She should call Atkinson as well, she thought, and tell her what Preacher had learned about Goody. Maureen was eager for Atkinson’s opinion of the information, whether or not she believed it. Maureen found the more she thought about the story, the less skeptical she grew. Considering what had happened to Mike-Mike, Goody getting out of town made sense. She wondered if Goody and Marques could escape Bobby Scales. So many connections stretched between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, with the way the aftermath of the hurricane had divided families, whole neighborhoods even, between the two places. The connections that formed Goody’s path out of town could be the same ones that led Scales right to him.
Marques had to be found. Now that Mike-Mike was dead and Goody had been flushed out of town—unless he was dead, too, something Maureen knew she had to still allow as a possibility—Marques might talk to them. Tell them things he hadn’t at the playground.
Maureen watched as the music teachers, two men and a woman, exited from under the stone arches of the Cabildo, one of the three-story Spanish colonial courthouse buildings flanking St. Louis Cathedral. The young players followed close behind their instructors, a noisy cluster of maybe thirty middle schoolers, boys and girls alike chattering and laughing, wearing matching polo shirts like the one Marques had worn at the playground—the noisy kids spreading like a bag of spilled marbles across the square. The teachers moved among the kids, redirecting the students toward where they needed to be, which for most of the kids was a pair of yellow school buses parked behind Maureen on Decatur. Other kids ran straight to the cluster of Jackson Square musicians, eager to talk shop. From what Maureen had seen around the city, the kids in Roots of Music weren’t more than a couple of years away from playing in sidewalk ensembles of their own. She figured it beat bottle-cap tap dancing outside the French Quarter Walgreens. Had to be more of a future in being the player than in being the dancer.
While looking for Marques, she thought of Mike-Mike and of his brief time as one of those polo-shirted kids. She wondered how many of these kids were headed back to Central City, how many would put down their horns and their drumsticks for more dangerous things as they got older. At least with an instrument in hand they had a choice to make. It was easier to pick up bad habits with empty hands. Maureen wondered which of the teachers had made the call to cut Mike-Mike loose. A hell of a thing to live with. Word of Mike-Mike’s fate would have reached the instructors and the kids at Roots by now, including Marques.
She’d hoped Mike-Mike’s death would have scared Marques into calling her, or anyone in the department, but she couldn’t say she was surprised that it hadn’t happened. What kid in a neighborhood as tight as his would turn to strangers, the cops especially, when he got in trouble? If she were in Marques’s situation, Maureen thought, she wouldn’t go to the police. No way.
The drummers straggled out of the building last. Sticks in hand, they beat out rhythms on whatever they could find: signposts, garbage cans, lingering horn players, and fellow drummers.
Marques appeared, blinking in the sunlight. Maureen had ruled out going to a teacher first. If she did that, she’d have to tell the teacher she was a police officer. She didn’t want to get Marques in trouble. A cop looking for you was never a good thing. She didn’t want him saddled with another thousand push-ups. And she didn’t want to expose him in front of the other kids. Most of all, she didn’t want him banned from the one place she knew he could be found. She wanted to keep this visit as quiet as possible.
Marques saw her approaching and moved away. His head turned from side to side as he searched for an escape route, maybe the alleys alongside the cathedral.
Maureen quickened her steps, not chasing but keeping tabs. She kept her badge in her back pocket.
Marques drifted in one direction, then changed his mind and considered the other. Maureen admired his savvy. The boy knew that if he straight-up cut and run, his teachers would see and would want to know why. He was trying to fade away into the background, out of their sight and out of hers at the same time. His place in this band, she thought, matters a lot to him. It was the reason he hadn’t joined Goody in Baton Rouge. She told herself that was a good thing. For him and for her. She called his name. His shoulders slumped and he turned to her.
Smiling at Marques, Maureen reconvinced herself that talking to him here was best. No one had a clue where he lived, who his people were. What would be a better place to talk? His friend’s funeral?
“I’ve been looking for you,” Maureen said.
“I figured,” Marques said, eyes on his shoe tops.
