by Baxter Clare
Gail frowned, “He was a Colonel?”
“That’s what No’s calling him. You know, the chicken? Colonel Sanders?”
“Ah, gotcha, that ineffable, indefatigable police humor. How’d Lewis do on her first solo?”
“All right. Made a couple mistakes but mostly ‘cause No prodded her into them.”
“Why are you all so hard on her?”
“Boot camp,” Frank shrugged. “Everybody goes through it.”
“Sounds like a frat house hazing,” Gail argued. “Inane and senseless.”
“Naw, there’s a reason. If she can’t take a little shit in the squad room she won’t be able to take it on the street. I’d rather know now than when my back’s against a wall. It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s just so juvenile.”
“We like to call it that ineffable, indefatigable po-leece humor. When do you think you’ll get to the Colonel’s post?”
“Oh, God, we’re so backed up right now. Handley’s sick. Jacob and I’ve been in court all week. And I should be at work tonight instead of going to the opera. A slit throat, obvious cause of death, we’ll be lucky to get to it by Monday. I don’t think I put your boy high on the rotation.”
“No big,” Frank said. “I was just wondering.”
Trailing her fingers under Gail’s dress, she added, “I don’t think you can tell us much more than we already know.”
“Better stop that or we’ll miss the opening act,” Gail murmured.
“That wouldn’t be so bad.”
“At these prices, yes it would.”
During the opera, Frank studied Gail’s rapt profile. She had to admit she was having a hell of a lot of fun with the doc. But she hadn’t lied to Tracey; it was complicated. The doc was bright and generous and sexy, but living alone all her life had spoiled her. She held Frank up to standards she wasn’t sure she could meet.
Still, Frank was game. Having loved and lost, she was willing to make concessions. She had to admit it was scary as hell, but it felt good to care about someone again. And be cared for.
She slipped her hand into Gail’s, rewarded by a bright, quick smile. Tracey’s tapping finger echoed against her heart.
12
Monday afternoon Frank slouched into Ike’s old chair and draped a long leg over the arm.
“What’s the good news?” she asked.
Jill shook her head, so Johnnie answered for her.
“People are scared, man. They don’t want to talk about Danny or any one connected with Mother Lo-ove-Jo-ones,” he drew out. “Like the ground’s gonna open up and swallow ‘em or somethin’. They’re all spooked, huh?”
He looked to Jill for corroboration but she only made a disgusted sound. She made a lot of those lately.
“What?” Frank encouraged.
“I don’t like this,” she blurted. “I don’t like this case.”
“Yeah, she’s spooked, too,” her partner teased. “Thinks she’s gonna get a spell put on her or somethin’.”
“Johnnie, shut up,” Jill snapped.
“True?” Frank asked.
“I just don’t like talking with any of these people. I don’t like their vibes.”
“What vibes?”
“Just creepy. Weird.”
“Come on, you gettin’ soft on me?”
“I’m not soft,” the detective defended, “They just creep me out.”
“That’s how those cults operate,” Noah chimed in. “They pull a rabbit out of their hat and make everyone think it’s magic when all it is is tricks and illusions. They make you think they’re powerful, and then once you believe that, you’re afraid of them. And then they’ve got you. That’s their power, the ability to make you afraid.”
Waving his hand, he advised, “It’s all superstition and mumbo-jumbo. Don’t worry about it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jill muttered.
Frank looked at Diego.
“What do you say, Taquito? Horseshit or real?”
Diego shrugged.
“I don’t know,” he shrugged, surly. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. My grandpa used to tell stories about brujos, witches and stuff. How they could turn into coyotes or snakes, make people do things. I don’t know.”
“Lewis, I know you believe it,” Frank mocked.
“Nuh-uh! I don’t believe they can change into animals or make anybody do something they don’t want to do. It’s like Noah says, I think they can make you believe certain things. And then once you believe that, they make you believe other things.”
“It’s just a form of brainwashing,” Noah interjected.
