Doing the Devil's Work (9 page)

“Are there drugs anywhere in this?” Maureen asked. “Tell me now. That changes things.”

“Don’t be like the rest of them, OC. Just don’t. You know me. You know I ain’t triflin’ like that. I got bigger plans.”

“Looks like it. How’s Mother Mayor feel about your new hairstyle?”

Marques shrank into his chair at the invocation of his grandmother, trying and failing to cross his arms over his chest, his wrist chain rattling. “She don’t like it.”

“I’d imagine not,” Maureen said. It’d be a hard, hard road for him, she thought, rebelling against a woman like Mother Mayor. “Cops hate that shit, trust me on this. It’s what the gangsters are wearing these days. We look for it. She knows that.
You
know that.”

“Because y’all be profilin’ I gotta get a haircut y’all approve of? No thanks.”

“I’m just saying, why make your life harder than it already is?”

“I don’t make it harder,” Marques said. “Y’all do. Who says my life is hard?”

“Then what’s the story? Why are you in here?”

“Ask the fat ass that brought me up in here,” Marques said. “Like I said, I was working, down on Frenchmen. Same as forty other motherfu—I mean, people out there on the street. And I ain’t
even
beggin’ or bullshittin’ like most of them.”

“Working where?”

“On that empty corner, by the old Café Brasil, where them stanky-ass gutter punks hang out, playin’ them stupid fiddles.” He sat up in his chair, straightened his shoulders. “I’m running a band, a brass band. A
real
band. Me and some fellas from school and a couple who graduated outta Roots of Music. We kickin’ it out there now. We’re gettin’ good, yo. No sheet music or nothing. We puttin’ a bucket out. Gettin’ paid a little bit. I gotta start thinking about the future. I age outta Roots next year.”

“It’s a school night,” Maureen said.

Marques shrugged. “We new. Weeknights the only time we can get the spot.”

“It’s not real work.”

Marques’s eyes got big. “
Don’t
let my band teacher hear you say that. Oh, hell no.”

“What I mean is,” Maureen said, “to us, the police, it’s not real work. There’s no pay stub or time card you can show us when we stop you. Horns and drumsticks don’t count, even if you’re standing there playing them.”

“Shamarr gotta show his papers everywhere he go? Shorty gotta show his?”

“They’re over eighteen,” Maureen said. “And pretty famous, to boot. You’re
twelve
.”

“Thirteen last week,” Marques said.

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you. Shamarr rolls with them braids, by the way,” Marques said, perking up as if he’d won an important point in an argument. “And the ladies are
into
Shamarr. You
know
it.”

“Shamarr almost missed his Jazz Fest gig last year because him and his long braids got popped the night before in St. Bernard Parish. Ladies love the braids, cops not so much.”

“That was straight-up racist shit,” Marques said. “And everyone knows it. He wasn’t doing nothing but being black in Cracker Town. Shamarr only got busted ’cause of how he looks.”

“That’s my point, Marques,” Maureen said. “And Shorty keeps it tight. Ladies love Shorty, too.”

Marques dismissed her argument with a wave of his hand, squirming in his chair, suddenly an embarrassed thirteen-year-old boy caught talking with a woman about sex appeal.

“Whatever with that noise,” he said. “For real, though. How am I gonna get known if I ain’t allowed to play? TBC and Baby Boyz? That’s how they got gigs, club owners hearing them on the street.”

He turned his eyes away from her. He was at that age, Maureen noticed, where he could go from boy to young man and back again with a single gesture. The legal system would start seeing him as a grown man real soon. On the street, his age had never been relevant. For such a young kid, he seemed to be running out of time in a hurry.

“So where are the other guys in your band?” Maureen asked. “Doesn’t seem like the whole band got dragged in. Seems like it’s just you.”

“They ran.”

“Even the tuba player?”

“We don’t have one,” Marques said. “At least not right now this minute. I had to fire his dumb ass.”

“Oh, really?” Maureen said, suppressing a smile over Marques’s frustration with his administrative duties. “And what for?”

Marques raised his shoulders high. “Kept gettin’ in fights on the school bus. Can’t
have
that in a band. Can’t have it. We’ll get a new one. Soon dudes’ll be lining up to play with us, as long as we can keep working.”

“And why didn’t
you
run?” Maureen asked.

“’Cause I don’t. You know that.” Marques shifted in his seat.

