Darkfall (6 page)

They looked at him blankly.

He said, “Okay, what about this woman, Vastagliano’s girlfriend or whatever she is ...”

“Shelly Parker,” Blaine said. “She’s waiting in the living room if you want to talk to her.”

“Have you spoken with her yet?” Jack asked.

“A little,” Blaine said. “She’s not much of a talker.”

“A real sleazebag is what she is,” Nevetski said.

“Reticent,” Blaine said.

“An uncooperative sleazebag.”

“Self-contained, very composed,” Blaine said.

“A two-dollar pump. A bitch. A scuz. But gorgeous.”

Jack said, “Did she mention anything about a Haitian?”

“A what?”

“You mean... someone from Haiti? The island?”

“The island,” Jack confirmed.

“No,” Blaine said. “Didn’t say anything about a Haitian.”

“What fuckin’ Haitian are we talking about?” Nevetski demanded.

Jack said, “A guy named Lavelle. Baba Lavelle.”

“Baba?” Blaine said.

“Sounds like a clown,” Nevetski said.

“Did Shelly Parker mention him?”

“No.”

“How’s this Lavelle fit in?”

Jack didn’t answer that. Instead, he said, “Listen, did Miss Parker say anything to you about... well... did she say anything at all that seemed
strange?”

Nevetski and Blaine frowned at him.

“What do you mean?” Blaine said.

Yesterday, they’d found the second victim: a black man named Freeman Coleson, a middle-level dope dealer who distributed to seventy or eighty street pushers in a section of lower Manhattan that had been conferred upon him by the Carramazza family, which had become an equal opportunity employer in order to avoid ill-feeling and racial strife in the New York underworld. Coleson had turned up dead, leaking from more than a hundred small stab wounds, just like the first victim on Sunday night. His brother, Darl Coleson, had been panicky, so nervous he was pouring sweat. He had told Jack and Rebecca a story about a Haitian who was trying to take over the cocaine and heroin trade. It was the weirdest story Jack had ever heard, but it was obvious that Darl Coleson believed every word of it.

If Shelly Parker had told a similar tale to Nevetski and Blaine, they wouldn’t have forgotten it. They wouldn’t have needed to ask what sort of “strange” he was talking about.

Jack hesitated, then shook his head. “Never mind. It’s not really important.”

That would be Nevetski’s next question. Jack turned away from them before Nevetski could speak, kept moving, through the door, into the hall, where Rebecca was waiting for him.

She looked angry.

Last week, on Thursday evening, at the twice-a-month poker game he’d been attending for more than eight years, Jack had found himself defending Rebecca. During a pause in the game, the other players—three detectives: Al Dufresne, Witt Yardman, and Phil Abrahams —had spoken against her.

“I don’t see how you put up with her, Jack,” Witt said.

“She’s a cold one,” Al said.

“A regular ice maiden,” Phil said.

As the cards snapped and clicked and softly hissed in Al’s busy hands, the three men dealt out insults:

“She’s colder than a witch’s tit.”

“About as friendly as a Doberman with one fierce damned toothache and a bad case of constipation.”

“Acts like she don’t ever have to breathe or take a piss like the rest of humanity.”

“A real ball-buster,” Al Dufresne said.

Finally Jack said, “Ah, she’s not so bad once you know her.”

“A ball-buster,” Al repeated.

“Listen,” Jack said, “if she was a guy, you’d say she was just a hard-nosed cop, and you’d even sort of admire her for it. But ’cause she’s a hard-nosed
female
cop, you say she’s just a cold bitch.”

“I know a ball-buster when I see one,” Al said.

“A ball-
crusher,”
Witt said.

“She’s got her good qualities,” Jack said.

“Yeah?” Phil Abrahams said. “Name one.”

“She’s observant.”

“So’s a vulture.”

“She’s smart. She’s efficient,” Jack said.

“So was Mussolini. He made the trains run on time.”

Jack said, “And she’d never fail to back up her partner if things got hairy out there on the street.”

“Hell’s bells, no cop would fail to back up a partner,” Al said.

“Some would,” Jack said.

