Mean Woman Blues

by Smith, Julie

  “Lovelace, wait. Did he call you, or did you call?”

  “He did. He told me to be extra careful for a few days.”

  “Did he give you any idea why the time limit?”

  “To figure out if the guy was actually Errol, I guess. I don’t really know.” The line went quiet; she was apparently trying to remember the conversation. “Oh, I know! I asked if his father was in New Orleans, and Isaac said he wasn’t in New Orleans. But he kind of slid off my question.”

  “So he didn’t say where the guy was?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Is this a cell phone?”

  “Yes. Do you have one?”

  Skip gave Lovelace her number and made her promise to call when she had an arrival time. When she hung up, she debated whether or not to call O’Rourke. No need, she decided. He was perfectly capable of asking the same questions she had— so long as he had the sense to think of them.

  She called Terri instead. “Listen, I need to come over right now.”

  “I’m not home. I’m at the hospital.”

  “Charity?” Charity Hospital was where gunshot victims were almost always sent.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll come there. Any word?”

  “He’s still in the accident room.”

  * * *

  She found Terri twisting a tissue in the waiting room. She’d changed into torn jeans and a tank top with a skull on the front— an outfit strangely at odds with her neat haircut, as was the tattoo it showed. “How is he?”

  Terri shrugged. “No news. I’m just… waiting.”

  “Look, Terri, I spoke to Lovelace. She’s flying in.”

  “Oh! Does she need a ride from the airport?”

  “Maybe. I’ll let you know. She told me something really interesting. She said Isaac called her this morning and said he might have seen his father.”

  “You mean Errol Jacomine?” Skip realized she still hadn’t taken it in that Jacomine was really his father.

  She only nodded. “And that isn’t all. I think he flew to Dallas last night.”

  “But—”

  Skip nodded again, to indicate she’d already gone where Terri was headed. “There was enough time. He could have flown there and back this morning. What time was the show?”

  “Seven o’clock. But why? Why the hell would he go to Dallas?”

  “Let’s think it through. I see you went home and changed. Had he left any voice mails for you?”

  Terri barked a laugh. “About ten of them: ‘Terri, it’s Isaac. Guess you’re not there yet.’ Pretty much like that.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.” Terri quit playing with the tissue and folded her hands, sitting quietly for a moment. “He sounded scared, though. I might not have thought that if I didn’t know what I do now. But I think it’s right; he might have been scared.”

  “When were the calls made?”

  “Oh.” She jerked her head, startled. “I didn’t pay attention, but I’m sure it says on the voice mail.” She looked at her hands. “I saved them. I wanted them. In case…”

  In case he dies, Skip thought. She understood. She’d have done the same thing in Terri’s place.

  “You can’t think of any reason he’d have gone to Dallas?”

  “Not unless it had something to do with me. But that’s crazy; I was coming right back home. And, anyway, he didn’t know where to find me; I’d left my hotel room, and I hadn’t called him.”

  “Listen, I’m going to ask you to focus on something.”

  “Sure.” Terri closed her eyes.

  Skip’s cell phone rang. It was Lovelace, giving her flight number and arrival time, late that evening. Skip said, “Good. I might have to work overtime. If I can’t make it, okay if Terri picks you up?”

  “Sure. Is she okay?”

  “She’s here. We’re in the hospital, waiting.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  It was another few minutes before Skip had Terri back. “Okay, here’s my question. I want you to think carefully. What, exactly, did you say on that show?”

  “You think it had something to do with that?”

  “If he’d seen his father, and he thought you were in danger, it might have been something you said. Did you say anything about Jacomine?”

  She shrugged, as if the idea were preposterous. “No. Why would I?”

  “Anything about Isaac?”

  Terri closed her eyes again and thought. Finally she opened them and shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s hard to remember what I said on and off the air.”

  “You talked about Isaac off the air?”

  “Just to the host. He interviewed me before the show.”

  “The host.”

  Terri nodded.

  “Was anyone else in the room?”

  “No. Why?”

