“I got some,” Maureen said, “around here somewhere.”
“How you could lose anything,” Patrick said, pulling his T-shirt over his head, “in a place this small is beyond me. You should upgrade.”
“I’m thinking about it,” Maureen said. She closed her robe over her thighs. She was so tired her eyes were tearing, blurring Patrick for a moment. She blinked them clear. “I’m looking around, kind of half-assing it, to tell the truth.”
Patrick smiled. “We’re talking about apartments, right?”
Maureen had to chuckle. “I need to make sure I’m gonna keep my job, before I can really start thinking about a more serious place.”
“So, like I was saying about that job at Lilette,” he said, smiling again.
He couldn’t help himself, Maureen thought. Even the way he said the name of the restaurant, like it was the name of a new great girl he’d just met. It was so cute.
“It’s a nice bump in pay from the bar,” Patrick said, “even without a tip jar in the window, and it’s only a start. I’ll be kind of like you for a while, on probation, so to speak, I’ll have to prove I can cut it, but if I can make it in Harris’s kitchen, even if there’s no room to move up, I can walk into pretty much any kitchen in the city that has an opening.”
He held his hands out flat in front of him, side by side, elbows on his knees. “I think it’s kind of neat how, all of a sudden, you and me are on parallel paths. You with that detective, me with John Harris.”
Maureen went cold in the pit of her stomach. It was dawning on her where this was going; Patrick wanted to merge their parallel paths. He was at best starting the “let’s get serious about this” conversation, and at worst he was about to ask her to move in with him. Why this? she wondered. Why now? Well, at least he’d steamrolled dead any temptation she had about keeping him on the hook.
“Listen, Patrick,” she said, sliding to the edge of the bed, “I think I know where you’re going here, and I have to say, I’m not sure I feel the same way.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and leaned forward toward him, her hands folded between her knees. “And I don’t know if I can talk about this right now.”
“I know you’re beat,” Patrick said, “but I don’t want to let this hang around. I don’t have the time.” He shrugged, and blushed. “And I have a lot of respect for you. With this new gig, well, the first thing I thought of was you.”
Maureen stood. “Pat, I really gotta make a call. For work. Can we have coffee over this at the Rue tomorrow?”
“It’s not that complicated,” Patrick said, rubbing his palms on his thighs, “though I hoped it was gonna be easier than this to talk about.” He wasn’t looking at her now. “Anyway, I guess I wasn’t a hundred percent right about how you felt. I thought I had it figured.” He looked up at her. “Maureen, with this new job, it’s gonna be so much to do, I can’t see you anymore.”
He stood, rolling his shoulders. “This thing we have, it’s cool, it really is, but right now I gotta give everything to my career.”
He paused, giving her a moment to speak. Maureen was too stunned to fill in the blank.
“You understand, right?”
“Yeah,” Maureen said. She looked at her hands. “Yeah, I understand. Believe me, I understand.” No, those were not tears pushing at the edges of her eyes. For this guy? Of course not. She was just so tired. “And I’m cool with this, just a little surprised, I guess.”
“I knew you’d understand,” Patrick said, smiling, and itching, Maureen could tell, to get away from her now that the deed was done. “You’re not the type for a lot of drama.”
“I guess not,” Maureen said. “So, anyway, I’m not trying to kick you out or anything, but I have to make a call for work before it gets too late.”
Patrick checked his pockets for his possessions before making his escape. He bent his thumb over his shoulder. “So, over in the bar, if we’re both in there?”
“We’re cool,” Maureen said. “You owe me a shot for dumping me right when you’re about to become this famous chef, but other than that, we’re good. And I’m not holding back around the pool table anymore.”
Patrick approached her. He held his hand out as if they’d finalized some long negotiation. She shook it.
“You’re good people, Coughlin,” Patrick said, heading for the door. “New Orleans is lucky to have you.”
Maureen came to the door, ready to slide it closed as soon as Patrick left. “Gimme a shout when you’re settled at Lilette. I’ll come in for something to eat.”
