Mean Woman Blues

needed some.”
    Everybody laughed but Hingle. He was a by-the-book kind of cop without a lot of sense of humor. Whatever was going down, she sensed he didn’t really approve. Or maybe he was just angry. The cemetery fiasco made him look almost as bad as Skip. She resolved to do a little politicking.
    When they were all seated, Begue said, “Agent Shellmire has been talking to me and Captain Hingle about something. Wanted to run it by you three and see what you think.”
    She and Abasolo and McGuire nodded, like kids in a classroom.
    He kept talking. “We’ve been talking about this Mary Jones thing. We think somebody’s out to get ya, Langdon, and we think we know who. Captain Hingle’s been having talks with Sergeant LeDoux and Officer Hagerty, who’re kind of thinking along the same lines. Now, we’ve turned this thing over to PID.” He meant the Public Integrity Division, New Orleans’ version of internal affairs. “Got to cross our
t
’s and dot our
i
’s. You aren’t off the hook yet, and of course we’ve got to reassign you. But Agent Shellmire’s got a real interestin’ idea about that.
    “Look, we don’t think Gibson did this thing. First off, we don’t think he’d have screwed up by sending an African-American gal. Second, the rest of the gang couldn’t wait to rat him out on everything else, but they say they never saw the stuff in Steinman’s yard. Bottom line, we think Errol Jacomine’s back— we’ve always known he wasn’t done with ya. And the fact that somebody took a shot at you a while back kind of bolsters that theory.”
    “Yessir,” Skip said. “That was my thought.”
    “Here’s the long and short of it, then. Agent Shellmire wants to go after him big-time, wants you to help him. Truth is, that might be the best thing for the department right now; it gets you out of our hair, and I don’t have to tell you, if you get him, we’ll all rest easier.”
    Plus
, Skip thought,
it’ll be a big feather in the department’s cap
. But she couldn’t feel too cynical about it; the plan could hardly be more to her liking.
    “There’s something big we have to talk about, though. There’s a real big ‘if’ here. You’ve got to agree to some things.”
    Uh-oh
, she thought.
    “First off, this is top secret multiplied by ten. You can’t even tell ya mother.”
    Skip nodded.
Not likely
, she thought.
    Begue paused and sat up straighter, getting down to business at last. “Here’s what we’re gon’ do. We’re gon’ announce that an internal investigation’s in progress and you’ve been reassigned. Just like we would if we thought you were guilty.” He paused. “Ya’ just gon’ have to be in disgrace for a while as far as the rest of the world’s concerned. Won’t make anybody else look good either— not Sergeant Abasolo, not Lieutenant McGuire, and, most especially, not Captain Hingle. But he’s agreed anyway.” Skip glanced at Hingle. He looked pretty grim.
    “What about the rest of y’all?” Begue asked.
    Abasolo said, “Sounds good to me.”
    McGuire nodded. “What have we got to lose?”
    Skip wanted this. She wanted it badly. But there was a problem. “What about Steve Steinman? He’s going to be tarnished.”
    Begue nodded. He’d been expecting that. “Look, whatever happens, there’s no way out of that right now. Main thing is, you can’t tell him what’s really going on.”
    He’d called it: There was no way out. She didn’t have to like it, but she had no choice about accepting it. “All right. I agree.”
    “It’s a done deal then. Just so you know, we’ve got to hold a press conference first thing tomorrow morning.”
    “Oh.” She tried smiling. “Gonna be a tough day tomorrow.”
    “You bet it is. Prepare for a shitstorm.”
    After the meeting, she and Shellmire got together and plotted strategy. First thing on the agenda, they decided, was a trip to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. This was where the best sources were: Jacomine’s son, Daniel, who’d been one of his father’s top lieutenants for a while; a man named Potter Menard, a “campaign aide” during Jacomine’s catastrophic run for mayor; and a couple of lesser followers. If anybody could help them, these guys topped the list. “Who knows?” Shellmire said. “Maybe one of them found Jesus.”
    “They all did,” Skip retorted. “Problem is, they think his first name’s Errol.”
    It would take a day to set up, so it was decided that the