Black Magic Woman

by Justin Gustainis

"Spoiled rotten," Carleton said, nodding. "Still, even Mrs. Gitner had a limit to her forbearance. One day, when she noticed sonny-boy was gone again, she came huffin' on down here and said she wanted us to find him, drag his ass home, and report to her on what the hell it was he'd been up to."

  "I'm no detective," Libby said, "but it seems to me that it would have been easier for you guys to follow Gitner when he left on one of these jaunts, rather then try to track him down once he was already gone."

  "I mentioned that to Mrs. Gitner, you know," Carleton said with a sour smile. "Even suggested that we might best wait until the following month and get in on the beginning of her son's next little excursion into the unknown. But she wouldn't hear of it. Her blood was up, and she wanted us to find the little bastard now, not wait until the next time and do it the easy way." He shrugged his meaty shoulders. "What the hell, she was willing to pay us to look for him. And so that's what we did."

  "How did your search bring you into contact with Queen Esther?" Libby asked.

  "Oh, his mama told us that Amos had been spending time with some of our local occultists," Carleton said. "She recollected that he'd once said something to the effect that voodoo had a lot more to it than the tourists ever see. So we had a word with some of the more prominent practitioners, including that old sweetheart Queen Esther. But either none of the voudinistas we talked to knew young Mr. Gitner, or none of them were sayin'."

  "But then we had some luck," Randall said. "Mrs. Gitner had provided the license number of her son's BMW, and a nice lady I know down at the parish DMV ran the license plate for us. Nothing unusual on his record, but there were a number of parking tickets over the last year or so. They had all been paid— Mrs. G. had seen to that—but we were more interested in when and where the tickets were issued. Almost immediately, we began to see clusters."

  "You mean the tickets had all been written in the same area," Morris said.

  "Yeah, you right," Carleton said, nodding. "They were all in the Ninth Ward, down near the river. Lots of warehouses and garages 'round there, along with some abandoned buildings and burnouts. And the dates matched up, too. The tickets had all been written up during times that sonny boy was off doin' whatever it was he did."

  "There were a couple of other factors we might have considered, but didn't," Randall said. "Well, it probably wouldn't have made any difference. Even if we had somehow reached the proper conclusion, we wouldn't have let ourselves believe it." His voice contained equal proportions of bitterness and regret.

  "Lex learned to talk like that at that fancy college of his," Carleton said. "But what he means is, there'd been occasional news reports that homeless folks in that ward had been disappearing, in ones and twos, for some time. Understand, we ain't talking banner headlines in the Times-Picayune here. Nobody makes much of a fuss about the homeless, and besides, they come and go all the time. Some poor bastard hasn't been seen for awhile, who's to say whether he's gone missing or just moved on to try his luck in Shreveport or someplace?"

  "You mentioned two factors," Libby said. "What was the other one?"

  "The dates of young Mr. Gitner's little excursions," Carleton told her. "There was a pattern to 'em, but we missed it—until it was too late, anyway."

  "The full moon," Randall said quietly. "They were all during the period of the full moon."

  Libby Chastain and Morris looked at each other but said nothing.

  Carleton explained how he and Randall started driving around the area where Amos Gitner had received his parking tickets, and on the second day spotted a blue BMW with license plates that matched what Mrs. Gitner had told them. They staked out the car, and just before dusk were rewarded with the sight of a man who looked an awful lot like the one in the photos they'd been provided with. The man drove off in the Beamer, and the two detectives followed him to what looked like an abandoned warehouse. He parked and then went inside.

  "We waited a while," Carleton explained, "'case he was just making a quick stop for some reason. But after about a half hour, when he didn't come out, we decided to go have ourselves a look."

  "It was full dark by then," Randall said, as if it meant something important.

  Carleton nodded agreement. "So we come up on this place, trying to keep to the shadows. Wasn't hard to do, since most of what you had around there was shadows. Blacker than the boots of the High Sheriff of Hell, is all it was. Course, the moon hadn't come out yet."

  "No," Randall said softly. "That was a little later."

