Kiss of Evil (18 page)

They had collected the dogs for the past two weeks, alternately starving them, then throwing them the slightest morsels of rancid beef. The dogs are ravenous, insane with hunger, and long bereft of any notion of their place as domesticated animals in a civilized world. There are four of them in the back of the van. Two Rottweilers, two Dobermans.

The boy opens the door and carefully, one by one, removes their muzzles. Within seconds, the four big dogs are out, their huge paws chewing up the gravel to get to this fallen cousin so freshly and mortally wounded in the primordial mist of their need.

As the boy and girl look on, the dogs descend upon the body with a viciousness that has lived in their beings, untapped, for centuries. The boy and girl understand completely, for they too have carried a dark violence within them for years, a visceral craving for this moment.

And so they watch, still and silent and rapt, two children of the same mother.

But, at this moment, their thoughts are one.

Rest now, Lydia.

Rest.

The girl pulls out of the lot first, leaving the boy in the driver’s seat of the van, idling, lights off, watching the last of the carnage unfold.

Mexico, he thinks. He does not know it yet, but Mexico is a place where he will learn the way of the road, the way of the night, the way by which all things must pass at least once as the devil smiles upon them. The way beside which all other ways pale.

In Mexico, he will learn the way of the saints.

24

She is horrified. Disgusted. More than a little afraid. And completely bewildered.

Here’s what she knows. Or
thinks
she knows.

Jean Luc and his sister beat their father to death because their father was an animal and abused their mother. Then they let dogs eat him.

But how does she know the
story
is true? How does she know that Jean Luc is really the boy in the story? And what can it
possibly
have to do with her? Did he tell her that story just to frighten her? On top of the blackmail?

She looks up to see him cross the room, pick up Isabella’s photo.

Fighting her growing nausea, she sprints across the room, takes the photograph from him, as forcefully as she dares, and places it in the end table drawer. “What do you want from me? Just tell me what the
fuck
you want from me.”

“Tonight? Nothing.” He takes her chin in his right hand, angles her face toward his. “But tomorrow. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.”

“Yeah? What about it?”

“It is a magical night and I want you to have the best time possible.”

She remains absolutely still, silent.

“Tomorrow night you are going to a party,” he continues. “A party filled with laughter and goodwill and all the other joys of the season.”

She looks at his handsome face, thinks about him as a thirteen-year-old boy, a bloodied baseball bat in his hands. She considers the will that must have propelled that fury. She feels it seething from him as he moves ever closer. She retreats, little by little, until her back is to the wall. Is
any
of this true? She has no idea. But she is a realist, if nothing else, and knows the box score. As long as Jean Luc has those pictures of her at the Dream-A-Dream Motel, it doesn’t really matter if the story is true or not.

Jean Luc says: “All I want you to think about, between now and tomorrow night, are three little words.”

He touches her cheek.

For a moment she feels, what,
charmed
?

In the middle of all
this
?

“What three words?” she asks.

He tells her, counting each word off with his fingers.

25

Jack Paris stands in the checkout line at the Rite Aid drugstore at East 113th Street and Euclid Avenue, a ridiculous parody of a Christmas tree in his hands. Actually, he is holding a box no bigger than a boot box, a box that allegedly contains a “full 36-inch-tall Christmas tree, great for small spaces!”

He has decided that he will not let this Christmas pass without some sort of cheer in his otherwise cheerless apartment.

The line is moving slowly, but that is not the worst of it. The worst of it is the incessant, mind-scrambling ring of the Salvation Army bell, courtesy of the Santa-clad volunteer standing just outside the door. Paris, like everyone else in the store, would like to take Santa out with a spinning back kick and stomp that bell flatter than a tuna can on the freeway.

Instead, after paying for his tree in a box, he nods at Santa as he passes him and, as per routine, walks another ten feet or so, spins on his heels, saunters back, and dumps a buck in the bucket.

“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.