by Smith, Julie
She brought it and sat down beside him and stroked his hair while he drank it. “That’s better,” she said.
“What is?”
“Your color’s back to normal.”
Okay, so he didn’t stroke out that time. He got up and got dressed, trying to think of a way to bring down the Devil-Woman. He read the article again. It was accompanied by a picture of a warehouse into which the police were moving an entire yardful of stolen cemetery art. In a week or so, they were going to open it up like some great department store where you could shop for your own stuff— or for your late Aunt Bessie’s. Langdon was overseeing the whole damn operation, which was bound to be as popular as a tax cut.
He took the paper into his home office, cut out the article, and put it up on his bulletin board, the picture of Langdon thumbtacked right through the nose.
A plan was shaping in his head, the notion that maybe this thing was an opportunity. But he needed money to bring it off. He dialed Rosemarie, but he didn’t get her. Damn caller I.D.! She was probably ducking him, but she couldn’t do it forever. Not when she owed him the way she did.
Karen came back in, dressed in a pair of shorts and smiling, her hair still wet. “Breakfast?”
“Well, now. Aren’t you as pretty as a picture.”
She took a step toward him, and he braced for a lapful of pulchritude, but instead she peered over his head at the board behind him, staring right at Langdon’s picture. “Who is that woman?”
“What woman?” He swiveled his chair.
“That one. With the tack in her nose.”
“Hell, honey, I don’t know. What the hell you talkin’ about?” He was aware he wasn’t supposed to speak like that— to drop his g’s, to say “hail” for “hell”; today he did it anyway.
“She’s attractive.”
David didn’t even bother turning around. “She’s ugly as a mud fence.”
“You’re not even looking at her.”
“Honey, I saw the newspaper article. I know what she looks like.”
“Why did you put it up on the board?”
He was about at the end of his patience. “Karen, for God’s sake! I got bigger fish to fry than some woman’s petty jealousies.”
She made a little sound like a whimper and stared for a moment, pupils dilating. Then, apparently getting it, she whirled and fled, sandals flapping lightly on the slate floor.
For a moment he felt badly at having snapped at her, wondered briefly if he shouldn’t have been a bit more politic under the circumstances. “Bullshit,” he decided. “She’s just gonna have to learn.”
He decided to forget about breakfast. He went to a pay phone, dialed Bettina’s cell number, and let it ring once. Then he phoned back and let it ring twice— their emergency signal. Not very imaginative, but it worked. Hell, any more complicated and Bettina probably couldn’t handle it. As it was, half the time she picked up.
He went on to the office and awaited her call, which ought to be coming in approximately forty minutes from the time of the signal. An hour at the most. He was lenient about this because he didn’t want her panicking and getting careless.
This time the call came in twenty-eight minutes exactly. “Hey, baby,” he drawled. “Been missin’ ya. How’s little Jacob?”
“Our baby fine, Daddy. He a beautiful little man.”
Again, she had said “our baby,” something he’d forbidden her to do, but he decided to let it go this time. He had much, much bigger fish to fry. She seemed to sense it. “What you need, Daddy? What you need from little Bettina?”
“Bettina, I’m over these dog-killing incompetents of yours. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and I need to deal with our man directly.”
“You mean Lo—”
“For Christ sake, Bettina. No names. How many fucking times do I have to tell you? Give me his number.”
“All he got’s a pager, Daddy. You know you never mess with that kind of shit. It’s disrespectful to ya.”
“You don’t have the number, do you, Bettina?”
“Daddy, I—” her voice was panicky. “Daddy, I didn’t know you wanted it, or I woulda.”
“Bettina. Listen, honey, it’s all right. Your Daddy’s proud of you. Everything’s just fine. You just get me the number by noon.” He rang off.
That would give him time to get a new cell phone under a name he’d never used before. He’d have to use a different one every time with Lobo.
When Bettina called with the man’s number, he dialed it immediately, not wanting to keep Lobo waiting. If Lobo had caller I.D., the name he’d used to get the cell phone would ring a real bell with him; it was somebody Lobo’d executed.
