk about the Big Easy, Maureen thought, shaking her head. The man made her glad she hadn’t been assigned down here to the Eighth District. Dealing with tourists would be too much like waiting tables again. She wanted to be done with supposed grown-ups who refused to listen, refused to follow, to even read, directions and simple instructions—people who refused to fend for themselves while in public.
She sipped cold coffee through the straw.
Yeah, she thought, because you’re so much better equipped for dealing with Mother Mayor and the J-Street Family or whatever the hell the local killers and drug lords call themselves these days. If only her mother, Maureen thought, could see her now.
27
On her graduation day, after the purse-snatching incident behind Café du Monde, Maureen had walked with her mom and Waters in the direction of their Canal Street hotel—the large, safe, and familiar Marriott where Maureen had booked their room in advance of their visit. Not only had she reserved the hotel and picked them up at the airport, but she’d also done everything else she could to Disneyfy her mother’s first New Orleans experience. She controlled what parts of the city they saw, keeping Amber and Waters corralled in the touristy parts of the French Quarter and the prettier areas of Uptown—St. Charles Avenue, Magazine Street, the Garden District, Audubon Park and Zoo. She couldn’t prevent them from reading the paper, but as luck would have it, no one got shot in New Orleans for three whole days. No cops got brought up on charges. Even the weather had been unseasonably kind. Good omens all.
Maureen knew her mother would never love New Orleans. She’d never expected her to. The city was too different, too distant. Maureen knew Amber might not even visit New Orleans again after this trip. But she had wanted her mother to at least enjoy the place. She hoped that would help her mistrust it less and, most important, no longer fear the city as she did knowing it only from TV and the Internet. There was some success.
Over the long weekend, they’d approached an understanding: Maureen, Amber, and Maureen’s new home. The night before the incident at the Café du Monde bathrooms, they’d had dinner on Magazine Street at a seafood place called Casamento’s, not far from Maureen’s apartment.
“It’s world-famous,” Maureen had said, leading them through the busy front room, past the white-tiled oyster bar where the thick-gloved shuckers talked a mile a minute in their musical accents. “We’re lucky they’re open and that we got a table. They keep odd hours.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Amber said.
As they sat, she scanned the tiled walls, ceiling, and floor. Everything was white tile. “It’s like having dinner in a shower. Easy to clean, I guess. What do I know?”
Amber fought the good fight, but the hothouse charm of the city that had so besotted Maureen upon her arrival had started softening the sharp, icy edges of Amber’s defenses. Over trays of chilled raw oysters, which Waters enjoyed but Amber could not even look at, never mind eat, Maureen could see her mother softening. Maureen ate oysters with horseradish, drank cold local beer, and waited.
Eventually, Amber set her fork down beside her half-eaten iceberg-lettuce salad. She picked a lemon seed from her iced tea and placed it on a corner of her paper napkin.
“I can see why you like it here,” she said. “The people certainly seem pretty happy. And I can’t say they’re not nice. It’s different, all right. It’s not home. I’ll give it that.”
Faint praise, Maureen thought, for the place where your daughter has staked her claim. But she also knew better than to ask for more. Maureen could become the city’s first female police superintendent and Amber would never concede her daughter had made the right choice in leaving New York City. So she took Amber’s words for what they were: her mother’s best effort. And, really, what else could a daughter ask for? Maureen thought her strategy had worked.
Her victory had been short-lived.
As they walked to the hotel from Café du Monde after the purse-snatching incident, Amber was as distressed as Maureen had seen her the whole trip. She watched her mother’s eyes, wary, bright and electric. She didn’t like the way they moved. Maureen, Amber, and Waters hadn’t talked about what had happened, and they wouldn’t discuss it, ever, once they parted ways at the hotel.
“Maybe we should have dinner at the hotel restaurant,” Amber said. “I’m sure they have good food.”
Okay, Maureen thought, here we go. Now she’s afraid to even walk out of the hotel. She caught sight of Waters and decided to let him lead the defense of their dinner plans. He looked like a kid who’d been told on Christmas Eve that Christmas Day was canceled. Maureen almost laughed out loud. Man, he could do hangdog disappointment with the best of them, she thought.
