Doing the Devil's Work (37 page)

Ruiz stood. He was so close that Maureen leaned back, resettling her weight on her heels. He looked down at her, fear in his eyes. “You wouldn’t spread that rumor. You wouldn’t rat him out like that. Not to his own.”

Maureen straightened her shoulders, holding her ground. “It’s not a rumor. Whether he meant to or not, Quinn did what he did. What I’m trying to tell you, Rue, is that I’m not the one he needs to worry about anymore. This case with Scales is going federal. Quinn needs to come in with me, and you, so we can tell our story before someone else does, before everyone else starts telling it for us. It’ll be too late then.”

Maureen felt Ruiz’s fast-food-and-cigarettes breath on her cheeks. They stared into each other’s eyes. Maureen’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She stepped back from Ruiz and checked the caller. Atkinson. She answered, keeping an eye on Ruiz, backing away from him.

“Coughlin.”

“I’m at the Tents,” Atkinson said. “You know who isn’t here?”

“You have to be kidding me.”

“One Robert Carter Scales,” Atkinson said.

“Tell me they didn’t fucking lose him.” If Ruiz was listening to her, or was interested in going anywhere, Maureen noted, he wasn’t showing it. She was furious enough to start jumping up and down in place.

“Oh, this one is not on them,” Atkinson said. “This one is on us.”

“How is that?”

“Scales left in the custody of the NOPD,” Atkinson said. “In the custody of Sixth District Platoon Officer Matthew J. Quinn.”

“I’m going to call you back in one minute,” Maureen said.

“When I’m off the phone with you,” Atkinson said, “I’m putting out a BOLO on Quinn. We need that witness. As for Quinn, he has crossed a bright and shining line. He’s done.”

“The shooting this morning,” Maureen said, “it was cover for Quinn snatching Scales. Get the whole department in an uproar.”

“It makes sense,” Atkinson said, “but we need Quinn to know for sure. And, Maureen, I have to tell you, if you hide anything from me about Quinn’s whereabouts, for even one minute, you are guilty of a felony.”

“One minute,” Maureen said, but Atkinson was already gone. She blinked at Ruiz. “What else do you know?”

“I’ve done my part,” Ruiz said.

“That was Atkinson, a detective sergeant, calling me,” Maureen said. “Right now, this very minute, she’s putting out a BOLO on Quinn. He’s taken off with Scales, but I get the feeling you know this already, that you knew about it when I got here, that you knew about it
before
I got here and that this roundabout sob story about your lost lamb of a pal is a stalling tactic. Where is he, Rue? Hiding him is a felony. You need to tell me. If I’m going down, I’m burning us all.”

“Your house getting shot up was never part of the plan. Not as far as I knew.”

“Don’t make it sound like it was my house they were after,” Maureen said. “They were shooting to kill me.”

Ruiz took a deep breath, again gazing away from the cemetery and at the school. “He’s taking Scales to the river bend, to the levee past the zoo at the end of Magazine Street, where people used to run their dogs before the Corps of Engineers closed it off for the levee work. No one is there anymore. The woods between the river and the levee are still standing. You can’t see anything happening on the river’s edge from the road, or even from the levee.”

“You can’t lie to me about this,” Maureen said. “You can’t. You’re positive that’s where he’s going?”

“He called me a while ago,” Ruiz said. “Not too long before you did. Asking me to meet him there, asking me to help him put Scales in the river. He didn’t even tell me why. He just figured I’d do it, that I’d help him kill this guy and cover it up.” He shook his head. “I got kids.”

He sat back down on the bench, any aggression gone out of him. “I hung up on him. I’ve been sitting here since, wishing this shit had never happened.” He turned, gazing up at Maureen, elbows on his knees. “Cogs, you know, you coulda let that goddamn pickup truck go on by.”

27

Maureen emerged from the trees on the back side of the levee onto a sloped, gravelly patch of riverbank bracketed on one side by a leaning willow and on the other by a chain-link fence that ran several yards out into the murky river. She had called Atkinson from the car. She figured she had five minutes, maybe ten, alone with Quinn before more cops arrived.

Beyond the willow tree, the shoreline continued upriver until it ran into a tumble of flat boulders that formed the barrier between the woods and a maritime salvage yard. Through the trees, Maureen could see the tilted sections of storm-damaged derricks and oil rigs brought in from the Gulf of Mexico. Downriver, on the other side of the chain fence, was the Army Corps of Engineers shipyard, a mammoth dredging ship idle at anchor at the edge of the wharf.

