Maureen turned her head, rolling her skull along the concrete wall of the coffee shop.
A short, slender, clean-shaven black man in a charcoal suit, his head down, phone at his ear, stood at the nearby corner. His name, as he’d told her on the phone last night, was Clarence Detillier, and he was an FBI agent, domestic terrorism unit. He was going to give her a chance, he had said, to go from being a liability to a commodity. His words. She could tell over the phone that he was proud of them. She’d told him she’d be happy to talk. She even let him name the time and the place. Then she had called Preacher. She knew when to roll with backup.
Preacher had worked his web of New Orleans contacts and called Maureen back to vouch for the guy. It was Preacher who’d found out he was in the domestic terrorism unit. So it didn’t seem, as far as Preacher could tell, that Detillier was setting her up for a fall, or worse, looking to somehow use her against her fellow cops in the Gage murder case.
The FBI agent finished his phone call, tucked his phone in his jacket pocket, and headed for Maureen’s table, where an empty chair awaited him. He dusted it off with a handful of paper napkins before he sat. He extended his hand across the table.
“Clarence Detillier, FBI, New Orleans office,” he said. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Maureen shook his hand. It was cold and dry. “Maureen Coughlin, NOPD.” She turned toward Preacher, who sat silent and stone-faced, his hands spread on his thighs. “This is Sergeant Preacher Boyd.”
“From the union?” Detillier asked, his eyebrows raised. Maureen could tell he hadn’t expected her to have company. Good, she thought. She’d already thrown the FBI a curve.
“Sergeant Boyd is my current duty sergeant.”
“So you’re no longer suspended?” Detillier said. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” As if you didn’t already know, she thought.
“I’m here in an advisory capacity,” Preacher said, watching pigeons work a chunk of bagel in the gutter. Maureen heard protective muscle in his voice. He was advising her, and Detillier, too, that he had her back. “Moral support. Backup. Standard operating procedure.”
“You’ve had bad experiences with the federal government, Officer Coughlin?”
Preacher laughed out loud. “We’re sitting in New Orleans and you ask that?”
Detillier leaned over the table. “Hey, Sergeant Boyd, I’m as ‘from here’ as you are. Born and raised.”
Maureen straightened in her chair. “Fellas, fellas.” She turned to Detillier. “Let’s be straight about one thing. I know you said you’re bringing me an opportunity, and I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, but everyone here knows the NOPD is scared shitless of the feds these days. For reasons that have nothing to do with Katrina. Between y’all and the Department of Justice, we’re every one of us waiting to hear the ring of the blade in the air.”
Detillier folded his hands in his lap, leaned back in his seat. “Tell me your specific concerns.”
“As soon as I get my badge back,” Maureen said, “I’m talking to the FBI. The next day. How do you think that makes me look around the district, to other cops?”
“No one needed to know about this meeting except you and me,” Detillier said. His eyes shifted to Preacher. “You’re the one who brought a witness.”
Maureen laughed. “This would’ve stayed a secret? Because that would look so much better, a secret meeting with the FBI after I get my badge back. Please. Yeah, I brought a witness. So that when I’m back on the job and the rumors about me start I have an impeccable source to vouch for me. So y’all are watching us, but we’re watching y’all right back.”
“You agreed to this meeting,” Detillier said, “of your own free will.”
“We’re under a consent decree,” Maureen said. “Big Brother is watching. I’m a rookie. The only reason I’m not out on my ass already is because I’m a woman and I have dirt on the department.”
“Dirt on the NOPD,” Detillier said, “is not why I’m here. I’m interested in the future, Officer Coughlin, not the past. That’s not my department. And I think you already know that.”
“So what is it exactly about the Gage murder that interests you?” Maureen asked.
“Where he came from, for one.”
“LaPlace?”
“The Sovereign Citizens,” Detillier said. “And the Watchmen Brigade, specifically. They are of interest to us. You are of interest to them. You see where I’m headed with this.”
Preacher leaned forward in his chair, the plastic creaking under his shifting weight. “Interested in her? They tried to kill her.”
“We know that,” Detillier said. “It’s the reason we’re sitting here today.”
“You know something,” Maureen said. “What do you know?” Her heart rate doubled, tripping over itself in its effort to accelerate. “They’re going to try again. When? How?”
