Let the Devil Out

by Bill Loehfelm

  Maureen felt rage squeezing her throat closed. She fought to keep her head clear. She kept thinking about the fear in Preacher’s voice as he told his story. She imagined the wails of the wives of the two young officers who’d been killed. Patience, she told herself. Diplomacy. Don’t start with threats. They don’t leave much wiggle room. Get results right now, she thought, opening and closing her gloved fists. She couldn’t go back to Preacher’s bedside having blown up everything with her temper. He’d forgive her, maybe, but she’d never forgive herself. This night was her chance to make things right. To prove herself. To prove she wouldn’t always be the Sixth District problem child.

  “There’s things going on,” she said, “ties to this neighborhood that would surprise you. You work with me, nobody gets hurt. Nobody even gets arrested. I’m explaining the reality of things to you. Right now, I’m the one running things. I’m the only one who knows what’s going on. In a matter of hours, that is going to change. Everyone on the NOPD will know what I know. The FBI will know what I know. I’m going to have to tell them that I came to you for help, on the day four officers got shot, and that you turned me away.”

  She rested her hand on the metal gate. “You have to live with your neighbors, that’s true. And, believe me, I know how many of them are, especially about cops. But you have to live with us, too. We’re part of the neighborhood. Forever. Longer than Bobby Scales. Longer than Big Mike. And longer than whoever comes after him. We’re not going away. And we never, ever, ever forget.”

  LaValle’s face had hardened. “What exactly are you saying, Officer?”

  “I’m saying you can deal with me tonight,” Maureen said, “when I can control what happens. Or the circus comes to town tomorrow, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. You, either.” She paused. “All I need from you is a table and chairs inside and a little bit of time and patience.” She flashed a smile. “Maybe a drink or two.” She raised her eyes to the camera. “And for you to turn off the recorders when I ask you.”

  LaValle stared at her for a long time through the metal bars of his security gate.

  “You can stay in the office,” Maureen said. “You won’t even know we’re here.”

  She heard LaValle suck his teeth. Then she heard the brass bolt slide home as he unlocked the gate.

  31

  Once she was locked inside the Big Man Lounge, Maureen was stuck doing the one thing she hated the most: waiting. She flipped a chair and sat at a table where she inspected her gun. She eyed the whiskey bottles across the room behind the bar. She put her gun back in her holster, sitting and waiting, tracing her fingers over the scratches in the tabletop. Names. Curse words.

  LaValle was locked in his office, doing his numbers for the night. He’d taken three cold bottles of Budweiser back there with him. She’d halfheartedly tried to get him to leave her the key and go home. She realized right away she’d have an easier time getting answers out of Shadow than she’d have getting LaValle to turn his bar over to the cops.

  When she got tired of sitting, she got up from the table, put a dollar in the jukebox, played Otis Redding and Dr. John and Muddy Waters. Otis sat on the dock of the bay. Dr. John walked on gilded splinters.

  Everything, everything, everything gonna be all right this morning, Muddy sang.

  I fucking hope you’re right, she thought, pacing the smooth, cigarette-burned wood floor as the music played.

  When the music ended, she sat on a barstool, swiveling her seat, drumming her fingers on the bar, chain-smoking, staring at the phone behind the bar, listening to the New Orleans night’s activities on her police radio. Please keep this a quiet night, she thought. She prayed nothing happened that the other cops on patrol couldn’t handle. No all-calls tonight. Please. For one night let the neighborhood knuckleheads be reasonably well behaved. Let our bad reputation work in our favor for tonight, she thought.

  Maureen worried as she sat there that she’d misjudged Shadow’s involvement with the Watchmen. What if he was more hooked into them than she was guessing? Their connection was live if she was right about Shadow being the one who gave the description of Preacher. But wasn’t that what she was sitting there hoping for? That Shadow was in deep with the Watchmen. What if he led the Watchmen and their white van right to her? What if he walked in willing to do the job himself? Wasn’t likely Little E was going to pat him down first. She’d set herself up but good for another attempted assassination, she thought, for another shoot-out.

