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Mean Woman Blues (A Skip Langdon Mystery) by Julie Smith
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2003
- Publisher: Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC
- Format: Hardcover, 304pp
- Series: Talba Wallis, #9
- ISBN-13: 9780765305527
- ISBN: 0765305526
- Edition Description: REV
Synopsis
A Skip Langdon Novel
Nemesis: the rival fate never allows you to beat.
The nemesis of Skip Langdon, New Orleans police detective, is Errol Jacomine. This evangelical preacher has been leader of his own frenzied army of converts, has run for mayor of New Orleans, and now wants to become president of the United States. His campaign methods are rabble-rousing, theft, kidnapping, and multiple murder.
Skip thinks he's as dangerous as Jim Jones. She has chased him for years, no luck. Now Jacomine comes after Skip, her lover, and her friends. She must track him down. But his guise this time is so clever even his own children don't recognize him.
In Mean Woman Blues, Edgar Award-winner Julie Smith returns triumphantly to her popular series about hip New Orleans detective Skip Langdon, once again operating in sensual, sexy, exotic New Orleans.
This time Skip is able to teach Jacomine that nemesis originally meant the goddess of retributive justice.
Publishers Weekly
Don't let the title fool you. In this tense but melodramatic entry in Edgar-winner Smith's (New Orleans Mourning) Skip Langdon series, the story hinges on a mean man-sociopath Errol Jacomine, who, helped by plastic surgery, has reinvented himself as a charismatic talk-show host. As to women, several besides Detective Langdon figure prominently, each working herself into one rage after another. And blues? While most of the mayhem occurs in New Orleans, this Crescent City is devoid of music-blues or otherwise. Other Big Easy attractions, like the ornate statuary in the city's renowned cemeteries, lend local color, as do po'boys, levees and the French Quarter, serving as backdrop for the characters' internal lives. Without exception, these people bear deep psychic wounds, which become figurative and literal gashes as they endure murder attempts, unlawful arrests, defamation and torture. Emotional updates come as insistently as a Louisiana forecaster tracking a Gulf hurricane. Some mood shifts jar. Given to snits, con artist Jacomine repeatedly drops his guard. And when a near-comatose woman suddenly starts haranguing an FBI investigator, the scene rather than intensifying seems contrived. Likewise, coincidence looms larger than some readers will accept. Nonetheless, fans should welcome this overheated installment as eagerly as others in this well-established series. (Aug. 21) FYI: Smith is also the author of Louisiana Bigshot (Forecasts, July 8, 2002), the second title in her series featuring African-American detective Talba Wallis. A former reporter, Smith has recently become a fully licensed PI in New Orleans. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Julie Smith currently lives and writes in the Faubourg Marigny district of New Orleans, a neighborhood of nightclubs, restaurants and coffee shops where shady characters mix with artists. The author of nineteen novels, she was born and raised in Savannah before escaping to the University of Mississippi. After graduation, Smith became a reporter, first for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and later the San Francisco Chronicle. She lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years before returning to New Orleans.
Smith abandoned reporting for writing mysteries in the early 1980s, writing a series featuring attorney Rebecca Schwartz and a second series starring Paul McDonald, a reporter turned mystery writer whose fate you wouldn't wish on a dog. A few years later, she launched a third series featuring New Orleans police detective Skip Langdon with New Orleans Mourning, which won the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel in 1991. She currently alternates between writing about Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis, an African-American poet/private eye who debuted in "Louisiana Hotshot."
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June 11, 2003: At one time he was the head of a church group that he turned into his own cult of personal assassins who were willing to commit any crime he asked them to do. He ran for mayor of New Orleans before Detective Skip Langdon exposed him as a murderer, kidnapper, and con artist. Before he could be arrested, he disappeared and one of his main goals has become to destroy Langdon.
After extensive plastic surgery Jacomine reinvented himself as David Wright, host of the Dallas Cable TV show, Mr. Right. He assists the poor and bewildered get help when they have nobody else to turn to. He married a woman from a powerful political family and has delusions of using his wife?s family and the show to springboard a political run. He also arranges a hit on his arch enemy Skip Langdon who is determined that this time she will find and bring to justice the criminal that made her life miserable for several years.
If it wasn?t for Jacomine?s obsession to take out the heroine, who knows if his plan to run and win in national politics would have worked. MEAN WOMAN BLUES is all about obsession: the FBI?s desire to take down their number two felon, the heroine?s desire to catch Jacomine and live a normal life, and the villain?s need to control everyone around him. Even though the audience knows who is doing what at all times, Julie Smith is able to surprise the readers with many unexpected twists and turns. This is one of the best police procedural of the year.
Harriet Klausner
From the Publisher
A Skip Langdon Novel
Nemesis: the rival fate never allows you to beat.
The nemesis of Skip Langdon, New Orleans police detective, is Errol Jacomine. This evangelical preacher has been leader of his own frenzied army of converts, has run for mayor of New Orleans, and now wants to become president of the United States. His campaign methods are rabble-rousing, theft, kidnapping, and multiple murder.
Skip thinks he's as dangerous as Jim Jones. She has chased him for years, no luck. Now Jacomine comes after Skip, her lover, and her friends. She must track him down. But his guise this time is so clever even his own children don't recognize him.