“You do that,” Patrick said. “Don’t you dare come in there without telling me. I mean it.”
“All right, Patrick.”
She slid the pocket door halfway closed, but stopped. She stepped out into the lobby and called Patrick’s name. He let the front door close and turned to her, waiting for her to speak.
“This cousin of Goo’s,” Maureen said. “You ever met him?”
“Couple of times, I guess,” Patrick said. “He passes by the bar every now and again. I think he’s Goo’s weed connect.” He laughed. “Shit, I guess I shouldn’t tell you that.”
“What’s he look like?”
“It’s just hearsay, I’ve never seen anything,” Patrick said.
“Can you answer me, please?”
Patrick’s shoulders slumped. “Maureen, c’mon, don’t be like that. You’re gonna hassle somebody ’cause I dumped you, hassle me. Don’t hassle my boy.”
“It’s not about that,” Maureen said. “I’m not like that. I promise. Can you just tell me what the guy looks like?”
Patrick sighed. “He’s a younger dude, twists in his hair. Dark skin. One of those Rasta wannabe kids, always decked out in Marley gear. Wears that corny shell jewelry all the time.” He rolled his eyes. “I forget his name. He’s got some goofy nickname he goes by.” He shrugged. “Go figure, right, with a cousin named Goo.”
“His name isn’t Scales?”
“That wasn’t it. It was something else.” He pulled open the door, letting in the sounds of the bar and the nighttime traffic. “Am I free to go now, Officer? I’m not really thrilled with this conversation.”
“Yeah, of course. Thank you. Sorry. Not the guy I was thinking of, anyway.”
“Glad to help, or not, or whatever. See you around.”
“Just one more thing,” Maureen said. “Do me a favor and don’t talk about me to people I don’t know.” She shrugged, gave a small grin. “It’s just a thing with me, but it’s important.”
“Sure. Will do, or not, or whatever.” Patrick walked out the door shaking his head.
Maureen slid closed the pocket door and locked it. She stood there with her forehead pressed against the hard wood. She heard the heavy front door slam closed behind Patrick. If he’d had any doubts about letting her go, she thought, she’d certainly killed them with that parting inquisition. She heard him gather up the po’boy from the front stairs, walk around the building, and toss the food in a trash can beneath her window. She thought hard about crawling into bed and pulling the covers over her head. She wanted to hide out, let the world turn without her until her shift in the morning. She could forget about Patrick, and even forget about the job long enough to fall asleep, but the smell of her own skin, of the sex and the sweat—she had to get rid of that before she could rest.
She tossed her gym bag on the bed and unzipped the side pocket, where she found her cigarettes and her phone. She slid a smoke from the pack, lit it, and flipped open the phone. She thumbed her way to Atkinson’s number and called it. She had to talk to someone about this kid with the shell necklace. The way he kept surfacing, he was into more than selling dime bags to the local part-time help. He was somebody, or he was somebody’s soldier. He wouldn’t be so interested in me, Maureen thought, if I wasn’t close to something he wanted to hide.
As the phone rang on the other end, Maureen wondered if the detective sergeant had read her report. Maureen knew she’d gotten som
e worthwhile info, even if it wasn’t as good or as much as she’d hoped. She’d written a good report. At the very least, she’d earned another day on the case. But that was the thing about getting dumped, even by guys you were planning on dumping. The rejection left you feeling like nobody wanted you, and like everyone you knew had been laughing at you behind your back. It wasn’t the breakup that stung, that humiliated her, to be honest, as much as it was her failure to see it coming. What else was there in her life that she’d decided worked one way and really worked another?
“Atkinson.”
Only everything, probably. “Officer Coughlin, Detective Sergeant, following up on my report from today.”
“You available tonight? Right now?”
You have no idea, Maureen thought. “Absolutely.”
“Meet me at Cleveland and Claiborne. Under the overpass.”