  Alone in this bar, she was cornered. Cases of bottled beer blocked the back door; she had checked, and it was padlocked anyway.

  She had backup in the neighborhood, but who knew if they’d respond fast enough.

  * * *

  Not long after Little E had left, Maureen had reached out to Wilburn and Cordts. They stopped by the bar and she filled them in on her plan. It wasn’t very complicated. Get Shadow to the Big Man. Make him talk about the Watchmen. By any means necessary. Wilburn and Cordts agreed to hang around the neighborhood and stick close to the bar as much as they could without completely neglecting their patrol assignment. That way, if something unexpected happened with Shadow, they’d only be blocks away. But that also meant, Maureen thought, if something unexpected happened, they’d be blocks away.

  Whether the meeting with Shadow went poorly or well, she’d be alone with him for most of it. Not that she was afraid of being alone in a room with Shadow. He’d taken her out once before, had surprised her from behind a blind corner during a foot chase in the Quarter and punched her right in the throat. None of that tonight, she thought. She was tougher now. Meaner. And she hoped she was smarter.

  When word came from Little E that Shadow was on his way, she’d call Wilburn and Cordts. She’d ask them to meet him outside the bar, make sure he was alone, and pat him down. She hadn’t decided whether she wanted Wilburn and Cordts inside the Big Man for her conversation with Shadow. She might not want witnesses to what she did. They couldn’t talk about what they hadn’t seen. She wanted to offer them that protection. If they needed it. She hoped things with Shadow didn’t go that route; she wasn’t looking to hurt him, simply reserving the right to do what was necessary.

  Maureen got up from the bar, walked around behind it. Whether or not she had booze on her breath wouldn’t be a deal breaker. Wasn’t like anything that happened in that bar would be spoken of again. Wasn’t going to be any paperwork. She searched the bottles. No Jameson. Disappointed but not discouraged, Maureen poured herself a double Jack Daniel’s in a plastic cup. She checked the wells. LaValle had burned his ice. So much the better, she thought. Not exactly the setting for kicking back with a cocktail. She downed the double shot. She felt the heat rise into her sinuses, felt the scorch in her throat, the match strike in her belly, felt the sparks drip lower. Grease for the machine. Her mouth filled with saliva, and she spat in the sink. She tossed the plastic cup in the trash, rolled her head on her shoulders. She laid a ten on the bar for the drink, tucked under her full ashtray. She lit a cigarette, pulled the smoke deep inside her.

  The phone behind the bar rang. Maureen answered. “Speak.”

  “That nigger Shadow coming to you,” Little E said. “That’s what I was told.”

  “Well done,” Maureen said. She hadn’t fully believed until that moment that she wouldn’t see the sunrise with nothing happening. She reached for the bottle of Jack, poured a single. Well, she thought, an Irish cop’s idea of a single. “I’m gonna tell Preacher you came through for him. Count on it.”

  “So we straight, then?” Little E said. “You and me, we done?”

  “For tonight,” Maureen said.

  “What you want me to do with this phone?”

  “Whatever the fuck you want,” Maureen said. “I was you, I’d toss it, and I’d stay far away from the Big Man tonight.”

  “You don’t gotta tell me twice. I’m out. Peace, OC.” Little E was gone.

  Maureen downed her shot. She checked her gun. She thought o
f going back to LaValle’s office, telling him if he needed a piss after those three beers that now was the time. She thought she’d tell him that Shadow was on his way. LaValle was a grown man, she thought. He had a phone in his office. He knew what it meant when it rang. And his bladder wasn’t her worry.

  She reached into her pocket and took out her cell phone.

  The right thing to do, the professional thing to do, was to call Detillier and tell him about Shadow. He was more qualified to do the questioning, especially in a huge case like this. The reason she’d been paired with Detillier in the first place was so the FBI could put her connections to the Watchmen to use, to better use than she and the NOPD could. And if Detillier was in the doghouse, she thought, giving him a fresh lead might be the thing to get him out of trouble. And if that were the case, wouldn’t he owe her a huge favor? How was that for turning the tables? She had no loyalty to Shadow. Sure, she’d promised through Little E that he would walk away free from the meeting with her. But, in the end, fuck Shadow. Too bad for him if the FBI needed him. Keeping promises to career criminals wasn’t a top priority for her.

