The Devil She Knows

by Bill Loehfelm

  She stood, pulling the strap of her knapsack tight against her shoulder.

  “Don’t go,” Molly said. She reached out, setting her hand on Maureen’s forearm.

  Maureen stared at Molly’s hand. She didn’t return to her seat or take her bag off her shoulder. “I don’t make a habit of hanging around where I’m not wanted.” With her free hand, she brushed her hair off her temples. “I have other places I can go.”

  “Obviously, somebody wants you here,” Molly said.

  “It’s obviously not you.”

  “Well, I’m not in charge here.” Molly looked down, intent on brushing crumbs or some other tiny detritus Maureen couldn’t see from the folds of her skirt. She stopped when she caught Maureen watching. Molly took a deep breath. “I never said I didn’t want you here. Not specifically. I just…” Molly looked up at the ceiling and glanced again at Waters and John before turning back to Maureen. “It’s like this. What’s happening to you is unfair, Maureen. I know that. I can see it. I’m not cold-hearted. And I feel for you, I do. But the truth is I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want someone like Sebastian anywhere near me or anyone I care about.” She paused. “That doesn’t make me a bad person.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Maureen said. She took her bag off her shoulder and hung it on the back of her bar stool. She slipped her fingers into her back pockets, cocked out her right hip.

  “I know I’m not,” Molly said. “We don’t know each other that well, at all really, but we should stick together anyway, try to behave like decent people.” She lifted her chin at Waters and John; Waters was headed their way. “We should try to not be afraid all the time. It can’t be that hard.”

  Waters tried to smile as he approached, but it didn’t stick. He couldn’t hold it and Maureen failed to return it. Molly was right that she and Maureen didn’t know each other, and neither did Maureen and John, for that matter. Not really. Her ex-boss, his girlfriend, and an overworked cop, Maureen thought. These were the people she had to count on. Did she even have the right? If things got worse, would they stick around? Waters, especially.

  She liked him, she really did. She trusted him, for the most part, which was as much as she trusted anyone. But he hadn’t accomplished much since getting involved with her, alternating as he did between chauffeur and babysitter. Even those duties were starting to wear on him. She wasn’t a real case. She was some kind of pro bono side project he had taken on for reasons she didn’t really know and hadn’t really tried to figure out. There was no crime against her on file, no reports, no bagged evidence in a locker, no photographs or paperwork. And it sucked to admit it, but Sebastian at twenty years retired held more sway in the NYPD than Waters. She could tell, watching his slow, stiff walk that Waters’s back was acting up. Was it time to think about letting him go? It might be merciful, for both their sakes. As he got closer, Maureen half-expected she’d hear his joints squeaking like the Tin Man’s.

  Waters put his hand on Maureen’s shoulder, leaned down to look into her face. “You should know,” he said, “that you’ve been plenty strong through this whole ordeal.”

  “For a girl.”

  “For anyone. I got a lot of respect for you. I know it’s terrifying. You’ve been a good soldier.” He straightened, taking in both women with his eyes, lingering on them. “Keep your eyes on the door. Sebastian can’t afford anything public, but you never know.”

  He shook Maureen’s hand. She thought her whole arm might disappear into his palm. She fought the urge to grab hold of Waters’s hand and make him swear not to leave, or to go home and forget about her and Sebastian altogether, not for her protection but for his. She said nothing.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Waters said. He turned away and headed for the door.

  Maureen watched as John squeezed past Tracy, brushing up against her in the narrow space behind the bar. “I know there’s no avoiding it,” Molly said, “but I hate it when he does that.”

  “Hey,” John said. He slipped his glasses off, clutching them in his hand.

  “What’s the story?” Molly asked.

  “Maureen needs a place to stay for tonight.”

  “Here we go,” Molly said.

  “Sebastian’s already sent people looking for me at my place,” Maureen said, “so I can’t go home. I went to my mom’s. He came to her house this morning.”