Maureen wasn’t sure where that was. Ask, she told herself, ask and get it right. Don’t end up driving around looking for it and keeping her waiting. “Central City?”
“CBD,” Atkinson said. “By the old Charity Hospital.” A pause. When Maureen didn’t fill it, she said, “There’s a bar close by called Handsome Willy’s. Park there. You’ll see us. We’ve got lots of lights.” She hung up.
The old Charity, Maureen thought. She knew the place, knew the stretch of Claiborne Avenue that Atkinson meant. Not much around that part of downtown but a bunch of parking garages and the massive empty shell of the old hospital complex. There was a bar there? Why would anybody put a bar in the middle of those ruins? She put on a pot of coffee. It would be ready to grab and go by the time she got out of the shower. She was going to need it.
Fuck it, she thought, stripping off her robe. I didn’t move here to sleep.
Graduation weekend, before the ink was even dry on her academy diploma, Waters advised her to keep on the lookout for a rabbi, for an older, wiser cop with good connections and a broad, sheltering wing. Despite everything she’d seen in the news, Waters assured her, there would be good cops left in that department. They’d be eager to find other good ones. They’d raise them up from fluffy fucking chicks if they had to. Even if there’s only one left, he told her, make sure you find them. For a very brief while, Maureen had thought maybe Preacher was her rabbi. But while he certainly had plenty to teach her, and had more street skills than he let on, Preacher had his eyes firmly fixed on the sunset of his career and was intent on riding into it on the back of a very slow horse. Maureen needed a broad wing, preferably a female one, and one attached to a bird on the rise.
15
Midafternoon on the day of Maureen’s academy graduation in June, Maureen, her mom, and Waters were down in the Quarter, over by the river, sitting around a table under the big green-and-white striped awning of Café du Monde. Maureen was learning that the Mississippi, like her, like every other part of the city, had its good days and its bad. Some days, its bad days, the river stank like rotted fruit or even flesh, or wet rust. Some days the smell was industrial like smog, and smoke, and slicks of spilled oil. But on Maureen’s graduation day, the sun was bright and the river was having a good day. It smelled like summer rainwater with a hint of salt.
Amber fanned herself with a swamp-tour brochure that had been left on the table. She wore big dark knock-off Ray-Bans that they’d bought at the French Market. She’d laughed out loud at the idea of a swamp tour. Who would ever?
Amber’s cheeks and neck were flushed with the heat. The time in the sun during her walking tours of the French Quarter, chosen because it was historical, and the Garden District, important because it was her daughter’s new neighborhood, had brought up her freckles.
Strands of reddish hair sprayed from Amber’s bun. Maureen kept waiting for her mom, now fifty-five, to start going gray, but so far it hadn’t happened. She had less red and more blondish, maybe, but no gray. And she wasn’t using any dye, either. Amber had kept her red hair, and she had kept her slim shape, which was the late-arriving upside, Amber had told her daughter once, to being underwhelming in the bust and backside departments. Her mom looked healthy. She looked happy. Not something Maureen could’ve said about her mom a year ago, or at any point over the preceding twenty years. The change in Amber gave Maureen hope, and not only for her mom.
Maureen turned in her chair toward the river and into the breeze. Atop the big white riverboat, on a small riser behind the smokestacks, a woman merrily murdered “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on the boat’s steam-powered calliope.
“Does that thing ever stop?” Amber asked.
“The tourists love that calliope, Ma. It’s one of those unique things. You can’t hear it just anywhere.”
“You can hear it everywhere,” Amber said, brochure fan pumping, “and I’m a tourist and I hate it.”
“You’re more than a tourist, Ma,” Maureen said. “You’ve got family here now. Family in New Orleans. Exciting, right?”
Amber said nothing, but she laced her fingers into her daughter’s and they held hands as they watched Waters guide his bulk, reduced by diet and exercise after his retirement, but still considerable, among the haphazard arrangement of tables in the Café du Monde courtyard. Most of the tables were two-tops inhabited by groups of four or six. Silent, exhausted families dutifully munched their beignets. Teens in perpetual motion, the last people in the world, Maureen figured, who needed strong coffee, tumbled in and out of one another’s arms and laps, coffee cup or a pastry in one hand, smart phone in the other.
