Crescent City Connection (Skip Langdon Mystery #7) (The Skip Langdon Series)

by Julie Smith

She hated this. It terrified her. It scared her a great deal more than mindlessness, or simple craziness. This was complicated craziness. This was a very effective mind at work. And it made her want to run screaming into the woods.

  She felt her heart beating, her pulse racing, and realized that part of what she was feeling was anger.

  We might expect our system to be falling apart, but we’ve got other expectations, too—criminals are supposed to be stupid. I don’t need goddamn Professor Moriarty here.

  Part of it was irrational anger, but part of it was rational. She was pissed off at anyone who had a brain that functioned as well as the letter-writer’s and still went around killing people. A person who most assuredly knew right from wrong, and who had chosen wrong.

  Chosen evil.

  She shivered. It gave her goose bumps. And made her think of Errol Jacomine.

  Her heart pounded faster as she scanned the letter again.

  Maybe there’s a reason it makes me think of Jacomine.

  “Bigger fish to fry.” That phrase again.

  And the cadences. The rhythm—so like a sermon. The Bible verses at the end, as if tacked on—first the rational mind, then a little glimpse of craziness, as if the writer couldn’t stop himself.

  And New Orleans—why focus on New Orleans?

  I’m crazy. I’m not thinking like a cop.

  But the idea wouldn’t leave her. She let it be for a while, decided to go home and sleep on it. And an hour later found herself wandering back to Abasolo’s cubicle.

  Abasolo was someone with whom she’d partnered up a number of times and if truth be told, she’d probably rather work with him than anyone in the department—not that she’d rather have him for her sergeant than Cappello; this way she felt a little more free to run crazy ideas by him. Like her bizarre notion that The Jury was very likely a group instead of one crazy person— because that was the way Errol Jacomine worked. He always managed to draw people into his schemes, get them blind-loyal; he had a dark charisma that was lost on her but was dangerous to underestimate. Because he was crazy—and she was quite sure he was—he didn’t mind looking like a fool, or asking others to do crazy things.

  He had once mounted a letter-writing campaign against her that was so transparent a seventh grader would have been ashamed of it. Yet it worked—most of the brass took his side against her.

  “Adam, tell me if I’m crazy.”

  “You are. We all are. Nothing that happened today could really have happened. We hallucinated it.”

  She slipped into the chair across from him, chewing on a pencil. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this Jury thing.”

  “Well, yeah. Sure you’re crazy. All right-thinking people are thrilled about it.”

  “Now, don’t laugh. The letter reminded me of Jacomine.”

  “Well, look, all these nuts—” he broke off. “How, exactly?”

  “Well, he quoted the Bible.”

  “Yeah.” Abasolo looked interested.

  “And he wouldn’t stop. That’s exactly what Jacomine did. He’d get started and he’d go on and on. Like he’d memorized a lot of verses with a particular word in them, but that didn’t really make much sense when you put them together.”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s the kind of thing a nut would do, right?”

  “This is a reality check—you tell me.” She put out her hands, palms up. “I never saw anyone else do it. Did you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And there was this one phrase he used to use—’bigger fish to fry.’”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” He was biting his lip a little.

  “And then there’s the way the thing reads like it was done by more than one person—like a ghostwriter did the real work, and then along came the boss and screwed it up with Bible verses. I mean, it seems so normal except for that.” She felt her face twitch with embarrassment. “I don’t mean normal. I mean …”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Lucid, I guess. Like nobody but a crazy person would do this, but he doesn’t talk so crazy.” He sighed and leaned back. “Have you talked to Cindy Lou at all?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I think she’s in the building. I had to take something down to Juvenile and she was coming in when I left.” He picked up the phone without waiting for Skip’s concurrence. “Hey, Cece. Is Cindy Lou still down there?”

  Cindy Lou was the department’s consulting psychologist and coincidentally Skip’s best woman friend. She was black, she was brilliant, she was breathtakingly beautiful, and—what had drawn Skip to her—she could handle hotshots who liked to put down women.

