Before ending up outside Solomon’s house, Maureen had visited the construction sites of the new jail and then the new hospital. She’d even smoked a couple of cigarettes parked by the demolition site of the Iberville projects. She stared down security guards who stared right back at her, hoping she’d move along so they could go back to sleep or smoke another joint.
As she moved from site to site, she had started wondering—as she stared at the deep holes and the rising structures, at the boards and the bricks and the girders, at the silent enormous machines that tore down and built up, at the placards on the fences with the Heath Design and Construction logo alongside their licenses and permits and their long list of worksite rules—about who was really in charge of the world she lived and worked in. Her house had been shot up, she realized, only days after she’d taken money from Solomon that he’d intended as a bribe, only for her to work against him in the end. Who had really given that first order to kill her weeks ago? Had it come from Caleb? That was hard to imagine. He was a spoiled punk. He had provided the Watchmen her street address, but he hadn’t picked up a gun against her.
A group like the Watchmen—angry, violent people who fancied themselves revolutionaries in their grandest, suicidal fantasies—wouldn’t look to a weak man like Caleb as a leader. He was the rich kid they let hang around the clubhouse because he had money to buy guns, because he knew people who had information and influence. They didn’t embrace him; they tolerated him. They would follow someone else.
Solomon wouldn’t lead the Watchmen directly, wouldn’t dirty his own hands with their particular brand of USA crazy. Were he involved with them, Maureen thought, whether for his son’s sake or for other reasons, he’d exert his authority through a proxy.
Maureen figured Leon Gage, despite his middle-school math teacher looks, was that leader Solomon used. He had the air of the pulpit about him. She could see him raging at a crowd, those blue eyes blazing. She knew she had no evidence connecting Solomon to the doings and dealings of the Watchmen, no proof that Leon took his orders from Solomon.
Light from inside the house suddenly filled the back door’s window and spilled onto the slate steps. Floodlights illuminated the yard and the back door opened. Solomon stepped out of the house. Maureen could see his breath as he pulled the door closed behind him.
He wore, as he always did, khakis and brown loafers. Against the cold he wore a thick down vest over a red flannel shirt. He had a wool snap-brim cap pulled low on his head and wore leather gloves. He carried something in his left hand. Maureen sat up straight for a better look. A thermos. He clutched it to his chest like a football as he walked in her direction.
Maureen zipped up her leather jacket, pulled on her knit cap, and got out of the car. Fuck it, she thought. She unbuckled her weapon. For weeks, you’ve been hoping to stumble into exactly this moment. And now there’s no one else around, no joggers in the park, no construction workers at the worksite. And no Preacher to rein her in and scold her.
Maureen decided as she stepped into the street that Solomon had ordered the hit on Preacher. She had seen Solomon recognize him in the park. And he had revived the kill order on her; she was sure of that, too.
With Caleb safely sequestered in the UAE and the NOPD working overtime to erase Quinn’s dirty history and look the other way at the circumstances surrounding his death, Maureen decided Solomon had convinced Leon Gage that now was the time for starting his war against the NOPD, using Gage to get rid of the cops that threatened his son. Gage was a leader to his men, but he was a weapon for Solomon—as Quinn had been, one of his countless tools.
Maureen figured that Leon, who was mourning a son who had crossed over much more than an ocean, hadn’t needed much prodding.
She closed the cruiser door, keeping her eyes on Heath, who had stopped his approach when Maureen left the car.
She realized as she straightened her gun belt on her hips that her return to work, to the NOPD’s good graces—hell, there was no reason he couldn’t know about her work with the FBI—had spurred Solomon into action. Being a cop again made her a threat again. He’d waited to see if she’d quit the department and leave New Orleans like Ruiz had done. Instead, she had rubbed her continuing presence in his face. So Solomon had acted and had done so in the way that men like him preferred, through others, by putting those others’ baser instincts and desires to work for him. Leon Gage fancied himself a man with a cause and an army. Solomon Heath gave him an enemy. A target. Then he sat back safe and distant in his big house and watched the bodies drop.