Tropic of Night jp-1

by Michael Gruber

  “Well, shit! Who the fuck else want to do something like that?”

  “Like what, Mr. Youghans?” asked Paz gently.

  “Oh, you know, slice her up like they done.”

  “How did you know that, sir?” More gently still.

  “Shit, her brother called me up and told me. Cursed me out, too, the lame little motherfucker. Blame me for it. Me? Shit!”

  “So where were you between, say, eleven Saturday night and two Sunday morning?” asked Barlow.

  In bed, was the answer, unusually as it turned out, alone but for the crotch magazines, and so they all went downtown, with Paz’s heart singing tra-la-la, because this was going to be a grounder after all.

  When he had Youghans in the little room, with Barlow looking on silently, Paz did the usual act, kicking chairs. You piece of shit, Youghans, you were drunk. You were pissed off. You had a fight. You admitted that. And then it went too far?you stuck her, and then you got scared, and you started thinking. You cut her up. You made it look weird, like some loony did it. And you made it all up, didn’t you, the hoodoo man. And what about this?

  Paz stuck it in front of Youghans’s face, the thing he had found in the apartment. A framed picture of Youghans and an unpregnant Deandra Wallace in happier days, the glass covered with little brown spatters.

  “You took this out of there after you killed her. You didn’t want anyone to think about you, did you? That’s blood, Youghans. Her blood. That you put there when you cut her open. You bastard!” He leaped across the table at Youghans and grabbed a handful of shirt, shook the man and screamed into his face. Then he allowed Barlow to pull him off, as per script, and toss him out of the interview room, with appalled commentary.

  Paz got a cup of coffee and strolled back to where a one-way window gave on the room, hooked a chair with his foot, and sat down to watch Barlow work. Barlow was the best good cop in the business, and seemed particularly effective with black and Hispanic suspects. They seemed grateful that a fellow who looked and sounded like the Grand Kleagle was as calm and considerate as a social worker on quaaludes. Paz watched the action, without flipping the switch to bring sound across the thick glass. It was more restful that way and he got to concentrate on the body language. He couldn’t see Barlow’s face, only the hunch of his back as he leaned over the table. He could see Youghans’s face, though, as it went through a series of transformations. Anger first, the brows knotted, the mouth gaping to shout, then confusion, the eyes wide and staring, the mouth slack, and then the collapse?tears, a rictus of sorrow, sobbing, and the hands brought up in shame, the head drooping. Paz looked at his watch. A little under forty minutes, not a bad time, even for Barlow.

  Paz got a pad and pen from his desk and went to the interview room. Barlow met him at the door.

  Paz said, “He looks ready to write.”

  “Let’s leave him be for a while, Jimmy.”

  “Don’t you want to get the confession while he’s in the mood?”

  “No confession. You know he didn’t do that girl.”

  “What! For Christ’s sake, Cletis … sorry. Then what the … what were you doing in there all this time?”

  “I was helping a soul to Jesus. A man can’t live the way that man’s been living without its eating away at him. He really cared for that girl, you know. I just helped him to see that and see that what he was doing, the fornicating, the drinking, well, that was just a way of trying to forget what-all’d happened to her, and that maybe part of it was his fault, taking advantage of her, pulling her away from the church so she was bait for that devil.”

  “Jesus Christ! What’re you talking about? He had the damn picture with her blood on it.”

  Barlow’s eyes, the color of an inch of water in a tin pail, turned sharply colder.

  “Jimmy, I’ll thank you not to take our Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Sorry, but … I thought … I thought we had him.”

  “I know you did, and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not our man. You know that in your heart, now, don’t you?”

  Paz took a quick step away, kicked the baseboard hard, and cursed to himself in Spanish. Of course he did, and he knew why he’d concocted what now seemed like an absurd case against that pathetic lowlife.

  He breathed deeply for a moment, facing the wall, head drooped. Then he turned around. “Yeah, right. All right.”