In Mean Woman Blues, Edgar Award-winner Julie Smith returns triumphantly to her popular series about hip New Orleans detective Skip Langdon, once again operating in sensual, sexy, exotic New Orleans.
This time Skip is able to teach Jacomine that nemesis originally meant the goddess of retributive justice.
Publishers Weekly
Don't let the title fool you. In this tense but melodramatic entry in Edgar-winner Smith's (New Orleans Mourning) Skip Langdon series, the story hinges on a mean man-sociopath Errol Jacomine, who, helped by plastic surgery, has reinvented himself as a charismatic talk-show host. As to women, several besides Detective Langdon figure prominently, each working herself into one rage after another. And blues? While most of the mayhem occurs in New Orleans, this Crescent City is devoid of music-blues or otherwise. Other Big Easy attractions, like the ornate statuary in the city's renowned cemeteries, lend local color, as do po'boys, levees and the French Quarter, serving as backdrop for the characters' internal lives. Without exception, these people bear deep psychic wounds, which become figurative and literal gashes as they endure murder attempts, unlawful arrests, defamation and torture. Emotional updates come as insistently as a Louisiana forecaster tracking a Gulf hurricane. Some mood shifts jar. Given to snits, con artist Jacomine repeatedly drops his guard. And when a near-comatose woman suddenly starts haranguing an FBI investigator, the scene rather than intensifying seems contrived. Likewise, coincidence looms larger than some readers will accept. Nonetheless, fans should welcome this overheated installment as eagerly as others in this well-established series. (Aug. 21) FYI: Smith is also the author of Louisiana Bigshot (Forecasts, July 8, 2002), the second title in her series featuring African-American detective Talba Wallis. A former reporter, Smith has recently become a fully licensed PI in New Orleans. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
New Orleans Detective Skip Langton (Crescent City Kill, 1997, etc.), is targeted by a sniper, assigned to head up the task force looking into cemetery-statue theft, and still determined to catch her old nemesis, master criminal Earl Jacomine. What's the dastardly Jacomine been up to? Well, extensive reconstruction work has given him a noble chin and a dashing hairline; voice coaching has made him sound mildly British, and a deal with his media-savvy first wife Rosemary has landed him on cable TV, where, as "Mr. Right," he is much admired for solving intractable problems for a harassed citizenry. His current wife, Dallas socialite Kate, would be flummoxed if she'd seen his real résumé or learned that his son Daniel is in the slammer and his grandson Isaac's girlfriend Terri has been caught kiting checks. A scheduled TV session between "Mr. Right" and Terri leads to a contract put out on Isaac. Drawing the interest of the Feds and Skip, Isaac winds up in a deadly conflagration engineered by a pair of duped women. While Jacomine's relatives obliterate each other, Skip enlists her best friends, a sort of extended family, in a sting of the cemetery thieves until, for the moment, all the sociopaths and psychopaths in Orleans Parish are quieted down. Busy, busy, busy, that's our Skip, who now seems (dare we say?) a tad drab when compared to her author's other series sleuth, the flamboyant Talba Wallis.
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: August 2003
- Publisher: Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC
- Format: Hardcover, 304pp
- Series: Talba Wallis, #9
- ISBN-13: 9780765305527
- ISBN: 0765305526
- Edition Description: REV
Table of Contents
Read an Excerpt
Chapter ONEMay is the cruelest month.
September has its moments, being hurricane season, but its meanness is unreliable. May is a sure thing.
On Mother’s Day, give or take a week or so, the Formosans swarm, only slightly less consistent than the swallows at Capistrano. They continue their inexorable flight, sometimes in terrifying indoor clouds, well into summer.
Formosan termites, accidentally imported some years ago, are eating the city of New Orleans. They are doing it not in bug-sized nibbles, but in greedy gulps that some people say they can actually hear. They swear that in the dark of night, as they lie awake kissing their investments good-bye, they can hear the buzz of so many tiny saws, mandibles chomping their floorboards.
Perhaps they are merely blessed with good imaginations, but a visitor who arrives in the merry month, strolls a few blocks, and finds himself wearing a vest of termites may be inclined to credit them.
The unsuspecting stay-at-home finds himself in a fifties sci-fi film. It begins with a single bug. It may fall on his clothing or perhaps the desk upon which he’s writing. He brushes it off, and another falls, like an earwig from the eaves of a porch. He looks up and sees a few winged creatures bouncing off the chandelier. Odd, he thinks, and goes back to his reverie. And soon there are more bugs. And more. And more. The room may fill with them, thick shrouds of them, circling, diving, turning the air into a seething dark mass.
It may seem the sensible thing to run screaming for cover, but in fact there is an easier way: Our hero can simply turn off the light, and they will leave or die. Orhe can just wait, if he can stand it. The winged ones, the alates, or breeders, have about a two-hour life span, between seven and nine P.M., usually. Unless, of course, they manage to mate, in which case they will start a nest. The largest nest found to date had a diameter of three hundred feet.
Unlike other termites, these can build aerial nests, right in your walls. Brick or stucco houses are fine with them; they’ll eat the door frames, windowsills, picture frames, furniture, and telephone bills, plus your favorite hundred-year-old shade tree. Except for exterminators, who shake their heads and look grim, like oncologists delivering the bad news, they have no natural enemies. The alates, so shocking in their thick, swirling clouds, are only a small percentage of the population, according to entomologists. A mature nest may contain five to ten million termites, though seventy million isn’t unheard of.
