by Toby Ball
Grip shook his head. “That’s not a great idea, I don’t think.”
“Fuck you.”
Morphy shoved Wayne forward onto the table, his weight tipping the table over and sending him and the beer glasses sprawling into the laps of his friends.
Grip and Morphy pushed their way back out to the street again. No one had seen Koss.
“This is getting out of control,” Grip said as they walked back to their car. “There’s a lot of kids in those shanties; women; old people.”
Morphy shrugged. “I don’t drink there.”
Grip winced at him.
Morphy drove back to the shanties, siren and lights going again, but almost serene at the wheel as he careened through the crowded streets. Grip recognized the attitude and kept quiet, knowing that Morphy was mulling something over.
* * *
Westermann was by the shanties, drinking coffee from a paper cup and talking to Dzeko, who looked as if he was about to drop from heatstroke. Grip heard drums coming from the shanties, the rhythm not quite organized. The ground seemed to bake in the sun.
Morphy strode toward Westermann and Souza, forcing Grip to skip a little to stay close. He had no idea what Morphy had in mind.
“Lieut,” Morphy said, still moving, “I’ve been thinking about Koss.”
Westermann turned to them. Everyone was sweating, but Dzeko’s face was the color of a slice of watermelon.
Morphy said, “He’s coming here. He’s got to know those assholes at Grip’s bar are going to tear the shanties apart to night.”
“What?”
“Oh, shit.” Grip looked around, registering the dozen or so cops, shaking his head. “We need a lot more support down here. There’s a group getting ugly uptown, going to come here and raise some hell.”
Westermann looked to Dzeko. “Phone it in.”
Dzeko shuffled off toward the squad car.
“You going to make it?” Grip called after him.
“Go to hell,” Dzeko shouted over his shoulder; but Grip hadn’t been kidding, the guy looked about to keel over.
Westermann turned back to Morphy. “You were saying about Koss?”
“Yeah, no way he lets this go. If we’re right and they were really trying to infect all these people, then Koss is going to do whatever it is he wants to do before the shanties get torn down and all the people disperse.”
“Isn’t that the point?” Grip asked.
“No. The point is they fucking think Womé is the Antichrist. The point is that Koss is going to come here to do some killing.”
Westermann nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. So we post people around? Keep an eye out?”
Morphy shrugged. “You’re the lieut.”
104.
Father Womé arrived as three men in loose, button-down shirts were planting an eight-foot pole where the assistant priest had chalked the X. Frings registered that people noticed Womé, but went back to what they were doing. There was respect but not awe, and for some reason that surprised him. Maybe they were used to seeing Womé, or maybe Frings had fundamentally misunderstood what Womé meant to the people in the Community.
The crowd hugging the edges of the Square was growing, their bodies making it even hotter. Womé wore a light tan suit along with a homburg and round sunglasses. He leaned on a brass-tipped cane as he conferred with the assistant priest and the two women. More drummers set up on wooden crates or sat cross-legged in the dirt. The crowd hummed with expectancy.
Carla pulled on Frings’s sleeve and nodded toward Eunice, whose eyelids drooped as she listened to another woman, as if she were falling asleep; but her broad shoulders were tense. The woman left and Eunice was motionless until Carla gently touched her arm.
“She said there’s a group of white men gathering in the field, more coming all the time. Said the police killed some doctor, a white man.”
Berdych? Frings nodded. “Okay. I’ll find out what’s going on.”
He pushed out of the Square and headed toward the shantytown exit, trying to keep a constant direction. A goat was loose and a couple of boys chased after it with a rope.
He didn’t like the idea of white men gathering outside the shanties. On top of what he now figured was the shooting of Berdych, the situation seemed to be getting out of hand.
