He said, “Ah!” out loud.
The figure was draped in his bedsheet, at least five and a half feet tall, with its arms outspread. Its hands were as white as alabaster, and so were its feet, and it appeared to be floating about a half inch above the floor.
Decker was so frightened by this apparition that he didn’t know what to do. He stood by the light switches, rubbing his right arm, feeling terrified and miserable and helpless. This might be Cathy, covered by a sheet, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was something terrible? How could it be Cathy? She was dead, with her head blown apart.
“Listen,” he said, and his voice was very dry, as if he really had been running through burning scrub. “I need to know what you want. I need to know who you actually are.”
The sheet-covered figure swayed a little more, but remained silent.
“If I was to drag that sheet off of you—I mean, who would you be underneath?”
Still the figure didn’t respond.
Decker thought, Shit, what am I going to do? I’m not dreaming, am I? I know I’m not drunk. He took one step toward the figure and then another.
“I’m scared of you, right? Hiding under that sheet like that. But I’ll bet you’re scared of me, too. Otherwise, why don’t you show yourself?”
“Saint Barbara,” the figure whispered, although its voice seemed to come from behind him, and he wasn’t at all sure it was Cathy’s voice. “Saint Barbara wants her revenge.”
Decker said, “Saint Barbara is a saint, that’s all. A good saint, from what I’ve been told. She protects people from fire and explosions and stuff like that. Why should she want to hurt me?”
“Come closer,” the apparition said.
“I don’t think so,” Decker said. “Not until I know who you are.”
“Come closer, my darling.”
Decker didn’t know what to do. He was frightened that this figure wasn’t Cathy, but in a way he was even more frightened that it was. He looked over at the hat stand, where his Colt Anaconda was hanging in its holster, and wished that he had learned the lesson and taken it into the bedroom with him.
“Are you Cathy?” he asked the sheeted figure.
“Don’t you trust me?” it whispered, and it sounded as if it were speaking down a hollow pipe.
“I don’t know. Aren’t you going to show me who you are?”
“I am many things. I have many different faces.”
“Are you trying to warn me about something bad?”
“Something bad is happening to you already.”
Decker circled cautiously around the figure toward the hat stand. It didn’t turn around to follow him, but stayed where it was, with its arms outspread, more like a statue than a human being, a statue that was waiting to be unveiled. Decker’s throat was so dry that he had to cough, and cough again, but still the figure didn’t move.
“Tell me about Saint Barbara,” Decker said, without taking his eyes off it. He reached up for his holster and unfastened the clasp.
“Saint Barbara wants her revenge for what you did. For what you all did.”
“Was it something that happened in the Wilderness? The Devil’s Brigade?”
“Promises were made and promises were broken.”
“What promises?”
“Promises of honor. Promises of war. Promises of just rewards.”
Decker eased his revolver out of its holster and cocked it. He approached the figure until he was almost close enough to reach out his hand and touch it. He could see the indistinct outline of a face under the sheet, and the cotton was being drawn in and out, in and out, as if the figure were breathing.
“Are you afraid of me?” the figure whispered.
“Should I be?”
“Are you afraid of Saint Barbara?”
“I don’t know. Are we really talking about Saint Barbara, or are we talking about somebody else?”
“Oche ofun,” the figure said. “The saints rescue you from the dead.”
Decker took hold of the edge of the sheet, close to the figure’s wrist. His blood was pounding in his ears and he couldn’t remember ever having felt as terrified as this, not in all of his years of police work.
“Are you sure you want to know what I am?” the figure asked him.
Decker didn’t answer, but grasped the edge of the sheet even more firmly, in his fist. He was just about to drag it off the figure’s head, however, when the figure let out a piercing screech—a screech of rage and pain and frustration, as if five voices were all screaming at once.
The screech went on and on, and Decker let go of the sheet and stepped awkwardly away, his revolver raised, not knowing what to do. But then there was a dull, wet thud! and the top of the sheet ballooned outward, and was drenched in blood. Instantly, it collapsed onto the floor.
