Shadow of a Thief

by Norman Green

  Dedication

  For Christine

  Epigraph

  The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood there and they here. This is not so.

  Meister Eckhart

  Step Eleven

  So who am I, my friend, and who are you

  How can I understand this world, this life

  or even just myself, what do I do

  to find my place in all this noise and strife

  I know I haven’t listened all that well

  or even thought to ask until too late

  for what is right for me I cannot tell

  am I this dumb or is it just my fate

  But I am really lost, I’m screwed this time

  alone, I’ll always make the poorest choice

  unless you help me, I will never find

  my way. And so I try to hear your voice

  But even now, I know I’m faithless, still

  afraid that you won’t speak, afraid you will

  d. e. kellogg

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Interrugnum

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Interregnum

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Finito

  Coda

  An Excerpt from The Last Gig Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  About the Author

  Also by Norman Green

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  The safest time to walk lower Manhattan’s Avenue D, in Corey Jackson’s opinion, was early in the morning. Early in the morning, chances were, the ghouls who ruled the projects at night would be passed out somewhere, not roaming around looking for entertainment the way they were now. Half an hour to midnight, Avenue D, a white kid from South Carolina with his African girlfriend, even the cops would tell you that you were asking for it, and for no good reason. But at the tender age of twenty-three Corey already knew enough about women to know that there were some arguments you weren’t gonna win. “Babe,” he said. “Babe, where the hell are we going?”

  “This way,” she said, and she kept on walking.

  Corey could not wait to get back to Batesburg.

  Two more semesters, that’s what he kept telling himself, two more semesters and he would be a real teacher, with the degree to prove it, and that would allow him to move out of the purgatory otherwise known as New York City. A degree would give him a leg up, a toehold in the middle class, a degree and a job teaching high school science and he just might be the first of the Batesburg Jacksons not to live in a trailer since the damn things were invented . . . It sounded like a good plan, it had always sounded good, and sometimes you had to take a shot, but you never knew when you were gonna hit a pothole somewhere. You never knew when you were gonna wind up walking down a sidewalk in a neighborhood where you and everybody else knew you didn’t belong.

  You never knew when you were gonna fall in love, or with whom.

  She was Nigerian. Her name was Aniri and she was the most beautiful person Corey had ever known, surely the sweetest, the kindest, the sexiest, the most wonderful thing God had ever put legs under. Okay, sure, she was black and he was white and that might be viewed as a problem by some, particularly by his never-been-north-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line mother, but either she would adapt and accept Aniri or she wouldn’t, and Corey was okay with that. And nobody in Batesburg was ever going to hear that she once worked as a call girl. And okay, Aniri didn’t have a green card but Corey was sure that he could find a work-around for that; hell, people did it all the time. No, the real problem was that Aniri was, essentially, owned and operated by the escort service that occupied the top two floors of the Hotel Los Paraíso on Tenth Street. Corey was no pushover and he was not without courage, but he knew when he was in over his head. The men who ran the escort service were out of his weight class and, even after months of racking his brain, he still had no idea how to pry Aniri out of their clutches.

  Aniri, though, had a plan, and that was why they were walking south on Avenue D at eleven-thirty on this particular Thursday night. “Babe,” Corey said. “Are you sure about this? A witch doctor? If my grandmother could see me now . . .”

  Aniri whirled to face him. “Corey Jackson, you have no idea how hard this is for me! It’s costing me two thousand dollars to see this guy!”

  “Two thousand bucks! Now I know you’re crazy!”

  Aniri grabbed a handful of his shirt. Corey could feel her trembling. She pulled him close and hissed in his face. “Corey, this could be my only chance. Now we’re going to go see this man, and I want you to keep your trap shut. When your mouth opens the only sounds I want to hear are ‘Yes sir’ and ‘Yes ma’am.’ If the word ‘witch’ or ‘doctor’ comes out of you I will kill you myself. I need this, Corey. We need this. You know I don’t ask you for a lot . . .”

