by Kiss of Evil
“Thank you,” Santa says. “And Happy Holidays.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Paris answers, his grumpiness a receipt for his small generosity.
Paris reaches his car and opens the trunk. At least one-third of his life stares back at him. After some clever maneuvering, he is able to slip the Christmas tree box into the left side, next to the gym bag containing workout sweats that have already survived two full years in the trunk without ever having seen the inside of a gym.
Then, from behind him, a sunny voice says: “What a softie.”
Paris turns around to see Mercedes Cruz. They had planned to meet here and she is right on time. “Hi,” he says.
“Saw you give in to the Christmas spirit there, detective.”
“Don’t let it get out, okay?” Paris says, slamming the trunk, hoping, for some reason, that Mercedes hadn’t seen his pathetic tree-thing. “Cops have four million charities and I’d never have a minute’s peace. In fact, tonight is the annual Cleveland League Christmas party. Bunch of conscience-plagued cops and inner-city kids. I go every year. It’s my penance.”
“You are a softie. I admire that in a . . . married man?”
“Divorced,” Paris says.
“I admire it even more,” she says, then instantly covers her mouth with a magenta-mittened hand. “Oh my goodness, was that sexual harassment?”
“Let’s see. Who has the power here?”
“I’d say it’s equal. I’ve got a pen. You’ve got a gun.”
“Then it was a compliment.”
“Whew,” Mercedes says.
“But let’s keep it to a minimum,” Paris says. “First it’s compliments, then the next thing you know people will think the press and the police are getting along.”
“I won’t let it happen again.”
“By the way, I met your brother. He took a few photos of this crooked face and busted nose.”
“You’ve got to be shittin’ me,” Mercedes says.
“What?”
“My brother actually did something I asked him to? Unbelievable.”
“Nice kid,” Paris continues. “Good-looking, too.”
“Yeah,” Mercedes says, rummaging in her bag. “He’s a real thief of hearts, let me tell you. Girls have been knocking on our front door ever since Julian turned twelve. I’m just stunned he stopped by.”
“It was painless,” Paris says.
“Good. Maybe getting these pictures published will get him off his ass.” She gestures toward the city. “So, where to first, detective?”
“West side,” Paris says. “I think it’s time to visit the botanica.”
“Want me to drive?” Mercedes asks, holding up her key chain, pointing to a sparkling, midnight blue Saturn.
Paris looks at his listing, rusted car, caked with road salt, and makes his first mistake of the day when he says: “Sure.”
They are on Detroit Avenue, going thirty-five miles per hour, sliding on ice, and about to slam into the rear end of a primer-prepped old Plymouth; a Plymouth whose driver decided to pause, at a green light, to empty his ashtray into the middle of the street.
In the middle of a snowstorm.
On the way, Paris and Mercedes had stopped at Ronnie’s Famous for a few minutes and Paris had switched Thermoses. He had also turned Mercedes Cruz on to Ronnie Boudreaux’s vaunted beignets. She had agreed instantly. World’s best, no contest.
Now, though, as they hit a patch of ice on Detroit Avenue, Paris can feel the coffee and the beignets in his stomach begin to head north. They do a three-sixty. Then another. Then, the Saturn comes to a full stop, somehow pointed in the right direction, somehow just inches to the right of the Plymouth. No damage.
Yet.
Mercedes gathers herself, waits a few beats, lowers her window, smiles, gestures to the other driver to do the same. He reaches over, a confused look on his face, and rolls down the passenger window.
“Hi,” Mercedes says, all charm and innocence.
“Hi,” the driver says.
“Chinga!” Mercedes yells out the window. “Chinga tu MADRE, tu PADRE, tu ’BUELA!”
Although Paris is monolingual, having plenty of trouble with English alone, you don’t have to be Antonio Banderas to know what Mercedes just said about the other driver’s sainted mother, father, and grandmother. The driver, a fair-sized young Latino kid, promptly flips Mercedes the bird, then floors it, fishtailing his way down to West Thirty-eighth Street, where he makes a hurried left turn and disappears into the squall of falling snowflakes.
