by Toby Ball
He watched the dancers in various degrees of frenzy: some shook violently as they danced, others seemed as if asleep except for their gentle swaying. Father Womé sat in a chair, receiving people as they came to him in their trances, offering some words before the people danced away to be replaced by others. Winston experienced the scene before him as a shimmer, like looking through the crystal-clear waters of a fast-moving creek, everything bright and clear but not distinct.
Glélé—though now, Winston was sure, he had become Samedi—wove his way between the dancers, making little circles with his cane and lewd movements toward the younger women.
Winston heard a different kind of noise from the crowd to his left; a sound of surprise and protest. He turned to the source and saw a white man—no, he knew who it was, not just a white man, but Ole Koss—stumble out of the crowd and into the Square, a figure isolated by the color of his skin and by the quality of his movements, somehow dissonant with those of the dancers, who continued, oblivious, around him. Koss had a gun in his hand.
Winston felt the cold on his skin, knowing what would happen before Koss stalked toward Father Womé. The crowd noise changed, no longer rapturous. Koss had his gun aimed at Womé when he stopped, his attention suddenly diverted, recognition in his eyes. Winston followed Koss’s sight line and saw Samedi, motionless, staring at Koss, a wide smile on his lips.
As Moses knew would happen, Koss turned on Samedi, gun outstretched, and advanced on him, shooting three times into the man’s chest. The noise came to Winston as three cracks followed by three more as Koss stood above Samedi, shooting into his supine body.
Another cat burst into the square, also white, also carrying a gun. Winston heard screams from the crowd. Most of the people in the ceremony were still dancing, and Winston realized that he was still drumming but didn’t stop. He watched the second white cat run at Koss from behind and bring the butt of his gun down hard on Koss’s head. Koss went down on his hands and knees, blood rushing from the wound down his neck. The white cat hit him again and Koss was facedown in the dirt, the cat with his knee in Koss’s back, the gun trained at the back of Koss’s head.
109.
Grip had his knee hard in Koss’s back, his gun in the nape of Koss’s neck. His hand was steady and he was in control. He noticed that the drumming had mostly stopped, replaced by the sounds of fear—screams, sobbing, confused murmurs. From his knees, he looked around at the maybe two hundred Community Negroes, wondering what they made of all this. They could tear him apart if they wanted to. He looked at the dead man next to him, saw that it was the jangly-legged man, and wondered if he was surprised by this or not. He cuffed Koss’s unresisting wrists.
A white guy emerged from the crowd, his shirt discolored with sweat. Grip recognized Frank Frings and found himself relieved to see him. Nobody seemed to be leaving. All eyes were on him. The Square seemed to shrink.
Frings squatted next to him, patting Koss on the shoulder. “You need to get him out of here.”
Grip nodded. “You think they’ll try to stop us?”
Frings shook his head.
Morphy and Westermann arrived near simultaneously, both assessing the situation warily. The uniform showed up seconds later.
Grip stood. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
110.
Purposeless. Frings stood with Carla and Eunice Prendergrast before Father Womé, who, still in his chair, stared back at them with vacant eyes. Eunice crouched down to Womé’s level and urged him to speak, to show some consciousness of the situation around him. Womé didn’t respond. Frings tried to figure out the problem: Shock? Drugs? A trance? Spiritual exhaustion? All of these?
It should have been pathetic, Womé in this state during a moment of acute crisis. But somehow it wasn’t. He was still a presence.
The drums were all silent, their noise replaced by the din of people outside the shanties. Frings heard violence in the pitch, but it might have been because he knew who was out there; what their intent was.
Frings conferred with Carla and Eunice. The crowd was beginning to ebb away, probably unaware of the mob outside the shanties, so consuming had been the ceremony. Eunice didn’t seem to know if most of these people still planned to abandon the shanties that night or if the ritual in the Square had fortified them enough to stay. Frings couldn’t believe they’d stick around after the murder they’d witnessed on top of everything else.
