The Axeman's Jazz (Skip Langdon Mystery Series #2) (The Skip Langdon Series) by Julie Smith

roomful of sitting ducks. And then you walk in on another roomful of them. I hate to say it, Sylvia, but you know how many of these things there are in New Orleans? Hundreds. There’s more than a hundred Al-Anon meetings and four hundred and five AA meetings alone. So that’s about five hundred. So far I’ve unearthed eleven programs besides those two main ones, but there may be more. Lots of the programs don’t even have permanent phone numbers, so I couldn’t find out yet how many there are.”
    Cappello sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “I’ve got more bad news. I sort of remember a long time ago my friend Alison Gaillard advised me once to go to AA because that’s where you met all the best guys. I thought she was kidding.”
    “Shit!”
    “Well, I called her back.”
    Alison had said, “Skippy, honey, that was years ago. You don’t have to go to AA to meet guys. Everybody’s doing Coda this year.”
    “Including you?”
    “Why should I? I’m married.”
    Cappello said “Shit!” again. “You mean we’re talking about a bunch of neurotics cruising each other?”
    “Hey,” said Skip, “our first thought was a bar, remember?”
    “Yeah, but if it’s that kind of deal, how do you explain Tom Mabus?”
    “Maybe he saw something—like Linda Lee with the Axeman. Anyway, yes to cruising, but that’s not exactly the whole story. I gave Cindy Lou a call too. Want to know what she said?”
    “Yeah, from the horse’s mouth—in half an hour. Get the whole team together.”
    Cindy Lou brought books with her—books with names like
Codependent No More
! and
Beyond Codependency.
She also brought some by John Bradshaw, including the ones Skip had seen in Linda Lee’s apartment.
    When Joe had brought everyone up to date on Mary Shoemaker, he let Skip take over.
    “Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking large. We are talking the biggest thing since VCRs—maybe since the great god television itself. If you aren’t addictive, then you’re almost certainly codependent, and if you aren’t codependent, you’re nobody.”
    “Be there or be square,” said Hodges.
    “Well, not exactly. It’s not like you’ve got any choice about it. See, the people who write these books say ninety-six percent of the population’s codependent. They don’t say who the other four percent are, but you can bet you haven’t met them and aren’t likely to. They’re basically saying we’re a very unhealthy society and a lot of the things we hold up as real great qualities are sick, sick, sick. So people go to these meetings to unlearn everything they learned as kids.”
    Cappello said, “I thought therapists were the chic thing.”
    “This stuff’s free.” Cindy Lou looked around the room. “Anybody in here codependent?”
    O’Rourke snorted. “I don’t even know any alcoholics.”
    “You don’t have to know any alcoholics. That’s a big misunderstanding about this whole deal. You can be codependent as hell even if you live alone and don’t form relationships or friendships. It’s a dumb word, ‘codependent.’ Doesn’t work, really. But the reason I asked that was just to see something. These groups are anonymous, and I don’t want to blow anyone’s anonymity, but I’m willing to bet there’s somebody in here who’s been to at least one meeting of one of these things, maybe who goes regularly.”
    “I’m Adam,” said Abasolo, “and I’m an alcoholic.”
    “I was in Alateen,” said Cappello quietly. “I still go to ACOA—that’s Adult Children of Alcoholics.”
    Cindy Lou nodded. “Just about everybody’s got some kind of contact with them. I bet somebody else in here’s got a relative who’s hooked on Al-Anon.”
    O’Rourke said, “You got it. My ex-wife. And she’s as bitchy as ever.”
    “Well, now, that’s an interesting point you bring up. One of the objects of the exercise, reduced to simplest terms, is to quit being too nice to people. Look here.” She opened one of the