Crescent City Connection (38 page)

He looked at the men. Surely Dashan, being the biggest and most powerful, was the poorest choice. He could probably take any of the others. But who could say? Maybe they all had black belts. One, named Ellis, was about five feet tall and young, but he couldn’t choose that one—it wasn’t even sporting.

So not Dashan and not Ellis. That left two. There wasn’t much difference, but the one named Pete was slightly bigger than Al; he was the older of the two, but he looked like a pretty good opponent.

I’ll choose fairly
, Daniel thought.
I’ll
just try to be fair.

He said, “I choose Pete.” The slightly bigger one.

“You choose Pete,” his father said. “Is Pete your choice, son?”

Daniel began to think he’d made a mistake. But what was the alternative?

He said, “Pete is my choice,” unconsciously entering into his father’s ritualistic cadences.

“Pete is your choice. Is that a fair choice, Daniel?”

“I think so.”

“What do you think, people?”

Daniel winced before he heard the chorus of “No’s,” knowing already that no other response was possible.

“They don’t think it’s fair, Daniel. Pete’s a good ten years older than you. You could probably lick him with one hand tied behind your back. So I tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna tie one hand behind your back.”

The Jurors shouted, “Amen.”

Daniel thought grimly: They seem to have done this before.

“I warned you to choose wisely,” said his father. “What do you think would have happened if you’d picked Dashan?”

Too late, Daniel saw it coming. “We’d have had to tie a hand behind
his
back.”

Daniel was right-handed, so they tied that one back.

Just when the fight was about to begin, Daniel’s father stopped it. “Pete, you’ve had the flu, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“You feeling okay?”

“Little under the weather. That’s all.”

“We’d better give Daniel another handicap. Wouldn’t want y’all to think I play favorites.”

They blindfolded him.

When it was over, his father said. “How you feel, boy? Did we knock some sense into you?”

In fact, he didn’t feel anything except sore.

And this morning he felt almost more depressed than sore. But when he got up, the balance quickly shifted; sharp, shooting pains made the walk to the bathroom a Himalayan trek. When he finally made it, he pissed enough blood for a transfusion.

He didn’t flush the toilet, left it instead for someone to find.

He was awakened by a scream. After that, he was vaguely aware of rustlings around him; comings and goings, and someone praying. His father, maybe.

* * *

“God won’t take your baby, Dorise. He couldn’t do that, ’cause He already took your husband, and He a merciful God.”

So far,
Dorise thought,
I haven’t noticed
.

But her mother was doing the best she could to keep her spirits up, and she bit her tongue.
One thing I got
, she thought,
I got a good mama.

Her mother had moved away when she got married for the second time, but she had always missed New Orleans. She had moved back when her husband died three months ago, and Dorise had seen the way her faith had gotten her through. It was her mother who’d gotten her to go back to church.

“Mama, I got something to tell you. I promised Jesus I wasn’t gon’ look at any man again, and I did, and now look what’s happened!”

“Jesus wouldn’t want you to do that, honey. It’s not your fault what happened to Shavonne.”

When her mother said it, she could almost believe it. But she didn’t really believe the other thing—that God wouldn’t take her daughter. He would if he felt like it, and then the preacher would just say it was God’s will, and she’d still be supposed to swallow that “merciful” bullshit. She knew families that had lost three or four members in shootings. She couldn’t even answer her mother. All she could do was cry, and wait for the phone to ring.

She couldn’t understand why these FBI guys thought the kidnapper would call her. She couldn’t offer any ransom—she didn’t have anything to give. It seemed much more likely he was a pedophile who’d torture and kill her daughter—except that she didn’t put it quite that way to herself. It was just a vague crimson cloud in her head.

It was around two in the morning when her mother finally got her to pray. She couldn’t honestly say it was comforting, but, since she was on her knees, she did find it made her want to sleep. And once she went to bed, she didn’t want to get up.

Her mother tried to rouse her at eight, then again at nine, and at ten, finally brought her some orange juice and made her sit up. “Honey, you can’t stay in bed the rest of your life. You got God’s work to do.”