“Yeah, like that. It’s all that mind over matter, power of suggestion foolishness. That’s all that voodoo stuff is—but mind you, it can work. I’m not saying it’s magic or nothin’, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. Like Noah says, they make you believe their nonsense. You think it works so therefore it does. It’s a placebo religion, that’s all.”
“Aren’t all religions?” Noah asked, provoking Jill’s Catholic ire. She cut him a look, but Frank said, “Darcy?”
He sat back from the report he was typing and measured his answer.
“It’s a complicated question. There are a lot of permutations to consider.”
“Permutations? Johnnie said mincingly to Noah.
His old partner snickered, “You ignorant bastard. You probably think that’s a fruit going bad.”
“Like what?” Frank asked.
“Like whether you’re talking about simple hoodoo, or something more complex. Like voodoo.”
“What’s the fucking difference?” Johnnie said. “It’s all just ignorant dirt-water bullshit anyway.”
“Not really,” Darcy drawled, his accent faint. “There’s a big difference, and both of them can be very complex.”
“How so?” Frank pressed, intrigued as always by the man’s incongruities. Barrel-chested, bandy-legged, and thick-armed, he drove a Harley, chewed Skoal, and had more tats than most of the bangers he locked up. He kept his own counsel, never joined his colleagues for drinks after work, and rarely joined in conversation unless asked. Off-duty he wore diamond studs in his ear and biker leathers. He looked like a Hell’s Angel who’d rather stomp someone in the face than talk to them, but when he opened his mouth a blind man would think he was talking to a tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking professor. The biker facade concealed a man with a sharp eye for details and anomalies at a crime scene, a keen understanding of criminal predilection, and, if the incident with the hidden .44 was true, an uncanny instinct.
Darcy picked up an empty Dr Pepper can. He squirted a thin stream of tobacco juice into it before answering, “Hoodoo’s basically folk medicine. Surprisingly effective medicine. It’s based on Old World healing principles and incorporates a large botanical pharmacopoeia while working on the same principles as faith healing. The root doctors—that’s what we called them in Louisiana— they have some repute for wizardry, but they’re not true mambos or priests like you’ll find in voodoo. They can make concoctions and juju’s for practically every domestic malaise you can think of: How to keep a husband from straying, how to get him to leave, how to come into money, how to get pregnant. You name the problem and I guarantee there’s a root doctor somewhere that will know the right combination of herbs and powders to produce satisfaction.”
Darcy’s audience was attentive, so he continued.
“Now voodoo, that’s actually a religion. I guess I should say an American bastardization of a religion. It developed in this country when Haitian slaves were introduced into Louisiana. It was based on the vodun religion that the slaves practiced back in Africa. Haiti was a Catholic island and the slaves there were all ostensibly converted to Catholicism. What actually happened, was that they syncretized their African gods with the Catholic saints. When the slaves were praying in front of an altar to Saint Barbara they were actually worshipping one of their old gods that had a lot of Saint Barbara’s attributes.
The Catholic masters looked on approvingly and the slaves practiced idolatry right under their noses.
“American slaves didn’t have that opportunity. Except for French Louisiana, most slave owners practiced some variation of Protestantism, so the slaves didn’t have the opportunity to co-opt their gods to the dominant religion. American slaves were forced to take their religious practices underground, and as they splintered off among the various slave holders, they lost touch with their priests and priestesses. They practiced secretly—what they could remember—but as their old beliefs faded they were be replaced by the prevailing religion of the area. The use of the traditional herbs and medicines—and their faith in them—that remained. That’s what we call hoodoo.”
“How the fuck do you know all this shit?” Johnnie interrupted. “They teach you this in Coon-Ass 101?”
Darcy ignored him and Frank appreciated that that was how he had decided to deal with Johnnie’s juvenile animosity.
“You know anything about a Saint Barbara’s Spiritual Church of the Seven Powers?” Frank asked.
