Doing the Devil's Work (31 page)

She gave Atkinson a beat to answer.

“Your concerns, then?” Atkinson asked, sounding impatient.

“It’s already rumored, and pretty much believed around the city, that Mr. Scales here killed at least one of his teenage soldiers while trying to revive a drug ring over the summer. It’s rumored he tried to kill another boy, and that boy’s grandmother, and a couple of cops. There are rumors that maybe he’d flipped, that he’d been seen doing business with a cop, and that was why we couldn’t nail him. Those rumors were the main reason he’s so toxic even to the local criminal community that he was squatting in a dirty hole when we found him.”

“Your point, Officer? You’re very eloquent, but we have shit to do here.”

“Everyone we’ve talked to,” Maureen said, choosing her words with care, “thinks he’s a rat, and a child killer. I’m concerned that if we lock him up as a sex offender, what happens if those accusations get mixed up with the new charges? What if it gets through the system that he was raping these underaged boys before he killed them? And that’s why he killed them. No jail in the state could guarantee his safety. You said yourself it’s a mess throughout Louisiana. He wouldn’t make his arraignment, never mind live to see trial.”

“So you’re interrupting my interrogation,” Atkinson said, “to express your concerns for the safety of the prisoner?”

“I’m not real worried about him,” Maureen said, looking at Scales, who was so panicked now she feared he’d hyperventilate, “but a lot of good police work, and a lot of potential information, which could lead to more good police work, goes up in smoke if he gets shivved in the lunch line and bleeds out screaming for his mommy on the tile.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Scales hollered. He squirmed in his seat, rattling his chains. “You can’t do that. You can’t be telling people inside that I been raping and killing little boys. While I been snitching at the same time? What the fuck is
wrong
with you? Why you doin’ me like this? You the police. You’re supposed to pro
tect
people.”

“I wouldn’t do you like that,” Atkinson said, “but the officer here has a point. Jail is worse than high school for rumors, worse than the neighborhood, worse than the police department or the courthouse, even.” She paused, tapping her fingertip to her chin. “I just thought of something. You’ve never jailed before, have you, Bobby? Some juvie shit, but never with men.”

Scales shook his head.

“My, oh my,” Atkinson said. “Wow.” She paused. “I almost feel sorry for you.”

Maureen backed into her corner.

Atkinson returned to the seat, and the position, where she had started the interview, arms folded over the back of the chair. “You know how much we have on you. About the murder. About the girls. And now there’s those guns, and how you got them, and your plans for them, which can change things for you. That looks to me like a federal beef. Now, taking a federal charge is no picnic, it doesn’t bode well for your long-term future, I’m not gonna sugarcoat that. However, as we all know, your short-term future is looking mightily, brutally fucking grim right now. The feds do have more resources for prisoner protection than we do at OPP.” She inched her chair a few inches closer to Scales. “Gimme a reason, Bobby. Gimme a good reason not to jail you as a fucking rapist child-murdering molester. A really good fucking reason. Because you know that’s what I want to do. Talk me out of it.”

Scales slumped in his seat again, a puppy cowering from the snapping jaws of a larger dog, hoping for mercy through submission. Maureen waited for Atkinson to tear open his soft belly. She watched and waited, chewing the inside of her cheek as Scales’s brain worked harder than it ever had in his brutish and short life. “I—I could tell you about those guns. I do know some shit.”

“Give it up.”

“You gotta promise me. No rape charges. None of that child-molester shit.”

Atkinson barked out a laugh. Maureen nearly jumped out of her skin. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but she was, at the moment, deathly afraid of Christine Atkinson. “Promise you?” Atkinson said. “I don’t have to promise you shit. I have all the cards, remember?” She pointed her finger at her face. “Look at me. I own you. This is me promising you nothing. You go in the Orleans Parish system, and you go in on child rape and murder, in which case you leave on a stretcher or in a pine box, or you go in federal on guns, and leave walking upright with your blood on the inside—that’s your choice here.”

Scales’s eyes kept flicking over to Maureen. She felt for the first time that he maybe recognized, and remembered, her. That’s right, motherfucker, she thought, it’s me, here to watch you go down in flames.

“Don’t look at her,” Atkinson commanded. “Look at me. She can’t do anything for you. The whole rest of your life is with me. Me. What’s it gonna be?”

