Kiss of Evil (25 page)

Jean Luc greets her at the door to his apartment, dressed in a black cashmere sweater, gray flannel slacks, loafers. His hair is swept straight back today, à la Michael Corleone.

She follows him to the kitchen, a kitchen full of modern, almond-toned appliances. But there is something beneath the fragrance of Glade aerosol and scented candles. Something that has gone off. Something dead.

She looks down the hallway where she figures the bedrooms and bathroom are located. Four doors, all closed, a single sconce at the end. To the left, a small living room, unfurnished. To the right, the tidy little kitchen. Not particularly lived in. Not septic either.

Jean Luc takes her coat without a word and hangs it in the hall closet. He closes the door, leans against it, studies her. After an excruciating silence, a silence during which she could actually hear her pulse in her ears, he says, “I don’t want you to hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’d have to
know
you to hate you. I don’t know you at all.”

“We can change that.”

“No. We cannot.”

“Why?”

“We have a business deal, Mr. Christiane,” she says, realizing that it is the first time she has referred to him as
anything
, much less something as formal as Mr. Christiane. “It is ugly, it is something I never asked for. But it is now on my plate and I can’t get it off. Or can I? Can I just turn around and walk out of here right now?”

“No.”

“See? Now, let’s just tolerate each other for the next day or two and then go on our separate ways.”

“If you only knew my pain, for a single second, you would understand why I am doing what I am doing.”

“Believe it or not, I really don’t care why you’re doing it. What I care about is why
I’m
doing it.”

Jean Luc’s face is unreadable. Had she pushed him too far?

He crosses his arms, considers her for a few more long moments. Then, as if a key was turned somewhere within him, his face softens and he says: “Can I get you something? Coffee? A soft drink?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“Sure?”

“Positive,” she says, relieved that she hadn’t overstepped any boundary. She has to keep reminding herself that this is a man who beat his father to death with a baseball bat, poured beef broth on the body, and let four big dogs eat what was left.

Jean Luc offers his hand, like an old lover on a beach.

For some reason, she takes it.

He says, “Let me show you a very special room.”

41

Paris presses the button at 3204-A Fulton Road for the fifth time. He steps back onto the sidewalk, glances up. There are no lights on in the apartment. He looks into La Botanica Macumba. It is dark also, save for a small spotlight over the cash register, which sits with its empty drawer open.

Paris tries the door to the stairwell that leads to 3204-A. Locked. He had circled the building twice when he arrived, but the back and sides of the two-story structure offered no lighted windows, no open doors, no fire escape. He takes out his phone, dials the Levertov number. There is no answer, nor is there an answering machine.

Five cars are parked along the curb within a block of the doorway. Paris jots down the license plate numbers. He calls them in, and at the same time requests an address.

Fifteen minutes later, Edward Moriceau is in custody.

Moriceau sits in Interview One at the Justice Center. It is nearly eleven and this is Paris’s third run at the story.

“And you never saw anyone argue with him, threaten him?” Paris asks.

“No. Never.”

“And you’ve never had any business dealings or personal dealings with Mr. Levertov?”

“No.”

Moriceau is lying. Time to ratchet things up a bit. Paris drops a photograph in front of the man, a medium close-up of Willis Walker’s tongue. The Ochosi symbol is very clear. Moriceau brings his hand to his mouth.

“Look familiar to you?”

“Yes,” Moriceau replies, his voice a little thin. “As I said . . .”

“Oh yeah . . . that’s right,” Paris says, knowing it is time to toss out the first bomb, the last vestige of cordiality. “You said something about a disemboweled rooster, didn’t you? This look like a rooster?”

With this, Paris places a full body shot of Willis Walker onto the table. The impasto of thick maroon blood is spread on the white tiles, giving the dead man’s body a bloated, moth-like shape. A rose-colored sprout of viscera extends from where Willis Walker’s genitalia once grew.

Moriceau dry heaves, turns away. Then vomits on his feet.

Paris grimaces, looks at the two-way mirror, and can almost hear the buck being passed down the food chain among the police officers on the other side. Low man gets to fetch the bucket and mop.

Paris circles to Moriceau’s side of the table, carefully skirting the foul debris on the floor. In a moment, Greg Ebersole enters, mop in hand. He hands Moriceau a five-inch stack of napkins, runs the mop over the vomit and makes a lithe and rapid exit from the room.

“Mr. Moriceau,” Paris begins, “somebody is doing terrible things to the people of this city. Right now, nobody here thinks that person is necessarily you. Do you understand?”

Weakly, Moriceau nods, dabs his chin.

“Good. The problem is, as time goes on, and there are more and more connections to Santeria, or the address on Fulton Road, the more likely it is that our attitudes will begin to change. Do you understand this also?”

Again, Moriceau nods.

“I want you to think about something for a moment. Somebody killed the old man who lived over your store. There is a good chance that that person is into Santeria or Macumba or Candomblé, or maybe he’s just a wanna-be asshole who gets his rocks off pretending to be some kind of witch. Either way, the link to your store, the link to the products you sell, is
awfully
compelling.”

Moriceau looks up, and Paris is nearly frightened by what he sees. The terror in the man’s eyes has no bottom. “They will know . . .”

“They?” Paris asks. “What are you talking about? Who is
they
?”

Moriceau gazes back at the floor. Paris is almost certain he is about to puke again, but instead Moriceau says, in his increasingly disjoined voice: “The seven powers.”

