“We did. His uncle was Bobby Scales.”
“Well, wherever he is,” Hardin said, “I’m sure Mr. Scales is happy his legacy endures. Was his uncle Three-N-G?”
“No,” Maureen said. “Scales was J-Street crew. That was his whole thing, trying to bring back J-Street after the feds took so many of them down in that big racketeering case after the storm.”
“You think Goody’s back in town trying to rebuild his uncle’s business?”
“I don’t know what he’s up to,” Maureen said. “If he’s the latest neighborhood kid trying to resurrect the J-Street crew, why’s he yelling about Three-N-G? For that matter, why the fuck is he shooting a middle school music teacher? And he won’t even admit to being who he is, never mind admitting to the shooting.”
“Would you?” Hardin said, suppressing a laugh. “When Goody came out from under the house, did he show any indication he was high on this flakka shit? Any chance of a connection between our OD and the shooting?”
“I doubt it, Sarge,” Maureen said. “He came out from under the house stinkin’ of something, but I think it was stray cats. He was sweaty and agitated, but we’d been chasing him for blocks.” She paused, comparing the kid in the pink tights and the shooting suspect in her mind. “I don’t see it. He was belligerent, but in the ordinary way. He wasn’t violent. He was manageable. He could walk and talk and function. Having dealt with both him and the John Doe, they were too different.”
“All right,” Hardin said, “we need to prioritize. Forget the flakka for now. First thing we do, we need to make sure any contagion this shooting has released has been squashed. We can’t have it infecting the whole route. So far we’re hanging in there. I need you to go down by Erato and St. Charles, check with our people at the Wendy’s, the Popeyes. Most years, when shit pops off the worst, that’s where it happens. Any Three-N-G that’s out at the parade, that’s where they’ll be. The tactical squads have that segment of the route. Ask around. See what the reaction is to the shooting, what the ripple effect is. Talk to them down there and report back to me.”
“Ten-four,” Maureen said.
“I’ll get you a ride,” Hardin said, grabbing his mic.
“Thanks. That’s a long walk.” Maureen’s phone buzzed in her pocket. Not a number she recognized. She answered anyway. “Coughlin.”
“Officer? This is Dakota. The bartender from Verret’s.”
“I remember. Is Susan okay?”
“She’s sleeping it off on my air mattress,” Dakota said. “I’ve got my eye on her. But listen, that’s not why I’m calling. There’s a man here, a detective. His name is Drayton.”
“He’s a tool,” Maureen said, “but he’s going to be investigating the case. Just help him out however you can. You might have to wake up Susan so he can talk to her. I’m afraid that can’t wait.”
“He hasn’t even asked about Susan,” Dakota said. “He seems more interested in my breasts than any crime that happened on this corner.” That was Drayton, all right. “The only time he talked to me was to order a drink. He’s a lousy fucking tipper, by the way.”
“I’m sorry,” Maureen said. “He is literally our only option tonight.”
“I’m calling you,” Dakota said, “because you seem like a decent person and I don’t want you getting in trouble.”
“Excuse me?”
“He is extremely pissed off,” Dakota said. “Those other two cops? The two who did the yellow tape or whatever? They’ve been hanging around since the rest of you took off. Drayton is screaming at them. And I’ve heard your name more than once. I thought you’d want to know. You and the others, you seem to give a shit about Cordell and the other people who got shot; this guy, though: fuck him.”
Maureen glanced at Hardin. He was a few feet away, talking with a group of kids who’d staggered out of a nearby house party. “Do you have any idea,” Maureen asked Dakota, “what he’s so angry about?”
“Is there or is there not a suspect in custody?” Dakota said. “That’s what he keeps yelling. And why doesn’t anyone at the scene know what’s going on? He’s demanding to know where you are, and where the other two cops who first worked the scene went. That’s what he kept yelling about. That and the weather. I take it he’s not a fan of leaving the office. He seems to think y’all caught the shooter.” Maureen heard her light a cigarette. “Did y’all catch someone? That was quick. If you did, people around here will be relieved. I can tell Susan when she wakes up.”
“Speaking of Susan,” Maureen said. “Do you think you can get to her phone?”
