Tropic of Night

by Unknown

  “I might. It seems to me you’re looking at obstruction of justice, imposture, uttering false instruments, conspiracy to commit murder. Or murders.”

  In my worst nightmares, it has never occurred to me that I would be in undeserved danger from the police, that someone might think I had committed a crime that I actually didn’t commit. I sit down, collapse actually, in the chair across from him. Maybe this is also part of Witt’s plan! To stick me with his killings. Yes, that would be a Witt thing to do, to close all doors for me, leaving only one open, one that led to him. And amusing.

  The cop says, “What you have to understand is that all the stops are out on this one. We have the closest thing to unlimited resources. We will, for example, find out where that kid came from, and we will find out what you did for every day of your life since you sank that boat. I’m not being a hard-ass here, but that’s just the way things are. If you’re not on our side in this, then you’re on his side, and if that’s the case, we’re going to drop the jailhouse on you. You’ll be under the jail. Do you understand me?” I say nothing. Things are emerging. They think I am some kind of accomplice? I have speed thoughts. Get the Mauser, kill this cop, grab Luz, take his car, escape?no, steal a boat, escape by water, Ifa said, oh, and the chicken, got to have the yellow bird, but what about the others? No, actually, the flaw is that I am not a murderer, or maybe I am, maybe I …

  I start to shake, like someone with a bad flu. Perhaps it is the amphetamine, or more magic, all chemicals anyway. He is looking at me peculiarly. He can see inside my head. I wait; he is boring into my brain, and I am so ashamed; it is worse than being naked in Mrs. W.’s office. I can’t stay on my chair. I see myself lying on the floor, from a distance. I am getting smaller and smaller. Now I see Dolores Tuoey in my kitchen. She is wearing her funny little nun scarf on her head and her acacia-wood crucifix, and lugging that big canvas bag she always had with her; she is walking away from me, down a corridor that does not exist in my kitchen, it is a shady covered arcade, like they have in the Petit Marché in Bamako. I want to shout out, Hey, Dolores, where are you going? But there is something in my mouth, an extra-large tongue perhaps, or a fur-covered creature, or a young vulture. So I can’t shout at all and she gets smaller, and stops and turns around and smiles and waves, the way she did when our paths crossed in Bamako. Good-bye, Dolores, see you in heaven!

  I am actually on the floor, I find, and he is bathing my face with a cold, damp, dish towel, very tenderly. I sit up, fast, and get to my feet; I am in the bold, self-confident phase of amphetamine now, with the appropriate teeth-grinding jaw lock. Also, I am completely Jane again. Running and hiding are over. I am so glad not to be waking up in my hammock in the moonlight! And am I ever ready to talk!

  “Well, Detective Paz,” I say, “you got me.”

  “You’re Jane Doe.”

  “Yes, Jane Clare Doe, Ph.D., of Sionnet, New York.”

  He nods, he is pleased with himself. “Okay, I’ll call an officer to take care of the kid and then we’ll go downtown and you can make a full statement.”

  “No, actually, we’ll stay right here, and I’ll tell you what you need to know. I’ve got as much interest in stopping him as you do?more, probably. But the first thing you need to do is forget your usual procedure. If you insist on taking me downtown, I’ll shut my mouth and stand on my right to remain silent except for my phone call, which will be to the firm of lawyers that has been twisting the legal system on behalf of my family since 1811, and I assure you that they will leave your police department a smoking ruin. So I’ll help, but on my terms only. Your choice.”

  It is so lovely to be bold Jane Doe again. Perhaps I’ve pushed him too far. He scowls, nods, sits down, takes out his notebook. “Okay, shoot; but if I smell any horse manure, it’s going to be a small room downtown, and bring on your lawyers.” I sit across the table from him. He says, “You said ‘him.’ That’s your husband, Malcolm DeWitt Moore.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe he’s the one committing these murders, the pregnant women, Wallace and Vargas and Powers?”

  “It’s certain.”

  “Did he kill your sister, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You’d have to ask him that.”

  “Why do you think?”

  “He was practicing a ritual he learned in Africa. It gives him power.” A partial truth, but no matter.

  “Did you help him?”

  “No. No one helps him. It’s personal. It has to be done alone.”

  “What has to be done alone? The killings?”