  Molly held up her hand. “Wait a minute.”

  “We all had coffee in the kitchen together,” Maureen said. “It was pretty horrifying. He knows where she works.”

  Molly spoke deliberately, as if talking to a lip reader, her hand still in the air. “Sebastian came after your mother.”

  “I can’t go back there,” Maureen said. “I can’t have him looking for me at her house anymore.”

  “You’re that afraid of him,” Molly said.

  “Yes,” Maureen said, surprised at how easily the admission popped out. “Yes, I am.”

  “We need to force Sebastian to sit on his hands and wait out the night,” John said. Acting casual, he pulled wineglasses one at a time off the shelf over his shoulder, polishing each one with a bar towel and setting it on the bar. “Waters needs a chance to play catch-up, to find a way to back him off.”

  Molly dipped her finger in her club soda and traced that fingertip around the rim of the wineglass in front of her, creating a faint musical note. Pressing the base of the glass with her fingers, she pushed it across the bar to John. “I’m getting a headache,” she said to no one in particular. She looked up at John. “Can I get a Jack and water, please?”

  John made Molly her drink. He set it carefully in the center of a fresh cocktail napkin. “Being in the same building as Maureen,” he said, “my place is out. Sebastian’s watching, for sure. She can’t stay with me. Obviously.”

  “Maureen stays with me,” Molly said.

  Maureen’s head snapped around. “Wait. What?”

  “’Scuse me?” John asked. “No, Mol. I don’t think so. That’s not where I was going with this.”

  An uncomfortable silence half-settled before Molly struck it down. “Maureen stays with me. I mean it.” She looked at John. “Where better? This guy has no idea who I am; never seen me, never heard of me. I live in a quiet neighborhood. My neighbors know me. Nobody we don’t know would last five minutes sneaking around my block.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly through her nose. “I don’t have any reason to be afraid of him. I don’t.”

  “Molly, thank you,” Maureen said, “but I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “Why not?” Molly asked.

  At the question, Maureen turned to John, who watched her with his eyebrows perched high on his forehead, wineglass in one hand, bar towel in the other. She knew he wasn’t waiting for the answer to Molly’s question, but for the answer to the same question Maureen was asking herself—where were her people? Where were her friends?

  The skin at the base of Maureen’s throat burned. She could feel the blood blooming underneath it. Not with envy or lust this time but with shame. Was that one of the seven? Didn’t seem like it should be, but she was guilty of it at least as often as she was the others. She stared at John. Her answer to him was simple. She hoped he wouldn’t make her say it out loud. She didn’t have any friends, not real ones. She couldn’t afford them. The effort or the time they took. It was the price she paid to make her money and defend her space.

  Years ago, she’d taught herself never to forget that everyone in her late-night world wanted something from her: a drink or two, a name and a number, a subtle stroke or an obvious grope, forgiveness for spilling or spewing or stepping out of line, a hit of blow or a blow job in the backseat. They wanted to be seen and heard through the lights and above the noise any way they could, no matter how crude or desperate they acted. In the morning, they could always blame the booze and the hour or blame her. Hadn’t she done it to them, leading them into temptation by bringing them what they’d asked and paid for? Everyone in he
r life, Maureen knew, was a buyer or a seller, usually both, all the time. That fact was the cornerstone on which she’d built her survival. Hers was not a world where a girl could let her guard down. For anyone. Ever. Not if she didn’t want to be left stripped bare as a stolen car.

  Sure, she knew tons of people. She knew them by first or last name but not both, knew how much money they made, knew how well or how poorly they tipped. She knew people well enough to do shots or key bumps of coke with them, to babble politics and religion and sex with them in buzzed conversation. But people she could trust? She knew two, if she counted Waters. And she was looking right at the other one and he knew it. Wasn’t the fact that she kept coming back to him enough? Was he really gonna make her crawl?

