Let the Devil Out

by Bill Loehfelm

  “These people who live here,” she said, “don’t need to be smelling your piss with their morning coffee. Mind your fucking manners next time you go out. Or better yet, stay home.”

  Then she kicked his keys under a nearby car. She heard them jingle as they dropped down a storm drain. A happy accident, she thought. She pulled a ten-dollar bill from her pocket, tossed it in the puddle.

  “Call a cab,” she told the man at her feet.

  Walking away, her heart racing, sweat beading along her hairline, she felt better, higher, smoother than she had since they’d taken her badge. Like cold, clear water had flushed out her veins. She took what felt like her first honest deep breath in months. Once, she’d told herself as she popped a piece of gum into her mouth. I do this once.

  Kid had it coming, she thought. I didn’t really hurt him. He’ll hardly even remember it. Just this once.

  * * *

  Turning from Philip onto Constance, she finally lit that cigarette she’d been craving. The pink-faced boy with piss on his shoes had been her first time. And now she’d done it for the last time.

  Tomorrow she’d be Officer Coughlin again. She’d find other ways to satisfy her less professional cravings. The job and the city she did it in were good to her that way. She and New Orleans, they were made for each other.

  Maureen limped off into the dark, trailing smoke behind her into the night sky like a dragon.

  7

  The next morning, in her sunlit bedroom, her closet half-empty, her clothes strewn across her bed, Maureen changed her outfit five different times. She’d be so glad to be working in a uniform again.

  She finally committed, more out of frustration than preference, to the outfit she’d started with: black cotton slacks and a matching jacket, under which she wore a button-up white top. Instead of her black boots she wore a pair of black patent-leather wedges. The combination made the closest thing she owned to a business suit. This was how you looked like you meant business off the streets, she thought. Clothes like this proved you were a grown-up. This was the uniform of offices, of courtrooms, of people talking over a desk or a conference table and not over the hood of a patrol car at three in the morning. People who weren’t borderline crippled by what they’d done the night before. She bent forward, her hands on her knees, taking deep breaths.

  Her hangover was brutal. Epic. A record-setter. Her ankle throbbed like a second panicked heart. A pulsing reminder of the violence she’d dished out. At least, she thought, someone out there was having a worse morning than her. She felt like she was moving through glue. She was almost ready to leave. Almost.

  She took off her jacket and blouse, laid them carefully on the foot of the bed. In her bare feet, she walked into the bathroom. She tied her hair up, and in her slacks and white bra, made herself throw up one more time, her knuckles white as she gripped the cold rim of the bowl. Nothing but bile came up; she was empty inside.

  She struggled to stand up straight, her stomach muscles sore and cramping from the morning’s efforts. At the sink, she blew her nose, brushed her teeth again, and rinsed her mouth with cold water and mouthwash. She rinsed her eyes with Visine, blinking at the bathroom ceiling as the saline ran down her cheeks. She checked her nails one more time. Her fingers were raw from the scrubbing she’d given them, but no blood remained, no dirt. Relax, Lady Macbeth, she thought. That was the beauty of the ASP. Using the weapon saved her hands. Sticking to body shots minimized the blood. Externally, anyway, which was Maureen’s main concern.

  In front of the mirror, leaning over the sink for a closer look, she touched on modest makeup, mostly around the eyes. She let her hair down, brushed it.

  Returning to the bedroom, she dressed again.

  She searched the jewelry box on top of her dresser for her favorite earrings, a pair of sterling silver fleurs-de-lis. She should show loyalty to the cause. They were a gift she’d given herself on her thirtieth birthday. For twenty-nine she’d gotten a nose ring. Her nose had gotten infected and she’d hardly worn it. A dumb idea, anyway. She checked her nostril in the mirror, touched the side of it with her fingertip. The tiny hole was gone. As if it had never been there. As if she had never made that bad decision. She touched the space under her nose, the indentation in her top lip. She thought of Dice, who had a stud punched through her own top lip, right there in the middle.

