If Logan had been aiming to impress his brothers this way, it worked. Even Jayce had been all fired up at the news. After the initial burst of excitement came disappointment when Charlotte, or Lottie, Landreneau seemed to have disappeared. By the time she returned from her lengthy European travels and reappeared on the Garretts’ radar, Logan had been out of jail for over two years. As for poor Eric Schwegmann, Logan had stopped looking after him the moment he’d got the information. Schwegmann was dead within a fortnight, shanked in the prison showers by a fellow inmate called Posie.
The long-awaited plan to kill Lottie Landreneau had come easy. It became even easier when the chance appearance of a stooge named Ben Hope, who’d by chance gotten himself spotlighted in the local news by beating up on a one-time Garrett associate, Billy Bob Lafleur, provided the perfect fall guy for them. They had all found this sequence of events highly amusing. Oh, how they’d laughed.
Just like they were going to laugh when they watched the very same Ben Hope being fed to the gators. There would be no merciful quick dunking for this guy. The Garretts were experts at drawing things out. They’d lower Hope down an inch at a time and let the gators have a foot, maybe take off a leg below the knee, then they’d haul him back up and let him hang a while, and scream a while, before the party went on. It would be a night to remember. They could even sell tickets. Lay on beers and barbecued burgers, music and dancing girls.
As an old vendetta came to a close, a new one had just begun. And they intended to waste no time seeing it through.
Chapter 44
Four hours and forty-eight minutes after receiving the mysterious phone call, Ben was sitting in a borrowed sedan within sight of an abandoned gas station on a minor road some twenty miles south of Chitimacha, at the GPS location that his caller had given him.
The first glimmers of dawn were breaking in the east. It had taken Ben all night to get here. Now all he could do was wait and see whether the journey had been worth his trouble and risk.
His new temporary ride, a suitably nondescript beige-coloured Ford Taurus, belonged to a rat-arsed drunk gentleman Ben had found staggering along the road in the middle of the night with a set of car keys in his hand. The guy was too inebriated to say much, but appeared to have been returning home from an extremely late session with some friends when, quite sensibly, he’d decided to abandon his car and walk the rest of the way. Ben gave him a hundred bucks for the loan of the Ford and said his name was Frankie Prendergast. He doubted whether the guy would remember anything about anything when he eventually sobered up.
The rendezvous had been set for 6 a.m. Ben had purposely arrived early and found himself a useful vantage point where a narrow track wound up a bushy hillside above the old gas station. From here he could observe and detect any kind of a trap. Trust was something he was feeling a little short of, under the circumstances, though he could think of no logical reason to suspect Sallie Mambo of foul play.
The stretch of road Ben could see from his hillside was deserted and obviously very little used, hence the choice of location. He waited, and smoked, and watched. Right on schedule, a solitary vehicle that from a distance looked like a long black station wagon appeared at the head of a tail of dust. It came tooling down the road, then slowed at the approach to the gas station and pulled to a halt by the disused pumps. The driver’s door opened and a lone occupant got out.
Ben picked up his binoculars for a better look. As expected, the driver was Carl, Sallie’s minder-in-chief. But not as expected, Carl was alone. And very oddly dressed, in a dark suit, white shirt, black tie and black peaked cap.
The reason for Carl’s attire, though not the entire reason, became clearer as Ben saw that the vehicle he’d turned up in wasn’t a station wagon at all. It was a hearse, something long and wide and quintessentially American like a Plymouth or Lincoln. Old with a lot of miles on it, but its midnight black paintwork gleamed in the rays of the dawn. A hearse seemed like just a slightly strange choice of vehicle. Especially as the casket compartment in the rear wasn’t empty.
Ben fired up the Taurus and rolled down the hillside to park up next to the hearse. Carl watched impassively as he got out of the car. The prices on the old gas pumps must have been from about 1982. A rusted Pennzoil sign dangled lopsidedly overhead.
‘I thought I was meeting with Sallie,’ Ben said. ‘Imagine my surprise, you turning up alone like this.’
‘I’m s’posed to take you to her.’ Carl motioned at the hearse.