  John had mercy, finally looking away from her, his attention drawn to a couple coming in the front door of the bar. He watched them sit, watched the waitress end her cell phone call and head their way, menus in hand. John’s mouth moved, working over words, searching for the right ones.

  Molly plucked the cocktail straw from her drink, laid it beside the glass. She swirled the ice cubes, sucked the whiskey off her finger. She performed the entire act without looking John in the face. “Don’t even tell me, my love, that you don’t want to leave her with a girl, that she’d be safer with a man in the house. You wouldn’t think that.”

  John wiped at the corners of his mouth. He wouldn’t look at either of them. Busted, Maureen thought. Molly had guessed exactly what he’d been thinking. Maureen felt like she was spying, watching them from outside their bedroom window. She’d seen it before, the way a real couple could shut out the rest of the room, conduct entire silent conversations with their eyes and hands as if they were an ancient tribe of two. She’d seen it before, anyway, even if she’d never lived it.

  John looked at Maureen, his eyes sad. “I can’t. I can’t go along with this. It’s not safe. I’m sorry, Maureen. You understand, right?”

  Maureen felt the humiliation bubbling up in her again. She was a bomb in a cartoon that’s juggled from person to person, the fuse burning down with every toss. Nobody wanted her to get hurt, but nobody wanted to get their fingers blown off, either. How could she argue? Look at what had happened to Dennis. John was protecting Molly. He loved her. She was more important to him than Maureen. That was how it should be.

  Maureen knew she needed her own answers. She pushed her fingertips hard into her eyes as if the pressure would force the right images to appear. Vic wasn’t an option. At least according to Waters, he’d already sold her out once. Paul lived right next door to her apartment. Too close. Besides, the way she’d treated him, he’d hand her over to Sebastian for new spark plugs and a six of Pabst. Could she find Clarence, stay with him and his wife? Would Sebastian think of that? And where did Clarence’s loyalties lie? Clarence, who saw Sebastian at the gym, every morning at the break of day.

  “Trust me, John,” Molly said. “We’ll be fine. We’ll survive till you come protect us after work.”

  Maureen could tell John knew that Dennis had been murdered, that Waters had told him over by the pool table. But John hadn’t decided how much to tell Molly about that and now she was pushing him into a choice. It wasn’t right, Maureen decided. These two didn’t belong in the middle of her mess, any more than her mother did. She wanted Molly’s shelter, she really did. But she didn’t deserve it.

  “Listen, Molly,” Maureen said. “Dennis didn’t kill himself. He was murdered before the train hit him. The train was a cover-up. Waters thinks Sebastian is responsible. And now Tanya’s missing; we think he’s in on that, too. That’s what we’re dealing with here.”

  Molly stared hard at John, anger roiling her eyes. “You knew these things. You were gonna tell me when?”

  John didn’t answer. Molly breathed deep, rocking the bar stool on its back legs. Maureen waited as the couple held each other’s eyes, neither one willing to back down. She realized why John had tried keeping the truth about Dennis’s death a secret. Knowing about the murder would only make Molly more afraid, which would only make her more defiant, more willing to get involved. A warm affection for Molly swelled up in Maureen. The list of people I can trust, she thought, has grown to three.

  Molly turned to her. “What happened to Dennis won’t happen to you. You need a safe place to stay. I’ve got one. End of argument.” She looked up at John. “That goes for you, too. Case closed.”

  “Then you stay till closing time, both of you,” John said. “The three of us go home together. It’s already after dark.”

  “We’re leaving now,” Molly said. She turned to Maureen. “Dinner, a hot shower. Sound good?”

  Maureen nodded, embarrassed and uncomfortable with feeling forced to choose a side.