Decker stood staring at it, panting for breath. It lay crumpled in front of the kitchen archway, massively soaked in blood, but it was obvious that there was nobody underneath it. After a while he kicked it sideways, and he could see that it was nothing but a sheet.
“Christ,” he breathed.
Still holding his revolver, he went over to the drinks table and one-handedly poured himself a shot glass of Herradura Silver. He tipped it back in one, and then he poured himself another.
He glanced back at the bloodstained sheet. Now he knew for sure that this investigation wasn’t just about facts and evidence and tracking down a perpetrator. This was about religion, and beliefs, and acts of betrayal. This was spiritual, and not only that, it was personal.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
He found Jonah in back of the Mask Bar on Second and Main, talking to two of his friends. The Mask Bar was dark and smoky and the walls were decorated with scores of African masks, some of them ebony, some of them beaten out of copper, some of them fashioned from dry reeds. Batá drum music was tapping in the background.
Jonah’s friends looked up uneasily as Decker came in. One of them was thin as a rail, with tiny dark sunglasses and a black beret. The other was enormous, wearing a billowing brown caftan with zigzag patterns on it, and a brown fez with a tassel.
“Talk to you for a minute?” Decker asked.
“About what, man?” Jonah was being aggressive for the sake of his friends.
“I don’t know. This and that.”
“I don’t know nothing more about Junior Abraham, if that’s what you’re excavating for.”
“I wanted to catch up on the local gossip, that’s all.”
“You want local gossip, go to the mother-and-baby club on Clay Street. They’ll even give you recipes for black bean chili, too.”
“Not that kind of gossip. I was more interested in Queen Aché.”
Jonah looked at his friends and eventually the fat one shrugged, as if to say, anything that was bad news for Queen Aché was good news for him. Decker didn’t know him, but he recognized the man in the beret as one of the Strutters, a petty drug dealer who called himself Dr. Welcome. There was no love lost between the Strutters and the Eguns, so he guessed that Dr. Welcome wouldn’t object if Jonah answered a few questions, either.
“All right, then,” Jonah said. “Five minutes, and that’s it. But I don’t know nothing, man. Nothing about nothing.”
They went and sat at a table in the corner, underneath a scowling green mask with a mouth that was smothered in glistening red varnish, to represent blood.
“I need to talk to a santero,” Decker said.
“Listen, Deck-ah,” Jonah interrupted, leaning forward and speaking in a hoarse whisper. “I like you and you like me. You done me some prime favors. But you can’t just come trucking in here and act like we best friends or nothing. Those two brothers, they’re cool, but I don’t need the whole of Jackson Ward to find out that I’m exchanging social pleasantries with the man.”
“This is serious, Jonah. I need to talk to a santero and I need to do it now.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“My undying grati
tude, of course.”
“How about your undying gratitude and two hundred bucks?”
Decker took out his billfold and peeled off a hundred dollars. “I’ll give you the rest when you do your stuff.”
Jonah made the bill disappear as if he were performing a conjuring trick. Then he said, “Most of the santeros are tied up with Queen Aché. You don’t want to go talking to those dudes, because the next thing you know they’ll be putting the hex on you and your dick’ll drop off or something. But there’s one who might help you, if you ask him real respectful. His name’s Moses Adebolu. He used to be a close friend of Junior Abraham, and I know he’s pretty sore that Junior got offed.”
“Can you take me to him?”
“Okay, but we have to go by way of the Afro market.”
“What the hell for?”
“You have to bring Moses a live rooster and some cigars and maybe a bottle of rum. Also some rompe zaraguey root if you can find it, or some okra.”
Decker said, “I’m conducting a homicide investigation here, not a shopping trip.”
“You have to bring those things, Deck-ah. They’re part of the ebbó, the sacrifice. Otherwise Moses won’t help you a-tall.”
A little before noon, Decker parked outside a scabby, narrow-shouldered house under the shadow of Route 95. He and Jonah climbed out, and they had to shout-to each other because the noise of the overhead traffic was deafening. The morning was hot, with 85 percent humidity, and the air was blurred with exhaust fumes.