“I guess,” Dakota said. “But I don’t know if I can unlock it. I can wake her up. You want her to call you?”
“I need a picture of Cordell,” Maureen said. “One where we can see his face real well.”
“I can send you that,” Dakota said. “I have that on my phone. A crew of teachers from Dell’s school comes in almost every Friday for happy hour. I took pictures for the bar’s Facebook page. I’ll pick out the best and send it to you.”
“Thanks, Dakota,” Maureen said. “And thank you for the heads-up on Detective Drayton. When Susan wants to go see Dell, he’s at UMC. She can go whenever she wakes up. If Drayton wants to ignore you, let him. He’s not worth the trouble.” She glanced at Hardin. “And do me one more favor.”
“If I can,” Dakota said.
“Don’t bother telling Drayton that we talked, or about the picture.”
“Not speaking to him is the easiest part of my night,” Dakota said. “Have a good night.”
After Dakota had disconnected, Maureen studied her phone for a long moment before she slipped it back into her pocket. Faye and Kornegay were either lying to Drayton or they didn’t know the suspect had been apprehended. She tried to remember what she had heard over the radio about the bust. There’d been the original announcement that had sent her running, the radio chatter as they tracked Goody through the neighborhood, the call for the K-9 unit. But after that? She couldn’t remember. She’d announced nothing on the radio.
Morrison had packed up her dogs and left once they’d got Goody out from under the house. Maureen had assumed Morello had put something out over the radio about that development, but she couldn’t be positive. She hadn’t heard it. Morello had said he’d called Drayton on the phone to update him on the situation, but Maureen hadn’t heard him make that call. Now, with an ignorant Drayton rampaging around the bar, Morello had obviously lied to her about calling the detective. Why was Morello hiding from Drayton the fact that they’d caught someone? Like Dakota had said, people would be relieved to know the police had the shooter in custody. It was good news. Why hide having Goody in cuffs?
She took out her phone, looked at it. She tapped it against her thigh. If her coworkers involved in this case were not talking about catching someone, they didn’t want her talking about it. She sipped her cold coffee. Everything went cold so fast out here, she thought.
She put her phone back in her pocket and walked over to Hardin. “Excuse me, Sarge. I need a minute.”
Hardin dismissed the drunk boys he’d been talking to. “Y’all be careful, fellas. Behave. No driving.” He turned to Maureen. “What’s the problem, Officer?”
“Why doesn’t Drayton know we caught somebody?” Maureen asked. “That bartender just called me. She said Drayton’s at the scene of the shooting, and he’s ripping Faye and Kornegay a new asshole trying to find out what’s going on with the case.”
Hardin waved a dismissive hand. “They can handle his abuse. You’re new to him, but the rest of us, we’ve been dealing with his shit for years. Don’t worry about them. They’re big boys.”
“She said he mentioned my name, too. And he’s looking for Wilburn and Cordts.”
“It’s not hard to find out who worked the scene,” Hardin said.
“It wasn’t in a positive context.”
“Don’t worry about him,” Hardin said, slower, obviously trying to make an impression. “Like I
said before, I will handle Drayton.”
Maureen’s phone buzzed. She checked the screen. Drayton. She showed it to Hardin. “It’s him.”
“Don’t answer it,” Hardin said. “Ignore him. Stick with me on this. That’s the best move. That’s what Cordts and Wilburn are doing, I promise you.”
“Morello never called him, did he?” Maureen asked. “He called you, not Drayton, when we got Goody out from under the house. You’re running this thing.”
“I’m the sergeant. Until someone gets a promotion, I’m the lieutenant, too. So it’s my job to run things.”
Hardin raised his chin at something over her shoulder. Maureen turned and looked. A patrol car waited for her at the end of Sixth Street, blue lights flashing. Her ride.
“Why would we not tell him we caught someone?” she asked.
“Officer, your ride is here,” Hardin said. “Unless you want to walk that mile in the rain?”
