Crescent City Connection (42 page)

She’d noticed Abasolo talking very quietly on his cell phone—he’d probably called Joe Tarantino, who had briefed the chief before King called. Throughout the whole day, Abasolo had moved like some dark, knowing shadow, anticipating what had to be done, smoothing the way for it.

The two of them—he and Skip—had always been a great team, but this was something new.
I’m going to owe him bigtime
, thought Skip.
That is, if I’m around.

She tried to clear her brain, banish thoughts of mortality.
Breathe in, breathe out. The hell with chanting.

Ferguson said, “Okay, everyone?” and dialed.

The psychologists had been called and had agreed this was the only alternative.

The TAC unit was at the ready, with strict instructions to stand by until Skip came out, or asked her bra bug for help, or it became clear from the bug that she was out of commission.

The bomb squad was ready to dismantle the bomb if Skip couldn’t.

An ambulance was parked a block away, ready to make a show of arriving for Daniel. More emergency vehicles were seconds away.

Ferguson held up a finger; Jacomine had answered.

“Hey, Reverend, how you doing?”

“All our people are at peace with God. We are ready to die in twelve minutes.” He sounded ominously calm.

“The paramedics are here, Reverend.” A siren could just now be heard. “I’m bringing them both over now—Lovelace and Langdon. After we have Daniel safe, an unarmed member of the bomb squad will bring Langdon up the steps. You will send one person out with Shavonne.”

“Send Langdon up alone.”

“Reverend, there won’t be time—”

“Whose fucking fault is that?” He hung up.

The first part of the operation went exactly as both parties had agreed. As soon as Daniel lay on the porch, and Jacomine’s two goons stood beside him, hands in the air, Skip—in her Lovelace role—walked onto the porch with the paramedics.

The first thing she noticed was that they hadn’t lied about Daniel. His eyes were closed and he was moaning, apparently unconscious.

One of the goons was black, one white. The black one was a large, handsome man, who nicely matched Dorise’s description of Dashan.
I hope
, she thought,
I don’t have to tangle with that one.

The white one was older and smaller, but he had a spare, mean look that Skip didn’t like, and thick ropy wrists. A fight with him wouldn’t be a picnic either.

She didn’t smile at either one of them, tried instead to look small and scared. On one account, at any rate, she wasn’t acting.

They made a sandwich of her, Dashan first entering the house, then Skip, then the white man.

She cased the place quickly. The front room of the house was meant to be lived in sideways—that is, the fireplace, instead of being dead ahead, was on the right wall.

This room opened into another, with pocket doors that were wide open, so that the two were really one. It was full of furniture, and there was practically none in the front room, the one in which Skip stood. It had probably been emptied into the second, except for one chair, which was full, and a heavy table that was apparently used as a desk. The one window was also to the right of the door. A man holding an assault weapon stood looking out, but probably couldn’t see much.

All that was expected.

What was not were two smiling women, waiting for Skip with arms outstretched. She heard the words, “Welcome, sister,” though from which one she didn’t know, and felt soft arms enfold her. Her face snuggled into someone’s shoulder. Somewhere in the distance she was aware of Dashan and the other man clumping up the stairs.

Upstairs,
she thought.
Jacomine’s running this from the second floor.

In the room’s one chair sat another woman, holding Shavonne, bomb in place.

Skip had half expected the faithful to be gathered round the girl, praying and kissing their asses good-bye. The fact that they weren’t was a good sign, she thought, a sign undermining Jacomine’s statement that they were all ready to die. He evidently expected to be obeyed by the forces of the law.

That could work in her favor.

The second the hugging woman let her go, Skip’s hand went to her waist, drew her gun, and jammed it into the hugger’s abdomen. “Now
I’ve
got a hostage.”

The man with the gun whirled, but remained in place.

Feet sounded on the stairs, men coming down, probably Dashan and his buddy.

The second woman started for the stairs.

The woman holding Shavonne started praying, tears running down her face, terror in her eyes. “Merciful God, deliver us … help us, oh God of Israel.”

She wasn’t going to be a problem, but Shavonne clung to her. Skip pushed her hostage, hard, toward the man with the gun, and while they were both still unbalanced, she jerked at the girl. When Shavonne turned toward Skip, the face of the clock loomed as large as Big Ben. It said three o’clock, straight up.