  It was true. “But Babe, those guys in Los P are Chinese. They probably don’t even believe in this shit . . .”

  “They believe in pain! And we are going to bring them some.”

  He had never seen her this adamant before, or this scared. She released her grip on his shirt and tried to pat out the wrinkles she’d made. “Okay, baby,” he said. “I’ll do this. For you.”

  “Do it for us,” she told him, and she popped the collar on his jacket, even though she knew he hated it. “And try not to look like you’re from South Carolina, just for an hour or two.”

  He sighed. “Yeah. Sure.” At the next corner, they turned off the well-lit avenue and into the relative gloom of Eighth Street. They were almost to the end of the block, steps from Avenue C when Aniri stopped in front of a tiny storefront. It was painted a dull, powdery red but the door was black. There was a display of dust-covered African masks in the single window. Aniri pushed open the door, bells jangled, and they entered.

  There was a woman behind a tiny counter and she murmured something in Yoruba, Corey knew it was Yoruba because Aniri murmured something back, her fear clouding her voice.

  There was a skull on a shelf nearby. It looked like a human skull, and if it was a reproduction, it was damned accurate. The lower jaw was missing. Two of the molars on one side had been implants, they stood away from the bone on tiny steel studs. This can’t be real, Corey thought, and he inched closer, peering.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Aniri whispered harshly.

  Corey Jackson put his hands in his pockets and began to pray.

  Money changed hands.

  Aniri counted out twenty crisp Ben Franklins. Corey tried not to think about how much Aniri paid and in what currency in order to earn each of those bills. There was another murmured conversation, and then Aniri removed her watch and handed it to the woman before turning to Corey. “Give me your watch, baby. And your cell. We can’t take anything mechanical out there with us.”

  “Out where?” Corey handed her his watch and fished around in his coat pocket for his phone. He preferred to keep it clipped to his belt but Aniri would yell at him and call him a nerd when he did that.

  “Shh. This is an earth ceremony.”

  “Oh great, an earth ceremony. Does that mean like the alleyway out back?”r />
  “Coreeee . . . Please?”

  He didn’t know if she knew it but he was powerless over her, he would do anything to get her to love him back. The woman behind the counter took the phone and the watches, put them in an old cigar box and stuck the box up on the shelf, next to the skull. “Please wait here,” she said softly. She opened a door behind the counter and went out. Corey looked at Aniri as the door closed. “Life with you,” he said, “is many things, but never dull.”

  She locked her pale brown eyes on his. “Someday in South Carolina,” she said, “what a great story this will be.”

  “Right now,” he told her, “I can’t even picture what South Carolina looks like.”

  The woman came back, beckoned them to the door. Aniri went first, Corey followed. The door shut behind them with a click. Three wooden steps down and they stood in the dirt of a courtyard. There was an arbor made of greenish pressure-treated lumber shielding them from the night sky. There was a large silver-colored tray on the ground in the very middle of the courtyard, with a plastic Clorox bottle and a paper bag next to it. A man sat in the corner. He wore a dark blue pin-striped suit, a crisp light blue shirt, a dark tie fastened with a gold pin, black penny loafers, no socks, dark glasses. He looked to be no older than Corey.

  Corey stared.

  “You were expecting maybe feathers?” The voice was pure Brooklyn, USA. “And a grass skirt. With a bone in my nose. Please, have a seat.”

  Aniri went from standing to sitting in one graceful movement. Corey did the best he could.

  The guy in the suit looked at Corey. “You gotta have questions,” he said. “Am I right? I know you gotta.”

  “I’m not allowed,” Corey said. Aniri stared at him, her lips pursed. “I promised.”

  The guy looked at Aniri and laughed. “Things we do for the ladies.” He fished a thin, plastic-tipped cigar out of an inside pocket, stuck it in his mouth and lit it with a plastic lighter. “How about I ask the questions.”

