The Devil She Knows

by Bill Loehfelm

  Maureen nearly leaped out of her skin when the hospital door slammed open. She turned to see Swain leaning out, his eyes wide, his face pale. “Doc’s comin’ out.”

  Maureen hurried inside.

  The fidgety cops, their eyes darting everywhere, formed a silent semi-circle around a short, round, middle-aged woman in a long white coat. No one spoke. The news hadn’t been delivered yet. Everyone, including the doctor, had been waiting for her. The doc gave her a nod and then turned to the cops.

  “Massive coronary,” the doctor said, “but he’s stable and we’re optimistic.” The room exhaled as one. Maureen felt tears burning her eyes. The doctor turned to her. “The immediate CPR saved his life.” The doctor smiled. “You must be stronger than you look, young lady. That’s a big man in there.”

  “I am,” Maureen said. “And Detective Waters has a heart like a wild lion.”

  28

  A month later, three days after the start of the New Year, Maureen stood in the middle of her mother’s kitchen, scared to move a finger. Amber had scrubbed everything to a shine. Maureen, having spent the afternoon carrying the last of her North Shore apartment into her mother’s basement, dripped with sweat. Figures, the day she picks to move is the warmest January Sunday in twenty years. That’s what John had said anyway, huffing and sweating as he and Molly loaded boxes into their cars for the trip over to Eltingville. Molly had quickly instructed Maureen to ignore the comment, adding that John wasn’t happy unless he was miserable.

  Maureen said nothing. Though she knew it wouldn’t last, she was happy to get a break from the cold.

  The coming Wednesday night she was taking the couple to dinner in Manhattan. The meal for three would seriously dent her leftover tips from the Narrows, and there wouldn’t be more money coming anytime soon, at least until her student loans arrived, but she would take John and Molly somewhere classy anyway. She owed them that, and more, and she intended to pay up.

  Dinner for three, Maureen thought. Why does that ring a bell?

  Glancing down at the kitchen table, she noticed three places had been set. Oh, shit, that’s right. Company for dinner. A few times in the past month the Coughlin women had hosted a guest for dinner, but Maureen still found company in her mother’s house a tough concept to grasp.

  Her mother, makeup freshly applied, new dress snug enough to flatter, turned the corner into the kitchen and headed for the stove.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Amber asked. “He’ll be here any minute.”

  Maureen gestured at the kitchen table, which had earlier been a mess of mail and bills. “What happened to my letter? Where is it?”

  “Where it belongs,” Amber said, stirring a simmering pot. “On the fridge.”

  “Aw, Ma,” Maureen said, crossing the kitchen to the refrigerator door. She touched the sharp bottom corner of the letter, the one outlining what she’d need for the summer class at the NYPD academy. “He’s gonna see it up there.”

  “He’s a man. He won’t notice a thing”—Amber smiled—“until I point it out.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Maureen said. But she left the letter where it was.

  “Yes, you do. And you should. He’s very proud of you.”

  “And what about you?” Maureen asked. “Are you proud?”

  “I’m worried,” Amber said. “You’re small for a police officer.” She set down her spoon and turned to her daughter. “But yes, Maureen, I am very proud of you. Officer Coughlin, someday Detective Coughlin—they have a nice ring.” A pause. “Now go get dressed.”

  Maureen lingered in the kitchen, letting her mother’s rare compliments settle into her skin. “It smells awesome in here. What’re we having?”

  “Wheat pasta and baked salmon,” Amber said, pulling open the oven and bending to check her fish. “I hope I haven’t dried it out.”

  “Salmon? You never make me salmon,” Maureen said, smiling as she spoke. “What was it the last time, lemon chicken? What happened to frozen pizza?”

  Amber straightened, hands set firmly on her hips, the picture of matronly disapproval. “Nat has to watch his diet. He needs to lose weight for his heart.” She shook her head. “You know this. A man cannot live a healthy life on waffles and ice cream. Poor old thing.”