Maureen wondered now if this reconnaissance mission Hardin had assigned her was meant to get her out of the way. Did Hardin, Morello, Wilburn, and Cordts have plans for Goody they didn’t want her knowing about? She was new; they all knew one another. She’d seen her fellow officers take matters into their own hands. She’d done it herself, almost losing more than her career in the process. So she’d promised herself she wasn’t going to participate in any more of that bloody business. But was looking away from it, she asked herself, any better, any less corrupt, than not participating?
Everybody knew Mardi Gras had its own rules and requirements, and that they existed for the safety of the greater good. What she didn’t know, she realized, because she simply hadn’t been in New Orleans long enough, was what those special rules and requirements were. And if she blew it today, she’d never get the chance to learn.
Fuck me running, she thought. I hate being the fucking new girl. Nobody trusts me. And I, she thought, don’t trust them very much.
“What’s the plan here, Sarge?” Maureen asked. “Why would we not tell anyone we caught a suspect? Isn’t that good news? Just tell me what to do here. You can trust me. You have to know that by now.”
“Look at me, Coughlin. You have your orders. Go down to Erato Street and get me a report. That’s the plan. That’s your role in the plan. The master plan, before you ask, is for you to follow my goddamn orders.”
“Ten-four. Yes, sir. If anybody over there asks about an arrest, what do I say?”
“You tell them the truth,” Hardin said, his patience gone. “That you don’t know a fucking thing.” He wasn’t pissed at her alone, Maureen could tell. He was mad that Drayton had turned up so soon asking questions. Someone who mattered had lit a fire under him and now the detective was in the way, a nagging monkey wrench in Hardin’s plan, whatever it was.
“Let me put it this way,” he said, calmer now, “I’m sending you down there to ask questions, not to answer them. Now, go.”
Maureen went.
She was climbing into the patrol car when she heard Hardin shouting her name. He sounded even less happy with her than he’d been only moments ago.
“Gimme another minute,” she said to the officer behind the wheel.
“Take your time. I got all night. Better you than me.”
She met Hardin on the street corner. He was squeezing his phone in his massive hand.
“What’s up, Sarge?”
Hardin, his chest heaving, took a moment to calm himself, then he said, “I got a call. The superintendent of the NOPD and the commander of the Sixth District are on their way to the scene of the shooting, where they are very much looking forward to joining Detective Drayton in announcing an arrest to the press. At the mayor’s direct insistence. This is happening in an hour.”
Maureen pulled her knit hat down over her eyes. “Oh, my.” Well, now they knew who was prodding Drayton into action. Even he jumped when the mayor called.
“Did you know about this?” he asked.
“The press conference?”
“Do not fuck with me, Officer. Now is not the time. Did you know that word had gotten out? Did you leak that we had a suspect in custody?”
“I have no idea what is going on right now,” Maureen said. “That is the absolute truth. I swear to you. I was here, with you, while whatever happened was happening. I spent the last ten minutes demonstrating my ignorance to you. Maybe Morrison let something slip?”
“I talked to Morrison.” Hardin wiped his hand down his wet face. “She said nothing. She knows better.” Maureen couldn’t tell if it was rain or sweat running down his cheeks. He held up his phone. “I’ve got orders. I have to meet DC Skinner at the crime scene within the hour to give him a full report about the shooting investigation so he can brief the mayor and the superintendent before making his arrest announcement in front of the news cameras. I can’t tell Skinner there’s no arrest.”
“Maybe Skinner doesn’t know about Goody,” Maureen said. “Maybe he’s hearing rumors and assuming we caught somebody. Or maybe this is his way of pressuring us into working faster. Maybe he wants you to lie to him? Who would know that we didn’t catch someone if we said we did? Right?”
“But we did catch somebody,” Hardin said. “And there’s a good chance he’s the guy who did it. I can’t send my boss to his boss empty-handed when we do have someone in custody. I can’t tell that lie. Word would get out after the fact. I’d be toast. We’d all be toast, everyone involved. Me, you, Wilburn, Cordts, Morello. That dick Drayton would be the only one left standing.”
