Doing the Devil's Work (5 page)

Stolen, she knew, every one of them. “Dispatch, unit fourteen-twelve here.”

“Go ahead, fourteen-twelve.”

“Have we had a run on purse snatchings tonight? Maybe in the Eighth District, most likely the Quarter?”

“Hold on, please.”

This batch looked stolen from the same party. Something formal, or semiformal, at least. Maureen wondered how either of the two people in her custody gained access to a party like that. More likely the thefts had occurred at the after-party, the women hitting a bar or club in the Quarter, like Pat O’Brien’s, hazy and giddy with booze and who knew what else. Gage wasn’t the snatching type. His type shoplifted, or stole packages off of old ladies’ front steps. The woman was the thief. That big denim bag wouldn’t attract any attention slung over her shoulder. Maureen wondered if Gage was in on it. Maybe he’d put her up to it. Even without tracks on her arms, she had that pale junkie sheen to her. She could smoke it or snort it or shoot it into the gaps between her toes. Maybe she had pills of her own that she took. Meth. Something. Maybe Gage had her stealing for a fix. Trade her some purple drank for the cash and cards in the bag. A good deal if she was hard up and dope sick.

Maureen’s radio crackled as dispatch came on the line.

“Fourteen-twelve, be advised the Eighth District duty sergeant reports at this time a lobby full of angry coeds in formal wear. Seems there was a near riot at Pat O’Brien’s after a sorority social. A bunch of purses went missing in the courtyard. Please advise.”

Maureen smiled. “I’ve recovered the missing items, and I have a couple of suspects. I’ll have some people in custody. Ask the sisters to sit tight.”

“Affirmative, fourteen-twelve. You’ll have some friends in Alpha Epsilon Pi.”

“Just what I’ve always wanted,” Maureen said.

She walked the bag over to the woman. “Is this yours?”

The woman said nothing.

“This blue bag,” she said to the woman, in a lower, calmer voice, “is this yours?”

The woman slid down the side of the pickup, sitting on the pavement, her arms wrapped around her chest.

“Ma’am?” Maureen said. “Did this man hurt you? Did he force you to steal? Did he force you into the truck?” Maureen squatted beside the woman. “You can tell me. You’re not getting back in the truck with him. He’s going to jail tonight.”

The woman said nothing, pressing her forehead into her knees.

Frustrated, Maureen walked back to her unit, leaving the woman where she sat. She tossed the bag on the passenger seat. She lit a cigarette as two NOPD units, one a beat-up patrol car like hers, the other a newer Bronco, a rank car, light bars flashing on both, parked behind hers.

Now she had numbers on her side, Maureen thought. Now the fun would start.

4

From the Bronco stepped Preacher Boyd, duty sergeant on the night tour, a rotund, green-eyed Creole who was a thirty-year vet on the job and twenty years Maureen’s senior. She was surprised to see him. He wasn’t often out on the streets. He hitched up his ill-fitting pants and, after easing the truck door closed, headed her way. In the second unit rode Quinn and Ruiz. They lit cigarettes and leaned on the hood of their unit, waiting for Maureen and Preacher to decide what would happen next.

“I was on my way to the St. Charles Tavern,” Preacher said. “Chicken fried steak there with my name on it.” He cupped his hand at his ear. “But then I heard the call, and I had to see what fourteen-twelve had cooking.”

Maureen watched Preacher study the pickup truck and its two former occupants, adding up the details in his head. He caught Maureen’s eyes and grinned at her.

“Officer Coughlin,” he said, “you been out racial profiling white boys again? I thought we’d spoke on such things.”

Maureen approached. “They call to me, Preach. Like chicken fried steak.”

Preacher pulled his flashlight from his belt, played the beam over the truck, shined Gage in the eyes until he groaned in complaint, blinking at the light. “A real stunner, that one.” He looked at the woman. “What about her?”

“Catatonic, it seems,” Maureen said. “Almost nonresponsive. Though I can’t tell if it’s trauma or drugs or her natural state.”

Preacher walked over to the woman. Hands on his thighs, he leaned a few inches in her direction, the closest he came to bending over.

“Can you stand?” Preacher asked. He turned to Maureen, a quizzical look on his face. “Her lips are purple.”

“In the car,” Maureen said. “Purple drank.”

“Ah. Ma’am, you high? Are you on drugs?”

“No, sir.”

“Can you stand for me, please?”

The woman stood.

