Having paced to the window, Wicke looked up at the winter sky, down at the street far below. “And now it's snowing. On top of everything else, the weather's got to turn rotten. It isn't fair.”
The man no longer reminded Jack of a toad. Now he seemed like a six-foot-tall, fat, hairy, stumpy-legged baby.
Rebecca said, “When did you hear the rats?”
“This morning. Just after I finished breakfast, I called down to the front desk to tell them how terrible their room service food was. After a highly unsatisfactory conversation with the clerk on duty, I put the phone down — and that's the very moment when I heard the rats. After I'd listened to them a while and was positively sure they were rats, I called the manager himself to complain about that, again without satisfactory results. That's when I made up my mind to get a shower, dress, pack my suitcases, and find a new hotel before my first business appointment of the day.”
“Do you remember the exact time when you heard the rats?”
“Not to the minute. But it must've been around eight-thirty.”
Jack glanced at Rebecca. “About one hour before the killing started next door.”
She looked troubled. She said, “Weirder and weirder.”
XI
In the death suite, the three ravaged bodies still lay where they had fallen.
The lab men hadn't finished their work. In the parlor, one of them was vacuuming the carpet around the corpse. The sweepings would be analyzed later.
Jack and Rebecca went to the nearest heating vent, a one-foot-by-eight-inch rectangular plate mounted on the wall, a few inches below the ceiling. Jack pulled a chair under it, stood on the chair, and examined the grille.
He said, “The end of the duct has an inward-bent flange all the way around it. The screws go through the edges of the grille and through the flange.”
“From here,” Rebecca said, “I see the heads of two screws.”
“That's all there are. But anything trying to get out of the duct would have to remove at least one of those screws to loosen the grille.”
“And no rat is that smart,” she said.
“Even if it was a smart rat, like no other rat God ever put on this earth, a regular Albert Einstein of the rat kingdom, it still couldn't do the job. From inside the duct, it'd be dealing with the pointed, threaded end of the screw. It couldn't grip and turn the damned thing with only its paws.”
“Not with its teeth, either.”
“No. The job would require fingers.”
The duct, of course, was much too small for a manor even a child — to crawl through it.
Rebecca said. “Suppose a lot of rats, a few dozen of them, jammed up against one another in the duct, all struggling to get out through a ventilation grille. If a real horde of them put enough pressure on the other side of the grille, would they be able to pop the screws through the flange and then shove the grille into the room, out of their way?”
“Maybe,” Jack said with more than a little doubt.
“Even that sounds too smart for rats. But I guess if the holes in the flange were too much bigger than the screws that passed through them, the threads wouldn't bite on anything, and the grille could be forced off.”
He tested the vent plate that he had been examining. It moved slightly back and forth, up and down, but not much.
He said, “This one's pretty tightly fitted.”
“One of the others might be looser.”
Jack stepped down from the chair and put it back where he'd gotten it.
They went through the suite until they'd found all the vents from the heating system: two in the parlor, one in the bedroom, one in the bath. At each outlet, the grille was fixed firmly in place.
“Nothing got into the suite through the heating ducts,” Jack said. “Maybe I can make myself believe that rats could crowd up against the back of the grille and force it off, but I'll never in a million years believe that they left through the same duct and somehow managed to replace the grille behind them. No rat — no animal of any kind you can name — could be that welltrained, that dexterous.”
“No. Of course not. It's ridiculous.”
“So,” he said.
“So,” she said. She sighed. “Then you think it's just an odd coincidence that the men here were apparently bitten to death shortly after Wicke heard rats in the walls.”
“I don't like coincidences,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
“They usually turn out not to be coincidences.”
“Exactly.”
“But it's still the most likely possibility. Coincidence, I mean. Unless…”
“Unless what?” she asked.
“Unless you want to consider voodoo, black magic—”
“No thank you.”
“-demons creeping through the walls—”
“Jack, for God's sake!”
“-coming out to kill, melting back into the walls and just disappearing.”
“I won't listen to this.”
He smiled. “I'm just teasing, Rebecca.”
“Like hell you are. Maybe you think you don't put any credence in that kind of baloney, but deep down inside, there's a part of you that's—”
“Excessively open-minded,” he finished.
“If you insist on making a joke of it—”
“I do. I insist.”
“But it's true, just the same.”
“I may be excessively open-minded, if that's even possible—”
“It is.”
“-but at least I'm not inflexible.”
“Neither am I.”
“Or rigid.”
“Neither am I.”
“Or frightened.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You figure it.”
“You're saying I'm frightened?”
“Aren't you, Rebecca?”
“Of what?”
“Last night, for one thing.”
“Don't be absurd.”
“Then let's talk about it.”
“Not now.”
He looked at his watch. “Twenty past eleven. We'll break for lunch at twelve. You promised to talk about it at lunch.”
“I said if we had time for lunch.”
“We'll have time.”
“I don't think so.”
“We'll have time.”
“There's a lot to be done here.”
“We can do it after lunch.”
“People to interrogate.”
“We can grill them after lunch.”
“You're impossible, Jack.”
