Mean Woman Blues

by Smith, Julie

  She thought about having sex with an older man. Maybe it was true what they said, about experience and all that. She wouldn’t know and wasn’t sure it mattered. David Wright seemed so feeling, so caring. That was what impressed her. Isaac, with his brittle humor about Baptists, turned her off right now. She wondered if she would have erotic dreams about Mr. Right.

  But she dreamed only of Isaac and woke in the night to find him ready for her. She rolled on her back for a lovely, sleepy midnighter. “So much,” he said, “for the Baptist angle,” which made her laugh. She loved his humor, couldn’t imagine why she’d felt so mean about it a few hours ago.

  She awakened feeling happy and once again hopeful, but cleaning off her desk squelched that. She found records she hadn’t mentioned to Isaac— traffic citations she’d been handed in jail, for two hundred dollars plus court costs. When they got you, they really got you; this had nothing to do with the bank problem but everything to do with the negligence that led to it. It made Terri feel ashamed and hopeless. Her depression came back like a blow to the head. She wanted to shake the bars of her cage like an animal and was surprised at the metaphor.

  But she had an insight about it. She thought it came less from jail than from the life she had chosen for herself. It wouldn’t be like this if she had money. If she didn’t have her head in the clouds all the time, thinking of images, trying to translate her life into colors and shapes. Maybe there was an easier way.

  Before that moment the notion of her life as a crusader had extended only until the end of the show. But what if it really were her life? What if she changed everything? Moved to Dallas and became a researcher for Mr. Right? She cut class that day and spent the day online, researching bank scams. She drank iced tea and reveled in learning, dreaming of doing good in the world, saving others like herself. Her own cozy head was a good place to be.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Skip and LeDoux were still waiting for “Joe” when Hagerty called on the cell phone. Her voice was excited. “I got lucky. I mean, real lucky. When I got to the brother’s house— you know, the antique dealer’s brother— these three guys were coming out looking like they were dressed for work. Manual labor kind of work. Got in a van registered to a Joseph D’Amico. Is that your Joe?”

  “Yeah. Guess he’s not home. Could he be on his way?”

  “Uh-uh. I’m tailing him now. We’re on I-10, headed west.”

  “Stay with him. We’re on our way.”

  Skip hung up and said to LeDoux, “Hagerty thinks she’s got something. Want to take a ride?”

  LeDoux shrugged elaborately, barely able to contain his pent-up energy. Ride, hell, his body language said. Fly’d be more like it. He was oozing so much testosterone Skip could hardly stand to be in the car with him.

  She stomped on the accelerator and wove her way to I-10, hoping to hear from Hagerty again soon, trying to keep her own pulse rate down.

  If these were their guys, they might be onto something big. Maybe they were going to Lake Lawn Metairie Cemetery. And if so, they’d be there soon. It was just on the outskirts of the parish.

  Impatient, LeDoux radioed Hagerty. “Where are they?”

  “They’re there, kids.” Her voice was triumphant. “They’re rolling into Lake Lawn Metairie right now. I can’t follow any more or they’ll make me. I’m going to wait for you at the entrance.”

  “Damn!” LeDoux said. “Damn!” He was like a dog straining at a leash. It must have killed him, Skip thought, not to be driving. But a little smile flickered on his lips and what he said surprised her. “I got an idea. Let’s stop and get some flowers.”

  She got it instantly. “Got a better one. Let’s, you know, borrow some from that huge mausoleum.”

  He chortled, “All right!” Truth to tell, the man was enjoying his work so much it was contagious. Skip reached for the radio. “Hagerty, you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “Hey, I’m way ahead of you. Perfectly acceptable grave-visiting threads.”

  “Okay, proceed to the All Saints Mausoleum— remember that huge one?— and liberate a lovely bouquet.”

  “Woo. Good thinking.”

  Hagerty sounded as excited as LeDoux.