Dorise wasn’t honestly sure she even believed in God anymore, but she wasn’t going to say that to her sweet mama. She was a grown woman, but she put her head on her mother’s bosom and her arm around her neck. Dorise was wearing the T-shirt and shorts she’d gone to bed in, her mother a fleecy, rose-colored robe. They were sitting like that, her mother stroking her hair, when the phone rang.

“Should I answer it?” asked her mother. It was probably bad news. The po-lice calling to tell her the worst.

“No!” She put her hands over her ears.

“You crazy, girl?” Her mother picked up the receiver.

She said, “Yes?” like some lady on television, somebody who lived in a mansion. In a minute, she hollered, “Praise the Lord!” and the phone tumbled out of her hands.

“What is it, Mama?”

“Shavonne. Shavonne calling.” She was rooting around on the floor, trying to find the phone. There was only a dial tone when she finally did.

The two FBI agents pounded into the bedroom. “Was that her voice?”

Dorise was crying.

“Hang up. Hang up the phone.” One of the men did it for her. Dorise stared as if it were a dead thing that might come alive. It rang again.

She answered slowly, so as not to break the spell, if that’s what it was. “Honey?”

“Mama?”

“Shavonne, honey, is that you?” The two agents were scrambling back to their equipment.

“Mama. Mama, I’m all right. They treatin’ me good and they need love …” Her voice sounded the way it did when she read aloud, unsure of each word, figuring each one out as she went along.

“Where are you, honey?”

“Love less. They will trade me for love.” Each word separate, slow. “Love less.”

“What you say, honey? Tell me again.”

A man spoke into the phone. “Tell the police we want Lovelace. We’ll call again.”

Dorise felt as if her whole body were being torn by exploding sobs she couldn’t control, that seemed not even a part of her but something far away and destructive.

“THEY CALLED DORISE,” Shellmire said. “An agent’s on his way with the tape.”

Everyone shouted questions, Skip fairly shrieking hers: “Did she talk to Shavonne?”

He ignored them all, shouting over them. “I’ll run it down, if everyone’ll just be patient.” He looked wilted. Skip thought he must have already sweated a gallon, and the day had hardly started.

The man’s going to be dehydrated by noon.

But so much could happen between then and noon; there was so very much to lose.

“They put Shavonne on and apparently had her read a prepared statement. She said she’s okay and they’ll exchange her for Lovelace. At least that’s what it sounds like. Then a man came on and said they’d call again later.”

“Lovelace for Shavonne. Why on earth do they want her?” Skip was thinking aloud. She didn’t like it. There had to be more.

King said, “Are the hostage negotiators on the scene?”

Shellmire shook his head. “Penny Ferguson’s going to be handling the negotiation.” He looked at his watch. “She should be here in about ten minutes.”

They drank coffee and waited for her, Taylor drumming his pencil nervously the whole time. Skip thought,
Wouldn’t you know he’d be a psychologist.

Ferguson arrived with another agent, carrying a briefcase that might have held a change of clothing. She was a petite woman with a neat pageboy. Her hair was sun-streaked brown, the kind of hair that looks natural and costs plenty. Her well-tailored pantsuit was a deep olive, almost black but not as severe. Her silk blouse was a lighter olive that brought out the green in dark hazel eyes. The whole effect was pleasing to the point of soothing. It occurred to Skip that this was no accident.

Ferguson introduced herself in a voice that washed over the group like mother’s milk—warm and nourishing, just sweet enough to make you want more. Skip felt instantly comfortable; she noticed even King was smiling. “Agent Ferguson,” he said, and his own voice seemed to have lost some of its edge.

“Sorry I’m late. I just got in from Washington.”

Shellmire said, “Agent Ferguson’s the best we got—I call her our secret weapon. We flew her in ’cause she’s got a voice could make you kill your grandma if she wanted you to. Fortunately, she usually just wants you to give up your life of crime.”

Ferguson smiled, and she had the teeth of a movie star, an all-American, girl-next-door kind of grin that made you glad she’d gone into law enforcement instead of white-collar crime. “I’m what they call a VNL—till they know me, of course.”