Winter silence ensues for a few moments. Mercedes looks at Paris. Paris speaks first, realizing he had just witnessed the temper Mercedes’s brother Julian had mentioned. “You okay?”
“Fine. Sorry about that.”
“No harm done.”
“I said a bad word.”
Paris laughs. “A bunch of them, actually. Nice talk for a Catholic gal.”
“You understood that?” she asks as she carefully scans her side mirror and gingerly pulls back out into traffic.
“Well, if you work the inner city, you learn the f-word in many languages. I had an Arab flip me off in Farsi once. I’m sure of it.”
“I’m so embarrassed.”
“Don’t be. I offer the same sentiment to my fellow Cleveland motorists quite often. Usually in Italian, though.”
“You’re Italian?”
“My grandfather on my father’s side was named Parisi. The i got chopped off at Ellis Island somehow. My mother’s father was Italian, too. What about you?”
“Puerto Rican on my father’s side. My mother’s family is English/Irish.”
“Which heritage do you feel more strongly?”
“I guess I consider myself Hispanic. My brother and I are both pretty close to my ’buela, my grandmother. She is a wonderful woman. My role model. I look a lot like her when she was younger. I think we’re the same type.”
“Type?”
“You know. Independent. Mysterious. Darkly exotic.”
“I see.”
“Kind of a Penelope Cruz type. No relation.” Mercedes looks at Paris, affecting a glamour pose. “What do you think?”
Paris, completely cornered, ever the diplomat, says: “I’m going to have to give it some thought, you know?”
Mercedes laughs, snaps on the radio, grabs her third beignet out of the oily white bag between the seats, and says, “I’ve got all day, detective.”
26
La Botanica Macumba occupies one corner of Fulton Road and Newark Avenue, on Cleveland’s near-west side, next to a used-shoe mart run by lay personnel at St. Rocco’s called The Deserving Sole. Beneath the botanica’s large red-lettered sign is a legend that reads: Hierbas Para Banos/Todas Clases.
Paris finds no small irony—now that he has a little background on Santeria and knows how it came into being—that the reflection in the window of La Botanica Macumba is of St. Rocco’s across the street. The botanica’s window is a patchwork quilt of brightly colored banners, decrying the shop’s exotica: Spanish Cards! Sugar Candy! Pompeia Perfume! Blue Balls! High John Root! Maja Products!
Yet there, in the center of the window, is a diaphanous cruciform, a cross reflected from the facade of St. Rocco’s. Next to the likeness, a neon sign that claims that La Botanica Macumba is a “grocery store for the body and soul.”
As Paris enters he is immediately beguiled by a seductively sweet aroma. He sees the smoldering cone on a nearby brass plate. A tented, hand-lettered card reads: nag champa.
There is one other customer in the shop, an Hispanic man in his seventies.
Paris and Mercedes look around the small store a while, waiting for the proprietor to wrap up his business with the other customer. On one wall there is a huge rack of oils, incense, and soaps, many promising a variety of benefits: from keeping away spirits to drawing money or love to keeping one’s spouse at home. “Stay With Me” one of the oils is called, Paris notes with an inner smile, thinking: Coulda used some
of that. On another wall is a magazine and book rack, along with a dozen cardboard display bins of candles, herbs, voodoo supplies, gris-gris, dolls, artwork, CDs, T-shirts, tarot decks.
After a few moments, the customer leaves. Paris and Mercedes approach the counter.
“My name is Edward Moriceau,” the man behind the counter says. He is sixty, thin and wiry, dark-skinned, of indefinable heritage. North African, perhaps. There is a ring on each of his fingers, including his thumbs. “Mojuba!”
“I’m sorry?” Paris says.
“It is a Lucumí term of greeting. It means ‘I salute you.’”
“Oh,” Paris says. “Thanks.”
“How can I help you?”
Paris shows the man his shield. “My name is Detective Paris. I’m with the Homicide Unit of the Cleveland Police Department. This is Ms. Cruz. She’s a reporter with Mondo Latino.”