“You stayed,” Maureen said, “and hassled that cop so the other guys could get away, didn’t you? You took the hit.”

“This whole thing is some bullshit,” Marques said. “I gotta have permission from the cops to play music? In New Orleans? What the fuck is up with that? A black dude can’t come and go without his papers? I was
born
here. That’s some Klan Nazi shit, what that is. Just ’cause we got a black president now. It’s worse than
ever
.”

Maureen fought back another smile. “I hear your grandmother’s voice. She’s well?”

“She finds out I got busted, we’ll hear her voice all over New Orleans, and won’t neither of us be well.”

“You asked for me,” Maureen said, blowing out her breath and raising her hands. “You got something for me? You heard anything about Bobby? He been sniffing around you and your grandmother? Been doing dirt in the neighborhood?”

“We moved,” Marques said.

“I heard. But you never get back to Josephine Street? Not ever?”

“I wouldn’t know about his ’hood, wherever it is.”

“You know what I mean,” Maureen said.

“I told you,” Marques said, “there’s two things I don’t do.”

“Yeah, you don’t run, and you don’t snitch. How’s that working out for you?”

“It is what it is,” Marques said. “I don’t know why you so worried about that, anyway. Ain’t like y’all arrested nobody. Who am I gonna testify against?”

“We couldn’t chase down his hideouts fast enough because our only surviving witness to his habits and drug trade, you, wouldn’t give a statement that was worth anything. No names, no places, nothing, despite everything we did for you. That’s how I remember it.”

“Stop. I’m thirteen, yo. You can’t catch the man without me? That sounds like
your
problem. And you want me to side with
y’all
on this. Nigga, please.”

Maureen paused, rubbing her temples until the echo of her own complaints about Edgar Cooley and the FBI faded away. She took a deep breath.

“A man who murdered your friend also tried to shoot you and your grandmother,” she said. “Asking if that man has tried it again since is hardly asking you to snitch. Especially after the
huge
breaks we cut you. I’m not askin’ who’s grinding on what corner, Marques. I’m not asking for your friends’ names.”

“I told you I’m not into that,” Marques said, frustration sharpening his tone.

“This is life-and-death stuff and you know it. Save that ‘nigga please’ shit for the street. And we will bring Bobby Scales in, sooner or later.”

“Don’t hate the playa, OC.”

“I know, I know,” Maureen said. “Hate the game. Whatever. So this isn’t a trade, then, where you help me because I’m helping you. This is a straight-up favor I’m doing you.”

“Call it what you want,” Marques said.

“You try me, kid. You really do sometimes. One of these days, I’m not coming for you.” Maureen stood up, her chair scraping the floor. “This room stinks. Let’s get outta here.” She walked to the door, knocked on it. “You owe me, Marques. Again. Still.”

Hardin came in, tilted his chin at Marques. “He good to go?”

“He is,” Maureen said. “If you’d do the honors.”

Hardin unlocked the cuffs. He gave Marques a hard slap to the back of the head as the boy stood. “I don’t want to see you here again. Not even on a school trip. Stay home sick that day. And get a fucking haircut.”

At the door, Maureen grabbed Marques by the upper arm. “Let’s go. Head down, mouth shut.”

Honoring Hardin’s request, Maureen led Marques through the building, down a flight of stairs, and out a side door, onto Iberville Street, where she ran right into Quinn and Ruiz on the sidewalk.

Quinn laughed as Maureen and Marques stopped short, the door banging closed, the lock clicking into place behind them. Marques backed up against the building.

“Is anybody left patrolling the Sixth District tonight?” Quinn asked. Ruiz loomed, dark-eyed, over his shoulder. “With all of us down here in the Eighth?”

The way the two men stood so close to her made Maureen feel cornered. She could smell the dried sweat and nicotine wafting off them. Narrow sidewalk, she told herself. That’s why they stood so close to her. They’d been reaching for the door when she and Marques had emerged from it. Of course, they were right there. She’d walked into their space. She rolled her shoulders back, squared her chest, trying to reclaim some ground. Marques inched away from the trio of cops, sliding along the wall. If she felt cornered, Maureen could only imagine how uncomfortable Marques felt. Neither man gave an inch. One of them smelled of garlic. One of them had alcohol on his breath.

“Quick errand,” Maureen said.

“Funny,” Quinn said. “Us, too.”