“Indefatigable.”
“Stubborn.”
“Determined.”
“Damnit.”
“Charming, too,” he said.
She apparently didn't agree. She walked away from him. She seemed to prefer looking at one of the mutilated corpses.
Beyond the window, snow was falling heavily now. The sky was bleak. Although it wasn't noon yet, it looked like twilight out there.
XII
Lavelle stepped out of the back door of the house. He went to the end of the porch, down three steps. He stood at the edge of the dead brown grass and looked up into the whirling chaos of snowflakes.
He had never seen snow before. Pictures, of course. But not the real thing. Until last spring, he had spent his entire life — thirty years — in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and on several other Caribbean islands.
He had expected winter in New York to be uncomfortable, even arduous, for someone as unaccustomed to it as he was. However, much to his surprise, the experience had been exciting and positive, thus far. If it was only the novelty of winter that appealed to him, then he might feel differently when that novelty eventually wore off, but for the time being, he found the brisk winds and cold air invigorating.
Besides, in this great city he had discovered an enormous reservoir of the power on which he depended in order to do his work the infinitely useful power of evil. Evil flourished e
verywhere, of course, in the countryside and in the suburbs, too, not merely within the boundaries of New York City. There was no shortage of evil in the Caribbean, where he had been a practicing Bocor—a voodoo priest skilled in the uses of black magic — ever since he was twenty-two. But here, where so many people were crammed into such a relatively small piece of land, here where a score or two of murders were committed every week, here where assaults and rapes and robberies and burglaries numbered in the tens of thousands — even hundreds of thousands — every year, here where there were an army of hustlers looking for an advantage, legions of con men searching for marks, psychos of every twisted sort, perverts, punks, wife-beaters, and thugs almost beyond counting—this was where the air was flooded with raw currents of evil that you could see and smell and feel — if, like Lavelle, you were sensitized to them. With each wicked deed, an effluvium of evil rose from the corrupted soul, contributing to the crackling currents in the air, making them stronger, potentially more destructive. Above and through the metropolis, vast tenebrous rivers of evil energy surged and churned. Ethereal rivers, yes. Of no substance. Yet the energy of which they were composed was real, lethal, the very stuff with which Lavelle could achieve virtually any result he wished. He could tap into those midnight tides and twilight pools of malevolent power; he could use them to cast even the most difficult and ambitious spells, curses, and charms.
The city was also crisscrossed by other, different currents of a benign nature, composed of the effluvium arising from good souls engaged in the performance of admirable deeds. These were rivers of hope, love, courage, charity, innocence, kindness, friendship, honesty, and dignity. This, too, was an extremely powerful energy, but it was of absolutely no use to Lavelle. A Houngon, a priest skilled at white magic, would be able to tap that benign energy for the purpose of healing, casting beneficial spells, and creating miracles. But Lavelle was a Bocor, not a Houngon. He had dedicated himself to the black arts, to the rites of Congo and Petro, rather than to the various rites of Rada, white magic. And dedication to that dark sphere of sorcery also meant confinement to it.
Yet his long association with evil had not given him a bleak, mournful, or even sour aspect; he was a happy man. He smiled broadly as he stood there behind the house, at the edge of the dead brown grass, looking up into the whirling snow. He felt strong, relaxed, content, almost unbearably pleased with himself.
He was tall, six-three. He looked even taller in his narrow-legged black trousers and his long, well-fitted gray cashmere topcoat. He was unusually thin, yet powerful looking in spite of the lack of meat on his long frame. Not even the least observant could mistake him for a weakling, for he virtually radiated confidence and had eyes that made you want to get out of his way in a hurry. His hands were large, his wrists large and bony. His face was noble, not unlike that of the film actor, Sidney Poitier. His skin was exceptionally dark, very black, with an almost purple undertone, somewhat like the skin of a ripe eggplant. Snowflakes melted on his face and stuck in his eyebrows and frosted his wiry black hair.
The house out of which he had come was a three-story brick affair, pseudo-Victorian, with a false tower, a slate-roof, and lots of gingerbread trim, but battered and weathered and grimy. It had been built in the early years of the century, had been part of a really fine residential neighborhood at that time, had still been solidly middle-class by the end of World War Two (though declining in prestige), and had become distinctly lower middle-class by the late 70s. Most of the houses on the street had been converted to apartment buildings. This one had not, but it was in the same state of disrepair as all the others. It wasn't where Lavelle wanted to live; it was where he had to live until this little war was finished to his satisfaction; it was his hidey hole.
On both sides, other brick houses, exactly the same as this one, crowded close. Each overlooked its own fenced yard. Not much of a yard: a forty-by-twenty-foot plot of thin grass, now dormant under the harsh hand of winter. At the far end of the lawn was the garage, and beyond the garage was a litter-strewn alley.
In one corner of Lavelle's property, up against the garage wall, stood a corrugated metal utility shed with a white enamel finish and a pair of green metal doors. He'd bought it at Sears, and their workmen had erected it a month ago. Now, when he'd had enough of looking up into the falling snow, he went to the shed, opened one of the doors, and stepped inside.
