In Shadows

by Chandler McGrew

  Finally she straightened and walked over to him, hugging him tightly. Her head rested just above his belly button, but her withered arms were surprisingly strong. When she leaned back to look into his eyes he knew she was seeing straight into his soul. Drawing him out of the room and into the kitchen where a pot of tea was brewing, she poured both of them a cup and laced each with a healthy dollop of rum.

  “You come by so early to see me wake the spirits up?” she asked, sipping across toothless gums, her dark face glowing with warmth.

  Cramer shrugged. “I saw the light.”

  “You know I leave candles burning all the time. You come because of dat boy.”

  Cramer knew dat boy was Jake.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I tink Jake in a world of hurt. I tink you know dat.”

  “He’s got a lot of baggage. I know dat.”

  “I don’t know baggage. I know trouble. Ogou say you stick wid dat boy, you got trouble, too. You gonna do dat?”

  Cramer sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think he wants me to stick with him. He’s been closed up tighter than a drum since the day I met him. But now something’s happened.”

  “Men get kilt on de beach.”

  He frowned. “How did you know that?”

  She laughed. “It on de news! You tink Ogou come tell me dat? Why for I need spirits to tell me what’s on CNN?”

  “Something funny happened out there, but he won’t talk about it. Jake almost got killed. And I got a call from his cousin in Maine. His uncle was murdered.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I tell you, dat boy got big trouble you maybe don’t want no part of. Maybe you do. You got to decide.”

  “How do I decide?”

  “Is he worth it?”

  “Worth what?”

  “Dyin’ for.”

  Cramer felt a chill rise between his shoulder blades. “You think maybe that’s what’s gonna happen?”

  “I tink dat boy got a ton a misfortune comin’ for him. Maybe he be okay. Maybe not. He kill José Torrio, right? People around dat boy gonna be swimmin’ in shit, I tell you dat.”

  “That’s what you’re worried about, the Torrios?”

  Memere made a face that said maybe so, maybe no. “The Torrios are bad juju. They mix up the spirit nations, like stirring a pot of soup wid a dirty toilet brush.” She shook her head, and a strand of gray hair seemed to slice one dark eye. “But dat boy got de baggage, all right. The Torrios are just icing on a cake made outta cow patty. You got to decide.”

  “But you haven’t told me how to decide.”

  She smiled, slapping him on the shoulder. “You gonna know when you know. Some t’ings worth dying for. Some t’ings ain’t.”

  “I’d die for you,” he said softly.

  She leaned to hug him again. “I know dat.”

  “I gotta go,” said Cramer, chugging the tea, even the heat of the liquor failing to thaw the ice that had settled in his bones.

  “Ogou watch over you. I see to dat. But you got to watch out for you self. You got a problem always wid you.”

  “I’m just too darned easy,” said Cramer, smiling.

  “You just too darned easy for de spirits. You a soft touch for dem. Always has been. You got to harden up and not let dem in so quick. It not funny, boy. One day something gonna get in and der gonna be hell to pay gettin’ it out.”

  “You used to tell me that I was going to be a great Houngon one day.”

  “And maybe so you could be. But to be a priest you got to know how to keep the spirits in they place. You stay mixed up with Jake, no telling what trouble you two get into. You be careful.”

  “You just make sure you lock this door behind me.”

  This time Memere smirked. “Anybody break in here, dey be sorry, I promise you dat.”

  AKE SAT STARING ACROSS THE TARMAC at the sunrise, waiting for the rest of the passengers to board the jet. But the commotion all around was as inconsequential to him as the bubbling of an air compressor on an aquarium. He had spent most of the previous day arguing with himself over whether or not to return Pam’s calls. Then she’d called again, and now her voice kept hammering in his head.

  “Please come, Jake. Pay your last respects. You owe him that.”

  He could hear her husband in the background, counseling her to take it easy. Pam had married Ernie Peyton, a Protestant minister, after Jake left. He assumed the man Pam wed had to be something special. Probably a man he’d like a lot.

