“I know what kind of man you are,” she said. “And I know what kind of man your son is, too.”
“My son,” Solomon said, “is certainly not what you think he is, or what you have told people he is. He had nothing to do with what happened today. He’s had nothing to do with anything that’s happened to you. Those Watchmen people would kill him, too, if they could. I sent my son where he would be safe. There’s nothing more to it than that.” He set his empty coffee cup on the car, poured a refill.
“I’m out here talking to you because I want the same thing you do, Officer Coughlin. To see the Watchmen undone, before any more blood is shed. And there will be more. We’re on the same side, you and I. We always have been. I know Quinn tried convincing you of that.”
What struck Maureen, listening to him, was that Solomon believed everything he said to her. She knew firsthand that no limits existed to the fictions people could convince themselves were truth. A good detective, Maureen thought, considers every angle, every possibility, no matter how improbable. What if Solomon Heath was nothing more than a father trying to protect his son? What if he wasn’t, she thought, for the sake of argument, a criminal mastermind? If she didn’t allow for that possibility, she thought, she could waste a lot of time and energy, neither of which she had to spare, going after the wrong man. What if there wasn’t any evidence linking him to the Watchmen because he wasn’t connected to them?
“I brought Caleb into the family business, gave him properties to run. I gave him the River Garden development. I gave him Harmony Oaks. To teach him responsibility, how to be answerable and accountable to other people. To at least give him something to do besides running around the swamp with those crazy people.”
“Is this the part of the story,” Maureen said, “where you tell me he was never the same after his mother left New Orleans. Or was it Katrina? Was it the storm’s fault? Poor lost lamb, Caleb. Please.”
“You don’t think I warned Caleb away from those people?” Heath asked. “You don’t think I warned him of the consequences?”
“Posh digs in Dubai,” Maureen said. “Some consequences. He can’t do anything without you. Without your blessing or your money. You’ve rebuilt half the city. You build shit across the world. And you couldn’t get your son to find different friends? Ones who don’t want to be terrorists? You didn’t give a shit what your son did, until today. And even now I’m not so sure.”
“What makes you think you know anything about me and my family?” Solomon asked. “Because you stood outside a garden party looking in through the fence for a night? Because crooked, disturbed cops you knew nothing about told you stories?” Heath folded his arms, staring her down. “And you did everything, I’m sure, that your parents told you to do.”
Maureen laughed. “I smoked cigarettes and raided the liquor cabinet. I didn’t arm cop killers.”
Heath stared at her, solemn and angry.
She’d seen that look in a parent’s eye before, in dealings she’d had with parents worth a lot less money and with a lot less power than Heath. Parents who listened to the detective say right to their faces, “We have witnesses, we have the gun,” and who shook their heads and said, “Not my son.” Maybe certain things really were universal. What wasn’t universal, Maureen thought, was access to plane tickets to Dubai.
“I’ve known this Napoleon Gage almost half my life,” Heath said, “though he used to go by a different name. In the eighties, he led a congregation of sorts. I gave them, gave him, money. Large amounts of money. Several of us did. Here in New Orleans. In Baton Rouge. He had pull in the lower parishes. He was good at getting people to vote, and vote a certain way. Local elections, state elections. He had a good racket going. He could play the game.”
“In a way that made you and your friends the big winners, I’m guessing,” Maureen said. “What happened? He finally caught on?”
“He expanded,” Heath said. “He came to New Orleans. And when I saw him up close, I realized that he wasn’t playing games.”
“He got tired of being the good soldier,” Maureen said, “and wanted an empire of his own, like you.”
“You’ve seen those people in the Quarter,” Heath said, “with the big white crosses, the banners with the flames, screaming about hell and the devil and damnation. It was like that, the crew he led, but worse. Much, much worse. They wore fatigues. They marched through the streets of the Quarter, chanting. I went to see him once on a Fat Tuesday, in Jackson Square. It’s a big day for those types, too. You’ll see. The rage that came from him, that he inspired. The vitriol. The hate. I’d never seen anything like it. Haven’t since.”