  Barlow strolled back to his desk and sat in his chair, Paz trailing along after him, and then resumed as if nothing had happened. “But we know a couple more things about our fella. One, he thinks he’s real clever. He went around back under Deandra’s window and picked up all his Africa things, ‘cause we sure didn’t find any when we looked. He walked into that living room with a handful of blood and sprayed it on the wall, and then he took Youghans’s picture off the wall and walked into Youghans’s place, where he knew we’d find it. A frame.”

  “So to speak. What’s the other thing?”

  “Oh, just something funny. He said that little thing he was with when we showed up, she came over about noon today. He says he was in his place all morning, with the doors locked and that dog in the yard. Now, he also says that picture wasn’t there when he went to bed last night and it wasn’t there when he let his honey in. And between then and when we showed up, the dog didn’t make a sound.”

  “So how did the picture get there?”

  Barlow gave him a long, considering look. “Uh-hn, that’s the right question. How did it?”

  “Somebody the dog knew and wouldn’t bark at,” Paz suggested.

  “Possible, but not likely. Man says the dog barks at leaves falling down from the trees. Barks at the man’s momma. Barked when the girlfriend came.”

  Barlow grimaced, showing a mouthful of crooked, yellowing, rural-bad-dental-care-type teeth. He rubbed his face vigorously. Paz thought of a big yellow dog shaking itself.

  “What, Cletis? Tell me,” Paz said when he couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “When you’re in the church,” said Barlow, “when you’re a churchgoing person, a believer, you believe in things you can’t see. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Corinthians 2:9.”

  Paz resisted the impulse to shove and needle. This had happened before, between them, it was part of Cletis’s thing, and Paz had seen the older man crack cases in this way.

  “I’ve seen miracles,” Barlow continued. “I know you don’t believe me, but that don’t matter. I know what my eyes have seen. It was … two times in my life it was given to me to see glory, praise Jesus. Now, the devil can’t do miracles, can he?”

  Barlow was looking at him differently. It was not a rhetorical question. Paz gave it serious thought. “Why can’t he? If you believe the movies, devils can do all kinds of weird stuff. I mean, he wouldn’t be much of a devil if he couldn’t, like, give you money, or make you terrific looking.”

  “You believe that, do you?”

  “No, I don’t believe it,” said Paz, exasperated now. “I’m just saying, if you give me that there’s a devil, then it follows that he’s got magic powers. Logically.”

  Barlow scratched behind his ear. “Logically, eh? Tell me this, then: Exodus 7:10. Aaron casts his rod upon the ground and it becomes a serpent. And Pharaoh calls in his sorcerers and magicians of Egypt and they do the same thing, their rods become serpents, too. So, do you think they were the same kind of snakes?”

  “I don’t know, Cletis. It wasn’t my case.”

  Barlow ignored this. “They were not the same, no sir! The Lord caused Aaron’s rod to become a real snake, but the magician’s rods stayed plain old rods. They just made everyone think they were snakes. You see the difference?”

  “Uh-huh. God makes real miracles, but the devil just tricks us.” Paz said this like a bored schoolboy in a catechism class. The payoff was not too distant.

  “That’s right. The devil can’t do miracles, �
��cause he’s got no power of creation. Only the Lord has power of creation. The Lord can send an angel through walls, through the roof, anywhere he likes, but the devil’s got to use the door. The only power the devil’s got is what we give him, all he’s got is power over whatsoever mind that is not turned to the Kingdom, which is you and me, son. And all the other poor sinners out there. The devil can twist your mind into a knot. That’s who we need to look for.”

  “Who? The devil? Okay, I figure our perp for around eight foot six, red complexion, wears a little beard, distinguishing marks?horns, tail, little hooves. I’ll get that right out on the wires. He shouldn’t be hard to spot.”

  Barlow waggled a finger. “Don’t mock, Jimmy,” he said quietly. “I know you like to, but you can’t do it around this here case. It ain’t good for your health.”

  “What’re you saying? Cut to the chase, here.”

  “I’m saying look at the facts. A girl killed and cut up, and not just a girl, a girl about to have a baby. The baby’s cut up too. Not just cut up in a crazy way, neither, cut up just so, in a ritual way. Two, she let whoever did it do it without fighting any, that we could see.”

