The Devil in Her Way

by Bill Loehfelm

  “That’s harassment,” Maureen said, amusement creeping into her voice, “making jokes about my weight.”

  She glanced across the street. The man had the hood open. He was leaning into the engine.

  “You’re skinny,” Preacher said. “What’s the world coming to when telling a woman she’s skinny gets to be harassment? The truth is harassment now? You know what, Coughlin? Look in the glove box. The sexualharassment complaint forms are in there. Right under the map to someone who gives a fuck. You make no sense to me sometimes.”

  “Help me out here, Preach.”

  “You’re fat, Coughlin. That better? Get your fat cottage-cheese ass in the car, please. You’re lettin’ the AC out.”

  “Officer Boyd.”

  “Coughlin, please, we got shit to do. Like go home in one piece. How many times you wanna get hit this week?”

  “That man is stealing.”

  “So he is,” Preacher said. “And so he was yesterday and the day before that. You know what’s on his calendar for tomorrow, rook? Fucking stealing. I guarantee it. Leave us some crime for tomorrow. I need this job.”

  The man had now attracted an audience of three young boys. The drummer boy and his two friends from yesterday. Perfect, Maureen thought. She wanted to talk to them anyway. She wanted to hear what Drummer Boy had wanted to say to her and Preacher. She wanted to know about the whistler. This incident was shaping up into a real opportunity; she had to take advantage.

  “I’m going over,” Maureen said. “You coming?”

  “Fuck me,” Preacher said, tapping a few computer keys. “Yeah, yeah. I’m right behind you. You are a slow learner, Coughlin.”

  Maureen checked the traffic then started slowly across the street.

  The perp was another thin, middle-aged black man, this one wearing baggy gray Dickies and a filthy white T-shirt. He was tall, close to six-six. They haunted the neighborhood like disconsolate teenagers, men like this one. Men like Arthur Jackson the baby-momma beater, ranging in age from thirty-five to fifty-five, bored and sullen, conditioned to violence and insult, dishing out and enduring both from all directions as regular as the summer thunderstorms. The shit that had happened yesterday, it was happening today, it would happen again tomorrow. They had records of petty crimes that went on forever. They knew cops, city attorneys, criminal court judges, and, if they had kids, civil court judges by their first names.

  Maureen had attended a handful of Preacher’s court dates at the Broad Street courthouse, from arrests he’d made before her time. The hearings came off like office reunions. The cops, the crooks, the lawyers, everyone knew one another. The proceedings were convivial, the participants resigned to their roles. The scene reminded Maureen of a movie she and her mother had watched about a pro wrestler, the part about how even the sworn enemies in the ring were actually friends behind the scenes, everyone with his part to play so the show could go on and the paying customers went home satisfied.

  The man’s name popped into her head: Norman Wright. She could see it on the arrest report. She’d filled it out herself.

  Wright hunched under the open hood of an old green Plymouth. The screwdriver lay on the pavement at his feet. He was elbow-deep in the engine, twisting and yanking at something, grunting with the effort, as if trying to jerk a resistant weed from a garden. Involved in his work, he had his back to the street. He didn’t see Maureen approaching.

  The boys stood close together on the sidewalk, their backs against the park fence, watching him work. They didn’t warn him of Maureen’s approach. Letting her catch him unawares made for a better show. Maureen nodded at the kids. The boys smiled, mugging for her, trying to make her laugh and give herself away to Wright. One put his finger to his lips, making Maureen think of see, hear, and speak no evil.

  “Mr. Wright,” Maureen called out. “Officer Coughlin, on your six.”

  Wright shot up at the sound of her voice, smashing his head on the Plymouth’s hood so hard his knees and hips gave out halfway on impact. Arms out for balance, he staggered away from the car in a twisty dance step. Maureen almost rushed to catch him, but Wright corrected himself well and turned, easing his weight back against the Plymouth’s grille as if he’d intended every move he’d made. He crossed his long arms, trying to look casual. He smiled, but his eyes watered from the blow to his head. His dry, flaky knuckles bled from his work inside the engine.

  “Officer, good to see you again,” Wright said. “Call me Norman.”