Formosan termites now infest eleven Southern states, plus California, New Mexico, and Hawaii. Louisiana has the most severe infestation in the world (despite headway being made by state and federal baiting programs), and it is only natural that the bug has become, like the loup-garou (or Cajun werewolf), part of the local mythology.
The stories are legion: An alfresco wedding attacked by something resembling a Biblical plague. A window shut just in time, as hundreds of tiny bodies, drawn by the light inside, smash as if on a windshield. An ordinary backyard, covered in minutes by a carpet of termites. Fat garbage bags of wings, as many as ten or twelve, shoveled from the floor of a house.
Indeed, the month of May affords a brush with nature rarely seen by urban dwellers. Those of a metaphorical bent try not to think about the Mother’s Day aspect.
* * *
Detective Skip Langdon, a veteran of many Mays in New Orleans, was trying to help her beloved through his first, mostly with diversionary tactics. She had seen Steve Steinman’s face when he discovered the termite launching pads on his newly purchased, newly painted, hundred-and-twenty-year-old ceiling. He looked as if someone had died.
“Am I insured for this?” he said, and she desperately wished there were something she could do. The insurance companies weren’t that dumb.
“Why didn’t they find them when they inspected?” he asked, outraged.
“You can’t know they’re there unless you rip out the walls.”
“Uh-oh. I’ve got a bad feeling that means I’ve got to do that now.”
“Maybe you won’t. They can probably drill holes for the poison.” But she was lying. They might well have to rip out the walls.
No exterminator would be available for weeks, of course, and it’s said the Formosans can go through a floor board in a month. The thing to do was keep his mind off it.
JazzFest was over, and the heaviness of summer was nearly upon them; Mother’s Day brunch at a fine old restaurant sounded like a prison sentence. Yet Skip was a mother of sorts, or at least an aunt to the adopted children of her landlord, Jimmy Dee Scoggin. Dee-Dee was gay, and his partner, Layne Bilderback, had recently joined the household shared by Jimmy Dee and young Kenny and Sheila Ritter, the offspring of his late sister.
Dee-Dee wheedled. “We have to do something to remember their mother, keep the feminine spirit alive. Isn’t it the decent thing?”
Steve said, “How about a hike?” and Dee-Dee countered, “Don’t you get enough wildlife at home?”
But Skip pounced on it. If Steve wanted it, she wanted it. She wanted him in a good mood about Louisiana. He had moved there recently and restored a house (the one being gnawed), after months and years of thinking about it. A documentary filmmaker and film editor, he’d lived in California the entire time he and Skip had been dating. Their long-distance relationship had deepened on proximity. Skip was getting comfortable and liking it a lot. Steve had come to New Orleans for her, and his being there had enriched her life so much more than she’d anticipated that she felt responsible now—And motivated—eager to make him happy. A walk in Jean Lafitte Park, over in Jefferson Parish, ought to be wonderfully therapeutic.
There was almost a no-go when Jimmy Dee said they’d have to leave the dogs behind—Steve’s shepherd, Napoleon, and the kids’ mutt, Angel—because they couldn’t go in the park itself and it was too hot to leave them in the car.
But in the end the three kids—Dee-Dee’s two and Steve—rose above it.
They went in two cars, the uncles and Sheila in one, Kenny with
Skip and Steve. There was a reason for this; Kenny, being in his early teens, hero-worshipped Steve. The two uncles could have gotten their feelings hurt but had the sense not to bother. The average fourteen-year-old preferred baseball to opera; metaphorically speaking, it was that simple. And Kenny was such a gentle soul, even as a teenager, that no one could imagine he’d ignore anyone on purpose. Sheila was another matter. She’d probably chosen to ride with the uncles just to snub her younger brother.
Spilling from the cars, they stepped onto the natural levee that ran
along Bayou Coquille and instantly heard the silence of the swamp. It
was louder than the bullfrog croaks and insect ditties and birdsongs and animal slitherings that, in fact, were a concert in themselves. The two conditions were like stereo—you could listen to either or both, and the effect was like being on another planet. As the trail descended to the flooded forest of the swamp, the noises grew louder, and so did the silence. The air, though it was nearly ninety in the French Quarter, here seemed fresh and soft with breezes. It was too late for the wild irises, which bloom in great fields of purplish blue, but a few of the pale lavender water hyacinths, to some more beautiful than orchids, still floated on the water, gorgeous to look at, but in fact choking out the life of the bayou. In its way, the water hyacinth—imported from South America rather than Asia—is as deadly as the termites. A single plant can produce fifty thousand others in one growing season, killing the native plants, thus reducing available food for animals.
Yet to Skip, the day was so beautiful, the views so tranquil, the natural mix so seemingly harmonious that it was possible to forget unharmonious nature: weed against weed, man against bug, cop against thug. People were oddly quiet as they walked the trail; even Sheila, given to complaining about the personalities and intellectual capacities of her companions, was as sunny as the day, which would have been perfect even if they hadn’t happened upon a Cajun band on the way home, playing at an outdoor restaurant where people danced under a shed. They stopped and had iced tea, enjoying the dancers, some of whom wore shirts from a Cajun heritage organization and one of whom wore a masterpiece of taxidermy on his hat: an entire duck, feet and all, intact except for its innards.