  Amber blushed. Maureen smiled. For the first time in years, Amber had something bringing color to her cheeks other than wine: Detective Nat Waters, retired. Her mom’s new boyfriend. The doorbell rang. Amber bolted for the door, not even bothering to demand that Maureen answer.

  Maureen stayed in the kitchen, listening. Quiet pleasantries, the front door closing, a kiss, Amber hanging up Waters’s coat. Another kiss. On the cheeks or the lips? Maureen wondered.

  Amber appeared in the kitchen, a bouquet in her hand. Behind her stood Nat Waters, a few pounds lighter, his wrinkled dress shirt and his stained tie a thing of the past. When he smiled at Maureen, she noticed his eyes were clear and happy and that the black shadows that had hung beneath them, haunting them, had all but disappeared. “Hey, Maureen.”

  Amber held up the flowers. “Let me get something for these.” She disappeared down the hall.

  Waters walked into the kitchen, reaching into his pocket. “Your mother called me yesterday about your letter from the academy. I’ve got something for you. These days, its value is only sentimental.” He held out something in his hand. “But I thought you’d like it anyway.”

  Maureen reached for her present. His badge. She felt tears rise in her eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost,” Waters said, “but I did a lot of good carrying that thing around. Maybe it’ll help you do the same.”

  Maureen stared at the gold shield in her palm, brimming with gratitude for the gift and burning with desire for one of her own. One day, she knew in her heart that she would carry a shield out into the world.

  Amber reappeared in the kitchen, setting the vase of flowers at the center of the table. She turned to Maureen. “Dinner’s almost ready, young lady. Would you please go get dressed?”

  “Right away,” Maureen said, bowing. Clutching the badge in her fist, she headed off to her room.

  Since moving back in with her mom, Maureen had slept in her childhood bedroom while she and Amber worked overtime, cleaning out the cluttered finished basement and turning it into a livable apartment.

  The weeks following her abduction had been filled with nightmares. Many nights, Maureen lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening for even the faintest sound in the house and breaking into a cold sweat every time she heard a train roll by the end of Bovanizer Street. She never cried out when the nightmares came, never called for help, but she liked the security even on the cusp of thirty of having her mom asleep in the room next door. It would never happen until Maureen moved downstairs, but she looked forward to the time when Waters, which was all she could manage to call him, started spending the night. Amber’s steady breathing and the creak of her bed as she rolled over in the night offered Maureen even more comfort than the ladybug night-light that she had returned to its place in the baseboard socket.

  Maureen had made one trip to the Narrows, riding the bus across the island in the gray early afternoon of New Year’s Eve. Wearing a thick NYPD sweatshirt, a Christmas gift from her mother, the hood pulled up, she stood across the street from the bar’s black door. She smoked cigarettes and watched the banquet staff get ready for a holiday party in the upstairs hall. No one came to open the Narrows for the second biggest party night of the year. She knew no one would. The place had closed, probably for good.

  The day after Sebastian died and Maureen didn’t, cops doing follow-up found Vic dead, facedown on the bar, the blood from his self-inflicted neck wound a pungent, thickening pool on the dark mahogany, an empty vodka bottle shattered on the floor. It was hard to be too exact with such things, Swain told her, but Vic had probably died before Sebastian. He didn’t even wait, Maureen had thought at the time, to see if
I pulled it off. Standing across the street that afternoon, Maureen wondered if Vic had used the white-handled knife, the one behind the bar for cutting lemons and limes, the knife the staff always complained was too dull. Guess it wasn’t. Not if you were motivated.

  Now, standing in front of her mirror, buttoning up her silk blouse, the blue one she hoped not to stain at dinner, Maureen stared down at the badge resting on the corner of her dresser. Its gold face glowed in the last light of sunset streaming through her bedroom window. She walked over to the night-light, its rosy glow faint in the shadows along the floor, and bent over, reaching for it. The ladybug went dark when she pulled it from the wall. She straightened to her full height and then tossed it in the trash can beside her dresser.