Fucking Preacher, Maureen thought. Everyone talked to him. Everyone. The dealers and stick-up boys and wife-beaters he had cuffed facedown on the sidewalk, the Uptown hipsters and riot grrls making his po’boys and his coffee. She’d arrested guys, from hard-core thugs and gang bangers to fey and cheery male prostitutes, who asked after him as she drove them to lockup. People didn’t always tell him the truth, but they talked to him. Getting people talking was a skill Maureen knew she needed to cultivate, for her current work on the streets and certainly for the future if she wanted a shot at making detective someday. People got their backs up around her—women especially. She needed subtler tools than barked threats and profanity, than her newfound muscle and fists and her boots and her Taser.

Back when she’d been a waitress, she’d charmed the shit out of people, men and women alike. She’d been a champion flirt. But bright red lipstick and a short skirt weren’t available to her anymore. As a cop, she’d struggled to connect on the streets and around the district, and it frustrated her. She’d changed when she’d put down the drink tray, moved to New Orleans, and picked up the badge, which was what she wanted. Becoming someone else in this strange, new place had been the entirety of her plan. She felt questions forming, though, rising like mist off the river, about who and what she was becoming. And she knew Preacher and the other cops around her saw her growing pains. She worried she wasn’t learning fast enough to fit in. She worried she enjoyed the violence more than she should, and that others, cops and criminals alike, could tell. She hoped Preacher wouldn’t look too closely at Gage’s forehead. She didn’t want to be the one the others whispered about in the hallways, the girl with the bad reputation. She’d been that once before. She hadn’t cared then. She cared now.

“Have you been abused,” Preacher asked the woman from the truck, “or traumatized in any way? Tonight, at least.”

“I’m fine,” the woman said, her voice a raspy whisper. “I’m tired. I wanna go home.”

“Don’t we all. So you’re the quiet type. What’s your name, darlin’?”

The woman nodded her head. She half smiled at Preacher, her cracked lips trembling as she showed discolored teeth. “Madison. Madison Leary.”

“Can you wait for us a few more minutes, Miss Leary?” Preacher said. “Just a few things to sort out.”

As Madison Leary chewed a thumbnail, looking out over dirty knuckles and greasy bangs, Maureen studied her, seeing her eyes for the first time. They were two different colors, one eye antifreeze blue, the other a deep emerald. One eye, the blue one, seemed to emanate light, the green to swallow it back down the well. Creases cut deep into their corners. Alive and sharp, quivering like small living creatures balanced in the palm of a hand, Leary’s eyes contradicted her loose-limbed, rag-doll body language. Her nose was small, peppered with blackheads. The corners of her mouth were cracked. The left corner bled. Leary poked at the blood with the tip of her pale tongue. She could’ve been twenty. She could’ve been forty.

“But can I get my bag back?” Leary asked.

“Yeah, about that,” Maureen said. A chill shook her. “That’s one of those things we need to sort out. Preacher, join me at my car a minute.”

Gage called out from the front of the truck. “What about me?”

Preacher laughed. “Holy shit, son, we forgot you were even there. You coulda wandered off and we’d’ve been none the wiser. Officer Coughlin?”

Maureen raised her flashlight, flickering the beam at Quinn and Ruiz to get their attention. They tossed their smokes into the street and walked over.

“Where y’at, OC?” Quinn said.

“Can you hook that one up?” she asked. “I gotta handle her.” She dug Gage’s ID from her uniform shirt, handed it to Quinn. “Clayton Gage. Take him to lockup?”

Quinn glanced at the license, raised a pale eyebrow. “Charges?”

“Open container in a vehicle, DUI, narcotics, and possession of stolen property to start,” Maureen said, “and depending on what else she says about how she got in the truck, maybe something more serious.”

“You give a field sobriety test?” Quinn asked.

“Technically, no,” Maureen said.

“So no Breathalyzer, either?”

“Feel free,” Maureen said. “You want the stats, make it happen. But that means you get the paperwork.”

“He gonna hurl in our unit?” Ruiz asked. “I’ll leave him curbside, white boy or not, ’hood or no ’hood.”

“Fuck it,” Quinn said. “Whatever. We’re already in OT for this week.” He held out his fist. Ruiz, nodding silently, bumped it with his own fist. “We like to keep it simple in the Sixth. You know how we do, Cogs. Living the dream.” Quinn turned to his partner. “Rue, pull the car around, homes, while I make the arrangements.”

As Ruiz walked to the patrol car, Quinn, twirling one finger in the air, headed for the front of the pickup. “Assume it, dog fucker.”

Gage didn’t seem surprised at Quinn’s orders. He didn’t protest, didn’t reject their authority. Fucking men. They crabbed about their rights when a woman asked for simple shit, but now that the men were here, Maureen thought, everyone behaved. Not a peep about getting arrested. But she’s the fascist. Typical, she thought.