  The back of Skip’s neck was beginning to prickle. It felt as if the temperature in the room had gone down twenty degrees. “What does the host look like?”

  “Oh! Handsome. Really attractive in an older-man kind of way. I mean, he grows on you. At first I thought he was kind of smarmy, but that’s just because he’s so nice. He’s one of the few people I’ve ever met that really has charisma, you know?”

  Skip was feeling chilled to the bone. “Terri. Could he be the man Isaac saw?”

  Terri did a literal double take. “David Wright? Are you kidding? No way. Jacomine’s a dried-up ratty-looking little turd who talks like a redneck— I saw him on TV a million times when he ran for mayor. David Wright’s educated; he has this really cultured voice, almost British. You can’t change the way you speak.”

  Skip was acutely disappointed. “I guess not.”

  “And believe me, there’s no physical resemblance whatsoever. I mean none. I told you, this guy’s really kind of cool. He has this very worldly gray hair and… I don’t know, nice clothes and a sort of TV presence. Jacomine had a weak chin, remember that?”

  “All too vividly.” She sighed. “Okay. Let’s start over. I want you to tell me every word of the conversation you had, both on- and off-camera.”

  Again, Terri closed her eyes. “Well, I told him about my troubles and my work, and how I have my own business.” She filled in the details, digressing briefly to complain that the host had stolen her lines. “He asked me if I had a boyfriend and… no, it wasn’t exactly that. He said, ‘I hope someone nice takes you out to dinner sometime.’ And I said my boyfriend was also a starving artist, so he cooked instead.”

  Skip couldn’t sit still any more. She stood up and pretended to stretch. “Did you say Isaac’s name?”

  “Let me think. Yeah. Yeah, I did. First name only, though. Isaac.”

  That would be enough, Skip thought. An artist named Isaac.

  “And then he started asking me about Isaac.” She stopped talking. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, shit. He made me tell him about Isaac’s art and define ‘outsider art’… oh, shit! I said The White Monk. I actually used that name. That would identify him, right?”

  “You’re sure you didn’t do that on the air?”

  “Positive because… oh, shit!”

  “What?”

  “The minute I said that phrase, he blew me off. Called Tracie, the producer, to come take me back to the green room.” She sat up straight and took handfuls of her hair in her hands. “Yes! And she was very taken aback. Asked him if everything was all right.”

  Skip’s mind was racing. This was it, had to be it. And yet…

  “All that’s suspicious as hell, right? The only thing is, he wasn’t Errol Jacomine. Absolutely wasn’t. That’s all there was to it. I mean, you’d have to see him to know what I mean.” She stopped dead. “Hey! Hey, you can see him. You absolutely can. I’ve got a tape of the show.”

  Skip was practically salivating. “Terri. I have to see that tape. I can’t overstress the importance. I need to see it now. I know you think you can’t leave Isaac…�
�� She stopped, trying to find a delicate way to insist that Terri play the tape for her immediately.

  But Terri was shaking her head and rummaging in her backpack. “Oh, no problem. Why don’t I just give you the key, and you go to my place and watch it?”

  “You sure?” Skip said, holding out her hand for the key. But the question was a Southernism; if Terri’d changed her mind, she’d have grabbed the key out of her hand. “What’s your address?”

  Skip broke every traffic law on the books getting to Terri’s and nearly broke the door getting in, she was so impatient. Poor kid, she thought, rifling Terri’s unpacked duffel, as instructed. Terri had practically no furniture, and what she had appeared to have been picked up at garage sales. Her protestations of poverty were no joke. However, she did have a VCR, a gift, she’d explained, from her parents. Skip found the tape under a pouf of soiled clothing, popped it into the machine, and settled on the double mattress that evidently served both as bed and daybed. It had a faded purple cover on it, along with a collection of mismatched throw pillows.

  The show’s theme music came up, David Wright was introduced. Skip braced herself— and let out her breath with disappointment. No way that nice-looking man could be Errol Jacomine, who looked like a weasel at best. She felt cheated.