‘Unusual mode of transportation you have there. So is that what you do for a living, drive dead people around?’
Carl shook his head. ‘Ain’t mine. Belongs to my cousin Antoine. He’s a funeral director.’
‘Who’s your passenger?’ Ben asked, pointing at the coffin in the back.
‘Box is for you, Cracka.’
Ben stared at it, then at him. ‘It’s a little early in the morning for jokes.’
‘The cops’re turnin’ the parish inside out huntin’ for you, my friend. Figure even they won’t go liftin’ no coffin lid to see what’s inside, though.’
Ben shook his head. ‘Carl, when my day comes to be put into one of those, I won’t complain. But that day hasn’t come yet.’
Carl shrugged his shoulders, as if he really didn’t give much of a damn one way or the other. ‘How it’s gotta be. Only way you gonna see Mama Mambo and find out what it is you need to know. You want I go back with an empty box, that’s fine by me.’
Ben turned a slow three-sixty, scanning the horizon. The road was still deserted as far as the eye could see, not a soul for miles around. No witnesses to the peculiar sight of a man climbing into his own coffin.
He thought about it a moment longer and then nodded. Carl opened up the back of the hearse and released a catch that allowed the coffin to slide out smoothly on a platform like a drawer on rollers. He lifted the lid. Ben gazed inside at the creamy white satin lining. Still dubious, he said, ‘Uh, I realise that ability to breathe inside one of these things isn’t normally an issue, but—’
‘It ain’t airtight till it’s sealed,’ Carl said.
‘I’m going to trust you, Carl. But if it turns out I’m wrong about that, you’ll be the one they carry off in a box. Understand?’
Carl offered the merest of smiles. ‘We cool, man. Just get in and think dead thoughts. We gotta get movin’. Mama ain’t gonna wait for ever.’
Ben thought, fuck it, climbed up and lowered himself inside the coffin. Travelling feet first, just like a real corpse. He lay back as Carl shut the lid. Cocooned inside the cushy interior with no small measure of claustrophobia, he felt the coffin slide back into the compartment on its rails, followed by the slam of the rear hatch. A muted rumble as the engine started up, and they moved off.
It wasn’t everyone who got a preview of what it would feel like to be transported to your own funeral. The coffin wasn’t uncomfortable, and the air-conditioned hearse was pleasantly cool inside. After a while Ben began to relax, deciding that with nothing else to do he might as well use the time to catch up on lost sleep. He closed his eyes. And crossed his hands over his chest, just in case God decided this was a good time to pluck him from this mortal coil.
Some time later, he was awoken by the realisation that they’d stopped. He felt the coffin slide backwards from the tailgate of the hearse. Then the morning light made him blink as the lid opened.
‘Best lookin’ dead man I ever did see,’ chuckled the crackly voice of Sallie Mambo.
Chapter 45
Ben sat up. They were inside an old cemetery. The early morning dampness in the air was yet to be burned off by the sun, and a low-drifting mist shrouded the uneven rows of gravestones. It looked like a forgotten place, belonging to another time.
Sallie Mambo wore a colourful dress that hung baggily to her hobnail boots. Several shawls draped her shoulders and a broad-brimmed hat covered her mane of snow-white hair, shading her face from what little sunlight poked through the mist. S
he was accompanied by two more of her devotees, or disciples, or whatever they considered themselves to be. The van in which they’d brought her was parked in the withered grass under a dead tree. They hovered close to the old woman, ready to catch her if she needed support, but she seemed determined to stand on her own, clutching tightly to a knotty walking staff that was as tall as she was.
Ben climbed out of the coffin and jumped down, grateful to be free once more. He said, ‘Hello, Mama.’
‘How’s it feel to be born again, child?’ she asked with a wrinkly smile. She looked even older in daylight. Beneath the brim of the hat her skin looked as thin and delicate as parchment. But the fire still burned in her eyes.
‘Like I’ve been given a second chance,’ he replied.
She shuffled closer, waved back her helpers and held her hand out to him. ‘Come, walk with me. You be a gennelman now, and take an old lady’s arm. I ain’t ninety no more.’
‘I think you’re doing fine,’ Ben said.