Afterward, they went home and barbecued. While Layne cooked, the other grown-ups sat in the courtyard Skip shared with the Ritter-Scoggin family, drinking gin and tonics while the kids watched television, Napoleon snoozed, and Angel tried to wake him up. The air was velvety, with a little breeze, and the mosquitoes weren’t yet biting. It was absurdly familial. Skip was completely, deliciously happy, a feeling she sometimes distrusted.
But that night she dreamed, and the dream was like life. In the dream, she had a beautiful house, and then a tiny hole appeared in the wall; out of the hole came swirling hordes of termites, traveling in vortexes like tornadoes. More and more swarmed until the air turned black, and then there was no air, only chaotic, moving, living walls, trapping her and invading her nose, her ears, smothering, strangling…
Steve shook her awake, and she told him the dream, still moaning, shivering though it was late spring, unnerved out of all proportion.
“They aren’t that bad,” he said. “It’ll be okay. But thank you for your empathy.”
* * *
The dream wasn’t about his termites. Someone could have said it was about him, about her fear of their relationship, her dread of becoming engulfed. But she knew it wasn’t that. She knew what it was about, and she knew why she couldn’t stop shaking.
It was about fear of dropping her guard, of looking away for even a second, of forgetting the danger that always lurked.
She had been happy too long, and something was happening to wake her up, to alert her to be wary. Yet the task was impossible. She couldn’t be wary every second of the day. She couldn’t protect even herself, let alone those she loved. No wonder she had dreamed of a pulsating monster, a force of nature that overwhelmed and smothered.
Fear was like that, a shrink might have said. But that wasn’t it, not quite. Her enemy was like that.
Nearly two years ago, Errol Jacomine had disappeared, but he would not stay gone. She knew this; she had destroyed two of his careers, twice thwarted his attempts to win control over his fellow human beings, to gain a following, and to dominate. He would be back, and he would try to kill her sooner rather than later. To forget it for a day in the woods, for an evening in her courtyard, for a moment, for a millisecond, was dangerous and possibly deadly.
Jacomine’s son, Daniel, had been arrested, charged with half a dozen crimes, and eventually convicted of murder as the result of one of Jacomine’s schemes. He was due to be sentenced in a couple of days.
How that would affect his father, Skip couldn’t know, but it had probably precipitated the dream. Jacomine might not even notice, perhaps having written Daniel off. He could do this; he seemed sometimes to have no feelings.
On the other hand, he perceived himself to be at the center of the universe. He might feel proprietary toward Daniel, no matter how unlikely he was to have true paternal feelings. And if he did, he might…what?
Surface. Treat it as an occasion to make himself known. Trade an eye for an eye: kidnap Kenny and demand Daniel.
Anything.
That was what the dream was about.
She left for work feeling hunted and resentful of her psyche for rubbing her nose in it. She knew all that, and what could she do about it? Exactly what? she asked herself angrily. Later, the dream seemed more a premonition than a warning.
That morning as always, she walked the few blocks to the garage where she kept her car, pointed the remote at the automatic door (a process that never failed to give her childlike pleasure), and waited for the door to raise itself high enough to allow her ingress. Instead of the familiar rumble, an explosion ripped through the quiet morning, followed by a loud ping, like a beer can hitting a metal drum.
She felt an arm around her waist, another at her back and then she felt herself falling, a great weight upon her. She tried to fight it, but it was too heavy. She was helpless. Her head hit the pavement.
It took a second to put it together. The explosion had been a shot, the ping a ricochet.
Another shot blasted the momentary peace, a second bullet thunked into the sidewalk. Closer. She felt her muscles contract, involuntarily seeking shelter.
She heard a woman scream, and she held her breath, but a shocked hush had enveloped the corner.
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 hit?”
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 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 lights. 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 lifesaver—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.”
Copyright © 2003 by Julie Smith
Read a Sample Chapter
Mean Woman Blues
By Smith, Julie
Forge Books
Copyright © 2004 Smith, JulieAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780765344656
Chapter ONE
May is the cruelest month.
September has its moments, being hurricane season, but its meanness is unreliable. May is a sure thing.
On Mother's Day, give or take a week or so, the Formosans swarm, only slightly less consistent than the swallows at Capistrano. They continue their inexorable flight, sometimes in terrifying indoor clouds, well into summer.
Formosan termites, accidentally imported some years ago, are eating the city of New Orleans. They are doing it not in bug-sized nibbles, but in greedy gulps that some people say they can actually hear. They swear that in the dark of night, as they lie awake kissing their investments good-bye, they can hear the buzz of so many tiny saws, mandibles chomping their floorboards.
Perhaps they are merely blessed with good imaginations, but a visitor who arrives in the merry month, strolls a few blocks, and finds himself wearing a vest of termites may be inclined to credit them.
The unsuspecting stay-at-home finds himself in a fifties sci-fi film. It begins with a single bug. It may fall on his clothing or perhaps the desk upon which he's writing. He brushes it off, and another falls, like an earwig from the eaves of a porch. He looks up and sees a few winged creatures bouncing off the chandelier. Odd, he thinks, and goes back to his reverie. And soon there are more bugs. And more. And more. The roommay fill with them, thick shrouds of them, circling, diving, turning the air into a seething dark mass.
