“Well, actually, I came to show you something that might be of help. A photograph of Baba Lavelle himself.”
“Truly?”
“Yes.”
“So you already know he's real. Let me see it, though. It ought to help if I can describe the man I'm asking around about.”
Jack withdrew the eight-by-ten glossy from inside his coat and handed it over.
Hampton's face changed the instant he saw Lavelle. If a black man could go pale, that was what Hampton did. It wasn't that the shade of his skin changed so much as that the gloss and vitality went out of it; suddenly it didn't seem like skin at all but like dark brown paper, dry and lifeless. His lips tightened. And his eyes were not the same as they had been a moment ago: haunted, now.
He said, “This man!”
“What?” Jack asked.
The photograph quivered as Hampton quickly handed it back. He thrust it at Jack, as if desperate to be rid of it, as if he might somehow be contaminated merely by touching the photographic image of Lavelle. His big hands were shaking.
Jack said, “What is it? What's the matter?”
“I know him,” Hampton said. “I've… seen him. I just didn't know his name.”
“Where have you see him?”
“Here.”
“Right in the shop?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last September.”
“Not since then?”
“No.”
“What was he doing here?”
“He came to purchase herbs, powdered flowers.”
“But I thought you dealt only in good magic. The Rada.”
“Many substances can be used by both the Bocor and the Houngon to obtain very different results, to work evil magic or good. These were herbs and powdered flowers that were extremely rare and that he hadn't been able to locate elsewhere in New York.”
“There are other shops like yours?”
“One shop somewhat like this, although not as large. And then there are two practicing Houngons—not strong magicians, these two, little more than amateurs, neither of them powerful enough or knowledgeable enough to do well for themselves — who sell the stuff of magic out of their apartments. They have considerable lines of merchandise to offer to other practitioners. But none of those three have scruples. They will sell to either the Bocor or the Houngon. They even sell the instruments required for a blood sacrifice, the ceremonial hatchets, the razor-edged spoons used to scoop the living eye from the skull. Terrible people, peddling their wares to anyone, anyone at all, even to the most wicked and debased.”
“So Lavelle came here when he couldn't get everything he wanted from them.”
“Yes. He told me that he'd found most of what he needed, but he said my shop was the only one with a complete selection of even the most seldom-used ingredients for spells and incantations. Which is, of course true. I pride myself on my selection and on the purity of my goods. But unlike the others, I won't sell to a Bocor—if I know what he is. Usually I can spot them. I also won't sell to those amateurs with bad intentions, the ones who want to put a curse of death on a motherin-law or cause sickness in some man who's a rival for a girl or a job. I'll have none of that. Anyway, this man, this one in the photograph—”
“Lavelle,” Jack said.
“But I didn't know his name then. As I was packaging the few things he'd selected, I discovered he was a Bocor, and I refused to conclude the sale. He thought I was like all the other merchants, that I'd sell to just anyone, and he was furious when I wouldn't let him have what he wanted. I made him leave the shop, and I thought that was the end of it.”
“But it wasn't?” Jack asked.
“No.”
“He came back?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Hampton came out from behind the sales counter. He went to the shelves where the hundreds upon hundreds of bottles were stored, and Jack followed him.
Hampton's voice was hushed, a note of fear in it: “Two days after Lavelle was here, while I was alone in the shop, sitting at the counter back there, just reading — suddenly, every bottle on those shelves was flung off, to the floor. All in an instant. Such a crash! Half of them broke, and the contents mingled together, all ruined. I rushed over to see what had happened, what had caused it, and as I approached, some of the spilled herbs and powders and ground roots began to… well, to move… to form together… and take on life. Out of the debris, composed of several substances, there arose… a black serpent, about eighteen inches in length. Yellow eyes. Fangs. A flickering tongue. As real as any serpent hatched from its mother's egg.”
Jack stared at the big man, not sure what to think of him or his story. Until this moment, he had thought that Carver Hampton was sincere in his religious beliefs and a perfectly level-headed man, no less rational because his religion was voodoo rather than Catholicism or Judaism. However, it was one thing to believe in a religious doctrine and in the possibility of magic and miracles — and quite another thing altogether to claim to have seen a miracle. Those who swore they had seen miracles were hysterics, fanatics, or liars. Weren't they? On the other hand, if you were at all religious — and Jack was not a man without faith — then how could you believe in the possibility of miracles and the existence of the occult without also embracing the claims of at least some of those who said they had been witness to manifestations of the supernatural? Your faith could have no substance if you did not also accept the reality of its effects in this world. It was a thought that hadn't occurred to him before, and now he stared at Carver Hampton with mixed feelings, with both doubt and cautious acceptance.
Rebecca would say he was being excessively open-minded.
Staring at the bottles that now stood on the shelves, Hampton said, “The serpent slithered toward me. I backed across the room. There was nowhere to go. I dropped to my knees. Recited prayers. They were the correct prayers for the situation, and they had their effect. Either that… or Lavelle didn't actually intend for the serpent to harm me. Perhaps he only meant it as a warning not to mess with him, a slap in the face for the way I had so unceremoniously ushered him out of my shop. At any rate, the serpent eventually dissolved back into the herbs and powders and ground roots of which it was composed.”
