Mean Woman Blues (13 page)

“It’s better than you think. This same thing happened to me in college.”

“You got thrown in jail for check kiting?”

“Oh, no. I most certainly didn’t. The bank manager sat me down, explained it was illegal, gave me a chance to make good, and that was that. But it gave me an idea. I started asking around. Just in the office and in— uh— a bar last night. I found six people it happened to. And not one of them ended up in jail.”

He stroked the lower part of his face. “Viewer empathy.”

“Hell, yeah, viewer empathy— like, half the population’s been there. I’ve backgrounded the girl, and she’s totally clean. Also dumb as a rock when it comes to math; no way she would have tried to scam the bank. I mean the only way she could do that would be to step into it, which she did. Now get this; I’ve also researched the bank, and their fees are twenty-five percent higher, on average, than those of other banks, plus they have more of them. They charge teller fees, for God’s sake. There’s a five-dollar penalty for not using the ATM!”

“I’m liking this a lot.”

“Well, that’s the tip of the iceberg. I’ve got incredible stuff on the banking industry in general. This is big, David. This could be one of our best yet.”

He was still thinking. “Everybody goes to banks.”

“Yeah, and everybody’s intimidated by them.”

“Tracie, this is terrific. I really can’t thank you enough for this.”

“It’s my job.” But he could see she was eating it up.

“No, you always go the extra mile. I admire your work so much.”

“Really? Well, I do try to be thorough.”

“No, you’re great. Really. I’m deeply, deeply impressed.”

He could see she left on a cloud, a cloud he knew exactly how to produce. Women were so insecure. All you had to do was praise them a little bit, and they fell in love with you at the very least; if you worked it right, they were your servant for life.

* * *

Isaac had talked Terri into letting him paint her portrait, something he was desperate to do while she still had the blue hair. Or maybe he wanted to do it because it was a way to feel close to her when they were so obviously moving apart. She had bugged him once or twice about lying to her, and all he’d been able to do was shrug and say he was sorry, he didn’t know why he’d done it. Which was another lie that drove another wedge between them. He knew exactly why he’d done it: because normal people have mothers that they go to see on Mother’s Day; they don’t have grown-up nieces whose fathers are incarcerated. He wasn’t ready to open the door to conversations about his family.

And now, since her arrest, she’d been so self-absorbed he hardly knew her anymore. As he worked, he argued with himself, about to go nuts with love and frustration. Maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe he’d never loved Terri. If he loved her, he had to trust her, right? And if he trusted her, why wouldn’t he open up about his family? Maybe it was guilt and frustration. Maybe she wasn’t right for him; maybe he needed to break up with her.

As soon as it occurred to him to break up with her, he had to excuse himself.

When he came back from the bathroom, he found that she’d lit up a cigarette. Before he could stop himself, he gasped.

“What?” she asked, drawing her robe around her. She was posing nude. He couldn’t stand painting a woman with clothes on, even if he painted her only above the neck; the energy didn’t flow right. In his life, he’d spent a lot of time meditating; energy was a big thing to Isaac.

She was out of the pose, back in the robe, and a blue cloud was rising above her. She stank; the room stank. Everything was different from the way it had been three minutes ago. He felt almost as if he wanted to cry.

“Isaac, what is it?” she said again. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I didn’t expect you to be smoking,” he said.

“What do you mean? I’ve been smoking ever since I got arrested. That and eating chocolate and fries and every kind of junk food— I bet I’ve gained ten pounds. Christ I’m a mess!”

She was. The wonderful blue hair was greasy. He didn’t even want to paint her today.

“Terri…” He didn’t know how to talk about it, didn’t know how to tell her who he used to be, how repellent these things were to the former White Monk: the smell of smoke, of fast-food grease in her car.

“What?” she said again, asking a different question now.

He sat down on the stool he used for painting. “I’m worried about you. It seems like…” Oh, hell, he might as well say it. “It seems like you’re falling apart a little bit.”

“You got that one right bro’.” He hated it when she talked like that. In street clichés. She was an educated woman; she had a brain, and she used to use it to a lot better advantage. “Yeah, I’m falling apart! You would be too if you were me.”

