Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(83)

“If you say so. I got no love for Shadow. Fuck him. It ain’t about that. I plain don’t know where he is.”

What if I beat the daylights out of him, Maureen thought, and he doesn’t know shit? She released his shoulder. Then he’s useless to me. Tonight and every other night going forward. And it’s not impossible someone finds out how he got torn up, she thought, especially if he ends up in the emergency room like the last guy she’d tuned up with the ASP. This encounter’s not anonymous like the Marigny and the Irish Channel, she thought; there are witnesses this time. Three guys saw her pull up and ask for Little E. Three guys heard her chase them away so she could be alone with E. Tonight, she was out in full uniform. She wasn’t skulking around town in a hoodie. She wasn’t sneaking up on anyone. She zipped up her jacket. Besides, odds were Little E didn’t know where Shadow stayed. But he would know someone who did. That was a fact.

Maybe there’d be two, three degrees of separation, but E would have a connection he could tap for information. He’d been around the neighborhood too long, had absorbed too much. He might not even know he had it. But she’d inspire him to find that connection. She would simply stop asking, stop giving him chances to deny her and treat him as if he’d already agreed to help.

“Come with me to the car,” she said.

Little E grumbled but he followed. At the front of the car, she said, “Wait here.”

Maureen opened the passenger door of the cruiser, grabbed a plastic shopping bag off the seat.

In the bag was a prepaid cell phone she’d bought for cash at an all-night convenience store on Broad Street. The transaction would be on the security video, but she’d done what she could to obscure the item she was purchasing. She tore open the hard plastic packaging and made sure the phone was activated. She took out her own smartphone, found the number for the Big Man Lounge, and programmed it into the prepaid. Then she handed that phone to Little E. He stared at it like Maureen had handed him a live hand grenade with no pin.

“I’m a snitch,” he said. “This is starting to feel like some kind of mission.”

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Maureen said. “You’re gonna go around the way and catch up to your boys, and the four of you are gonna make like messenger pigeons and get word out to Shadow that the NOPD wants to speak with him. You put it out there, no arrest, no jail. We want to talk only. Tonight only. When the meeting’s over, he walks away. It’s a chance for him to score some points with us. Points he will need to cash in one day.”

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “You’re going to call me at the Big Man on that phone I gave you. The number’s in the phone. Sun’s up in about three hours. My shift is over in four. That’s the duration of this offer. We don’t see Shadow tonight, we’re tearing the neighborhood down. SWAT, Tactical, the state police, the FBI, everybody’s coming. Because when I go back to the district to file my report, I’m putting Shadow and the Watchmen together, I’m telling everyone that you told me Shadow was laid up in Central City and we’re coming looking—for him and for you.

“We’re hitting Big Mike and his crew first. And I’m gonna make sure Mike knows you had a chance to stop the storm from happening and didn’t get it done. And Shadow won’t be helping anyone else up onto the throne because there won’t be a throne. There won’t be a kingdom. I’m coming through and burning everything down. You think the Iberville got torn down? You ain’t seen nothing.”

“I, uh, no disrespect,” Little E said, “but the Big Man closed.”

“Let me worry about that,” Maureen said. “You get word to Shadow. You call me when he’s on his way to the Big Man.”

Etienne looked at the phone in his hand and Maureen knew his thinking. He could get five, maybe even ten dollars for that phone, a burner with all its time on it, within five blocks in any direction of where they stood. He could toss it down the nearest storm drain and tell Maureen someone had taken it off him. He knew enough that even if the 82nd Airborne came through the neighborhood the next day, their interest in him wouldn’t last. He was too small-time. For the game. For the law. His smallness was what allowed him to survive, and E knew it.

“I want you to think about something,” Maureen said. “I want you to think about the times, the many, many times, that Preacher did right by you. The times he caught you f*cking up and let it slide. You think about the jail you didn’t do because of Preacher. You don’t like me, you don’t want to do nothing for me, that’s fine. But I’m here representing him, and I’m calling in his favors.”

Little E stared hard at the street, his chin on his chest. Maureen had no idea if she’d reached him. She’d threatened him, reasoned with him, appealed to his better nature. She didn’t know what else she could do, other than let him loose. The clock was ticking and she’d emptied her bag of tricks.

“Hit it,” she said. “And let me hear from you soon.”

An idea struck her as Little E walked away, something to add emphasis to her request and some urgency to Shadow’s response. She called Little E back to her. Shadow had become involved with the Watchmen because Ruiz and Quinn had something on him, something they used against him. What it was, Maureen had never learned, but Shadow didn’t know that. E looked at her expectantly.