Desperate Souls

by Gregory Lamberson

  “Your voodoo shit can only go so far. This is New York, not Haiti.”

  Katrina opened her mouth to speak, but Malachai raised his hand. “Enough. I need both of y’all, and I don’t need to be listening to this shit right now. You want to take someone out, you run it by me. Period.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go out tonight,” Marcus said. “Maybe we should keep staying low.”

  Malachai shook his head. “Nah, nah. Fuck that. We’re going out for the whole world to see where we stand now. If Helman’s dead, he can’t touch us. If he’s alive, he doesn’t know shit, and we still get what we want out of him. Have a car pick up my moms and bring her to us.”

  Jake returned to Alice Morton’s house in a fresh change of clothes and a black Monte Carlo at 8:30 p.m., half an hour before her scheduled pickup. Having ditched the sunglasses when the sun went down, he wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eye and pressure pad. At 8:40, Edgar called his cell phone, which Jake set on speaker. “Talk to me.”

  “How’s your eye?”

  “The one in my head or the one in the medical waste Dumpster at Saint Vincent’s?”

  “The one that’s keeping your head from being completely empty.”

  “That one’s fine. A little tired, but it’s getting the job done. What’s new on your end?”

  “Papa Joe and his entire crew were shot, then hacked apart with machetes. Medical examiner’s going to have a hell of a time putting all these pieces together.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “One, but she isn’t talking. Joe’s little girl. I don’t know why they let her live, but she’s in deep shock.”

  I wonder if she’ll live with her aunt Alice. “When are you coming back to the city?”

  “Couple of hours. We’re getting dinner with the Rockaway detectives, then dealing with a mountain of paperwork. What’s up?”

  “I might have a lead on our runaway prince.”

  “He’s wanted for questioning. You see him—call me. Understand?”

  “Why? So you can tip him off, and he can skate circles around us?”

  “That’s my job. That’s the law. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

  By the book. “Okay, okay.”

  “Maria’s coming. I’ll call you later.”

  “Right.” Jake felt relieved to have Edgar for backup, so he ignored any frustration he felt at being hamstrung by the legal system.

  An hour later, a white SUV pulled up to Alice’s house.

  Half an hour late. Good help is hard to find. Unless Malachai wanted to show his moms who the boss is.

  Jake took out his Canon digital camera and set it to high-def video mode with night vision. He recorded a bulky black man with baggy jeans, a red shirt, and a cap getting out on the passenger side and strutting to Alice’s front door. The man pressed the doorbell and waited. When Alice came out, dressed to the nines in a black dress with sparkles, she said something to the man, who snatched the hat off his head, making Jake laugh. The man escorted Alice to the vehicle and opened the back door for her. After she got in, he climbed into the front, and the SUV took off.

  Jake zoomed in on the license plate, then set the camera aside and followed.

  They took the Triborough Bridge to Harlem River Drive. Jake’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. With his altered depth perception, driving at night felt like an entirely new experience. He kept squinting, which sent pain lancing through the nerves in his left eye socket.

  Switching lanes, he dropped back, switched lanes again, came forward. He was sure the driver of the SUV had no idea he was being followed. On 125th Street, a block away from the Apollo Theater, the SUV pulled in front of a nightclub called Caribbean. The bodyguard got out, opened the door for Alice, and walked her inside. The SUV idled at the curb.

  Meaning she’s coming right back out.

  Twenty minutes later, she did. Jake could not read her expression.

  The bodyguard helped her into the waiting vehicle and got in himself. Then the SUV pulled into traffic, and Jake faced a decision. If Malachai was not inside, and Alice had simply been given another rendezvous point, he would be unable to relocate the SUV.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Then he located a parking spot for the Monte Carlo. From the bag at his side, he took out a canister of styling mousse and sculpted his hair into a slick shape that he hoped would serve as an adequate disguise in case anyone he knew saw him. At least his strawberry blond hair appeared darker. Hopefully the pressure pad over his eye altered his features enough. Next question: Do I take my Glock or not? These days, nightclubs often employed metal detectors to stem violence.