  She scrolled through her contacts, found Detillier’s number. She hesitated.

  And what if he shows up with a dozen other guys and whisks Shadow away in a van? What if it would be hours, or days, before the feds got anything out of Shadow? What if lawyers got involved? That happens and here we are again, Maureen thought, waiting for, counting on the feds to come through and pluck us off the rooftop. No thanks. And really, what leverage did the FBI have? Shadow presented the same problem as Solomon Heath did. Unless he was suddenly inspired to incriminate himself, nobody had any proof that Shadow was guilty of anything.

  And what if another attack happened while the feds were dicking around with Shadow? Maureen thought. More shootings? A bomb, even? Who knew what else the Watchmen had up their sleeves. The FBI couldn’t, they wouldn’t, go after Shadow like she could. She had a freedom, at least that night in that bar, the FBI didn’t have.

  On the other hand, she thought, with Madison Leary dead, Shadow was the one lead, the only extant lead into the Watchmen that anybody, feds or local, had right now. She was done, done in the NOPD if she blew that lead. What if another attack happened then? How would she live with herself? She’d already maybe failed, despite what Preacher had said in the hospital, to stop the first attack by failing to find Madison Leary. What if she failed again?

  She took a deep breath. Okay, then. Me first, then him. We can both have him, she thought. I can make this work. She called Detillier. When he answered, she could tell he’d been asleep. I hope I never learn that, she thought, to sleep on a night like tonight, when there’s so much work to be done.

  “I might have something for you on the Watchmen,” Maureen said.

  “Might? Where are you?”

  “I’m working. Get up, make some coffee. And be ready to move. I’m gonna call you back in thirty minutes.”

  “Excuse me?” Detillier said. “You know who you’re talking to?”

  Maureen disconnected, slipped her phone back into her pocket.

  She went back to her table. She righted another chair, set it across the table from where she’d sat before. She put an empty ashtray on the table. She lit the mason-jar candle. Then she sat and waited again. This time the waiting was easier. This time she knew the wait would be short. She unzipped her leather jacket, making the ASP easier to reach.

  32

  Twenty minutes later, she heard someone bang three times on the metal gate. Either Wilburn or Cordts. The three bangs was their signal that Shadow had arrived and everything was copacetic. She got up from the table, found LaValle’s office in the back. She rapped a knuckle on the door. “They’re here,” she said. “Do not come out of this office for any reason until I come back and give you the all clear. For safety’s sake. Your safety. Am I understood?”

  LaValle hollered back that she was.

  Maureen walked to the front door and opened it.

  Shadow stood on the other side of the iron gate, a bored look on his face, his hands loose at his sides, his eyes so red Maureen thought he might have burst a few blood vessels. The weed stink off him made her own eyes water. He was slender with a small potbelly, and looking at him face-to-face Maureen realized he was not much taller than she was. She remembered him as a bigger man, taller and more rangy. Then again, she’d only gotten one good look at him, and that was from across the street before she knew who she was looking at. Back then, months ago, she’d had no reason to pay close attention; he was an older boy yelling at a younger boy she was talking to at a crime scene.

  After that he was the guy who ambushed her with a throat punch. She hadn’t seen him that day, not coming at her, not running away.

  He’d shorn his braids since she’d seen him on the streets, keeping it close now, and he had a long, wispy goatee hanging from his chin like Spanish moss. His puffy down vest was open, and against his chest, over his thermal tie-dyed shirt, lay his telltale cowrie-shell necklace.

  Behind Shadow stood Wilburn and Cordts, each gripping one of Shadow’s upper arms in one hand. The officers were stone-faced. They hated what she asked of them, Maureen thought, which was bodyguarding her while she questioned a known fugitive and possible conspirator in cop killings, and did so off the record. Too bad, she thought, if they hated her. Or maybe, she thought, they just hated the pungent dogshit odor of the high-grade marijuana. Shadow sighed.