After a couple of false turns, he found his way to the outside. A warm breeze blew off the river, carrying something that approached fresh air. Uniforms gathered around a dozen police cars, smoking and talking shit. Two cops were posted at each corner of the shantytown. Frings stepped out to get a better view of the field and saw a group of two or three dozen white men, maybe fifty yards away, drinking bottles of beer, their boisterous talk drifting on the wind. Between the shanties and the men, a line of cops and, behind them, young Negroes pacing back and forth between the fires burning in oil drums.
Shit.
Frings found Westermann talking with three other cops, including the one who’d braced Frings the other night in the Palace. He kept his distance, edging over so that he was in Westermann’s line of sight. Westermann eventually saw him and nodded. The other three men turned to look. The cop from the Palace looked from Frings back to Westermann and then back to Frings. Westermann excused himself and walked over.
“I can’t be talking to you here.”
“What’s going on with those ginks in the field?”
Westermann looked at him.
“Off-the-fucking-record,” Frings said.
“Detective Grip over there”—Westermann nodded to where the three men were watching them—“says that there’s a sizable group of men planning to take down the shanties.”
Frings shook his head. “And the cops are here to what, guard the shanties?”
Westermann nodded. “If it comes to that.”
The drums were going again.
Westermann asked, “You know what’s going on in there?”
“Yeah. Come have a look at who you’re protecting.”
People stood three deep around the perimeter of the Square when Frings and Westermann arrived. Kids sat on the roofs of the surrounding shanties. The drummers were all going now, the rhythm fast and hypnotic. Frings led the way through the crowd to Carla and Eunice. Carla and Westermann exchanged looks but didn’t speak.
In the Square, Father Womé was shaking a rattle and moving in choreographed steps with the assistant priest, who carried a sword and was flanked by the two women, now carrying white standards attached to poles. The three would advance together and Womé would retreat, stop, and then advance on the three, who would retreat in turn. Women on the edges of the crowd were dancing subtle dances, not coordinated with each other, but moving with the same beat. People were singing, or maybe chanting in what Frings thought must be some African language. He felt out of place and conspicuous; looked over at Carla and saw that she felt it, too.
Westermann grabbed Frings’s arm. “Who’s that?”
Frings followed Westermann’s gaze to Moses Winston, slapping a drum with his bare hands, his head cocked slightly to the side, eyes closed.
“Moses Winston. He’s a musician.”
“He lives here, in the shanties?”
Frings was surprised by the question and turned to Westermann, not liking what he saw in the lieutenant’s unfocused eyes.
“He’s staying here, from what I’ve heard,” Frings said slowly. “He’s a traveling musician, just living here while he’s in the City. Why?”
Westermann frowned and seemed to sink further into himself.
In the Square, the assistant priest and the two women discarded their props and began dancing around the pole, the man, especially, moving libidinously; the women only slightly more chaste. The tempo picked up and two men from the crowd—thin, shirtless, gleaming with sweat—entered the Square whirling, their arms out, eyes rolling around in their heads.
This was what was going to save the Community? Would this ceremony stoke their courage? Inspire resistance?
Beyond Carla, Frings saw Eunice with her eyes closed, her head swaying slightly to the rhythm, mouthing the words of whatever song was being sung.
105.
Westermann stood motionless, frightened by the intensity with which he was experiencing the ceremony, this frenzy of sound, motion, release. He felt Frings’s eyes on him but couldn’t pull his gaze away from the scene in the Square.
Father Womé, his jacket off, his white shirt soaked with sweat, circled the pole, head down, doing a funny shuffle that emanated from his hips. The assistant priest twirled one of the women around and her dancing grew increasingly frantic.
Lenore rotating as she floats downstream.
Something foreign in his blood.
Ed Wayne and Art Deyna.
Marijuana smoke rose from all sides of the Square. Westermann wiped sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Another man entered the square, a loose shirt hanging from his skeletal frame. He wore dark glasses and a shapeless hat and had the strangest walk that Westermann had ever seen, limbs seemingly controlled from without, not quite moving naturally or in concert. He carried a cane that he mostly waved as he whirled around and made little jumps while leaning way back from the waist. His appearance was greeted with a cheer from across the Square.
