Doing the Devil's Work (38 page)

“Why haven’t you done it already?” Maureen asked. “You could’ve done what you’re doing today at any time in the past few weeks, ever since you and Ruiz busted Shadow, when there was a lot less attention, and you didn’t do anything. You criticize Atkinson. You’ve been putting the screws to Marques, scaring him into keeping his mouth shut.
Now
you decide to take out the trash? Come on.”

“We woulda never hurt that kid,” Quinn said. “Or let anyone hurt him. You believe that, right? What do you think I am?”

“What about me?” Maureen asked. “What about the innocent people who live on my block? Getting rid of Scales only lets things like that continue.”

“What getting rid of Scales allows to continue,” Quinn said, “is the work the Heaths do for the city.”

“And the money they pay you, too,” Maureen said. “That keeps coming. Stop with the benevolent-benefactor shit. You’re gonna spend your life in jail for an extra few grand a year? You think Caleb is gonna protect you if you go down for this? You think he’ll put up money for you? Pull strings? Pay your child support? Protect your boy from the bullies? His daddy is hip-deep in city contracts. What makes you think Solomon will let Caleb anywhere near you? What he’ll do is send some crazy freak from the Watchmen after you for five hundred bucks and a fistful of pills. You think he’ll return the favor you’re doing him now? He’ll cut you loose faster than he did Scales. He might cut your throat for this favor you’re doing him.”

“We’ve known each other over half our lives,” Quinn said. “I’ll talk to Caleb. He’ll listen to me. I can get him to rethink what he’s doing, if it’s like you said, which I doubt. Even if it is, he didn’t mean any harm. He’s no terrorist, he’s a rich kid that didn’t know any better. They’re part of the city. Always have been. They like to go slumming, these Uptown kids. Cheap drugs, bossing around black people, white-trash pussy. Caleb’s always been that way. Makes him feel tough.”

Maureen saw over Quinn’s shoulder that, upriver, the awesome prow of a container ship had turned the bend in the river.

“He’s not an Uptown kid drinking at F and M’s anymore,” Maureen said. “He’s a grown man. You think it gets better from here? It won’t work like this. I can’t let this go. Atkinson needs Scales. She’ll come looking for him, and she’s not Ronnie Drayton.”

“She’ll fucking thank me,” Quinn said, “for saving her the effort.”

She could argue that the feds wanted Scales, Maureen thought, but she knew that strategy would backfire, only further persuading Quinn to kill Scales.

“And I know what you’re gonna say next,” Quinn said. “Fuck the feds.”

Quinn rocked in place, losing his balance for a moment as one foot sank a few inches farther down in the mud. Scales had rolled onto his back again, and was trying to blink the mud from his eyes.

Maureen saw that the ship coming downriver had to be the size of a city block. Quinn hadn’t noticed it. Or maybe, Maureen thought, he knew better than to be afraid.

“Besides,” Quinn said, “if anyone really needs Scales, the current’ll spit him back up in a day or so.” He shrugged. “Or it won’t. I don’t much give a fuck. Now help me get him out there.”

“Think,” Maureen said. “Whether he surfaces or vanishes, the trail’s gonna lead straight back to you. You’re the one who checked him outta jail. Atkinson already knows it was you. She told me herself.” She knew she should be watching Quinn, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the approaching vessel. It seemed to be running so close to shore. An optical illusion, she told herself, caused by the curving riverbank. “There are witnesses at the sheriff’s department, there are cameras everywhere.”

“This is the same sheriff’s department,” Quinn said, “that dumped your crazy-eyed purse snatcher in the emergency room and went out for tacos, and then lied to you up and down about it. They’re a bunch of lazy fucking amateurs. You think I can’t cover a trail? That I haven’t before? I’m pretty good at this shit.”

“You think any deputies you buy or bully will hold up,” Maureen said, “when Atkinson comes calling? Or the FBI?”

“All they have to do is play dumb. They’re good at that.” He kicked at Scales. “Help me here. Help me make this look like an escape. Prisoners slip out of the Tents with alarming frequency. Scales is another one lost. A minute or two facedown in the mud under my boot and he’s finished. We pop the cuffs off, shove him out into the current, and let the mighty Mississippi do the rest. He vanishes, and nobody knows but us.

“If there’s nothing left to do but bust a couple of cops for Scales’s disappearance, Atkinson will back off, especially if one of those cops is you. She’s smart. Don’t let her fool you. She knows the game. She knows Scales isn’t worth screwing over good people, like you, like the Heaths.”

