Mean Woman Blues (2 page)

After a moment a man said, “Owww.” The man on top of her, she realized. Someone was shooting at her, and he had pushed her down, remained on top of her so that she couldn’t move.

When she had waited long enough to be sure the shooting had stopped, she said to the lump atop her, “Police. Are you hurt?”

The man rolled off, and she saw that he was a light-skinned black, well-muscled, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt— laborer’s garb. He said, “You’re police?” Her detective status meant she wore no uniform.

She didn’t see any blood. “Are you all right?” She was frantic.

He was examining himself. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right. That was real close, though.”

A crowd was gathering around them. Unless the sniper was in it he no longer had a clear shot. Skip scanned the rooftops, wondering where the shots had come from.

The idea of asking what happened made her feel shamed somehow. She closed her eyes for a moment trying to get it together, and the man said, “Somebody just tried to kill you.”

“You saw him?”

“No. I was right behind you when I heard the shot. Didn’t stop to look around, you understand?”

“Thanks. I appreciate what you did. But how did you know he wasn’t shooting at you?”

The man shrugged. “I didn’t ax no questions. Just hit the pavement.”

When they paced it off, she could see that the man wasn’t really right behind her; he’d had to run a step or two to tackle her. She’d been facing the garage door, and the bullet had hit it immediately to her right. She was between it and her rescuer.

There was no doubt in her mind that it was meant for her. She grabbed for her radio.

After that it was chaos. A sniper in the French Quarter was a big deal, shots fired on a police officer an even bigger deal. But when it was Skip Langdon, it was nearly enough to declare a state of emergency. Everyone in the department knew Errol Jacomine was as likely to come for her as get up in the morning and put on his clothes.

He might even come in person, and catching him would be as big a coup as discovering the whereabouts of D. B. Cooper.

Certainly her sergeant— her good friend and sometime partner Adam Abasolo— knew all this. Skip knew he was going to call for the works investigating this one, and the works was what Skip got in minutes. District cars blocked the whole place off, the streets crawled with cops, and the downside— TV cameras.

The poor man who saved Skip’s life was treated like a threat to society, taken over to the Eighth District, questioned and bullied until he well and truly understood that no good deed goes unpunished. Skip made a mental note to thank him somehow but wondered how. What did you do for a perfect stranger who risked his life to save yours, and then found himself in a living nightmare? He’d obviously been on his way to work. Maybe he’d even get fired.

She was having an extremely pessimistic day.

It seemed she’d barely picked herself up when Turner Shellmire turned up, a rumpled, pear-shaped figure in the midst of all the glamour of sirens and flashing tights. Shellmire was an FBI agent she’d worked with on the Jacomine case— or cases, actually. Though he came from the agency the New Orleans police liked to call Famous But Incompetent, he wasn’t either. Certainly not incompetent. He was one of the best cops she’d ever worked with, and he was a straight shooter. They were as close to being friends as a police officer and an FBI agent possibly could be.

She played it light. “Hey, Turner. Slow day today?”

He didn’t return her grin, instead examined the dented door and sidewalk. “He almost got you.”

“What about the kids?”

“I’ve sent people to get them. Also Jimmy Dee, Layne, and Steve.”

“Layne? Even Layne?” He’d only married into the family; it didn’t seem fair to him.

Shellmire nodded. “Jacomine would go for him.”

Skip knew it was true. Jacomine played mind games. If he couldn’t get at her through somebody really close, he’d try for someone once removed, knowing that would pile guilt on top of her other emotions— guilt and the outrage of the person closest to the one targeted.

“What are you going to do with them?”

He opened his arms in exasperation. “That’s the problem. We can keep them safe for a day, maybe, but they’ve got to have a life.”

At the end of the day, when all the questions that could possibly be asked had been asked, the life-saver— a man named Rooster Blanchard— had finally been released, and still the sniper hadn’t been found and not a single fact more was known than the kind of gun he’d used and the angle the bullets had come from.

Skip went to see her sergeant. “A.A., my nerves are shot. I’ve
got
to get the son of a bitch.”

“You sound like you’re asking for a leave of absence.”