Photos with Mel Washington.
Sam “Blood Whiskers” McAdam standing over Klasnic, whose chest is blown open.
Big Rolf looking confused, scared.
Close to twenty people danced now. Womé was making the rounds, talking animatedly to this person or that, dancing all the while. Some danced subtly, moving their hips and heads; others whirled and shook and occasionally fell, writhing, only to be picked up by people from the crowd. The man with the funny walk weaved through all this, rubbing up against the women, clasping hands with the men, and spinning in circles with them.
Are you good with the Lord?
Are you good with Legba?
Westermann swallowed great gulps of air, feeling somehow outside himself. He had to leave.
The drums lost nothing of their power out in the shanty alleys, but he was away from the intensity of the people and the feeling that had threatened to overwhelm him. He careened through the maze of alleys; his thoughts seemed beyond his control, the drums disorienting. A few people still walked through the shanty passageways and he felt their wary eyes on him. He’d lost track of how long he’d been walking when he happened upon a gap in the shanty walls. He slipped through in a daze, greeted on the outside by two uniforms, guns drawn.
Recognizing him, they lowered their guns, but remained on guard, nervous. Behind them, in the near distance, Westermann heard the powerful rush of the river. He’d emerged on the opposite side he intended.
“Lieutenant, I think you’d better find Detectives Morphy and Grip.” One of the cops motioned around the corner of the shantytown wall.
Spurred by the cops’ urgency, Westermann hurried around the corner, but was brought up short by the scene before him. Flames licked over the edge of the oil drums, dense black smoke rising to the sky like skeletal fingers, while a group of about twenty young men from the shanties paced manically back and forth, some carrying sticks or clubs. Past them was a group of cops, spread out along the length of the shanties. Some watched the men by the oil drums and the others watched the crowd of white men—now close to a hundred strong, Westermann guessed—two dozen yards or so off.
The drums were loud even out here, and the men from the shanties and the group of white men had to shout for their epithets and threats to be heard. The cops between the two groups of men moved tensely, unsure where to focus their attention. Westermann jogged between the oil drums and the shanty walls to the front of the shanties. There weren’t enough cops here.
Ten yards from the corner, he saw Morphy and Grip coming in a hurry.
“Jesus,” Grip said. “Where’ve you been?”
Westermann nodded toward the shanties.
Grip stared at him. Westermann saw the concern in his eyes.
“What’s going on here?” Westermann asked. “Is support coming?”
“Yeah, that’s what they say. Lieutenant Ving is calling the shots with the uniforms.”
“Okay. Good.” Ving was competent.
Grip shook his head. “No. Not good. A couple of the uniforms say they saw Koss, got a couple of shots off at him, but missed.”
“Yeah?”
Morphy jabbed a thumb toward the shanties. “He’s in there.”
Jane Morphy, stretched naked on her bed.
Do you love me?
106.
Betty guided Frings through the shanties, Frings holding her gently by the arm as they walked. She was smaller than she seemed. They walked in silence until they reached the threshold of the front entrance. Through the door they could see the array of police cars and edgy cops.
Frings looked around, searching for a face he might know. Anders Ving walked over to him, grim.
“Frank.”
“Andy.”
Ving ushered the two of them away from the shanties, to where they had a better perspective on the field and what lay beyond. Frings watched Betty’s reaction as she saw the horde of drunken white men massing mere yards from the shanties, only a couple dozen cops and the Samedi men as resistance. She seemed remarkably calm, calmer than Frings felt.
Frings leaned toward Ving. “We need to get Mel Washington out here.”
Ving was astonished. “Mel Washington? This situation isn’t charged enough for you?”
“Listen. The only way this doesn’t end up really badly is if we get the Community people out of the shanties before those assholes move, because there’s no way you’re going to hold them back forever. Mel has been working with these people for months. We need him if we’re going to get this place cleared out.”
