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

by Julie Smith

  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.

  Twenty-nine

  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.”

  “You did, actually. It’s just that the lions were a little preoccupied.”

  Skip nodded, and swallowed the last bite of her sandwich. She considered ordering another. “There weren’t that many when you realize how big the house was—they were all spread out trying to cover every entrance.”

  “Would you do it again?”

  “Not for a million dollars and a castle in Spain. Not if I got to be queen of England. No way and uh-uh.” She wondered if Lou-Lou would ask how she felt about the people who had died in the blast and the man she had killed the day before, but she didn’t and that was good, because Skip didn’t want to talk about it.

  She felt oddly separate from their deaths—“in denial,” Lou-Lou might say, but if denial would work that was fine with her. She had shot Delavon in the middle of a family reunion; these other deaths were not so real, and she wanted to keep it that way.

  “Do you know who’s the cutest thing in the world?” Lou-Lou was saying. “Hey, Skip—you with me?”

  “Oh, yeah. The new boyfriend.”

  “Not really. That was just a joke, but honestly, he’s adorable.”

  “Who?”

  “The White Monk.”

  “Oh, God, he’s perfect for you. He’s a sweetie pie, which would be a welcome change, and has delusions you could work on the rest of your life.”

  “What delusions?”

  “About killing somebody. Either that or he’s a liar, but I kind of think he really thinks it.”

  “That’s no delusion. That’s just his OCD.”

  “His what?”

  “Obsessive-compulsive disorder. He doesn’t think he killed somebody, he just thinks he might have.”

  “Oh, right. That’s what he says. What’s the difference?”

  “OCD is a very interesting thing—people who suffer from it are like philosophers, in a way. They want to know how you can really know something. Because they can’t. They’re pretty sure they didn’t kill somebody, but they just can’t be absolutely sure. They’re pretty sure their hands are clean, but they still might have to wash them twenty-seven times a day. They can remember checking the door thirty times to see if it’s locked, but they still can’t be sure it is.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  Cindy Lou nodded. “It’s not a fun thing to have. And Isaac’s kind of a case—you usually get washers or checkers or doubters. He doesn’t seem to be into checking so much, but he’s got all the other stuff in spades. And he’s got a shitload of ‘shoulds’ on the conscious level. Poor guy.”

  “What about not talking?”

  “That seems to be voluntary—the washing and stuff isn’t. See, the other philosophical question OCD brings up is free will. They have to do certain stuff.”

  “Why do they have to?”

  “Something just tells them they do.”

  “What causes it? Having a dad who’s the closest thing to the devil?”

  “No, it seems to be chemica
l. Drugs help. Isaac didn’t know what he had till I told him. He’s hugely embarrassed, of course, to be found out—but I’m going to send him to a shrink and get him some vitamin P or something. He could get a lot better.”

  * * *

  The Monk could hardly bear the thought of her leaving, though it was going to be a lot easier being on his own again. Human relations were difficult for him, and they were about to be harder now that he’d decided to give up his silence. But the time had come for that, and for other changes. It had never occurred to him that he didn’t have to clean and shower and count—he’d simply thought he did. He’d never questioned it. So he would try Prozac or whatever it was they wanted to give him, and then he’d have more time to paint.

  The time had come to paint differently, too. He would finish the pregnant Pandora, the one Dahveed hated, and he would go on to paint other things.

  Other women.

  First the beautiful psychologist, then the magnificent bald detective. When the detective’s hair grew back, he’d paint her that way, too.

  And he’d paint his mother if she’d let him. He was going to call her soon.

  Lovelace was getting her things together now. He had bought her a backpack and a duffel to go back to school. He thought she was sniffling a bit, crying perhaps, because she’d miss him. Or maybe she was getting a cold.

  He said, “You’ll come back this summer, won’t you? Anthony says you’re the best assistant he ever had.”

  “I’d like to, but I’ve missed a lot of school—I might have to make it up this summer.” She turned toward him, and he saw that her nose was red. “I’ll come next year for sure. For JazzFest, maybe.”

  He must have shown his distress. She said, “Oh, no, that’s way too long. Let’s do a family Thanksgiving. Just you and me—and anybody else you want except Mom and Dad. And your dad, of course.” She shuddered a little at the mention of her grandfather.

  He moved toward her. “You’ve been good for me, you know that?” He recognized as he said it how uncharacteristic it was. It probably scared her to death.

  Sure enough, she stepped away. “In what way?”

  You put me back in touch with women. After your mother, I sort of flipped out, I guess.