“The guns,” Scales said. He hesitated.

“Be special here, Bobby,” Atkinson said. “Be fucking extraordinary.”

He glanced back and forth between Maureen and Atkinson. Atkinson let her silence do its work and Maureen followed suit, her heart thumping against her sternum. They were gonna get something, she thought. Something really good, something beautiful. Life-changing, career-changing shit. She could feel it.

“Do not fuck with me,” Atkinson said.

Maureen leaned forward, her weight on the balls of her feet.

“I ain’t,” Scales said.

“That trunk,” Atkinson said, “where did those guns come from?”

“Some coon-ass cracker named Gage.”

Maureen hiccupped. Atkinson threw her hands in the air. “And Gage is fucking dead. Literally a dead end. Holy Christ. You get more worthless by the second, Scales. I can’t stand it.”

“I didn’t do it,” Scales said, panicking again. Maureen could tell he hadn’t known that Gage had been killed. “I didn’t fucking do it. I didn’t.”

“Nothing, Scales,” Atkinson said. “You’ve given me fucking nothing but a headache. For this I got up at the crack of dawn. So you could pin your shit on a dead guy.”

“Wait, wait,” Scales said. “Gage, he just one of the players, he a front. For some like crazy white-boy survivalist militia gang or whatever, from out in one of the other parishes. They was strapping up to fight y’all, is what he kept telling me. He used to talk all kinds of crazy-ass shit. I was like, whatever.” He shrugged. “Long as your money be green and I don’t hafta leave the house, or fuck with no cops myself.”

Maureen thought of Gage’s shitty pickup, of the discount cigarette butts and fast food wrappers littering the front seat. How had he paid for the expensive jewelry and the custom Saints jersey he’d been wearing the night she’d pulled him over? Where had he gotten the cash to buy those guns?

“People like that,” Scales said, wonderment in his voice, “I thought it was always niggers they hated, Klan and white power and shit, but these dudes, it was y’all they had it in for, they hate cops with a passion. Always fuck-the-government this and fuck-the-government that. They changing with the times, us having a black president, I guess.”

Maureen thought of the faded and disintegrating wallet she’d found on Gage’s fresh corpse. Of the gun-dealer business cards and the gun-show receipt.

“Where did Gage get the guns that he brought to you?” she asked.

Atkinson turned and Scales looked up at her, both unsure which of them Maureen was addressing with the question.

“All that weaponry,” Maureen said to Atkinson, “that shit costs money. Gage didn’t have that kind of cash. He’s not buying AR-15s twenty at a time without help. He may have been the deliveryman, he may have even bought the guns at pawnshops and gun shows, made the physical purchase, but someone else put up the cash for a stockpile like that, I promise you.”

She had a name in mind, but couldn’t decide if she wanted to hear it or not.

Atkinson turned to Scales. “All those guns come to you at once?”

“They arrived a few at a time. More supposed to be coming. After that next gun show out in wherever-the-fuck outside the city, next month.”

Maureen thought of Gage’s name on the federal watch list, of his criminal record. None of that would matter at the gun shows. No ID check, no background check, no purchase limit. Nothing needed but cash and connections and a handshake. Maybe the right tattoos, depending on who he was buying from. He didn’t look like a terrorist, not to the people who sold him his guns—he looked the same as them. He looked like any average harmless guy walking down Bourbon Street drinking a Hand Grenade or a Hurricane. She took a couple of steps across the room. “Why? Why get involved with those guys? Why let them use your closet?”

Scales chuckled. “Why the fuck else? Like you said, cash money.” He looked around the room, as if looking for an audience to share his humorous disbelief. “Rent out my closet to a bunch of white motherfuckers out to kill cops instead of niggers for once?” He chuckled again. “Nigga, please. Where do I sign up? Are you kidding me?”

“Who paid you?” Maureen asked. “Was it Gage?”

“That broke-ass tweaker? He had nothing.” He shook his head, grinning. “Gage. That pussy. I heard his bitch stone robbed him blind ’fore he left for New Orleans. Took it all from him. That’s why he was hanging ’round town instead of going back to his fucking trailer park to wait for the next gun show. He was looking for her.” He chuckled. “He try to not show it, Gage, but she scare him, too. I don’t know how hard he was really looking. He told these crazy stories about her. But he a man, and she took him off.” Scales shrugged. “Can’t let that shit go, I guess.” He looked at Atkinson and Maureen, his eyes half closed, a smile lingering on his lips. “Bitches, man. White ones, black ones. Nothing but problems, all a y’all. Nothing but devils, doing the devil’s work, all a y’all. Man, all y’all
do
is ruin a man.”