Decker opened the trunk and took out a wicker basket with a querulous, brassy-plumed rooster inside it. Jonah lifted out a brown paper sack containing two bottles of Mount Gay rum, a box of King Edward cigars, and an assortment of sugarcane, palm oil, cinnamon sticks, and toasted corn.
“This had better be worth it!” Decker yelled in Jonah’s ear.
“I don’t know, man! I can’t guarantee nothing! These santeros, they can be highly uppity if they don’t like the smell of you!”
They climbed the steps in front of the house where three young boys were playing a game of pick-up-sticks with what looked like rats’ bones.
“Moses at home?” Jonah asked.
The rooster flapped and clucked inside its basket. The oldest boy frowned and said, “What’s that you bringing him?”
Decker opened up the lid so that he could see. “Takeout. Kentucky Unfried Chicken.”
They pushed open the peeling, brown-painted door and stepped into the hallway. The floor was covered with cracked, curled-up linoleum and the stair carpet was so worn out that it was impossible to tell what color it might have been. The whole house was pervaded by an eye-watering smell of frying garlic and cinnamon, and somebody was listlessly playing the bongo drums. At the top of the stairs was a stained-glass window showing a man in white robes standing next to a river, John the Baptist maybe, but the top part of the window had been broken so that he had no head, only plain glass.
“Second story,” Jonah said, and up they trudged. They crossed the creaking landing, and Jonah knocked at a door that was decorated in lurid reds and blues and maroons, with a staring yellow eye painted on each of its panels. “Let’s hope Moses is feeling amenable. Not stoned or got a sudden attack of unreasonable racial prejudice or nothing.”
He knocked again, and a hoarse voice said, “Don’t be so impatient, my friend, I hear you, I hear you.” The door was opened by a big-bellied, gray-haired man with enormous spectacles that looked like the screens of two 1960s TVs. He was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt and black pants and sandals, and around his neck hung necklaces of colored beads and silver chains and brightly dyed guinea-hen feathers.
“Jonah, ain’t seen you in a while, what you want, man?”
“I brung you some stuff, man.”
Moses squinted suspiciously at Decker. “Looks like you brung me some trouble, too.”
Decker lifted up his basket. “One live rooster. I just wanted to talk to you, that’s all.”
“Talk about what? I’m a busy man, friend. Got to do this, got to do that.”
“Decker’s the man, man,” Jonah explained. “He’s trying to find out who offed Junior Abraham.”
“How should I know who offed him? And even if I did I wouldn’t tell the man. What you say your name was?”
“Decker—Decker Martin.”
“That’s kind of a slave-owning name, ain’t it?”
“I wish. I don’t even have a cleaner.”
The rooster skittered impatiently, and Moses said, “All right then, guess you’d better come along in. What you got there, Jonah? Cigars, is that? And rum?”
“One hundred twenty proof, just the way you like it.”
Moses shuffled ahead of them into a gloomy, airless living room. The room was permeated with an extraordinary smell, bitter and yet fragrant, which somehow gave Decker the feeling that he had stepped out of the real world and into another. It was crowded with heavy 1950s-style furniture—two immense armchairs and a couch, all upholstered in brown brocade, with antimacassars draped over the back. The drapes were thick and brown and dusty and looked as if they hadn’t been taken down and cleaned since the first run of I Love Lucy. A huge television dominated one corner of the room, while the other was taken up by a Santería shrine—less glittery than Queen Aché’s, but crowded with coconuts, red and green beads, candles, flowers, pictures of saints, and a scowling head made of cement, with cowrie shells for eyes.
Moses eased himself down into one of the armchairs and said, “Don’t know what I can do to help you, my friend. The rumor was going around that Junior Abraham was doing some sly business on the side when he was supposed to be working for Queen Aché, but that was only a rumor. He had some fancy new threads and a fancy new SUV, but that don’t prove nothing.”