  Wordlessly, lifting each clean wineglass by the stem, John lined them up on their shelf. As he slid the last one into place, a delivery truck rumbled by outside, vibrating the glasses and setting them ringing like wind chimes. He said nothing about Molly’s demands. To the untrained eye he was pouting. But Maureen could see tightness under his eyes and along his jaw that showed he was straining to suppress his concerns about Molly’s decision, shelving everything he wanted to say in protest for later or for never. It wasn’t a decision; it was a process, one that took a little time.

  She and Molly waited.

  “I’ll call Jimmy and Rose,” Molly said finally, trying to sound soothing. “They’ll come over and hang out with us until you get off. I’ll tell them it’s important.” She waited for John to say something. He didn’t. “You know they’ll come.”

  John pulled his crumpled pack of cigarettes from his front pocket. He fished out two broken ones, tossed them in the trash behind the bar. “Fucking soft packs. What is wrong with me?” He found an intact smoke and put it to his lips. “Let me get my coat. I’ll drive you home.”

  17

  In front of Molly’s house, as Maureen and John leaned on the hood of the car finishing off their cigarettes, a dirty white hatchback eased up the block and parked nose to nose with John’s car. Maureen shaded her eyes from the glare of the headlights, turning her face into her shoulder and looking up at John for his reaction. He squinted into the lights until they went dark, dragging on his smoke. He didn’t seem concerned about the new arrival, so Maureen decided she didn’t need to be, either. The door of the hatchback creaked like an old oven door and the driver climbed out.

  As the figure approached, Maureen hoped the shadows of the streetlights hid the misery on her face. Jimmy McGrath. God, how embarrassing. The married high school teacher she had a crush on was now one of her babysitters.

  “That filthy white piece of shit refuses to die,” John said, crushing out his cigarette in the street.

  “My wife told her mother the very same thing the other night.” Jimmy glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, you mean the car and not me. You’re hilarious, Sanders.”

  Boys, Maureen thought. Go figure.

  Standing about six foot, well built, with his black hair cut short above his pale, blue-eyed Irish face, Jimmy looked much more like a TV cop or a Hollywood firefighter than a real-life teacher. She could picture Jimmy at Waters’s side, clad in the same long wool coat, the badge on his belt glowing red and blue in the crime-scene emergency lights. Was he cop enough to fool anyone Sebastian sent sniffing around? He might be. Maureen wondered if Jimmy’s looks helped in the classroom. She’d tell him what he wanted to hear, no problem, either in detention or under interrogation. She noticed Jimmy’s wife wasn’t with him.

  Strip search, Officer? Why, sure.

  Jesus, she was losing it. Maybe it was best that she was being locked down for the night.

  “Good to see you, Maureen,” Jimmy said. “Out in the world, as it were. Wish the circumstances were better.”

  “Me, too,” Maureen said. “Thanks for coming.”

  Jimmy slipped his hands in his pants pockets, rocking back on his heels. “Nothing to it. Rose is buried with some presentation for work. F
ootball’s only on Sundays. What the hell else was I gonna do, grade papers? No, thanks.” He turned to John, chuckling. “You’re getting smarter, lad, having Molly call for a favor like this instead of you. Female solidarity goes a long way in the McGrath household.”

  John leaned close to Maureen. “So does getting Jimmy’s annoying ass out of the house when his wife has work to do.” He checked his watch. “Speaking of work, I gotta get back. They tear the place up like drunken puppies if I’m not there.”

  “Go,” Jimmy said. “We got it from here.”

  “Thanks for this, Jimmy,” John said. “I owe you one.” He slid his arm across Maureen’s shoulders. “He comes off like a clown, but don’t be fooled, I’d trust him with my life.” He gave Maureen a hard squeeze and then climbed into his car, started it up, and drove off.

  Maureen crossed her arms, her eyes locked on her toes, feeling very much like she’d just lost, or was it won, a round of spin the bottle. Jimmy stood close enough for her to inhale his aftershave. The sharp scent tightened her throat. She coughed. She knew her breath stank of booze and cigarettes. She didn’t want to talk, but she did anyway.