“I’m on duty,” Maureen said.
Killing Solomon Heath, she thought, wasn’t whipping some frat boy’s ass in the bushes to teach him a lesson. Killing a scion of the city, committing vigilante murder, she thought, even to save herself and avenge her fellow cops, doesn’t catch the other bad guys. It’s not self-defense because he came at you with Irish coffee and charm. Vengeance is not in the job description. And it’s a hell of a long way farther back from secret blood justice than it is from cracking somebody’s ribs in the dark. That’s supposing there is a way back. You’ve had a hard-enough time, she thought, finding your way back from the bank of the Arthur Kill.
“Who’s going to know you took a little nip besides you and me?” Heath asked.
Killing Solomon Heath solves nothing, she thought. Maybe it brings Caleb home, but who wants or needs him by then anyway, with the big fish gutted and grilled?
“And after a day like today,” Heath said, “who would begrudge you? This is New Orleans, after all.”
Taking out Solomon Heath does send a message to the Watchmen, Maureen thought. It shows how far the cops go to protect their own. She watched as Heath produced a second plastic cup from his vest pocket and set it on the hood of her cruiser. He unscrewed the thermos and poured. No. No, killing him wouldn’t send the right message, she thought, the coffee-whiskey aroma blooming into the air again.
Killing Solomon, she thought, shows how far one crazy cop would go to get her own sick version of revenge. Shit, she’d told the FBI she had it in for him. Killing him wouldn’t do the most important thing she needed to accomplish, which was put an end to the Watchmen and their war against the NOPD.
There had to be a way, a legit or at least passably legal way, to tie Solomon Heath to the Citizens and the Watchmen. To pull his whole house down on top of him.
She thought of Preacher and of his constant reminders of their true mission, of their real job. Catching bad guys.
She reached out and took the plastic cup from Heath, blew on its contents as he had.
Maureen got the feeling that once she and Preacher had been eliminated, Leon Gage wouldn’t last much longer. Their surviving the day probably kept him alive that night. Actually, he was a goner either way. Maybe he wouldn’t even survive the night. She wondered who Solomon had in the wings sharpening their claws against Gage. Solomon would find a way to turn Gage’s people against him and hang on to their loyalty for himself. Of course, the wet work would fall to others, someone weaker, ambitious, deluded. Someone broke. Heath wasn’t any better than the drug dealers outside the Washington Avenue grocery who Preacher had talked about at roll call last night. Killing. Conniving.
“You asked me about information,” Heath finally said. “If I had any.”
“I did.”
“Napoleon Gage. He is the man you should be looking for.”
Maureen laughed to herself. She wondered if Solomon would offer her the job of killing Gage. The pay would be good. Better than good. Was that why he’d gone after Preacher? To make her that much more willing to kill Gage? He’d get her or she’d get him. Either way, Solomon came out the winner. It made sense.
She wondered if Solomon had an envelope full of money in the pocket of his khakis, and if he would offer it to her right then and there. Like a bounty. She wondered if she would take it. “We had that idea. Where to find him would be much more useful information.”
“What do you know about the man?” Solomon asked.
“Enough.”
“You really think so?” Heath said. “You don’t know enough to find him tonight, do you?”
“If not tonight, tomorrow,” Maureen said. “But we’ll get him. What I wonder about is what he’s going to tell us when we do.”
Heath shrugged. “I’d imagine the man has left town. Wouldn’t you? I would imagine that right now y’all have impressive resources at your disposal.”
“You and I both know,” Maureen said, “that you have a deeper well to draw from than we do.” She set the empty plastic cup on the car. She wasn’t feeling it yet, but the coffee had more than a little of the Irish in it.
“I’m not sure,” Heath said, “that I’m the kind of man you think I am.”
I know exactly the kind of man you are, Maureen thought. And there’s one very important thing about me that you don’t know. That nobody in New Orleans knows. The last one like you I met? The only things that remained of him were a black shoe and bloody, greasy gravy smeared like wet paint across the front of a speeding train.
Don’t tread on me, indeed.