  But that fat boy got in. He couldn’t imagine the bodyguard wasn’t strapped. Which means Malachai really is King Shit around here.

  Jake stowed the gun under the seat and got out. As he crossed 125th Street, the sound of calypso music grew louder. Inside the lobby, he paid a twenty-dollar admission fee and walked right in. No metal detector. Damn it.

  The club’s interior swallowed all unnecessary light, and Jake appreciated the darkness. The four-man band onstage performed for two dozen men and women dancing on the floor. About twenty small tables surrounded the dance floor, and another forty tables were on the upper level. Jake knew that Malachai would not be sitting at a small table. On the night of his ascension to the throne, he would have a large entourage with him.

  But he won’t be in a private room. He’ll want everyone to see him, to know that he’s celebrating his victory.

  Malachai wasn’t hard to find. Jake zeroed in on a large table in the back, around which sat ten people. Dressed in white, Malachai was the center of attention. Bottles of Dom Pérignon protruded from buckets of ice, and laughter rose above the music.

  The king’s big night.

  A beautiful woman with long, wavy hair and light-colored skin sat next to Malachai, whispering into his ear. She wore a beige dress and plenty of gold.

  Katrina? Alice had mentioned her by name. Jake believed Katrina was an alias used by Ramera Evans, the missing member of Old Nick’s voodoo research team.

  As he stepped closer to the table, but not close enough to alarm any bodyguards paying attention, his heart skipped a beat. His head turned numb, and his testicles shrank inside his scrotum. He did not know if Katrina and Ramera were the same person, but he did know Katrina under another name.

  Dawn Du Pre.

  The woman Edgar hoped to marry.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Jake stood paralyzed in the nightclub, a constant flow of bodies circumnavigating him. He fished in his pocket for his cell phone and brought it out. Training the camera lens on the celebratory table, he zoomed in on Malachai and Dawn and touched the record icon. A body passed before him and he looked up, half expecting to see one of Malachai’s thugs. Instead, a tall man wearing a suit moved around him. Looking down at the screen, he saw Malachai and Dawn snuggling and laughing.

  On top of the world, Ma.

  And then Dawn looked straight at the camera.

  Jake’s blood turned cold, and he snapped his head back, making eye contact with her.

  Bad move.

  Praying that she did not recognize him, he slapped the phone closed, moved deeper into the crowd, then returned to the entrance. He recalled having dinner with Edgar, Maria, and Dawn and driving Dawn home before he staked out Louis Rodriguez and the other two zonbies in Brooklyn.

  As he exited the nightclub, anger seethed inside him. Somehow Dawn—no, he wouldn’t call her that; Dawn was a fictional creation, a façade constructed to deceive Edgar. Maybe her real name was Ramera Evans and maybe it wasn’t, but Katrina fit her well. She had insinuated herself into Edgar’s life and seduced him into falling in love with her. Just as she had made Malachai fall in love with her.

  Why?

  In Malachai’s case, the answer was easy: power. She was the woman behind the man. But Edgar was just a cop. A civil servant.

&
nbsp; As Jake grabbed the Monte Carlo’s door handle, he froze. A cop working in the Black Magic Task Force. A tremendous source of information. Katrina wasn’t just using Edgar; she was abusing his integrity as a cop.

  Sliding behind the wheel, he looked into the rearview mirror, then retrieved his Glock. He did not intend to part with it again. Laying the weapon on the seat beside him, he closed the door and gunned the car’s engine.

  Jake drove downtown with no specific destination in mind. He wanted to do some research on Dawn Du Pre and contrast that with the little bit of information he had found on Ramera Evans. A search on Katrina, without a last name, would be hopeless. He didn’t want to return to his office suite or even Laurel’s parlor. Salt or no salt, that building was unsafe for him. He drove over to Astor Place, where he knew of a twenty-four hour Internet café, and parked within sight of the café’s wide window. Opening the glove compartment, he took out a container of Tylenol and popped four tablets into his hand.