Carla leaned against Frings, sagging with fatigue. Eunice called over those in her group of women who remained in the Square.
Frings rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the urgency of the situation and also his inconsequence. He watched Eunice talk with her women until he heard a murmur from the remaining crowd behind him and turned to see Mel Washington, bearded and drawn, walking toward Eunice with Betty Askins and Warren Eddings in his wake.
111.
Morphy and Grip each held one of Koss’s heavy arms. Koss was conscious and staggered along as they pulled him through the shantytown alleys. Westermann walked in front and the uniform took up the rear. The crowd noise from outside had everyone on edge.
Where is Vesterhue?
Something is in my blood.
Big Rolf looking back, scared.
Koss’s senses returned. He began muttering to Morphy and, especially, Grip. “Let me go. You’re really going to arrest me for killing that Negro demon? That demon that followed me here from Africa? I was doing the Lord’s work. He walked Godtown every night, a soldier of the devil. A soldier of Womé.”
Westermann registered that Grip was letting Koss talk, which wasn’t Grip’s way. Grip’s patience for perps sounding off was minimal; but he let Koss run his mouth. Westermann didn’t like it.
“Shut him up,” Westermann said over his shoulder.
“You’d like that,” Koss spit back.
Westermann waited to hear Koss grunt from a Grip kidney-punch, but it didn’t come.
Lenore’s body slowly rotating as it floats downstream.
Jane Does on coroner’s tables, covered in sores.
“Yeah, you’ve got some things to answer for,” Koss taunted.
Still no move by Morphy or Grip to silence him. Westermann kept moving, at a loss about what to do. Koss was going to talk at some point. Maybe it was better to get it out now, get a handle on what Koss had on him before everything was on the record. But he was showing weakness in front of Morphy and Grip. Worse, they were abetting his humiliation.
“I’m going to take the juice,” Koss continued. “I have no problem with that. I’m good with the Lord. But I’m not going to leave any secrets, Lieutenant. I’m going to tell what I know.”
“You’ll have your chance” was all Westermann could think to say.
“I’ll have my chance,” Koss said, mocking Westermann. “You want to know what I’m going to say? You want to know what I have on you, Lieutenant? Red Lieutenant? I bet you Grip, here, would like to hear; wouldn’t you, Torsten?”
We can just push her back into the river.
Front-page photo of Mel Washington talking to him.
The twins singing, Brother Allison sweating piously.
“You’re just digging yourself a hole,” Westermann said.
“A hole? How about this hole: I killed Vesterhue; I killed Jimmy Symmes; I killed three of those whores. That’s enough to see me burn. But you know who I didn’t kill? I didn’t kill Lenore Ivanova. And you know what, Lieutenant? I know where she was killed and it wasn’t where you found her; but you know that, don’t you? I did what I could to point you in the right direction. How many bodies do you need to find before you start looking in the Uhuru Community?
“It got me wondering, why is Lieutenant Westermann poking around Godtown when all the bodies are by the Uhuru Community? It didn’t make sense.”
Westermann turned on Koss, fists balled. Grip put a hand in Westermann’s chest, holding him away from Koss. Westermann’s heart hammered.
Grip’s voice was s
ubdued. “Let’s do this here. Before we go out, Lieut. It’ll be easier that way.”
Morphy turned to the uniform. “Get out of here, and you didn’t hear anything.”
The uniform nodded and hurried off.
The enemy among us.
Big Rolf walking with his arm around Vic Truffant.
Grip and Morphy weren’t holding Koss now, and even with his hands cuffed behind his back, he exuded physical strength. He tilted his chin up and showed Westermann a cocky smirk.
“Like I said, I was wondering why you were in Godtown. But then I found out you were spending time flapping your gums with Frank Frings and maybe his little girlfriend Red Carla. That’s kind of interesting. And those two, well, it’s no secret that Red Carla is close with Mel Washington and spends time down in the shanties. You connect the dots.”