  “Shouldn’t we, ahh . . .” Corey glanced at Aniri. “Shouldn’t we be telling you about the, ahhh, situation we, ahhh . . .”

  “No. I don’t need to know nothing about any of that.”

  “Now I’m really confused.”

  “The Arisha is gonna speak to her tonight, not to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I am only the Babalao.” He leaned forward, cigar in his teeth, picked up the Clorox bottle. It was filled with white sand, and he poured it onto the silver tray. “I know that don’t tell you a hell of a lot. You ever hear of the I Ching?”

  The acrid smell of the Babalao’s cigar was starting to burn Corey’s eyes. “Yeah. Pennies and nickels. It’s the Taoist book of divination. You toss the coins, and then from the pattern they make, there’s supposed to be a corresponding verse in the book. Superstition, really, is all it is. There isn’t a shred of evidence, scientific or otherwise . . .” He looked over at Aniri and stopped talking.

  “Yeah,” the Babalao said. “Figured we’d come to that. The problem with Americans is that most of us don’t know what we don’t know.” He upended the paper bag. A bunch of wrinkled brown balls poured out, along with what looked like a desiccated chicken foot. He picked up the chicken foot and began raking the sand with it. “You a religious guy, my brother? You believe in God? Don’t worry about Aniri, you can answer.”

  Corey wanted to say no but he couldn’t. Hadn’t he been praying, just moments ago? The Babalao continued raking until he had the sand spread out over the tray to his satisfaction. He picked up one of the balls, rolled it in his fingers, held it out over the tray, and dropped it. “Easier question,” he said. “Why did that dried goat testicle just hit the sand?”

  “What the fuck? A goat’s testicle? Seriously? And a chicken’s foot?”

  “It’s a betel nut,” the Babalao said. “Sorry, man, I couldn’t resist. And why a betel nut? What could I tell you. Why do Catholic priests wear dresses? Who knows? It’s just the way it’s done. Lug nuts would prolly work just as good. But why did it hit the sand when I let go of it?”

  “Because you dropped it. Gravity . . .”

  “Which is what?”

  “Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces . . .” Corey’s voice faded as his conviction waned.

  “There are five fundamental forces in the universe, by the way, not four. Think, now.” The Babalao leaned back, puffed on his cigar, picked up two more balls. “You stick your finger in a socket, right, you feel it. Electricity is made of stuff, and we know what it is, even if we can’t see it.”

  “Electrons,” Corey said, and then he racked his brain. Gravity, electromagnetism, the weak atomic force, the strong atomic force. That made four . . .

  “So they say.” The Babalao leaned forward, dropped the two balls in the sand. “Something just pulled those down. Something is holding them down right now. Some kinda force. So what’s it made of? Gravitons?”

  “No.” Corey shook his head. “I’ve heard that argument and it’s complete bull, it doesn’t even work in a quantum environment. No such thing as gravitons. We don’t know . . .”

  The Babalao finished his sentence for him. “How power works. Or force, if you like that word better. We can measure it. We know how to use it. But we don’t really know all that much about it.” He continued dropping his betel nuts until they were all in the sand. He leaned forward again, handed his cigar to Aniri. “Inhale,” he said. “And hold it.”

  The tip glowed as she complied, and she handed the cigar back to the Babalao, who passed it to Corey. “Inhale,” he said. “And hold it.”

  Corey knew this was his last chance to back out, but if he did he would spend the rest of his life wondering whatever happened to the first woman he’d ever really loved. He could hear the cigar burn and pop as he inhaled.

  His ears began to ring.

  “Would you like to see,” the Babalao asked him, “how power works?”

  Corey stared at him.

  “Exhale,” the Babalao said to Aniri. “Blow it out.” He turned to Corey. “Exhale. Blow it out.”

  Corey exhaled, feeling light-headed.

