by Nocturne
“Pardon? Do the ceremony?”
“Conduct the ceremony. Whatever.”
“What ceremony do you mean?”
“Come on, Miss Prouteau. We’re talking voodoo here, and we’re talking the lady who implores Papa Legba to open the gate, and who sacrifices …”
“Sacrifices? Vraiment, messieurs …”
“We know you sacrifice chickens, goats …”
“No, no, this is against the law.”
“But nobody cares,” Carella said.
She looked at them.
The specific law Clotilde had referred to was Article 26, Section 353 of the Agriculture and Markets Law, which specifically prohibited overdriving, overloading, torturing, cruelly beating, unjustifiably injuring, maiming, mutilating, or killing any animal, whether wild or tame. The offense was a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment for not more than a year, or a fine of a thousand dollars, or both.
Like most laws in this city, this one was designed to protect a civilization evolved over centuries. But cops rarely ever invoked the law to prevent animal sacrifice in religious ceremonies, lest all the civil rights advocates demanded their shields and their guns. Clotilde was now weighing whether these two were about to get tough with her for doing something that was done routinely all over the city, especially in Haitian neighborhoods. Why bother with me? she was wondering. You have nothing better to do, messieurs? You have no trafiquants to arrest? No terroristes? And how had they learned about Friday night, anyway?
“What is it you are looking for precisely?” she asked.
“We’re trying to locate a person who may have driven a live chicken to a voodoo ceremony,” Hawes said, and felt suddenly foolish.
“I am sorry, but I did not drive a chicken anywhere,” Clotilde said. “Live or otherwise. A chicken, did you say?”
Hawes felt even more foolish.
“We’re trying to find a person who may have stolen a gun from a borrowed Cadillac,” Carella said.
This didn’t sound any better.
“I did not steal a gun, either,” Clotilde said.
“But did you conduct a voodoo ceremony this past Friday night?”
“Voodoo is not against the law.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about. Did you?”
“I did.”
“Tell us about it.”
“What is there to tell?”
“What time did it start?”
“Nine o’clock?”
An indifferent shrug. Another drag on the cigarette in its red holder that matched the earrings, the necklace and the pouty painted lips. A cloud of smoke blown away from the two detectives.
“Who was there?”
“Worshipers. Supplicants. Believers. Call them whatever you choose. As I have told you, it is a religion.”
“Yes, we’ve got that, thanks,” Hawes said.
“Pardon?”
“Can you tell us what happened?”
“Happened? Nothing unusual happened. What is it you think happened?”
We think someone delivered a chicken for sacrifice and stole a gun from the car while he was at it. Is what we think happened, Hawes thought, but did not say.
“Did anyone arrive with a chicken?” Carella asked.
“No. For what?”
“For sacrifice.”
“We do not sacrifice.”
“What do you do?” Hawes insisted.
Clotilde sighed heavily.
“We meet in an old stone building that was once a Catholic church,” she said. “But, as you know, there are many elements of Catholicism in voodoo, although our divinities constitute a pantheon larger than the holy trinity. It is my role as mamaloi to call upon Papa Legba …”
“Guardian of the gates,” Carella said.
“God of the crossroads,” Hawes said.
“Yes,” Clotilde whispered reverently. “As you mentioned earlier, I implore him to open the gate …”
“… Papa Legba, ouvrez vos barrières pour moi. Papa Legba, où sont vos petits enfants?”
The gathered faithful in the old stone church close their eyes and chant in response, “Papa Legba, nous violà! Papa Legba, ouvrez vos barrières pour le laisser passer!”
“Papa Legba,” Clotilde pleads, “open the gate …”
“Open the gate,” the faithful intone.
“Papa Legba, open the gate …”
“So that we may pass through.”
Call and response.
Africa.
“When we will have passed …”
“We will thank Legba.”
“Legba who sits on the gate …”
“Give us the right to pass.”
The strong African elements in the religion.
And now a girl of six or seven glides toward the altar. She is dressed entirely in white and she holds in either hand a lighted white candle. In a thin, high, liltingly haunting voice, she begins to sing.
“The wild goat has escaped
“And must find its way home.
“I wonder what’s the matter.
“In Guinea, everyone is ill.
“I am not ill.
“But I will die.
“I wonder what’s the matter.”
Clotilde fell silent. The detectives waited. She drew on the cigarette again, exhaled. Piaf was still singing of unrequited love. “Guinea is Africa,” Clotilde explained. She fell silent again, as if drifting back to Haiti and beyond that to Africa itself, to the Guinea in the child’s plaintive song, to the Grain Coast and the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast, to the empires of the Fula and the Mandingo and the Ashanti and Kangasi, the Hausa and the Congo. Still the detectives waited. Clotilde drew on the cigarette again, exhaled a billow of smoke, and began speaking in a low, hoarse voice. From the rising smoke of the cigarette and the hypnotic smoke-seared rasp of her voice, the old stone church seemed to materialize again, a young girl in white standing before Clotilde, the priestess sprinkling her hair with wine and oil and water, whitening her eyelids with flour.