It may seem the sensible thing to run screaming for cover, but in fact there is an easier way: Our hero can simply turn off the light, and they will leave or die. Or he can just wait, if he can stand it. The winged ones, the alates, or breeders, have about a two-hour life span, between seven and nine P.M., usually. Unless, of course, they manage to mate, in which case they will start a nest. The largest nest found to date had a diameter of three hundred feet.
Unlike other termites, these can build aerial nests, right in your walls. Brick or stucco houses are fine with them; they'll eat the door frames, windowsills, picture frames, furniture, and telephone bills, plus your favorite hundred-year-old shade tree. Except for exterminators, who shake their heads and look grim, like oncologists delivering the bad news, they have no natural enemies. The alates, so shocking in their thick, swirling clouds, are only a small percentage of the population, according to entomologists. A mature nest may contain five to ten million termites, though seventy million isn't unheard of.
Formosan termites now infest eleven Southern states, plus California, New Mexico, and Hawaii. Louisiana has the most severe infestation in the world (despite headway being made by state and federal baiting programs), and it is only natural that the bug has become, like the loup-garou (or Cajun werewolf), part of the local mythology.
The stories are legion: An alfresco wedding attacked by something resembling a Biblical plague. A window shut just in time, as hundreds of tiny bodies, drawn by the light inside, smash as if on a windshield. An ordinary backyard, covered in minutes by a carpet of termites. Fat garbage bags of wings, as many as ten or twelve, shoveled from the floor of a house.
Indeed, the month of May affords a brush with nature rarely seen by urban dwellers. Those of a metaphorical bent try not to think about the Mother's Day aspect.
* * *
Detective Skip Langdon, a veteran of many Mays in New Orleans, was trying to help her beloved through his first, mostly with diversionary tactics. She had seen Steve Steinman's face when he discovered the termite launching pads on his newly purchased, newly painted, hundred-and-twenty-year-old ceiling. He looked as if someone had died.
"Am I insured for this?" he said, and she desperately wished there were something she could do. The insurance companies weren't that dumb.
"Why didn't they find them when they inspected?" he asked, outraged.
"You can't know they're there unless you rip out the walls."
"Uh-oh. I've got a bad feeling that means I've got to do that now."
"Maybe you won't. They can probably drill holes for the poison." But she was lying. They might well have to rip out the walls.
No exterminator would be available for weeks, of course, and it's said the Formosans can go through a floor board in a month. The thing to do was keep his mind off it.
JazzFest was over, and the heaviness of summer was nearly upon them; Mother's Day brunch at a fine old restaurant sounded like a prison sentence. Yet Skip was a mother of sorts, or at least an aunt to the adopted children of her landlord, Jimmy Dee Scoggin. Dee-Dee was gay, and his partner, Layne Bilderback, had recently joined the household shared by Jimmy Dee and young Kenny and Sheila Ritter, the offspring of his late sister.
Dee-Dee wheedled. "We have to do something to remember their mother, keep the feminine spirit alive. Isn't it the decent thing?"
Steve said, "How about a hike?" and Dee-Dee countered, "Don't you get enough wildlife at home?"
But Skip pounced on it. If Steve wanted it, she wanted it. She wanted him in a good mood about Louisiana. He had moved there recently and restored a house (the one being gnawed), after months and years of thinking about it. A documentary filmmaker and film editor, he'd lived in California the entire time he and Skip had been dating. Their long-distance relationship had deepened on proximity. Skip was getting comfortable and liking it a lot. Steve had come to New Orleans for her, and his being there had enriched her life so much more than she'd anticipated that she felt responsible now--And motivated--eager to make him happy. A walk in Jean Lafitte Park, over in Jefferson Parish, ought to be wonderfully therapeutic.
There was almost a no-go when Jimmy Dee said they'd have to leave the dogs behind--Steve's shepherd, Napoleon, and the kids' mutt, Angel--because they couldn't go in the park itself and it was too hot to leave them in the car.
But in the end the three kids--Dee-Dee's two and Steve--rose above it.
They went in two cars, the uncles and Sheila in one, Kenny with
Skip and Steve. There was a reason for this; Kenny, being in his early teens, hero-worshipped Steve. The two uncles could have gotten their feelings hurt but had the sense not to bother. The average fourteen-year-old preferred baseball to opera; metaphorically speaking, it was that simple. And Kenny was such a gentle soul, even as a teenager, that no one could imagine he'd ignore anyone on purpose. Sheila was another matter. She'd probably chosen to ride with the uncles just to snub her younger brother.
Spilling from the cars, they stepped onto the natural levee that ran
along Bayou Coquille and instantly heard the silence of the swamp. It
was louder than the bullfrog croaks and insect ditties and birdsongs and animal slitherings that, in fact, were a concert in themselves. The two conditions were like stereo--you could listen to either or both, and the effect was like being on another planet. As the trail descended to the flooded forest of the swamp, the noises grew louder, and so did the silence. The air, though it was nearly ninety in the French Quarter, here seemed fresh and soft with breezes. It was too late for the wild irises, which bloom in great fields of purplish blue, but a few of the pale lavender water hyacinths, to some more beautiful than orchids, still floated on the water, gorgeous to look at, but in fact choking out the life of the bayou. In its way, the water hyacinth--imported from South America rather than Asia--is as deadly as the termites. A single plant can produce fifty thousand others in one growing season, killing the native plants, thus reducing available food for animals.