  She tossed the earrings back in the jewelry box. Whatever. Fuck it, she thought. She’s not my problem. I’m not a goddamn social worker. She slammed the box closed.

  She realized, taking one final look in the mirror, that she had picked out, with the exception of having switched out a blue top for white, the same outfit she’d worn to her hearings with the Public Integrity Bureau. That wasn’t bad luck, right? No. It was good luck, she thought. She’d survived and was on her way to get her job back. Things had worked out for her.

  She had a horrible thought.

  Things had worked out provided the DC wasn’t putting her on a desk in the motor pool or the evidence room. What if that’s what waited for her after this favor for the feds?

  She put her hand over her eyes, as if hiding from the sight of her foolish self in the mirror. Oh God, she hadn’t considered that option until that very moment. Her stomach dropped through the floor. The brass and administrators knew how badly she wanted to stay in New Orleans. She hadn’t exactly kept it a secret. They knew she wanted to buy the house she was renting. That she had bills in the present and plans for her future.

  For the first time in her life, she had plans beyond surviving the next shift. She needed her paycheck. She needed her benefits. Why? Why had she let them see, let them know what she wanted, what she hoped for? They’d use it against her. Especially if she bungled this thing with the FBI. Then the brass would really screw her. Royally.

  Calm down, she told herself. Preacher would know if the DC planned on backstabbing her. He would have warned her. He wouldn’t let her get her hopes up if he knew she was getting shafted. Preacher wouldn’t let her go blind and unaware to her own demise. She had faith in that, in him.

  She checked her phone. Twenty minutes to get to the DC’s office. These questions, she’d have answers to them soon enough.

  8

  Maureen arrived at DC Skinner’s office with three minutes to spare. He came out into the lobby, met her with a smile and a handshake. Skinner told her he was sorry but she’d have to wait another fifteen minutes or so. She didn’t care. She’d survived six weeks in exile. She could wait another fifteen minutes. Hell, she could wait twenty. He made her wait twenty-five. She did the last minutes of her penance with a smile on her face. She drank three cups of ice-cold water from the cooler. She practiced her deep breathing.

  She was checking her hands one more time when Skinner opened the door. He smiled at her, beckoned her into his office. Maureen brushed her hair off her shoulders and followed him in. As she entered and eased closed the door, Skinner returned to his seat behind his desk.

  Deep breaths, she told herself. A steady voice and eye contact. Show him, she thought. Prove to this man that he can trust you.

  Skinner’s office reminded Maureen of what she imagined a small-town politician’s might look like. Big desk. Shelves heavy with books that had probably never been read. Framed awards and photos on the wall. A clean window with dusty blinds overlooking the police parking lot and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Local politician, she supposed, was part of the district commander’s job. Skinner looked the part. He was a tall, amiable, white-haired white guy with red cheeks and a jowly neck spotted red with shaving nicks. Bright, bright blue eyes.

  “Have a seat, Coughlin,” he said, his voice scratchy, as if maybe he’d had a few too many drinks himself the night before. Maureen noticed the office, or more likely the man, carried a whiff of expensive cigars. Definitely better quality than the shit Preacher smoked. “Certainly no need to drag this out any longer than we have to.”

  Maureen sat in the office chair before his d
esk. She crossed her legs, folded her hands in her lap. She uncrossed her legs, settled her arms on the arms of the chair. She had to pee. She cursed herself for the agitated fidgeting. She hated herself for wearing her hair down, for playing at being a girl. Skinner moved papers around on his desk. She’d been so much calmer following a strange man down a dark street. A man, she thought, who didn’t know she was there, who wasn’t looking right at her. A man with no power over her.

  “A month and a half off with pay,” Skinner said, rocking back in his big leather chair, “and without a damn thing to do. Not a lot of people would consider that punishment.”

  What Maureen wanted to say was You have no idea. What she wanted to tell him was Having not a damn thing to do made me fucking crazy. Another two weeks, she thought, and y’all would’ve been coming to get me, blue lights blazing.