Clotilde blows out the candles.
The faithful are chanting again.
“Mistress Ezili, come to guide us!
“If you want a chicken,
“We will give one to you!
“If you want a goat,
“It is here for you!
“If you want a bull,
“We will give one to you!
“But a goat without horns,
“Oh, where will we find one …
“Where will we find one …
“Where will we find one?”
The bar went silent.
Clotilde exhaled another cloud of smoke, blowing it over her shoulder, away from the detectives.
“That is essentially how the ceremony goes,” she said. “The faithful call to Ezili until she appears. Usually this takes the form of a woman being mounted …”
“Mounted?”
“Possessed, you would say. Ezili possesses her. The goddess Ezili. I left out some things, but essentially …”
“You left out the sacrifice,” Carella said.
“Well, yes, in Haiti a goat or a chicken or a bull may be sacrificed. And perhaps, centuries ago in Africa, the sacrifice may have been human, I truly don’t know. I suppose that’s what the goat without horns is all about. But here in America? No.”
“Here in America, yes,” Carella said.
Clotilde looked at him.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” Carella said. “After the oil and the water …”
“No.”
“… and the wine and the flour, someone slits the throat of a chicken or a goat …”
“Not here in America.”
“Please, Madame Proteau. This is where the priestess dips her finger into the blood and makes a cross on the girl’s forehead. This is where the sacrifice is placed on the altar and the drumming begins. The sacrifice is what finally convinces Ezili to appear. The sacrifice …”
“I am telling you there are no blood sacrifices in our ceremonies.”
“We’re not looking for a cheap three-fifty-three bust,” Hawes said.
“Good,” Clotilde said, and nodded in dismissal.
“We’re working a homicide,” Carella said. “Any help you can give us …”
“Mais, qu’est-ce que je peux faire?” she said, and shrugged. “If there was no chicken, there was no chicken.” She ejected the cigarette stub from the holder, and inserted a new one into its end. Piaf was singing “Je Ne Regrette Rien.” Taking a lighter from her purse, Clotilde handed it to Hawes. He lighted the cigarette for her. She blew smoke away from him and said, “There are cockfights all over the city on Friday nights, did you know that?”
The interesting thing about Jamal Stone’s yellow sheet was that it listed the names of several hookers in his on-again off-again stables. Among these, and apparently current until her recent demise, was one Yolande Marie Marx, alias Marie St. Claire, who had left behind in the apartment of the dead Richard Cooper her handbag and samples of hair and fibers. Ah, yes, Ollie thought, doing his world-famous W. C. Fields imitation even within the confines of his own mind, a small world indeed, ah, yes. Another one of Stone’s current racehorses was a girl named Sarah Rowland, alias Carlyle Yancy, whose address was listed as the very same domicile Stone had inhabited while among the living, ah, yes.
Ollie didn’t expect to find a working girl home at this hour of the night. But even the good Lord rested on Sunday (although it was already Monday), so he drove downtown through the snow and into 87th Precinct territory, getting to Stone’s block at about a quarter past one, and stopping for a cup of coffee in the open diner before going into Stone’s building—smell of piss in the hallway—and then upstairs to the third floor to knock on his door. Lo and behold, and would wonders never, a girl’s voice answered his knock.
“Yes, who is it?”
“Police,” Ollie said, “sorry to be bothering you so late at night, would you mind opening the door, please?” All in a rush in the hope that she’d just open the goddamn door before she began thinking about a search warrant, and police brutality, and invasion of privacy, and civil rights, and all the bullshit these people up here thought about day and night.
“Just a minute,” she said.
Footsteps inside, approaching the door.
He waited.
The door opened a crack, pulled up short by a night chain. Part of a face appeared in the wedge. High-yeller girl looked about nineteen, twenty years old. Suspicious brown eye peering out at him.
“What is it?”
“Miss Rowland?”
“Yes.”
“Detective Weeks, Eighty-eighth Squad,” he said, and held his shield up to the wedge. “Okay to come in a minute?”
“Why?” she asked.
He wondered if she knew her pimp was dead. News traveled fast in the black community, but maybe it hadn’t reached her yet.
“I’m investigating the murder of Jamal Stone,” he said, flat out. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
She knew. He could see that on her face. Still, she hesitated. White cop banging on a black girl’s door one o’clock in the morning. Did he think nobody watched television?
“What do you say, miss? I’m trying to help here,” he said.
He saw the faint nod. The night chain came off. The door opened wide. She was wearing a short silk robe with some kind of flower pattern on it, black with pink petals, sashed at the waist, black silk pajama bottoms under it, black bedroom slippers with pink pom-poms. She looked very young and very fresh, but he knew in her line of work this wouldn’t last long. Not that he gave a shit.
“Thanks,” he said, and stepped into the apartment.
She closed the door behind him, locked it, put on the chain again. The apartment was cold.
“Police been here already?” he asked.
“Not about Jamal.”
“Oh? Then who?”
“Yolande.”
“Oh? When was this?”
“Yesterday. Two detectives from the Eight-Seven.”