The river was low. The rocky beach ended at a wide apron of pungent black mud littered with trash and driftwood left behind by the receding river.

In front of her, Quinn stood ankle deep in the sucking mud, along the edge of the water. He was breathing heavily, leaning over with his hands on his thighs. Sweat darkened the back of his uniform shirt, the fabric stuck to his body. Beside him, facedown, clad in his orange OPP jumpsuit, was Bobby Scales. His ankles were shackled and his hands cuffed behind his back. One of his black rubber jail shoes was missing. He writhed on his belly like an eel tossed up on the riverbank, struggling to keep his face out of the mud. Maureen could hear his panicked breathing. She could see the trail through the stones and the mud Quinn had made dragging the struggling Scales to the water.

Before she could say anything, Quinn turned his head in her direction, squinting at her. He spat into the mud. “Cogs? The fuck are you doing here?”

“You really need to ask me that?” She started down toward the water. The ground was soft and wet under her feet.

“Did Rue send you?” Quinn asked.

“Not in the way you mean,” Maureen said.

Quinn straightened up, twisting side to side to work the kinks out of his back, casually, as if she’d found him moving furniture and not dragging a kidnapped prisoner into the Mississippi River. His movements seemed to sink him deeper into the mud. Maureen wasn’t sure he was aware of it. From the state of him, Maureen could tell Quinn hadn’t planned on doing this alone. “So you’re not here to help,” he said. His speech was slurred. Booze.

“Depends on what you mean by help.” Maureen stood at the edge of the mud. Her foot sank as she stepped into it, the mud pulling at her boot with a sucking sound. She lifted her foot free and stepped back onto the stones. “I know about your friendship with Gage. I know about Shadow. This can’t go down like this. It can’t.”

“Why not?” Quinn asked. “Because of what you think you know? That’s the problem with you, Cogs. Your weakness is you have this idea that everyone cares what you think, what you think you know and see. Like you’re so fucking important.”

“You’re not a fucking murderer, Quinn,” Maureen said. “For chrissakes, think about what you’re doing. Think about who you’re doing it for. How are you gonna live with this?”

“Pretty easy, to tell the truth,” Quinn said. “So you’re not going to rat on me, you’re only concerned about my conscience? You’re here for me, is that what you’re saying?” He laughed. “How’d you fucking find me, anyway?”

“Ruiz did send me here.”

Quinn’s eyes went wide with surprise. He was astonished his former partner had given him up, Maureen could tell, but he wasn’t angry. He wouldn’t use the word
rat
, no matter how betrayed he felt. “Don’t be too hard on Rue,” Quinn said. “Don’t blame him. He never really knew how everything fits together. He never knew how deep it runs. He’s not a bad guy.”

“He doesn’t want you to do this,” Maureen said.

“Not bad enough to be here with you.”

Scales had rolled over onto his back, and recovered his breath enough to speak. “Hey, hey, this dude crazy. Help me, miss. Help me. This man gonna kill me.”

Quinn turned to him. “You shut the fuck up.”

“Help me,” Scales implored, panic raising the register of his voice. “Please. I don’t wanna die. I don’t.”

I don’t wanna die.
Was that what Mike-Mike said, Maureen thought, before you choked the life out of him? Before you tricked his friends into setting him on fire? Scales kept begging. Maureen wanted to jam her fingers in her ears and her foot down Scales’s throat. The more pathetic he sounded, the angrier Maureen got.

“Shut up, Scales,” she demanded. “Shut your fucking mouth or I’ll fill it with mud myself.”

But Scales wouldn’t be quiet. He was crying now, wailing wordlessly. Sound traveled far along the river. Maureen worried someone would hear. People worked in salvage and shipyards. It wouldn’t be long before a tug or a tanker cruised by. What was happening wouldn’t be tough to figure out, two sweaty, furtive cops and a prisoner in orange, facedown in the mud. A part of her wanted to turn her back on the scene, to let Quinn finish what he’d started long before she’d even moved to New Orleans, and to let him live with the consequences.

But then she remembered that the Watchmen Brigade gunmen had gotten her address from somewhere, from someone.

Quinn was swearing at Scales to be quiet as he struggled to free his feet from the mud. He grimaced in pain, one hand snapping to his back as if he’d pulled something. Instead of coming closer to the shore, though, Quinn stepped in Scales’s direction, his feet sinking again in the mud. He lifted one foot, brought it down on the side of Scales’s face, grinding the toe box of his boot into Scales’s temple, driving his face down into the mud.