Heat assaulted him. Although the shed wasn't equipped with a heating system, and although the walls weren't even insulated, the small building — twelve-foot by-ten — was nevertheless extremely warm. Lavelle had no sooner entered and pulled the door shut behind him than he was obliged to strip out of his nine-hundred dollar topcoat in order to breathe comfortably.
A peculiar, slightly sulphurous odor hung in the air. Most people would have found it unpleasant. But Lavelle sniffed, then breathed deeply, and smiled. He savored the stench. To him, it was a sweet fragrance because it was the scent of revenge.
He had broken into a sweat.
He took off his shirt.
He was chanting in a strange tongue.
He took off his shoes, his trousers, his underwear.
Naked, he knelt on the dirt floor.
He began to sing softly. The melody was pure, compelling, and he carried it well. He sang in a low voice that could not have been heard by anyone beyond the boundaries of his own property.
Sweat streamed from him. His black body glistened.
He swayed gently back and forth as he sang. In a little while he was almost in a trance.
The lines he sang were lilting, rhythmic chains of words in an ungrammatical, convoluted, but mellifluous mixture of French, English, Swahili, and Bantu. It was partly a Haitian patois, partly a Jamaican patois, partly an African juju chant: the pattern-rich “language” of voodoo.
He was singing about vengeance. About death. About the blood of his enemies. He called for the destruction of the Carramazza family, one member at a time, according to a list he had made.
Finally he sang about the slaughter of that police detective's two children, which might become necessary at any moment.
The prospect of killing children did not disturb him. In fact, the possibility was exciting.
His eyes shone.
His long-fingered hands moved slowly up and down his lean body in a sensuous caress.
His breathing was labored as he inhaled the heavy warm air and exhaled an even heavier, warmer vapor.
The beads of sweat on his ebony skin gleamed with reflected orange light.
Although he had not switched on the overhead light when he'd entered, the interior of the shed wasn't pitch black. The perimeter of the small, windowless room was shrouded in shadows, but a vague orange glow rose from the floor in the center of the chamber. It came out of a hole about five feet in diameter. Lavelle had dug it while performing a complicated, six-hour ritual, during which he had spoken to many of the evil gods-Congo Savanna, Congo Maussai, Congo Moudongue — and the evil angels like the Zandor, the Ibos “je rouge,” the Petro Maman Pemba, and Ti Jean Pie Fin.
The excavation was shaped like a meteor crater, the walls sloping inward to form a basin. The center of the basin was only three feet deep. However, if you stared into it long enough, it gradually began to appear much, much deeper than that. In some mysterious way, when you peered at the flickering light for a couple of minutes, when you tried hard to discern its source, your perspective abruptly and drastically changed, and you could see that the bottom of the hole was hundreds if not thousands of feet below. It wasn't merely a hole in the dirt floor of the shed; not anymore; suddenly and magically, it was a doorway into the heart of the earth. But then, with a blink, it seemed only a shallow basin once more.
Now, still singing, Lavelle leaned forward.
He looked at the strange, pulsing orange light.
He looked into the hole.
Looked down.
Down…
Down into…
Down into the p
it.
The Pit.
XIII
Shortly before noon, Nayva Rooney had finished cleaning the Dawson's apartment.
She had neither seen nor heard anything more of the rat — or whatever it had been — that she had pursued from room to room earlier in the morning. It had vanished.
She wrote a note to Jack Dawson, asking him to call her this evening. He had to be told about the rat, so that he could arrange to have the building superintendent hire an exterminator. She fixed the note to the refrigerator with a magnetic plastic butterfly that was usually used to hold a shopping list in place.
After she put on her rubber boots, coat, scarf, and gloves, she switched off the last light, the hall light. Now, the apartment was lit only by the thin, gray, useless daylight that seemed barely capable of penetrating the windows. The hall, windowless, was not lit at all. She stood perfectly still by the front door for more than a minute — listening.
The apartment remained tomb-silent.
At last, she let herself out and locked the door behind her.
A few minutes after Nayva Rooney had gone, there was movement in the apartment.
Something came out of Penny and Davey's bedroom, into the gloomy hallway. It merged with the shadows. If Nayva had been there, she would have seen only its bright, glowing, fiery white eyes. It stood for a moment, just outside the door through which it had come, and then it moved down the hall toward the living room, its claws clicking on the wooden floor; it made a cold angry, hissing noise as it went.
A second creature came out of the kids' room. It, too, was well-hidden by the darkness in the apartment, just a shadow among shadows — except for its shining eyes.
A third small, dark, hissing beast appeared.
A fourth.
A fifth.
Another. And another…
Soon, they were all over the apartment: crouching in corners; perching on furniture or squirming under it; slinking along the baseboard; climbing the walls with insectile skill; creeping behind the drapes; sniffing and hissing; scurrying restlessly from room to room and then back again; ceaselessly growling in what almost sounded like a guttural foreign language; staying, for the most part, in the shadows, as if even the pale winter light coming through the windows was too harsh for them.
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