  A few things from her old room would make it downstairs to the apartment: her running trophies, her mirror, her dresser, her books, some of the old clothes from high school, at least the stuff that hadn’t dated too much. But the ladybug night-light, that precious gift from her father that had for so long chased the monsters from a scared little girl’s room, its time had ended.

  Also by Bill Loehfelm

  FRESH KILLS

  BLOODROOT

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks first and foremost, as always, to the loving and loyal McDonald, Lambeth, Loehfelm, and Murphy families.

  Thanks also to Rick Barton, Joanna Leake, Joseph and Amanda Boyden, and everyone else at and around the University of New Orleans and the UNO Creative Writing Workshop, which manages to quietly produce talented and successful writers one after the other like there’s nothing to it. It’s more like joining a tribe than going to graduate school, which is as it should be. Others may be more famous, but none are better.

  John Cooke, we miss you, pal. I’m still learning from you.

  To Jarret Lofstead, Joe Longo, and everyone at Nolafugees.com and Nolafugees Press, thanks for your fierce devotion to the truth, to laughter, and to the idea that the two are not mutually exclusive. Soul is, indeed, bulletproof.

  Thanks to Britton, Ted, Amy, Jamie, and everyone at the Garden District Book Shop. Thanks also to the staff and ownership of the Rue de la Course, CC’s, and Mojo coffeehouses of Magazine Street. Keep it hot and black, y’all.

  A big, fat WHO DAT to Justin and everyone at Handsome Willy’s bar for game-day festivities, and especially for that mad game. We’ll always have that special Sunday night in the Quarter.

  A humble bow and deepest gratitude to my agent, Barney Karpfinger, for really pulling the rabbit out of that hat this time. Without his faith and hard work, and that of his staff, a lot of good things don’t get the chance to happen. Let’s keep it rolling. Much gratitude also to Sarah Crichton for always having the right answer and, maybe more important, the perfect questions. Thanks also to Dan Piepenbring, for knowing where it is, where it’s going, and when it’s supposed to get there.

  Special thanks to the Gaslight Anthem, whose music was huge in finding and maintaining the tone for this book, and to Tori Amos for the same, and for the color of Maureen’s hair.

  Thanks to Rob of the NYPD for answering a lot of bizarre questions without a lot of context. Forgive the parts where I ignored the answers and made it up anyway. Forgive also, dear reader, my mangling of Staten Island geography for the sake of the story.

  Finally, all my love to my stellar and talented wife, AC Lambeth, who every day makes of herself a light so that I may see the good in the world. Without her, all would be darkness.

  A Note About the Author

  Bill Loehfelm was born in Brooklyn and grew up on Staten Island. In 1997, he moved to New Orleans. He is the author of the novels Fresh Kills, which won an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and Bloodroot. Loehfelm lives in New Orleans’s Garden District with his wife, the writer AC Lambeth.

  Sarah Crichton Books

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  18 West 18th Street, New York 10011

  Copyright © 2011 by Beats Working, LLC

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Loehfelm, Bill.

  The devil she knows / Bill Loehfelm.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  “Sarah Crichton Books.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4299-6880-5

  1. Bartenders—Fiction. 2. Political corruption—United States—Fiction. 3. Staten Island (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.036D48 2011

  813'.6—dc22

  2010033099

  www.fsgbooks.com

  Read on for an excerpt from Bill Loehfelm’s new novel

  The Devil in Her Way

  BILL LOEHFELM

  Available in Hardcover from

  SARAH CRICHTON BOOKS FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX NEW YORK

  Copyright © 2013 by Bill Loehfelm

  1

  The punch caught Maureen flush in the temple, striking near her right eye.

  The big bony fist drove the rim of her sunglasses into her cheek, knocking them askew but not off, and put a faint buzz in her right ear. She yelped at the blow, a comically loud and clear ouch! A lucky shot, she thought, thrown by a guy she’d been dumb enough to give a free one, to let for half a second step into the blind spot over her shoulder. The punch did get her adrenaline cranked up and pumping double-time, something she hadn’t thought possible, not with the way her skin had throbbed and hummed as she’d barreled up the metal stairs outside the two-story apartment complex and charged down the concrete walkway toward the muffled screams coming from behind the thick metal door of Apartment D.