“Uh-huh. Well, this is about Jamal.”
“Do you think they’re related?”
“The murders, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Richie was killed, too,” she said. “Isn’t that right?”
“He didn’t like to be called Richie.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. He liked to be called Richard.”
The scumbag, he thought.
“Do you think somebody was after all three of them?” she asked.
“Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”
Ollie often found this effective. Get them speculating, they told you all kinds of things. Sometimes, they speculated themselves right into a Murder One rap. Cause they all thought they were so fuckin smart. Far as he knew, this sweet, innocent-looking doll here had torn open the other hooker and drowned Richard the scumbag and then slashed her own pimp, who the hell knew? These people? Who could tell? So they ask do you think they’re related, and do you think somebody was after all three of them, which could all be a pose, the one person you could never trust was anybody.
“All I know is the last time I saw Jamal, he was going out to look for her bag.”
“Her bag, huh?”
“This red clutch bag she was wearing when she left here.”
“Which was when?”
“Saturday night. Jamal drove her down the bridge.”
“Which bridge?”
“The Majesta.”
“What time was this?”
“They left here around a quarter to ten.”
“What time did Stone get back?”
“Around eleven. He came to pick me up, take me to this party he arranged with some businessmen from Texas.”
“How many?”
“The Texans? Three of them.”
“Remember their names?”
“Just their first names. Charlie, Joe, and Lou.”
“Where was this?”
“The Brill. They had a suite there.”
“On Fawcett?”
“Yeah.”
“What time did you get there?”
“Jamal dropped me at midnight. I took a cab home.”
“When?”
“Three.”
“What kind of car did he drive? Stone.”
“A Lexus.”
“Know where he kept it?”
“A garage around the corner. On Ainsley. Why?”
“Might be something in it, who knows?”
He was thinking dope. There might be dope in the car. Jumbos on the bathroom floor and in the girl’s handbag, this might’ve been a dope thing, who the hell knew, these people.
“You know the license plate number?” he asked.
“No.”
“Did they know him at the garage?”
“Oh, sure.”
“On Ainsley, you said?”
“Yeah.”
“You know the name?”
“No, but it’s right around the corner from here.”
“Okay. So you say you got back here around three. Was Yolande home yet?”
“No. Just Jamal.”
“What time did Yolande get home?”
“She didn’t. Next thing we know, two cops are banging down the door.”
“When was this?”
“Eight o’clock Sunday morning. Jamal thought it was this crazy Colombian crack dealer who said Jamal stole some bottles from him and he was gonna kill him for it, which Jamal didn’t, by the way.”
“Didn’t steal no crack from him, you mean.”
“Right. Still, Jamal popped four caps through the door, thinking it was this crazy fuck Diaz, but it was two cops instead.”
“Shot at two cops, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Not a good idea.”
“T
ell me about it.”
“Who were they, do you remember?”
“Two guys from the Eight-Seven. One of them had red hair.”
“Hawes, was that his name?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s Diaz’s first name? The crack dealer.”
“Manny. Manuel, actually. You think he killed them?”
“Well, I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I think he coulda killed Jamal, cause he’s crazy, you know, and he thinks Jamal stole some shit from him, which he didn’t. But I don’t see how that ties in with Yolande or Richie.”
“Richard. You know him?”
“Just to say hello.”
“He deals, too, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“You think he might’ve known this Diaz guy?”
“I don’t know.”
“So Jamal pops four through the door …”
“Yeah.”
“… so naturally they arrest him.”
“Yeah.”
“Then what?”
“Dragged him out of here.”
“How come he was on the street again? How come they didn’t lock him up?”
“I guess they figured they didn’t have nothing on him.”
“How about the gun? He shot at two fuckin cops, they didn’t lock him up?”
“He thought it was Diaz.”
“Did he have a license for the gun?”
“I think so.”
“Guy with a record, they gave him a license?”
“Then maybe not.”
“So why’d they let him go?”
“I got no idea.”
Ollie was thinking that sometimes a bullshit class-A misdemeanor wasn’t even worth taking downtown. This included violations of 265.01, where criminal possession of a firearm could get you a year in prison, which wasn’t insignificant even if you behaved yourself and got back on the street in three and a third months.
But this Jamal jerk had popped four at a pair of cops, which should have irked them considerably and caused them to haul his ass downtown toot sweet. Unless they were thinking he’d be more valuable to them outside, lead them to whoever had torn out that dead hooker’s insides, who the hell knew? Take a shot at Ollie, first thing you’d be picking up all your teeth, and next thing you’d be downtown waiting for arraignment with your shoes falling off and your pants falling down cause they took away your belt and your shoelaces and your brand-new stolen Rolex.
Or—and this was a possibility—maybe they figured with a murder on their hands and the shift changing, they didn’t want to bother with booking and mugging and printing and court appearances on an A-mis where the guy might even walk if he pulled a bleeding-heart black judge. Better to let the shithead walk now, especially since he’d been trying to chill another shit-head, which maybe next time he’d succeed, and more power to him. There are more things in police work, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your potato patch.