Let the Devil Out (32 page)

Maureen rose from the chair, stepped to the bed. She reached out, set her hand on Preacher's. She figured she had until morning before the powers-that-be got their shit together. She had a lot to do before then. Miles to go before she slept. “I'm going to take care of this, Preach. I promise.” She walked to the door.

Before crossing the threshold, she stopped, turned back to him. “The other two cops, that was opportunity. But you. They came after you because of me. Your connection to me got you shot.”

Preacher blinked at her, waiting a long time to speak. “So.”

“Well, I just want to—”

“You apologize to me,” Preacher said, coughing, wincing at the pain. “And I will get out of this bed. So help me God, I will put you over my knee.”

Maureen sputtered. “I mean, I—”

“You're right,” Preacher said. “I was targeted because I'm close to you. So what? What if instead of hunting me they hit the streets today gunning for someone else? That's better? It'd be better, you'd
feel
better, if instead of coming after an old warhorse savvy enough to see them coming, they went after two more young'uns with pretty wives and little kids? They don't come for me, and maybe we have four dead cops today instead of two. Think about that.”

Maureen put her hands on her hips, hung her head. She blew out her breath.

“I love ya, Coughlin. I do. But you gotta quit thinking you're at the center of everything. This city was fucked up when you got here. It'll be fucked up when we're dead and buried. You're just another marcher in the fucking parade. The sooner you learn that, the happier you'll be. Welcome to the party.”

 

29

Shortly before three a.m. Maureen rolled up on Little E in a dark and quiet section of Central City. Madison Leary had been hard to find. Finding Shadow would be a challenge. Little E was not tough to track. His accessibility was part of what made him a good snitch.

E sat on the wide, dirty concrete steps of an abandoned house, next door to the Big Man Lounge, a can of beer between his feet. Maureen pulled up slowly, roof lights off, bouncing the creaking patrol car over the curb, halfway onto the cracked-up sidewalk.

On the steps of the house, three other men sat with Little E. Each of them was positioned on a different step. Each of them nursed the amber glow of a cigarette, or maybe a roach. They sat with their thin shoulders hunched deep into their old second- and thirdhand coats. None of them had so much as flinched at the arrival of an NOPD cruiser. They knew that had Maureen been looking to make trouble for them, she would have arrived with much more bluster.

She got out of the car, zipping up her black leather NOPD jacket. An old soul tune played in the bar, floating out into the street. She closed the car door, dug her knit watch cap from her jacket pocket, and pulled it snug on her head. She blew into her fist as she stepped up onto the sidewalk. She had gloves in her pocket but was saving them for later. Behind her, she heard the rattle of a metal gate. She turned to see the bar owner, his brown face a scowl in the shadows, locking up the Big Man. The music cut off mid-song. The neon beer signs and colored lights in the small windows went dark. The men watched her from the steps. She studied their emotionless faces, hoping to recognize someone in addition to Little E. She didn't like that E wasn't alone.

On the one hand, because he had company, Little E could be less likely to talk to her. He couldn't have the whole neighborhood knowing he was an NOPD snitch. He at least couldn't let it be this obvious. And if he did talk, an outcome to which Maureen was especially committed, his cover would be blown as soon as Shadow got picked up. At worst his life would be in danger, at best E might be useless to her and Preacher as a snitch anymore. The trick to negotiating the situation, she realized, would be what she and any other cops did with Shadow. They didn't want to arrest him, not tonight. Not if it could be avoided. She could let that be known, make it part of Little E's message. Tonight they wanted information. That might be enough to save Little E from too harsh a retribution. Maybe.

“Mr. Etienne,” Maureen called. “Come down from the steps and see me, please.”

E glanced at his compatriots, who looked away from him. They gazed past Maureen, their faces blank, and over the neighborhood, demonstrably ignoring not only E but her as well. No matter what happened in front of them, Maureen realized, they would see and hear nothing. Tonight, she realized the men were letting her know, lots of things otherwise forbidden would get a pass.