  “I’d rather not,” Maureen said, hooking her thumbs in her gun belt, a habit she knew she’d picked up from TV. She couldn’t help it. She stayed aware of the screwdriver.

  “Ooooooooooh, snap,” piped in one of the kids, his chin shiny from the orange drink that he’d also dribbled down his T-shirt. He belched a puppy belch. “She said, ‘Fuck you, Norman.’”

  “Do you have to talk that way?” Maureen said. She’d grabbed some napkins with her coffee, for the two ounces she knew she’d spill in the patrol car. She pulled those napkins from her pocket and handed them to the orange-drink kid. “Who’s teaching you manners?”

  The drummer’s friends shrugged. They glanced at each other, then looked back at Maureen as if she’d started stuttering and they were waiting for her to form intelligible words. Neither took the napkins.

  “Well, nigga,” the other kid finally said, “wipe your face.” He winked at Maureen. He actually winked. And, though she knew better, it was everything she could do not to smile. This one was taller, Maureen noticed, and seemed a little older than the drummer and the orange-drink kid. “You hafta excuse him, Officer. He’s half retard and half crackhead.”

  “Am not,” Orange Drink said, but he took the napkins and did as he was told.

  “And the other half is plain stupid.”

  Orange Drink tilted his chin up in Maureen’s direction for inspection.

  She gave a nod of approval, and Orange Drink tossed the fistful of dirty napkins in the gutter. Maureen growled. The drummer stepped forward and picked up the napkins. He handed them to Maureen. She thanked him.

  “Boys, I’m Officer Coughlin,” she said. “You’re gonna be seeing a lot of me around the neighborhood. We should get to know each other. Tell me your names.”

  The boys glanced at one another, then looked back at her, their expressions sphinxlike. Blue uniform, Maureen thought. White skin. Progress would be slow. Another day. Wright was her concern.

  “Beat it,” she said. “Go find the playground. And watch your mouths from now on.”

  The taller kid punched Orange Drink in the arm, hard, and took off running down the street, his victim on his heels in pursuit.

  “I’m gonna remember your faces,” Maureen yelled after them.

  The drummer, silent this whole time, lingered. A serious look frowned up his long face. He studied Maureen the way a kid might study an exotic zoo animal. He seemed pretty fearless, at least when it came to cops. She threw a quick glance up and down the street, looking for the teenager with the shell necklace. No sign of him.

  “What am I gonna do with you guys?” Maureen asked him. “We’re gonna be sharing this neighborhood. We should help each other out.”

  “Officer,” he said, “don’t hate the playas, hate the game.”

  “And what’s your name, playa?”

  The kid lifted his chin at Wright. “Please lock up this here sorry-ass nigger for good, ’fore he get himself kilt for messin’ with Bobby Scales’s whip. He been told.”

  “Don’t you worry about what I been told,” Wright said to the kid, “or what I ain’t been told. You don’t know.”

  Bobby Scales, Maureen thought. Okay. Not a name she’d heard before, but one worth knowing, obviously. It was important enough that this kid assumed that she, being a cop, already knew it. Mr. Marley in the shell necklace? She didn’t want to ask straight up and give away the fact that she didn’t know the name.

  “I’m just sayin’,” the drummer said. “Mr. Bobby and hi
s boys be out here fucking with it under the hood early most every morning lately. Piece of shit don’t ever run, but he out here tryin’.”

  “What’re you doing out early every morning?” Maureen asked. “Helping with the car?”

  The kid shrugged and turned to walk away, his parting words cast over his shoulder, dismissive, as he picked up his pace. “People that know shit know Bobby.”

  The kid was half a block away before she realized she hadn’t asked who had called to him from across the street, or if he knew who’d called the cops on Arthur Jackson and his woman. And he hadn’t answered a thing that she had remembered to ask. She hadn’t even learned his name. Outwitted, she thought, by a twelve-year-old. Yup. Undercover. Detective. Super-fucking-intendent. She was ready.

  Could she at least remember seeing someone working on that old Plymouth?

