The Devil in Her Way

by Bill Loehfelm

  Preacher waved Maureen closer to him. She bent farther into the car. He leaned across the front seat of the cruiser. “It’s not for you, Coughlin. None of this is for you, not really. If it helps you, like, residually, I’m okay with that, I might even be happy about it, but I don’t like neighborhood kids dead under the I-10 overpass any more than you or Atkinson or anyone else does. I’d like to stop it from happening again. You can’t think of everything in terms of how it’s gonna help you.” He dropped the car into gear. “At least don’t let it show like it does. Get some rest tonight.”

  Preacher drove away, leaving Maureen to reconsider how much she was really going to miss him. But she put the sting of his words aside, and filed away his advice. Humility never killed anyone. She recalled something she’d heard from an instructor at the academy. Your ego should be for the work, he’d said, always for the work first. He’d talked about the New York Yankees, about how they were the most successful franchise in professional sports and about how they were also one of the few teams that didn’t wear names on their uniforms. He insisted those two things were connected. He talked about how there was a reason the badge had a number and not a name, a number that passed along to another cop after your time with it was done. In the spirit of her lessons, Maureen made a wish that the case were solved and the other two boys were safe and Bobby Scales sat behind bars. And that she’d have nothing to do but go home and go to bed early for once. But she wasn’t betting on it.

  She took her phone from her pocket and walked around the corner of Sixth Street, away from the noise of Magazine. She called Atkinson’s cell.

  “Atkinson.”

  “Detective Sergeant, it’s Coughlin.”

  “You holding up okay after last night?”

  “Never better,” Maureen said. “Concerning last night, I have some info about Mike-Mike and Goody. I’m free. I can bring you the files, over at Homicide.”

  “I’m not there.” Atkinson’s tone was sharp, her words clipped. Maureen wondered if she shouldn’t have made the call. Was she overstepping? Delivering the files to Homicide would’ve been the best, the most modest and professional move. Maureen heard traffic through the phone, construction, too, and the squeal of a bus’s brakes in the background.

  “I’m just getting out of court,” Atkinson said.

  “Criminal or juvie?”

  “Divorce.”

  Maureen’s voice caught in her throat. Dope. So much for trying to sound savvy and casual about the court system.

  “Meet me back at Handsome Willy’s,” Atkinson said. “I’ll buy you a couple of tacos and we’ll take a look at the files. Maybe we can walk over the crime scene one more time.”

  Nothing had been solved, Maureen thought, and she hadn’t been cut from the loop just yet.

  * * *

  Maureen found Atkinson standing on the concrete patio outside the dark doorway of Handsome Willy’s, smoking a cigarette and staring up at the ruins of Charity through black Ray-Bans. Atkinson, to Maureen’s surprise, wore a deep-caramel-colored pantsuit with a sleeveless white blouse, the jacket of the suit draped over her arm. Maybe it was the pose, maybe it was simply seeing Atkinson in the daylight and not lording over a nighttime murder scene, but as Maureen approached across the parking lot she noticed that the detective sergeant was actually a bit of a bombshell: tall and buxom, with the straight posture of a soldier.

  She turned, startled, when Maureen called her name.

  “I should be better,” Atkinson said, “about letting people sneak up on me.”

  “I’m unobtrusive,” Maureen said. She handed over the files.

  Atkinson took them but didn’t look at them. Maureen felt the urge to insist on the importance of finding Goody and Marques as soon as possible. She said nothing. Preacher would be looking. He’d have the other cops in the Sixth looking, continuing to carry out Atkinson’s orders. Nothing needed Maureen’s emphasis.

  Atkinson led them inside the bar. “I’m starving.”

  Handsome Willy’s was more compact inside than it looked from the street. The narrow barroom had deep red walls and a pressed-tin ceiling. The bar ran along the right side, three cocktail tables stood against the wall on the left. A makeshift DJ booth and a couple of video poker machines were in the back by the restrooms. The place had a seedy charm, even if it felt a little dim and desolate walking in out of the sunlight. An older black man with a Heineken in one trembling hand studied a folded newspaper. Beside him, a skinny hipster in a straw hat, a High Life on the bar in front of him, thumbed away at his phone.

