Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(74)

“I brought Caleb into the family business, gave him properties to run. I gave him the River Garden development. I gave him Harmony Oaks. To teach him responsibility, how to be answerable and accountable to other people. To at least give him something to do besides running around the swamp with those crazy people.”

“Is this the part of the story,” Maureen said, “where you tell me he was never the same after his mother left New Orleans. Or was it Katrina? Was it the storm’s fault? Poor lost lamb, Caleb. Please.”

“You don’t think I warned Caleb away from those people?” Heath asked. “You don’t think I warned him of the consequences?”

“Posh digs in Dubai,” Maureen said. “Some consequences. He can’t do anything without you. Without your blessing or your money. You’ve rebuilt half the city. You build shit across the world. And you couldn’t get your son to find different friends? Ones who don’t want to be terrorists? You didn’t give a shit what your son did, until today. And even now I’m not so sure.”

“What makes you think you know anything about me and my family?” Solomon asked. “Because you stood outside a garden party looking in through the fence for a night? Because crooked, disturbed cops you knew nothing about told you stories?” Heath folded his arms, staring her down. “And you did everything, I’m sure, that your parents told you to do.”

Maureen laughed. “I smoked cigarettes and raided the liquor cabinet. I didn’t arm cop killers.”

Heath stared at her, solemn and angry.

She’d seen that look in a parent’s eye before, in dealings she’d had with parents worth a lot less money and with a lot less power than Heath. Parents who listened to the detective say right to their faces, “We have witnesses, we have the gun,” and who shook their heads and said, “Not my son.” Maybe certain things really were universal. What wasn’t universal, Maureen thought, was access to plane tickets to Dubai.

“I’ve known this Napoleon Gage almost half my life,” Heath said, “though he used to go by a different name. In the eighties, he led a congregation of sorts. I gave them, gave him, money. Large amounts of money. Several of us did. Here in New Orleans. In Baton Rouge. He had pull in the lower parishes. He was good at getting people to vote, and vote a certain way. Local elections, state elections. He had a good racket going. He could play the game.”

“In a way that made you and your friends the big winners, I’m guessing,” Maureen said. “What happened? He finally caught on?”

“He expanded,” Heath said. “He came to New Orleans. And when I saw him up close, I realized that he wasn’t playing games.”

“He got tired of being the good soldier,” Maureen said, “and wanted an empire of his own, like you.”

“You’ve seen those people in the Quarter,” Heath said, “with the big white crosses, the banners with the flames, screaming about hell and the devil and damnation. It was like that, the crew he led, but worse. Much, much worse. They wore fatigues. They marched through the streets of the Quarter, chanting. I went to see him once on a Fat Tuesday, in Jackson Square. It’s a big day for those types, too. You’ll see. The rage that came from him, that he inspired. The vitriol. The hate. I’d never seen anything like it. Haven’t since.”

He paused, shaking his head at the recollection. “I cut him off after that. Turned my back on him. I got the others I’d persuaded to finance him before to cut him off as well. His resources dried up. I heard there was infighting in his ranks.”

“You undermined him.”

“He had to go. It was clear. People like him never get less angry. Letting it out only lets it grow.”

“I’d imagine he didn’t take to that,” Maureen said. “To you shunning him.”

And I can see, she thought, what he wanted with your son. Knowing Caleb’s money came from Solomon, Gage built his movement, his army with Heath money all over again. Until it cost him his own son. The sins of the father weigh heavy, indeed.

“I admit I felt a twinge of admiration,” Heath said. “All the time I thought I was using him, he was using me right back.” He finished his cold coffee. “And I admit that after I stopped the money I was afraid of him and his thugs. I spent a good six months looking over my shoulder. Then there was a terrible fire, a lesbian bar on the edge of the Quarter. Multiple deaths. He was never connected to it, but he disappeared from New Orleans before the ashes went cold.

“I’m telling you these things,” Heath said, “because you need to believe that Leon Gage is the real thing. The worst kind of true believer. He’s a dangerous man, and completely capable of the atrocities that happened today. And I have no loyalty to him, no reason to protect him.”

“It works out real well for you,” Maureen said, “if we believe that someone else is the real threat here. The radical, the fringe player, the lone wolf. You’d love for us to believe there’s only one rat in the kitchen. That there’s not a big, teeming nest just out of sight.”

“You’re so terribly new to all of this,” Heath said. “This place, its history. Our history. You’re in so far over your head you don’t even know you’re drowning. Wake up. Why do you think Detillier picked you as the canary in the coal mine? Because you have no idea who Leon Gage really is. You couldn’t have a conversation with him if you did. You couldn’t stomach it. And because he’d never talk to a cop who might remember who he was.”