Caleb Heath emerged from the shadows. He kept a respectable distance. He held his hands clutched behind his back, smiled. “Making my way back to the festivities after a walk of my own. Didn’t even see you standing there until the last second. Sorry about that, darlin’.”
Maureen expected him to keep walking. He didn’t. Dressed in pale pleated slacks and a dark silk dress shirt, Heath looked like what he was, a rich man’s underworked and overindulged heir. It took Maureen a moment to realize it, but Heath did not recognize her from Magnolia Street. He had stopped, she worried, to hit on her. From the look and the smell of him, she knew he was stoned. Very stoned. That was what he’d been doing off in the park, smoking much better shit than they got on Magnolia or Frenchmen Streets. He’d had himself some fine bourbon, as well.
“Daddy does throw quite the party,” he said. “So popular I can hardly stand it. He is an expert. You haven’t worked one of his soirees before, have you? I’d remember you.” He offered his hand. “Caleb Heath. The son.”
Maureen let his pale hand hang in the air. Suspended in the dark between them, it reminded her of a white jellyfish adrift in the night sea. Caleb did not have his father’s hands.
“Officer Maureen Coughlin. This is my first Heath party, you’re right about that, but we have met before, as it turns out.” She gave him a moment to remember. He didn’t. She offered a clue. “Magnolia Street.”
Heath shrugged. He finally lowered his hand.
“The man we pulled out of your house the other night,” Maureen said. “Turns out he had quite a history.”
“That means nothing to me,” Heath said. “I have no idea who that person was.”
Maureen wasn’t sure he knew what she meant and wasn’t humoring her.
“He may prove to mean something to the FBI,” she said.
“Then I wish them luck,” Heath said. He had a mystified tone and a confused look, as if he couldn’t believe they were still talking and she was not yet on her knees and blowing him behind the nearest oak tree. “They have a very difficult job. Is this what you want to talk about? It’s a lovely night. All work and no play and all that. Let’s enjoy the dark and the quiet. I don’t have to go back to the party just yet. It’s not like it’s for me.”
“When you met Clayton Gage at Pat O’Brien’s,” Maureen asked, “was Madison Leary with him or did he meet her there?”
That hit home. The events and people of Magnolia Street, they hadn’t registered, but those three names—they got an instantaneous reaction from Heath as clear as the sound of breaking glass.
“Shame about Mr. Gage,” Heath said, looking away from her. “It’s a dangerous time in New Orleans for out-of-towners.”
“So you heard about him?”
“Quinn and I, we talk. We talk about lots of things. We keep each other well informed.”
“Gage was a friend of yours?” Maureen asked.
“Nonsense,” Heath said. “Never met the man. I only know what Quinn told me about him. He seemed to be a man of questionable decision-making. His end, though sad, seems predictable.”
“What makes you say that?”
Heath chuckled. “Quinn told me y’all met his date for the night. You tell me.”
“So they were a couple, Gage and Leary?”
“You’re asking me questions I couldn’t possibly know the answers to.”
Maureen watched as Heath began the long, slow process of digging a single cigarette from deep within his shirt pocket. He’d brought it with him, she figured, to mask the smell of the marijuana. Good luck with that, she thought. When he finally got the cigarette to his lips, Maureen lit it for him. While Heath smoked, she pondered her approach to him. Here was a chance, she thought, to get something substantial out of this night, to flip Quinn’s subterfuge on its head. She needed to maximize these accidental moments with him, before his head cleared and he realized both that he wasn’t getting in her pants and that he was better served not speaking with her.
Dice’s stories playing on her mind, she wanted to nail down the Gage–Leary connection. She suspected that Gage had tracked Madison to New Orleans, maybe with Cooley’s help, in search of her and the money she’d stolen from the Watchmen. Gage couldn’t alert the authorities to his troubles. He’d have to get the money back himself. Had Gage somehow tracked Madison to Pat O’Brien’s? If he’d known she was a thief, he’d have known her style, and he could have found the target-rich spots she’d work. Or had Leary set a trap? Had she let him find her? Had she worked Pat O’s because she knew Gage would be the one to come after her, and that he’d know where to look for her? How deep into the Watchmen had Leary been hooked, Maureen wondered, before something, maybe her own demons, had driven her away from them?