  “The fifth fundamental force in the universe,” the Babalao said. “Would you like to feel it? Ideally, there should be nothing between you and the earth.”

  “No shoes,” Corey said. He sat still but his mind reeled.

  “No nothing,” the Babalao said.

  You ain’t scaring me, Corey thought, and he clambered to his feet and began to strip. Aniri, her eyes wide in disbelief, did the same. Jesus, Corey thought dimly, she’s as beautiful as Eve or any woman since. God, I love this woman . . . And then they were sitting again, bare skin on dirt, and the Babalao passed the cigar to Aniri. “Inhale.” And then it was Corey’s turn. “Inhale.” The edges of his world began to blur and then his field of vision began to narrow. He heard the Babalao’s voice, sensed him up close. “I am the guardian,” the Babalao said. “I am the keeper of secrets . . .”

  And then Corey’s world went black.

  Chapter One

  There are still some lonely places in the world, if you go looking.

  In some circles it’s known as a geographical cure; it’s the notion that you can walk away from your problems, that you can relocate yourself to some new place and in the process become new yourself. The consensus is that it’s a sucker’s bet, that it leaves you lost and alone and still dealing with all the same old shit, but man, is it ever a seductive idea, and if it’s a trap, it’s one I’ve fallen into more than once. And sometimes, just for maybe a day or so, it really feels like it’s working . . .

  I stood where the inrushing waves reached up to my knees and I worked the long rod, flinging the heavy lure out into the verge of the sea, feeling the weight on the end of the line, reeling it back in slowly, waiting for the twitch, the hit that almost never comes, repeating the process over and again. I had come to love the feel of the cold wind, the weak sun, the unending surf, the rod like a living thi
ng in my hands. More than that I loved how my mind seemed to empty, how for that one moment I could just be, nothing more than now, no past, no future, and not another soul in sight. There was something eternal about the way the hard, thin orange sunrise veiled itself in a cold northern haze while the chill breeze stole through my ragged flannel shirt with a pickpocket’s touch, feeling for warmth.

  It wasn’t the end of the world, that’s what the locals said, but you could see it from there. I never had a good reason for choosing that particular stretch of the Maine coast, any other spot should have done just as well and sometimes I thought about heading farther north, farther away from other people, but I hadn’t done it. For four hundred and thirty-one days I stayed, four hundred and thirty-one days without any of the chemical assistants that had been propping me up for most of my life; it was my longest stretch of abstinence since my teens. I was only substituting one compulsion for another and I knew that, but it seemed to work. The shadows that haunted me were not far away, though, they were as close as the nearest pharmacy, and if there were no drugstores, a bottle of Johnny Dark would awaken the dragon just as easily, so I stayed close to that one spot where I felt like I was safe, knee-deep in salt water. With the rod in my hands, I couldn’t pick up anything else, that’s what I told myself, and if it wasn’t quite the life that I’d been intended for, what could I do? I waited, wondering if I might see some kind of a sign, but all I got was the crunch of wave on rock as the universe went about its business without a sidelong glance. I still couldn’t escape the conviction that I’d missed the boat, that there was something else that I was supposed to be doing, but I couldn’t picture what it could be or how the hell I could ever get to it without falling back into my old addictions. Faith dies hard, though, and even when you can’t believe in a damn thing anymore, you still hope.

  All I really knew for sure was that I had grown sick of the man I had become, tired of the daily con I had to run on myself just to get my ass up and out the door in the morning. You never really know yourself, you don’t know who you really are until that day comes when you’ve finally had enough. One year and some months prior my day had come and I’d walked away, washed up a while later on that forlorn and deserted stretch of coastline. And no matter how deeply I ached for some kind of connection to something greater and deeper than the inside of my own skull, there are too many alternate explanations for that sort of phenomenon, mostly involving medication and the reasons I haven’t been taking it. So like a man who has settled for order instead of law, eventually I gave up on peace and contented myself with what moments of quiet I could find.