  Though the two women had been close, their friendship had suffered when Errol Jacomine ran for mayor and Skip tried to expose him as a psychopath. Because he was strong on minority rights, Cindy Lou supported him. And because she knew Skip wasn’t any too stable at the time, she was inclined to dismiss her friend’s fears about him. The friendship was more or less healed, but inwardly Skip winced at the notion of opening up old arguments.

  Waiting the five or ten minutes for Cindy Lou to show up, she remembered the other times they’d been through this—except Skip hadn’t needed a reality check. That time she was sure she was right, and Cindy Lou was equally sure she was wrong.

  “Adam,” Skip said. “You present the problem, okay?”

  Cindy Lou—Lou-Lou to her friends—was dressed in lime-green, a color that would turn most people pea-green. But on her it looked great. It was funny—she was tiny, but had such presence that the first time Skip met her, she thought Lou-Lou was almost as tall as her own six feet. Yet she could make Skip feel clumsy and lumbering.

  Adam ran the question past her, and before he was done, Skip knew how Cindy Lou was going to respond—with extreme caution, because she’d been wrong before.

  “It’s possible,” she said, and Skip almost said it with her. But then she started to pick up steam. “In fact, it’s a perfect role for Jacomine in lots of ways. It’s anonymous, and he certainly can’t be public again—being wanted for murder is pretty awkward for most people’s careers. It may very well use the services of other people, which we know he’s good at getting—in fact, if he really has followers, they could be some of the same ones from before. Most of all, though, it seems to be about power.”

  “Power,” said Abasolo, mulling it.

  “Well, Jacomine certainly isn’t after money. I mean, being mayor isn’t a high-paying job—of course, some say it’s a license to steal, but that’s not Jacomine’s thing. We know that from the tight control he kept on his followers.

  “I mean, we know that’s his thing—tight control. Anyhow, it’s always the same with these gurus—they think they’re God and they set themselves up as God.” She started to get excited. “Look what’s in the letter: ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ That’s usually interpreted as ‘don’t take the law into your own hands.’ So The Jury’s taken over the Lord’s job by their own admission.

  “Then there’s New Orleans. He picked us to operate in, for openers. He can’t have been too far away, because there wasn’t enough time …”

  “Or more likely he got someone else to do the shooting for him. That’s completely Jacomine’s style. I mean, but completely.”

  Cindy Lou nodded. “That’s his M.O. And he’d have known about the Hollywood walk—that we do that, I mean. And nobody, but nobody could know that who hasn’t spent time here.” She nodded again, adding things up and getting answers. “The gunman knew exactly where to stand … he was definitely someone familiar with the layout.”

  Abasolo said, “Let’s get Cappello in on this—and then let’s go talk to Joe.” Lieutenant Joe Tarantino, in charge of Homicide.

  The rest of the day was dizzying. They went from Tarantino to the captain in charge of the detective bureau, right up to the acting superintendent. It was only about three hours before Skip found herself at FBI headquarters.

  She’d worked with one of these dudes before—Special
Agent Turner Shellmire. “So you figured it out, too,” he said.

  “Figured what out?” Skip said, knowing she hadn’t figured much out at all.

  He pointed out the window, somewhere in the direction of the river. “The Crescent City Connection.”

  It was the name of a bridge across the Mississippi. “This dude knows us.”

  Nine

  THE WHOLE THING had happened so fast Daniel was a little woozy. He’d lived a long time in Idaho with people who didn’t give a damn; he’d seen a lot of things, but he’d never seen anything like this. Anything remotely like this.

  He was feeling kind of schizophrenic about it. On the one hand, exhilarated, a little dizzy. On the other, a little down. Like somehow it shouldn’t have been so easy. Like it’s the kind of thing people talk about but don’t actually do. Because for one thing they wouldn’t know how. For another…

  He didn’t quite know what the other thing was. That path made him feel kind of wiggly and crawly, like he needed to get away, quick. He knew what it was, deep down, but he couldn’t bring himself actually to think the thought: Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea.