  “But she was drugged.”

  “There was chemicals in her body, but she didn’t take them through her mouth. They just got there and we don’t know how, and right now we don’t know what they do. For all we know, they might’ve made her wide awake, and she just told him to go ahead.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  “Uh-huh. To us, but you been in the police long enough to know people do all kinds of awful stuff to themselves and other folks, stuff that seems just fine at the time. Something gets in ‘em, and then later, that’s just what they say. You heard it yourself about four hundred times. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “That’s a figure of speech.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t always just a figure of speech. Not back in Bible times, it wasn’t. Our Lord was always casting devils out of folks. And maybe not even now, when you come to think on it. Then we got the other fact, that this fella seems to go where he wants to, and no one sees him, not even dogs. It takes some doing to get past a dog.” He fixed Paz with his eye and said, matter-of-factly, “I guess, when you put that together we’re looking for someone with demonic powers, God help us.”

  Paz goggled for a moment and then felt a flash of raw anger. There wasn’t going to a be a brilliant payoff after all. With some force, he said, “Oh, for crying out loud! Look, we have exactly one informant for all this, and he might’ve been half in the bag at the time when. I’ll tell you what the real facts are. We got a perp did a killing, and he dressed it up with all kinds of African hoodoo. Is he wacko? I’ll give you that. Is he some kind of spook with weird mystic powers? No, he’s not. No offense, but that kind of stuff isn’t real, not anymore it isn’t. You want to believe it happened back in Bible times, hey, I respect your beliefs, but this is now, and we’re looking for a regular guy, a regular homicidal maniac, not the spawn of Satan. Talk about something getting into people?what’s got into you? I mean, unless you’re pulling my leg …”

  Barlow nodded calmly as Paz rapped this out, and said, “No, I was never more serious in my life.” He sighed heavily and stood up. “Well, we’ll see, won’t we? For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. First Corinthians 3:19.” He patted Paz absently on the arm. “You’ll want to write up your report. Just put in the facts, for now.”

  SEVEN

  Ido not panic. I go back to Records and finish my day, alphabetical order being such a comfort in periods of tension, and it gives me time to think. Thought before action, not jumping to conclusions: aikido, anthropology, and Olo sorcery are in agreement here. I pause behind cabinet or-osh, get centered, and think. He’s in town, or he’s got a disciple in town, both possible. Who knows what he’s been up to these last years? He could have hundreds, a whole cult. The important thing, does he know where I am? Not likely. New name, low profile, not doing a lot to attract his attention. I’m supposed to be dead, anyway.

  The homeboys don’t notice me on the way back to my car. It’s after school and they are being vamped by girls who are more in tune with the times. I get into my stifling junker and think about Margaret Mead, the mother of all us girl anthropologists, and about what she would think of this. Our world is changing so fast that the kids have to figure it all out for themselves, so they reject the parents’ experience as nonrelevant. A very sixties view, Margaret, and explains hippies and hip-hop but doesn’t explain me. I was thirteen when she died, and never met her, but Marcel knew her quite well, thought her a nice lady, good writer, knew zip about culture, depending as she did throughout her career on the honesty of her informants. They all lie, darling, he would say to me, all the informants lie. Wouldn’t you? What would you do if a person in a weird hat and the wrong color skin accosted you on the street and asked you, You like fuckee-fuck, eh, girlee? When you start fuckee? Who you do it with? Old men? Boys? Other girls? How many times? You likee orgasms? You let boy touch-em titties? You like suck-em willie? Would you tell this ridiculous person the truth? You would not. I once actually peed on his foot I was laughing so hard at one of these riffs. Marcel was not a great believer in mere objectivity. Objectivity is the leprosy of anthropology, one of his sayings. French intellectuals are obliged to come up with pithy, witty apothegms, and he was no exception.

