Let the Devil Out

by Bill Loehfelm

  “The Watchmen Brigade,” Maureen said. “What do you know about them?”

  “They sound like people I would hear about?”

  “They’ve been doing business in the city since the summer. Especially in this neighborhood. Buying guns, selling guns. Throwing lots of cash around, talking about a war. A revolution.”

  Little E nodded. “Now that you mention it that way. They the ones doing business with Bobby Scales, hiding their guns at his place.” He pointed to the NOPD emblem on her jacket. “I thought y’all put a stop to that business when Bobby went in the river with that cop.”

  When Bobby went in the river, Maureen thought. Pretty diplomatic of you, Mr. Etienne. She wondered how much he had learned from Preacher. “So you knew Bobby Scales, knew his business?”

  E slugged his beer. “I knew of him. I kept my distance from his business, believe that.” He looked away, down at the street. “You see where it got him.”

  Maureen recalled the times she’d observed Preacher working an informant, smooth and rhythmic in the way he talked, his questions and tone guiding the snitch this way then that way, massaging, like a man gently polishing clear a smudged marble surface. She thought of watching Atkinson hammer a suspect in the box, direct and relentless as a pile driver. This was a time for Preacher’s way. The information you wanted, she’d learned from him, you had to circle it, come at it from the side, indirect. If you led the person right toward the prized information, the one important answer, they’d anticipate what you wanted, they could see the next question coming, and the question after that, and they’d start planning their answers, lining up their lies. You’d never get a clear picture through the smudges.

  “Preacher and me,” Maureen said. “We were working on something before he got shot. He said you could help with it. He told me you specifically. He’d be here himself, you know, if today hadn’t happened. I’m here with you because he needs your help.”

  “Makes me sad,” Little E said, “what happened to him. Preacher’s a good man. We’ve had our things, you know, our differences, like friends do, but he done right by me most of the time. By a lot of people in this neighborhood. A lot of fellas in this neighborhood making ends instead of doing time because Preacher a real-world person. He know when someone need a break. Always.” Etienne dragged his wrist under his runny nose. “Fuck. I was eight years old, selling peanuts up Napoleon Avenue on the parade route first time I met Preacher. He used to come in the Fox, drink a beer with my old man on Super Sundays.”

  Maureen smiled. “Selling peanuts? Exactly how’d you ‘meet’ Preacher?”

  “Yeah, well, you know.” He couldn’t stop his grin. “Pick up a lost wallet or two. Lot of people drop their wallet while they chasing beads. It happens. You work Mardi Gras, you’ll see.”

  “I bet I will.”

  “But I don’t know nobody,” Etienne said. “I don’t know nothin’ about nobody out killing cops.”

  Maureen waved the idea away. “It’s not that. I know that if you knew something that would put me on the Watchmen, you would’ve told me by now. You wouldn’t waste my time with memory lane. Not with Preacher nursing bullet wounds. I want to know about the grocery, the one on Washington and Magnolia.”

  Etienne’s eyes darted sideways for an instant. Bingo. She had him.

  “It a grocery. Chips, cold drinks, nothin’ special.”

  “I’m not looking to go shopping,” Maureen said. “The white Camaro. The dude with the white pit bull and the sweaters. What’s the story?”

  “You the police,” Etienne said. “You tell me.”

  “Couple weeks ago, the boys out front were in red. Nowadays, they’re different boys and they’re wearing white. I wanna know why.”

  “You asking about shit that’s over my head. I don’t run with fellas like that. Red or white.”

  “I’m not asking for the whole operation,” Maureen said. “Tell me what you’re hearing, what’s floating around in the air. Rumors. Talk.”

  Little E let out a long sigh. Maureen lit two cigarettes, gave him one. He said, “The dude with the dog, Big Mike, I don’t know him. Them boys with him make like they a Josephine Street crew, and maybe Big Mike is, I don’t go around asking, and maybe some of them J-Street boys is over there with him now, but word is them boys hanging around wearing white is really downtown muscle. The reds, they was two uptown neighborhood crews really, and they started beefing with each other, like internally. Right about that time the Iberville started getting torn down, which eliminated prime Fourth Ward territory.”