Lobo answered the page in about fifteen minutes, keeping him waiting, David thought, to show disrespect, gain a little power. Well, hell. Money was power. He threw some at Lobo immediately.
“Lobo, my bro’. You know who this is?”
“I got an idea.”
“Ya want another chance at that ten grand? Same money you would have made for the job you fucked up?”
“It ain’t over yet. I’m gon’ get the bitch.”
“Yeah, sure. Meanwhile you got five thousand dollars of my money, and I got nothin’ but promises.”
“Look, just forget about it, okay? I’ll send you ya money back. I never did want to hit no cop; it was a favor to Bettina, tha’s all.”
“Hold on, Lobo. We worked together before, and it turned out fine, right?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“This isn’t a hit. It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
“Let’s just call it Plan B.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Overnight Skip had the highest profile in town. Once again, she was everybody’s favorite Good Girl, an extremely ironic development, in her opinion, for a chronic Bad Girl. She would have gone out to smoke some weed with Jimmy Dee, just for balance, if they hadn’t both given it up when his sister died and the kids came to live with him.
Sheila huffed around, mightily unimpressed, but Kenny asked Skip to come speak to his class about police work. It was the kind of thing that made her grit her teeth. But it had to be done, and not just because the chief and Abasolo wanted it, but because Kenny had taken Napoleon’s death hard. He loved the monster. What a sweet-tempered boy like Kenny— or like Steve, for that matter— saw in that vicious animal…
Unable to solve the problem of who had poisoned the beast, she did penance by going to Kenny’s school when she should have been working.
The FBI hadn’t solved the case, either. All they really had was evidence that somebody had lobbed some poison over the fence. Steve’s neighbors were out of town, making it an easy operation. Their flower beds were disturbed, and the kind of poison wasn’t even slightly in doubt. The autopsy showed metaldehyde, a common ingredient in snail and slug pesticide handily bought at a garden center and often found on garage shelves. The perp could as easily be a dog-hating crazy as a Skip-hating fanatic.
Skip found it was altogether better for her love life just not to bring it up. She and Steve seemed to have gotten over the rough spot, he attributing his bad temper to grief, she admitting to a streak of paranoia. After that, what with the termites and increasing May mugginess, she found it best to pretend it never happened. Steve had announced a sudden trip, and that ought to help too, she thought.
She still intended to work the Jacomine case but not till after the spotlight from the angel caper dimmed. The FBI was keeping good tabs on Bettina, who was all they had at the moment. What Skip really wanted to do was get to Dallas and check out Rosemarie, Jacomine’s child bride. There was something intriguing there; she could feel it. And there was sure as hell no way to do that with the little decorating project her superiors had so kindly given her. She had an angel warehouse to set up. For that she needed an assistant and she happened to know an expert who worked free. She nipped across the courtyard to her landlor
d’s house and slipped into the kitchen, where she found only a pot of fabulous-smelling beans and Sheila, making a salad.
For once, the kid was in a half-decent mood. “Hey, Auntie.”
“Hiya, Martha Stewart.”
“Puh-lease. This is cassoulet.” She favored Skip with a rare smile. “You can call me Julia, though.”
“Oh. Roberts or Child?”
Sheila just sniffed. “The uncles are teaching me to cook. Want to know something? I think I’ve got a talent for it.”
“I think you might.” Skip said, though she really had no idea. She was just glad to see Sheila interested in something that didn’t involve shopping or makeup. Not that the kid was shallow; she was a kid. This could be a sign of impending adulthood. “Uncle Jimmy around?”
“Upstairs. You better holler.”
“Dee-Dee!” Skip trilled. “Dee-Dee darling!”
“My ears!” Sheila winced.
“Margaret?” Jimmy Dee’s voice was unmistakably welcoming. He was the only person in the world allowed to call her by her given name. “Is that you, my dainty darling?”