He paused, letting her think it over. The ship looked to be running too close to their side of the river, Maureen worried. Surely there was a reason for that, she thought, something about currents and river depth and navigation and whatever.

“Bring him in to shore,” Maureen said. “Away from the water. Or leave him there, and you come in. Come closer. We’ll talk about it some more.”

Quinn looked over his shoulder, seeing the ship. “Is that what you’re staring at? Forget it. Nice try. Good acting. You do look terrified. But watch when it passes, that ship won’t be anywhere near us. Before she got knocked up, my ex and I brought her dog here once a week. I’ve seen this before. The river plays tricks.”

She wanted to tell him it wasn’t the giant ship that made her nervous, or even how close it ran to their bank. What unnerved her was the huge wall of water foaming at the peak of the ship’s prow, and where that water would go as the ship passed their location and headed downriver.

“Before I come in,” Quinn said, “you need to help me get him in the water. You have to prove you’re on my side. Otherwise, I’m just surrendering.”

Maureen said nothing. She didn’t move.

“C’mon, Coughlin. Think of the bad shit Scales did, and the bad shit now he’ll never get to do. Think of the good shit we get to keep doing. We’re protecting ourselves here, and Rue, and Preacher. There’s a hundred other routes for the FBI to take to the Citizens. Caleb will owe us huge. He’ll shut down the Watchmen’s New Orleans operation. Think about it, Maureen. Scales dies. Everybody wins. You can’t deny it.” His eyes got wide. “Okay, what about this? I can turn Caleb against them, right? I can flip him for us. I know I can. Wouldn’t even be hard. That would be huge, us handing the feds a witness against the Sovereign Citizens like Caleb Heath. What he cares about is being the big shot, it don’t matter to him who he gets to play it in front of. He can play at being an FBI secret agent. He’ll love it. We’ll get promoted. You could
walk
onto the task force at the Sixth or any other district. Preacher’ll be fucking thrilled.”

Maureen wanted to tell Quinn he was delusional about their futures, and about his friend Caleb Heath, but she’d be telling Quinn things he’d known and chosen to ignore long before she’d come around. She toed the mud, testing it, staring at Quinn, thinking about where she stood. From what she could tell, and she was guessing, she was at a safe-enough distance from the water. Quinn, on the other hand, stood at the edge.

“Me and you,” Quinn said, “we could make a deal. We could make this work.”

The huge black hull of the ship, a rushing thundercloud, seemed so close as it swept past them, sending fat, rising swells of gray water like bull elephants rolling toward the shore. Maureen marveled at how quiet it was, something of that size and speed going by. She imagined the giant propellers churning under the river’s surface. She felt miniaturized. She took a quick step in Quinn’s direction, her foot sinking into the mud. He’d been right about the ship. It was farther out on the river than it had appeared. Maybe she could reach him before the water did.

She looked at Quinn, who frowned back at her. He could feel it coming. Maybe, if she could free herself from the mud, she could pull him out of the water. Scales was screaming. He might be beyond saving.

The big swells crashed ashore hard and took everything out of her hands.

Quinn barked out a yelp as a wave slammed into his back, pitching him forward. Scales disappeared under the water without a sound, swallowed. Quinn’s knees buckled in the undertow as his legs were sucked deeper into the mud. Knee-deep. Hip-deep. The deeper he sank, the faster he sank. He bent backward then forward in the rushing water, flopping about in the push and pull of the river like a stuffed toy in the jaws of a playful dog. His arms flailed. He had for some reason that Maureen couldn’t fathom pulled his gun. He wouldn’t let go of it. His hand was black. Mud and dark water ran down his arm. Another wave washed over his head and he went under, vanishing from Maureen’s sight.

With the river curling and seething around her ankles, the swirling water black with mud, Maureen fell back onto the stones, her foot popping free, bootless. She scrambled back to her feet and retreated. The waves kept coming, each one bigger and louder than the last, driving Maureen stumbling farther back up the rocky beach. She tumbled over backward again, falling on her ass, her gun bruising her tailbone. As she fought for breath, watching the river, the swells subsided. The river settled a few long moments later, the last wave washing over the mud as quiet as a sigh.

Every trace of Quinn and Scales was gone from the riverfront, as if they had never been there. She couldn’t find her boot, couldn’t even locate the hole in the mud where she had lost it. Maureen got to her feet, hobbling across the stones.