“Fuck that,” Maureen said. “I still don’t get why we haven’t told Drayton about Goody. We didn’t make the formal arrest because then the kid can invoke Miranda, which, considering his record, he’ll know to do. I get that. But why not let Drayton question him without arresting him while he’s detained in the car? Isn’t that the next logical step? And it’s not like we never do that. The way things are now, Goody’s sitting in the backseat of the cruiser giving us nothing.”
“It’s like this,” Hardin said. “The minute Drayton catches up to Goody, he’ll arrest him.”
“Why would he do that?” Maureen asked. “He knows Goody will dummy up when he gets arrested and we’ll get nothing useful about preventing the next shooting.”
“Drayton doesn’t care about the next shooting,” Hardin said. “That’s the problem. That’s why we’re hiding Goody from him. The second Drayton makes this arrest, the investigation ends. All he cares about is clearing tonight’s case, getting his attaboys from the brass and the press, and going back to watching porn with his shoes off. Once he makes it official with Goody, we have to take him to the jail wagon. Goody then goes to lockup, Drayton goes back to district, and our best lead on any other violence going down tonight and maybe for the next five days disappears into the system. None of us will have the time or the opportunity to go get him before Ash Wednesday.
“And what about making sure no one else gets shot this weekend?” Maureen asked. “What about that?”
“That’s up to us,” Hardin said. “Not Drayton, not Skinner, not the mayor. Us, out here working the parade. Now go get me some good news for the bosses, and good intelligence for us. Because of this press conference, we have to let Drayton make his arrest very soon. We’re going to lose Goody as a resource within the hour. Go find out for me if we can safely do that. We’re in an even bigger hurry now than we were before.”
26
Maureen’s ride dropped her off at Prytania and Erato Streets, in a neighborhood called the Lower Garden District, where most of the streets were named after muses or saints.
Though the parade was in full swing again, she had an easy time navigating her way across St. Charles to the lake side of the avenue. The Lower Garden parade-goers were for the most part a younger and funkier and grungier and more diverse lot than their more monied compatriots farther uptown on the other side of Jackson Avenue. Many people down here attended the parades in costume, the outfits often homemade. Maureen felt more at home i
n the LGD than she did in the heart of the Garden District. The people of the Lower Garden reminded her of her neighbors in the Irish Channel. Fewer doctors, lawyers, oilmen, former Saints, and current mayors, and more service-industry vets, shop owners, tattoo artists, electrical contractors, and ironworkers. They drank more, and drank stronger stuff, but they were older and they held it better than the fearless and brainless teenagers like Rob and Don farther uptown. The policing was different at this end of the route, as well.
While there were fewer parade-goers on the route in the LGD, there were more cops per block than up by where Maureen had been stationed earlier that night. They worked in larger teams, too. Where on her part of the route the cops worked in twos and threes, down here they stationed themselves in groups of six or seven. They hung almost exclusively on the back side of the route, keeping nearer the bars and drugstores and fast-food joints along that part of St. Charles than they stood to the parade. Maureen knew only the best officers worked this part of the route. This year, the two tactical squads and the gang task force were among the other experienced officers back in their blues and taking their turn with the lower part of the Uptown half of the route. Pairs of mounted officers sat atop their horses on every other block. The reasoning behind the differing personnel and strategy was simple.
While a shooting on Maureen’s part of the route was an anomaly, a shooting along this section of the parade route had become an annual event, almost every shooting the result of a petty fight that had started somewhere else at some other time—back in this neighborhood, on the streets of another neighborhood, at school. Most everyone involved in the violence was a teenager or not much older. On a parade night, the guy you were beefing with was in that crowd somewhere, most likely on the back side of the route among the saints and the muses. Not only was the route a good place to make your move, it was a good place to make a statement.
Some of the fighting was rooted in school rivalries. Some of it was the result of neighborhood beefs. A lot of it was gang-related. Alcohol fueled some of it; drugs drove more. Hormones played a part, too. Knowing the players was valuable intelligence, which was why tactical and gangs got stationed here. They knew what faces to look for, and they knew the chatter on the streets. They had the best eyes for who had come to make trouble, and who had come to enjoy the festivities. They confiscated guns and made arrests on a regular basis. Hardin was smart to look for intelligence down here. Maureen hoped she could deliver it.
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