Westermann tried a confident laugh, but it came out false. He tried changing the subject. “You’re confessing to, what, five murders? Six? Seven? Where are the bodies?”
“You found two on the river. The others are hidden. Look, I’ll bring you to them, don’t worry. I’ve got nothing to hide. It’s all done in the Lord’s name. All of it. But you, Lieutenant, I don’t know why you do what you do, but you are about to reap what you’ve sown. The Lord does not reward subterfuge and abetting the godless. You knew that somebody moved Lenore Ivanova’s body. You might have done it yourself. But whether it was you or someone else, it was done to get that body away from the shanties because you and your Red friends didn’t want this murder tied to the Community.”
Westermann fought panic, his words coming out without thought. “You’re lying. You’re trying to pin that murder on someone else.”
“I’ve just confessed to five. You said so yourself. I’m going to lie about this one?”
Westermann glanced from Morphy to Grip. They stared back. He’d lost them.
“Then who killed her?”
Koss shrugged his massive shoulders. “That’s on you, Lieutenant.”
They stood in silence for a moment, Westermann feeling the heat in his face, the wobble in his knees. It was coming apart.
Grip said, “Lieut, you haven’t denied it. Did you move the body?”
Westermann stared back at him, debating the lie.
Are you good with the Lord?
“You’ve got to say something,” Grip pleaded.
Westermann looked to Morphy and saw the hate. Grip was looking at Koss, who smiled, pleased with himself.
Are you good with the Lord?
Are you good with Legba?
Westermann pulled the badge from his pocket, threw it at Grip’s feet, and walked away.
112.
Frings stood on the roof of a building across the street from the Uhuru Community, resting his forearms on the low wall that ran along the edge. The sun had set and the sky was a fading scarlet dotted with wispy orange clouds. Frings smoked a reefer in the breeze and watched the last few members of the Uhuru Community walk out of the shanties through an opening made by tearing down two shacks. They retreated out the side away from the field, slinking off where they couldn’t be seen by the mob that had grown to at least a couple hundred. Even up here, Frings could sense the latent violence waiting to be unleashed. He spotted Deyna, notebook out, talking with Ed Wayne. Deyna was crossing a line Frings had crossed long ago, but he was crossing it to the other side.
Washington had arranged this evacuation, the only way he could see to prevent a tragedy. Womé had been barely better than catatonic as he was led away by two bodyguards, Frings still not sure if he was spent from the rituals or if he’d been overwhelmed by the situation, by the raw physical presence of it.
Mel Washington was down there now, talking to Lieutenant Ving and Kraatjes. Washington had earned the right to be free of police persecution. He’d assessed the situation and formulated the course of action. Frings had volunteered to accompany him, introduce him to Ving. Washington had shaken his head. “This is our affair.”
Frings understood and moved aside.
He watched Washington’s approach to Ving, then the body language of the two men as their inaudible conversation progressed, thinking Washington was lucky to be dealing with Ving, who was smart and not afraid to take bold steps. Frings watched as Ving nodded along with whatever Mel was proposing. They shook hands and Ving strode across the field, alone.
Ving had returned with three white guys, Ed Wayne among them. Washington met them by an oil drum, smoke still billowing, the Samedi ginks long gone. They worked out the compromise. The mob would give the people in the shanties time to leave—a couple of hours—then they would level the shanties or burn them or whatever it was they wanted to do. There was no way to save the Community, Washington realized, but this way he could at least save the people.
Frings tossed the last bit of his reefer over the edge of the roof and stretched, feeling the strain of the day ebbing from his body. Below, one of the prowl cars gave a quick siren blast, which must have been the signal because the mob began to move on the shanties. Their noise drifted up to Frings like a primal roar, and he thought that this was what happened in the City: Grace was devoured by brutishness, utopias by the ignorant.
He watched as the mob took to the shantytown like ants to a carcass.
EPILOGUE
113.
Weeks later.