  The mausoleum was in the northeast quadrant of the cemetery, quite a distance from the older section, with its desirable artworks, but for that reason, it would make an excellent meeting place. Inside, they knew from their previous explorations, were hundreds and hundreds of vases and urns full of silk flowers. (Signs strictly forbidding plastic ones were posted prominently.)

  Hagerty could take one blossom from each of ten or fifteen vases and nobody’s relative would miss his funeral tribute. Maybe the dead would even approve the small theft in the service of catching grave robbers.

  Skip and LeDoux found her holding her bouquet like a bride, practicing looking mournful. “I take it,” she said, “I’m the point person?”

  “It has to be you,” Skip said. “LeDoux’ll stand out, and if these guys don’t know my face, they haven’t been watching the tube.” She looked at her notes from the day of the field trip. “Okay, the old part’s the south side, east to west the entire width of the cemetery. Hey, here’s something: The best stuff’s on Avenue A through O.”

  “That’s where they’ll be,” LeDoux said.

  “Okay,” Skip said. “Got a camera?”

  “No.”

  “I do.” She opened her trunk and took it out. “Fully loaded. You might not be able to get close enough, but here it is. Ready?”

  “Ready. I’m just going to walk up the east side till I see them. If I hear them first, I’ll know they’re working close to that side and retrace my steps and cross over to the west to make sure they don’t hear me. I should have an unobstructed view from either side, and there’s plenty of stuff to hide behind.”

  “Including your bouquet.”

  Hagerty grinned. “Here I go to find Great Aunt Ethel.”

  Skip and LeDoux waited, discussing strategy. It was nearly ten minutes before Hagerty reached them on the radio. “We have a madonna theft in progress: Three grown men are huffing and puffing to get a four-foot lady off the ground. Would you care to bust ’em?”

  “Maybe not yet. Can you get pictures?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay, get what you can. Danny and I aren’t inclined to let them rip up the whole cemetery, but they’ve already pried the madonna loose— is that what you’re saying?”

  “They’re not there yet, but they’ve done some damage.”

  “Our thought is to let them load her up and see what happens. If they try to steal something else, we bust ’em then. If they don’t, we follow ’em.”

  “Ten-four. I’ll see if I can get some pictures.”

  “What row are you on?”

  “Avenue K.”

  “You’re on the east, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. We’re coming up on the west one at a time, just so we’ll have all three of us as witnesses. If they spot us and spook, we bust ’em. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Let us know if they start moving.”

  LeDoux did the walking tour first, leaving Skip with the car, in case she needed to move fast.

  The plan was a risk. They could have called for backup and made a noisy, high-profile bust that would have guaranteed a burst of publicity on the evening news, but it might have backfired; if these were copycats or small-timers, only one family would get its funeral art back.

  The whole object of the exercise was to return the objects that had everyone gnashing their teeth and grabbing crying time in the press. The Great Madonna-and-Cherub Graveyard was what they were looking for.

  Skip hopped in her car and got ready. In about five minutes, she saw LeDoux running back. Hagerty called her on the radio: “Skip. They’ve got the statue in the car. They’re rolling. Stand by.”

  She opened the door for LeDo
ux.

  “Looks to me like they’re leaving,” Hagerty said.

  “Ten-four. LeDoux’s back. Take your time getting back to your car. We’ll follow and radio our location.”

  Sure enough, in a moment the truck eased into view, the occupants obviously happy with their haul for the day. Skip gave them a slight head start but not too much, and then followed. She let out a sigh of relief when the vehicle turned toward New Orleans. That meant no Jefferson Parish deputies had to be involved. It was still their case.

  The truck more or less ambled back into town and out St. Claude, plunging deeper and deeper into the Ninth Ward. Here, depending on where they ended up, a strange car might be noticeable and two twice as suspicious.

  “Hagerty, how’s it going?”

  “Fine. Where are you?”

  Skip told her.

  “Shit. Hope they don’t go to St. Bernard Parish.”

  “Amen,” LeDoux said.