But the second hand was still sweeping. It was four seconds from the screw.

Skip felt sweat pop out on her face, her hands, all over her body. Jesus Christ. They were dead. It could take that long just to get the wire cutters out of her bra.

She thought
I should pray, too
. She was aware of noise in the room, the other two coming toward her.

She couldn’t pray, she couldn’t pretend she was a warrior woman, she couldn’t get a simple tool out of her bra.
Maybe it’s a bluff
, she thought.
Jacomine doesn’t want to die
.
Maybe there’s no bomb at all.
And recognized the thought as an excuse for paralysis.

But she was already paralyzed. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t make a decision, she couldn’t save this child. Or herself.

And yet she was vaguely aware that she
was
moving, her hands were moving, even as they shook and sweat poured into her eyes. What they were doing was getting that bomb off that poor child, ripping open the jacket snaps, snatching it off Shavonne so roughly that the child cried out. The popping snaps sounded like firecrackers.

She was going to die holding it, there was no time to do anything, anything at all. No time even to…her head swiveled wildly, wondering why she wasn’t dead, vainly searching for a way out.

And it was so hot, she thought.
So damn hot in here.

Without even taking aim, without thinking, without deciding to do so, she threw the vest into the second room, and dived under the table, Shavonne’s body under hers. The building exploded.

SHE SWALLOWED DUST and rubble, and she was hit by flying objects, but for the most part the table protected her. She said into her bug, “We’re all right, I think.”

Shavonne whimpered, and Skip tried to move a little, so as not to crush the child, but she found herself absolutely unable to speak words of comfort, only to lie there, very still, until they pulled her out.

Someone said, “Can you walk?” and she had absolutely no idea what the answer was. But her muscles moved, and she did walk, through a bombed-out shell. Seeing what she saw, she couldn’t believe she’d survived. She later learned someone else had carried Shavonne out, but she had no recollection of being parted from the child.

She had thrown the bomb diagonally, and most of the damage to the house was on the other side, the left, and toward the back. Still, the house was totalled.

She was so deeply in shock that she didn’t protest when they put her in an ambulance and took her to Charity Hospital. Abasolo rode with her.

“You’re okay, Skip, you’re okay.” The usual lies.

He held her hand tightly, but she couldn’t stop the shaking. Her body was reliving the explosion over and over again, like aftershocks of a quake.

“Close,” she said. She meant it was a close call, but she couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say anything for a long time, not until she had been examined and pronounced well, and Cindy Lou, who had shown up almost immediately, had fought her way in and said, “Valium, okay? Have pity on the woman.”

They made her swallow something, and gradually the shaking subsided.

Cindy Lou said, “Steve’s on his way.”

Involuntarily, Skip’s hand went to her head. “Oh, shit. My hair.”

Lou-Lou laughed and Skip was aware that this was a normal sound, a real-world sound. “You might be getting better, girlfriend.”

She was well enough to go home, but that was about it. Steve got her upstairs and into bed, wrestling off her clothes, removing the .22 and the bug without so much as a comment. He woke her briefly to ask if she wanted to see the news, but she shook her head, noticing it felt slightly strange—lighter and smoother, she wasn’t sure why—and she went back to sleep.

She awoke the next morning feeling surprisingly normal, except for a choking mass of something in the back of her throat. She rolled over onto Steve and wouldn’t let go until he pushed her gently. “My leg’s asleep.”

When she spoke, she realized she was hoarse. “Shavonne?”

He stroked her bald head. “She’s fine.”

To her vast surprise, she started crying, and when she was done, the mass in her throat had dissolved. “That wasn’t fun.”

“What, crying? I know. It really hurts your eyes.”

She rolled over, flinging an arm over her head. “Oh, shit. I’m not cut out to be a commando.”

“Actually, intelligence agencies the world over have been faxing fabulous offers. A few came in from Hollywood, too. My favorite’s the one from some dude named Broccoli—is he a man or a vegetable? Says you’re the new Jane Bond.”

She couldn’t even laugh. “He’s wrong. Also he’s dead.”

“I like your new haircut.”

She turned away from him.

“Seriously.”

