Mean Woman Blues

army— police volunteers. Great, hulking, gorgeous ones.”
    That got Sheila’s attention. “Count me in,” she said without looking up.
    Skip had no idea whether the girl was serious or not, but she sure was growing up.
    “How about the bear?” Jimmy Dee said.
    “We’ll have to do without him; he’s going to L.A. for a few days to raise some money. He wants to do a documentary on the whole cemetery art phenomenon.”
    “Brilliant idea.”
    Maybe
, Skip thought.
And maybe Steve just wanted to get away for awhile.
    Meanwhile, she had a job to do, and it was getting good. The three grave robbers, Joe D’Amico, Lance Fortenberry, and Jerome Bowen, hadn’t made bond. At first, the task force had concentrated on the brother and the dealer, Adnan and Bilal Rashid, preferring to let the others cool their heels in Parish Prison. Neither proved particularly proficient in English, and, even with a translator, they didn’t have a whole lot to say.
    The brother, Bilal, also a dealer, said he’d met the gang about a month ago and bought one statue and two urns from them. They’d come to his house for payment the day Hagerty picked them up there. Bilal claimed he had no idea the merchandise was stolen; the gang said it came from a relative’s plantation. Since all that turned up was indeed the statue and a receipt for the urns (which had since been recovered), the officers sensed they weren’t going to get any more. They turned their attention to the gang.
    Skip and Hagerty took D’Amico, who by now had had two days to think things over. Hagerty did the questioning. She had a persuasive way about her. D’Amico, a big, shy guy with a thick head of hair and moustache to match seemed to take a shine to her.
What the hell,
Skip thought.
Whatever works.
    “Joe, you got a couple of priors here. Ever think about yourself? You like women, don’t you? Not many of those in Angola.”
    He shifted toward her. “Look, I got a family.”
    “You probably like to see them once in awhile too. Want to see your kids grow up, or you want to spend the next ten years pumping iron so you don’t end up some thug’s bitch?”
    “I ain’t gon’ be nobody’s
bitch
.”
    Skip said, “They grab you and hold you down, Joe. Three of them at a time jump you.”
    “You shut up!”
    She stood. At six feet in her uniform (worn specially for the occasion), she looked like nobody to mess with. “You shut up, punk! We got pictures of you robbing people’s graves. You know how unpopular that is? There aren’t twelve people in this town
wouldn’t
convict you. We got a whole yardful of people’s precious little angels and urns where they plant mums and pansies for dear departed papa from the old country. You gonna plead innocent? Innocent of what? Leaving the bones?”
    Hagerty said, “Was this thing your idea, Joe? Or did somebody put you up to it? If anybody did, all you have to do is tell us who it was, and the D.A.’ll be nice to you. See, he knows he can’t solve this case without you, and he really needs to solve this case. You could get off with a couple of years, max; be home in time for little Stacy’s sweet sixteen party.”
    Joe rubbed his eyebrows. “I had me a job in construction, real good job, but man, I’m getting too old for that shit. My joints are giving out you know? And Maureen needs clothes, and the kids got to have school uniforms…”
    Hagerty practically had tears in her eyes. “Mmmph, mmph.”
    “You’re disgusting,” Skip said. “Are you trying to say…”
    “Look, here’s what I’m trying to say. Just let me spit it out, okay? This guy had termite damage— had to take out some walls in his shop…”
    “What shop?”
    “Little antique shop in the Quarter.”
    “The French Quarter?”
    The man nodded. “Chartres Street. Guy had this real pretty marble saint in his window. I said I liked it and he said, ‘Wish I had a hundred just like her. I could sell two, three every day.’ After a while, he said, ‘You wouldn’t know where to get more, would you’? I went, ‘Me? How the hell would I know? I ain’t no antique dealer.’ And he said, ‘Well, I just thought you bein’ Italian and all, maybe you had some in the family. People put ’em in cemeteries and stuff.’ And I got to thinkin’ that, yep, they sure did. So I told him maybe I could get him one. And I just went out to Lake Lawn in broad daylight and got him one. Easiest thing I ever did. I picked this old, deserted-looking