  “Yes, that and the consumption of the extracted body parts. Portions of the posterior atrial wall, the spleen, and the anterior uterine lining of the mother, and from the baby, a piece of the midbrain, including the pituitary, the hypothalamus, and the pineal body.”

  He gives me a long look. “So you know all about this stuff, huh?”

  “A good deal. Not as much as he does, of course.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I’m just a fairly proficient apprentice sorcerer, while he is a fully accredited, extremely powerful witch.”

  “Uh-huh,” he says, and I see he is starting to deflate. He thought he had a big piece of his big case and now he’s starting to think he’s got a mere nut who’ll walk on an insanity plea. I say, “Of course, he’s not as powerful as he will be. That’s why he’s doing the okunikua. “

  “The … ?”

  “The okunikua. It’s Olo, it means the fourfold sacrifice. It’s a dontzeh thing, or it used to be?sorry, a witch thing. The Olo disapprove of it. But my husband enjoys revivals. He needs one more baby and then it’ll be done. It’d be nice to stop him before he gets it and completes. I’m not sure anything can stop him if he completes, except maybe Olodumare.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “God. The Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and all that is seen and unseen. The Ancient of Days.”

  I smile helpfully. He puts on a false one, and leans back and knits his hands behind his head.

  “How do you know he needs one more?” he says. “Maybe this last one, in your yard, was number four. Maybe he did one somewhere else that we don’t know about.”

  “No,” I say. “They take the breastbone of the last one. It becomes an amulet. An idubde. “

  “I hope you’re not being cute, Jane,” he says. “Crazy I can deal with, but not cute. Why don’t you drop the mumbo-jumbo and just tell me how he does it. What does he have, some kind of spray? He sprays a knockout drug, right?”

  “He could. But he can make the stuff in his own body. The faila’olo, and the chint’chotuné, sorry, I mean the invisibility and the? I guess the closest translation would be power over thought via sorcery, those he can do himself. Like sweating or breathing. He’s not a regular kind of person anymore. Olo sorcerers know how to modify their bodies, through programs of ingesting mutagenic compounds, combined with mental and physical disciplines. They’re walking drug factories. They can exude psychoactive drugs, extremely powerful, highly targeted ones, from the melanocytes on their skin surface. It’s all mediated by the pineal body. That’s how he made that paarolawats at the bus stop.”

  “What’s a parlo … you mean Swett?”

  “A paarolawats is what you would call a zombie. A person who is essentially dead, but the witch can give him certain simple tasks to do and can ride in him if he wants.”

  I see pity appear in his eyes. The poor nutcase is what he’s thinking. This infuriates me. I shut my own eyes and take two deep breaths, centering. “Oh, Christ in heaven!” I cry. “Look, you think I’m some sort of pathetic cultist with a bundle of weird ideas, and you’re not listening, really, you’re not writing it down in your little book. Focus on this, Detective Paz: This is real! It’s as real as guns and cars. It’s a fifty-thousand-year-old technology that you don’t understand, and unless you do understand it enough to work with me, you have abo
ut as much chance of stopping Witt Moore as a bunch of savages have of stopping a locomotive by stretching a grass rope across the tracks.”

  “Cute,” he says, smugly. “What we’re going to find here is that your guy’s got some powder in a jar that he’s immune to himself, and he’s got some way of shaking it out so it affects people in a certain area, and he’s got a gang of fellow fruitcakes who like to cut up pregnant ladies, which explains how he can be in two places at once. Occam’s razor, Jane. You’re a scientist, you know about Occam and the simplest explanation. So we don’t have to worry about zombies or the goddamn pineal gland.”

  He pulls out a cell phone. “If you want to tell me about that version, Jane, I’m all ears. Otherwise, off we go.”

  I had not thought it would be so exhausting, and I feel a pang of sorrow and regret about me and Marcel in Chenka, what it must have been for him trying to convince me. I say, “You are a moron, Detective Paz.”

  He nods agreeably, makes a call and asks for a search team, and for someone from Family Services to take Luz to one of those friendly foster homes you read about in the papers all the time. I start to cry, and I say, “Please, couldn’t she stay here? My neighbor would be happy to take care of her. She’s had a terribly rough time and she’s very frightened of strangers.” I haven’t cried in a while, so that I am a little overwhelmed by the gush, especially since I am amphetamine bone-dry. Detective Paz is unmoved, however. He says, “Hey, listen, Jane, I’m really not a hard-ass. We can work any deal you want if you start talking sense.”

