Li’l Dizzy’s was a small, busy café in the Tremé, famous for its fried-chicken-anchored lunch buffet. Preacher had turned her on to the place, taking her there a few times during her training days, the café being a central hub of New Orleans’s Creole power structure. On any given weekday afternoon, the café buzzed with cops, lawyers, judges, and city politicos on their way to or from the nearby courthouses and police headquarters. A lot of business, city and otherwise, Maureen was sure, got conducted at those lunch tables.
When Gage walked into the restaurant, half an hour late, Maureen knew him right away. Detillier had provided an accurate description. Looking at him, though, trying to get a first read on him as he crossed the room, Maureen realized that despite being told what Gage looked like, she had expected someone much different. She’d expected someone more backwoods, more swamp. She’d expected leathered skin, long hair, and a wild beard. She’d expected camouflage and Confederate flags. A cliché. Lazy, Officer Coughlin, very lazy. She thought of Atkinson. Stay open to the possibilities.
The man walking toward her was below average height, underfed, cubicle-pale. He kept his thinning brown hair trimmed short, wore a bushy brown mustache. A couple of days’ worth of stubble threaded with white whiskers shadowed his cheeks and throat. He wore a yellow shirt under a Carhartt jacket, brown trousers, and a hideous brown-and-gold-striped tie, discount store brown loafers with black socks. His clothes hung on him, Maureen noticed, like they would on a scarecrow. He appeared a man burdened by suffering. If he was faking his grief, she thought, he’d built a hell of a disguise.
“Detective Coughlin?” Gage asked, placing a hand on the back of the chair opposite Maureen, his scratchy voice barely audible above the din of the busy restaurant. He had the bright blue eyes of a different man, a handsome man, Maureen noticed, but not the chin or the cheekbones, and his lips were almost feminine.
Maureen rose, extending her hand across the table. “Officer Coughlin. You can call me Maureen.”
Gage hesitated a moment, as if he hadn’t shaken a hand in so long he had to remember how. But then he reached for Maureen’s hand. He had a solid grip. “Leon Gage. Thanks for meeting me.”
The waitress appeared at the table, a slip of a black girl in jeans and a Dizzy’s T-shirt, apron tied around her waist, her hair pulled back, nineteen at the most. She’d brought the coffeepot, refilled Maureen’s mug without asking. “Something for you?” she asked Gage. Again he looked confused. He looked at Maureen.
“I ate,” she said. “But, please, take advantage of the buffet. You’ll be glad you did. They’ll be putting it up soon.”
“No, no, thank you,” Gage said. “I ate earlier. A sweet tea, maybe?”
“Maybe or yes?” the waitress asked.
To Maureen’s surprise, Gage smiled. He moved one degree closer to handsome when he did so. “Yes, thank you.”
Neither spoke until the waitress delivered Gage’s tea.
“I take it you know why I’m here,” Gage said.
“You have questions,” Maureen said, “about the death of your son.”
“I do, I do,” Gage said. He reached into his bag. He pulled out a digital recorder, set it in the middle of the table.
Maureen eyed the recorder. Gage had turned it on. She covered it with her hand, pushed the device across the table. “We won’t be recording this conversation, Mr. Gage. You can put this away.”
“Many people would consider your refusal to go on the record as an admission of something to hide,” Gage said. “If our roles were reversed, you would use it against me, as cause for suspicion.”
“Consider it anything you like,” Maureen said. “I’m willing to discuss whatever it is that troubles you about what happened to your son. But we won’t be recording anything.”
Gage raised his eyebrows. “You’ve already told me so much. Thank you.”
He returned the device to his bag. Maureen wasn’t sure he’d turned it off.
“You wouldn’t believe what it’s like trying to have a simple conversation in this city,” Gage continued. “The police, the coroner’s office. Or maybe you would. Doing what you do.”
He set his elbows on the table, leaned a bit forward. “And I’m not uncomfortable with the word murder. Because that’s what it was. Murder. I am not a fearful man. Fear is how we lose our truth, by obscuring things from the very beginning of the story. Hiding the truth for the sake of people’s feelings, or for correctness, or to pass along responsibility for it. My son didn’t die. He didn’t have a stroke. He didn’t drown. He didn’t fall down a flight of stairs. He was killed. On purpose. As a choice someone made. That difference in wording, that specificity, acknowledges that someone, a free individual, bears responsibility for him being dead.” He paused. “I want that acknowledgment made and sustained.”
“Consider it so acknowledged,” Maureen said, resenting being made to feel like she was on the witness stand. If any one person bore prime responsibility for Clayton Gage’s death, she figured, it was Clayton Gage. He’d made choices of his own. She figured withholding that opinion from his father was best.