After the lunch conversation with Dice, Maureen was questioning who had gotten in whose way at Pat O’Brien’s that Sunday night. She had figured Leary for the wild card, and that she had queered the business meeting between Heath and Gage. But had Heath been the monkey wrench in Leary’s plan? How ironic would that be, Maureen thought, if both Heath and Leary had picked Pat O’Brien’s because it was full of drunk college girls, making a decision that would get Gage killed. Whose life was in danger in that truck? Maureen wondered. After Maureen had messed up Leary’s chance to kill Gage that night, after Leary had managed to escape both the jail and the emergency room, she’d arranged another meeting with Gage.
Making an offer of surrender and a shoe box full of money would be how Leary had lured Gage into meeting her alone outside F and M’s—another bar popular with drunk and oblivious college-age kids, another spot rich with, what had Dice called them? Soft targets. Madison might have known it and picked it herself. Her range might extend far beyond downtown.
Cooley had come first, Maureen decided. And after he had fallen down the rabbit hole, Gage had been dispatched by the Watchmen to find Leary. Madison had killed Cooley, too. Maureen was sure of it. If she went back to Magnolia Street, and asked the right people the right way, she could find someone who saw a red bike parked outside that empty house. One question remained. How had Leary and Cooley found that property in Central City?
Maureen wondered if she wasn’t looking right at the answer.
“And you’ve got nothing,” Maureen said, “that you want to inform me about while we have the chance to keep this conversation casual and off the record? Such as your whereabouts the night Gage was killed. I can protect you with that information. I know your father does a lot for the city, if I can help him out, or you, I guess, the more I know, the better.”
Heath narrowed his eyes at her. “What makes you think I need protection?”
Maureen could tell she unbalanced him. He was like his father that way. The rich, she thought, who could figure them? They toughed it out through city-swallowing hurricanes then came undone over the smallest of things, like people underwhelmed by their big money and minor depravities. Right now, she was a buzzkill to him, nothing more. He wasn’t sure what to do with a woman if she wasn’t tugging at his wallet, his zipper, or both. His name alone should have done it for him. Her calm irked him. She thought of Preacher and of Atkinson, of their reliance on the patient, steady, almost gentle approach. Something to be said, Maureen thought, for underplaying the role sometimes. And she knew that because she stood there with tits and without a dick, Heath would never suspect she’d figured him out.
She decided to push only a little.
“What if I told you,” she said, “that the police have material evidence of a prior relationship between you and Gage? That we have hard evidence of a planned meeting. A meeting about guns and money.”
“I’d think you were a liar,” Heath said, sniffling. Maureen could see him struggling to navigate the fog in his head. “In fact, I’d know you were lying, because if you had a sliver of a scrap of anything that could put me in danger, like maybe a Post-it note with my name on it from someone’s wallet, I’d be in an interview room right now, having this conversation w
ith a real detective. I sure as hell wouldn’t be standing in the park with a glorified security guard who was playing detective while waiting on the crumbs that fall from my father’s table. That’s what I would say.”
She hadn’t expected a flinch from Heath over her revelation of the note. She hadn’t expected him to own up to anything, even in his addled state. The test, the trap she was setting, it was for Quinn, to ascertain once and for all whether she could trust him with anything that she’d learned from Preacher or Dice. Destroying the note was one thing. Telling Heath about it was another thing entirely, a worse thing. Quinn had failed the test, and his supposed friend had betrayed him. The sad thing was that she couldn’t even tell him.
“Quinn and I,” Heath said. “We’ve talked about you.”
“Nothing but nice things, I’m sure.”
He shrugged. “He’s impressed with you, but you make him nervous.”
“We’re working some things out, the two of us,” Maureen said. “But he’s got nothing to worry about. Tell him that, the next time you two talk. What was the real nature of your relationship with Clayton Gage?”