“We need to talk.” Maureen squatted down so she was looking up at him. From that position, Marques couldn’t hide his face from her. “It’s important. Very, very important.”
“Because of what happened to Mike-Mike.”
“Because of him,” Maureen said, “and because of Goody.”
She watched for a reaction to the second name, a wince or a flinch, something that might tell her Goody had suffered something worse than exile to Baton Rouge. Marques revealed nothing. Maureen wasn’t sure he’d heard a thing she’d said. His eyes were everywhere away from her. The kid was miserable. Terrified. Exhausted. Could she blame him? He was too young to be the Last of the Mohicans. The fear shrank him, and he wasn’t a big kid to begin with. Most of his bandmates had dispersed, but a few had hung around. Heads had started to turn in their direction. She needed to get him away from the others, the kids and the teachers alike. She needed to help him relax.
There was a gelato stand behind the cathedral at the end of the alley. She thought of Preacher and Little E. Okay. She’d buy him something.
For a moment, it didn’t seem right to her, what she was doing. E was an adult; he had choices. What did Marques have but a bunch of adults who kept telling him a choice was the one thing he didn’t have? And the alternative to her was what? Maureen wondered. The trunk of a car? Under the floor of a flooded-out vacant house?
She stood, held out her hand to him, saw that it shook, felt stupid for offering it. One of his best friends was dead. The other was running for his life. The kid thought of himself as a man. According to Atkinson, he might already be a killer. Didn’t look much like one, Maureen thought, but lots of people thought she didn’t look much like a cop.
Maureen tucked her hands in her back pockets. “Take a walk with me. We’ll get an ice cream around the corner.”
“I’m gonna miss the bus.”
Marques shuffled his feet, taking subtle leans left and right, as if trying to hide behind her and see around her at the same time. Escape was still his first choice.
“I’ll drive you home,” Maureen said.
And find out where you live, she thought, and who you’re living with, and what they know about what you’ve been doing. The way she thought, the double-dealing, the way the angles appeared to her so quickly, her brain made her feel dirty and underhanded and kind of like a natural cop all at the same time. Was she ashamed because she was dealing with a child? He’s hardly an innocent, she reminded herself. But, Christ Almighty, she thought, was there a worse excuse to do something to a kid than for his own good?
“Wanna get moving?” Maureen asked, trying to smile.
“You need to tell Mr. Elvin,” Marques said. “I can’t leave with nobody unless Mr. Elvin knows them first.”
Good policy, Maureen thought, but she wasn’t too into Mr. Elvin knowing she was a cop.
Elvin Dodds, the last of the teachers in the square, was a substantial man who stood military straight. He wore loose khakis and an oversized blue-and-white-striped polo shirt. Long braids hung down his back. Around his neck hung thick-rimmed drugstore reading glasses on a thin chain. Even from a distance, Dodds radiated an air of cool authority. Maureen could tell he wasn’t a man to be messed with, and that he didn’t need clothes or jewelry to get that message across to the kids he taught or anyone else. Wasn’t hard to see, Maureen thought, why younger kids, especially boys of a certain age, craved
his respect. He was everything a lot of fatherless young boys would want.
Marques tugged on Maureen’s arm. His eyes had welled up. Fear and frustration were boiling over in him. He was doing everything possible not to be a scared little boy. He was failing. “You need to tell him I ain’t in trouble. He said I’m almost ready to march. I wanna march. I been practicing like a motherf—like crazy.”
“I can do that,” Maureen said. “I will do that. I’ll explain to him that you’re only helping me. I promise.”
She squatted again. She took Marques by the arms, as if to stop his shaking and hold him together. She had to do this. She had to put him through this now so someone else didn’t do worse to him later.
“Can we sit and talk for a minute?” Forget the walk, she thought. Forget the ice cream. She needed to ask as little as possible from this boy. She needed to get what she could and get it fast. “We’ll sit right here on a bench where Mr. Elvin can see us.”
