“First off,” Maureen said, “Preacher is alive. And he’s going to make it. I saw him not too long ago tonight.”
Etienne smiled and clapped his gloved hands. He pumped his fist. “Yes, indeed. Ol’ Preach. He a tough motherfucker.” He tapped his fist over his heart. “You tell him, you tell him Little E got prayers up for him.”
“I will,” Maureen said. “He’ll be glad to hear it.”
“So it was the Klan then?” Little E said. “I heard they was back around. Hard times. Hard times.”
“Not the Klan,” Maureen said. “Something like it, but different. Something new. They’re antigovernment, anti-police. They call themselves the Watchmen Brigade.”
Etienne was skeptical. He shrugged. “Nigger-hating country white boys with guns. Am I right? Maybe they don’t call theyselves Klan, but they ain’t nothin’ new. Believe that.”
“The two cops that were killed, they were white,” Maureen said.
Etienne shrugged again. “I’m just glad it weren’t niggers that shot them cops. Not that I’m glad they got shot. I don’t like nobody getting shot down like that.” He paused. “Even y’all. It’s bad all around.”
“The Watchmen Brigade,” Maureen said. “What do you know about them?”
“They sound like people I would hear about?”
“They’ve been doing business in the city since the summer. Especially in this neighborhood. Buying guns, selling guns. Throwing lots of cash around, talking about a war. A revolution.”
Little E nodded. “Now that you mention it that way. They the ones doing business with Bobby Scales, hiding their guns at his place.” He pointed to the NOPD emblem on her jacket. “I thought y’all put a stop to that business when Bobby went in the river with that cop.”
When Bobby went in the river, Maureen thought. Pretty diplomatic of you, Mr. Etienne. She wondered how much he had learned from Preacher. “So you knew Bobby Scales, knew his business?”
E slugged his beer. “I knew of him. I kept my distance from his business, believe that.” He looked away, down at the street. “You see where it got him.”
Maureen recalled the times she’d observed Preacher working an informant, smooth and rhythmic in the way he talked, his questions and tone guiding the snitch this way then that way, massaging, like a man gently polishing clear a smudged marble surface. She thought of watching Atkinson hammer a suspect in the box, direct and relentless as a pile driver. This was a time for Preacher’s way. The information you wanted, she’d learned from him, you had to circle it, come at it from the side, indirect. If you led the person right toward the prized information, the one important answer, they’d anticipate what you wanted, they could see the next question coming, and the question after that, and they’d start planning their answers, lining up their lies. You’d never get a clear picture through the smudges.
“Preacher and me,” Maureen said. “We were working on something before he got shot. He said you could help with it. He told me you specifically. He’d be here himself, you know, if today hadn’t happened. I’m here with you because he needs your help.”
“Makes me sad,” Little E said, “what happened to him. Preacher’s a good man. We’ve had our things, you know, our differences, like friends do, but he done right by me most of the time. By a lot of people in this neighborhood. A lot of fellas in this neighborhood making ends instead of doing time because Preacher a real-world person. He know when someone need a break. Always.” Etienne dragged his wrist under his runny nose. “Fuck. I was eight years old, selling peanuts up Napoleon Avenue on the parade route first time I met Preacher. He used to come in the Fox, drink a beer with my old man on Super Sundays.”
Maureen smiled. “Selling peanuts? Exactly how’d you ‘meet’ Preacher?”
“Yeah, well, you know.” He couldn’t stop his grin. “Pick up a lost wallet or two. Lot of people drop their wallet while they chasing beads. It happens. You work Mardi Gras, you’ll see.”
“I bet I will.”
“But I don’t know nobody,” Etienne said. “I don’t know nothin’ about nobody out killing cops.”
Maureen waved the idea away. “It’s not that. I know that if you knew something that would put me on the Watchmen, you would’ve told me by now. You wouldn’t waste my time with memory lane. Not with Preacher nursing bullet wounds. I want to know about the grocery, the one on Washington and Magnolia.”
Etienne’s eyes darted sideways for an instant. Bingo. She had him.
“It a grocery. Chips, cold drinks, nothin’ special.”
“I’m not looking to go shopping,” Maureen said. “The white Camaro. The dude with the white pit bull and the sweaters. What’s the story?”
“You the police,” Etienne said. “You tell me.”
“Couple weeks ago, the boys out front were in red. Nowadays, they’re different boys and they’re wearing white. I wanna know why.”