“Just a transfer. I want to go to Cold Case for a while. Please. Just let me try it.”

“Skip, he’s a needle in a haystack. And furthermore, you can’t just work on one case.”

“At least I could work on it some. That’s all I ask.”

The sergeant’s eyes went shifty on her. “Langdon, you’re not the person to work on this. You know that. Anyway, I can’t spare you.”

She ignored his last sentence. “Oh, come on. I wouldn’t be working the shooting, just the cold case.”

“Did you hear me? I can’t do it. I’ve got to have you for the cemetery thefts. I want you to head the task force.”

Here in the Third District where Skip had been sent when the department was “decentralized” and the Homicide Division disbanded, things were usually pretty quiet. But the cemetery thefts were big, about as high profile as a case that wasn’t a triple murder could get in New Orleans.

Somebody— probably a ring of professional thieves— was removing cemetery statues and selling them through the lucrative antiques market. In a city that took its saints and angels as seriously as it did its pre-Lent festivities, this was big, bad crime. A department that stopped it was going to be a popular department. Heading the task force was a handsome plum.

Still, to Skip’s mind, it was trivial compared to getting Jacomine. She said, “A.A., I’m flattered, but…”

“The superintendent asked for you. Says it’s the mayor’s idea. Two city councilmen have also called— at the mayor’s request, probably.”

“Oh, shit.”

He could have made a crack about the price of fame, but Abasolo looked as downcast as she probably did. “Yeah. I’m sorry, Skip. Wrap it up fast, and we’ll see about the transfer.”

Terri Whittaker stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, wondering how she was going to get through the day without Isaac. And with blue hair.

She had gone ahead with the hair, anticipating that her boyfriend would act as a buffer between herself and her parents, particularly her mother. Now, with no Isaac for the evening, it was a beacon inviting her mother’s attack. She would just have to hope the barbed-wire-looking thing around her neck and the thorn bracelet tattooed on her upper arm would look so scary no one would comment.

Now there was a pipe dream.

Mother’s Day would be Judgment Day, as usual. Her parents were Christians of a sort: the sort who seemed to think they were channeling God with a bug up his butt. She toyed with the idea of saying she was sick.

But she knew she would go. She always went; to this and all family gatherings, no matter that she felt less kinship with her kin than she did with gibbons and lemurs. She didn’t exactly hate her parents; she merely disliked their company. In fact, she was perfectly aware that they were decent people who’d done the best they could for her and her sisters, both of whom had had the gall to move out of state. That left her to cope, and it would have been a lot easier with her new boyfriend.

Her parents wouldn’t be rude in front of a stranger, in fact they’d go out of their way to be friendly. And Isaac, truth to tell, would be quite a prize to show off. The man was handsome, and he was talented, and he was polite and well spoken. Best of all, he was just eccentric enough to intimidate them— and she got along with them best when they were intimidated.

Yet she didn’t know how to pull it off by herself. In fact, she’d cover up the tattoo with sleeves, and she’d leave the barbed-wire thing at home. She was aware that, for all her blue hair and bravado, there was still some piece of her that was deeply timid and submissive. And frightened.

She sighed, hoping this time would be better. She had baked a lemon chess pie, her mother’s favorite. It was something, anyway.

Her parents lived in a small, depressing house in one of the few neighborhoods she could name that actually had no charm. This was a hard thing to pull off in New Orleans, but the house was in Kenner, out in the burbs. It might have been the sort of thing you’d hide from a new boyfriend— and so might her parents be— but Isaac was so perfectly sweet and tolerant, he probably wouldn’t even be offended when they questioned him about whether he was Jewish or not, on account of his first name.

It was still light when she arrived for dinner, and when her mother saw the pie, she said, “Oh. I thought you liked chocolate. I got a cake.”

“Mom, the pie’s for you. Happy Mother’s Day.” Her mother looked as if she didn’t know how to respond. Neither of them made a move to kiss the other. Her dad was in the den watching television.

“What’d you do to your hair?”

“Dyed it. What’s for dinner?”

