by Nick Stone
Jean le Chat, they’d called him in Haiti–the Catman, for short. Back then he’d made his living stealing cats and kittens, black ones in particular, to sell to the hougans and mambos to use in their fortune telling. The most popular and reliable method was for the priest or priestess to kill the cat and leave its body on a grave for the night. The next morning they would fry and eat the animal’s guts with squill and galanga root, and then they’d see into the future.
That was how the Catman had met Carmine’s mother. He used to come round to the house in Haiti with a thick, wriggling burlap sack on his back, his hands and face always scratched and bleeding. His mother would choose a cat, usually the wildest and most vicious, the ones who went for her with tooth and claw, the ones with strongest spirits who’d take a good while to kill. Carmine remembered Jean’s gap-toothed grin, the way he didn’t say much, just smiled, and his unusually soft hair. It was said he was the bastard son of one of the wealthy Syrians his mother had worked for as a maid–hence his family name. Ask him about it and he’d shrug his shoulders and say he really didn’t know and he cared even less. He was who he was, he said, and that was the best he could do. Who knew where names came from?
On Eva Desamour’s advice, Solomon had brought Jean Assad into his enterprise, a year or so after it got started. He did petty minor-league stuff–shoplifting and housebreaking mostly. He was good at it, but he’d never be better than his limitations. He had neither the ambition nor the balls or brains to progress to new, more complex areas, so he stayed strictly bottom rung, doing exactly as he was told, without question; a dependable soldier–as long as you didn’t expect too much. When Solomon expanded into drugs and had to divide his enterprise into sub-sections, he got Jean to be a driver for one of his call-out dealers, the ones who sold to the wealthy, upwardly mobile crowd. Jean loved the job, loved the driving around in the air-conditioned Cadillacs he kept real clean inside and out, loved wearing a nice suit like he was somebody special. He thought he’d been promoted. He used to tell people he was starting to feel American.
Then he’d killed Tamsin Zengeni, the dealer he worked for. He beat her to death with a tyre jack and stole her smack stash.
No one understood it at first. No one had known the Catman used drugs, let alone that he was a junkie. Solomon had started digging. He found out that Assad had been buying heroin from one of Solomon’s other dealers, a guy who worked in the Broward County division called Ricky Maussa. There were strict rules about drug use in the organization. Solomon had executed Maussa and his entire crew in the same way he was going to execute Jean. Carmine remembered the ceremonies. Maussa and his crew had been made to watch as one by one Solomon killed them, starting with the most recent recruit and moving upwards. Maussa had pleaded his innocence, that he hadn’t known Assad’s identity, but that in itself was no excuse. All Solomon’s dealers had to be sure their customers weren’t narcs, stoolies, rival gang members or one of their own.
Carmine found it impossible to hate Jean Assad. Jean had always been cool with him. He’d intervened more than once when his mother had been beating up on him. He wasn’t scared of her like everyone else was. He’d even told her she was taking it too far.
Carmine cast a sweeping gaze about the room. The eleven other barons were stood around the figure they towered above, motionless on their stilts, expressions of sealed-in impassivity. As usual he couldn’t recognize anyone he knew under all the make-up, and he was sure it was the same for everyone else. They all looked identical. They were the same height–thirteen feet tall–and, thanks to padding and clever tailoring, the same shape. Even their hands, encased in black gloves, were equal in length and width.
When the ceremony was over, they’d all walk out and go off into individual cubicles. They weren’t allowed to talk until they were well outside the building, back to being gangster civilians. Those were the rules. Break them and you ended up here, in the middle of the circle. It had happened once before, a long while ago, never since.
There were people watching from a long balcony off to the left; a small select crowd, mostly new recruits, children as young as ten, and a lot of the newly arrived island immigrants, fresh off the boat; Haitians, obviously, but Cubans, Dominicans, Jamaicans, Bajans, people who’d talk about what they’d seen, evolve the myth. This was mostly for their benefit. Get them young, dumb or impressionable, tell them the myth, show them some magic, get them to spread the word, exaggerated and distorted so no two versions matched, even though they meant precisely the same thing. This was the key to Solomon’s power, making people think he was more than just flesh and blood like them, making them believe that he was other, a demon–Baron Samedi, voodoo god of death, reborn as a Miami gang leader.
Here was the popular misconception about Solomon Boukman’s organization, that it was actually called the Saturday Night Barons Club or SNBC for short. It wasn’t. That was the name of the ceremony.
The organization itself didn’t have a name. It never had. This was deliberate. A gang with a name is an immediate target, a recognizable entity, just begging to be shut down. If you don’t know your enemy’s name, how can you find him? Solomon had wanted to differentiate it as much as possible from American gangs, which cops and rivals were used to dealing with and approached in the same way. As for a structure, it didn’t really have one. It was Solomon and a few key allies, most of whom didn’t know each other. People were never sure who was working for Solomon Boukman and who wasn’t.