Marques gave her the tiniest shrug. She didn’t see his shoulders rise, just felt the effort in her hands. She released him.
“Have you learned any new cadences?” she asked. “Any new marches?”
Marques wouldn’t look at her. He flashed no bravado, did no posing. They didn’t move to the bench. This is not the same boy, Maureen thought, who she and Preacher had talked to on the playground. After what had happened to his friend, how could he be? He’d never be the same. She’d at least had the advantage, the luxury, really, of becoming an adult before serious violence had walked into her life. Not like Marques. She could debate with herself forever over how well she’d handled it, was handling it, but she’d had resources, choices about how to cope. What did Marques have? His marching band and her.
“I’m sorry,” Maureen said, “about what happened to Mike-Mike. It’s a terrible, terrible thing and I’m sorry it happened. I would’ve stopped it if I could.”
Marques turned his head, blinked away tears. “Me, too.” He sniffled. Maureen felt him harden. “But that’s the game, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Maureen said. “But I do know that you don’t play the game, do you? That’s not your life, you’re not like that. Even if Mike-Mike and Goody wanted you to be.”
“Mike-Mike didn’t know nothing but what Goody told him he knew. And Goody think he’s so hard, but look at him now. Runnin’ like a bitch.”
Maureen settled on her knees. Keep it simple, she thought. Baby steps. “The three of you were good friends?”
“Pfffffffff. We were boys, from like, way back in the day. From before the storm, even.”
Back in the day, Maureen thought. Six years ago when you were six years old. What could Marques even really remember about that time? She couldn’t recall having felt at twelve that she’d already lived a long life.
“We walked down the Convention Center together,” Marques said. “We stuck together outside there for three whole days. The three of us on some ugly-ass piece of carpet that Goody cut out from inside with his knife. Like a fucked-up little raft. Made some badass niggers step off us, though, with that knife, like, every night. The three of us, taking turns standing guard. Everybody was sayin’ not to mess with those crazy little niggers on the corner. Like, everyone, ya heard? We even got sent over to Houston together on this smelly bus.” He shrugged. “We were livin’ in that stadium, it was nothin’ but New Orleans people, then some church people came in and messed it all up for us.”
“They separated you?”
Maureen stood, easing over to a bench where she took a seat, begging Marques in her mind to follow, and to keep talking.
“They found out I had my grandmother looking for me in Baton Rouge. Made me go there. Alone. On another smelly damn bus.”
He dropped his heavy knapsack off his shoulder, dragging it behind him as he sat beside Maureen on the bench.
“She put it on the Internet or something. I looked for her at the Convention Center, but never found her. I thought she might be dead. A lot of old people be dying out there.”
“I’m real glad she wasn’t dead,” Maureen said, “and that you guys found each other again. Goody and Mike-Mike, they didn’t have family?”
“Like uncles and cousins and shit, but they was in Houston.”
“So they got to stay together in Houston, your friends,” Maureen said. “And you had to come home to New Orleans.”
“Baton Rouge first,” Marques said. “For a couple of years, then I got to middle school and got kicked out and my grandma had some money from some other church people, so we came home. And then, you know, Houston sucked for Goody and Mike-Mike. Nothin’ but bullshit and trouble, and gettin’ hassled over school like I was dealin’ with in Baton Rouge, so then Goody’s people here sent for him and he brought Mike-Mike back with him. And then we was all back together.”
He grinned at the memory, like an old man remembering the guys he played college ball with. “The same old Josephine Street crew. Only Josephine Street was fucked up in the flood and the street wasn’t like it was and none of us could live where we used to. So except for that.”
“So you came home with your grandmother,” Maureen said. “Who did the other guys come home to?”
Marques shrugged. “Me.”
“You? They didn’t have anybody else? It’s been the three of you living pretty much hand to mouth on the streets since, what, 2009? Why don’t I believe that? Who are these people that sent for Goody?”
Maureen had her own ideas about the answers to her questions, but she wanted to hear Marques say it. When Marques took a deep breath, Maureen held hers. He wanted to tell her more. She could feel it.