  Their wishes were granted. The truck came to rest in a quiet residential Ninth Ward neighborhood and drove into a free-standing garage that looked as if it might be used for some kind of workshop. The two police vehicles could only drive by, and that only once; to do it twice, rubberneck a little, wouldn’t be good. Skip wondered if the men were armed and decided not to chance it.

  The officers met at an intersection a few blocks away, a busy well-lit one where cops, plainclothes or otherwise, wouldn’t be out of place, and had a powwow.

  “I’m calling for backup. LeDoux, I’m partnering up with Hagerty; you go and make sure they stay where they are.” All three knew LeDoux was the necessary choice; it was a mostly black neighborhood. “Let’s synchronize our watches. I want to make the bust in half an hour, assuming they don’t move.”

  She got in the car with Hagerty and called Abasolo to fill him in and get his higher-level assistance: “I want three district cars here. No sirens.” She gave her location. “We’ll do a five-minute run-through and then make the bust. Sound good?’

  Abasolo couldn’t keep the jubilance out of his voice. “Sounds great.”

  The district cars straggled in, and it was half an hour before everyone was assembled. Quickly, they made a plan. Skip radioed LeDoux. “What’s happening?”

  “They’re in there.”

  They started toward the garage in a caravan. LeDoux came back on the air. “There’s a television van here. Who called them?”

  “Oh, shit. They probably just monitored the radio.” Unless Abasolo had tipped them. “Can you get them out of there?”

  “I’ve already tried. They’re throwing First Amendment stuff at me.”

  “All right. Hell. Tell them we’re sealing the area. You take the far end of the block; one of the district cars will take this one. Just make sure we don’t have to argue when we get there; read them their rights if they won’t move.”

  When they got there, the van was well outside the area to be sealed, the crew already unloading their gear. Making a solemn vow to murder Abasolo if he’d tipped them, Skip thought about praying, settled instead for crossing her fingers. If things went bad, they went bad in front of the whole city.

  Quickly (and very quietly), with no lights, the cars took their places, all officers out. The garage door was steel, the sort that required a remote to open. No way in hell to kick it in. But there were paths to the back on either side. Two officers started up each one, Skip and one of the uniforms— Chuck Cramer— on the left where they found a high, wooden gate. Skip’s scalp crawled. This hadn’t been a good idea. Who knew what was behind there?

  The silence was nearly intolerable until she heard someone laughing. Evidently, the laugher was inside the garage. She and Cramer returned to the front as did the two other officers. They also reported a gate.

  They modified the plan slightly and put it into action. Skip approached the front and listened for a moment. Again, she heard laughing, loud talking. She banged on the door. “Excuse me. Excuse me, is anybody here?”

  Inside, everything went quiet.

  “Listen, I’ve got an emergency. Mrs. D’Amico’s been in a wreck. She’s gonna be okay, but she’s unconscious, and I really need…” She was going to say “…someone to give blood,” but the garage door began to go up. Quickly, she and two uniforms rolled under it while LeDoux shouted: “You are under arrest. Put your hands on your heads. You are under arrest.”

  Skip came out of the roll kneeling, her hand on her gun. What she saw almost made her laugh: three horror-stricken thieves, slowly, very slowly raising their hands. One was in the splashy process of wetting his pants. “That’s it. Come on; take it easy now. Just cooperate, and nobody’ll get hurt.”

  She heard Cramer behind her, making a similar croon. She got to her feet. The garage door was completely open now, and the other officers had poured in. Quickly, they patted down the three men and handcuffed them, while Skip assessed the situation.

  Evidently, the men were simply sitting around having a couple of beers and a cigarette. The statue from the cemetery was still here, still wrapped in quilts, and there were quite a few others as well. But not as many as Skip had hoped.

  She opened a door at the back of the structure, felt for a light, and stepped into the backyard. The sight she beheld was more beautiful than moonlight on the ocean— the biggest trove of stolen angels ever assembled, she was willing to bet Angels and madonnas and saints, iron crosses and gates, even a deer. She recognized quite a few pieces from pictures people had brought in, photos of their angels in happier times.