Moriceau nods at Mercedes, says, “Yes. I am familiar with your paper, of course.” He gestures to a wire newspaper bin near the door, where a small stack of Mondo Latino newspapers reside.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” Paris says.
“Certainly.”
“Do you recognize this?” Paris holds up a pencil sketch of the symbol found on both Willis Walker and Fayette Martin.
“Yes. It is the symbol for Ochosi.”
“Could you spell that for me, please?”
Moriceau does.
“What does it mean?” Paris asks.
“Ochosi is a hunter god. The bow and arrow are his tools.”
“What is it for?”
“For?”
“Why would someone pray to this god?”
“For many things, detective,” Moriceau says as he turns to the display case behind him, removing a small iron replica of the bow-and-arrow symbol. “It depends upon what is in the heart of he who prays. If you are a decent person, a law-abiding citizen, you might pray to Ochosi for bounty. If you are a thief, with the proper sacrifice, the hunter god Ochosi can ward off arrest, police, jail.”
Paris and Mercedes exchange a glance. “Sacrifice?” Paris asks.
Moriceau offers a sad, lopsided smile. “I’m afraid there are more misconceptions than truths about the Afro-Caribbean religions. The notion of human sacrifice is one of the most insidious.”
“I didn’t say anything about human sacrifice,” Paris says.
“You are a homicide detective,” Moriceau says. “I trust you are not here because of some disemboweled rooster.”
Paris doesn’t particularly care for the man’s attitude, but lets the snide remark slide for the moment. “I didn’t say there was a disemboweled anything. I’m here to ask some basic questions about Santeria. Mind if I continue?”
“Not at all.”
“Are there many followers of Santeria in Cleveland?”
“Yes. But Santeria is not a centralized religion. It is impossible to count the number of worshipers in this or any city.”
“Do you have any regular customers who’ve mentioned this Ochosi lately?”
“None that come to mind. There are many subtle variations in the Afro-Caribbean religions. Many different names for things.”
“So, there’s no way to pin down which sect might use this god for, say, darker purposes?”
“Not really. It is as if someone says that they are a practicing Christian. Are they Methodist? Baptist? Mormon? Adventist? Roman Catholic? If a brujo were to purchase items for an altar, there are many different combinations of symbols, candles, cards, incantations he might use. Brazilian Macumba, Haitian voodoo, Mexican Santeria. Santeria and its offshoots like Palo Mayombe are very complex, very secretive religions that differ from country to country.”
For some reason, Paris is feeling a bit defensive about Catholicism, even though he knows he hardly has the right. “And what exactly is a brujo?”
“A brujo is sort of a wizard, a seer. A male witch, to some. But these words have completely different meanings than they do in English.”
“Are there any of these brujos in Cleveland?”
“A few. Although, if I may anticipate your next question, I do not keep a list. We generally do not ask to what use our customers put our goods.”
Paris jots a few more notes in his book, liking Moriceau’s attitude less and less. “What sorts of items might a customer ask for if he were doing evil things?”
“Well, followers of Palo Mayombe sometimes ask for palo azul—blue stick. It is an item many botanicas do not stock. This one included. But there are many exotic things used for good and evil. One botanica in New York City regularly stocks dried cobra. Some stock something called una de gato—cat’s claw.”
“Have you had any unusual requests lately?”
“No,” Moriceau says. “Nothing like that.”
Paris closes his notebook. He looks at Mercedes, who shakes her head slightly, indicating she had no questions, nor anything to add.
Moriceau says: “Now, may I ask you a question, detective?”
“You can ask,” Paris answers, buttoning his coat.
“Obviously, there has been some sort of tragedy. A murder, most likely. My hope is that the police department is not going to conduct some sort of a witch hunt against the Hispanic and Caribbean people of this city. Most of the people who follow Santeria are peaceful, tax-paying citizens. They believe in the magic and the magic works for them. They just want to win the lottery. Or have a healthy child. Or hang on to their wife or husband for a few more years. These are not criminal acts.”