Abandoned to his fate, E leaned forward, groaning, to grab his beer. He stood, unsteady, and came carefully down the marble steps, one hand at the small of his back, as if Maureen's visit had interrupted a long night of heavy lifting.

“Fellas,” Maureen called out, “why don't y'all head back inside the bar? It's cold out here, anyways.”

“They closed,” Etienne said, sniffling. “That's why we out here in the first place.”

“They can take a walk,” Maureen said to him, her voice calm and low, “or I can call another unit and you and me can take a ride together to lockup.” She paused. Let the message sink in. It was smarter, she thought, better neighborhood politics, to let E negotiate the next moves with his friends than for her to push them around. She lit a cigarette. Patience, Maureen thought, that's what Preacher would counsel. “I hate to break up a party, but we're in a bad mood tonight.”

“Mos def,” Little E said, turning. “I got you. Fellas, I'll catch up with y'all around the way.” He gestured at Maureen with his beer can. “I got some parole thing I gotta clear up. Ain't no thing. Just be a minute. Nothing to worry about.”

No way they believe that story, Maureen thought. Nobody, especially not a beat cop, comes around following up on “parole things” at three in the morning. But the men got the message they needed. They stood, picked up their beers, and sauntered down the steps. One of them muttered an “all right” as they walked away into the darkness, shaking the cold out of their backs and shoulders.

She noticed Little E eyeing her cigarette. She gave him one from her pack, lit it for him.

“OC, I been hearing
things
,” Little E said, animated now. “Crazy shit.” He leaned in close, as if there were anyone else on the block to overhear them. He stank. “I heard the Klan got Preacher. That true? No way that's true, right?” He swallowed hard. His emotion, his concern, it wasn't an act, Maureen thought. Etienne was upset. Not because cops who were strangers to him got killed, she knew, but because Preacher, who had done Little E an untold number of small favors, had been shot.

“First off,” Maureen said, “Preacher is alive. And he's going to make it. I saw him not too long ago tonight.”

Etienne smiled and clapped his gloved hands. He pumped his fist. “Yes, indeed. Ol' Preach. He a tough motherfucker.” He tapped his fist over his heart. “You tell him, you tell him Little E got prayers up for him.”

“I will,” Maureen said. “He'll be glad to hear it.”

“So it
was
the Klan then?” Little E said. “I heard they was back around. Hard times. Hard times.”

“Not the Klan,” Maureen said. “Something like it, but different. Something new. They're antigovernment, anti-police. They call themselves the Watchmen Brigade.”

Etienne was skeptical. He shrugged. “Nigger-hating country white boys with guns. Am I right? Maybe they don't call theyselves
Klan
, but they
ain't
nothin'
new
. Believe that.”

“The two cops that were killed, they were white,” Maureen said.

Etienne shrugged again. “I'm just glad it weren't niggers that shot them cops. Not that I'm glad they got shot. I don't like nobody getting shot down like that.” He paused. “Even y'all. It's bad all around.”

“The Watchmen Brigade,” Maureen said. “What do you know about them?”

“They
sound
like people I would hear about?”

“They've been doing business in the city since the summer. Especially in this neighborhood. Buying guns, selling guns. Throwing lots of cash around, talking about a war. A revolution.”

Little E nodded. “Now that you mention it that way. They the ones doing business with Bobby Scales, hiding their guns at his place.” He pointed to the NOPD emblem on her jacket. “I thought y'all put a stop to that business when Bobby went in the river with that cop.”

When Bobby went in the river
, Maureen thought. Pretty diplomatic of you, Mr. Etienne. She wondered how much he had learned from Preacher. “So you knew Bobby Scales, knew his business?”

E slugged his beer. “I knew
of
him. I kept my distance from his business, believe that.” He looked away, down at the street. “You see where it got him.”