  “Hey, LeDoux,” she said. “Hagerty. Check this out.”

  Hagerty said, “Holy shit!”

  LeDoux settled for “Jesus God Almighty.”

  Skip called Abasolo again, and this time her own voice tingled with jubilation. “Mission accomplished. We’ve got enough angels here for our own little heaven on Earth. It’s going to take days to move all this stuff.”

  “Yes! All right, Langdon! Like they say in the movies, ‘You de man.’”

  “Gee, thanks.” She braced herself for a night of crime scene photographers. After that, she planned to seal the scene and post guards. Morning would be early enough to find a place to put the art and start the transfer process.

  It was nearly one a.m. when she used her key to Steve’s house and climbed into bed with him. He woke up, startled, but not so startled he couldn’t pull her tight against him. It was the first time they’d been together since Napoleon’s death. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Well, you got me.”

  He looked at the time. “You have an earlier date or something?”

  “Bust,” she said. “Got the Angel Gang.”

  He sat up. “The cemetery thieves? You got ’em?”

  She smiled with her lips closed, trying for modesty. “It’s the kind of thing makes me horny.”

  “You got ’em?” Steve took childish pleasure in her small triumphs. “Way to go! We’ve got to celebrate.” He had huge brown eyes that looked as innocent as Kenny’s sometimes. She hugged him and snuggled down for something a little more serious, thinking maybe their rift was over.

  “I love you, Skip. I’m sorry I was so… um…”

  “Mean?”

  “I was going to say judgmental. I was just upset.”

  “I know.”

  “I really am sorry about Napoleon.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “Oh, sure I am. Kiss me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She was grateful to have a self-employed boyfriend. He could afford to be frolicsome, since he could sleep all morning if he wanted to, which was more than she could say for herself. For her, there was still a world of details and logistics to attend to, not to mention the hordes of reporters Absolo was going to make her talk to.

  * * *

  Mr. Right was furious. He’d come all the way to Texas to get away from the woman, and here she was on page one of the Dallas paper. It seemed she’d caught a gang of crooks.

  Well
, big deal. Wasn’t that her job? The way the paper described it, it didn’t even sound very difficult what she’d done. It was just a crowd-pleaser, one big, fat, giant crowd-pleaser, just like her. She was ugly as sin, mean as the devil, and dumb as dirt, but she was made of nonstick Teflon, and she always landed on her feet. He didn’t understand how it had come about that she was being lionized yet again. If ever anyone didn’t deserve it, it was this bitch. If he didn’t believe in the devil— and he did— this would be enough to convince him the woman was on the wrong side. She was a woman who stood between him and what God wanted from him— a truly evil woman. And yet no one could see that. Everywhere she turned, she met with success.

  This deeply, deeply rankled David Wright. In his heart he felt that every bit of the acclaim that came to Skip Langdon should have come to him. She had beaten him repeatedly, and he hated her for it, felt shame for it, and knew that only Satan himself— or his nearest representative— could have caused such a feeling.

  “Karen! Get me some water, will you?” He was still in bed, but he was having trouble breathing. This was probably giving him a heart attack.

  He got no answer from his wife. What the hell was wrong?

  He yelled again.

  And then he was aware not of sound but the absence of sound, as she turned off the shower. She stepped into their bedroom, hair dripping, wrapping a soft white robe around her. “Did you call me?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know you were in the shower.”

  “Are you all right? What’s wrong with you?” Her voice was urgent.

  Fear flashed through his body. “Nothing, why? What’s the matter?”

  “You’re red. Your face is all flushed, like you’ve been running or something.”

  He wondered if he was having a stroke. Not wanting to show weakness, he said nothing.

  “David? You sure you’re all right?” He hated it when she looked at him like that, like he might be old, weaker than she was. “Here, let me get you some water.”