“Ewwwwww,” said Sheila, but Skip could see her mouth twitching. For a few years after the kids came, Uncle Jimmy had tried to squelch his exuberantly campy side. (“Mustn’t upset the Martians, you know”— Mars being his nickname for Minnesota, where they came from.) Lately, they’d all relaxed— Uncle Jimmy, Skip, Steve, and Uncle Layne. Nowadays the kids called every hooker and queen in the neighborhood by name. Minnesota was a distant memory.
Dee-Dee clattered down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Lovely as always, I see. Adore the torn T-shirt.”
“Dee-Dee, have I got a job for you. Want to organize the most exclusive antiques boutique in town?”
“Omigod, deco fun! You mean the Madonna Barn?”
Skip smiled smugly. “It’s yours if you want it.”
“How much does it pay?”
Sheila stopped stripping ribs from Romaine lettuce and gave him a grin. “Oh, cut it out. It’s a maiden uncle’s wet dream.”
“True, pearl of a girl. True. A Krispy Kreme of a scene, simply made for a queen.”
The pearl of a girl snorted. “Sorry I butted in.”
“I shall hang the walls with gold lamé, drape all the statues with old piano shawls and festoon them with Mardi Gras beads. For background music, Bach, I think.”
Jimmy Dee was a lawyer who passed for straight in most circles. Skip thanked Bacchus his clients couldn’t hear him now. “You got the idea,” she said. “But you might have to downscale it.” In her heart, though, she thought the beads might be a pretty good touch.
“When do we start?”
“It’s going to take them a week or two to haul the statues to this old warehouse we’re using. I thought maybe you could come in at night and arrange them artfully.”
“Arrange them? Me and what army? Some of those things weigh half a ton.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got the army— police volunteers. Great, hulking, gorgeous ones.”
That got Sheila’s attention. “Count me in,” she said without looking up.
Skip had no idea whether the girl was serious or not, but she sure was growing up.
“How about the bear?” Jimmy Dee said.
“We’ll have to do without him; he’s going to L.A. for a few days to raise some money. He wants to do a documentary on the whole cemetery art phenomenon.”
“Brilliant idea.”
Maybe, Skip thought. And maybe Steve just wanted to get away for awhile.
Meanwhile, she had a job to do, and it was getting good. The three grave robbers, Joe D’Amico, Lance Fortenberry, and Jerome Bowen, hadn’t made bond. At first, the task force had concentrated on the brother and the dealer, Adnan and Bilal Rashid, preferring to let the others cool their heels in Parish Prison. Neither proved particularly proficient in English, and, even with a translator, they didn’t have a whole lot to say.
The brother, Bilal, also a dealer, said he’d met the gang about a month ago and bought one statue and two urns from them. They’d come to his house for payment the day Hagerty picked them up there. Bilal claimed he had no idea the merchandise was stolen; the gang said it came from a relative’s plantation. Since all that turned up was indeed the statue and a receipt for the urns (which had since been recovered), the officers sensed they weren’t going to get any more. They turned their attention to the gang.
Skip and Hagerty took D’Amico, who by now had had two days to think things over. Hagerty did the questioning. She had a persuasive way about her. D’Amico, a big, shy guy with a thick head of hair and moustache to match seemed to take a shine to her. What the hell, Skip thought. Whatever works.
“Joe, you got a couple of priors here. Ever think about yourself? You like women, don’t you? Not many of those in Angola.”
He shifted toward her. “Look, I got a family.”
“You probably like to see them once in awhile too. Want to see your kids grow up, or you want to spend the next ten years pumping iron so you don’t end up some thug’s bitch?”
“I ain’t gon’ be nobody’s bitch.”
Skip said, “They grab you and hold you down, Joe. Three of them at a time jump you.”
“You shut up!”
She stood. At six feet in her uniform (worn specially for the occasion), she looked like nobody to mess with. “You shut up, punk! We got pictures of you robbing people’s graves. You know how unpopular that is? There aren’t twelve people in this town wouldn’t convict you. We got a whole yardful of people’s precious little angels and urns where they plant mums and pansies for dear departed papa from the old country. You gonna plead innocent? Innocent of what? Leaving the bones?”