“I don’t ever want to do that again.”

“If you do, don’t tell me, okay? Only good thing about it, I didn’t know till afterward. That, and my girlfriend’s currently the most famous woman on the planet.”

She sat up. “You better give me the stats. What happened in there?”

“Three dead, four injured, three unscathed. All law enforcement personnel in one piece.”

“Which group is Jacomine in?”

His face was suddenly serious, even a little panicked, as if he were afraid of disappointing her. His voice sounded puzzled. “There’s something funny there.”

She gave him a kill-the-messenger glare. “What?”

“He wasn’t there.”

“What do you mean he wasn’t there?”

“He wasn’t in the rubble.”

“Are you trying to tell me he got away?”

“Not necessarily. Maybe you blew him into such minute smithereens he disappeared.”

She was shaking her head, refusing to buy it. “This is a joke, right?”

Before he even answered, she flung the covers aside, got out of bed, and started rummaging for clothes. Steve said, “Shellmire called. They’re questioning the survivors at the federal building.”

She arrived as angry as she was scared the day before. Shellmire came out to greet her. “Nice job, Skip. Incredible job.”

“How’d he get away, Turner?”

“Oh, shit. It’s too embarrassing to talk about.”

“Tell me.”

“Did you ever hear about the case where the perps were passing something along, and all the surveillance team ever saw them do was dump trash in a Dumpster? Turned out it had a hole in it and it was up against a wall with a hole in it, and there was another Dumpster on the other side. Or that was more or less it. Famous case in FBI annals.”

“Shit. How’d Jacomine work it?”

“A uniquely New Orleans twist. Armoires.”

She saw it instantly. “Two bedrooms back to back—the armoires in exactly the same place, only you’d never notice.”

“Yeah, well, we might have noticed those bedrooms also had closets.” He sounded chagrined. “But in the heat of the moment—and I do mean heat…” He shrugged.

“How’d he get out of the house?”

Turner shrugged again. “Made himself invisible, I guess. Or more likely waited till no one was looking—till after dark, probably.”

“We’ve got seven survivors, right? And no one blew the whistle?”

“Oh, yeah, someone did—the pregnant woman. But not till after the baby was born.”

“A baby? You mean a baby came out of all this?”

He grinned. “Bouncing girl, doing fine. Bettina got injured somehow or other—flying wall, probably—and they had to do a C-section. It was a while before we could question her.”

“Who’s the father?”

“She won’t say.”

“Oh, God. Spawn of the devil, as Aunt Alice would say.”

“Could be. Speaking of which, Daniel’s doing okay, too.”

“What about Rosemarie?”

“Sorry to say she hasn’t turned up. She did charter a plane, but needless to say, Jacomine chose an alternate mode of transportation.”

“Shit, shit, shit.”

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that’s a very unoriginal and undescriptive word?”

“Wrong. It exactly describes what I feel like and what we’ve got.”

She was so angry about Jacomine she threw herself into questioning the survivors, unwilling to brood, just wanting to work her mood off, until Cindy Lou called to ask her to lunch.

Skip looked at her watch. “Lunch? It’s two o’clock.”

“You haven’t eaten, have you? Come on—I’ve got a new boyfriend.”

“With your record, it’s probably Dashan.” Lou-Lou’s boyfriends always had a fatal flaw.

“It’s a thought,” she said. “He’s not only homicidal, he’s got a real bad head injury. If he comes out of this sick enough, I might consider him.”

They went to Mona’s, a Mideastern restaurant said to be fashioned from an old gas station, and famous for unique alfresco dining—it may once have had windows, but it no longer did. Until she actually had a falafel in hand, Skip didn’t realize she was ravenous.

“You’re really tearing into that poor sandwich.”

“You know what? I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours—more, maybe. Listen, you want to be my shrink? I swear to God that was the worst thing I’ve ever done—how come in the movies everybody’s all beaming and happy after a disaster?”

“You’ve had close calls before. Why was this so much worse?”

“I don’t know. I had more time to think about it, I guess. Lou-Lou, I really didn’t think I was going to pull it off. I’ve never felt that way before. Do you know how lucky I got? We didn’t know if there were ten people in there or fifty, and we had no idea where they were. I could have walked right into the lions’ den.”