“How do you know it was Lavelle who did this thing?” Jack asked.
“The phone rang a moment after the snake… decomposed. It was this man, the one I had refused to serve. He told me that it was my prerogative, whether to serve him or not, and that he didn't hold it against me. But he said he wouldn't permit anyone to lay a hand on him as I'd done. So he had smashed my collection of herbs and had conjured up the serpent in retaliation. That's what he said. That's all he said. Then he hung up.”
“You didn't tell me that you'd actually, physically thrown him out of the shop,” Jack said.
“I didn't. I merely put a hand on his arm and… shall we say… guided him out. Firmly, yes, but without any real violence, without hurting him. Nevertheless, that was enough to make him angry, to make him seek revenge.”
“This was all back in September?”
“Yes.”
“And he's never returned?”
“No.”
“Never called?”
“No. And it took me almost three months to rebuild my inventory of rare herbs and powders. Many of these items are so very difficult to obtain. You can't imagine.
I only recently completed restocking these shelves.”
“So you've got your own reasons for wanting to see this Lavelle brought down,” Jack said.
Hampton shook his head. “On the contrary.”
“Huh?”
“I want nothing more to do with this.”
“But—”
“I can't help you any more, Lieutenant.”
“I don't understand.”
“It should be clear enough. If I help you, Lavelle will send something after me. Something worse than the serpe
nt. And this time it won't be just a warning. No, this time, it'll surely be the death of me.”
Jack saw that Hampton was serious — and genuinely terrified. The man believed in the power of voodoo. He was trembling. Even Rebecca, seeing him now, wouldn't be able to claim that he was a charlatan. He believed.
Jack said, “But you ought to want him behind bars as much as I do. You ought to want to see him broken, after what he did to you.”
“You'll never put him in jail.”
“Oh, yes.”
“No matter what he does, you'll never be able to touch him.”
“We'll get him, all right.”
“He's an extremely powerful Bocor, Lieutenant. Not an amateur. Not your average spellcaster. He has the power of darkness, the ultimate darkness of death, the darkness of Hell, the darkness of the Other Side. It is a cosmic power, beyond human comprehension. He isn't merely in league with Satan, your Christian and Judaic king of demons. That would be bad enough. But, you see, he is a servant, as well, of all the evil gods of the African religions, which go back into antiquity; he has that great, malevolent pantheon behind him. Some of those deities are far more powerful and immeasurably more vicious than Satan has ever been portrayed. A vast legion of evil entities are at Lavelle's beck and call, eager to let him use them because, in turn, they use him as a sort of doorway into this world. They are eager to cross over, to bring blood and pain and terror and misery to the living, for this world of ours is one into which they are usually denied passage by the power of the benevolent gods who watch over us.”
Hampton paused. He was hyperventilating. There was a faint sheen of perspiration on his forehead. He wiped his big hands over his face and took several slow deep breaths. He went on, then, trying to keep his voice calm and reasonable, but only half succeeding.
“Lavelle is a dangerous man, Lieutenant, infinitely more dangerous than you can ever comprehend. I also think he is very probably mad, insane; there was definitely a quality of insanity about him. That is a most formidable combination: evil beyond measure, madness, and the power of a masterfully skilled Bocor.”
“But you say you're a Houngon, a priest of white magic. Can't you use your power against him?”
“I'm a capable Houngon, better than many. But I'm not in this man's league. For instance, with great effort, I might be able to put a curse on his own supply of herbs and powders. I might be able to reach out and cause a few bottles to fall off the shelves in his study or wherever he keeps them — if I had seen the place first, of course. However, I wouldn't be able to cause so much destruction as he did. And I wouldn't be able to conjure up a serpent, as he did. I haven't that much power, that much finesse.”
“You could try.”
“No. Absolutely not. In any contest of powers, he would crush me. Like a bug.”
Hampton went to the door, opened it. The bell above it rang. Hampton stepped aside, holding the door wide open.
Jack pretended not to get the hint. “Listen, if you'll just keep asking around—”
“No. I can't help you any more, Lieutenant. Can't you get that through your head?”
A frigid, blustery wind huffed and moaned and hissed and puffed at the open door, spraying snowflakes like flecks of spittle.
“Listen,” Jack said. “Lavelle never has to know that you're asking about him. He—”
“He would find out!” Hampton said angrily, his eyes wide open as the door he was holding. “He knows everything — or can find it out. Everything.”
“But—”
“Please go,” Hampton said.
“Hear me out. I—”
“Go.”
“But—”
“Go, get out, leave, now, damnit, now!” Hampton said in a tone of voice composed of one part anger, one part terror, and one part panic.
The big man's almost hysterical fear of Lavelle had begun to affect Jack. A chill rippled through him, and he found that his hands were suddenly clammy.