Waters had gone to the railing, where he’d passed a couple of bucks to the three-man horn section stationed on the sidewalk.
“Liza Jane,” he said, hitching up his cargo shorts and settling into his seat. He held a green bandana in his hand, patted his sweaty forehead with it.
“Who?” Amber asked.
“The name of the song they were playing,” Waters said. He whistled the song’s chorus. “It’s called ‘Little Liza Jane.’”
Maureen could tell that Amber’s boyfriend enjoyed New Orleans more than Amber did. Then again, he’d supported this move from the beginning. Maureen sometimes forgot that her mother had supported her becoming a cop, too. It wasn’t the job that Amber didn’t care for, Maureen reminded herself, it was New Orleans, or, more specifically, its considerable distance from Staten Island.
“I wish they’d coordinate shifts or something with the organ-grinder,” Amber said. “Isn’t anyone in charge of these things? World’s most musical city, I’m sure. I don’t think they’re very good.”
“Compared to what, Ma?”
“I should’ve been in the band when I was in school,” Waters said. “I would’ve played the tuba, like that guy over there.”
He wasn’t changing the subject, Maureen knew, as much as he was dropping her a hint not to start a sparring match with her mother. Waters threw a glance at Amber, then looked back at Maureen, who realized that her mother labored in genuine emotional distress. This was how Amber handled stress, releasing her tension in short, powerful bursts of snide and sarcastic complaint, like belts of smoke from a locomotive, with as steady a rhythm.
Maureen hadn’t realized until those moments at Café du Monde, the first of their last evening together in New Orleans before Amber and Nat returned to New York, how very hard her mom took her daughter’s newfound success. Maureen had done everything she could to make New Orleans look good to Amber, and had been very open about how quickly and freely she was falling in love with the city. Now she feared her plan had backfired. Amber had not given up hope until that evening that New Orleans, the city, its police department, the whole thing, had been a rebound fling inspired by a desire for rebellion after being hurt and thwarted by New York. Amber would never admit it, but she’d hoped since the day that Maureen arrived in New Orleans that the city would betray her, sending her home into the consoling arms of her mother. But Maureen had gone and completed the academy as valedictorian. She’d been assigned to her district and her first field-training officer. Amber wa
s realizing that she and Waters had not come to collect Maureen and bring her back to her old home, but that they had come to do what they had been invited to do—see her off and wish her luck in her new home.
A server approached the table, a stout, short-haired Vietnamese woman in an obvious hurry, her white button-down shirt clouded with faded coffee stains, her black clip-on bow tie and her white paper hat askew at opposite angles. She set three small waters on the table hard, the fast-melting ice chips clinking in the short glasses, water sloshing over the rims. She tucked her tray under her arm. “Your order?”
Amber rose in her seat and opened her mouth to speak, but Maureen cut her off. “Two large au lait,” she said, “both frozen.”
“Frozen?” Waters asked.
“Trust me on this,” Maureen said. She turned back to the server. “And a small decaf and two orders.”
The server repeated everything back. Maureen agreed with a nod and the woman was off on her way.
“You understood that?” Amber asked.
“Her accent’s not that thick,” Maureen said. “She just talks fast.”
“I’m a New Yorker,” Amber said. “Don’t tell me about fast talk. Two thousand miles to hear a Chinese accent. What for? This is what you moved for?”
Maybe it was better, Maureen thought, that her mom and Waters weren’t staying longer. So far the three of them had skirted Amber’s apprehensions about her daughter moving to a poor city that was more black than white, ammunition she’d employed in desperation during one of their final and most pitched battles about the move. Maureen knew Amber’s temperament would degrade as she grew more and more upset about leaving her daughter behind. The bigotry would surface, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
The Devil in Her Way Page 12