  And more in this vein, which dries me up better than speed could; fury, the best antihistamine. I say, “If you are using a little girl as a bargaining chip to get me to tell you acceptable lies, which you must know are lies, then you’re not only a moron, but a sadistic moron. But have it your way?okay, you got me. My husband is the leader of a highly trained band of skilled assassins using African juju powder to cloud the minds of his victims and their guards.”

  “Good,” he says, smugly. “And you’re a part of all this? The band?”

  I say, “Oh, Christ! Don’t be stupid! Sorry, that’s not an option. Think, will you! I am a rich woman who’s been hiding in pauperage, doing menial work, for two and a half years. Who was I hiding from, and why?”

  “The cops,” he says with assurance.

  “Because I killed my sister?”

  “Or helped him do it, and took the rap for it by faking that suicide.”

  I see how this is so much simpler for him to believe, that criminal mastermind with hosts of minions and exotic drugs, simpler than what is really happening. I sink back into silence. There is no point in thinking further now.

  Cars arrive. Cops emerge, one of them a female. I am read my rights, cuffed, and placed in the back of a patrol car. I see Paz talking to the lynch-mob man. The man looks at me with those eyes, which I am surprised to see are kindly and sad. Another car pulls up, with a Children’s Services badge on the side. Out of it comes a large black woman in a violet pantsuit, who could be Mrs. Waley’s long-lost sister. She talks to Paz for a while, and then, to my surprise and relief, gets back in her car and drives away. I see Paz walk across the street and speak with Dawn. I may have misjudged him, or perhaps he is a more subtle manipulator than he first appeared to be.

  The policewoman drives me to police headquarters, where I’m placed in a cell by myself. After about forty minutes, Paz comes by and takes me to an interview room, windowless, tiled, with the usual one-way glass mirror/window, and asks me if I am ready to make a statement. I say I’m not, and I wish to contact my attorney. He seems disappointed, but tries to hide it behind the usual bland cop mask. I thank him, however, for not giving Luz to Mrs. Waley’s sister, and he shrugs it off. “No problem,” he says. I suspect that it will be a problem if his superiors ever find out. I’m pretty sure he knows who Luz really is, and he hasn’t blown the whistle as far as I know, which will be an even bigger problem for him, covering up on a homicide. Why is he doing it? Deep waters here. After he leaves, I wait ten or so minutes and then a female officer enters and takes me to a phone.

  I dial one of the few numbers I hold in memory. A woman answers, “Mr. Mount’s office.” I ask to speak to him and she asks who’s calling and I say, “Jane Doe, his sister.” A considerable pause here. “Jane Doe is deceased,” she says. I say, “Yes, but I’m alive again. Get him for me, would you? And tell him I could smell the flowers of Bermuda when I died on the North Rock Shore.” I have to repeat this and chivvy her a little, but she does something and there is some light classical hold music, Boccherini, I believe. My brother comes on the line. “Jane?” His voice is hesitant and breaking, and I start to leak again.

  I say, “Yeah, it’s me, Josey.” I listen to the hiss of the line. My hand on the phone is trembling and sweaty. I am not ready for this, for the terror of love.

  “How could you!”in a yell that must have brought his secretary running. “How could you do that to me? And Dad? Jesus Christ, Janey! What the fuck!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? No, sorry is when you’re late for a dinner date, not when you fucking pretend to commit suicide. Ah, shit, Janey …”

  Sobs come across the continent, minutes of them, in which I join. Then he asks me why. I say that I was afraid. I tell him that Witt has done it, that Witt is the Mad Abortionist of Miami, too. I tell him the whole story, as much of it as I could recall.

  He listens in silence, and then?and here is why I love Josiah Mount?he doesn’t suggest a stay in a mental institution, he doesn’t ask a lot of questions about why I did this, or failed to do that. He just says, “What do you need?”

  I tell him what.