Carl stayed close to the hearse and the other two hung back by the van, all three pairs of eyes watching every move as Ben gently took the old woman’s arm. It felt very thin. She probably weighed under eighty pounds, but she was wiry and still strong.
Ben was burning up with impatience to hear what she had to tell him, though he knew better than to press her. He looked around him at the cemetery as they walked slowly over the unkempt grass. Many of the gravestones were thick with moss and crumbled with age. Judging by the inscriptions that were still visible, nobody had been buried here in the last century or longer.
‘Lot of history in this place,’ he commented. ‘I’m not surprised you chose it to meet up.’
‘Oh, I visit here often, child,’ Sallie said. She shook her head wistfully, adding, ‘The dead, they gets lonely and appreciate someone takin’ the time to come talk to them.’
‘Just like I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me,’ Ben replied. ‘Last time we spoke, I had a feeling you were holding out on me. Is that what this meeting is about?’
She frowned and nodded slowly, gazing down at her feet as she walked. ‘Been doin’ a lot of thinkin’ since then.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘I think you know more than you wanted to tell me before about the connection between Peggy Eyumba’s murder and Lottie Landreneau’s. I think it was bothering you then, and it’s still bothering you now. You’re afraid of the Garretts, aren’t you? You know they’re behind this, just like back in 1873.’
‘Child, you should be afraid, too. The Garretts are possessed by evil spirits. Bad juju been in their blood for hundreds of years and always will be.’
Ben smiled. ‘I don’t believe in evil spirits. Just bad people.’
Sallie shook her head. ‘You got no idea. Mama knows, because Mama understand magic. What you know about magic?’
‘Voodoo magic? Only what Keisha Hebert told me.’
Sallie said, ‘Keisha is a sweet girl. Got the gift, but she ain’t got the experience. She don’t see the things Mama can see. All she’s known is the white magic. Natural magic, the ways of the plants and animals, the trees and the earth, rootwork and healin’, like things I do with my herbs and powders and special things. Hoodoo is what they call it. In Hoodoo everythin’ that you do is the plan of God. The power of good. That ain’t the dark side.’
‘The dark side?’
Sallie gave a low, crackling chuckle and squeezed Ben’s hand. ‘You don’t want to go there, child. Lord, no. The dark side be the work of the devil. It feedin’ on light. Suckin’ the goodness out of your soul. Ruinin’ lives and bringin’ death and pain wherever it spread. Like a sickness it takes folks over. And once they’re taken over they become its servants, instruments of the deepest, darkest evil that comes straight from hell. Folks like the Garretts.’
‘I really think you mean it,’ Ben said.
Sallie halted her slow stride and looked up at Ben with utter sincerity in her eyes. ‘They is demons in human form, child. That’s how come they have so much power over folks and nobody will dare stand up to ’em. They been carryin’ on their wicked works since the days when ol’ Leonidas Garrett used to torture, rape and murder his slaves right here in Clovis Parish. God have pity on their poor souls.’
Walking slowly on, still clutching tightly to Ben’s arm, she said, ‘So now you know why I was too scared to tell you before. I be just a poor ol’ lady. I ain’t afraid of dyin’, ’cause I know my Lord will take care of me when my time comes. Amen to that. But I want to go peaceful. I ain’t lived all these years to be ripped apart by the hand of no demon.’ A tremor shuddered through her body at the thought. ‘The Garretts have a long, long arm, child. They know when someone’s talkin’ about them. Powerful, powerful magic.’
Ben said, ‘Listen to me, Sallie. I’ve stood face to face with Jayce Garrett and I can tell you he’s no more a demon than I am. He and his brother Seth are as mortal as you or I, and Logan’s already dead to prove it. They’re nothing but very twisted men who’ve done too many bad things and hurt too many innocent people. Now they’ve got to stand up and account for the harm they’ve caused. And I intend to see to it that they do.’
‘I knows that, child.’ Sallie slipped her arm out of Ben’s and pressed a fingertip below one eye, pulling the lid down. ‘Mama knows. Mama sees. You been sent to wash away the evil of the Garretts and cleanse this place from their curse. That’s what I been thinkin’, and so that’s why I brought you here to this place. So the dead will know that deliverance has come.’