  “I’m sorry, Jake,” said Pam. “I know you never wanted to hear from me again or to see this valley. But Albert loved you like a son.”

  Jake felt a stabbing sensation around his heart. “I never said I didn’t want to see you again, Pam. I had to get away from Crowley. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

  “From Mandi, too?”

  The stab became an ax. He started to say yes, Mandi most of all. But his voice wouldn’t wrap around the sentence, his lungs wouldn’t exhale her name.

  “Please come home, Jake. Even if it’s just for a visit.”

  He heard the hurt in her voice, the sense of betrayal, just as he’d heard it fourteen years earlier when he’d climbed on another plane, running from who he was. Only he couldn’t take it now, not again.

  “All right, Pam,” he said quietly. “I’ll come.”

  Cramer’s voice knocked the wind out of his thoughts. “You’re taking up two seats, asshole.” He waved his ticket in Jake’s face, pointing at the aisle seat. “That’s mine.”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Jake, shifting, dull pain radiating from beneath the bandage on his shoulder.

  “Taking a vacation. I always wanted to see Maine.”

  “No, you didn’t. You hate the country. You hate any place that doesn’t have a shopping mall. How did you know what flight I’d be on?”

  Cramer flipped his shield in Jake’s face. “I keep trying to tell you, I’m a detective.”

  “You don’t need to do this. I’m just taking a little time off.”

  Cramer shrugged. “Believe it or not, the chief actually likes you. When I told him you were taking a trip he agreed that it might be a good idea for me to cash in some of my vacation time and go with you. It seems like Jimmy Torrio has suddenly disappeared.”

  “You spoke to the chief?”

  To Jake that was a little like speaking to God.

  “You were on the news, dumbass.”

  Being on the news and getting noticed by the chief were not good things.

  “What do you mean Jimmy Torrio disappeared?”

  “Nowhere to be found. That’s kind of curious seeing as how his brother just died. He and José were close. So tell me about your lovely hometown.”

  Jake sighed, fastening his seatbelt. “Crowley isn’t really a town. It’s a valley. There’s nothing there but a few scattered homes tucked away in the woods. The kind of place where no one locks their doors at night. You’re gonna love it.”

  “The valley was named after your great-great-grandfather?”

  “Jacob Crowley,” said Jake, giving Cramer the eye.

  But Cramer merely tapped the pocket holding his badge again. “And you’re the king!”

  “More like the prodigal son.”

  “Are they going to barbecue a fatted calf for your return?”

  “I doubt if anyone except Pam even remembers me. Did you contact anyone else in Maine besides her?”

  Cramer squinted, glancing past Jake out the window. “Some local yokel in Arcos named Milche.”

  “He isn’t a yokel,” said Jake. “Virgil Milche is the county sheriff, and he’s a damned good police officer. It was because of him I decided to become a cop myself.”

  “Really? Well, he was curious why you didn’t show for the funeral and why you were coming now.”

  “When did you talk to him?”

  “Right after Pam called.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Like you were talking. Ho
w come you couldn’t make it to the funeral, but you’re going back now?”

  “Pam called again.”

  “And?”

  “I guess she’s taking it pretty hard.”

  “She and your uncle were close?”

  “Not as close as he and I were. Look, I’m going to Crowley to pay my last respects and to settle Pam’s nerves. She’s high-strung.”

  “And maybe to investigate your uncle’s murder?”

  Jake sighed.

  “What makes you think you can find out anything this great cop friend of yours hasn’t?” asked Cramer.

  Jake closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat. “Have a nice flight.”

  The engines revved up, and he turned toward the window. The tarmac became a gray river as the plane rumbled inexorably down it into the thunderous roar of some great cataract just ahead.

  ITH THE ARRIVAL OF THE SUN, Memere rose slowly to her feet, blanking out the pain that scorched her knees, elbows, and hips. Rheumatoid arthritis, the doctor called it. She laughed to herself, thinking of the bottle of pills he’d given her, still sitting unopened in her medicine cabinet. Passing quickly into the second bedroom she’d converted to a shrine for the spirits, she nodded to each of the alcoves filled with objects the Iwas—the spirits—attached themselves to. In front of each was a fresh offering. Iwas could be very naughty, even dangerous, if not treated with the proper amount of respect.