  What she said was “I’d rather have been on the job, sir. Earning my pay. I’m not a fan of the sidelines.” Her mouth was bone-dry. She licked her lips. “Though I certainly understand why things had to happen the way they did.”

  “What’s happened over the past month and a half took a lot of thought, and a lot of planning. The final decision was not unanimous.” He came forward in his chair, his feet on the floor. “I handpicked you for the Sixth District out of the academy. Made a big deal of it. Both the Eighth and the Second wanted you, too, but I got you, because I’m the senior man. You remember that?”

  “I do, sir,” Maureen said. “Preacher made sure I knew. And I’m grateful.”

  “I bragged about you. Academy valedictorian. First place in the hand-to-hand combat competition. Smart, tough, and female. Everything that makes me and my district look good. How you think it looks if my supergirl implodes after three months on the job?”

  “You look like Mickey Loomis wasting a first-round draft pick, sir.”

  He grinned in spite of himself. He knew she was kissing his ass with the football bullshit, Maureen realized. She could tell he appreciated the effort.

  “And that is a thing that Mr. Loomis does not like to do, is it, Coughlin?”

  “I’d imagine not, sir.”

  “The reason I say these things, Coughlin, is this. What you do on the job, in our uniform, affects a lot more people than you—like the next woman who shines coming through the academy, for instance. Three DCs don’t chase her for their districts like we did you if you blow it, Coughlin.”

  He slid open a desk drawer, removed something from it. Her badge and her ID. Maureen felt her eyes widen. She tried to stop her reaction, and failed.

  The DC set the badge in the center of his desk. “I want you to have this. A lot of people around here want you to have it.” He paused. “And there are some that don’t. Quinn was a cop in this city a long time. He stayed for the storm. He stayed after.”

  Maureen leaned forward to speak. Before she could say anything, Skinner raised his hand to stop her.

  “The fact that you’re even here,” Skinner said, “should tell you that you’ve been heard on the Quinn matter. I’m not telling you what’s right. We’re not here discussing principles. I’m telling you how some of the people you work with think. What they know Quinn did, what they saw, will always count more with them than the things you said he did.”

  Don’t reach across the desk for that badge, she told herself, don’t reach for it until he offers. Skinner noticed her staring. She couldn’t hide it.

  “I want you to keep it,” Skinner said. “You’ll outlast this bullshit. You’re already most of the way there. I want you to sit in this chair someday. Or the next chair up. Or as head of Homicide.”

  And you’ll be there to take credit for it, Maureen thought, and to brag to your buddies. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate your confidence.”

  “You can be a hell of a cop, Coughlin, if you can just get your shit together.” He picked up the badge and held it out to her. “And keep it together.”

  When Maureen leaned forward and reached for her badge and ID, he pulled it back.

  She froze, her rear end half a foot off the chair. “Sir?”

  “There’s one thing you have to do for me,” the commander said.

  Shake that ass for me, Maureen thought. One more time. She settled back into her chair. Here it comes, she thought, the deal with the FBI. In her excitement, she’d forgotten about it. The reason she was here. “I’m all ears.”

  “You have to promise me,” Skinner said, “that you will consider seeing someone, talking to someone about what you’ve been through.”

  For a fleeting moment of high panic, Maureen thought he meant the silver-haired man. How could he possibly know?

  Or did Staten Island have nothing to do with it? Had her recent night work in New Orleans come to light? That was more likely.

  Wouldn’t make sense, though, she thought, to be giving her back her badge if he knew she’d been out at night playing vigilante.

  “Between what you went through with Quinn,” Skinner said, “and what happened at your house, those things are tough on anyone. To be honest, you look considerably frayed. Even after the time off. I expected better.” He paused, waiting for Maureen to consent to his assessment. “Maybe too much booze and not enough sleep,” Skinner said. He paused again.

  Maureen blinked at him. Wow. It was that bad. Her hand went to her mouth. As if her breath were the only thing that might give her away. She wanted to crawl out of the room.

  “I’ve been around cops a long time,” Skinner said. “I was here during Katrina, and for after. I have a pretty good eye for what a particularly stressed officer looks like.”