  She had to be missing something. Maybe it was something Terri said in the interview. She turned up the volume.

  “Hello, I’m David Wright,” said the star, “and tonight we have an extremely relevant show, relevant to each of us who has a bank account, that is. And that’s all of us, isn’t it?” The audience applauded. “I mean, if we’re lucky enough.” He spoke the last part with modesty and sympathy, not ridicule.

  Terri was right: His accent was slightly British, nothing at all like Errol Jacomine’s redneck twang. The man was actually somewhat likable. She wouldn’t go so far as “charismatic,” but she wasn’t repelled by him, and that alone indicated he wasn’t Jacomine.

  She took a good look at the man’s neck— Jacomine’s neck was stringy and sinewy, old before its time. Could you change a person’s neck?

  She knew the answer to that: Sure you could. This guy’s neck didn’t look anything like Jacomine’s. Did anything else? Yes! The widow’s peak. Jacomine had worn his hair combed to the side, evidently to tame it; had hidden the birthmark, though anyone who looked closely could see it.

  Mr. Right wore his hair combed back, so that it looked luxuriant. And it was gray. Jacomine’s hadn’t been; could he have dyed his hair? Certainly, she thought, or, more likely, he could have let it go natural. But that didn’t prove anything.

  She watched the way the man moved his jaw— kind of clipped and impatient. She saw the shut-up look that popped into his eyes when the attention went to Terri. But hell, he was a TV personality; that was what they were like.

  She paused the machine, got up to get herself a drink of water, and when she looked again, she saw something. What, she wasn’t exactly sure, just something that made her go alert again. A gesture? Maybe, she thought.

  She closed her eyes and listened, and the more she listened, the more she was sure she’d heard the voice before. A person could change his accent but he couldn’t really change his voice.

  She started to get excited. There were plenty of Jacomine recordings; she could get voiceprint analysis. Stop, fool, she said to herself. Voiceprint, hell! If that’s Jacomine, he just put out a contract on his son. You’ve got to move faster than that.

  Mr. Right was saying, “Now you probably think your bank is there to serve you. But, after hearing about Ms. Whittaker’s problem, we looked into it a little bit. And ladies and gentlemen, serving you is about as far as you can get from the whole story. Yes, indeed, these pillars of the financial community have bigger fish to fry by far. Oh, yes, much much bigger fish to fry.”

  Skip froze. She’d heard that before, that voice, saying those words. “Bigger fish to fry” was one of Jacomine’s favorite expressions. She stopped the tape, rewound, and listened again with her eyes closed.

  Her scalp prickled. It was Jacomine.

  * * *

  She called Shellmire. “Turner, Where are you?”

  “I’m back at my office.”

  “Anything new?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, I’ve got something. I’m bringing you a tape.”

  She sped to FBI headquarters, once again managing not to get a ticket. She played the tape for Shellmire, watching him watch Mr. Right. She saw him go through what she’d experienced, moving from utter disbelief to wary alertness to excitement. It wasn’t the fish phrase that did it to him, it was a growing familiarity. “See the way he shrugs? Kind of bucking his head up first? I always thought he did that when he was lying— a ‘tell,’ you know what I mean?”

  Skip nodded, surprised she’d never noticed.

  “I’m going to go get some more tapes.”

  He brought an armload of tapes of Jacomine, being interviewed, giving campaign speeches, even giving a sermon. The more he and Skip compared, the more excited they got.

  Skip thought she was going to go nuts; it was like having an itchy trigger finger. “Look, let’s go to the airport, get the first flight out to Dallas.”

  “My thought exactly. Just let me set some stuff up with the Dallas guys, have some agents there discreetly check out the employment record he gave the station, maybe his references…”

  Skip stopped him in mid-sentence. “Okay, okay, fine. Meanwhile, I’m going to the airport. I’ll rent a car and find a hotel, meet you when you get there.”

  “Skip, you’ve got to calm down. You’re going to do some damage if you don’t watch out.”

  “Right.” She was standing now. “See you there.”