  “So Big Mike,” Maureen said, “he’s making a move on this neighborhood by bringing in those Fourth Ward boys, using them for muscle in exchange for kicking something back to them.”

  Etienne shrugged. “Their spots in the Iberville are torn up now. Their neighborhood is gone. Ain’t there no more. Nobody living there, and the new place is going to look like that Harmony place across from the grocery, nice and shit. Prob’ly put a school there, too. Times are changing, I guess.”

  “So how did news of two uptown crews beefing get down to the Iberville?”

  “You got me,” Etienne said. “Small city, you know. Everybody in the same business, basically. Word travels.”

  Maureen moved half a step closer to Etienne. “No. No. There’s more to it than that. It’s a big leap, a big power move, bringing people from way down the Iberville up to Central City. Especially for someone like Big Mike, who’s not real known as far as I can tell, certainly not outside this neighborhood.”

  “I mean, I don’t know,” Etienne said. “I’ve never been in the game. I use every now and then, I ain’t gonna lie, but I ain’t like in it, ya know?”

  “And yet you do seem to know quite a bit,” Maureen said.

  E stepped away from her. He straightened his coat. “No offense, but shouldn’t you be after those boys that shot y’all’s own? You know how we do. You don’t like Big Mike, give it six months, someone else be out in front of that store with a different car and a different dog and everyone be wearing, I don’t fucking know, whatever the fuck, purple or some shit.”

  “Back to Big Mike,” Maureen said. “Here’s what I’m thinking. There’s one key thing that he would need to exploit a crisis like a gang beef with new muscle from outside the neighborhood. He’d need a broker, a go-between.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Etienne said. “I’m not smart enough to follow you. I’m just a convict. And I’m getting cold.”

  “An inside man,” Maureen said. “A matchmaker would make a move like Big Mike’s so much easier. An inside man would get himself paid and protected greasing the wheels for a man like Big Mike, a big mover like him.”

  Little E raised his beer can to his mouth, but he’d drunk it dry. He studied the empty can, tossed it in the gutter, jammed his hands in his coat pockets. “If you say so, Officer. You’re the one trained in this shit.”

  Maureen closed the distance between them again, steeling herself against his stench. “I want you to stand there and tell me you haven’t seen Shadow hanging around these past couple of weeks. Everything that’s gone on, you haven’t been hearing his name?”

  “Shadow?”

  “Yeah, Shadow. I’m stuttering? This alliance with the Iberville guys, you think that doesn’t have Shadow written all over it?”

  Etienne’s mouth hung open as he thought of what to say.

  “Don’t you fucking lie to me,” Maureen said. She touched the leather over her ribs. The ASP rested in an inside pocket. She’d carried it with her everywhere she’d gone tonight. She didn’t want to use it on Little E. He was small and scared, cold and weak. Not the kind of person she carried it for. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t use it if he left her no choice. “Don’t you lie to me, E. Not now, not tonight.”

  “I heard things,” Etienne said. “I heard this was Shadow’s big move. Y’all saw to that, you gave him the opportunity. Getting rid of Scales like y’all did opene
d up the game for Big Mike.”

  “One goes down,” Maureen said, “and another steps up.”

  “Only, you know Shadow,” Etienne said. “He never the man on the throne. He the man behind the man, that’s how he do. Someone else always get to take the fall.”

  “Not this time,” Maureen said. “This time it’s him I want.”

  “Get in line,” Little E said. He stamped his feet against the cold. His discomfort was making him brave. “Nobody know where Shadow stay. You think you’re the first cop to ask me that? Damn, OC.”

  Maureen reached into her jacket pockets. She pulled out her leather gloves. E’s eyes got wide. She’d been standing there with her hands turning blue to preserve that effect. She slid one hand into a black glove then the other. “I’m not the first cop to ask that, but, and this I promise you, I am the most persuasive. I’m the one asking tonight.” She flexed her fingers in her gloves. The leather creaked. “Where is he?”