“Fucking shut it, you piece of shit,” Quinn yelled. “I fucking told you.”

Scales couldn’t cry out now, his nose and most of his mouth pressed into the mud. Maureen could hear him gagging and spitting.

Over Quinn’s shoulder, out in the river, a fish jumped. Pelicans reeled in the sky over the silent dredging ship. Upstream and down the river was empty of traffic. It wouldn’t last. Maureen could see the swirling currents running against and into one another on the surface of the water. She needed to end this. For a long moment, she fought against the need.

“Quinn!” Maureen yelled. Her instinct was to rush him, but she stayed where she was. “Quinn, stop it!” Her hand went to her weapon. “Please.”

Quinn lifted his foot. Scales drew one knee toward his chest. He was able to roll his face out of the mud, his weight forward on his forehead. His body heaved. He choked and spat, his nose full of mud. Maureen realized she felt nothing for him. She didn’t care if he lived or died.

Quinn settled his foot back onto the mud, taking a wide stance to steady himself and distribute his weight. He’d seen her hand go for her weapon. He showed no interest in his own, made no move. Maureen was relieved. With the mud and the sweat on his hands, he hadn’t a chance of beating her on the draw. She moved her hand away from her gun.

“Seriously?” he asked, almost smiling. “You think you could?”

“Easy,” Maureen said. “You’re a sitting duck stuck there in the mud.”

“Oh, I know you’ve got a good eye,” Quinn said. “I know you can hit the target. But could you pull the trigger? On a fellow cop?”

“If you made me.”

“Over this piece of shit?”

“How about over what happened to me this morning?” Maureen said. She pulled her weapon from the holster, held it against her thigh with both hands. “You gave them my address, didn’t you? Why would you do that, Quinn?”

He seemed genuinely perplexed, seemed to be thinking. He shook his head. “I didn’t know they were gonna
shoot
at you. I swear to fucking God. I gave your address to Caleb. You took the money from the party. He told me you were on the team. He said he had more for you, that he had something he wanted to discuss with you. I was trying to help you, Cogs. All I’ve tried to do since you pulled that goddamn truck over is help you, and you won’t fucking take it.”

“Look at where it’s got us,” Maureen said. “Look at where we are. You’re trying to murder someone, in broad daylight, to protect someone who tried to have me killed.”

“You talk fucking endlessly, this romantic bullshit about how you love it here. Well, lemme ask you this. Who’s worth more to this city? Scales or the Heath family? You know, the people who’ve been here for generations, who build shit,
useful
shit. People who stayed after the storm, who stayed
during
the storm, who fed and watered the police department you now belong to while this fucking baboon and his fucktard cronies took potshots at us from the project rooftops? The Heaths rebuilt
half
of this fucking city after the storm. They give to every fucking charity in the city. What’s this murdering, cop-hating gangsta slab of shit here in the mud worth? Who’s better for New Orleans? The builders or the asshole who only adds to the body count? Who’s worth protecting?

“Use your fucking head, Coughlin. We have the power to make the trouble we’re gonna be in go away. All we gotta do is put a guy who killed an old man and a twelve-year-old in the river. And the people we’re protecting by doing that are worth more than him and me and you combined.” He raised his shoulders, his hands spread out in front of him. “Christ. How is this hard for you? I don’t understand.”

“You’re delusional,” Maureen said. “No matter what good Solomon Heath does, his son is no better, no different than Scales. He bankrolls hate groups and militias. Armed gangs. For fun. To be a big shot. He gives people money that they use to buy guns that they’re gonna use to kill cops. Think what he coulda done with his name and his money, and he’s a fucking terrorist instead. He
chose
it. He’s no better than some asshole in a desert cave. How is this hard for
you
?”

“There’s no proof of any of that shit about Heath,” Quinn said. “Nobody’s got any proof of Caleb putting up that money.”

“The proof is lying right there in the mud,” Maureen said. “Isn’t that why the three of us are out here in the fucking first place?”

“So he spits out some white guy’s name he saw on the side of a building because your dyke rabbi is putting the screws to him. You wanna blame somebody for us being out here standing in the river, blame Atkinson. Me? I don’t care what he said under pressure, I know what he’s done, to that kid, to that old man, to you. I’m taking out the trash. Should’ve been done a long time ago.”