The drums began–one beat, three seconds apart–a deep echoey sound like that of a heavy load hitting the bottom of a long deep dry well. At the beginning they hadn’t had any accompaniment, then they’d used tapes of authentic voodoo drummers recorded in the Haitian mountains, and now Solomon had flown the drummers over and set them up in Miami. When they weren’t playing the ceremonies they worked the club circuit from New York to New Orleans.
At the twelfth beat the barons linked hands with a flutter and slap of leather on leather. Then the light behind the Catman went out. For a moment they stood linked together in complete darkness. Carmine could feel the nervous pulse of the guy to his left; he heard him swallow and breathe a little harder through his nose. It was probably his first time here.
When the drum was struck for the thirteenth time a dark but powerful purple light gradually came on, bathing the circle in its rich, almost liquid glow.
At the fifteenth drum beat the barons began to move, slowly, anti-clockwise, one step at a time, one step per drum beat.
Christ! Jean thought. He’s coming.
The giant figures were moving around him, turning slowly but deliberately like the mechanism of some ghastly machine; a complex lock gradually opening, unlocking horror.
He was scared now, real scared; scareder than he’d ever been–absolutely and utterly terrified.
He knew what was about to happen, those things he hadn’t believed before–slicing your neck, drinking your blood while you were still alive, draining your life out of you before your very eyes. Then they’d take his soul.
The drum was beating faster. He could feel it in his stomach, stirring the contents, making them jump, making them come to life. He suddenly felt like he’d swallowed a sack of live toads, and they were hopping around inside him, jumping at his stomach, trying to get out. It was hurting him real bad, not nausea, but pain like he’d been punched by a cast-iron fist.
The drum got faster. Another joined in, slipped in behind it, a snare, building up a rhythm. The barons were moving in time, picking up speed. They were starting to blur, the whites into blacks, losing their shape. He tried to focus on one and follow him, but he couldn’t move his head. He tried closing his eyes but he couldn’t do that either. He tried looking away, but even that wasn’t an option.
Jean knew he couldn’t win. He knew it was over, that he was finished.
They were now spinning so fast they’d become an indistinct grey mass, but the purple light they were bathed in was hitting their waistcoat ch
ains and belt buckles, and these were spitting out weird bright red, blue, green, yellow and orange reflections in the shape of deadly bats.
He was getting dozy. He felt part of himself fading away, slipping under, not even bothering to put up a struggle.
His stomach was killing him. He felt like he’d swallowed a live hungry rodent, scratching and clawing and biting him for all it was worth.
As they turned they began to chant:
Vin Baron
Baron l’ap vini icit,
Vin Baron
Baron l’ap vini icit,
Vin Baron
Baron vini icit,
Vin Baron
Baron l’ap vini icit
The lights were dazzling him now, burning his eyes like pepper spray. He felt tears running out of them.
The chanting went on as they spun around him:
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
There were more drums now, a whole battery of them, pounding, hurting his head, killing his stomach.
The chant had been picked up by others he couldn’t see, getting louder.
SSSSO-LO-MON
SSSSO-LO-MON
Worked every time, thought Carmine, the chant. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Solomon, didn’t even mention his name, but as they turned, the words ran one into the other and produced a new word people thought they recognized and chimed in with. The onlookers got swept up in the moment and began to repeat it.
The barons were now spinning so fast the colours had leached out into a thick dirty white cloud, while the reflections had blended into one another forming a thick crimson band around the middle of the circle.
The chant was growing ever louder and the pain in his stomach was intensifying, like he had a boxer in there, flailing away. He wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t move his mouth.
And then Solomon appeared. He rose up slowly from out of the ground, a swirling red and orange light shining beneath him, like flames. He was dressed as the barons were, except all in white, right down to the make-up on his face.
Solomon crossed his arms over his abdomen and drew two long swords from under his coat. The blades caught the light and threw it into Jean’s eyes, sharp and white and hot.
Solomon began whirling and twirling the blades through the air, slicing through the purple darkness.
Jean followed their deadly progress, feeling like someone getting sucked towards a spinning fan, dragged towards his death, their pull obliterating his resistance.
His terror had flatlined into panicked resignation. He hoped for the best he could. That he’d go out quick and clean. No pain.
But something else was happening to him too. Inside. The pains in his stomach were gone. He couldn’t feel a thing.
And then he was drawn back to the man who’d come to kill him. He’d crossed the blades into an X and was drawing nearer. The light from the cross filled his eyes, warming them with its heat, blotting out his vision, until finally it was all he could see–pure white light.
His hearing faded. He could hear absolutely nothing.
He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t taste. He couldn’t smell. He couldn’t touch. He couldn’t see.
He wasn’t sure he was still breathing.
Was this it? Was this death?
Although it was difficult for him to move, chant and pay attention to what was going on, Carmine caught a glimpse of Solomon rising out of the ground and heard the excited gasps and screams of the simple-minded idiots watching from the balcony. They didn’t realize this was an act, exactly like the circus or a pantomime.
He saw flashes of Solomon doing his dance, twirling his two lethal razor-sharp blades through the air like propellers, slicing, coming closer and closer to Jean Assad, as he sat there facing death without being able to so much as blink or scream.