  “Whoa, whoa, Officer.” Etienne went to step back, his hands in the air. “Preacher wouldn’t do me like this.”

  “Preacher ain’t here,” Maureen said, moving in closer. “He’s laid up in a hospital bed, and Shadow knows the guys behind it.” She reached out, put her hand on E’s shoulder. Her touch was light. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know that,” Etienne said. “I don’t. There’s no way I would know that. Shadow is a player. I’m a piss stain. You know that. C’mon, now. You scaring me.”

  “How many fucking times you gonna make me ask you the same fucking question?”

  She twisted the shoulder of Etienne’s coat in her fist. A thought occurred to her. Solomon Heath wasn’t the only one who could’ve given Preacher away.

  She said, “Preacher took three bullets. Preacher was having lunch in street clothes. How did the Watchmen know who he was unless someone told them? You ask me, that rat was Shadow. He knows who Preacher is, what he looks like. He knew the Watchmen before Scales did. It connects.”

  “If you say so. I got no love for Shadow. Fuck him. It ain’t about that. I plain don’t know where he is.”

  What if I beat the daylights out of him, Maureen thought, and he doesn’t know shit? She released his shoulder. Then he’s useless to me. Tonight and every other night going forward. And it’s not impossible someone finds out how he got torn up, she thought, especially if he ends up in the emergency room like the last guy she’d tuned up with the ASP. This encounter’s not anonymous like the Marigny and the Irish Channel, she thought; there are witnesses this time. Three guys saw her pull up and ask for Little E. Three guys heard her chase them away so she could be alone with E. Tonight, she was out in full uniform. She wasn’t skulking around town in a hoodie. She wasn’t sneaking up on anyone. She zipped up her jacket. Besides, odds were Little E didn’t know where Shadow stayed. But he would know someone who did. That was a fact.

  Maybe there’d be two, three degrees of separation, but E would have a connection he could tap for information. He’d been around the neighborhood too long, had absorbed too much. He might not even know he had it. But she’d inspire him to find that connection. She would simply stop asking, stop giving him chances to deny her and treat him as if he’d already agreed to help.

  “Come with me to the car,” she said.

  Little E grumbled but he followed. At the front of the car, she said, “Wait here.”

  Maureen opened the passenger door of the cruiser, grabbed a plastic shopping bag off the seat.

  In the bag was a prepaid cell phone she’d bought for cash at an all-night convenience store on Broad Street. The transaction would be on the security video, but she’d done what she could to obscure the item she was purchasing. She tore open the hard plastic packaging and made sure the phone was activated. She took out her own smartphone, found the number for the Big Man Lounge, and programmed it into the prepaid. Then she handed that phone to Little E. He stared at it like Maureen had handed him a live hand grenade with no pin.

  “I’m a snitch,” he said. “This is starting to feel like some kind of mission.”

  “Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Maureen said. “You’re gonna go around the way and catch up to your boys, and the four of you are gonna make like messenger pigeons and get word out to Shadow that the NOPD wants to speak with him. You put it out there, no arrest, no jail. We want to talk only. Tonight only. When the meeting’s over, he walks away. It’s a chance for him to score some points with us. Points he will need to cash in one day.”

  She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You’re going to call me at the Big Man on that phone I gave you. The number’s in the phone. Sun’s up in about three hours. My shift is over in four. That’s the duration of this offer. We don’t see Shadow tonight, we’re tearing the neighborhood down. SWAT, Tactical, the state police, the FBI, everybody’s coming. Because when I go back to the district to file my report, I’m putting Shadow and the Watchmen together, I’m telling everyone that you told me Shadow was laid up in Central City and we’re coming looking—for him and for you.

  “We’re hitting Big Mike and his crew first. And I’m gonna make sure Mike knows you had a chance to stop the storm from happening and didn’t get it done. And Shadow won’t be helping anyone else up onto the throne because there won’t be a throne. There won’t be a kingdom. I’m coming through and burning everything down. You think the Iberville got torn down? You ain’t seen nothing.”

  “I, uh, no disrespect,” Little E said, “but the Big Man closed.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Maureen said. “You get word to Shadow. You call me when he’s on his way to the Big Man.”