Detillier threw the quickest glance at Preacher before he spoke, his hands raised in a calming gesture. “We don’t really know anything. I have no knowledge of another planned attack. But we’re worried about it, an attack on you, or on another officer or officers. Losing the gunrunners Gage and Cooley from their own ranks, losing their local connection, the drug dealer named Scales, we don’t believe any of that has deterred the Watchmen from moving men and weapons into New Orleans. None of those three men were in charge. None of them made decisions. They were expendable.”
The agent leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, looking at his hands as he spoke. “The Sovereign Citizens, the larger, umbrella cause that the Watchmen align themselves with and claim to support, or represent, or whatever—it’s all very fluid—are a problem. They have been for some time. Until recently, they mostly confined their efforts to the courts—filing crazy lawsuits, clogging up the system with paperwork, suing townships and judges and anyone else, squatting in foreclosed houses and filing ownership claims—shit like that.”
“More recently, my ass,” Preacher said. “Timothy McVeigh was a Sovereign Citizen.”
“There have always been outliers,” Detillier said. “Individuals. Duos and trios. Cells, if you want to call them that. We’re starting to; the language is changing. The terms we use in the U.S. are becoming more familiar in ways that nobody likes. The outliers, the extremists, they’re impossible to predict, nearly impossible to find before they act. And yes, Sergeant Boyd, I admit, we spent recent years watching for international dangers and for threats coming into the country. As a result, we are now woefully behind on what’s been growing here at home. We’re human like you. There’s only so much we can do.
“What worries us much more now is the growth, the exponential growth of these armed and dangerous militaristic offshoots like the Watchmen Brigade. These patriot groups not only don’t fear law enforcement, be it local or federal; many of them antagonize law enforcement.” He gestured toward Maureen. “They target law enforcement. And their influence is growing.
Detillier ticked off names and places on his fingers. Maureen grew ill as they added up. “That rancher in Utah and his gun buddies. The Oath Keepers, who are now national, the West Mountain Rangers in Montana, the Indiana Rangers, the Massachusetts Fighting Wolves, the Radical American Patriots, the Guardians of the Free Republic in Texas.” He shook his head. “The list goes on, and it grows. Now we have the Watchmen Brigade in south Louisiana.”
“The conspiracy in Vegas,” Maureen said. “The cops killed in the ambush, in the restaurant. That was these people you’re talking about. These are the people who are after me.”
“They got our attention around here before that,” Detillier said. “When those state police got killed in LaPlace. But, yes, the killers in Vegas called themselves Sovereign Citizens. The man they just caught in Pennsylvania who killed those state troopers at their barracks. Him, too.”
“LaPlace was three years ago,” Preacher said. “Vegas was last summer. Pennsylvania was last month. You’re not making much progress. They’re still there, and probably elsewhere in Louisiana, and now they’re here in New Orleans, too.” He nodded at Maureen. “She’s got a front door full of bullet holes to prove it.”
Maureen shook her head. “Not anymore. Rehab is done on the outside. Can’t even tell it happened anymore. I don’t even wanna think about what it cost the landlords to get it done that quick.”
“What about the inside?” Preacher asked.
“That’s got some work left,” Maureen said. “There are bullet holes above the fireplace. In my bed frame.”
“That’s gotta frighten the boys away,” Preacher said.
“Well, good luck with that,” Detillier said, loud enough to get everyone back on point. “If the events of last month have checked the Watchmen’s move into the city, it’s not for long. We’re planning aggressive countermoves. We would like your help with that.”
Maureen stretched her legs under the table, crossing her ankles. “In what capacity?”
“This is not the part where I make you a federal agent,” Detillier said. He reached into his suit-jacket pocket, produced a notepad and a pen. “This is the part where I ask you some questions. Hopefully, you give me useful answers, and we move on from there.” He clicked the pen. “What can you tell me about Madison Leary?”
Maureen crossed her arms. Not the question or the name she’d expected to hear. Leary was a New Orleans case. Skinner had told her the feds had dead Gage’s father on the hook, and that he was the person they wanted to talk about.
“She came here from LaPlace on the run from the Watchmen,” Maureen said. “Allegedly carrying a sizable wad of cash that she’d stolen from them. As far as we were able to figure, both Cooley and Gage were in New Orleans looking for her and the money. But she’s not who you want. A man named Caleb Heath, he’s the one you want.”