Yet to Skip, the day was so beautiful, the views so tranquil, the natural mix so seemingly harmonious that it was possible to forget unharmonious nature: weed against weed, man against bug, cop against thug. People were oddly quiet as they walked the trail; even Sheila, given to complaining about the personalities and intellectual capacities of her companions, was as sunny as the day, which would have been perfect even if they hadn't happened upon a Cajun band on the way home, playing at an outdoor restaurant where people danced under a shed. They stopped and had iced tea, enjoying the dancers, some of whom wore shirts from a Cajun heritage organization and one of whom wore a masterpiece of taxidermy on his hat: an entire duck, feet and all, intact except for its innards.
Afterward, they went home and barbecued. While Layne cooked, the other grown-ups sat in the courtyard Skip shared with the Ritter-Scoggin family, drinking gin and tonics while the kids watched television, Napoleon snoozed, and Angel tried to wake him up. The air was velvety, with a little breeze, and the mosquitoes weren't yet biting. It was absurdly familial. Skip was completely, deliciously happy, a feeling she sometimes distrusted.
But that night she dreamed, and the dream was like life. In the dream, she had a beautiful house, and then a tiny hole appeared in the wall; out of the hole came swirling hordes of termites, traveling in vortexes like tornadoes. More and more swarmed until the air turned black, and then there was no air, only chaotic, moving, living walls, trapping her and invading her nose, her ears, smothering, strangling...
Steve shook her awake, and she told him the dream, still moaning, shivering though it was late spring, unnerved out of all proportion.
"They aren't that bad," he said. "It'll be okay. But thank you for your empathy."
* * *
The dream wasn't about his termites. Someone could have said it was about him, about her fear of their relationship, her dread of becoming engulfed. But she knew it wasn't that. She knew what it was about, and she knew why she couldn't stop shaking.
It was about fear of dropping her guard, of looking away for even a second, of forgetting the danger that always lurked.
She had been happy too long, and something was happening to wake her up, to alert her to be wary. Yet the task was impossible. She couldn't be wary every second of the day. She couldn't protect even herself, let alone those she loved. No wonder she had dreamed of a pulsating monster, a force of nature that overwhelmed and smothered.
Fear was like that, a shrink might have said. But that wasn't it, not quite. Her enemy was like that.
Nearly two years ago, Errol Jacomine had disappeared, but he would not stay gone. She knew this; she had destroyed two of his careers, twice thwarted his attempts to win control over his fellow human beings, to gain a following, and to dominate. He would be back, and he would try to kill her sooner rather than later. To forget it for a day in the woods, for an evening in her courtyard, for a moment, for a millisecond, was dangerous and possibly deadly.
Jacomine's son, Daniel, had been arrested, charged with half a dozen crimes, and eventually convicted of murder as the result of one of Jacomine's schemes. He was due to be sentenced in a couple of days.
How that would affect his father, Skip couldn't know, but it had probably precipitated the dream. Jacomine might not even notice, perhaps having written Daniel off. He could do this; he seemed sometimes to have no feelings.
On the other hand, he perceived himself to be at the center of the universe. He might feel proprietary toward Daniel, no matter how unlikely he was to have true paternal feelings. And if he did, he might...what?
Surface. Treat it as an occasion to make himself known. Trade an eye for an eye: kidnap Kenny and demand Daniel.
Anything.
That was what the dream was about.
She left for work feeling hunted and resentful of her psyche for rubbing her nose in it. She knew all that, and what could she do about it? Exactly what? she asked herself angrily. Later, the dream seemed more a premonition than a warning.
That morning as always, she walked the few blocks to the garage where she kept her car, pointed the remote at the automatic door (a process that never failed to give her childlike pleasure), and waited for the door to raise itself high enough to allow her ingress. Instead of the familiar rumble, an explosion ripped through the quiet morning, followed by a loud ping, like a beer can hitting a metal drum.
She felt an arm around her waist, another at her back and then she felt herself falling, a great weight upon her. She tried to fight it, but it was too heavy. She was helpless. Her head hit the pavement.
It took a second to put it together. The explosion had been a shot, the ping a ricochet.
Another shot blasted the momentary peace, a second bullet thunked into the sidewalk. Closer. She felt her muscles contract, involuntarily seeking shelter.
She heard a woman scream, and she held her breath, but a shocked hush had enveloped the corner.
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 hit?"
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 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 lights. 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 lifesaver--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."
Copyright 2003 by Julie Smith
May is the cruelest month.
September has its moments, being hurricane season, but its meanness is unreliable. May is a sure thing.
On Mother's Day, give or take a week or so, the Formosans swarm, only slightly less consistent than the swallows at Capistrano. They continue their inexorable flight, sometimes in terrifying indoor clouds, well into summer.
Formosan termites, accidentally imported some years ago, are eating the city of New Orleans. They are doing it not in bug-sized nibbles, but in greedy gulps that some people say they can actually hear. They swear that in the dark of night, as they lie awake kissing their investments good-bye, they can hear the buzz of so many tiny saws, mandibles chomping their floorboards.