  Also, it was making him feel strange new ways about his father that he hadn’t sorted out yet. Respect was way high on the list. The man had actually pulled it off. He couldn’t get over it.

  And he had done it with such ease. It was as if he had snapped his fingers, and—poof!—the asshole was dead.

  It made Daniel feel weird, no question about it. Like his dad was different, or maybe even more than the person he knew—wasn’t really his dad, but some kind of evil magician.

  Truth to tell, Daniel was a little in awe.

  He thought: You can think and think about a thing and still not have any idea what it is until you actually do it. Like sex. Or being a father. Or killing an animal.

  For some reason he hadn’t thought killing a person would feel like getting broadsided by a truck.

  It had happened so damn fast.

  His father had called him into the office in a kind of excited rage, almost frothing at the mouth, furious but getting off somehow. Daniel could see he was getting off.

  “The bitch is out there again, son. The bitch is on the move. It’s like God sent her to torment me.” He grinned all of a sudden. “But we’re gonna get her, Daniel. We are going to get her.”

  Daniel sighed, sitting down without waiting for an invitation. His dad ran a formal office even though it was in the living room of an apartment. He sat at a desk and if you were called there, you sat across from him. “What’s up, Daddy?” He had his dossier to do.

  “Listen, we have to do another one.” His dad’s mouth was tight, but his muscles fairly rippled under his polyester shirt. His body was a coiled spring.

  His dad had done Billy Hutchison, yes. Daniel knew it in some part of his brain, but he hadn’t been in on it—it was a California operation, and Jacomine had used California people, loyalists from his Blood of the Lamb days. Half the cops in the country might be looking for Errol Jacomine, but he still had quite a little underground following.

  His dad had told him how he did it, too. He had picked only the most loyal lieutenants. He had been sure that the people at the top were absolutely trustworthy. And those people now formed the network that had become the Jury.

  Daniel knew all that perfectly well, but it still seemed rather abstract; kind of exciting, yet distant.

  Now they were going to do someone, and Daniel had proof they could—the Hutchison proof. His stomach fluttered.

  “You know that good police chief they almost got in New Orleans?” Lightning had shot out of his father’s eyes.

  “Yeah. I think so.” Daniel wasn’t all that sure what he meant—he’d been too busy with the Lovelace problem.

  “Some asshole killed him.” He pounded a fist on his desk. “I will not have that. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ I will not have it!”

  “Oh, shit.” He remembered now. An honest cop. You didn’t see that every day in Louisiana.

  “We are going to do the asshole that did him. We are going to get the bitch.”

  “Hold it, Daddy. Wait a minute. It was a woman?”

  “No. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “You said we’re gonna get the bitch.”

  His father chuckled. “I certainly did. Well, I certainly did say that. Because this time we are. Detective Skip Langdon’s who I meant. Mine enemy. Every time I turn around the bitch is out to get me. Always has been, right from the first time she laid eyes on me. Some kind of weird grudge, probably about something simple like sexual repression—nearly always is. Hell, I can’t figure it out. You ever have anybody hate you, Daniel? For no reason? It’s a baaad feeling. I never did a damn thing to piss her off, so I have to conclude she was sent by the forces of Satan to torment me.”

  “I thought you said God sent her.”

  “Why would I say that? She couldn’t have come from God. If she’d have come from God she’d have been on our side.” His father’s voice had the slight edge that Daniel was getting to know—it seemed familiar, as if he remembered it from childhood, but at first he hadn’t recognized it as a danger signal. He did now and he kept his mouth shut.

  “Detective Langdon made the arrest,” his father said. “Some peckerwood crazy who’s going to get off on an insanity defense.” He shook his head. “Worst thing that ever happened to justice in this country.”

  Daniel nodded. “Amen to that.”

  “So we’re just going to shoot her prisoner right out from under her, thereby savin’ the taxpayers the cost of a trial.”