  The smell of honey hung in the air, and Memere twisted her nose. This variety of incense stick was too woosy for her taste, not nearly as satisfying as the peppermint. She’d remember not to be using it again. She made one last bow to the altars and headed into the kitchen, where she prepared a fresh paket kongo for her ails. That and a good long spirit bath would fix her up better than any doctor medicine. Or fix her up as well as an eighty-year-old Voudou priestess—a Houngon—could expect. She shook the new paket kongo to make sure Loko Atizou and Ayizan, the patron saints of Houngon—and the spirits this paket had been created to appease—were really awake. Sometimes the Iwas were just like Cramer as a kid, only pretending to wake up.

  Sixty years before, at Memere’s initiation as a Houngon in the swamps outside of Baton Rouge, she had been presented with the traditional seven paket kongos. But of course all pakets only held their power for seven years. Even so, those originals held a place of honor atop the dresser in her bedroom. Now she touched each knee ritually with the silk onion of the fresh paket, then each elbow, finally each hip, sighing as she called out to Loko Atizou and Ayizan and felt relief flowing slowly through her old bones. The bath would make her even better. She rested the paket back on the kitchen counter, glancing back toward the altar room to make sure she hadn’t forgotten any of the many rituals required daily. The Iwas should be pleased with her for now.

  She ambled off to the bathroom, turned the tub faucet on very hot, and tossed in a handful of jasmine flowers, then a drop of orgeat syrup and some crushed almonds, drops of water from a spring in Florida, more drops of Holy Water from a mostly friendly but sometimes snotty priest up the block, and, finally, a dollop of flat champagne. Memere packaged the same contents in Ziploc bags for sale to her clients—many of whom were big shots around town and came to her because they knew she would respect their privacy—but for her own consumption she preferred to use only the freshest ingredients.

  Like the rest of the house, the bathroom walls were covered with framed religious icons and hand-painted images of Voudou spirits. An ornate idol that looked like a miniature termite mound capped with a Barbie doll head sat beside the bottle of mouthwash. She nodded to it in passing, mumbling a prayer to Danbala, one of the spirits of the Rada. The spirits were divided into two nations—Rada, cool, and Petwa, hot and impetuous—not good or evil, a concept that meant nothing to the spirits. Danbala was the snake spirit, who could be equally hot or cold depending upon the situation, but like all snakes he was best catered to and watched carefully, and he could be a very good ally in time of need.

  She let her white cotton shift fall to the floor, shaking her head and chuckling to herself as she stared at her wrinkled black frame. Every year she looked more and more like one of the prunes she was forced to consume to keep from getting all bound up like a rock.

  You are what you eat.

  She chuckled even louder.

  Finally she slipped gratefully into the tub, straining to turn off the water before leaning back and immersing herself in the scalding liquid. The heat and the special ingredients of the spirit bath finished the work of the paket kongo. She could feel her muscles relaxing, ancient joints loosening as she dragged in long, deep breaths of the healing, jasmine-scented steam. The bath was as good for the soul as it was for the body. She felt herself drifting into that soft place where her worries eased, and she could think more clearly.

  Cramer had been a handful since his mother—her daughter Angelina—had left him in Memere’s care. But that girl had been a lot more than a handful. She was a slut woman from the time she bled, and Memere had been unable to control her no matter what offering she made to the spirits. A woman alone shouldn’t have to raise a kid, but she had been forced to do it twice in her life. At least Cramer had turned out better than his mother. Still, he’d wanted to go off running after wild chances from the time he was old enough to walk. It had taken a lot of years to settle him down and convince him to take life one day at a time and to pay attention when the spirits spoke to him. Now he was heading way up north on a fool’s errand, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t like it one bit. Jake Crowley was going to get him into a lot of trouble. A lot.