She stubbed out her cigarette, and, to his chagrin, lit another. It was his house; he didn’t even have the nerve to ask her not to smoke in his house. She brushed greasy blue hair out of her eyes. “Isaac, I just can’t seem to catch a break. I told you what happened before I met you: I caught my boyfriend cheating on me and he kicked
me
out. Now how does something like that happen?”

Isaac had heard the story. “If I recall, it was his apartment.”

“And I’d left a really good, cheap one to move in with him. So I had to scrape up the money for a new one. All I could find was that expensive dump I live in, which I
hate
. But at least it would do; it would get me through. And then my transmission got fucked up.”

He winced. He really wished she wouldn’t swear.

“And now this. Then I get arrested for something I didn’t do.”

He corrected her. “Didn’t know you did.”

“Isaac, goddammit.” She got up and paced for a moment, then headed for the bathroom. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“No!” he shouted, unaware he’d raised his voice.

She stared at him, astonished. “You don’t shout. What’s this about? You’re not acting like yourself.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell. I need to get in the bathroom first.” Before she could argue with him, he went in, closed the door, did what he had to do, and returned five minutes later.

She was smoking another cigarette, half-concerned, half-angry. “Isaac, what’s going on? Are you doing drugs?”

“Drugs? Oh, you mean the bathroom. No, uh-uh. I’m not doing drugs.”

“Well, why are you going to the bathroom so often? Are you sick?”

“Sick. Well, no. Not in the usual sense.” He was trying to decide whether to tell her. “A little nuts, maybe. That’s about it.”

She surprised him by smiling. “A little nuts.” She ruffled his hair. “You’re so cute when you’re nuts.”

She got up, went in the bathroom, and closed the door. A moment later he heard the shower go on.

He took the opportunity to scurry, emptying her ashtray, wiping off all the surfaces they’d both dirtied, washing the glasses from the Diet Coke they’d shared, and then, before he could stop himself, sweeping the floor, counting the strokes.

He was almost in a trance, never even heard her come up behind him. “Don’t you think it’s clean enough?’ she said.

Damn! She’d made him lose count. That meant he had to start over. He did so without speaking, forgetting that he could. The last time he’d done this, he’d been operating under a vow of silence.

“Isaac.”

Again he ignored her, but at least this time he didn’t lose count. Or did he? Had he lost count? He couldn’t be sure. That meant he had to start over. He stopped long enough to speak to her. “I’ll just be a moment Terri.”

When he finished, he saw that she’d washed her hair, but she’d lit up another cigarette. She was going to stink again.

Her face was twisted in surprise and fear. Sorrow too, he thought. “Isaac, what’s going on?” Her eyes started to swim.

For a moment he loved her again, just as he had a few days ago, just as if nothing had happened. He sat down in his old rocking chair, feeling better about things and thinking to tell her, just wishing he didn’t have to breathe cigarette smoke. In fact he found he couldn’t speak as long as she was smoking. He felt as if he were choking. He decided to write it for her, just like in the old days, when he had to write everything. “Can we talk without smoke?”

She looked at him like he was nuts and shrugged. “Sure,” she said, and stubbed out her cigarette. She even emptied the ashtray, which pleased him mightily. Once again, he excused himself and went into the bathroom.

“What do you
do
in there?” She asked, her voice high-pitched and pleading.

“I wash my hands,” he said.

“That’s all?”

“Oh, no. Then I take a clean towel and wipe off the sink and the doorknob, and everything I’ve touched. Then I have to wash my hands again and then clean everything off again, and after that, if nothing’s strange, like the mirror got splashed or something, I can go.”

She closed her eyes and opened them. “You
what
?” she said, and the tone of her voice was unfriendly.

“I guess,” he said, “you’ve never heard of OCD.”

“Uh…” she seemed to be searching her memory. “No.”

“Obsessive-compulsive disorder. People who have it wash their hands a lot and check thirty times to see if they’ve locked the door. And count. I was counting the broom strokes awhile ago.”

Her face wasn’t looking quite so blank. “Like that movie with Jack Nicholson?”