Maureen recalled the times she'd observed Preacher working an informant, smooth and rhythmic in the way he talked, his questions and tone guiding the snitch this way then that way, massaging, like a man gently polishing clear a smudged marble surface. She thought of watching Atkinson hammer a suspect in the box, direct and relentless as a pile driver. This was a time for Preacher's way. The information you wanted, she'd learned from him, you had to circle it, come at it from the side, indirect. If you led the person right toward the prized information, the one important answer, they'd anticipate what you wanted, they could see the next question coming, and the question after that, and they'd start planning their answers, lining up their lies. You'd never get a clear picture through the smudges.

“Preacher and me,” Maureen said. “We were working on something before he got shot. He said you could help with it. He told me you
specifically
. He'd be here himself, you know, if today hadn't happened. I'm here with you because he needs your help.”

“Makes me sad,” Little E said, “what happened to him. Preacher's a good man. We've had our things, you know, our differences, like friends do, but he done right by me most of the time. By a lot of people in this neighborhood. A lot of fellas in this neighborhood making ends instead of doing time because Preacher a real-world person. He know when someone need a break. Always.” Etienne dragged his wrist under his runny nose. “Fuck. I was eight years old, selling peanuts up Napoleon Avenue on the parade route first time I met Preacher. He used to come in the Fox, drink a beer with my old man on Super Sundays.”

Maureen smiled. “Selling peanuts? Exactly how'd you ‘meet' Preacher?”

“Yeah, well, you know.” He couldn't stop his grin. “Pick up a lost wallet or two. Lot of people drop their wallet while they chasing beads. It happens. You work Mardi Gras, you'll see.”

“I bet I will.”

“But I don't know
nobody
,” Etienne said. “I don't know
nothin'
about nobody out killing cops.”

Maureen waved the idea away. “It's not that. I know that if you knew something that would put me on the Watchmen, you would've told me by now. You wouldn't waste my time with memory lane. Not with Preacher nursing bullet wounds. I want to know about the grocery, the one on Washington and Magnolia.”

Etienne's eyes darted sideways for an instant. Bingo. She had him.

“It a grocery. Chips, cold drinks, nothin' special.”

“I'm not looking to go shopping,” Maureen said. “The white Camaro. The dude with the white pit bull and the sweaters. What's the story?”

“You the police,” Etienne said. “You tell me.”

“Couple weeks ago, the boys out front were in red. Nowadays, they're different boys and they're wearing white. I wanna know why.”

“You asking about shit that's over my head. I don't run with fellas like that. Red or white.”

“I'm not asking for the whole operation,” Maureen said. “Tell me what you're hearing, what's floating around in the air. Rumors. Talk.”

Little E let out a long sigh. Maureen lit two cigarettes, gave him one. He said, “The dude with the dog, Big Mike, I don't know him. Them boys with him make like they a Josephine Street crew, and maybe Big Mike is, I don't go around asking, and maybe some of them J-Street boys is over there with him now, but word is them boys hanging around wearing white is
really
downtown muscle. The reds, they was two uptown neighborhood crews really, and they started beefing with each other, like internally. Right about that time the Iberville started getting torn down, which eliminated prime Fourth Ward territory.”

“So Big Mike,” Maureen said, “he's making a move on this neighborhood by bringing in those Fourth Ward boys, using them for muscle in exchange for kicking something back to them.”

Etienne shrugged. “Their spots in the Iberville are torn up now. Their neighborhood is gone. Ain't there no more. Nobody living there, and the new place is going to look like that Harmony place across from the grocery, nice and shit. Prob'ly put a school there, too. Times are changing, I guess.”

“So how did news of two uptown crews beefing get down to the Iberville?”

“You got me,” Etienne said. “Small city, you know. Everybody in the same business, basically. Word travels.”

Maureen moved half a step closer to Etienne. “No. No. There's more to it than that. It's a big leap, a big power move, bringing people from way down the Iberville up to Central City. Especially for someone like Big Mike, who's not real known as far as I can tell, certainly not outside this neighborhood.”

“I mean, I don't know,” Etienne said. “I've never been
in
the game. I use every now and then, I ain't gonna lie, but I ain't like
in
it, ya know?”

“And yet you do seem to know quite a bit,” Maureen said.