Stroking his longer-than-regulation moustache, he mused, “I’m not sure. Spiritual churches are big in the South. They’re hard to define. Kind of an amalgamation of southern Baptist, Pentecostal, and spiritism, all rolled into one complicated ball. They use seances to call down the dead, all in the name of Jesus. And the Church of the Seven Powers. To the best of my knowledge it’s an offshoot of the Church of the Lukumi. That was the first officially recognized church of santeria in the United States.”
“Santeria,” Lewis interjected. “That’s Cuban, right? That’s what those sickos in Matamoros believed in.”
Darcy said, “Yes, they were sickos all right, but they weren’t practicing true santeria any more than Timothy McVeigh was practicing true Christianity. They took a basically benign theology and ran riot with it. They twisted it to their own sick ends. And yes, it’s an island religion. Remember how I said Haiti was predominantly Catholic so the slaves were allowed to syncretize their African gods? The same thing happened in Cuba and throughout the Caribbean. Brazil too. That’s how santeria and palo mayombe, candomble, all the Afro/Latino religions came into existence.”
“So Mother Love-Jones is practicing santeria?”
“Well, I couldn’t say for sure,” Darcy drawled. “I’d say with a ‘spiritual’ in the name of her church she’s probably incorporating some form of ancestor worship in her services, and with the Seven Powers and Saint Barbara tacked on, it sounds like some derivative of santeria, yes.”
Jill spoke as if she’d tasted something bad. “Don’t they sacrifice animals?”
Darcy nodded, “That was one of the obstacles in legalizing their church, yes.”
“What kind of animals?” Lewis asked.
“Usually fowl. Sometimes a pig or a goat if they need to make a particularly potent offering.”
“Larger the sacrifice, the greater their power?” Frank asked.
“Something like that, yes. The animals are usually drawn over the supplicant’s body to draw out whatever sickness or problem is plaguing him. The theory is the animal will absorb the trouble and then it’s killed and offered to whichever god they’re propitiating. And different gods have different preferences.”
“What about people?” Noah asked. “They ever sacrifice people?”
Darcy spit into his can and shook his head.
“Only in Hollywood.”
“And Matamoros,” Jill added.
Following Noah’s line of thought, Frank asked, “How do they kill the animals?”
All the detectives were silent while Darcy considered Frank’s question. Holding her blue eyes with his own, he finally answered, “They slit their throats and bleed them. Then they offer the blood to the gods.”
The squad was silent until Jill said, “That’s it. I’m going home.”
Jerking the sports coat off the back of his chair, Johnnie said, “I’m right behind you.”
Frank looked at Lewis. The rookie hung her head and muttered, “Shit.”
Noah cackled and clapped her on the back. “Better get some garlic and wooden stakes, partner.”
“No, you need silver bullets,” Johnnie said. “Or maybe a priest, like in The Exorcist.”
Frank shot her rumpled detective a look. He was blithely ignorant, but the skin on Frank’s arms rose as she pictured Father Merrin in front of his stone demon.
Johnnie went on, “Isn’t that right, Swamp Boy? Isn’t that what she needs? Or maybe one of those powders ya’ll concoct out of snake skin and gator teeth.”
Darcy didn’t even bother looking up. Johnnie bent his big frame over the smaller detective.
“I’m talkin’ to you, boy.”
Darcy put his pen down, considering the face inches above his.
Frank said, “Johnnie. Go home.”
“I’m talkin’ to Swamp Boy here. Just tryin’ to have a friendly conversation only he’s not being so friendly. Where’s that southern hospitality, boy?”
“Conversation’s over,” Frank said. “Go home.”
“Since when can’t I talk to my colleagues after work?” Johnnie argued.
Frank’s eyes iced up and she said, “Don’t make me say it again.”
“Fuck.”
“Come on,” Noah said, putting his arm around Johnnie. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
“Fuck off,” Johnnie answered.
Frank stayed where she was until he left the squad room, then withdrew to her office. Darcy followed.
“I don’t need you to defend me,” he complained.
