Let the Devil Out (Maureen Coughlin #4)(85)

LaValle stared at her for a long time through the metal bars of his security gate.

“You can stay in the office,” Maureen said. “You won’t even know we’re here.”

She heard LaValle suck his teeth. Then she heard the brass bolt slide home as he unlocked the gate.





31

Once she was locked inside the Big Man Lounge, Maureen was stuck doing the one thing she hated the most: waiting. She flipped a chair and sat at a table where she inspected her gun. She eyed the whiskey bottles across the room behind the bar. She put her gun back in her holster, sitting and waiting, tracing her fingers over the scratches in the tabletop. Names. Curse words.

LaValle was locked in his office, doing his numbers for the night. He’d taken three cold bottles of Budweiser back there with him. She’d halfheartedly tried to get him to leave her the key and go home. She realized right away she’d have an easier time getting answers out of Shadow than she’d have getting LaValle to turn his bar over to the cops.

When she got tired of sitting, she got up from the table, put a dollar in the jukebox, played Otis Redding and Dr. John and Muddy Waters. Otis sat on the dock of the bay. Dr. John walked on gilded splinters.

Everything, everything, everything gonna be all right this morning, Muddy sang.

I f*cking hope you’re right, she thought, pacing the smooth, cigarette-burned wood floor as the music played.

When the music ended, she sat on a barstool, swiveling her seat, drumming her fingers on the bar, chain-smoking, staring at the phone behind the bar, listening to the New Orleans night’s activities on her police radio. Please keep this a quiet night, she thought. She prayed nothing happened that the other cops on patrol couldn’t handle. No all-calls tonight. Please. For one night let the neighborhood knuckleheads be reasonably well behaved. Let our bad reputation work in our favor for tonight, she thought.

Maureen worried as she sat there that she’d misjudged Shadow’s involvement with the Watchmen. What if he was more hooked into them than she was guessing? Their connection was live if she was right about Shadow being the one who gave the description of Preacher. But wasn’t that what she was sitting there hoping for? That Shadow was in deep with the Watchmen. What if he led the Watchmen and their white van right to her? What if he walked in willing to do the job himself? Wasn’t likely Little E was going to pat him down first. She’d set herself up but good for another attempted assassination, she thought, for another shoot-out.

Alone in this bar, she was cornered. Cases of bottled beer blocked the back door; she had checked, and it was padlocked anyway.

She had backup in the neighborhood, but who knew if they’d respond fast enough.

*

Not long after Little E had left, Maureen had reached out to Wilburn and Cordts. They stopped by the bar and she filled them in on her plan. It wasn’t very complicated. Get Shadow to the Big Man. Make him talk about the Watchmen. By any means necessary. Wilburn and Cordts agreed to hang around the neighborhood and stick close to the bar as much as they could without completely neglecting their patrol assignment. That way, if something unexpected happened with Shadow, they’d only be blocks away. But that also meant, Maureen thought, if something unexpected happened, they’d be blocks away.

Whether the meeting with Shadow went poorly or well, she’d be alone with him for most of it. Not that she was afraid of being alone in a room with Shadow. He’d taken her out once before, had surprised her from behind a blind corner during a foot chase in the Quarter and punched her right in the throat. None of that tonight, she thought. She was tougher now. Meaner. And she hoped she was smarter.

When word came from Little E that Shadow was on his way, she’d call Wilburn and Cordts. She’d ask them to meet him outside the bar, make sure he was alone, and pat him down. She hadn’t decided whether she wanted Wilburn and Cordts inside the Big Man for her conversation with Shadow. She might not want witnesses to what she did. They couldn’t talk about what they hadn’t seen. She wanted to offer them that protection. If they needed it. She hoped things with Shadow didn’t go that route; she wasn’t looking to hurt him, simply reserving the right to do what was necessary.

Maureen got up from the bar, walked around behind it. Whether or not she had booze on her breath wouldn’t be a deal breaker. Wasn’t like anything that happened in that bar would be spoken of again. Wasn’t going to be any paperwork. She searched the bottles. No Jameson. Disappointed but not discouraged, Maureen poured herself a double Jack Daniel’s in a plastic cup. She checked the wells. LaValle had burned his ice. So much the better, she thought. Not exactly the setting for kicking back with a cocktail. She downed the double shot. She felt the heat rise into her sinuses, felt the scorch in her throat, the match strike in her belly, felt the sparks drip lower. Grease for the machine. Her mouth filled with saliva, and she spat in the sink. She tossed the plastic cup in the trash, rolled her head on her shoulders. She laid a ten on the bar for the drink, tucked under her full ashtray. She lit a cigarette, pulled the smoke deep inside her.

The phone behind the bar rang. Maureen answered. “Speak.”

“That nigger Shadow coming to you,” Little E said. “That’s what I was told.”

“Well done,” Maureen said. She hadn’t fully believed until that moment that she wouldn’t see the sunrise with nothing happening. She reached for the bottle of Jack, poured a single. Well, she thought, an Irish cop’s idea of a single. “I’m gonna tell Preacher you came through for him. Count on it.”