“You asking about shit that’s over my head. I don’t run with fellas like that. Red or white.”
“I’m not asking for the whole operation,” Maureen said. “Tell me what you’re hearing, what’s floating around in the air. Rumors. Talk.”
Little E let out a long sigh. Maureen lit two cigarettes, gave him one. He said, “The dude with the dog, Big Mike, I don’t know him. Them boys with him make like they a Josephine Street crew, and maybe Big Mike is, I don’t go around asking, and maybe some of them J-Street boys is over there with him now, but word is them boys hanging around wearing white is really downtown muscle. The reds, they was two uptown neighborhood crews really, and they started beefing with each other, like internally. Right about that time the Iberville started getting torn down, which eliminated prime Fourth Ward territory.”
“So Big Mike,” Maureen said, “he’s making a move on this neighborhood by bringing in those Fourth Ward boys, using them for muscle in exchange for kicking something back to them.”
Etienne shrugged. “Their spots in the Iberville are torn up now. Their neighborhood is gone. Ain’t there no more. Nobody living there, and the new place is going to look like that Harmony place across from the grocery, nice and shit. Prob’ly put a school there, too. Times are changing, I guess.”
“So how did news of two uptown crews beefing get down to the Iberville?”
“You got me,” Etienne said. “Small city, you know. Everybody in the same business, basically. Word travels.”
Maureen moved half a step closer to Etienne. “No. No. There’s more to it than that. It’s a big leap, a big power move, bringing people from way down the Iberville up to Central City. Especially for someone like Big Mike, who’s not real known as far as I can tell, certainly not outside this neighborhood.”
“I mean, I don’t know,” Etienne said. “I’ve never been in the game. I use every now and then, I ain’t gonna lie, but I ain’t like in it, ya know?”
“And yet you do seem to know quite a bit,” Maureen said.
E stepped away from her. He straightened his coat. “No offense, but shouldn’t you be after those boys that shot y’all’s own? You know how we do. You don’t like Big Mike, give it six months, someone else be out in front of that store with a different car and a different dog and everyone be wearing, I don’t fucking know, whatever the fuck, purple or some shit.”
“Back to Big Mike,” Maureen said. “Here’s what I’m thinking. There’s one key thing that he would need to exploit a crisis like a gang beef with new muscle from outside the neighborhood. He’d need a broker, a go-between.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Etienne said. “I’m not smart enough to follow you. I’m just a convict. And I’m getting cold.”
“An inside man,” Maureen said. “A matchmaker would make a move like Big Mike’s so much easier. An inside man would get himself paid and protected greasing the wheels for a man like Big Mike, a big mover like him.”
Little E raised his beer can to his mouth, but he’d drunk it dry. He studied the empty can, tossed it in the gutter, jammed his hands in his coat pockets. “If you say so, Officer. You’re the one trained in this shit.”
Maureen closed the distance between them again, steeling herself against his stench. “I want you to stand there and tell me you haven’t seen Shadow hanging around these past couple of weeks. Everything that’s gone on, you haven’t been hearing his name?”
“Shadow?”
“Yeah, Shadow. I’m stuttering? This alliance with the Iberville guys, you think that doesn’t have Shadow written all over it?”
Etienne’s mouth hung open as he thought of what to say.
“Don’t you fucking lie to me,” Maureen said. She touched the leather over her ribs. The ASP rested in an inside pocket. She’d carried it with her everywhere she’d gone tonight. She didn’t want to use it on Little E. He was small and scared, cold and weak. Not the kind of person she carried it for. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t use it if he left her no choice. “Don’t you lie to me, E. Not now, not tonight.”
“I heard things,” Etienne said. “I heard this was Shadow’s big move. Y’all saw to that, you gave him the opportunity. Getting rid of Scales like y’all did opened up the game for Big Mike.”
“One goes down,” Maureen said, “and another steps up.”
“Only, you know Shadow,” Etienne said. “He never the man on the throne. He the man behind the man, that’s how he do. Someone else always get to take the fall.”
“Not this time,” Maureen said. “This time it’s him I want.”