Standing at Panos’s window, Frings saw Grip loitering across the street from the Gazette’s main entrance, smoking a cigarette and eyeing the passing women.
Panos noticed the sudden tension in Frings’s posture. “What is it, Frank?”
Frings made a noncommittal noise and turned to Panos. “I’ve got to go, Chief.”
“Someone waiting for you?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Frings didn’t mind making Grip wait and thought that maybe a reefer would relax him, make it easier to talk. So he sought out Bronstein, who never passed up a visit to the fire escape. They sat on the grated stairs, passing a reefer and watching the street. It was finally cool, a breeze making it almost cold. Two blocks down, they could see the aftermath of a car accident, an improbable volume of steam rising from one of the engines.
Frings took a drag off the reefer, then pointed it down toward Grip. “You know him?”
Bronstein squinted. “Yeah, I think so. Detective Morphy or … no, not Morphy.”
“Grip,” Frings grunted, keeping the smoke in.
“Yeah, that’s right, Grip. Son of a bitch, Grip. Not as bad as his partner, though. That’s who I was thinking of, Morphy.”
Frings nodded. The stoned pigeons had sensed what was happening on the landing and perched on the railing expectantly. Frings blew smoke their way.
Bronstein took a hit, thought for a minute, then blew smoke at the birds. “He waiting for you?”
“I think so.”
“Jesus,” Bronstein said, handing the reefer back. “You’d better have some more of this.”
Grip and Frings sat in the same diner, at the same table, that Frings had weeks before with Ellen Aust. They waited in uncomfortable silence for their coffee.
When it arrived, Grip asked, “You heard from Lieutenant Westermann?”
Frings shook his head.
“You tell me if you had?”
Frings shrugged. “I don’t know. But I guess I would tell you if I hadn’t, because I haven’t and I am telling you.”
Grip nodded at this. “I’m sure you know he’s missing.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“No body’s turned up; he hasn’t been back to his apartment; hasn’t contacted friends.”
“You think maybe he’s in a hospital somewhere? Berdych’s needle …”
Grip shook his head. “Nah, Pulyatkin took a look at what was in the syringe. The lieut doesn’t have to worry about getting the mumps.”
“Look, what are you after, Detective?”
“We off-the-record?”
“Why not?” Frings said, wondering wh
ere this was going.
“The lieut took off after we cuffed Koss, right? He and Koss had some words as we were getting out of those fucking shanties, and then the lieut just vamoosed. Well, we took Koss downtown of course and grilled him about what had happened. We had a lot of questions you know—not about the lieut, really, because we didn’t know that he wouldn’t turn up again and we figured we had time.”
Frings nodded.
“So we started in on Koss and the first thing was why did he kill that guy in the Square—guy’s name turned out to be Glélé, don’t ask me to spell it. Koss says he was after Womé but when he got into the Square he sees this Glélé character and he recognizes him; says he met him in Africa and then damned if the guy doesn’t show up here, in the City. Koss said this guy was bird-dogging him down in Godtown. Drove him nuts; thought he might be going crazy—seeing things. But this guy—Glélé—left the skull-and-hat symbol on the church walls sometimes, so he knew there must be someone. You know this guy—Glélé?”
Frings shook his head.
“Look, I know you and the lieut worked this thing together somehow. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a Red thing; maybe something else.”
“Yeah, we were working together.”
Grip waited for Frings to expand and, when he didn’t, said, “Koss rolled over on everything: Symmes, Vesterhue, Berdych, the dead girls. Says he and Vesterhue were infecting the girls, seeing how the disease worked: how long it took to go through someone, how it could be transmitted, all that.
“We pushed him, you understand. You can’t tell me that this whole thing, that Prosper Maddox didn’t know about it; wasn’t a part of it. But Koss stuck to his story: it was him and Vesterhue. Morphy even got a little rough with him, but the guy was in the Leopard Corps; we weren’t going to break him with a little rough stuff. So Maddox is going to skate. Vesterhue and Berdych are dead, and Koss is going to fry.”