He sighed, nodded. “All right, all right, Mr. Hampton. But I sure wish—”
“Now, damnit, now!” Hampton shouted.
Jack got out of there.
V
The door to Rada slammed behind him.
In the snow-quieted street, the sound was like a rifle blast.
Jack turned and looked back, saw Carver Hampton drawing down the shade that covered the glass panel in the center of the door. In bold white letters on the dark canvas, one word was printed: CLOSED.
A moment later the lights went out in the shop.
The snow on the sidewalk was now half an inch deep, twice what it had been when he had gone into Hampton's store. It was still coming down fast, too, out of a sky that was even more somber and more claustrophobically close than it had been twenty minutes ago.
Cautiously negotiating the slippery pavement, Jack started toward the patrol car that was waiting for him at the curb, white exhaust trail pluming up from it. He had taken only three steps when he was stopped by a sound that struck him as being out of place here on the wintry street: a ringing telephone. He looked right, left, and saw a pay phone near the corner, twenty feet behind the waiting black-and-white. In the uncitylike stillness that the muffling snow brought to the street, the ringing was so loud that it seemed to be issuing from the air immediately in front of him.
He stared at the phone. It wasn't in a booth. There weren't many real booths around these days, the kind with the folding door, like a small closet, that offered privacy; too expensive, Ma Bell said. This was a phone on a pole, with a scoop-shaped sound battle bending around three sides of it. Over the years, he had passed a few other public telephones that had been ringing when there was no one waiting nearby to answer them; on those occasions, he had never given them a second glance, had never been the least bit tempted to lift the receiver and find out who was there; it had been none of his business. Just as this was none of his business. And yet… this time was somehow… different. The ringing snaked out like a lariat of sound, roping him, snaring him, holding him.
Ringing…
Ringing…
Insistent.
Beckoning.
Hypnotic.
Ringing…
A strange and disturbing transformation occurred in the Harlem neighborhood around him. Only three things remained solid and real: the telephone, a narrow stretch of snow-covered pavement leading to the telephone, and Jack himself. The rest of the world seemed to recede into a mist that rose out of nowhere. The buildings appeared to fade away, dissolving as if this were a film in which one scene was fading out to be replaced by another. The few cars progressing hesitantly along the snowy street began to… evaporate; they were replaced by the creeping mist, a white-white mist that was like a movie theater screen splashed with brilliant light but with no images. The pedestrians, heads bent, shoulders hunched, struggled against the wind and stinging snow; and gradually they receded and faded, as well. Only Jack was real. And the narrow pathway to the phone. And the telephone itself.
Ringing…
He was drawn.
Ringing…
Drawn toward the phone.
He tried to resist.
Ringing…
He suddenly realized he'd taken a step. Toward the phone.
And another.
A third.
He felt as if he were floating.
Ringing…
He was moving as if in a dream or a fever.
He took another step.
He tried to stop. Couldn't.
He tried to turn toward the patrol car. Couldn't.
His heart was hammering.
He was dizzy, disoriented.
In spite of the frigid air, he was sweating along the back of his neck.
The ringing of the telephone was analogous to the rhythmic, glittering, pendulum movement of a hypnotist's pocketwatch. The sound drew him relentlessly forward as surely as, in ancient times, the sirens' songs had pulled unwary sailors to their death upon the reefs.
He knew the call was for him. Knew it without understanding how he knew it.
He picked up the receiver. “Hello?”
“Detective Dawson! I'm delighted to have this opportunity to speak with you. My good man, we are most definitely overdue for a chat.”
The voice was deep, although not a bass voice, and smooth and elegant, characterized by an educated British accent filtered through the lilting patterns of speech common to tropical zones, so that words like “man” came out as “man.” Clearly a Caribbean accent.
Jack said, “Lavelle?”
“Why, of course! Who else?”
“But how did you know—”
“That you were there? My dear fellow, in an offhanded sort of way, I am keeping tabs on you.”
“You're here, aren't you? Somewhere along the street, in one of the apartment buildings here.
“Far from it. Harlem is not to my taste.”
“I'd like to talk to you,” Jack said.
“We are talking.”
“I mean, face-to-face.”
“Oh, I hardly think that's necessary.”
“I wouldn't arrest you.”
“You couldn't. No evidence.”
“Well, then—”
“But you'd detain me for a day or two on one excuse or another.”
“No.”
“And I don't wish to be detained. I've work to do.”
“I give you my word we'd only hold you a couple of hours, just for questioning.”
“Is that so?”
“You can trust my word when I give it. I don't give it lightly.”
“Oddly enough, I'm quite sure that's true.”
“Then why not come in, answer some questions, and clear the air, remove the suspicion from yourself?”
“Well, of course, I can't remove the suspicion because, in fact, I'm guilty,” Lavelle said. He laughed.
“You're telling me you're behind the murders?”
“Certainly. Isn't that what everyone's been telling you? “
“You've called me to confess?”
Lavelle laughed again. Then: “I've called to give you some advice.”
“Yeah?”
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