  The breeze from the car window is somewhat cooler than the waft from a hair dryer on low, but I am not much bothered by this. People who are excessively attached to the creature comforts would be well advised to eschew anthro as a career. The temperature in my car right now approximates the shade temperature inside my bon in Ulune’s compound at Danolo, during nearly the whole of the dry season. My sense memories are returning, I think. I attribute this to the child. Now, for example, I pick up Luz in the cool shade of the patio at Providence and I am nearly overcome by a recollection of being held by my father, on our dock. I must have been about Luz’s age, the age when you can still ride comfortably in an adult’s arms, held easily by one hand under your bottom. It’s low tide, and I can smell the tidal stink around us. We’re at the dinghy basin and we’ve just finished a ride in our tender. My father smells of tobacco, marine varnish, and wood dust.

  Luz is carrying a paper sack. When we are in the car she shows me what is in it. It’s a present, she says, it’s for candoos. A great lump of baked Sculpey in the shape of a candleholder, with thick flowers stuck on and all painted primrose yellow with cobalt blue splotches. Nice Ms. Lomax must have pressed the butt of a candle into the soft clay because this part looks quite functional. I appreciate it lavishly. No one has given me anything for some time. We make a special trip down Grand to the rich folks’ Grove to buy a candle to fit in it. We stop at the thrift shop and rummage like the poor people we are and Luz finds a tattered Goodnight Moon, which I gratefully buy for fifty cents.

  So we dine by candlelight. I have made a big fruit salad with cottage cheese, which she seems to like, and which helps to cool me down. After dinner, she has to blow out the candle and I have to relight it many times. When I was studying aikido, sensei used to make us douse candles with our fists, to practice speed and control. The point is to compress a column of air in front of your fist and stop your knuckles dead a few millimeters short of the flame. It’s harder than it looks, like everything in aikido. Or sorcery for that matter. Without thinking, to entertain Luz, I snap out my fist and find that I can still do it. More, demands Luz, and I light the wick again and then I recall how her mother died and feel a rush of grinding shame. While I am thus self-absorbed, Luz attempts the trick and slams her little fist into the candle and spills hot wax over her hand and forearm. Wails and a rush to the sink for cooling water. I bring her back into countenance with sleight-of-hand tricks. I take some quarters from a jar where I keep my spare change. I make them walk across my knuckles and I vanish them and produce them from h
er ears and hair and off my tongue, fingertip productions, toss vanishes, flick vanishes, French drops, and coins-through-table as a finale. I am good at this, I could amaze those even older than four. Marcel always said that legerdemain was the root of sorcery, and one of the field anthropologist’s most valuable tools. It is all about attention, magic. Most of the rest of life is about attention, too.

  After the tricks, we lie in my hammock together in our sleeping Tshirts and I read to her, all her books, in the order she likes them, the bird book first, then Bert and Ernie, then the new Goodnight Moon, a great success, three times and she’s out. I had Goodnight Moon, too, and although I suppose my mom must have put me to bed sometimes, I can’t recall being read to by anyone but my father.

  Sleep won’t come. There is a gibbous moon and a scent of jasmine. I rock slowly in the hammock. On its uproll the mesh overlays my view of the treetops and the cloud-scudded moonlit sky. Mesh or line, our lives, one of the great questions. I have been shaken by what happened in the office today, the old lady and the dulfana and the news about the slaughtered pregnant girl. Stuff is breaking loose, like rock from an eroding cliff, and poor Dolores is hanging on by her fingernails. Jane Doe is yelling from her tomb, Hey, Dolores! I’m all squashed down here, lemme out! Not yet, Jane, says Dolores. Things are still too obscure. A bird calls from the yard outside:

  Whit-purr Whit-purr Whit-purr WHIT WHIT

  My blood curdles, a fist presses down on my heart. It can’t be, but I know very well that it could. It is the unmistakable call of a honeyguide. I have heard it a thousand times in Africa, but there are no honeyguides in South Florida. We used to say it was calling my husband; that was before we knew what the honeyguide meant, its ways, that it was a kind of sorcerers’ mascot because of its magical powers, how it got men to do its work of busting up beehives, how it was never stung. How it eviscerated the nestlings of other birds with a special scalpel-like tooth on its beak.