  Maureen tightened her ponytail, hoping for that breeze on her neck she could never seem to catch. The owners went easy on the AC, which, to her surprise, Maureen was learning she liked, even in the high heat of summer. There was only so much filtered air she could tolerate.

  Atkinson walked straight to the far end of the bar and spoke to the paperback-reading bartender, who, putting her book facedown, smiled at Atkinson. They obviously knew each other. They talked in front of what Maureen figured passed for the kitchen, a complicated construction of hot plates, chafing dishes, a microwave, and a Crock-Pot; paper products were stacked amid a tangle of extension cords and wires. Their order complete, Atkinson set the files on the end of the bar. She lit another cigarette, watching the flashing images on the video poker screens. Maureen lit one of her own smokes, for something to do. She studied the bar, trying to match it with her companion. It was a hard pairing to figure.

  Old album covers, classic hip-hop and soul, hung on the walls behind the bar: Biggie Smalls, Public Enemy, Isaac Hayes. Not what Maureen would’ve figured for Atkinson’s musical tastes. A couple of rusty and dented horns were hung over the cocktail tables. The yellowed newspaper pages trumpeting headlines from the Saints’ Super Bowl run made more sense. The bartender, a slight, quiet, pretty brunette with luminous white skin set off by gorgeous, colorful tattoos, built four tacos, placing two each in wax-paper-lined plastic baskets.

  “What are you drinking?” Atkinson asked, the bartender setting a can of Coke and a plastic cup of crushed ice in front of her.

  “An Amber,” Maureen said. “Draft. Please.” She reached for her wallet.

  “I got this,” Atkinson said. She gave Maureen a small smile. “After the morning I’ve had, let me do something nice for someone.”

  “That bad?” Maureen asked. The bartender brought her beer.

  “You think murder is confusing?” Atkinson poured her Coke. “Try marriage. Twelve years into it he decides he wants a housewife. What the hell am I supposed to do about that?”

  She grabbed her drink and a taco basket. “Let’s eat.”

  Maureen followed Atkinson out the back door. In the courtyard, Maureen better understood the appeal of the place and how it could do enough business to survive in a mostly deserted neighborhood. Dried bamboo fencing masked the chain-link and wide, colorful umbrellas shaded the picnic tables. There was a modest L-shaped tiki bar, closed on a weekday afternoon, but complete with an imitation thatched roof on top and a gas grill behind it. A small plywood stage occupied the back corner of the yard. Empty beer kegs sat on it now, but there was space enough for a four- or five-piece band. Wouldn’t have to worry much about bothering the neighbors out here, that was for sure. Two big fans blew a warm breeze through the yard. Old-school soul music from the stereo inside played through hidden speakers, a touch Maureen had always liked in a bar. The courtyard was, of course, surrounded by empty stretches of parking lot. It must be really weird out here at night, Maureen thought. Like dancing on the deck of a small ship in the middle of a flat, dark ocean. Handsome Willy’s was a neighborhood bar without a neighborhood.

  Atkinson led them to a picnic table by the stage. They sat in the umbrella’s shade, in the direct line of a fan, eating in silence. After the first taco, Maureen understood the bar’s appeal even better. The food was amazing. It wasn’t easy, Maureen knew, to make simple fare so stunning. Most of the places she’d worked couldn’t
handle it, not that the customers expected much beyond something to soak up the alcohol. Here in New Orleans the whole city seemed to excel at the basics, and most people expected excellence, especially from the unfancy, tucked-away joints that thrived in every neighborhood.

  Maureen dropped her crumpled napkin in her empty basket. “Damn. I could eat six of those. Easy.”

  “Not bad, right?” Atkinson said. “I don’t just come here for the crime. Speaking of, what’d you do before you found your one true calling with the NOPD?”

  “Waited tables,” Maureen said, “for a long fucking time.” She decided to preempt the next question. “Then some things changed, a few things clicked in my brain, I finished school first, and now here I am.”

