Crescent City Connection

the hell are you talking about?”
    “That cute little Lovelace is quite a kid. I know you want to meet her sometime.”
    “Earl Jackson, you’re just as crazy as you ever were. You’ve got to promise to leave me alone now—do you hear me? You really can’t call on my phone.”
    “I don’t have to, honeybunch. I sent somebody to help you. He’s watching you this minute, and he’ll introduce himself real soon. I know you still love me, honey. You do, don’t you? You have to because of what we did together. That thing last week—you remember?”
    He rang off, and this time Rosemarie did the cursing.
    Kohler turned off the tape. “Neat, huh?”
    Goerner’s face twisted like so much dough. “Shit! What about Owens?’
    “We don’t know yet. We monitored the call from here and then got in touch with the office in Dallas. But she was gone by the time they got there. We haven’t heard from them since.” He checked the time. “That was forty-five minutes ago.”
    “Oh, Lord, what else?”
    “Well, sir, there is something. Several somethings.”
    Goerner glared as if Kohler were the perp.
    “We have laser surveillance equipment that’ll go through their wall, as long as we’ve got our window open. Theoretically, we can hear all over the house, but some things come in better than others. So far we’ve got seven discrete voices. We don’t know how many more there are. We’ve got a few conversations about cooking and household chores, and one that seems pretty interesting. Shall I play it for you?”
    “Certainly. For Christ’s sake.”
    “This one’s kind of fuzzy at first.”
    It began with a blur of voices, one of them female, one male. And then one that was clearly Jacomine’s. “What do you mean he can’t walk?”
    The female voice answered. “Tara says we might have hurt him last night. I think you should come up and see him.”
    Instead, his voice bloomed into a shout. “Daniel! You get your tail down here.”
    Silence.
    “Daniel, goddammit!” Again a shout. Then a lot of rustlings and scrapings.
    Kohler said, “He must have been sitting down. We think he got out of his chair and left the room.”
    “And how long ago was that? Before or after the Rosemarie incident?”
    “After. About ten minutes ago. That room—” Kohler tapped the wall “—the one closest to us—is the one he’s apparently using for an office. When he’s in there, we do pretty well. When he’s not, we don’t.”
    Ferguson said, “What do you think? Do we call?”
    Goerner put both hands over his face, and drew them down to his chest, his fingertips ending up on his mouth—a man frustrated and nervous.
Headed for a heart attack
, Skip thought.
    “Yeah, sure. Make the call.”
    Ferguson sat at a folding table and dialed, showing not so much as a wrinkle in her green silk. “Hello. This is Agent Penny Ferguson of the FBI. I wonder if I could speak to the Reverend Jacomine?”
    The phone went dead.
    Kohler said, “This is cool. All calls from their number to any FBI office get put through to here automatically. So when he calls back—” He was interrupted by a ringing phone.
    Giving Goerner a smug look, he answered it himself. “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” There was a pause.” Agent Ferguson? One moment.” He punched buttons and looked up at his audience, canary feathers dotting his chin.
    The nerds
, thought Skip,
shall inherit the Earth
.
    Ferguson answered with her last name. The caller rang off.
    After that, they waited.
    If Jacomine and his followers were holding a council of war, they weren’t doing it in the office.
    Finally, they heard someone re-enter the room, and a few minutes later a phone rang. Ferguson jumped, ready to go. Kohler held up a hand. “It’s ringing at the Bourgeois house. We’re set up so we can hear the whole thing.” He adjusted something—the volume, Skip thought.
    They heard Jacomine say, “You shouldn’t have called the FBI. I said tell the police.”
    “What you mean, don’ call the FBI? Let me talk to my baby.” Dorise sounded indiscreetly furious.
    “We’re disappointed in you, Mrs. Bourgeois.”
    “What you talkin’ disappointed? You kidnap my chile from a public school, you think my house ain’t crawling with FBI? What you think I’m gon’ do to get ’em out of here? They here right now, and they got my phone tapped. They say they don’t, but I know they do. What you think I can do about that?”
    All right, Dorise!
Skip had no idea