Perhaps they are merely blessed with good imaginations, but a visitor who arrives in the merry month, strolls a few blocks, and finds himself wearing a vest of termites may be inclined to credit them.
The unsuspecting stay-at-home finds himself in a fifties sci-fi film. It begins with a single bug. It may fall on his clothing or perhaps the desk upon which he's writing. He brushes it off, and another falls, like an earwig from the eaves of a porch. He looks up and sees a few winged creatures bouncing off the chandelier. Odd, he thinks, and goes back to his reverie. And soon there are more bugs. And more. And more. The roommay fill with them, thick shrouds of them, circling, diving, turning the air into a seething dark mass.
It may seem the sensible thing to run screaming for cover, but in fact there is an easier way: Our hero can simply turn off the light, and they will leave or die. Or he can just wait, if he can stand it. The winged ones, the alates, or breeders, have about a two-hour life span, between seven and nine P.M., usually. Unless, of course, they manage to mate, in which case they will start a nest. The largest nest found to date had a diameter of three hundred feet.
Unlike other termites, these can build aerial nests, right in your walls. Brick or stucco houses are fine with them; they'll eat the door frames, windowsills, picture frames, furniture, and telephone bills, plus your favorite hundred-year-old shade tree. Except for exterminators, who shake their heads and look grim, like oncologists delivering the bad news, they have no natural enemies. The alates, so shocking in their thick, swirling clouds, are only a small percentage of the population, according to entomologists. A mature nest may contain five to ten million termites, though seventy million isn't unheard of.
Formosan termites now infest eleven Southern states, plus California, New Mexico, and Hawaii. Louisiana has the most severe infestation in the world (despite headway being made by state and federal baiting programs), and it is only natural that the bug has become, like the loup-garou (or Cajun werewolf), part of the local mythology.
The stories are legion: An alfresco wedding attacked by something resembling a Biblical plague. A window shut just in time, as hundreds of tiny bodies, drawn by the light inside, smash as if on a windshield. An ordinary backyard, covered in minutes by a carpet of termites. Fat garbage bags of wings, as many as ten or twelve, shoveled from the floor of a house.
Indeed, the month of May affords a brush with nature rarely seen by urban dwellers. Those of a metaphorical bent try not to think about the Mother's Day aspect.
* * *
Detective Skip Langdon, a veteran of many Mays in New Orleans, was trying to help her beloved through his first, mostly with diversionary tactics. She had seen Steve Steinman's face when he discovered the termite launching pads on his newly purchased, newly painted, hundred-and-twenty-year-old ceiling. He looked as if someone had died.
"Am I insured for this?" he said, and she desperately wished there were something she could do. The insurance companies weren't that dumb.
"Why didn't they find them when they inspected?" he asked, outraged.
"You can't know they're there unless you rip out the walls."
"Uh-oh. I've got a bad feeling that means I've got to do that now."
"Maybe you won't. They can probably drill holes for the poison." But she was lying. They might well have to rip out the walls.
No exterminator would be available for weeks, of course, and it's said the Formosans can go through a floor board in a month. The thing to do was keep his mind off it.
JazzFest was over, and the heaviness of summer was nearly upon them; Mother's Day brunch at a fine old restaurant sounded like a prison sentence. Yet Skip was a mother of sorts, or at least an aunt to the adopted children of her landlord, Jimmy Dee Scoggin. Dee-Dee was gay, and his partner, Layne Bilderback, had recently joined the household shared by Jimmy Dee and young Kenny and Sheila Ritter, the offspring of his late sister.
Dee-Dee wheedled. "We have to do something to remember their mother, keep the feminine spirit alive. Isn't it the decent thing?"
Steve said, "How about a hike?" and Dee-Dee countered, "Don't you get enough wildlife at home?"
But Skip pounced on it. If Steve wanted it, she wanted it. She wanted him in a good mood about Louisiana. He had moved there recently and restored a house (the one being gnawed), after months and years of thinking about it. A documentary filmmaker and film editor, he'd lived in California the entire time he and Skip had been dating. Their long-distance relationship had deepened on proximity. Skip was getting comfortable and liking it a lot. Steve had come to New Orleans for her, and his being there had enriched her life so much more than she'd anticipated that she felt responsible now--And motivated--eager to make him happy. A walk in Jean Lafitte Park, over in Jefferson Parish, ought to be wonderfully therapeutic.
There was almost a no-go when Jimmy Dee said they'd have to leave the dogs behind--Steve's shepherd, Napoleon, and the kids' mutt, Angel--because they couldn't go in the park itself and it was too hot to leave them in the car.
But in the end the three kids--Dee-Dee's two and Steve--rose above it.
They went in two cars, the uncles and Sheila in one, Kenny with
Skip and Steve. There was a reason for this; Kenny, being in his early teens, hero-worshipped Steve. The two uncles could have gotten their feelings hurt but had the sense not to bother. The average fourteen-year-old preferred baseball to opera; metaphorically speaking, it was that simple. And Kenny was such a gentle soul, even as a teenager, that no one could imagine he'd ignore anyone on purpose. Sheila was another matter. She'd probably chosen to ride with the uncles just to snub her younger brother.