The drums rose and rose to a booming crescendo of roaring cannon strapped to the back of a herd of stampeding bulls, before suddenly and quite abruptly dying back down to the same single, solitary heavy beat that had started the ceremony. The barons slowed their movements down one beat at a time, until, by the tenth, they were walking in step with the drummer.
At the twelfth beat Solomon swiftly raised and back-handed his swords across the middle of Assad’s exposed throat, leaving a thin, dark, almost black line. By the fourteenth beat blood had geysered out of the veins and arteries, heavy jets and fine fountains, coating Solomon’s painted face and white clothes.
Solomon then covered himself and the body with his cloak. Both were lowered down into the ground, prompting more screaming and shouting from the balcony.
Then the lights went out and the abattoir was plunged into darkness.
11
Carmine drove out to Miami Shores. There was a potential Heart working a bar off Park Drive which was popular with the rich old men who were members of the nearby country club. They’d go there after playing a few holes of golf. Carmine didn’t understand golf. It wasn’t a sport to him but a status thing white folks did once they hit a certain age or income bracket or both. Hitting a ball around and taking a leisurely stroll to where it had landed so you could hit it again–what was the whole damn point of that?
He drove down a pitch-black street where the lights were busted and all the houses were derelict and boarded up. Some had been demolished and were just piles of rubble surrounded by wire fencing. Desolate palm trees tilted over the road like drunks, their trunks hacked, drilled and graffitied, their leaves droopy and dirt-coated. He turned into another street where all the buildings had been levelled. The road was coated with thick dust. It reminded him of a picture he’d seen of Hiroshima after the bomb had hit it, nothing standing. All over Miami construction companies were blowing up or knocking down old buildings and then just leaving the mess right there instead of clearing it up and reconstructing.
Suddenly a car pulled out in front of him and he hit the brakes. He wasn’t wearing his belt so the jolt threw him hard against the steering wheel and he smacked his forehead on the windshield.
‘Motherfucker!’ he yelled and punched the horn. The offending car drove off regardless.
‘You still drive like an idiot,’ a familiar voice said behind him. He turned around and saw the faint outline of someone in the back seat.
‘Solomon!’ Carmine hadn’t noticed anyone when he’d got in the car after the ceremony, nor the whole time he’d been driving. ‘How did you–how long you bin in here?’
‘I get around,’ he said. ‘Keep driving.’
Carmine set off down the road.
‘Put on your seatbelt,’ Solomon said, his voice still the same, a clear, forced whisper, his words hollowed out and filled with silence.
Carmine plugged in the belt. He felt his boss’s stare bouncing back at him from the rearview mirror, even though he couldn’t see his eyes, let alone his face.
‘Keep your eyes on the road. Concentrate,’ Solomon said.
‘Where we goin’?’
‘Wherever you are.’
‘I’m workin’. Got a possible Heart lined up.’
‘A Heart? That’s good. We need more of the high-class ones, less of the low,’ Solomon replied.
‘I hear that,’ Carmine said. ‘I’m doin’ my best out here, you know?’
‘Your best at what?’ Solomon asked.
‘My best at what I do, Solomon,’ Carmine answered, mouth drying, a little tremor in his voice. He hoped Solomon hadn’t found out about his and Sam’s side project. They’d been so damned careful.
‘How’s your mother?’
‘She’s good.’ Carmine searched the mirror quickly, but all he saw was a silhouette. He hadn’t been face to face with Solomon in five or six years at least. They always met like this, in dark or shadowy places when Carmine least expected it and not often. Carmine had heard that Solomon had had extensive facial reconstruction, that he’d bleached his skin close to white and wore his hair straight a
nd long, that he was so unrecognizable you could pass him on the street without knowing who he was, and that he used doubles and soundalikes to fool his enemies. Carmine wasn’t really sure he wasn’t talking to an impersonator right now.
‘Send her my regards.’
‘I will.’
‘Take a left here.’
He turned onto North East 101st Street and drove on for a short while.
‘Pull over after the Cordoba there.’
Carmine parked in front of a black Chrysler. The road was empty.
‘I heard about that cop who assaulted you. We’re looking into it.’
‘It’s no big deal,’ Carmine spoke to the mirror. A sliver of stray light coming from the street had fallen across Solomon’s mouth. It was bullshit what they’d said about him bleaching his skin; he’d probably started the rumour himself. He was into that–‘misinformation’ he called it.
‘It is a big deal.’ Solomon smiled.
And then Solomon licked his lower lip and Carmine saw what had always freaked people out. It wasn’t something Solomon let everyone and anyone see, but it was the one thing about him that left the deepest impression, usually to the detriment of his other features. People who’d seen him went on and on about his eyes, their luminous quality, the way they looked through you, the way they saw your secrets, but none of them had ever seen Solomon Boukman’s tongue. It was forked, split in two from the middle out, with its tips splayed and pointed and curved slightly downward, like two small pink talons. Carmine remembered when his mother had done that to him, sliced the thing down the middle on a butcher board with a knife. Solomon hadn’t even flinched.