“Coughlin,” Preacher said, caution in his voice.
“Leary knows the Watchmen,” Detillier said. “She lived with them in LaPlace. She was one of them. The last place she lived before she came to New Orleans was with the Watchmen.”
“She’s a crazy drifter who fell in with the wrong guys at the trailer park,” Maureen said. “That’s not the same as joining a terrorist cell. She came to New Orleans to get away from them. To escape, and they hunted her here.”
“According to your friend Detective Atkinson,” Detillier said, “this poor, unfortunate victim you describe, she’s the lead suspect in the murders of Gage and Cooley.”
“Then ask Atkinson about her,” Maureen said.
“We did,” Detillier said. “And she sent us to you. She said you knew her first.”
Maureen turned in her chair and looked at Preacher, expressionless behind his dark glasses. In the park, they had theorized about how Maureen had drawn the FBI’s attention. Atkinson was the answer, then. Maureen wondered what else the detective had told the feds about her. Not too much, not everything she knew if Detillier wasn’t coming after her with cuffs.
“If you want the Watchmen,” Maureen said, turning back, “if you really want to hurt them, find Caleb Heath.” She waited for Detillier to write the name down. “Caleb Heath, son of Solomon, the owner of Heath Construction and Design. They have a house on Audubon Park. You need me to spell it for you?”
“I see their signs around the city,” Detillier said. “I know who they are.”
“They’ve rebuilt half of it,” Preacher said. “And they’re tearing down the other half so they can rebuild that. City dollars, state dollars, federal dollars. Katrina made Solomon Heath even richer than he was before the storm. And that’s saying something.”
Detillier chuckled, shaking his head. “Caleb Heath is in Dubai. You both know that already.”
“He can’t stay there forever,” Maureen said.
“I don’t know about that. He’s got a brother who lives there. Heath Construction has an office there. Among other places.” Detillier leaned across the table. “Do you have any idea how big these people really are?”
“I get the feeling you do,” Maureen said, leaning away from him. “And that you’re making your decisions accordingly. The poor people like Leary put up so much less of a fight.”
“It’s the poor people, as you put it,” Detillier said, “who shot up your house.”
“Caleb Heath bought them the guns they used to do it,” Maureen said. “Caleb Heath gave them my fucking address.”
“You have proof of this,” Detillier said. “Ironclad proof? Because that’s what we need to send agents to Dubai to arrest this man’s son. Otherwise, I don’t have taxpayer dollars for a wrongful arrest suit. Not with my budget. Not with the lawyers the Heaths can afford. That’s what I mean when I talk about how big they are.”
“I do not have that kind of proof,” Maureen said. “I did. I don’t anymore.”
“Officer Quinn?” Detillier asked. “I take it he’s one of your sources.”
Maureen nodded.
“Well, he’s dead,” Detillier said. “Which means anything he ever said to you is meaningless.”
“Caleb knows everything Quinn told me,” Maureen said, “and more.”
“Rebuilding New Orleans is only part of what they do,” Detillier said, shaking his head. “And a small part at that. It’s building sand castles to these people. They’re worldwide. If they get sick of Caleb in Dubai, they can send him to Jakarta, to Buenos Aires. That’s how big these people are, how deep their pockets go.”
“Here in New Orleans,” Maureen said, “the big boss lives on the edge of the park four miles away. I can show you which house. I can give you their address. Solomon seems like a decent guy. I only met him once, but I’ve seen him a bunch of times since then. I can give you a general impression. He has to know what his son is mixed up in. Have you even talked to him? Made him try to understand what his son was doing?”
Detillier sat silent and stone-faced.
Maureen turned to Preacher. “Do you believe this guy?”
“I do,” Preacher said. “Sadly enough.”
“Caleb Heath is a direct connection to the Watchmen,” Maureen said, rising from her seat, pressing her finger into the tabletop. “Direct. He’s done business with them. For them. He knows any number of them personally.”
“This business is?” Detillier asked, sighing.
“Guns,” Maureen said. “Lots of them. He finances them, bankrolls them. Or he did, through Clayton Gage, who was an old friend of his from school.” She sat back down. “Now that Heath is out of the country, I don’t know if the pipeline stayed open.”