‘I’m just a man, Sallie. I’m nothing special. Nobody sent me. I came to Louisiana to hear a jazz band. No other reason. It was pure chance that put me in this situation. Bad luck for me, and bad luck for the Garretts too.’
But Sallie was having none of it. She tapped his shoulder with the head of her walking staff, like a teacher scolding a pupil. ‘That’s where you be wrong, child. Nothin’ happens by chance. Not ever. Jazz band,’ she added with a derisive snort. ‘You bein’ here, that’s fate. Now it be time for you to meet yours, and for the Garretts to meet theirs. And now it be time for me to play my part in this, ’cause I knows where they’s at.’
Ben looked at her. ‘What are you saying? You know where Garrett Island is?’
‘That’s what folks call it now,’ she replied darkly. ‘Weren’t always known by that name.’
‘Tell me how to get there.’
Sallie reached a thin, bony hand into the folds of her dress and pulled out a crumpled, stained piece of paper. She offered it to Ben, and he took it and uncrumpled it.
‘Ain’t hard to find, once you knows how,’ she said.
The rumpled map Ben found himself holding in his hands wasn’t the sort of crude hand-drawn affair he might have expected of someone of Sallie’s generation. It was a printout of a Google Maps satellite image, zoomed tight down onto what looked like an area of Amazonian rainforest. When he looked more closely he could see that little notes and arrows had been penned in by hand to provide further directions, including GPS coordinates.
‘Nice job,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have you down as the techno type, Sallie.’
She brushed the air dismissively with her free hand and replied, ‘I got a nephew who’s good with all that kind of newfangled tomfoolery. Computers is the work of the devil, but I guess we can make an exception now and then.’ The wonders of modern technology didn’t seem to appeal much to Mama Mambo after all.
‘These directions are pretty precise. Have you been to Garrett Island yourself?’
Sallie’s face contorted into a mass of wrinkles. ‘It was 1933, but I remember it like yesterday. We was just kids, actin’ on a dare to see if all them terrible stories we’d heard was true. Four of us young fools crossed over the bridge, that’s the only way you can get on the island, and crept through the woods near enough to see the house. I ain’t never bin so scared in all my life. Then this big man in a long black beard come out yellin’, wavin’ a shootin’ iron at us. It
was ol’ Elmore Garrett, Willard’s father. They done fried his ass for murder later on, ’forty-eight I think it was. Anyhow, we ran for our very souls. Lord knows how we got away. Since then I knowed a few folks who crossed over that bridge and never come back. Not even the sheriff will set foot in that cursed place.’
‘I don’t believe in curses either,’ Ben said.
‘Don’t believe in much, do ya?’ Sallie said. She laughed mirthlessly, showing her bare gums. ‘You will, child, you will. Here, I got somethin’ else.’ Reaching again into whatever deep pocket was hidden in the folds of her baggy clothing, she came out this time with a small flannel bag tied at the neck with a leather thong. ‘Take it.’
Ben took it. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
She patted his arm. ‘That be a gris-gris. A mojo bag. A talisman. You call it what you want, child. Got things inside that’ll bring you luck and protection. I laid my tricks on it. But don’t you open it, now. Won’t work if you look inside. Wear it around yo’ neck and don’t never take it off. The demons can’t hurt you then.’
She paused, eyeing him in a way that made it clear she expected him to put the charm around his neck right away. To please her, he slipped the leather thong over his head, then tucked the mojo bag under his shirt next to his skin. Sallie gave a broad, gummy smile. ‘There. You safe now.’
‘I appreciate you looking out for me, Sallie. Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me, child. I’s just doin’ God’s work. Now it’s time for me to go. I gots to get back to my people.’
Ben accompanied Sallie back the way they’d come, where her helpers were waiting to fuss over her and help her aboard the van. Carl gave Ben a surly nod and said, ‘I’ll take you back to your car.’
‘Goodbye, Sallie,’ Ben said, leaning on the van door.
‘I be prayin’ for you, Mister Ben Hope.’
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