Maureen noticed as Ruiz slipped something into his pocket. He stared hard at Marques. “Taking out the trash, Cogs? That’s what it looks like.”

Maureen flinched. Sticking up for Marques in front of her fellow officers wouldn’t happen. Still. Ruiz’s insult irked her. They should at least show her more respect. It was Quinn who’d been drinking.

“He’s a good kid,” she said. “He just steps in it now and again. He’s learning.”

“We can take him off your hands,” Ruiz said. “We can speed up his learning curve, too. No offense to you, Cogs, but he looks like a kid who might benefit from a strong
male
influence.” He raised his thick eyebrows, his pockmarked face a mask of insincere concern. “Where’s your daddy, son? Angola? Cemetery? Under a floor somewhere?”

Marques said nothing. He kept his eyes lowered, but he raised his chin.

“You wanna see some mug shots?” Ruiz asked. “Maybe we find one that looks like you. Maybe we get lucky and he’s alive and willing to claim you, his lost little boy.”

Quinn slapped Ruiz in the chest with the back of his hand. “The shit you say, dude. Damn.” He’d gone pale, vampiric, Maureen thought. Or maybe it was the streetlights.

“What about your own errand?” she asked. “Don’t let us hold you up.”

“Yeah, there’s that,” Quinn said. Ruiz’s aggression had made him uncomfortable. He looked at Marques. “So you’ve got it under control with—what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t say,” Marques answered. “Sir.”

“Let me get this kid home,” Maureen said. “And y’all can do your thing and we can get back uptown before Preacher throws a stroke.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Quinn said. “We’ll see y’all later.”

Maureen walked away, blinking, fighting for her breath, trying to hide the spike in her stress level. Marques stuck close to her, his eyes glued to the sidewalk. She didn’t need to grab his arm this time, didn’t even need to talk to him.

“My car is around the block,” she said, just to make a sound, “on Royal.”

Maureen glanced back down Iberville Street before she and Marques turned the corner onto Royal. Quinn and Ruiz remained at the side door, both of them looking back at her. She couldn’t read their faces in the dark and distance. The encounter rolled around in her stomach, sour and acidic, leaving her feeling like she had a bellyful of the cheap liquor on Quinn’s breath. A key, she thought. That was what Ruiz had put in his pocket when she walked out the door. Had to be. They couldn’t get in through the side door without one. Why would Quinn and Ruiz, she wondered, have or even need a key to that door? Why not walk in through the front door? Because Hardin would see them? And why wouldn’t they want that?

She looked at Marques. Maybe she wasn’t the only cop who’d come for him. Did Hardin know Quinn and Ruiz were coming? Was that why he’d rushed her with the boy? Was that why he’d asked her not to brag on the favor, hadn’t asked for her over the radio? Maureen wondered who Hardin was crossing, letting Maureen slip out of the station with Marques in tow. It had to be someone more important than Quinn and Ruiz. He outranked them. If he didn’t want them around, he could order them to stand down, send them back to the Sixth with their tails between their legs. And they knew it, which was why they were sneaking around the side door. She wondered who the cop was who’d busted Marques in the first place.

“Oh, hells no,” Marques said, recoiling at the sight of her patrol car. “I can’t get a ride home with you. In a cop car?”

“Gimme a break. What’d you think I’d be driving? A Range Rover?”

“Serious, OC. The whole block’ll think I’m snitchin’.”

“You gotta go home. That was the deal I made.”

“Yeah, that
you
made,” Marques said, walking away. “What I gotta do is go get my drum. Peace.”

“Wait right there,” Maureen said.

Marques kept walking, accelerating his pace. Maureen wasn’t sure it was her he was trying to escape.

“I mean it,” she said, hustling after him. “Do not make me fucking chase you. I’ll call it in. I’ll leave you in the box this time.” She took a shot. “I’ve got Quinn and Ruiz down here to help me, and I know where you’re going. I get the feeling they’d be happy to help round you back up.”

Marques stopped. He waited for Maureen to catch up to him, jaw set as he tried to drive the fear from his face. She’d seen that look on him in the past. She wanted to know the connection between the boy and the cops. Uncovering that fact without tipping off those two would be tough. Marques would lie to her. He’d deny knowing them. And he’d never, ever trust her to take his side over other police, no matter their personal history, asshole cops or not. That was the way things worked. That was the game. She couldn’t blame him. Were the situation flipped, she wasn’t sure she’d trust him.