“Damned few. And if they did, they wouldn’t be cops forlong.”

“She’s a hard worker,” Jack said. “Carries her weight.”

“Okay, okay,” Witt said, “so maybe she can do the job well enough. But why can’t she be a human being, too?”

“I don’t think I ever heard her laugh,” Phil said.

Al said, “Where’s her heart? Doesn’t she have a heart?”

“Sure she does,” Witt said. “A little stone heart.”

“Well,” Jack said, “I suppose I’d rather have Rebecca for a partner than any of you brass-plated monkeys.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. She’s more sensitive than you give her credit for.”

“Oh, ho! Sensitive!”

“Now it comes out!”

“He’s not just being chivalrous.”

“He’s sweet on her.”

“She’ll have your balls for a necklace, old buddy.”

“From the look of him, I’d say she’s already had ’em.”

“Any day now, she’ll be wearing a brooch made out of his—”

Jack said, “Listen, you guys, there’s nothing between me and Rebecca except—”

“Does she go in for whips and chains, Jack?”

“Hey, I’ll bet she does! Boots and dog collars.”

“Take off your shirt and show us your bruises, Jack.”

“Neanderthals,” Jack said.

“Does she wear a leather bra?”

“Leather? Man, that broad must wear steel.”

“Cretins,” Jack said.

“I
thought
you’ve been looking poorly the last couple months,” Al said. “Now I know what it is. You’re pussy-whipped, Jack.”

“Definitely pussy-whipped,” Phil said.

Jack knew there was no point in resisting them. His protestations would only amuse and encourage them. He smiled and let the wave of good-natured abuse wash over him, until they were at last tired of the game.

Eventually, he said, “Alright, you guys have had your fun. But I don’t want any stupid rumors starting from this. I want you to understand there’s nothing between Rebecca and me. I think she is a sensitive person under all those callouses. Beneath that cold-as-an-alligator pose she works so hard at, there’s some warmth, tenderness. That’s what I think, but I don’t know from personal experience. Understand?”

“Maybe there’s nothing between you two,” Phil said, “but judging by the way your tongue hangs out when you talk about her, it’s obvious you wish there was.”

“Yeah,” Al said, “when you talk about her, you drool.”

The taunting started all over again, but this time they were much closer to the truth than they had been before. Jack didn’t know from personal experience that Rebecca was sensitive and special, but he sensed it, and he wanted to be closer to her. He would have given just about anything to be with her—not merely
near
her; he’d been near her five or six days a week, for almost ten months—but really
with
her, sharing her innermost thoughts, which she always guarded jealously.

The biological pull was strong, the stirring in the gonads; no denying it. After all, she was quite beautiful. But it wasn’t her beauty that most intrigued him.

Her coolness, the distance she put between herself and everyone else, made her a challenge that no male could resist. But that wasn’t the thing that most intrigued him, either.

Now and then, rarely, no more than once a week, there was an unguarded moment, a few seconds, never longer than a minute, when her hard shell slipped slightly, giving him a glimpse of another and very different Rebecca beyond the familiar cold exterior, someone vulnerable and unique, someone worth knowing and perhaps worth holding on to.
That
was what fascinated Jack Dawson: that brief glimpse of warmth and tenderness, the dazzling radiance she always cut off the instant she realized she had allowed it to escape through her mask of austerity.

Last Thursday, at the poker game, he had felt that getting past Rebecca’s elaborate psychological defenses would always be, for him, nothing more than a fantasy, a dream forever unattainable. After ten months as her partner, ten months of working together and trusting each other and putting their lives in each other’s hands, he felt that she was, if anything, more of a mystery than ever....

Now, less than a week later, Jack knew what lay under her mask. He knew from personal experience. Very personal experience. And what he had found was even better, more appealing, more special than what he had hoped to find. She was wonderful.

But this morning there was absolutely no sign of the inner Rebecca, not the slightest hint that she was anything more than the cold and forbidding Amazon that she assiduously impersonated.

It was as if last night had never happened.

In the hall, outside the study where Nevetski and Blaine were still looking for evidence, she said, “I heard what you asked them—about the Haitian.”