“You have a temper, Quinn says, and a propensity for violence. For snap judgments, too. You’re quick not to like people. I can vouch for that. He wonders how long your career will last. You’re a bit of a hazard. To others. To yourself.”
“Not a lot of people to like, the business I’m in,” Maureen said. “And my career will last at least as long as Quinn’s does, if not longer. I can promise you that.”
“Violence,” Heath said. “Is that why you left New York?”
“Excuse me?”
“Like I said, Quinn and I talk. He says you’re a native New Yorker. Long Island, is it?”
“Staten. Staten Island. Two totally different places.”
“Don’t meet many people around here from that particular place,” Heath said, kicking at a thick tree root bursting up through the soil. His wits were returning. “Not sure I could find it on a map, which says more about the place you’re from than it does me. You’re a long way from home. I’m curious about how you got from there to here. I’m interested in people’s stories. Actually, no, I’m not. That’s bullshit. I couldn’t give a flying fuck about other people’s stories, but I do like useful information. It’s always surprising how much of someone’s story you can find out with a last name, birthplace, and a few other basic facts.”
“I got here by car,” Maureen said. “Like plenty of other people.” And like hell, she thought, are you doing your own research. Had Quinn done it for him? Would he do that, Maureen wondered, plot against her, a fellow officer, with a civilian? “I got what I needed from you. You’ve told me plenty. I’m sure it’s time for you to get back to the party. Your daddy is calling you.”
“My father has plenty going on around him,” Heath said, “to keep him distracted. Surgically enhanced wives and widows abound at these things. He doesn’t need me to catch his next trophy. I can stand out here with you for as long as you like. We’ve talked about my friends. Let’s talk about yours. Isn’t that what women like? To be asked about their lives? How’s your young friend Mr. Marques Greer? How’s his grandmother? They like their new place in the River Garden? We built that, you know. I pretty much own it. Maybe I’ll visit over there, ask how they’re getting on. See if anyone from the old neighborhood needs to find them. Maybe they miss their old friends.”
He recited his lines like a bad actor in a worse TV drama. Someone had armed him with them, Maureen thought. Who? Quinn again? Maybe Ruiz? Someone concerned she and Heath might end up talking. Had to be Quinn.
“This park closes at dusk,” Maureen said, “which was some time ago. I’d hate to have to cite you for trespassing. And I get the feeling that if I searched you, I’d discover contraband. Then we’re talking jail. I’d have to perp walk you through your father’s lovely party. He wouldn’t like that. Why don’t we not go there?”
Heath stepped closer to her, making a show of his fearlessness, swinging his foot wide, hands clasped behind his back. “How far do you think you’d get, really, with me in cuffs? At my father’s house? How do you think that would play back at the district when my father called? Last week, my father won the redevelopment contract for the row of old storefronts across the street from the Sixth District. Whose playground do you think you’re in, Maureen?”
Maureen closed the distance between them, her hands clasped behind her back. “I know you, Heath. I’ve known you my whole life. You’re as common and as tedious as herpes. So fucking impressed with yourself. You’re a titty baby, living on an allowance, everything bought and paid for by someone else’s brains and hard work. Never made anything in your life but a mess.”
“There’s the New York,” Heath said, smiling, leaning back. “It comes through so much clearer when you get angry, Maureen. I bet it comes out real strong when you fuck. I bet you fuck hard.”
“You don’t get to call me Maureen. You speak to me, you call me Officer Coughlin. I took shit from you people my whole life, I don’t have to do that anymore.”
“That badge is like your pussy,” Heath said, looking her up and down. “You think it can’t be taken from you with a few good slaps. This is New Orleans. That tin star may as well come with a popgun and a cowboy hat. It’s a half step above a Mardi Gras costume.”
“Walk back to the party,” Maureen said. She pulled a compact black cylinder from her belt. “Or get carried back. Your choice.”
Heath chuckled. “Pepper spray? Really?”