She climbed out onto the dirt embankment that surrounded the leaning willow. She stepped up onto the exposed roots, and clutching a crooked branch, inched out over the water, searching the river for any sign of Quinn. She knew Scales was lost. Deep inside, she hoped she wouldn’t find Quinn, either, that she wouldn’t see him thrash to the surface a hundred feet from shore, calling for her help. She lacked the nerve to challenge the river on his behalf.

The river showed her nothing.

Atkinson came crashing out of the woods, two sweating cops in blue on her heels, their weapons drawn. She looked around, panting. “What the fuck, Coughlin?”

“They were here,” Maureen said, “and then they were gone.” She spoke standing on the exposed roots of the willow, as if the backdrop of the river added credence to her story. She was already thinking of all the things she could have said and done differently in the last few minutes.

“A giant ship washed them away. You can still see it. I couldn’t get to them. There was nothing I could do.”

Atkinson didn’t respond. She called for backup, including calls to the Coast Guard and the state police for search and rescue. She named it a rescue mission, but everyone on both ends of the call knew the truth. It would be a recovery mission before sundown. Maureen knew it, too.

Her calls made, Atkinson didn’t speak or reach out to Maureen to help her back to shore, as Maureen had suspected she might. Instead, she stared at Maureen, her radio clutched at her side, her blond curls blowing in the breeze, her eyes hidden behind dark shades. Maureen eventually had to look away from her. She watched from her perch under the willow as more cops appeared out of the woods. They wandered aimlessly, uselessly, along the rocky shoreline, shading their eyes in the cloudy haze as they looked out over the river for signs of life, whispering to one another.

Maureen knew, she
knew
, that her fellow officers understood her decision to stay on shore after the waves had died. They’d have gone into the river after Quinn, she knew, like she would have, if there existed any chance of bringing him back out alive, but they knew, like she did, the powerful river currents would have sucked them underwater. The Mississippi would have swallowed them, too, one after the other, like marshmallows tossed to the alligators at the zoo. No one on that rocky beach thought her a coward. Maureen knew that.

When she looked at the spot where Atkinson had stood, the detective was gone. It took Maureen a moment to spot her. She had turned her back and was walking away into the trees.

28

The second Saturday after Quinn was swept away, Maureen stood at the back porch railing of her rented bungalow, her hips pressed into the sun-warmed wood, watching a large blue heron stalk the edge of the canal cutting through the property. She was on Dauphin Island, a thin spit of sand in Mobile Bay, a few miles off the coast of Alabama. She was on hiatus from her house, her job, and her city. The Saints had beaten the Panthers by twenty last Sunday, remaining undefeated, and sat comfortably atop the division. Maureen eagerly anticipated watching this Sunday’s game on TV by herself, a bottle of wine at her elbow, instead of in a crowded noisy bar. She would still wear her Pierre Thomas jersey, even if no one was around to see her in it.

Back in New Orleans, her landlords had come in from Houston to hire a contractor. Repairs had started right away. The landlords were sympathetic about her trauma, and tight-lipped about the condition of the house and what fixing it would cost. Maureen would be allowed to finish out her lease. No one was going to put a cop who’d been shot at out on the street, not even in New Orleans. Not right away, at least. She hadn’t asked about their lease-to-own deal, figuring it was best to let the pain of paying the contractors recede before raising the subject. Just as well. She had to resolve her own concerns about her future ability to pay rent before she could go making any deals or offers to buy anything. She had wondered, at one point when she was feeling desperate and was deep into a bottle of whiskey, if maybe there was a bed at the Bend in the River. She could room with Dice. She struggled not to think about Dice.

The break from work had come at the orders of the police department’s Public Integrity Bureau. She was suspended indefinitely, with pay for now, pending the results of their ongoing investigation into her recent activities. She’d given them her testimony in the days following the events by the river, and they’d left her waiting on their call. When they felt like it, they’d let her know if she had a job and a future with the NOPD. The possibility that her career had ended made it tougher for Maureen to part with the bribe money she’d taken from Solomon Heath, but she found good uses for it. The three hundred she was owed for the detail she kept. Five hundred went to Roots of Music, the citywide marching band for middle school students. The money covered one scholarship; another kid like Marques would learn to play, would get to march someday soon in Mardi Gras parades. The last five hundred paid the rent for her week at the beach. Fuck it, she thought. She deserved it.