“So?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Jack!”

“Well, Baba Lavelle is our only suspect so far.”

“It doesn’t bother me that you asked about him,” she said. “It’s the
way
you asked about him.”

“I used English, didn’t I?”

“Jack—”

“Wasn’t I polite enough?”

“Jack—”

“It’s just that I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Yes, you do.” She mimicked him, pretending she was talking to Nevetski and Blaine: “‘Has either of you noticed anything
odd
about this one? Anything out of the ordinary? Anything
strange?
Anything
weird?’
”

“I was just pursuing a lead,” he said defensively.

“Like you pursued it yesterday, wasting half the afternoon in the library, reading about voodoo.”

“We were at the library less than an hour.”

“And then running up there to Harlem to talk to that sorcerer.”

“He’s not a sorcerer.”

“That
nut.”

“Carver Hampton isn’t a nut,” Jack said.

“A real nut case,” she insisted.

“There was an article about him in that book.”

“Being written about in a book doesn’t automatically make him respectable.”

“He’s a priest.”

“He’s not. He’s a fraud.”

“He’s a voodoo priest who practices only white magic, good magic. A
Houngon.
That’s what he calls himself.”

“I can call myself a fruit tree, but don’t expect me to grow any apples on my ears,” she said. “Hampton’s a charlatan. Taking money from the gullible.”

“His religion may seem exotic—”

“It’s foolish. That shop he runs. Jesus. Selling herbs and bottles of goat’s blood, charms and spells, all that other nonsense—”

“It’s not nonsense to him.”

“Sure it is.”

“He believes in it.”

“Because he’s a nut.”

“Make up your mind, Rebecca. Is Carver Hampton a nut or a fraud? I don’t see how you can have it both ways.”

“Okay, okay. Maybe this Baba Lavelle
did
kill all four of the victims.”

“He’s our only suspect so far.”

“But he didn’t use voodoo. There’s no such thing as black magic. He stabbed them, Jack. He got blood on his hands, just like any other murderer.”

Her eyes were intensely, fiercely green, always a shade greener and clearer when she was angry or impatient.

“I never said he killed them with magic,” Jack told her. “I didn’t say I believe in voodoo. But you saw the bodies. You saw how strange—”

“Stabbed,” she said firmly. “Mutilated, yes. Savagely and horribly disfigured, yes. Stabbed a hundred times or more, yes. But
stabbed.
With a knife. A real knife. An ordinary knife.”

“The medical examiner says the weapon used in those first two murders would’ve had to’ve been no bigger than a penknife.”

“Okay. So it was a penknife.”

“Rebecca, that doesn’t make sense.”

“Murder never makes sense.”

“What kind of killer goes after his victims with a penknife, for God’s sake?”

“A lunatic.”

“Psychotic killers usually favor dramatic weapons-butcher knives, hatchets, shotguns ...”

“In the movies, maybe.”

“In reality, too.”

“This is just another psycho like all the psychos who’re crawling out of the walls these days,” she insisted. “There’s nothing special or strange about him.”

“But how does he overpower them? If he’s only wielding a penknife, why can’t his victims fight him off or escape?”

“There’s an explanation,” she said doggedly. “We’ll find it.”

The house was warm, getting warmer; Jack took off his overcoat.

Rebecca left her coat on. The heat didn’t seem to bother her any more than the cold.

“And in every case,” Jack said, “the victim has fought his assailant. There are always signs of a big struggle. Yet none of the victims seems to have managed to wound his attacker; there’s never any blood but the victim’s own. That’s damned strange. And what about Vastagliano—murdered in a locked bathroom?”

She stared at him suddenly but didn’t respond.

“Look, Rebecca, I’m not saying it’s voodoo or anything the least bit supernatural. I’m not a particularly superstitious man. My point is that these murders might be the work of someone who
does
believe in voodoo, that there might be something ritualistic about them. The condition of the corpses certainly points in that direction. I didn’t say voodoo works. I’m only suggesting that the killer might
think
it works, and his belief in voodoo might lead us to him and give us some of the evidence we need to convict him.”