Ving shook his head. “Jesus, Frank. You really think that’s a good move for me? A good career move, if nothing else?”
Shit. “Andy, I’ll frame it in the paper. You know: ‘The resourceful Lieutenant Ving trying anything in his power to avoid a riot; the kind of innovative thinking we need in the police force.’ And so on.”
“Right, right, right, you’ll shovel on the horse shit.”
“People eat it up. The brass aren’t going to screw a big hero. Come on.”
Ving sighed. “Frank, you really owe me on this one. Maybe you can fix me up with one of your girlfriend’s friends or something?”
“Your Nordic good looks, Andy, and you need fixing up?” Frings winked. “You know I take care of people.”
“Yeah, okay, if you say so. Where do I find your buddy Mel?”
Frings nodded to Betty. “She’ll take you to him.”
107.
Grip moved quickly through the shanties and was soon disoriented; the drums, the smells, the strange sameness of these little alleys. He hated this fucking place and it didn’t help that Ole Koss was in here somewhere along with three edgy cops with guns—Westermann, Morphy, and a single beat cop.
Grip held his gun pointed forward and kept his left shoulder to the shanty walls as he hurried along. The goddamn drums! He felt eyes on him from the darkness behind open doors.
He heard footsteps and grunts down a perpendicular alley and tightened his finger on the trigger. He spun around the corner, ready to fire, but found a kid with a rope dragging a resisting goat. Grip managed a nod at the kid, but his nerves were through the roof.
Up ahead, in a blur, he saw someone, a Caucasian, cross on a perpendicular alley. Grip closed his eyes, counted to three, and took off after him.
Westermann had branched off to the left, away from the river, while Grip had gone right and Morphy and the uniform had headed straight in and then split.
Westermann tried to concentrate, address the real danger of the situation, but exhaustion, fear, the impact of the ceremony in the Square … they overwhelmed him. He moved in a daze, his eyes doing slow sweeps of the alley before him, his gun out but pressed against his thig
h. The drums played with his perceptions, made his legs weak. He heard voices from the shacks, but they were either women’s or had that Caribbean patois.
Jimmy Symmes walking away with Ole Koss.
Klasnic lying dead in a pool of blood.
Old women speaking in tongues, hands shaking.
He crept through the alleys, trying to get a hold on the situation, but the drums seemed to fracture his thoughts. His breathing went shallow. He edged up to another intersection, turned to peek around the corner, and felt the barrel of a gun against his forehead.
“I could hear you coming a mile away, Lieut.” Morphy was almost apologetic as he forced Westermann back into the alley he had just left.
“Larry, this isn’t the time—”
Morphy’s temper exploded from nowhere. “Shut the fuck up and drop your gun.”
Westermann knelt, placed his gun gently on the ground. His hands shook.
Morphy put his lips to Westermann’s ear, whispering. “The past few days, I wake up, I ask myself if today’s the day that I kill the lieut. Every day the answer is no. But one day, the answer won’t be no, and I won’t have to ask the question anymore.”
Westermann nodded, trying to pull away from where the barrel pressed into his forehead.
“You dropped off the edge,” Morphy said.
“I know.”
Morphy pulled the gun back and walked away, heading left down an alley. Westermann stood with his eyes closed, shaking, until he remembered why he was there in the first place, picked up his gun with his still-shaking hands, and walked unsteadily forward.
108.
If Winston’s arms ached after this hour of drumming, he was beyond noticing. He was where he wanted to be spiritually, mentally. The rhythm of the drums propelled his efforts, and the collective sound seemed to seep into him, separating his mind from his body.
Earlier, he’d been distracted, worried that he wouldn’t know how to approach this ceremony, knowing that there was something that he wanted to achieve: getting on the good side of the Community gods. But this concern had melted away as the drums worked on him. He understood that he just needed to be carried along with the ceremony; that things would work out that way.