“Who paid you?” Atkinson demanded. “Who handed you the cash for keeping the guns?”

“The guy who paid me is the same motherfucker that paid for the guns, the guy who owned that house you found me in.” Scales took a deep breath. “A big-timin’ white boy named Caleb Heath.”

And there it was. Maureen’s heart, which had been pounding for what felt like hours, stopped. She could feel the blood drain from her face, the air burst from her body. Atkinson threw her the briefest glance. The name had surprised her, too. More than it had Maureen. She recovered faster.

“Gage was all talk,” Scales said, “but Heath, he got juice. I could see that from the jump. He try to play it hard, try to play it street, he got this whole collection of ugly-ass, off-brand Saints jerseys. Man, but money like black, it don’t cover up and it don’t wash off, ya heard me?”

Leaning closer to Scales, Atkinson said, “Now you’re making shit up. That fucking annoys me. Here I am trying to help you out. What makes you think I got the patience for this?”

“I
know
that motherfucker,” Scales insisted. “He been in my house. Shit, he
own
that house, run-down piece of shit that it was. Part of the deal was I didn’t have to pay no rent. He handed me spending money, like I said. Cash money from his hands to mine.”

Scales had picked up on the mood change in the room, Maureen could tell. He knew the weight of that name he’d dropped. He’d gained confidence from it, wanted to ingratiate himself and capitalize on the connection. He straightened in his seat, and then described Caleb Heath perfectly. He crossed his arms over his chest, self-satisfied. He again reminded Maureen of Drayton, changing tactics to match the mood of the room.

“How else a broke-ass nigga like
me
gonna know a rich-ass white boy like
that
, unless
he
doin’ dirt? I know that.
Y’all
know that, ya heard?” Scales shrugged. “Just another white boy who wants to be gangsta. Nothin’ new. City full of ’em. Don’t tell me you don’t know.”

Scales had a point, Maureen thought. No way he had picked Caleb Heath’s name out of thin air. He was a scared and cruel punk scrambling under heavy pressure, selling out someone he did business with, someone he resented and had never liked or cared about.

“Who’d you meet first?” Atkinson asked. “Gage or Heath?”

“Gage,” Scales said.

“Tell me about your first date,” Atkinson said.

“I get a text, see, from my boy Shadow. He tell me to go by the daiquiri place by Claiborne and Louisiana, the one by the check-cashing place, at a certain time and all that. So I do it. I’m thinking maybe he got some new girls with him or something. Shadow there, but he ain’t with no girls, he with this skinny white dude named Cooley, belt buckle as big as his head. We make the arrangements. I started out dealin’ with him, but then this other white dude, Gage, I think he was Cooley’s boss or whatever, stepped in. What the fuck happened to Cooley, I don’t know. So if he dead, too, that ain’t on me.”

“What was this gang called?” Maureen asked.

“The Watchmen Brigade,” Scales said, rolling his eyes. “Corny, right? Motherfucker talked about it constantly. Gage, he’s hard-core
into
it, this militia thing, tells me over and over that there’s an army comin’, a war comin’, they got money, they got guns, and I need to pick the right side.”

An army was coming, Maureen thought, and Caleb Heath had their guns and their hideouts waiting for them.

“I’ll hold the guns,” Scales said, “babysit the stash in one of Heath’s houses, and guys will come get the guns from me. When that happens, I’m supposed to give them up, no questions asked. I get paid for running the warehouse. Maybe get some smaller pieces to sell off on the side. Gage come by with a couple of guns at a time. Sometimes Heath was with him, sometimes not. I don’t think Heath needed to be there, but he liked to be, you know? Maybe him being the landlord covered for the other white-boy traffic in the neighborhood. Like I tol’ you. Maybe it made the boy feel gangsta. Made his dick hard, I guess. The rest, you already know.”

Maureen listened to Atkinson’s heavy breathing. She knew the detective wondered how much to believe, and what to do about it. With each new name, with each new lead, the case got more problematic, not less.