Crescent City Connection

girlfriend’s currently the most famous woman on the planet.”
    She sat up. “You better give me the stats. What happened in there?”
    “Three dead, four injured, three unscathed. All law enforcement personnel in one piece.”
    “Which group is Jacomine in?”
    His face was suddenly serious, even a little panicked, as if he were afraid of disappointing her. His voice sounded puzzled. “There’s something funny there.”
    She gave him a kill-the-messenger glare. “What?”
    “He wasn’t there.”
    “What do you mean he wasn’t there?”
    “He wasn’t in the rubble.”
    “Are you trying to tell me he got away?”
    “Not necessarily. Maybe you blew him into such minute smithereens he disappeared.”
    She was shaking her head, refusing to buy it. “This is a joke, right?”
    Before he even answered, she flung the covers aside, got out of bed, and started rummaging for clothes. Steve said, “Shellmire called. They’re questioning the survivors at the federal building.”
    She arrived as angry as she was scared the day before. Shellmire came out to greet her. “Nice job, Skip. Incredible job.”
    “How’d he get away, Turner?”
    “Oh, shit. It’s too embarrassing to talk about.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Did you ever hear about the case where the perps were passing something along, and all the surveillance team ever saw them do was dump trash in a Dumpster? Turned out it had a hole in it and it was up against a wall with a hole in it, and there was another Dumpster on the other side. Or that was more or less it. Famous case in FBI annals.”
    “Shit. How’d Jacomine work it?”
    “A uniquely New Orleans twist. Armoires.”
    She saw it instantly. “Two bedrooms back to back—the armoires in exactly the same place, only you’d never notice.”
    “Yeah, well, we might have noticed those bedrooms also had closets.” He sounded chagrined. “But in the heat of the moment—and I do mean heat…” He shrugged.
    “How’d he get out of the house?”
    Turner shrugged again. “Made himself invisible, I guess. Or more likely waited till no one was looking—till after dark, probably.”
    “We’ve got seven survivors, right? And no one blew the whistle?”
    “Oh, yeah, someone did—the pregnant woman. But not till after the baby was born.”
    “A baby? You mean a baby came out of all this?”
    He grinned. “Bouncing girl, doing fine. Bettina got injured somehow or other—flying wall, probably—and they had to do a C-section. It was a while before we could question her.”
    “Who’s the father?”
    “She won’t say.”
    “Oh, God. Spawn of the devil, as Aunt Alice would say.”
    “Could be. Speaking of which, Daniel’s doing okay, too.”
    “What about Rosemarie?”
    “Sorry to say she hasn’t turned up. She did charter a plane, but needless to say, Jacomine chose an alternate mode of transportation.”
    “Shit, shit, shit.”
    “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that’s a very unoriginal and undescriptive word?”
    “Wrong. It exactly describes what I feel like and what we’ve got.”
    She was so angry about Jacomine she threw herself into questioning the survivors, unwilling to brood, just wanting to work her mood off, until Cindy Lou called to ask her to lunch.
    Skip looked at her watch. “Lunch? It’s two o’clock.”
    “You haven’t eaten, have you? Come on—I’ve got a new boyfriend.”
    “With your record, it’s probably Dashan.” Lou-Lou’s boyfriends always had a fatal flaw.
    “It’s a thought,” she said. “He’s not only homicidal, he’s got a real bad head injury. If he comes out of this sick enough, I might consider him.”
    They went to Mona’s, a Mideastern restaurant said to be fashioned from an old gas station, and famous for unique alfresco dining—it may once have had windows, but it no longer did. Until she actually had a falafel in hand, Skip didn’t realize she was ravenous.
    “You’re really tearing into that poor sandwich.”
    “You know what? I haven’t eaten in twenty-four hours—more, maybe. Listen, you want to be my shrink? I swear to God that was the worst thing I’ve ever done—how come in the movies everybody’s all beaming and happy after a disaster?”
    “You’ve had close calls before. Why was this so much worse?”
    “I don’t know. I had more time to think about it, I guess. Lou-Lou, I really didn’t think I was going to pull it off. I’ve never felt that way before. Do you know how lucky I got? We didn’t