“Goody and Mike-Mike came home to do business with Bobby Scales,” Marques said. “He’d been back awhile. Mr. Bobby is Goody’s uncle. Mr. Bobby heard they was making trouble in Houston and volunteered to look out for them here in New Orleans.” Marques shrugged. “I don’t even know if Mike-Mike’s people ever realized he’d left Houston. I don’t know if they ever knew he left New Orleans after the storm. They was all fucked up since even before. Mr. Bobby had a house with electricity and stuff on Josephine, near where the flood wasn’t so bad. Whoever owned it just never came back. He had other houses around that he hooked up the same way and used for stuff and for people to live in.”
“People who did business for him lived in those houses,” Maureen said. “People like Goody and Mike-Mike.”
Marques nodded.
“And you?”
Marques shrugged.
“But listen to me, Marques. I think Bobby Scales is responsible for Mike-Mike’s death. Goody knows it. You’re too smart not to see it, too. You’ve known Scales was trouble for a long time, haven’t you? The day I stopped Norman Wright at that green car, it was you who told me that car belonged to Scales. That was no slip of the tongue, was it? You told my partner even more about him that day on the playground. You knew Jackson and his girlfriend were holding for Scales. You called the cops to the Garvey Apartments, didn’t you? For camouflage, so you could talk to us about him. So you could put us on to him without looking like a rat. It was all set up until Shadow saw you.”
Marques’s chin hit his chest. “Shadow ain’t nothin’. He the rat. He just run around, rattin’ on everything to Mr. Bobby.”
“I know all about Shadow,” Maureen said. “I know it’s Scales you’re afraid of. You’re too smart not to be. He scares me, too, but not enough, and not as much as he thinks he does. And Shadow’s not here now. I can help you, Marques, I got a lot of people on my side, but I need to know what you know about Bobby Scales to do it right.”
Marques sank down lower on the bench, as if some internal apparatus that had been supporting him had failed and collapsed. “You got questions, ask him yourself.”
“I will,” Maureen said. “I’d be happy to. Tell me where I can find him. Just that one thing.”
Marques pointed over Maureen’s shoulder. “That’s him right over there, watching us.”
&nbs
p; 29
Maureen sprang to her feet.
Off to the side of the brass band stood a tall, slender black man with a shaved head, maybe eighteen, nineteen years old, in an untucked and spotless wifebeater T-shirt and a pair of brand-new baggy blue jeans. A huge elaborate black tattoo, a fleur-de-lis with wings, bloomed over his heart and across his collarbones, sending thick tendrils of ink down his ropy, muscled arms. He wore a diamond bracelet on his left wrist. He had long, thin fingers, the longest fingers Maureen had ever seen. He’d been standing there, blending in with the band and their friends, the whole time Maureen had been sitting in the square.
Spotted, Scales now made no attempt to hide. He moved another half step away from the band, as if to give Maureen a better look at him. He didn’t smile. He didn’t frown. She couldn’t guess what he was thinking. She couldn’t be sure he was thinking anything at all. The recorder clicked on in her brain. She scanned him for the physical details she could recall at a moment’s notice, the ones that would ring a bell when she saw him from the cruiser at a three-block distance at night, the marker that he couldn’t hide like the tattoos or remove like the bracelet. She found what she needed in his face. He had a smooth and wide forehead and high, squared cheeks. His eyes, tiny, dark pebbles, looked like his maker had grabbed him hard by the back of the head and then used his thumbs to push Scales’s eyes far back into his skull.
The truth hit Maureen like a kick to the back of the knees: Scales had been waiting, too, like her, for Marques to get out of band practice. To do what with the boy, Maureen didn’t even want to think about. Not to take him home. Not to take him for ice cream. Scales was cleaning up and Marques was next, was last, on the list. Maureen cursed herself for not somehow making Scales as separate from the others. He’d been there right in front of her. At least she had gotten to Marques first. With Marques standing beside her she was, for the moment, a step ahead.
The Devil in Her Way Page 21