Hagerty said, “Was this thing your idea, Joe? Or did somebody put you up to it? If anybody did, all you have to do is tell us who it was, and the D.A.’ll be nice to you. See, he knows he can’t solve this case without you, and he really needs to solve this case. You could get off with a couple of years, max; be home in time for little Stacy’s sweet sixteen party.”
Joe rubbed his eyebrows. “I had me a job in construction, real good job, but man, I’m getting too old for that shit. My joints are giving out you know? And Maureen needs clothes, and the kids got to have school uniforms…”
Hagerty practically had tears in her eyes. “Mmmph, mmph.”
“You’re disgusting,” Skip said. “Are you trying to say…”
“Look, here’s what I’m trying to say. Just let me spit it out, okay? This guy had termite damage— had to take out some walls in his shop…”
“What shop?”
“Little antique shop in the Quarter.”
“The French Quarter?”
The man nodded. “Chartres Street. Guy had this real pretty marble saint in his window. I said I liked it and he said, ‘Wish I had a hundred just like her. I could sell two, three every day.’ After a while, he said, ‘You wouldn’t know where to get more, would you’? I went, ‘Me? How the hell would I know? I ain’t no antique dealer.’ And he said, ‘Well, I just thought you bein’ Italian and all, maybe you had some in the family. People put ’em in cemeteries and stuff.’ And I got to thinkin’ that, yep, they sure did. So I told him maybe I could get him one. And I just went out to Lake Lawn in broad daylight and got him one. Easiest thing I ever did. I picked this old, deserted-looking tomb, you know, nobody was gonna miss it.”
Right, Skip thought. That’s just how it happened, all right. Forget the lady in the window; you’re the saint in this story. She might have said it aloud, except that Joe was on a roll.
“I brought it in, and he just about went crazy. Said could I get him some urns too, and maybe some crosses. Said people love those things. He couldn’t get enough of ’em.”
“Did you tell him where the statue came from?”
“Hell, no, I didn’t tell him. I didn’t know him yet. He’d have to be crazy not to know, though. Right?”
“You tell me.”
Hagerty offered him a cigarette. He pounced on it like it was a hamburger. “Once, when I brought him this real nice statue, a little girl holding a bouquet, he said he’d seen one like it once. Axed me, wasn’t there a pair of ’em. And there was. I said, sure, I could get him the other one. After that he’d describe stuff: tell me exactly what he wanted and where to get it.”
“Where to get it?” Hagerty repeated mildly.
“Oh, yeah. He told me where to get it. That was when I brought in Lance and Jerome. We’d go get what he wanted, and while we was at it, we’d pick up other stuff too. Figured he wasn’t the only game in town. Pretty soon we had a list of regulars.”
“The Rashid brothers.”
“Naah, they only bought from us once.”
“Come on. We tailed you from Bilal’s house.”
“Would you listen to me? They’re nothin’, small-time nothin’.” Like it was disgusting. “We was just there to kind of talk them into payin’ up, you know?”
Hagerty sighed. “It’s a cash-and-carry business, Joe. You telling us you just gave them the stuff?”
“That idiot Jerome took half on delivery; felt sorry for ’em. Ain’t important. Would you listen? We had three regulars givin’ us art lessons: tellin’ us to go for the marble, not the concrete; how to tell the good stuff, like if the fingers was separate, ya know?”
“You tell us.”
“If the hand’s just carved out of one block, that’s one thing, see? But if they got each finger separate, like you can see through, then that’s real fine work. Desirable to collectors.”
He had Skip’s interest. “Go on.”
“Well, we worked for ’em reg’lar. Got ’em anything they axed for. They probably sold it out of town, a lot of it, but I know they got stuff right now. I know. Hadn’t had time to move it.” His face took on a sly look. “I can tell you where it is.”
“Okay, Joe. You tell us. Names and addresses.”
“Listen, y’all, I got a family. You gon’ make me a deal?”
“That’s up to the D.A., but if I had to guess, I’d give it about ninety-nine percent. You cooperate with us; we cooperate with you.”