  Daniel nodded again.

  “See, this is the way it’s gonna work. Later on today, when they finish beating him with rubber hoses, or whatever they do, they’re taking him on a Hollywood walk. That’s where they trot out their prize criminals on the way to be booked. So the media can get some nice footage and make the cops look good.” He sat back in his chair, hands folded in his lap, a contented, happy man, the fury and frothing only a memory. “And that’s when we’re gonna get him.”

  “How’re we gonna know when it is?”

  “We have contacts, son. We have some real good contacts.”

  “In the police department or the media?”

  “Both.”

  Daniel never knew if these things were true. Probably his dad had one contact in either the police department or the media. But who cared? He always seemed to know the right person in the right place. Either that or he had a lot more followers than Daniel imagined.

  “Now here’s a map of the area. The beauty of it’s that nobody, absolutely nobody’s going to be watching the Broad Street overpass. Assholes’ll be falling all over themselves to get their smug little faces on TV.” His dad pronounced it TEEvee, on purpose, Daniel thought, to belittle it. “You’ll have time for one shot. Just as they clear the edge of the building.”

  This was what he had come here for and what he wanted to do. All the same, Daniel felt his breathing go ragged.

  “And another thing,” his dad said. “In three days we’re moving all operations to New Orleans.”

  “What?”

  It was a rhetorical question that his father didn’t dignify with an answer.

  “Now get down the road, son. You’ve got plenty of time to find us a place before you have to get up on that overpass. Okay, let’s think now. We need something big enough for a lot of people—the four of us here and three or four more, say. And it has to be in a neighborhood where you wouldn’t notice white and black people together, all coming and going at the same address. And I guess that means a place with a lot of foot traffic, since we’re going to have a lot.” He closed his eyes. “Magazine Street. A nice duplex on Magazine Street. Or just off it. Irish Channel, anyway.”

  Daniel was getting into it. “No. Is Magazine Street a main drag? That’s the best. Nobody’ll notice a thing.”

  How am I going to find it in one day? he wondered.

 
In the end he hadn’t. He didn’t know New Orleans, for one thing, and for another, he didn’t want to miss his appointment on the overpass. He ended up staying overnight at a Holiday Inn.

  Holed up in his room, drinking some beer he’d bought, he watched himself on television, shooting Nolan Bazemore.

  Or rather he watched Bazemore fall dead and then saw himself leaving the scene, as the police would say. Some cameraman had been quick enough to catch him. But you couldn’t begin to see who he was—he was just another dude in a baseball cap and shades. He was cool, too, hardly even running, just walking fast.

  Still, it wasn’t nearly as much fun as television the next night—watching the reactions to the letter. He’d mailed it in New Orleans right before he did the hit.

  Various public officials said sober things about vigilante action and taking the law into your own hands—a shrink had opinions on the kind of crazies who’d do a thing like that. And one reporter had had a great idea. Gal named Jane Storey.

  Jane had done man-in-the-street interviews. A man in a business suit said, “These people are scary because they’re doing what a lot of us would like to.”

  A dignified black man dressed in a waiter’s uniform seemed as mad as Daniel’s dad had been: “This man, this Bazemore killed our only hope of gettin’ out of this mess we’re in.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that, it’s gone. I’m sorry, I think there’s a lot to what they’re sayin’. I’m sorry, I can’t say I disagree with ’em.” He shook his head, a sad look on his face that made Daniel think of the old expression “more in sorrow than in anger.”

  A woman in a pink power suit—Daniel was sure she was a liberal-assed lawyer who’d benefit mightily from a good fuck—said, “I thought it was just another group of racists when they killed Billy Hutchison. But… you know… the ACLU defends everyone from pornographers to Nazis if it has to, to protect the First Amendment. These people are like that—they couldn’t have picked more different enemies. They’ve proved to me, anyway, that they’re not racists and they’re making a point. I mean, you can’t say they’re not making a point. They’ve got something to say.”