  “He’s unarmed,” Wilburn said.

  “Only love,” Shadow said, raising his chin, eyelids heavy and low. “Only love.”

  This guy, Maureen thought, was gonna be her big breakthrough? If there were ever a time and occasion, she thought, that required Preacher’s touch … but tonight, there was no Preacher. There was only her and what she’d learned from him in too short a time together.

  Maureen searched Shadow’s face for any indication he recognized her. She found nothing. She wasn’t sure he knew where he was or what was happening. She was surprised at his condition. There might be more than THC in his system, she thought. Out of character for someone with a reputation as a consummate operator. Then again, in her short time on the force, Maureen had found the common criminal element pretty disappointing. With very few exceptions, nobody lived up to the rep that preceded him on the streets. Not the criminals, not the cops. Maureen was determined to be one of the exceptions.

  “Bring him in,” she said, opening the gate. “You guys, too.”

  Wilburn and Cordts traded glances, then marched Shadow into the bar. They wouldn’t question her in front of a criminal. Wouldn’t leave her alone with him, either. She was counting on these things. Stick with me, guys, she thought.

  “Shadow,” Maureen said, “follow me to the table over there.” To the other cops she said, “Can you guys wait at the bar?”

  Wilburn rolled his shoulders. He spoke in a low voice as they watched Shadow stroll over to the cocktail table. “That’s three of us, Coughlin, off the streets when we should be out there. If we get a call, we have to roll. I’m not gonna broadcast anything, but I’m not gonna lie about where I am. You do what you gotta do, we’ll cover for you as best we can, but…” His voice trailing off, he completed his sentence with a shrug.

  “That’s plenty,” Maureen said. “This shouldn’t take long. I appreciate your help.”

  “If you can get a coherent sentence out of that guy,” Cordts said, “about anything, you deserve that detective shield, like, tomorrow.”

  Maureen left them at the bar and crossed the barroom to sit with Shadow. He slouched deep in his chair. She said, “You’ve been told what this is about?”

  Shadow slid a cigarette from the pack Maureen had tossed on the table. He lit it using the candle. “Some kind of parlay.” He coughed one time, sharp, like a bark. “I do for you or the wrath of God burns down the neighborhood.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Some shit like that.”

  “Yeah, some shit like that,” Maureen sai
d. “You heard what happened today.”

  Shadow nodded slowly. “White boys killing cops. In a big way. Crazy, for sure. But not nothing that had to do with Shadow.”

  “But you’re here.”

  “Not for you,” Shadow said. “For I.”

  “You remember a guy named Cooley, another guy named Gage? Clayton Gage?”

  “The things I do,” Shadow said, “I meet a lot of people. Shadow diversified, you could say.”

  “Well, I believe you met them during one of your diversification efforts,” Maureen said. “White boys from outside the city. They call themselves Sovereign Citizens. They were raising a militia called the Watchmen Brigade. They wanted to move guns, lots of guns, into and around New Orleans.”

  “Sounds to Shadow like they got that shit done.”

  “Because you helped them,” Maureen said.

  Shadow held out his hands. “See these hands? These hands never so much as picked up a gun.” He pressed his palms together. “That’s not Shadow’s way.”

  “You connected Cooley and Gage to Bobby Scales. You set them up in New Orleans.”

  “You set them up in New Orleans,” Shadow said. “Your people. It was a cop that made Shadow make that connect. What happened today? What goes around, comes around, feel me? Y’all did this to y’all selves. Karma. Payback a bitch.”

  He eased deeper into his chair, grinning, confident in his wisdom.

  Maureen flipped the table, cigarettes, ashtray, and burning candle flying.

  She kicked Shadow in the chest, boot heel hard to the sternum, toppling him and his chair backward onto the floor. His cigarette flew through the air. Wilburn and Cordts were halfway to her before she stopped them with a raised hand. She knew they were rushing in not to defend Shadow, not to restrain her, but to assist in the beating they saw coming. All day, every cop in New Orleans had been waiting to kick someone’s ass. Anyone. But they stopped at her wordless order. They stood frozen, panting like dogs waiting to be let off the leash.