  Carleton then told them that he and Randall had gone through the same side door that Amos Gitner had used. With Randall's penlight, they were able to see the trail of footprints in the thick dust on the floor. It led them to a set of metal stairs that the two men climbed slowly, carefully, and quietly.

  The second floor of the warehouse was strewn with junk— scraps of lumber, abandoned tools, and a couple of old shipping containers. "It looked," Carleton said, "like whoever used to own the place had cleared out fast, and just left behind anything they couldn't see a use for."

  "And it was from behind one of those shipping containers that Amos Gitner appeared," Randall said. "Nothing melodramatic about it. He didn't jump out suddenly or act aggressively or anything. Just strolled right on out. Of course, he was buck naked."

  "Like the day he was born," Carleton said. "He had set up three of those big nine-volt flashlights in different parts of the room, along with a couple of those electric lanterns that campers use, so we could see him pretty good. Boy was hung like a stud mule, too." He looked at Libby and inclined his head slightly. "Your pardon, Ma'am."

  Libby gave him a pleasant smile. "References to the penis don't usually offend me, Mr. Carleton," she said. "Please go on."

  "Well, I introduce myself and Lex to this naked fella, then tell him we're private investigators his mama hired to find out what the hell he's been up to. 'You may as well get dressed, Mr. Gitner,' I tell him. 'We need to talk some.'"

  Carleton shook his head at the memory. "He just stares at us. Then he says, 'You two have no idea what you've stumbled into.' And, you know, he doesn't say it like a threat—and take my word, I've heard plenty of threats in my time. Fella actually sounds like he means it. Then he glances toward the window, and I'm wondering if he's thinking about trying to make a dash in that direction. But then he looks back at us and he says, 'The absolute best thing y'all could do for yourselves right now is to clear out of here just as fast as you can. And then forget you ever found this place, or that you ever saw me.'

  "So, I try to explain to him that it doesn't work that way, that we don't intend him any harm but that we took his mama's money which means that we have to do the job she hired us for."

  "He didn't seem to find any of that very interesting," Randall said. "He hardly seemed to be paying attention."

  "Yeah, you right," Carleton said. "He's acting pretty bored by my little discussion of the ethics of our profession. Then, all of a sudden, he looks back toward the closest window. The moon must've come out from behind the clouds about then, because it's suddenly a whole lot brighter in there, and Gitner just looks at us and says, 'Too late, now.' He sounds almost sorry about it.

  "And that's when the real shit starts."

  Carleton fell silent then, staring down at his desk blotter. After a bit, Morris said, "If you're waiting for someone to feed you the next line, I'll be happy to oblige. What started?"

  Carleton shook his head. "No, it ain't that. I'm not tryin' to drag this out, to make a better story of it. It's just that I never talk about that night, and I feel like an ass tryin' to describe something that I didn't used to think even existed, not in real life, anyways."

  He took a deep breath and look up at Morris. "You ever hear the term loup-garou?"

  Morris nodded. "French name for 'werewolf,' isn't it? The Cajuns use it, too." He didn't say this as if he were surprised, because he wasn't.

  Carleton looked at him with narrowed eyes. "You ever seen one?"

&nbs
p; "That doesn't matter," Morris told him. "But it seems pretty clear that you have."

  Carleton shifted in his chair. "Yeah, I reckon I did," he said finally. "Damnedest thing—maybe literally, I don't know. But we watched the moonlight shine on young Mr. Gitner, and within a couple of seconds he started sprouting fur, claws, the whole nine yards. Nothing that you can't find in a dozen different videos available at your local Blockbuster, but this was by God real."

  "The whole process took about two minutes, I'd guess," Randall said. "I suppose we could have used the time to run. Hell, we might even have gotten away." He shook his head ruefully. "But we were just… transfixed by what we were seeing."

  "Like we were paralyzed," Carleton said, nodding. "Leastways, until the fucking thing came at us. Looked more animal than human by that time, and seemed like it was about ninety percent teeth and claws."

  "It must have been terrifying," Libby said. "Were either of you armed?"