  Inside the café, he bought a large black coffee and made himself comfortable. He fed the Tylenols into his mouth like quarters into a parking meter and washed them down with hot caffeine. The place was largely empty except for a handful of college students, and he wondered how soon this business would be unable to meet the demands of Manhattan commercial real estate and join all of the others that had closed.

  Sitting before a computer, he started with Ramera Evans. What had he missed in his first search? He knew he had to go farther back.

  It took him less than ten minutes to discover the first nugget of information. Forty minutes after that, he called Edgar.

  Jake stood at the railing of the Carl Schurz Park walkway overlooking the East River. He had come here often with Sheryl and had returned on a regular basis after her murder. It was easier than visiting her grave in the cemetery off the Long Island Expressway, though he managed to get out there at least once a month.

  Marc Gorman, the Cipher, had murdered Sheryl less than three hundred yards from where he now stood, underneath a stone viaduct close to Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence. Jake tried to shut out the memories, but he never succeeded. He had seen Sheryl’s bloodstains on the ground beneath the viaduct, and he had seen the image of her terrified face tattooed onto Gorman’s chest right before he had executed the serial killer.

  Jake had been in an insane bind then, just as he found himself now. He didn’t know how to tell Edgar that Dawn was behind the horrors that had infected their city. Gazing across the river at Roosevelt Island, he shuddered in the night breeze. But at least he felt safe here, standing in the circle of illumination provided by the overhead streetlight. A garbage scow chugged across the dark water below, and couples walked hand in hand along the stone walkway behind him. A three-quarters moon gleamed in the clear night sky.

  The sound of footsteps rose above that of waves crashing against the retaining wall, and Jake turned to see Edgar approaching him from the direction of the stone steps that curved down to street level. Edgar had unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie, and he carried his blazer over one shoulder.

  “Dr. Helman, I presume?” He sagged onto the dark green bench before Jake. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger?”

  “It’s a good idea to stay on the move when a drug lord has an army of zonbies hunting for you.”

  “I guess it does. Zonbies?”

  “The accurate term for this particular breed of undead slave.”

  “According to whom?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m up to my chin in this crap, so I think I’m entitled to know who these sources are so I can make up my own mind whether or not to believe any intel they provide. My life is on the line, too.”

  Jake had expected no less, but he had long ago promised himself that he would never reveal that he possessed Old Nick’s Afterlife research. “You’re right. Well, there’s the Internet, of course.”

  “Great.”

  “And there’s this woman I know. Sort of a psychic.”

  “Even better. Did you find her through the Psychic Friends Network?”

  “Look, we’re dealing with a lot of unknowns here. A lot of stuff that has its roots in the supernatural.”

  “Old wives’ tales, you mean.”

  “Somewhat. But what you have to realize is that these folktales and superstitions stem from reality. People with little or no scientific knowledge created them to explain what they couldn’t understand otherwise. It’s the same thing with religion. Sure, there’s a lot of fantasy and nonsense involved, but at the core is something that fundamentally exists.”

  Edgar mustered a patronizing smile. “I’m not arguing, Jake. Last night I blew away a few dozen dead people who were stumbling around like extras in a George Romero movie. I saw them with my own eyes. I had their rotting flesh on my clothes and in my hair when I got home. So I know they’re real, and I know they’re all over this city. You and I are the only ones who know what they are, and we have to do something on our own to stop all this. I just don’t want to fuck around with any comic book bullshit. How do we stop them? We can’t hunt down every one of them and blow their brains out. There’s too many of them for that. And with the way Black Magic is spreading through the city, there’s more every day.”

  Edgar had made it impossible for him to set up his revelation. It has to be now. “My psychic lady friend says there’s a way to stop them all at once.”

  “I hope it doesn’t involve a nuclear bomb, because that’s just stupid, not to mention counterproductive.”