  She’d met Jake several times, and deep down she liked him. Cramer liked him, too, probably a lot more than he should, because Jake Crowley had some serious spirit problems. Both the nations, the Rada and the hotter, more impetuous Petwa, stirred up like hornets whenever Jake came around. That didn’t make Jake a bad man. It just meant the spirits were tuned to him, but for some reason he wasn’t tuned to them. She’d just as soon Cramer had nothing to do with that boy. But that was not to be, and so she tried to protect both of them. She prayed to the pantheon for them every night, and she had insisted that Cramer force Jake to take her most powerful paket kongo to keep the Iwas as pacified as they could be in his presence. But she knew that wasn’t going to be enough in the end. Jake had a peculiar destiny waiting out there somewhere, and she was afraid that Cramer had already been dragged into it.

  A noise from the other room startled her, and she stiffened, listening to the faint lapping of the water across her flat, pendulous breasts. It was true that most of her drug-boy neighbors gave her plenty of space, respectful of an old Houngon who some of them probably suspected wasn’t beyond using the powers of a Bokor, a dark priest. But she also knew that some of those same drug-boys were so hopped up that they might not be afraid of anything.

  But whatever the sound had been, it did not repeat itself, and she sank back against the tub. Sometimes she’d fall asleep like this, dream of her days as a Voudou queen back on the bayous, before Angelina was born, when she spent her nights dancing to the sound of the drums, surrounded by the heady smell of swamp water and the taste of rum, and red beans and rice. When she spent her days in the arms of Jean Coupe, the man who ran away and left her with a full belly and an empty cookie jar when he found out he was going to be a father.

  It wasn’t the thought of Jean that opened her eyes, though. It was another sound from the living room, stealthy, like a click beetle snapping its shell.

  She climbed slowly out of the water, testing her joints, glad the bath and paket had done their work. She felt little fear at the thought of an intruder. The spirits would be more agitated than she was, and woe to the sac-de-papier who disturbed one of their altars.

  But she dried herself hurriedly and wrapped a frayed terry-cloth robe about her before opening the door. The smell of a Houston morning struck her, even stronger than the honey smoke of her incense. The aroma was a mixture of
gasoline and carbon dioxide, oak, pine, magnolia, and something Memere could only describe as the odor of dirty money. She knew instantly that her front door was open. As she strode into the living room it slammed closed behind a man as big as her grandson but pale as the shroud on a corpse. A Mexican of much smaller build was in the altar room, bending over the statue of Ogou. A third man surprised her by speaking from directly behind her, and she whirled to face him.

  “My name is Jimmy Torrio,” he said, with a gleaming smile that reminded her of a toothpaste commercial. He had short, curly black hair, a razor-sharp nose, and bony cheekbones, and she found the combination—along with his dark, cunning eyes—disturbing. But she supposed some women would like his slick manner. He had the aura of the very rich, and he smelled of the same dirty money as the morning air. “I really don’t want to cause you any trouble, Memere. I just need some information.”

  “You get out of my house!” she spat, blood racing to her face.

  “That’s not going to happen, old woman. I need to find your grandson, and unfortunately my contacts in the police department aren’t cooperating this week. Now, where is he?”

  “I tell you nothing. You come in here like you own this place, you and your drug-boys. You get youselves in deep trouble, Mister High-and-Mighty Jimmy Torrio, I tell you that right now.”

  Torrio laughed, and the sound hardened the faces of his men. Memere glanced at each of them in turn and saw nothing but deep-rooted evil.

  “I have nothing against you, old woman,” said Torrio, shaking his head. “But you are going to tell me what I want to know. Talk now, and we’ll walk out of here without hurting you.”

  “I tell you one more time for your own good. Leave now while you okay.”

  Torrio’s eyes narrowed, and she could sense the spirits stirring around her. Then he backhanded her so hard she blacked out. She came to in the arms of the pale white giant, and Torrio hit her again. This time she remained conscious, but the pain was fierce. She spat blood onto the carpet, and she knew that would disturb the Iwas. The smell and taste of blood always aroused them. The blood of a Houngon would excite them doubly.