  "Yeah, I had this ten-millimeter Glock that I keep on my belt around back. Lots of folks carry the nine, but I like the extra stopping power. Lex doesn't carry a piece most the time, and he didn't have one that night. Can't blame him for that, really. Hell, we was just running down some rich boy with a bad habit or two, or so we thought. No need for heavy artillery."

  "Did you reach your gun in time?" Morris asked quietly.

  "Yeah, I did, for all the difference it made. I got a shot off, and I hit the sumbitch, too, I'm sure of it. Square in the chest." Carleton shook his head. "Didn't even slow him down. And a second later he was on me. Knocked me to the floor, the Glock went flying off somewhere, and then he's doing his best to tear my throat out with his teeth. I was able to get my forearm under his chin, and that gave me some leverage. But I knew I wouldn't be able to hold him off for long. God he was strong. Then, all of a sudden, he kind of rears up and lets out this howl—not a scream, understand, but a howl, just like you'd expect from an animal."

  "That was because I'd noticed an axe on the floor when we came in," Randall said, "along with all the other junk that had been left there. So, I grabbed it up and then did my best to bury the blade in that thing's spine."

  "Did that kill it?" Morris leaned forward in his chair.

  "Not even close," Carleton said. "The damn thing rolls off me, jumps to its feet, reaches back, and just yanks that hatchet right out of there. Throws it aside like it was a toothpick. And then it starts toward Lex."

  "I'd about run out of options," Randall told them, "so I figured that I was looking at the last thing I'd ever see. But then the shooting started."

  Libby looked at Carleton. "You'd found your pistol again?"

  The big detective snorted in disgust. "Hell, no," he said. "At that point, I'd have been lucky to find my head with both hands. No, I wasn't the one doin' the shooting. That was the fella who'd just burst through the door."

  "He must have come up the same stairs we had used earlier," Randall said. "We hadn't heard him—not surprising, really, with all the commotion going on. He had a revolver, and he put three rounds into that werewolf, or Amos Gitner, or whatever you want to call him, in as many seconds."

  "And he must've been doing something right," Carleton said, "because that thing did nothing but rear up, fall over and die. Right then and there. Next thing that happened was right out of the movies, I swear. The transformation reversed itself, and pretty soon we were lookin' at the naked body of Amos Gitner. Same as before, apart from the bullet holes. And the blood, o' course." Carleton shook his head at the memory. "After a little while, I manage to sit up, and I ask this fella, you know, 'How the hell'd you stop him, when we couldn't do diddly-squat?' He just shrugs and gives me this crooked kind of smile. Then he says, 'Silver bullets.''"

  Randall, still leaning against the door jamb, said, "He told us that he was a private investigator from New York. Apparently one of the homeless men who had disappeared had a brother up North who was worried about him, and who had heard wild stories about some creature that was preying on the street people down here. This investigator told us that he sometimes took on cases involving what he called, 'the unusual.' So he'd agreed to come to New Orleans and try to find out what was going on."

  "Sounds like he found out just in time," Morris said.

  "Yeah, for sure," Carleton said with a slow nod. "He gave us his business card before we all left the warehouse together. We've called him on the phone a couple of times since then, sort of on a consultant basis. But we haven't set eyes on the fella since that night."

  "This investigator," Libby Chastain said thoughtfully. "What did he call himself?"

  "Unlikely as it may sound," Randall told her, "the card said his name was Barry Love."

  Chapter 20

  This time, the cheap motel was in Connecticut. Snake Perkins figured that being a state away from where all the shit went down might buy them a little breathing room.

  "Got us a problem," he said to Cecelia Mbwato.

  Cecelia was ensconced in the room's only armchair, eating salted peanuts, one at a time. She looked at Snake, who sat on the bed, with a mixture of scorn and indifference. "What problem is this?"

  "Gas stations these days, they all got cameras trained on the pumps, case somebody decides to just take off, instead of paying. They must've had 'em at that place in Jersey."

  "So the authorities will have a movie of us driving away. As you would say, 'Big deal.'"