“Clayton Gage,” Detillier said. “He’s dead, too. He was the second murder.” He drew a finger across his throat. “The necktie outside the bar.”
“Indeed,” Preacher said.
“So with the deaths of Quinn and Gage, and the disappearance of”—Detillier flipped through his notebook—“former officer Ruiz, this direct connection from Heath to the Watchmen has been totally cut off. So to speak.”
“Ruiz hasn’t disappeared,” Maureen said. “He left New Orleans.”
“And went where?” Detillier asked, his eyes moving back and forth between Preacher and Maureen. “He resigned in disgrace, not the best witness. He’s a waste of resources.”
“You’re the federal investigator,” Maureen said. “We’re just beat cops, us.”
“These connections were cut off by the murders,” Detillier said, “in which Madison Leary is a suspect. She seems to know how to find these guys better than anyone else in New Orleans. I’d like to talk to her about that.”
Maureen shrugged. “I’m telling you, she’s not your best way in. She’s not the trick to shutting them down. She’s her own violent offshoot of their violent offshoot.”
“I can be the judge of how important she is,” Detillier said. “Or isn’t.”
“You know she’s mayor of Psycho City, right?” Preacher said.
Detillier frowned at his notebook, flipping back and forth between pages. Maureen didn’t know who else he had talked to about the case, but he’d made a lot of notes. She could tell from his furrowed brow that ideas were starting to lock together in his imagination.
Detiller said, “We’ll come back to Ms. Leary.”
Maureen wondered if Madison had ever been called that before. She had a crazy idea. She decided she’d say it out loud. To see what Detillier would do.
“She’s one of yours, isn’t she? Madison Leary. She was some dopey bastard’s drug mule, or some gunrunner’s scagged-out girlfriend, and you flipped her and put her to work for you, made her an informant. You brought her to Louisiana and pointed her to the Watchmen. And now you’ve lost her and she’s running around New Orleans killing people. She was a mole for you, into the Sovereign Citizens down here. And she’s gone rogue in the worst possible way. That’s why you’re so interested in her.”
Detillier stared at her for a long time. “I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into her.”
Maureen couldn’t even hear Preacher breathing.
“Let’s talk about the father,” Detillier finally said. “He’s of interest to us.” He paused. “I’m talking about Clayton’s father. I’m talking about Napoleon Gage. Goes by Leon.”
“Yeah, I got that,” Maureen said. “What about him?”
“We’re wondering what he knows, if anything, about his son’s activities,” Detillier said. “He went to Homicide demanding information about his son’s death. He dropped off a two-inch stack of bullshit paperwork there that he says compels the NOPD to talk to him. Apparently, he spent three days going from courthouse to courthouse trying to see judges and trying to file these legal forms he drew up himself. This is before going to Homicide. After his visit there, Detective Atkinson reached out to us, which she did because we asked the division to do so. We’ve been waiting to see if anyone would surface over these deaths. Now someone has.”
“And you can’t question this guy yourself?” Maureen said.
“He’s demanding an audience with law-enforcement personnel who worked the scene. We hear he’s filed a bunch of papers with the coroner’s office, too.”
Maureen turned to Preacher. “And we honor demands like these? Is that common NOPD practice?”
“Fuck, no,” Preacher said.
Maureen turned back to Detillier. “But this guy is an exception because?”
“Because his son was a member of a violent patriot militia,” Detillier said. “And because this business with the bogus paperwork filings is typical of Sovereign Citizens. It’s our first real sign he may have been involved in his son’s activities.”
“How does Detective Atkinson feel about the FBI stepping into her investigation?” Maureen asked. “About you bringing me into it like this? She’s okay with it? The two Watchmen deaths are her case now. Leary is her suspect. Why doesn’t she get a chance to talk to the father? He may know a thing or two about Leary. Put him in a room with Atkinson, she’ll have him squawking in three minutes. She’s the best interrogator probably in the state.”
“We asked her,” Detillier said. “She told us to come to you.”
“If you think this guy’s a Citizen,” Maureen asked, “why not have one of your guys handle him?”