Terri stayed in the kitchen while her mother finished cooking: ham, sweet potatoes whipped with orange juice, frozen green beans, and Waldorf salad— her mother’s idea of festive food. She hadn’t started the salad yet. This way she could keep Terri in the kitchen with her while she complained about her husband.

He never talked to her, she said. Their marriage wasn’t close; it never had been. Sometimes she was so depressed she didn’t know what to do.

“Pray?” Terri suggested.

And her mother snapped, “A lot you know about it,” as if Terri were being deliberately insolent.

When they were at the table, in the small dining room papered with a stiff brown and yellow floral pattern, her mother said, “You’re welcome to bring your boyfriend. We hope you know that.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“You got a boyfriend?” Her dad seemed suddenly interested. “Who’d want a blue-haired gal?”

“A very nice man. An artist.”

“You meet him in some bar?”

“At school. He went back for his degree.”

Her dad pointed a fork at her, speared with a great hunk of pink meat. His face was perennially red, and his neck was thick and always had been, even before his middle matched. Though he’d never hit her— it was her mother who had— she’d always found him frightening. “He older than you?”

“A little bit. He’s very mature.” She wasn’t sure that he was, but at least he made money, which was more than she could say for herself.

Her dad made his voice low and somehow seductive. “You gonna marry him?”

She felt the hot rush of blood to her face. “I don’t know. We’ve just been dating a couple of months.”

She didn’t even know if she wanted to marry him, but she sure wished he’d ask her to move in with him. Sharing rent and groceries would take a huge financial burden off her.

“Just so you don’t go living in sin.”

Terri lost it then; sometimes it didn’t take much. “I wouldn’t consider it a sin to live with somebody you love.”

It was like throwing a mouse to a cat. Her mother sat up straight as a pole and narrowed her eyes. She was in territory she loved. “It is in the sight of God,” she said.

“Who decided that? The male chauvinists of the Roman Catholic church?”

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

“If you aren’t married, it isn’t adultery.”

“Why, it certainly is.”

“You know, if you’re not a Christian, it just doesn’t matter. You don’t have to listen to what anyone says. You get to make your own rules.”

“You don’t believe there’s such a thing as God’s truth?”

“Will y’all
stop
!” Her father was furious. “My stomach’s churnin’ and churnin’.” That was his unvarying reaction to conflict, which was inevitable in all Whittaker family visits. When there was silence, he said, “Now tell us about school, Terri.”

The rest of the evening continued that way: a pocket of peace followed by an eruption of aimless, unfocused anger. And when it was over, her parents thanked her for coming and said how much they’d enjoyed the evening and how they didn’t see her enough and wished they could see her more and when could they do it again. This happened every time and never failed to make her feel sad. They clearly didn’t have a clue how to communicate with her, didn’t approve of her, and didn’t enjoy her company, yet they wanted to. Actually, she wasn’t sure of that; in some dim corner of her soul, she knew that
she
wanted to. She thought that perhaps they just wanted to think they did.

Her mother had given her half the bought chocolate cake, which Terri took because she thought Isaac might enjoy it. (She herself avoided sweets and fats lest she turn into a balloon.)
Why not take it to him now?
she thought.

She was desperate for someone to talk to. Being with her parents always made her feel desperate, as if she were alone in the world and there was no hope.

She could simply go over to Isaac’s house and surprise him— have a second evening after the first fiasco. Actually, they hadn’t seen each other all weekend. Isaac had gone to visit
his
mother— in Atlanta, she thought— but he was coming back tonight. He’d said he’d call her; that meant he’d be home.

He might be too tired to see her. Well, in that case, she could just drop off the cake and kiss him good night. What could be wrong with that? Who wouldn’t be glad to see half a chocolate cake?

If she’d really thought about it, she’d have known she had expectations beyond cake delivery. Isaac lived in the Bywater, and Terri lived in Carrollton, two neighborhoods about as far from each other as you can get.

She felt a little rush of happiness as she got out of her beat-up Toyota and saw that the lights were on in his living room. She was nearly up the front porch steps when she noticed the curtains weren’t completely closed. What was he doing? she wondered, and peeked.