“I wasn’t aware,” Maureen said, “that information had been made public.”
“You and I both know,” Heath said, raising his eyes to hers, “that I’m not stuck relying on WDSU for my information.”
“Is there anything you know, then,” Maureen said, “that maybe we don’t?”
He held out the thermos to her. “I brought this for you. For your vigil. It’s coffee. Good coffee.” He smiled. “It has a bit of the Irish in it. I hear you have a taste for that.”
“Thank you, I’m fine.”
“You mind if I do?” Heath asked.
“Be my guest,” Maureen said.
Heath set the thermos on the hood of the cruiser. He unscrewed the plastic cap. Maureen watched as he poured the coffee, steam rising into the cold night air like a genie from a lantern. He raised the cup to his lips, blew on it, eyebrows high on his forehead. Maureen sighed as the earthy roasted aroma of the coffee filled the air around her, the sharp wood-smoke tang of the whiskey dancing like heat lightning through the cloud of coffee. Her mouth watered.
Am I really this easy? she wondered.
Now that she was here, and had figured things out, what was stopping her, she wondered, from throwing Heath down in the street and arresting him? Or from beating him senseless like she had those other dangerous men. She had the ASP in her pocket. She unzipped her jacket and reached into that pocket. Nothing was stopping her, that was what. Specifically, the nothing she had to offer as evidence of his involvement in any conspiracy to kill cops, or of any wrongdoing whatsoever. She’d be the one in cuffs, not Solomon. Tonight she wasn’t an anonymous assailant.
Instead of the ASP, she produced her pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket.
If she got in trouble again, there’d be no cover-up this time, no mercy, no deals. She’d be lucky to make it to prison and not end up in the river. She lit up.
The other option, she thought, was killing him. They weren’t far from the river. They were out of range of his cameras. Most likely.
“Would you mind?” Heath asked.
Maureen held out the pack to him. “Wouldn’t have figured you for a cigarette smoker.”
Because of course you can do that, she thought. No problem. You can kill one of the five richest men in Louisiana, the mayor’s buddy, dump the body in the Mississippi, and walk away from it. She had killed before, but that was in a fight for her life. Sebastian’s flunky, who’d put her in the trunk of a car. And then Sebastian himself had his hands on her, was trying to murder her. Only one of them could live through those moments. Plain and simple like nothing she’d ever been through before or since. Now she was mixed up in something much more complicated. Everything about her life now was much more complicated.
Heath slid a cigarette from the box by pinching the filter. “It’s been a while. I do prefer cigars, but unless we’re going inside.” He shrugged. He put the cigarette in his lips and lowered the tip to the flame of Maureen’s lighter.
But was this situation truly so different, Maureen wondered, from what had happened on Staten Island with Frank Sebastian?
This man Heath, who is standing right here smoking one of your American Spirits, wants you dead. He’s different from Sebastian how? He deserves due process because he had other people pulling the trigger? Can you afford to wait that long? she wondered. Look at what he’s done already.
There’s one key thing to remember, though, she told herself. This idea that Solomon is the source, this theory that he’s using the Watchmen to kill you and Preacher to protect his son, viable as it sounds to you—right now, you’re the only one who has this idea. And you have no proof that it’s true and no one, with Preacher in the hospital, who you can take it to without ending up in that new jail or that river. Who would believe it?
Heath slurped his Irish coffee. “It does cool off quick out here.”
Gage had you one-on-one in L’il Dizzy’s, Maureen thought, and you walked away. You spent weeks alone and unprotected and no one came for you. From the outside, how does all that look? Suspicious as hell, Maureen thought. Maybe it was Coughlin, people might wonder, who told Gage and the Watchmen where to find Preacher.
Get a grip, Maureen, she told herself. You’re losing it. Stop thinking that way. Think like a cop, not like, not like … whatever else you’ve been thinking like.
Heath gestured at the thermos. “You’re sure?”