Cindy Lou said, “Abasolo, you can close your mouth. She’s wearing a wedding ring.” Because she was a consultant, and not a police officer, Lou-Lou could say anything she pleased and always did, which made her Skip’s hands-down hero.
Yes,
she decided,
those two have definitely been flirting.

The sergeant gave the psychologist one of his devastating grins. “Don’t be jealous, Lou-Lou. I like my women mean.”

King asked the question everyone else was holding back: “What the hell’s a VNL?”

“A Very Nice Lady, Captain. But that’s only what I look and sound like.”

Shellmire said, “She’s got that right. We got guys in prisons all over the country still don’t know what hit ’em.”

Ferguson sat down, apparently feeling she’d established her credentials. “Morris briefed me,” she told Shellmire. “And I’m quite familiar with the Jacomine case, as well as The Jury.”

“Okay. The only new development we got is they want to exchange the victim for Jacomine’s granddaughter.”

“What kind of weapons do they have?”

“We don’t know.”

“How many people are in there?”

“Don’t know that either.”

“Are we set up at the scene?” She was firing questions like darts, the VNL momentarily banished.

“We have a command post next door and the block’s surrounded.”

“Do they know we’re there?”

“So far we haven’t heard a peep out of ’em. Not so much as a curtain flutter. The street’s blocked off, but we’ve got people walking up and down now and then, to make it look normal. So far as we know, they don’t have the least idea we know where they are—or who they are.”

The two psychologists, along with Tarantino and Cappello, were released. That left Shellmire, Skip, Abasolo, King, and Ferguson, who entered the command post in two groups, like people arriving for a business meeting. Goerner was already there.

The furniture had been stripped from the living room and piled in the dining room, replaced by folding tables and chairs, and a baffling maze of phones and electronic equipment.

“How’d you get this stuff in here?” asked Skip.

A man she didn’t know pointed to a side window. “Brought it in from the other side of the house.” He pointed next to a front window. “See those roofs? TAC unit’s already in place.”

Ferguson took off her coat. “Shall I make the call?”

“You better listen to this first. The Rev’s been on the phone.” The speaker couldn’t have been more than twenty-two; he wore khaki shorts and a polo shirt. His head was almost as smooth as The Monk’s, and he had on glasses. “I’m Will Kohler, by the way.”

Shellmire made the introductions. Kohler said, “Shall I play the tape?”

The instant Goerner nodded, Jacomine’s voice filled the room. “Rosie, honey, how the hell are you?”

“Darling, I just stepped out of the shower. Could you give me twenty minutes?”

“Are you wearing a towel? With maybe a pair of high-heeled what-do-you-call-’ ems?”

“Mules, sweetcakes. ’Bye now.”

The woman hung up and Jacomine swore. Then he hung up himself and dialed again. Rosemarie Owens’s machine answered.

Kohler clicked the tape off. “We timed him. He called again in exactly twenty minutes. Listen to this.”

“Rosie, honey.”

“Darling, I’m so glad to hear from you. I could just hug your evil little neck. But I’ve got to be somewhere in ten minutes. Call me there, will you?”

She gave him a number and hung up. Kohler fast-forwarded. “She’s a fast thinker, but of course she didn’t know about this little setup.”

Jacomine’s voice again: “Rosie, what’s going on?”

“My home number isn’t safe, baby. How’ve you been? I’ve been so worried about you.”

“That wasn’t nice what you did to me, baby. Disappearing off the face of the Earth. ’Specially after I did that little favor for you.”

“I had to be out of touch for a while. The FBI came calling.”

“I was getting the dumb idea you just didn’t want to talk to ol’ Uncle Earl.”

“Earl, this is serious. We really can’t talk for a while.”

“Well, we have to, sweetness. I’ve got me a situation here. I need you to send a plane for me and a few of my friends. You know that island you own off the coast of Florida—the one with the airstrip? We need you to take us over there.”

“You think I’ve got planes at my disposal?”

“Charter one, Rosie—and make sure it can’t be traced to you. Or your heirs are gonna die before you do.”

“What 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?”