  She saw cars worked on at curbs throughout the neighborhood. She hadn’t noticed this particular car, or anyone paying particular attention to it, other than Wright. Good job being observational, she thought. The neighborhood was a busy one. People were on the streets most of the night and day. Lots of people didn’t work. A lot of them worked nights or odd hours, like she had for over a decade. People spent considerable time outside, working on cars or houses, hanging out in the front yard, talking, grilling, playing dice, cards, and dominoes.

  To the untrained eye, the neighborhood looked chaotic, but most people did the same things every day. They tended to the same flower bed, worked on the same old beater in the driveway outside the house. Played the same games with the same friends. Maureen knew she needed to see the particular neighborhood patterns. Without knowing those patterns, she’d never notice the aberrations.

  Wright watched, shaking his head as the drummer jogged up the street after his friends, throwing one last glance at Maureen over his shoulder.

  “You know those boys?” Maureen asked.

  “Neighborhood brats,” Wright said. “It’s a damn shame, what’s happened with kids these days. No respect.”

  “This is your idea of setting an example? Stealing engine parts in broad daylight?”

  Wright’s jaw dropped. “Officer, what are you talking about? That’s just crazy.”

  “Is it?”

  “This is my cousin’s car. I was about to bring the battery over to the auto parts store so they could match it up with a new one and get rid of this one, as this here one has run out.”

  “Step aside for a sec,” Maureen said. Wright shimmied to the corner of the front fender. Maureen looked into the engine. “This battery in here is brand new.”

  “You would think that,” Wright said, “to look at it. But it’s a lemon.”

  Maureen straightened. “’Scuse me?”

  Behind her, across the street, she heard a storm door thrown open. She backed away from the Plymouth, keeping an eye on Wright but bringing the doorway into her peripheral vision. A tiny black woman, rail thin and maybe five feet, wearing a blue caftan and a matching head wrap, stepped out her front door and onto her small concrete stoop. She settled into a rickety lawn chair and lit a long white cigarette. She stared hard at Maureen and Wright as she smoked.

  Mother Mayor. The doyenne of Washington Street. Preacher had pointed her out on day one of Maureen’s training. Fantastic.

  Maureen wished she’d listened to Preacher and stayed in the car. Had she done so, she’d be taking a cool shower back at the district by now instead of standing in the hot street getting eye-fucked for doing her job by the self-anointed neighborhood watchdog. And Maureen knew that Mother’s neighbors, people passing in and out of the corner store, people in the park, they watched her, judging and assessing her. The new cop. The new girl. She had to come strong in front of the block. Had to. Because if she didn’t, the next time she came around looking for something, she’d get ignored, or worse. Hell, maybe even Preacher was paying attention. She had to impress him, too.

  “Why you harassin’ this innocent black man?” Mother Mayor demanded loud and clear from across the street. For a small person, she had a resounding voice.

  Maureen held a hand up high against the interruption, regretting it right away.

  “Oh no, you didn’t,” Mother Mayor said. “I axed you a question. I seen him nearly fall over. You hit him like you did Mr. Arthur?”

  Maureen’s head snapped around. “Oh, you saw that? So then you saw him hit me first. We’re looking for witnesses to that event. I need to come over there and talk to you? Maybe you can tell me whose stash that was we took. I’ll be right over when I’m done here.”

  Mother Mayor said nothing. She hadn’t seen a damn thing at the apartments. She didn’t move well, and rarely left her stoop, as far as Maureen could tell.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Maureen said. She threw a glance at the patrol car. Fucking Preacher. Couldn’t he at least go over there and keep Mother Mayor occupied? “Please, ma’am, give me a minute.”

  She turned back to Wright. “This is Bobby Scales’s car and everyone knows it. He works on it all the time. He’s gonna kill you for messing with it again.”

  Wright huffed and puffed, trying to decide which of Maureen’s claims to disavow. He looked to Mother Mayor, hoping that she’d raise a ruckus and come to his rescue. “Why would you say stuff like that? Call me a liar and all? You believe them brats over me? You hear this, Mother Mayor?”

  “’Cause you are a liar,” Maureen said. “Last week I caught you stealing out of this same car.”

  “Naw.”