  Maureen straightened in her chair. “I’m in the best shape of my life. My doctor says I have the resting heart rate of a professional athlete.”

  “You don’t have to see a department shrink.” If Skinner was impressed with her physical conditioning, she thought, he hid it well. “Or any shrink. But collect yourself. Smarten up.” He touched his finger to his chest. “I’m sending you out on the street with a gun. Me.”

  “I will take care of it,” Maureen said.

  “I have your word?”

  She swallowed. She remembered that being a cop meant she would now spend a lot of time around people who read others as well as or better than she did. Skinner didn’t get where he was by being easily fooled. “You do.”

  Skinner reached her badge across the desk. Maureen took it, the badge warm from being held in the DC’s hand. Her hand shook. She didn’t care if he saw. She slipped the badge into her jacket pocket. She felt a foot taller with the weight of it against her breast.

  “Becoming a cop is one thing,” the DC said. “Staying one, that’s another thing entirely. And surviving New Orleans, that’s its own thing again. Nothing wrong with getting help. Even Drew Brees has coaches. Going back to our talk of Mr. Loomis, you got drafted, and you made the cut at training camp.” He waited for her to finish the story. She wasn’t sure what was supposed to come next.

  “Sir?”

  “The easy part is over, rookie. The academy, the training. The coddling, the encouragement, that’s done. Time to do real work starts now if you want to stay on the team. These are the times that separate the men from the, well”—he smiled—“you know what I mean.”

  “I do, I’m ready,” Maureen said. “I’m good to go. Who dat.”

  “Good, that’s what I like to hear.” He studied her, thinking. “The department has looked out for you. It’s time to start paying back the favors.”

  “Name it, sir,” Maureen said. This was it, she thought. She was ready.

  “The FBI has reached out to us in the Sixth District,” Skinner said, “about the Clayton Gage homicide. The father of the victim has come to town asking questions. The FBI wants you to talk to him. You feel up to the task?”

  “I don’t know a whole lot about what happened,” Maureen said.

  “If what you want to tell the man,” Skinner said, “is what you don’t know, that’s fine with me. I was asked to
ask you to take the meeting.”

  “I’ll meet him. Of course. What do I do? I don’t know how these interagency things work.”

  Skinner shrugged. “They work however the feds want them to work. I was told someone from the FBI will reach out to you, sometime today. He’ll have the details. He’ll probably coach you up a bit, too.”

  “So this is part of a bigger investigation?” Maureen asked.

  “Like I said, I was asked to ask you if you would take the phone call and the meeting. That’s as far as I go in this.”

  “Yeah, tell the agent to call me. Absolutely, sir.”

  “I don’t have to tell you,” Skinner said, “that pleasing the feds—FBI, DOJ, feds of any stripe—is good for the department. Part of the reason I recruited you for the Sixth was to make me look good. Here’s a big chance for you to contribute.”

  “Happy to have it, sir,” Maureen said. “I won’t let you down.”

  “You’re on night shift tomorrow,” Skinner said. He stood, extended his hand across the desk. “Welcome back, Officer Coughlin. What is it the kids on the street call you?”

  Maureen shot up from her seat and reached for his hand. She shook it hard. She had her badge in her pocket. Tomorrow night she’d be back in uniform. Everything was right with the world. “OC, sir. They call me OC. Some of the other officers, too. You know, for Officer Coughlin.”

  “Now, please,” Skinner said, checking his watch, “let’s get back to what we call normal around here.” He sat back down behind his big desk. “Don’t let me see you in here again unless it’s for a commendation or a promotion.”

  9

  That afternoon, groggy from a long nap and pain pills, Maureen sat on her front porch wrapped in a Mexican blanket, her legs folded beneath her. She clutched a steaming cup of fresh coffee. In an ashtray on the table beside her a cigarette burned. The sky over the Irish Channel was the color of her ashes and the air was cold and damp. The warmth in her palms from the coffee mug helped push back the chill.