  She faked a smile. Atkinson wasn’t buying her casual act, at least not the simplicity of the explanation, but the tiny curl at the corner of the other woman’s mouth told Maureen that she’d received the important part of the message: that Maureen didn’t want to talk about the details.

  “You’re a braver woman than I am,” Atkinson said. “I tried waiting tables once. I don’t think I lasted six weeks. Closest I ever came to getting arrested was working that job.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your divorce,” Maureen said. And she was sorry, but not as eager as she was to move the conversation away from her past, waiting tables, and anything else Atkinson might ask about. She moved the plastic basket aside and sipped her beer. “That sucks. He sick of you being out on the streets?”

  “Yeah.” A pause. “No. I don’t know. His excuses change every time I talk to him.”

  Typical married-man bullshit, Maureen thought, lighting a cigarette. Don’t commit to anything that might be used against you later: words, feelings, or anything else. Not that she knew from the married side of things, but she did know from the other-woman side.

  It had always eluded her, even when involved with married men, why men went through the trouble of getting another woman only to treat her the same as they treated their wives, which is to say, poorly. Or maybe it’s me, she thought. Maybe I was never any good at being the other woman. I’m not needy enough.

  “It is what it is,” Atkinson said. “Things haven’t been the same for us since the storm. I give him credit for hanging on for six years. God, I make him sound like a car-wreck victim, like he’s got brain trauma or something. He works in oil-and-gas exploration. There are a lot more glamorous places he could be working than New Orleans and South Louisiana. You know, like Houston.” She shook her head. “Maybe he’s the smart one. He knows I’d never leave here, and he knew better than to waste his time and mine asking if I would.

  “The divorce, it’s just…” She looked up, as if her next words floated in the smoke trapped on the underside of their umbrella. “Draining, I guess. The job is enough, and now I got this hanging over me. Lawyers, meetings, explaining myself to strangers.”

  “So it’s New Orleans forever,” Maureen said.

  Atkinson raised her Coke in a toast. “For better or worse, till death do us part.” She drank down her soda. She pushed aside the last half of her last taco, produced her cigarettes.

  “My folks, we’ve been in New Orleans since yellow fever. I’m born and raised. They own an antique shop in the Quarter. My dad was a business lawyer, made his money, and the shop is kind of a retirement hobby. Anyway, at the shop they have an accountant-slash-office-manager-slash-whatever. Nice girl. A control freak who can’t do much right, but a nice girl. She’s good to my parents. About a year ago she went through a long divorce. Came out the other side okay, but you would not believe the drama, the agony. It was like a death in the family, the end of her marriage, it really was. And her husband was a prickly little shit. Broke, bucktoothed, and arrogant as the day is long.”

  “But not yours?” Maureen asked. “The marriage, I mean. Not so intense?”

  “No, not so much.” Atkinson winced. “Not at all. No drama, no nothing. Not the divorce, not the husband, not the wedding. None of it. And then I think about that girl from the antique shop and I get jealous. Isn’t that stupid? I’m forty-five. I’m not holding out hope for the fairy tale, but I just sit there in the conference room surrounded by lawyers and thinking the whole time that this should hurt more. That’s what hurts. That’s what weighs on me, keeps me up at night. The lack. Should divorce be this”—another pause, another look up—“I dunno, boring? It makes me really depressed.” She chuckled. “But then I used to look at him sleeping next to me and think the same thing about marriage. So what do I know?”

  Maureen ran her finger around the lip of her plastic cup. She was having a hard time looking at Atkinson. She had a feeling Atkinson didn’t have many people to talk things out with, especially other women. As long as you didn’t count dead bodies, that was.

  “Working in the bars,” Maureen said, “I saw people at the beginning and at the end of their relationships, you know? Either on the hunt or drowning their sorrows. I didn’t see much of the middle.”

  “You married?”

  “Never even close.” She hadn’t seen much of the middle in her own life, come to think of it. She went from starting to over pretty quick. “Is this the part where you tell me to give up on that? Where I’m married to the job? To the city?”

  Atkinson laughed. “Oh, hell, no. I don’t make those kinds of pronouncements, especially not the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ type. You’ve been riding around with Preacher for too long. I’ll let him have the birds-and-the-bees-of-the-job conversation with you.” She moved her ashtray aside and slid the files in front of her on the table. “Let’s stick to what I know.”