  Etienne looked at the phone in his hand and Maureen knew his thinking. He could get five, maybe even ten dollars for that phone, a burner with all its time on it, within five blocks in any direction of where they stood. He could toss it down the nearest storm drain and tell Maureen someone had taken it off him. He knew enough that even if the 82nd Airborne came through the neighborhood the next day, their interest in him wouldn’t last. He was too small-time. For the game. For the law. His smallness was what allowed him to survive, and E knew it.

  “I want you to think about something,” Maureen said. “I want you to think about the times, the many, many times, that Preacher did right by you. The times he caught you fucking up and let it slide. You think about the jail you didn’t do because of Preacher. You don’t like me, you don’t want to do nothing for me, that’s fine. But I’m here representing him, and I’m calling in his favors.”

  Little E stared hard at the street, his chin on his chest. Maureen had no idea if she’d reached him. She’d threatened him, reasoned with him, appealed to his better nature. She didn’t know what else she could do, other than let him loose. The clock was ticking and she’d emptied her bag of tricks.

  “Hit it,” she said. “And let me hear from you soon.”

  An idea struck her as Little E walked away, something to add emphasis to her request and some urgency to Shadow’s response. She called Little E back to her. Shadow had become involved with the Watchmen because Ruiz and Quinn had something on him, something they used against him. What it was, Maureen had never learned, but Shadow didn’t know that. E looked at her expectantly.

  “You tell Shadow that I’ve been talking to Ruiz. Tell him it’s been passed on to me.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Make sure you tell him that,” Maureen said. “He’ll know what you mean. Trust me.”

  E walked away from her, murmuring to himself.

  30

  After E turned the corner in search of his friends, Maureen walked over to the Big Man.

  She rapped on the gate over the front door with her flashlight. She leaned in close to the door, listening for sounds from the inside. She heard faint jukebox music. No doubt the bar’s owner was there, trying to relax while he cleaned and counted, swept and mopped and sorted. Maybe sipping the night’s first cold beer, smoking the first unhurried cigarette. She knew the d
rill, she’d done it herself countless times, which meant she hated bothering the man. But times were different now, and there was shit she needed to get done.

  She rapped on the gate again, adding, “NOPD. Open up.”

  She glanced overhead. She saw that a security camera peered down at the entrance. The owner could double-check that it really was police at his front door. After she’d had a chance to talk with the man, she’d have to convince him to turn off that camera, and any other cameras in his place, for as long as she needed. She banged again with the flashlight, harder this time. The music went off inside the bar. Don’t do that, she thought. Don’t pretend you’re not in there. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.

  The door opened a few inches. “I didn’t call. There’s nothing going on in here.”

  “It’s not about that,” Maureen said.

  “I don’t know nothin’ about them boys on the steps,” he said. “Every now and again, they drink in here. Neighborhood fellas, they’re never any trouble for me. If they’re trouble for anyone else I don’t know nothin’ about that.”

  “This doesn’t involve them,” Maureen said. “Not directly.”

  “It’s been a long night, Officer,” the man said. “I won’t get out of here for at least another hour as it is.”

  “That’s actually a good thing,” Maureen said.

  The man frowned at her.

  “I’m Officer Maureen Coughlin. And you are?”

  “Gus LaValle.”

  “Mr. LaValle, the NOPD needs a favor from you.”

  LaValle looked down at the floor. “I know y’all have had a bad day. I don’t know what I can do.”

  “We’re pursuing leads about the shootings today,” Maureen said. “And we have to act quickly. We need your place for a meeting, tonight. Sometime between now and dawn.”

  LaValle chuckled. He opened the door wider, propped one arm up on the frame. He kept the gate between him and the outside world locked. “You want me to do the police a favor? In this neighborhood? What do you think that does to my business? I feel bad about them young officers getting killed, and them other two getting shot up. But not everyone around here feels like I do, you know what I’m saying? And I gotta live here, do business here. It was out-of-town crazies that shot at y’all. White boys. It wasn’t nobody from this neighborhood.”