Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(73)
“Who’s going to know you took a little nip besides you and me?” Heath asked.
Killing Solomon Heath solves nothing, she thought. Maybe it brings Caleb home, but who wants or needs him by then anyway, with the big fish gutted and grilled?
“And after a day like today,” Heath said, “who would begrudge you? This is New Orleans, after all.”
Taking out Solomon Heath does send a message to the Watchmen, Maureen thought. It shows how far the cops go to protect their own. She watched as Heath produced a second plastic cup from his vest pocket and set it on the hood of her cruiser. He unscrewed the thermos and poured. No. No, killing him wouldn’t send the right message, she thought, the coffee-whiskey aroma blooming into the air again.
Killing Solomon, she thought, shows how far one crazy cop would go to get her own sick version of revenge. Shit, she’d told the FBI she had it in for him. Killing him wouldn’t do the most important thing she needed to accomplish, which was put an end to the Watchmen and their war against the NOPD.
There had to be a way, a legit or at least passably legal way, to tie Solomon Heath to the Citizens and the Watchmen. To pull his whole house down on top of him.
She thought of Preacher and of his constant reminders of their true mission, of their real job. Catching bad guys.
She reached out and took the plastic cup from Heath, blew on its contents as he had.
Maureen got the feeling that once she and Preacher had been eliminated, Leon Gage wouldn’t last much longer. Their surviving the day probably kept him alive that night. Actually, he was a goner either way. Maybe he wouldn’t even survive the night. She wondered who Solomon had in the wings sharpening their claws against Gage. Solomon would find a way to turn Gage’s people against him and hang on to their loyalty for himself. Of course, the wet work would fall to others, someone weaker, ambitious, deluded. Someone broke. Heath wasn’t any better than the drug dealers outside the Washington Avenue grocery who Preacher had talked about at roll call last night. Killing. Conniving.
“You asked me about information,” Heath finally said. “If I had any.”
“I did.”
“Napoleon Gage. He is the man you should be looking for.”
Maureen laughed to herself. She wondered if Solomon would offer her the job of killing Gage. The pay would be good. Better than good. Was that why he’d gone after Preacher? To make her that much more willing to kill Gage? He’d get her or she’d get him. Either way, Solomon came out the winner. It made sense.
She wondered if Solomon had an envelope full of money in the pocket of his khakis, and if he would offer it to her right then and there. Like a bounty. She wondered if she would take it. “We had that idea. Where to find him would be much more useful information.”
“What do you know about the man?” Solomon asked.
“Enough.”
“You really think so?” Heath said. “You don’t know enough to find him tonight, do you?”
“If not tonight, tomorrow,” Maureen said. “But we’ll get him. What I wonder about is what he’s going to tell us when we do.”
Heath shrugged. “I’d imagine the man has left town. Wouldn’t you? I would imagine that right now y’all have impressive resources at your disposal.”
“You and I both know,” Maureen said, “that you have a deeper well to draw from than we do.” She set the empty plastic cup on the car. She wasn’t feeling it yet, but the coffee had more than a little of the Irish in it.
“I’m not sure,” Heath said, “that I’m the kind of man you think I am.”
I know exactly the kind of man you are, Maureen thought. And there’s one very important thing about me that you don’t know. That nobody in New Orleans knows. The last one like you I met? The only things that remained of him were a black shoe and bloody, greasy gravy smeared like wet paint across the front of a speeding train.
Don’t tread on me, indeed.
“I know what kind of man you are,” she said. “And I know what kind of man your son is, too.”
“My son,” Solomon said, “is certainly not what you think he is, or what you have told people he is. He had nothing to do with what happened today. He’s had nothing to do with anything that’s happened to you. Those Watchmen people would kill him, too, if they could. I sent my son where he would be safe. There’s nothing more to it than that.” He set his empty coffee cup on the car, poured a refill.
“I’m out here talking to you because I want the same thing you do, Officer Coughlin. To see the Watchmen undone, before any more blood is shed. And there will be more. We’re on the same side, you and I. We always have been. I know Quinn tried convincing you of that.”
What struck Maureen, listening to him, was that Solomon believed everything he said to her. She knew firsthand that no limits existed to the fictions people could convince themselves were truth. A good detective, Maureen thought, considers every angle, every possibility, no matter how improbable. What if Solomon Heath was nothing more than a father trying to protect his son? What if he wasn’t, she thought, for the sake of argument, a criminal mastermind? If she didn’t allow for that possibility, she thought, she could waste a lot of time and energy, neither of which she had to spare, going after the wrong man. What if there wasn’t any evidence linking him to the Watchmen because he wasn’t connected to them?