Decker sat opposite him and set down the rooster’s basket on the matted brown rug. “I need to know some more about Santería,” he said. “In particular I need to know how a man can make himself unseen.”
“Unseen? You’re talking a seriously serious spell here. Only a very prestigious santero can work a spell like that, maybe even a babalawo. A babalawo is a high priest, in case you wasn’t aware of it … somebody who conducts the sacrifices whenever santeros get theirselves initiated.”
Decker said, “The guy who killed Junior Abraham made himself unseen … at least for long enough to walk right up to him and blow his head off at point-blank range. And I’m dealing with three other cases, too, where the perpetrator has somehow managed to remain invisible.”
Moses nodded. “Well, this is interesting, friend. I haven’t heard of magic as strong as this for many years. These days, very few priests have the total faith that you would need to walk amongst other folks unseen. You want tea?”
Behind Moses’ back, Jonah nodded a frantic yes, to indicate that this was a matter of essential courtesy. Decker said, “Tea? Sure, I’d like that.”
Moses reached over to a side table and rang a small brass bell. Almost immediately, a young woman in a red and green turban and a red and green sari came into the room. She was twenty-three or twenty-four, with high cheekbones and a long, almost Masai face. She was wearing a sweet musky perfume that Decker didn’t recognize.
“My daughter, Aluya,” Moses said. “Aluya takes care of me, don’t you, Aluya? Bring us some tea, yes, Aluya? And some of them honey-nut cookies.”
Decker looked up at Aluya, grinned, and said, “Hi,” but Aluya bashfully turned her face away. Moses said, with undisguised satisfaction, “Aluya will have plenty of time for socializing with men when I’m gone off to associate with my ancestors. Right now she has enough on her plate, cooking my dinners and washing my drawers.”
“Sounds like she has her hands full.”
After Aluya had gone back to the kitchen, Moses leaned forward in his chair. “Listen—to understand the power it takes for a man to make himself invisible to other people, you have to know about more than the nature of one particular spell. You have to
know what Santería is.”
Decker said, “All I really know about it is that it’s an African religion, and that it was brought to America by slaves. I know that the slaves changed the names of their gods to the names of Catholic saints, but that’s about it.”
“Well, pretty much right so far as it goes. Santería is the name we give to two belief systems that got themselves, like, all tangled up with each other. Its roots was in southwestern Nigeria, in all of the myths and the magic rituals of the Yoruba people, but when the Yorubas came to the New World, and they had to hide what they were doing, they borrowed a whole lot of fancy trappings from the Roman Catholic church.
“The Yorubas was very smart and they was very cultured. Back in Africa they had theirselves a very sophisticated social structure, and they created all kinds of amazing art in wood and bronze and ivory. They had kingdoms, like Benin, and they built the holy city of Ile-Ife, which is the place where everything that exists comes from. They also worshipped many gods. Orishas, they called them. That’s the Yoruba name for a god. Orisha.
“Trouble was, round about sixteen hundred and something, Yorubaland was invaded by the Ewe tribes from the north, and the Yorubas was forced to migrate down to the Nigerian coast. That was why so many of them was captured by slave traders and shipped to America.
“Like you said, they carried on worshipping their old gods, but they gave them the names of Catholic saints. So when their owners thought that they was praying to Saint Anthony, they was actually paying their respects to Elegguá the owner of the crossroads and the messenger of the orishas. Oggún, the god of metals, he became Saint Peter, and Orunla, who knows all the mysteries of the universe, was honored as Saint Francis of Assisi. We still give a sacrifice to Orunla on October the fourth, which is Saint Francis of Assisi Day for the Roman Catholics.
“Santería is an earth religion, if you understand what I mean. It’s all about nature and the forces of nature, like the Native American beliefs. Changó is the god of fire, thunder, and lightning. Oshún is the god of river waters, and also of love, and marriage, and fertility. Oyá is the wind, and the keeper of the cemetery, the watcher of the doorway between life and death. She ain’t death itself, but she’s the knowledge that we all have to die.”
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