  “No, nothing like that. The zonbies are under the control of a bokor—a voodoo sorcerer or sorceress with actual powers bestowed by a demon.”

  Edgar clapped. “So now we’re dealing with demons.”

  “They exist. So do angels. Just not the way that our traditions and cultures have indoctrinated us to view them.”

  Edgar raised his eyebrows. “I’ve seen recovering alcoholics become Jesus freaks, but I had no idea you’d joined the flock.”

  “I haven’t. I don’t subscribe to any religion. Like I said, organized religions are based on fantasy. But most of them contain germs of truth, too. Demons and angels do exist, and when my source tells me that a true voodoo witch receives her powers from a demon, I believe her.”

  “Have you ever seen a demon?”

  Jake stared at his friend. Don’t make me answer that.

  Edgar narrowed his eyes. “Have you?“

  Jake swallowed.

  “Son of a bitch!” Edgar leapt to his feet. “How the hell can I put my life in your hands if you’re delusional? Demons, witches, voodoo …”

  “Don’t forget angels,” Jake said. And ghosts. But he didn’t dare tell Edgar about the Soul Searchers who had haunted Old Nick’s tower. “Are they any harder to believe in than zonbies?”

  “I don’t know!” Edgar pulled his hair with both hands. “Aaaargh!

  Why did you pull me into this?”

  Jake folded his arms across his chest. “If anything, you were involved before I was.” And on a much deeper level than you realize.

  “I know. I know. But Maria is on the task force, too, and I don’t see her gunning down zombies.”

  “Zonbies.”

  “Whatever!”

  “Gary Brown and Frank Beck were on the task force, too.”

  Edgar recoiled as if realization had slapped him upside his head. “Oh, my God. You’re saying their deaths—”

  “—were murder. This isn’t about zonbies. It’s about voodoo. Black Magic.”

  “Why Gary and Frank?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know how dirty they were. They worked for drug lords and moonlighted as cops, not the other way around. Malachai probably ordered his bokor to take them out because Papa Joe had them looking for Malachai.”

  “So, what, this bokor put a spell on them?”

  “A curse. She did the same thing to me. I spent half a day hallucinating and hearing drums in my he
ad.”

  “Now that I believe. How do you know this bokor—if there is a bokor—is a she?”

  “I’m getting to that. It was the day after I escaped the first zonbi hit team by flipping my wheels outside One PP. She sent another team to my building, and then she screwed with my head.”

  “Why didn’t she kill you like she did Gary and Frank?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t figured that out yet. For some reason she wanted me out of commission but not dead.”

  “There’s always got to be some fucked-up shit with you, doesn’t there?”

  “It’s what makes me special.”

  Edgar sighed. “So tell me what our end game is. What do we have to do to put these things down as quickly as possible?”

  “We have to kill the bokor.”

  Edgar stared at him. “Murder.”

  Jake shrugged. “She’s their brain. Without her, they’re just a bunch of rotting corpses.”

  “And if we arrest her?”

  “On what charges? Who will believe us? And even if they put her away, she can still work her magic wherever she is. She can continue to reanimate the dead, and she can come after you and me. There’s no other way. She has to go.”

  “What if your ‘psychic lady friend’ is wrong about all this? What if you’re wrong? Are you really willing to chance killing an innocent woman?”

  And spend eternity in the Dark Realm, suffering at Cain’s hands? Not really. “She isn’t innocent. She’s killed God only knows how many people, and she’s destroying this entire city.”

  “How do you know this bokor’s a woman?”

  “Like you said, I’m always deep in shit. But I’m also a good private eye. I know how to do my legwork, and I’ve seen her with Malachai.”

  “Who is she?”

  Jake hesitated. Here we go. “You know her.”

  Edgar knitted his eyebrows together. “I know her?”

  “That’s right. You’re in this a hell of a lot worse than I am.”

  “Jesus Christ, don’t spend all night dancing around the head of a pin. Give me a name.”