Mean Woman Blues (16 page)

She wanted to look a certain way; this was show biz, and she was going to treat it as such. Innocent was how she wanted to come across. She had it all planned out.

Justin, her hairstylist, had a hissy fit. “Honey, get a wig,” he sniffed. “I don’t
do
innocent.”

“What if I were an actress? Think Judy Garland as Dorothy.”

“
Brown
? You want to go brown?” Like she’d said give her antlers.

“No, I just want to go Kansas.”

So he gave her light brown hair with blonde highlights and styled it smooth and straight in a little schoolgirl thing. She couldn’t believe it when she looked in the mirror. “Omigod! I just pledged TriDelt.”

“Honey, if you tell even one soul who mutilated you, I swear to God I’ll slash my wrists.”

“It’s perfect Justin. My lips are sealed.” She fished out money for a tip.

“Well, just be sure you wear something with sleeves; the tattoo is
so
not Kansas.”

She’d already figured that out. She was going to wear a light blue dress. She was going to go some place like Dillard’s and walk into the Dowdy Shop, or whatever they called their soccer mom department, and get herself something a Metairie lady would wear, maybe with a little jacket, so the tattoo wouldn’t be an issue. And she was going to dig out the little gold cross her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday, and she was going to wear that around her neck. The lights would shine on it; the camera would pick it up; and it would shimmer. Her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.

Even Isaac barely recognized her. But once he did, once he realized it was really Terri sitting in Terri’s chair without Terri’s blue hair and Terri’s tattoo and one of Terri’s navel-baring T-shirts, his eyes bugged out, and his voice came out in a hoot. “You look like somebody’s Baptist sister!”

She nodded primly. “That’s the general idea.”

“Uh-oh. We can’t have sex then. I couldn’t defile you.”

She thought he was kidding, but that night he really wasn’t interested— an entirely new development in their relationship.

She used it as a jumping-off point to get to some dimly lit corners of her mind, places she’d been trying not to go. She had tapes of
Mr. Right
now, and she watched them over and over. And the more she played them, the more she thought about David Wright.

It wasn’t something she wanted to admit even to herself. But now Isaac had opened the door… and it really did occur to her that she was changing and he wasn’t changing with her. Maybe he wasn’t working out any more. Maybe the relationship had run its course.

Otherwise, why would she be finding David Wright so attractive? At first she’d found him sleazy and cornball; so what was this about? Maybe she was shallow, a victim of reverse snobbism. Ergo, if he had on a suit, he was cornball. If his hair was sprayed, he was sleazy. The man was in show biz, she reminded herself. Of course he used hair spray. Maybe she was getting through that getting to who he really was. After all, he had a really lovely accent; that had to count for something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stay with him. We’re on our way.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m here.”

“What are you wearing?”

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

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

“Woo. Good thinking.”

Hagerty sounded as excited as LeDoux.

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay,” Skip said. “Got a camera?”

“No.”

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

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

“Including your bouquet.”

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

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

“Maybe not yet. Can you get pictures?”

“I think so.”

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

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

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

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

“What row are you on?”

“Avenue K.”

“You’re on the east, right?”

“Right.”

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

“Got it.”

“Let us know if they start moving.”

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

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

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

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

She opened the door for LeDoux.

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

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

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

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

“Hagerty, how’s it going?”

“Fine. Where are you?”

Skip told her.

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

“Amen,” LeDoux said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re in there.”

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

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

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

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

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

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