  TWENTY-SIX

  11/27 Mdina, Mali

  The trader Togola easily found, has a compound down by the river, stinks of dead things, curing animal skins abound, his two wives and uncounted children all at work scraping, skinning, salting, drying. Showed him the Olo artifact?observed him closely. Saw fear first, then feigned ignorance. Told him I wanted to be taken to where he found it. I flashed big money, not hard to overawe people who see $500 in a good year, should be ashamed of myself but am not. I have the fever. I kept laying twenties on the mat as I talked, Togola staring at stack like a hypnotized hen. When I reached fifty bills I stopped, and took up half the stack. This when we start, and this (the other half) when we arrive. And as much again when we return here. Fucker rolled. W. looked at me with contempt, neocolonialist me, prob. remembers me and Colonel Musa, and how my overbearing worked out in that case. Don’t give a shit anymore.

  11/28 Mdina

  W. and Malik our driver off to Nossombougou to get supplies, while I stay here and keep Togola company, so he won’t scram with my advance. And he is frightened, too. No luck getting him to cop to source of the fear, language problem, I think, 80% of what I say = i ko mun, roughly “come again?” or “what did you say?” According to T., Olo are all witches, if they don’t want you to find them, you won’t find them, that the river is full of jina, or diables, that the Olo are eaters of human flesh. I am dying to go meet them.

  More worried about half-assed way we are planning to leave. December is high water, I want to be sure that wherever we float off to there will be enough water in the channels to float us back, why I decided not to go back to Bamako and do serious logistics. Box with valuables in it is with Dolores at the mission so

  Later. They’re back. Asked W. if he got everything OK and he said, Yeah, we went to Wal-Mart. Feeble, but really the first little joke he has made in a long time. Maybe he is coming around. Sent Malik back to Bamako with message for Dolores, telling her to call or wire Lagos to let Greer know what we are doing. Said we might be gone as long as a month & if anything turns up will come back and mount a serious operation.

  12/2 On the Baoulé

  We are in an 18-foot pirogue with a seven-horsepower outboard, Togola at the stern, the two of us midships under a woven raffia sunshade with our suppl
ies and gear in bags and baskets arranged around us, maybe six inches of freeboard. Area we are entering called the Boucle de Baoulé, the “buckle” of the Baoulé River = inland delta?an area of about three thousand square kilometers w/ no significant roads. Channel here varies from 60 to 20 meters in width, 3 to 5 m depth. Thick vegetation on the high banks, shrubs and small acacia trees, occasional larger ironwood and red silk-cotton trees. Large numbers of trees skeletal. Togola says river was much higher in the old days, reached to the tops of the banks and beyond at high water. I believe him; the whole of Mali is drying up, the desert moving south. Meanwhile, the region is alive with birds, we putt-putt through a continual chatter and screech. Saw a paradise whydah and a martial eagle, the latter on a dead limb with what looked like a monkey.

  I have not been in a boat in a while, I find myself ridiculously happy. It is Swallows and Amazons again, me and Josey exploring the channels of the Sound in our skiffs at age eight and eleven, pretending we were in Africa or Amazonia. Now this is Africa, and I am with W. and our faithful native guide. Ridiculous, our guide farthest thing from faithful & my pal and husband replaced by surly stranger. But he will come back, I know it, I see little sparks of the real him all the time, when his guard is down, like that joke about Wal-Mart, and this morning he made a joke about getting lost and having to eat human flesh. Tastes like chicken, a running gag, he says it of every new food. Pathetic hopes. But what else can I

  12/3 On the Baoulé

  We proceeded on, as Lewis & Clark used to say. Millet porridge and coffee for breakie, rice, beans, peanut sauce, for lunch, w/ tea. Tea and sesame sticks around four. When it gets dark, we find a low bank and camp. DEET vs. mosquitoes, they swarm around us anyway. Togola lights a fire, and I set up our tent (a French military thing, and clumsy) while W. mostly idle. Then I cook our evening meal. Togola watches, fascinated; he has never seen a white woman cook before. This convinces him that I’m indeed a woman and not some weird third sex peculiar to the tobabou . A mistake to generalize about African culture, but a fairly safe one might be that men don’t cook. Decided not to stand on my high feminist horse, too exhausting. Can’t help noticing W. seems to prefer me as an African (or “real”) woman. Absurd man.