  “Yeah,” Maureen said. “And I arrested you for it. The reason there was a new battery in it last week is because you stole the old one the week before. Officer Quinn busted you for that. Three times in this car now that’s not yours to be in.”

  “Naw.”

  “So you’re calling me a liar?” Maureen said, stepping closer to Wright. “That wasn’t you I arrested last week? You knew me when I walked up to you just now. It ain’t from the library. You calling me a liar or you calling me stupid?”

  “I ain’t calling you nothin’.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Maureen turned to Mother Mayor, who from her chair had watched the arrest last week, roaring about the injustice of it to anyone who’d listen. “What about you, Mother? Anything to add while we’re at it?”

  Mother Mayor leaned forward in her chair, wrapping her hands around the stoop railing, narrowing her eyes at Maureen. Even from across the street, Maureen could see the wheels turning in the old woman’s brain. Mother Mayor was loud, she was dramatic, and she was racist, but she wasn’t stupid. She took pride in being an irritant, and because of her sex, her size, and her age, she could say things other people could not. Might even provide a public service that way, Maureen thought. She gave voice to things other people might think and feel but would never and could never say. But, as Preacher had told Maureen, Mother Mayor never filed formal complaints, never put her name on anything. She took care not to make real enemies of the police. Not when she, or some niece or cousin or neighborhood kid, might need a cop’s help someday.

  Cover Your Ass. It wasn’t just the rule in the NOPD. It played in the neighborhood, too.

  If she wanted info about the Garvey Apartments, Maureen thought, Mother Mayor was the person she needed to talk to. Of course, that meant she needed to be nice to the old bat.

  “It’s my job,” Mother Mayor said, “to keep track of who you arrest around here?”

  She dropped her half-smoked cigarette into a soda can, shook it, and rose from her chair. “If you can’t keep count your own selves, maybe that’s something y’all need to think about. I know we all look the same to you.”

  Mother Mayor disappeared back into her house with a loud slam of the storm door.

  Wright groaned with disappointment. There’s an interesting turn, Maureen thought. Mother was not monitoring Wright’s arrest all the way through. Why abandon him? Mother wasn’t falling over impressed with the new skinny white-girl c
op, that was for sure. Wright was on the outs with Mother, then. What had he done to get there?

  Wright blew out a long sigh, scratching at his forearms, his ragged nails leaving gray trails on his dark brown skin. One thing was for sure, Maureen thought. No point in asking Wright, whose attention was waning and whose eyes were glazing over, what he’d done wrong.

  Maureen knew he had planned on having that battery boosted and sold by now, probably at the body-and-rim shop a few blocks away. She had fucked that up. He was itching in places much more demanding than his arms. He would soon go from frustrated and impatient to desperate to stupid. Just like Arthur of Apartment D had done. She had about another minute and a half to make use of being the lady officer before Wright’s need for a fix transformed her into that bitch cop. She couldn’t let things turn violent again. She did not need another bruised black man in cuffs on her record.

  Behind Maureen, a whoop-whoop from the patrol car. Okay, so Wright wasn’t the only one on the block getting itchy and impatient. Preacher wanted his cigar.

  Wright turned, assuming the position against the front of the Plymouth. Maureen left her cuffs on her belt. Play this one different, she thought. This wasn’t Arthur Jackson: The Sequel. Wright hadn’t hurt anyone, hadn’t even threatened anyone. Why not show some smarts, show the flex and discretion that she hadn’t shown the day before? Here was an opportunity, right away, to show Preacher that she’d heard his message, that she was growing up as a cop. No punches, no blood, no drama. Rookie or not, sore cheek or not, she was a better cop, a smarter cop, than that. She’d prove it to Preacher and the neighborhood at the same time.

  And then they could all go home and have a cold bath and a big whiskey and chain-smoke half a pack over a day well spent and a job well done.

  Okay, maybe that last part was just her.

  “Turn around and face me,” she said to Wright. He did so. “You can’t treat Bobby’s ride like your own personal ATM. It’s not legal. It’s not safe. I can’t look away when you do it. I can’t ask other cops to look away. What if you get one grumpier than me? One who doesn’t know you? And don’t think Scales can keep looking away, either. Don’t think he doesn’t know.”