“As far as Napoleon Gage knows,” Detillier said, “his son is the victim of a random street crime. He expects to deal with the NOPD. The FBI suddenly appearing would change that. We don’t want to scare him out of town. We don’t want to make him more reluctant to talk. We want him very much to talk to someone, and we agree with Atkinson that the someone he’s most likely to be comfortable with is you.”
Preacher laughed out loud, trying and failing to cover by coughing into his fist. “Because of her sparkling personality.”
“You have to admit, Preach,” Maureen said, “that I’m a whole lot less scary than Atkinson.”
“You’re the one the Watchmen shot at,” Detillier said. “Nobody’s forgotten about that. We thought you’d like to get in on bringing them down.” He shrugged. “But if you’re happy writing speeding tickets…”
“I’m going to tell Atkinson everything that I learn doing this,” Maureen said. “Anything I learn from Gage that might help her find Madison Leary and close her case, I’m going to tell her.”
“Bringing Leary in could only be good for us,” Detillier said. “If you can help Atkinson while keeping the father in play for us, I have no problem with that.
“Listen, let’s not get distracted by interagency politics. I want to keep you alive, Maureen. The Watchmen present a direct physical threat to New Orleans law enforcement. They’ve targeted you specifically. Leon Gage may have useful information about them, and we feel that humoring him is the best way to get that information, should it exist. No matter how she feels about me and what I do, I’m sure Detective Atkinson is keen to eliminate the threat the Watchmen present. And I think she would agree that pulling apart the Watchmen is more important than her murder investigation into the deaths of two guys who, quite frankly, no one will miss.”
Maureen reached for her cigarettes. She lit one.
She wanted to believe that Detillier was telling her the truth and that the feds were on her side. That they were generous and team-oriented. That all law enforcement was created equal. That a badge was a badge to them. She knew better. They didn’t want her killed, but the feds acted only in their own interests. They came to her because it was the best move for them. She exhaled a long plume of smoke.
“So you get my help with the father and the Watchmen,” Maureen said, “and Atkinson maybe gets help with finding Leary, which may also benefit you guys. What I want to know is, what’s in it for me?”
“Preacher will tell you,” Detillier said, unfazed by the question, rolling into an answer that sounded like he’d prepared it, “that plainclothes work is the quickest way to a promotion in any police department. That’s especially true of the one that you work in. Here’s your chance to build that résumé, with an endorsement from the FBI to put in your file. Your coworkers may twitch at the idea of you doing a favor for the feds. They’ll get over it. The brass and the suits look real favorably on that kind of thing, on anything that makes them look good. The brass are the ones who give out the gold shields. And I know one DC I figure you owe some good turns.”
Maureen turned to Preacher, who shrugged.
“Believe him,” Preacher said. “It’s not like you’ll be in Narcotics in two weeks, but you have to start somewhere. Sounds like a cake gig to me. This is a legit opportunity.” He glanced at Detillier then looked back at Maureen. “If they want to overpay for a small favor, fucking let them.”
“Your department is bleeding cops at a near-terminal rate,” Detillier said. “From top to bottom. You didn’t hear it from me, but your SVU is about to lose five detectives. Five. Someone’s getting sucked up into that empty space in the departments above you. Why not make it you? We want one hour of your time. Have coffee with the man. Tell us what he tells you. Couldn’t be simpler. If it’s nothing, well, we tried, and the effort looks good on you.”
He checked the time on his phone, reached into his jacket pocket, produced a business card. He placed the card on the table between them. “Take a few minutes to discuss things with your duty sergeant here. But call me soon. Later today or tonight. We don’t know how long Gage is staying in the city. If we wait too long, we may all of us lose our chance to get what we can from him.” He raised his hand to Preacher. “Sergeant Boyd, a pleasure.” He shook Maureen’s hand. “Officer Coughlin, we’ll speak soon.”
Maureen left the card on the table until Detillier turned the corner. When he was out of sight she picked up the card, tucking it into the inside pocket of her leather jacket.
“What do you think, Preach? Straight up. Do I trust this prick?”
“You have to make that decision,” Preacher said. “I’m not seeing a downside for you right now, but they set it up that way on purpose. I will tell you this. If you get them something good for Detillier, if you put the NOPD in the middle of the FBI making a major bust, you will have gone from the shithouse to the penthouse faster than any cop in department history. We could really use a gold star around here. Believe it.”