  Maybe she could calm down on the plane. Meditate or something.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  David Wright had shaken off his absurd panic, had understood that was probably all it was. It was a mistake not to have whacked Isaac months ago, but now the problem was under control. The glitch, he should say; that was all it was.

  There was another now. Karen had taken her miscarriage unreasonably hard. She was practically a vegetable. Two days after her miscarriage, David got up early and made coffee, toast, and scrambled eggs for his wife. They were the first scrambled eggs he’d ever made in his whole life, but he figured any fool could scramble eggs. And he was right. As far as he could tell, they were no different from anybody else’s scrambled eggs.

  He made a plate for Karen and put it on a tray, on which he’d already placed a rose from their garden. He took it into their bedroom and shook her gently.

  “Come on, sleeping beauty. Breakfast time.”

  All day yesterday, so far as he knew, she’d done nothing but sleep. She opened her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Look. I made you some breakfast.”

  She made a kind of grimace, though she may have meant it as a smile. “Thanks.”

  But she didn’t budge.

  “Karen, now, come on. You can’t stay in bed the rest of your life. Come on and eat now.” He could barely believe the words coming out of his mouth. No more than he could believe what he’d just been doing for half an hour. Earl Errol David Jackson Jacomine Wright had never made so much as a sandwich for himself, much less for a woman. And here he was, begging.

  Karen didn’t answer. It was like she was in a coma or something. “Come on, baby, just a little bit.” He held the toast to her mouth. Her eyes had closed again, and she didn’t even notice.

  “Karen!” He spoke sharply. “You can’t do this.”

  She didn’t answer.

  He left the room to keep from hitting her. That was one thing he absolutely could not do. It was bad enough what she’d told her parents, though her father, thank God, had the sense to believe him instead of his bimbo daughter, but it could not, under any circumstances, happen again.

  What had to happen was, he had to win her back. He came back and sat on the edge of the bed,
took her hand.

  To his surprise, she opened her eyes, stretched, and sat up. “David, this is sweet of you.”

  “I need my girl back.” He looked into her WASP-blue eyes, and almost believed what he was about to say. “Karen, I’m nothing without you.”

  She picked up the coffee. “I’ll be okay.” She patted his hand. “Thanks to Dr. Wright.”

  “You promise you’ll get dressed and do something fun today?”

  She nodded. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” Unlike most women, who slept in T-shirts these days (if you believed what you saw in the movies), Karen still wore lacy nightgowns. She had on a white one, and the lace against her white shoulders was unbearably lovely. He absolutely couldn’t believe he’d ended up with a woman like this. The thing was to keep her.

  He left fifteen minutes late, but with a terrific feeling of accomplishment. He was pulling it off. He felt elated. His life was coming together again: Karen was coming out of her coma, Isaac was still in his, and Mr. Right had had great response to the banking show.

  Walking through to his office, he noticed that Tracie actually had on a dress. Was it his imagination or was she dressing better these days? He mimed tipping his hat. “Looking lovely this morning.”

  She gave him a wave that was actually a little finger-wiggle. Definitely seductive. “Got a great idea,” she said. “How about overmedication of elders? I’ve got this woman whose mother’s on fifteen different prescription drugs. Poor thing’s so out of it her speech is slurred.”

  “Can we get the mother on the show?”

  “Whoo! That might be too much, don’t you think?”

  “How about a tape? We could go to her house and talk to her in the comfort of her own bed.”

  “You are so smart, David Wright. Sure. Let’s do it. I left a memo for you.”

  Tracie was falling for him; it was never more obvious. She’d have to be kept at bay. He absolutely could not mess up this thing with Karen. Did Ronald Reagan mess around with bimbos? Hell, no. That was for losers like Clinton. He, Mr. Right, must be above reproach.

  He wasn’t in his office twenty minutes when Tracie busted in, not even bothering to knock. He glared at her over the rims of his reading glasses, a trick he’d seen in movies, and spoke in his most supercilious pseudo-British. “Ms. Hesler. Do we need to talk about privacy?”