“
As Good As It Gets
. Yeah, like that.”

“But you don’t have OCD.”

“I did. I used to. I got it under control with meds.”

“And now it’s coming back?”

“Seems to be.”

“Why?”

Yes. That was the question. Why indeed? He thought it was because he was having a crisis of faith in human nature. He had started life among dangerous humans. That he knew intellectually, and, unfortunately, he could remember a great deal as well.

But he’d paid his dues. He’d gotten away from all that. He had been a monk; he had meditated hours and hours a day… oh, the things he’d done! He hadn’t spoken for weeks at a time.

Now he’d made a new life, a completely new life as an art student with a girlfriend and a family (in the form of Lovelace). And suddenly this thing had happened to Terri. The arrest and then the falling apart. The cigarettes, the overeating, the whining, the worrying. She was suddenly a different person. He was shocked that this could happen to a person, that it could be done to a person. He wondered if he could say this to her. He decided he had to give it a try.

“Why is my OCD coming back? It’s complicated, Terri. And it has a lot to do with you.”

“Me?” she interrupted him, furious. “You’re accusing me?”

“No, of course not. It’s just that the stress…”

“The stress. You think I should plead out, don’t you? To something I didn’t do.”

He wasn’t sure whether he did or not. “This thing is so hard on you, Terri…”

“It’s unjust. It isn’t right. It’s something that only happens to poor people. The question just doesn’t come up if you never have to worry about covering a check.”

The thought in the back of his head surged to the forefront:
Did she mean to defraud the bank? How can I be sure she didn’t?

It was a completely unworthy thought. She was really a good person. But he couldn’t help thinking it. She looked at his face, and she read it there; he knew this because of what he saw on hers. The comprehension, the disappointment, the betrayal.

He needed to wash his hands again, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t move and couldn’t speak, either. He was frozen and might have remained so for a long time if the silence hadn’t been ruptured by a ringing telephone.

Terri answered her cell phone as if nothing had happened, and in a moment she squealed with delight. “You’re from the
Mr. Right
show? You’re kidding! You really want me to? I can’t believe it!”

Nothing made her happy these days. He couldn’t imagine what the call could be.

Because New Orleans is below sea level, its early citizens quickly learned that normal burials were impractical, as their dead relatives tended to float back up. Hence, they learned to build elaborate tombs above ground, miniature buildings in rows like streets, which earned the cemeteries the nickname “Cities of the Dead.” At the end of a year, the bones of the latest body could be swept to the back to make room for someone else; thus, once a family had its tomb, there was no need to keep buying cemetery plots.

The older tombs tend to be ornate and decorated with gorgeous statues and urns— or at least they used to be. The day the task force took its field trip, it was sad to see the outlines of those that had been removed, and there were lots.

On the whole, the field trip was a great success, like a perfect operation in which the patient dies.

It gave the three officers more than ever a sense of the enormity of territory the thieves had to work from. It was easy to see how they’d been so successful and even how they’d come up with the idea in the first place. New Orleans had acres and acres of unprotected artworks, just there for the taking. There was no way on Earth you could patrol this much property.

But if the trip was daunting, a couple of good things came out of it. It afforded a sense of where the good stuff was (in the older sections, naturally) and how a thief would likely operate in each one. In some, he could simply drive his SUV down the little streets between the rows of tombs, stop whenever he saw something he wanted, pry it up with a crowbar, and load it in full daylight. Because the cemeteries were so vast it would be easy enough to operate unobserved.

All that could be helpful if they ever got a suspect. They could probably see a crime in progress from the end of a row without being seen, maybe even photograph or tape it. The catch was, they’d have to know about it to be there.

The sting itself wasn’t exactly coming together with Germanic precision. However, Hagerty and LeDoux, out on their pavement-pounding missions, were beginning to get a feel for which shopkeepers were honest and which ones could be tempted with a little illicit action. One or two had actually called to report LeDoux when he came in showing pictures of “family heirlooms” he was selling. These were then questioned as to whether they’d gotten other such offers. So far none had, but they said they’d sure keep their ears open.