  "The big fuckin' deal is that they most likely got my license number. Which means by tomorrow, and maybe sooner, every cop in six states is gonna have it in the little computer in his squad car. I ain't saying there's gonna be some big manhunt for us. But there just ain't a lot of cars on the road look like mine. All we gotta do is drive past some Dudley Do-Right who ain't too busy eatin' doughnuts to notice the car and decide to run the plates, and then it's WBF, for sure."

  "What means this 'WBF?'"

  Snake gave her a crooked grin. "Lady, it means 'We Be Fucked.'"

  Cecelia thought for a few moments. "Then you should get rid of your car, and steal another for us."

  Snake shook his head. "Nope, bad idea."

  "And why is that? Do you love so much that piece of junk we have been riding in?"

  Snake felt his gorge start to rise. The Lincoln meant more to him than this ugly nigger bitch ever would, but he had just enough control not to say so. Instead, after a deep breath or two, he told her, "There's a couple of reasons. One is, I'm no car thief. Sure, I can hot-wire a car, any kid can do that. But cars these days, shit, they got alarms, and steering wheel locks, and remote ignition switches, and GPS systems, and all kinds of other shit that I don't know how to deal with. I try to steal us a ride, I'd end up busted, for sure."

  "How terrible that would be," she said, her face expressionless.

  "Yeah, and the other reason is, even if I do rip off a car, there's no way of knowin' when it's gonna be reported. Any car that's good enough to be worth stealin' is good enough for somebody to miss it. We'd never know for sure if the car was hot, until we saw them red flashing lights in the rearview mirror, and then it's too fuckin' late. Trying to outrun the cops is for suckers. You see that on TV all the time."

  "Then what are you suggesting that we do?" She waved a hand around the dump of a room. "Spend the rest of our lives hiding in here?"

  "No, not hardly. I got me an idea, and it ain't half bad. I don't steal a car—just a set of plates. And I don't only steal 'em, I replace 'em with the plates off the Lincoln. I mean, who goes out to his car in the morning and checks his damn license plates? The guy might not notice the switch for weeks. Meantime, we'd be drivin' around with a nice, clean set of plates that ain't on any cop's hot sheet."

  "It makes sense," Cecelia said grudgingly. She glanced at the cheap watch she wore on her wrist. "There are several hours of darkness still left," she said to Snake. "What are you waiting for?"

  * * * *

  Fenton and Van Dreenan were braving the traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, thus p
roving that neither was lacking in courage.

  Van Dreenan broke several minutes of silence by saying, "Once we get back to New York, I have some phone calls to make."

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Fenton produced his cell phone. "Here, use this if you want."

  "Thank you, no. I already have my own. But one of the calls requires that I look up a number in my address book, which is currently in my suitcase, at the Holiday Inn."

  "You want me to drop you there, then?"

  "If you would, please. For the other call, I know the number, but it is in South Africa. For that, I should use a landline. As you are aware, cell phones are often unreliable at that sort of distance."

  "Yeah, for sure." A pause. "You mind if I ask, has this got to do with our case?"

  If Van Dreenan noticed that Fenton was now referring to it as 'our case,' he did not say so. Instead, he said, "Oh yes, very much so. I want to ask a colleague of mine to send, by the quickest possible means, a hair sample we have on file. It came from one Cecelia Mbwato."

  "They found some bits of hair at two of the crime scenes," Fenton said thoughtfully.

  "Ja, I know. A DNA comparison might be very informative, don't you think?" He let Fenton think that was the real reason.

  "Damn right, it would. When it gets here, I'll ask my boss to press the FBI lab, make them give it priority."

  "That would be very helpful, I think," Van Dreenan said.

  "Um, what about the other call? The one where you have to look up the number?"

  "That one, my friend, should be local. The lady in question used to live in New York. I can only hope that she still does."

  "Our phone system here has Directory Assistance, you know. Just hit four-one-one and talk to the nice computer."

  "Her number is almost certain to be in the X directory."

  "The what?"

  "Sorry. What you call here an unlisted number."

  "Oh. This somebody who knows Cecelia what's-her-name?"

  "Mbwato. No, probably not. But she is someone who knows a great deal about magic."