“Come to the car with me,” she said to Preacher.

They walked to the unit. She grabbed the denim tote from the passenger seat. “This is her bag. It’s jammed with other ladies’ bags, stolen, most likely from a sorority party at Pat O’s. I already talked to the Eighth about it.”

“She’s definitely good for it?”

“No doubt. Can you see Gage purse-snatching and getting away with ten bags? Woman like Madison, skinny, plain, poor, she’s invisible everywhere she goes.”

“What’s she doing with that winner?” Preacher asked.

“I couldn’t get a thing from her,” Maureen said, watching Quinn and Ruiz load Gage into their unit. Prisoner secure, Quinn and Ruiz lit another round of cigarettes and leaned against their cruiser. Lean and smoke. It was what they did best. “I got two different stories from Gage already. I don’t believe either of them. I’d like to get one from her, but she’s giving me nothing. And I was nice. I promise.”

“Something ain’t right with her,” Preacher said. “It’s like there’s this hum coming off her. And those crazy eyes. Weird. Had a dog with those once. That dog was crazy crazy. Saw ghosts. I’d swear to it.”

“I don’t want her back in that truck,” Maureen said. “I want Quinn and Ruiz to take Gage in, and I’ll take Madison in. If she’s out stealing, if she’s an addict, I can’t put her back on the street knowing that. If we lock her up, even just for the night, sober her up, then maybe we can pin her down and get some answers about what Gage was up to.”

“Suit yourself,” Preacher said. “It’s your traffic stop.”

Maureen walked to the truck, leaned against it beside Madison. She pulled her cigarette pack from her pocket, offered one to Madison, who declined. Maureen lit up.

“That man giving you a ride home, Madison?” Maureen asked. “Is that true?”

“Bike had a flat,” Madison said. “I wanna get that back, too. I want a receipt from you for the bike. And for my handbag.”

“Did you ask for a ride or did he offer?” Maureen asked. “Did he make you get in the truck? How’d you meet him?”

In her periphery, she could see Preacher shaking his head. She could hear his voice in her head:
One question at a time, Coughlin. Let her answer.

“You been in legal trouble before?” Maureen asked.

Madison shrugged. “I avoid cops as best I can.”

“You wanna tell us about that denim bag, Madison? You wanna tell us about the other bags inside it? They yours? How’d you get them?”

“I fucking stole them, you dumb bitch. Jesus. This your first fucking day?” She turned, leaning her temple against the roof of the truck. She crossed her wrists at the small of her back. “You gonna take me in or what? I won’t make you whack me around, like you did him. Let’s get going. I gotta pee.”

Maureen took Preacher’s cuffs from his outstretched hands. “My pleasure.”

“I fucked him,” Madison said, licking again at the bleeding corner of her mouth, eyeing Maureen over her shoulder. “Made his eyes roll back in his head like he was struck by lightning. He nearly bit my titty off.”

“I’m so proud.” Maureen cuffed Madison. Usually the gears clicking excited her. Locking the cuffs on Gage had made the hairs on her arms stand up. Right then, though, what she felt was thin tendrils of guilt squirming in her gut. She led Madison by the chains to the unit. Preacher opened the door to the backseat.

“In that tiny truck,” Maureen said. “That’s some Cirque du Soleil shit, for sure. You’re a fucking miracle worker.” She palmed the top of Madison’s skull, squeezing. “Watch your head.” She lowered Madison into the unit.

“You believe that shit?” Maureen asked, slamming the car door shut.

“I been a cop in New Orleans for thirty years,” Preacher said. “I believe everything.”

“Can you wait here for the tow truck?” Maureen asked. “I would, but you know she will absolutely piss herself in my car. Just to aggravate me.”

“You even call for it yet?”

“Not yet.”

Preacher sighed. “You ain’t even mine to train no more, Coughlin, and still you try me.”

Maureen pulled the denim tote from the patrol car. She held it up. “There’s a crowd of drunk co-eds in fancy clothes over at the Eighth waiting for these. I’ll let you be the hero.”

Preacher touched his index finger to his chin. “This a face that gives a fuck about college girls? Get a grip, Coughlin. I’ll call it in, but then I’m going to the St. Charles Tavern, get some steak and eggs. I’ll make Quinn and Ruiz wait for the truck and let you make it up to them later. You get rid of Miss America here and drop off the bags in time, join me at the Tavern. If not, I’ll see you back at the district for shift change. Make sure your prisoner is squared away.”