Spilling from the cars, they stepped onto the natural levee that ran
along Bayou Coquille and instantly heard the silence of the swamp. It
was louder than the bullfrog croaks and insect ditties and birdsongs and animal slitherings that, in fact, were a concert in themselves. The two conditions were like stereo--you could listen to either or both, and the effect was like being on another planet. As the trail descended to the flooded forest of the swamp, the noises grew louder, and so did the silence. The air, though it was nearly ninety in the French Quarter, here seemed fresh and soft with breezes. It was too late for the wild irises, which bloom in great fields of purplish blue, but a few of the pale lavender water hyacinths, to some more beautiful than orchids, still floated on the water, gorgeous to look at, but in fact choking out the life of the bayou. In its way, the water hyacinth--imported from South America rather than Asia--is as deadly as the termites. A single plant can produce fifty thousand others in one growing season, killing the native plants, thus reducing available food for animals.
Yet to Skip, the day was so beautiful, the views so tranquil, the natural mix so seemingly harmonious that it was possible to forget unharmonious nature: weed against weed, man against bug, cop against thug. People were oddly quiet as they walked the trail; even Sheila, given to complaining about the personalities and intellectual capacities of her companions, was as sunny as the day, which would have been perfect even if they hadn't happened upon a Cajun band on the way home, playing at an outdoor restaurant where people danced under a shed. They stopped and had iced tea, enjoying the dancers, some of whom wore shirts from a Cajun heritage organization and one of whom wore a masterpiece of taxidermy on his hat: an entire duck, feet and all, intact except for its innards.
Afterward, they went home and barbecued. While Layne cooked, the other grown-ups sat in the courtyard Skip shared with the Ritter-Scoggin family, drinking gin and tonics while the kids watched television, Napoleon snoozed, and Angel tried to wake him up. The air was velvety, with a little breeze, and the mosquitoes weren't yet biting. It was absurdly familial. Skip was completely, deliciously happy, a feeling she sometimes distrusted.
But that night she dreamed, and the dream was like life. In the dream, she had a beautiful house, and then a tiny hole appeared in the wall; out of the hole came swirling hordes of termites, traveling in vortexes like tornadoes. More and more swarmed until the air turned black, and then there was no air, only chaotic, moving, living walls, trapping her and invading her nose, her ears, smothering, strangling...
Steve shook her awake, and she told him the dream, still moaning, shivering though it was late spring, unnerved out of all proportion.
"They aren't that bad," he said. "It'll be okay. But thank you for your empathy."
* * *
The dream wasn't about his termites. Someone could have said it was about him, about her fear of their relationship, her dread of becoming engulfed. But she knew it wasn't that. She knew what it was about, and she knew why she couldn't stop shaking.
It was about fear of dropping her guard, of looking away for even a second, of forgetting the danger that always lurked.
She had been happy too long, and something was happening to wake her up, to alert her to be wary. Yet the task was impossible. She couldn't be wary every second of the day. She couldn't protect even herself, let alone those she loved. No wonder she had dreamed of a pulsating monster, a force of nature that overwhelmed and smothered.
Fear was like that, a shrink might have said. But that wasn't it, not quite. Her enemy was like that.
Nearly two years ago, Errol Jacomine had disappeared, but he would not stay gone. She knew this; she had destroyed two of his careers, twice thwarted his attempts to win control over his fellow human beings, to gain a following, and to dominate. He would be back, and he would try to kill her sooner rather than later. To forget it for a day in the woods, for an evening in her courtyard, for a moment, for a millisecond, was dangerous and possibly deadly.
Jacomine's son, Daniel, had been arrested, charged with half a dozen crimes, and eventually convicted of murder as the result of one of Jacomine's schemes. He was due to be sentenced in a couple of days.
How that would affect his father, Skip couldn't know, but it had probably precipitated the dream. Jacomine might not even notice, perhaps having written Daniel off. He could do this; he seemed sometimes to have no feelings.
On the other hand, he perceived himself to be at the center of the universe. He might feel proprietary toward Daniel, no matter how unlikely he was to have true paternal feelings. And if he did, he might...what?
Surface. Treat it as an occasion to make himself known. Trade an eye for an eye: kidnap Kenny and demand Daniel.
Anything.
That was what the dream was about.
She left for work feeling hunted and resentful of her psyche for rubbing her nose in it. She knew all that, and what could she do about it? Exactly what? she asked herself angrily. Later, the dream seemed more a premonition than a warning.
That morning as always, she walked the few blocks to the garage where she kept her car, pointed the remote at the automatic door (a process that never failed to give her childlike pleasure), and waited for the door to raise itself high enough to allow her ingress. Instead of the familiar rumble, an explosion ripped through the quiet morning, followed by a loud ping, like a beer can hitting a metal drum.
She felt an arm around her waist, another at her back and then she felt herself falling, a great weight upon her. She tried to fight it, but it was too heavy. She was helpless. Her head hit the pavement.
It took a second to put it together. The explosion had been a shot, the ping a ricochet.
Another shot blasted the momentary peace, a second bullet thunked into the sidewalk. Closer. She felt her muscles contract, involuntarily seeking shelter.
She heard a woman scream, and she held her breath, but a shocked hush had enveloped the corner.
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 hit?"
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 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 lights. 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 lifesaver--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."
Copyright 2003 by Julie Smith
Continues...
Excerpted from Mean Woman Blues by Smith, Julie Copyright © 2004 by Smith, Julie. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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