Paris leans over the counter. He brings his face to within inches of Moriceau’s. “If I’m not mistaken, witch hunts are where the authorities round up people with no evidence. Only suspicion. I’m here for a reason, Mr. Moriceau.”
The two men look at each other for a few hard moments, exchanging will. Paris wins.
“I did not mean to imply—” Moriceau begins.
Paris leans back, holds out his right hand, shows it empty, both sides, then produces a business card with a quick flourish. It is an easy sleight-of-hand, a holdover from his amateur magician days as a teenager.
“Very good, detective,” Moriceau says.
“But not magic, Mr. Moriceau. Merely a parlor trick. Which, upon closer examination, I have always found the supernatural to be.”
Moriceau takes the card and glances at Mercedes. He finds no quarter there.
Paris continues: “If you remember anything else, or if you have any customers who request paraphernalia relating specifically to this Ochosi, please give me a call.”
Moriceau examines the card, remains silent.
“One last question,” Paris says. “Is there a Santerian term for ‘white chalk’?”
“Ofún,” Moriceau says. “It is a chalk made from eggshells.”
Mr. Church, the weirdo who had phoned about the missing woman, had said: “You will take her place in ofún.”
The chalk outline.
This prick had called him.
“Thanks for your time,” Paris says, and turns for the exit, the nag champa filling his senses.
As Paris opens the door for Mercedes, and an icy wind greets them, he shudders for a moment. Not from the cold, but rather from the irony of Edward Moriceau’s words.
Brujo, Paris thinks.
It might be a witch he is hunting after all.
27
The back room of La Botanica Macumba is a shambles, littered with wooden packing crates bearing seashell candles, Indian incense, and cheap T-shirts from Korea bearing African incantations. Amid the mess sits a slight brown man with graying hair, a rainbow skullcap on his head, his fingers and thumbs adorned with gaudy paste jewelry.
His name is Moriceau. He trembles before me.
Edward Moriceau is a man who, perhaps, once wielded some power in this life, once seduced young women with a flex of his back muscles or a wink at closing time. A man now reduced to a shuddering clerk amid a minefield of cheap trinkets and brightly colored trash
.
“It is not something so easily obtained,” Moriceau says.
“I understand this,” I say. “But I have faith.”
“And you want it within three days?”
“No. I will have it within three days.”
I can see the resistance flare for a moment in Moriceau’s eyes. “And what is to stop me from calling the police?” he says. “They were just here, you know.”
“I know.”
“Then why me? Why here? Go talk to Babalwe Oro.”
“The Mystic Realm? They are bigger charlatans than even you. The truth is, I am here and I am talking to you. I am asking you to perform a service for me, to obtain an item within your grasp, just like all the other items you have obtained for me over the past year. I am not asking for this thing for free. I intend to pay full price for it, as well as some reasonable surcharge for the rush service. Each day you stand there and you sell love potions to lonely tías who think they will win the heart of some elderly gentleman of means. Do you care that you sell them false hopes? No. You just pocket their money like a common thief.”
“Yes, but they want to believe it works. Are you saying there is no magic here?”
“I am not saying that,” I answer, knowing enough to fear even my own practice of the dark arts. “But your drugstore magic has no true power. This is Potions-R-Us. Don’t insult me again.”
“But what if I cannot get you what you want? What if it is completely out of my hands?”
I cross the room, towering over Moriceau. “Then I will visit you. Perhaps in a month. Perhaps a year. One day, I will be in the closet when you open it. One day, I will be in the kitchen when you descend the stairs in the middle of the night for a drink of water. One day, I really will be the man sitting behind you at the movies.”
I genuflect, kneel, stare into the man’s small, sable eyes.
“Listen to me, Edward Moriceau. If you do not bring me what I demand, I will be more than the sum of your earthly concerns.” I take my small knife from its ankle scabbard, touch its razor-sharp tip to my right index finger. Blood responds. I touch this shiny dot of scarlet to my mouth, lean forward, kiss Moriceau on the lips. “I will be the shadow within the shadow you fear the most.”