  Her assailant, a skinny black man, barefoot in dirty jeans and a food-stained green tank top, staggered out of that apartment doorway as if he were the one who’d been hit. He stood about half a foot taller than Maureen, putting him at almost six feet. Weightwise, he carried only a ten-, maybe twelve-pound advantage over her.

  Maureen braced herself against the balcony’s rusty iron railing and drove her heavy boot heel into the man’s knee, slamming it hard sideways. The man, who hadn’t escaped in his half second of opportunity but had instead started babbling something apologetic, screamed like she’d stabbed him in the eye. He wobbled but didn’t go down. No problem. Maureen didn’t need him to fall. Not yet. She just needed his chin to drop into the range of her right cross, which it did as he struggled for balance, his face bobbing into perfect position.

  Setting her feet, she brought her fist from behind her hip and snapped her arm forward, using force from her hips and her back like a baseball swing. She connected well, grunting as the punch landed. A sharp pain shot across her knuckles and the back of her hand like an electric current. The shock died at her wrist. There and gone in an instant. A flash.

  Her assailant dropped to his hands and knees on the concrete balcony, coughing. Hell of a shot, Maureen thought, if she did say so herself.

  “On your face, motherfucker! Now!”

  When the man did not immediately comply, she kicked one arm out from under him. He collapsed face-first onto the concrete. Snapping her cuffs free from her belt, she dropped to her knees, straddling the man’s hips. She bent one arm behind his back, cuffed that wrist, and then bent the other arm, shackling his wrists together, the metal handcuffs grinding like machine gears as she locked them. The man didn’t resist, his breathing fast and wet.

  Maureen leaned her forearm into the back of his head, squashing his nose into the cigarette-ash-and-piss-stained concrete. “Do not fucking move. You are done moving. Done.”

  She rose to her feet, the four other cops who had arrived on the scene gathering around her. Nobody said a word.

  Maureen took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Getting up for a run-in was never a problem for her. Getting her control back, that was where she needed practice. In front of the stone-faced cops surrounding her, she felt exposed and raw, almost as if they’d walked in on her getting laid. Under her uniform, sweat slicked her whole body. Salt stung her eyes. Her heart kept right on racing, punching at the insid
e of her bulletproof vest.

  From behind her dark glasses, Maureen studied her fellow officers. They were hard-bodied men her age or younger. They looked ready and eager to step in and take over for her. She worried that this guy at her feet constituted an informal but important field test, one that concerned a lot more than proper technique with a pair of handcuffs.

  Pop quiz, hotshot.

  Sad and frail and cuffed as he was, stinking of shitty weed, and sweat, and cheap booze, and Taco Bell, the sad bastard at her feet had hit a cop. Even though she was a rookie, and even though he hadn’t done any real damage, hitting a cop was more than bad news—it should be a one-way ticket to traction. That was what she’d heard, at least. Or had she heard that it used to be that way but wasn’t anymore? She blinked the sweat from her eyes.

  She was only five weeks out of the academy; as a condition of her rookie probation she could lose her job over anything, no questions asked and no chance to argue her case. Twenty-first-century police department or not, plenty of cops didn’t like women on the job. Her being from out of town didn’t help. She’d heard rumors she was a plant, from the FBI, from the DOJ, both of which had an active eye on the New Orleans Police Department. She didn’t know these guys surrounding her. She didn’t know them as cops, or as men. She couldn’t trust them. Not yet. One brutality complaint, the wrong kind of gossip or rumor in the wrong ear, and she’d be out of a job, maybe even up on charges of her very own, all before she’d even had a chance to wrinkle her uniform.

  These days, zero tolerance in the New Orleans Police Department started with the police themselves. Every arrest, every report, every stat— anything that outside eyes might see got scrutinized. Maureen’s instructors at the academy had hammered CYA into her head. Forget Protect and Serve, they said; Cover Your Ass was the department mantra.