“We were gonna do that fancy place tonight,” Waters said. “I’ve been looking forward to it. You’ve been looking forward to it. I brought a tie.”
“I’m sure you can wear a tie to the hotel restaurant,” Amber said.
Maureen watched her mother flinch as two kids coming their way on a small bike caught her attention, two black teenage boys in baseball caps, both laughing, one pedaling away, the other balanced, barely, on the handlebars. Seemed a dangerous undertaking, Maureen thought, considering the heavy traffic flowing into the Quarter. The danger was probably the point, Maureen decided. She remembered those days.
“You picked the place, Am,” Waters said. “It’s that lady you like from that show. Spicy Susan. It’s her place. She might even be there. You could meet a famous person. It’ll be fun.”
“We’ve had all the rich food that we, that you, can stand,” Amber said. “And the woman’s name is Spicer, Susan Spicer.”
“Amber,” Waters said, slowing to a stop so Amber had to turn and face him. “We’re having a good time. I’ll go back to salmon burgers and quinoa tomorrow when we get home. I promise. C’mon. It’s been a great vacation and a great visit with Maureen. It’s a big weekend for her.”
“The biggest,” Maureen said.
“Don’t let that clown back there ruin it,” Waters said. “Besides, you’re with two cops.”
The boys on the bike wobbled along in their direction. Maureen watched Amber try not to watch them. She couldn’t help herself. And though people walked close by her at a regular clip in both directions, some even bumping her shoulder and her handbag, those passersby were adults, white adults, Maureen noticed, and Amber ignored them. Her gazed stayed fixed on the approaching black kids. Something small and prickly squirmed in Maureen’s gut.
C’mon, Ma, she thought, don’t be like that.
“Oh, that?” Amber said. “I’m not worried about that. I’m tired. We have an early flight tomorrow.”
“The flight’s at noon,” Waters said. “The airport’s twenty minutes away.”
“There was a very long security line,” Amber said. “I saw it when we arrived. Somebody in this family has to plan ahead.”
“Ma, it’s a six-thirty reservation. Even in New Orleans you can be back in your room by ten.”
“Don’t you two gang up on me,” Amber said, fighting a grin. “I hate that.”
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Amber screamed. Clutching her purse to her chest, hunching over it, she twisted her back to the street. Everyone around them froze. Maureen watched the bike go by. The kid pedaling the bike turned and flipped up his middle finger, to make sure everyone knew the implications of Amber’s panic.
“Fuck you, lady.”
The rider kept on laughing.
Maureen took a deep breath, trying very hard not to lose it on Amber for making a scene while at the same time wanting to belt that kid for cursing at her mom. A stranger walked up to her. A white stranger. “Aren’t you gonna do anything?”
It took Maureen a moment to remember she was in uniform. “Like what?”
The stranger was incredulous. “Those black kids tried to rob that lady you’re with. I saw it.”
“No,” Maureen said. “No, they didn’t. I watched them coming all the way from the corner of Canal. They didn’t do a thing but ride by.”
The stranger gave Maureen the up-and-down, as if checking to make sure he hadn’t mistaken the uniform. “No wonder this city’s a mess, cops like you.”
“Then don’t live here,” Maureen said. The words were out of her mouth before she knew she’d thought them. Listen to me, she thought. Next thing you know I’ll be calling everyone “y’all.”
“I don’t live here,” he said. “Never would.”
He walked away, a white-knuckled grip on his Hard Rock Café shopping bag, his head swiveling on the lookout for danger. Maureen turned to her mother, who was looking everywhere but at her daughter. Without a doubt, Maureen thought, New Orleans has a lot to teach me.
28
In Jackson Square, Maureen got up off the bench and stretched, wincing at the sting of her sunburn. She checked her phone. She wanted to call Waters. She had lots to tell him and ask him about the past couple of days. Before finishing his career as a homicide detective on Staten Island, he’d worked the Bronx and Brooklyn in the golden era of crack cocaine. He knew drugs and gangs. Even on the Island, drug crime had been the main source of his homicide cases.
The Devil in Her Way Page 20