  She opened the first file, Mike-Mike’s. She smoked as she scanned it, flipping pages back and forth. She did the same with Goody’s file. Maureen watched carefully. Nothing in them seemed like news to Atkinson.

  “It’s like they photocopy the same file,” Atkinson said, “and just change the pictures inside them. And even those don’t change much. Young, male, black, drugs, guns. Drives me fucking crazy, the sameness of it. You’d think by now that either their side or our side would’ve found a better way.” She got up from the table, picked up the files. “There wasn’t a third?”

  “Preacher said Marques is clean,” Maureen said. Floating across Atkinson’s face, she could see the same cynical take on the absence of a third file that Preacher had voiced at the Mayan. “He’s not in the system yet, at the very least.”

  “Thank the Lord for small favors,” Atkinson said. “May he never know the inside of the system.” She pulled out her phone and checked the time. “I’m in a hurry. I gotta go home soon and change. I can’t go to work dressed like this.” She looked at Maureen. “Real quick, Officer Coughlin, let’s go see what the crime scene has to tell us in the hot light of day.”

  22

  Under the overpass, Maureen stood right where the green Plymouth had been recovered the night before. The afternoon heat was close and thick and the air dirty. Traffic passed in both directions on either side of Claiborne Avenue. The impound lots were half-empty and unattended. Nothing was left of the previous night’s crime scene but smoke and oil stains on the pavement. Found in the car trunk, Mike-Mike didn’t even leave a chalk outline behind. He was bundled up in a cooler down at the morgue. The Plymouth sat in the police impound yard. Maureen wondered if either would get the close inspection it deserved.

  She slid off her shades and leaned forward, studying the entrance gate to the impound lot. Scrapes and a couple of minor dents where the paint had flecked off. The bumper of the Plymouth had hit the gate. She looked through the gate at the old beaters scattered around the yard. Had the impound yard been the car’s destination? Maybe breaking into the impound lot had been the original plan. Break in and abandon the car. The way the city ran that lot, months could pass before someone noticed the car had gone unclaimed. Who would ever suspect someone of breaking a car into the impound yard? That plan would also explain the short journey from Central City. And when
the thieves couldn’t get in, Maureen thought, they burned the thing in an act of desperation. Had an accomplice inside the lot let them down, maybe?

  That plan, though, pointed toward the car thieves not knowing about the body in the trunk. Only a couple of days would’ve passed before the smell gave the body away. If they knew about the body, they’d want it hidden for good, not for a day or two. Even the most apathetic city employee wouldn’t be able to ignore a stink like that. Maureen stuck to her theory that what had happened last night had been about the car, and about its role in the murder of Norman Wright.

  “Have you heard anything new about Norman Wright?” Maureen asked.

  “We’re checking the bullets against other recent gun-crime arrests,” Atkinson said. “Maybe we can use the bullets to ID the gun, maybe it’s a gun we know from other crimes and we can work backward toward an owner or a shooter from there.”

  “You don’t sound too optimistic.”

  “That’s because I’m not. Realistically, our best bet is to bag someone else, preferably someone with a record we can squeeze him on, who can put a finger on the shooter.”

  “You think you can flip someone over a dead neighborhood drug addict?”

  “I can flip someone over a stolen tip jar from CC’s.” Atkinson shook her head, as if to assure Maureen her comment was directed at the sad state of affairs among New Orleans criminals and not her own investigative prowess. “Ninety percent of crooks are pussies.”

  “The other ten percent?”

  “They’re hard. They do a lot of damage. I’ll admit it.” She looked at Maureen. “But they leave enough of a mess for us to use against them. Usually, anyway. In six months, you’ll be able to pick the true hard cases out of a crowd on the corner like they’re standing under a spotlight.”

  Maureen couldn’t wait to gain that talent. She’d missed it in Goody’s case.

  “How about Mike-Mike?” she asked, dodging falling dollops of pigeon shit. “Have you heard anything? Did he die in the fire or before?”