Maureen snapped her wrist. The cylinder released a telescoped, spring-loaded metal rod with a weighted ball at the end. Maureen held the weapon close to her thigh. Heath’s eyes flicked to it before returning to her face. “It’s called an ASP,” she said. “It breaks bones. I can get a new job faster than you can get new teeth, or a new jaw, or two new knees. Daddy’s money can buy you new things, but it can’t make the pain go away. Pain punches its own time clock.”
Heath opened his mouth to speak, a smile playing in his eyes, but he decided to say nothing.
“You walk around alone in the park at night often?” Maureen asked.
“What if I do?”
“You might want to rethink that habit,” Maureen said.
“Has the NOPD given up on solving the murder problem? Shifting resources to the trespassing issues, are you? Or are you threatening me, Officer Coughlin?”
“If I wanted to get you, Heath, why would I warn you not to wander around alone in the dark? It’s not us, or me, that you need to worry about. It’s dangerous times in this city.”
“Oh, it’s been dangerous times in this city since there’s been a city,” Heath said. “You new arrivals are all the same. You act like it’s some big revelation that New Orleans is a slippery place. The swamp and the things in it with wings and claws, with scales and teeth, they were here before you, and they will be here after you’re gone.”
“Mr. Heath,” she said, “it’s my sworn duty as an officer of the law to inform you, in the interest of public and personal safety, that the aforementioned Madison Leary, has, as of this moment, evaded capture. Her whereabouts are unknown. She could be anywhere. She is rumored to be proficient with a razor blade. We know she is familiar with Uptown.”
“How fun and cryptic,” Heath said. “We won’t meet again.” He turned away from her and walked toward his father’s grand house, hands deep in his pockets.
Maureen watched him walk away as she lit another cigarette, her hands shaking. Quinn would be wondering what was keeping her. Heath never looked back her way, only throwing his hand in the air like a wave as he crossed from the park onto his father’s property, the flab of his soft body jiggling under his expensive shirt. The people on the porch thought the wave was for them, and returned it, but Maureen knew the gesture had been meant for her.
She watched as he sauntered up the stairs, ignoring the line at the bar and getting himself a drink before hugging and handshaking wit
h several guests who’d been waiting for cocktails. None of them minded deferring to him. She didn’t know how much she really believed Madison Leary was out there in the shadows with her ivory-handled razor at the ready, waiting for her shot at Caleb Heath. She couldn’t be sure Heath mattered to Leary, if a real connection existed, or if it was wishful thinking on her part that Leary would come after him. She’d given Heath what she could tell her conscience and her superiors was a warning, and, another part of her hoped, a nightmare or two. Men like Heath, though, she thought, could not imagine themselves being killed by a woman. Or a poor person. She wondered if they believed they could die. Wealthy, powerful men did die, though, Maureen thought. They could be killed. Same as everybody else. She had proved it. She had killed one herself.
Heath entered the enormous glowing house, a man vanishing into fire, the butler opening both of the tall oak doors for him like the gates of Heaven. She knew Caleb Heath was not another Frank Sebastian—a vain and evil man who had won his power with his willingness to do savage things others would not do. Caleb Heath by comparison was a weak-chinned bully, a capricious and spoiled man-child. Heath would never in a million years go himself to the River Garden to threaten Marques and his grandmother. He would pay someone else to do it for him. He could do damage, but he didn’t have power, not really. People he paid would turn on him for the right price. What people like Caleb Heath had, what they mistook for power, Maureen thought, was permission. Permission to indulge their callous whims and bloated visions of themselves because of their names and their stations. Once you had power, Maureen thought, it was yours until and unless you gave it away. Permission, unlike real power, wasn’t yours. Permission could be revoked by those who bestowed it, whether you liked it or not. You had no say. Maybe you were allowed the illusion of influence, but even that was a courtesy awarded from the outside. In that way, Caleb Heath, Maureen thought, was somewhat like her. Until her probationary period was over, she had permission from the powers-that-be to be a cop. When that time was over, when she was a real cop on her own, then she’d have real power.
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