Frank checked a sigh.
“And I don’t you need you losing your temper and pulling a Sandman on him.”
Darcy had been demoted from Venice Division to Figueroa for planting his supervisor’s face into the beach, through which action he’d become known as the Sandman.
“I wasn’t going to do that.”
“Good. Johnnie’s got a short fuse at the end of the day and I was tired of it. Do you have a problem with that?”
Darcy chewed the inside of his lip.
“No,” he mumbled before turning around, squeezing past a flustered Jill outside Frank’s door.
Now what?
Frank wondered if she’d run into Johnnie on the way out.
“I thought you left.”
“I did. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure.”
Jill closed the door and Frank waited while she dragged a chair closer to the desk. Maternity may have suited Jill, but working a full case load didn’t. She looked pale and tired. Big circles under her eyes were vainly covered with make-up and her hair looked dull and brittle. Frank remembered it being thick and deep red. They used to call her the Fire Truck because of her flaming hair and quick response to a hot man.
“I need to ask you a favor.”
Jill twisted her hands in her lap and Frank braced herself for the resignation speech.
“I know it sounds silly, but I want off this Duncan case.”
“How come?” Frank asked, relieved.
“I’m just not comfortable with it. I know it sounds ridiculous. I can go into a roach-infested tenement and have maggots crawl out of a two-week-old corpse and up my leg, but I don’t want to deal with this devil worship shit. Not now. Not with a baby to look after.”
“What devil worship shit are we talking about?”
“What Johnnie said. For once he’s right. People don’t want to talk about Love-Jones. They’re scared of her. You can see it. One man I talked to yesterday, he’s retired from Caltrans, a straight up fellow, and he went off, telling me not to mess with her if I knew what was good for me, that she was a witch, she could make things happen. He almost slammed the door in my face!
“Then one of my CIs—I didn’t even call her, she called me, she lives near Love-Jones’ place on Slauson—she told me about some really bizarre things that go on there. Granted she’s not the most reputable source, but for her to c
all me out of the blue and tell me she’s seen lightning flashing over that place without a cloud in the sky, and red lights on at all hours of the morning?”
Jill’s voice climbed as she added, “And her boyfriend? She says he fights pit bulls and none of them will walk by that building. She said they start peeing and whimpering like puppies whenever they get near it. And to top it all off, she tells me the dumpster in front of their place is always filled with dead chickens and pigeons. There are even goats sometimes! I just don’t want anything to do with it. I’m asking you to take me off, Frank. Please.”
“No problem. I was going to put everybody back on regular duty anyway.”
Jill was visibly relieved and Frank leaned forward.
“Let me ask you something. Personal. I don’t mean any disrespect, I just don’t know. If you believe in God, and have a strong faith like you seem to, then wouldn’t you feel protected from evil? From characters like Mother Love?”
Jill’s head shook vehemently.
“Oh, no. Evil’s everywhere, and it’s insidious. I have tremendous faith but I’m not perfect. The thing about the devil is he uses any chink in your armor, any weakness in your belief as a foothold to claim your soul. It might start out innocently enough, but Satan’s persistent. He digs in and has all eternity to undermine your faith, until you finally, without even knowing it, have crossed to the dark side. He’s patient and clever. And he’s dangerous. Don’t underestimate him, Frank.”
“No. I won’t,” Frank reassured. She’d never seen this evangelical side to Jill and was slightly unnerved.
Jill stood, all tired pride and defiance. “Anything else?”
When Frank shook her head no, Jill smiled weakly.
“I know I probably sound like some crack-pot zealot, but I’d rather be safe than sorry. This just feels all wrong to me.”
She seemed to consider an idea, then added, “Be careful, Frank. And take care of Cheryl. She’s so green. Don’t let her get hurt.”
“I won’t,” Frank promised.
Jill left Frank stinging with the memory of Kennedy bleeding out in her arms. That had been Frank’s fault. No. She wouldn’t let anything happen to Lewis.