Paris had come across the term
seven powers
in his readings on Santeria. But it was all beginning to blend together in his mind. He imagines it would be like someone trying to learn all about Catholicism or Judaism in seventy-two hours or so. “I’m sorry?”

“Eleggua, Orula, Ogun . . .”

Paris could barely hear him now. “What are you talking about?”

“Obatala, Yemaya, Oshun, Shango . . .”

“Mr. Moriceau?”

Moriceau looks up, holds his gaze, his red eyes searching, his hands now trembling like those of a man in violent, freezing waters. “I . . . I . . .”

Paris remains silent for a few moments, waiting for the answer this man will almost certainly not supply. He is right. “You
what
, Mr. Moriceau?”

“I want a lawyer.”

Paris studies the shivering figure in front of him. This is no stone killer. Whatever legal horrors Moriceau might be facing, whatever apparitions of prison life eddy in his mind, they seem to be nothing compared to the flames of his personal hell.

The stench reaches Paris at that moment—sour and pervasive and cloying. He looks into the mirror, at himself, at the cops on the other side. They all know that there is no way they will be able to hold Edward Moriceau, just as they know that surveillance on La Botanica Macumba will begin within the hour.

The building has taken back its silence, reclaimed its mysteries. Paris is alone. He directs the beam of the flashlight along the cobwebbed wall, the skewed shelving, opaque with dust. Some of the hand-painted menus for Weeza’s cuisine are still visible beneath the layers of time.

He is unsure why he had come back. Boredom and loneliness certainly had something to do with it. The building had probably given up what it knew about the last moments of Fayette Marie Martin’s life, had most likely disclosed all its veiled wisdom.

But what the Reginald Building had not told him is why would someone like Fayette Martin come here in the first place. Why did she agree to meet with someone who, by all appearances, had been a total stranger, a man she had met online? Why didn’t she drive up to the building, take one look, then drive back home and lock her doors and ask herself what the hell she was doing?

How lonely had it
gotten
?

He stands in the doorway leading to what was once Weeza’s kitchen, listens to the night sounds, the constant bray of the wind. He wonders if Fayette
knew
. Did she scream when she saw the big knife? Did it come as a complete surprise? Did she have a second to reflect, or did the end of her life come as a brutal blindside, like a drunk driver running a red light at eighty miles an hour? Hadn’t she known it
might
happen?

Or was that the kick?

Paris decides to go home, to rest, to take the whole story apart and reassemble it from the bolts up. He plays the flashlight beam across the floor at his feet and heads for the door just as the wind picks up again, a doleful gust that rattles the glass panes of the building’s few remaining windows, loose in their mullions like rows of diseased teeth.

42

They had entered through the second door on the left. The room is
searingly
white. The one splash of brilliance is the velvet wing chair in the center of the room, a deep purple in color. Across from it, against the far wall, is a white table holding a computer and a monitor. Against the wall to the right is a white ultramodern desk, very slender, no chair.

That’s it. No other furniture, no paintings nor posters on the walls, no books nor magazines nor ashtrays nor table lamps. Just . . .
white
. And a hell of a lot of track lights hanging from the ceiling. There had to be twenty of them. And every one of them is blazing.

“Do you have anywhere to be tomorrow, early evening?” he asks.

She sits on the velvet wing chair. Whatever she had smelled in the kitchen is stronger here. Spoiled beef, maybe. But this room is almost sterile, and she finds it hard to imagine that Jean Luc would have another room in such disarray as to have rotting food strewn around. Perhaps it is coming from the next apartment.

“No,” she answers. One of her part-time jobs is secretarial work for a small company that writes grants for charities and foundations. They had closed the offices for the week. Besides, if she had said yes, she had the distinct feeling it wouldn’t really matter that much.

“Good,” Jean Luc says. He crosses the room, opens the closet door. Inside hangs a solitary item, a black leather jacket. He removes it from the hanger and walks over to the velvet wing chair. Without a word, she stands and he slips the jacket on her. It feels warm. She does not question what he is doing. There is no longer any point to that.

There are other ways to win.

Jean Luc reaches into his pocket, then holds up a small card. On it is the address of an Italian specialty market on East Sixty-sixth Street. “He’ll be there at six-thirty
P
.
M
. tomorrow. He goes there like clockwork, every week.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asks, standing closer, looking deeply into his eyes. She unzips the jacket halfway.

“I want you to take him on a little voyage.” He walks over to the desk, opens a drawer, removes a soft cloth. She looks into the drawer. No photos. Jean Luc returns, gently buffs everywhere on the jacket he has touched. “A little
cruise
, if you will.”

“A cruise?” she asks. “What kind of cruise?”

Jean Luc smiles. “A cruise I’m certain he will enjoy. A cruise on the
Mare di Amore
.”

43

The ice on the back of his head melts during his fourth cup of coffee, but the hangover does not. He had stayed up until almost dawn, finishing the final three inches of four different kinds of booze he had found lurking in his cupboards. Scotch, rye, schnapps, Cuervo. He had also found a pair of Lynchburg Lemonades loitering in the back of his fridge.

What had he been
thinking
?

He had been thinking about not thinking, that’s what he had been thinking.

Paris Is Burning
is what he had been thinking.

He had watched old movies, he had smoked old cigarettes, he had poured his booze carefully, adding ice until every drop was gone, shooting for blotto.

He arrived.

He has most of the day off and has at least ten errands to run before his tour starts. He pours himself another cup of coffee, promising movement soon, and scans the
Plain Dealer
, pleased by not seeing a huge headline, above the fold, with the words
voodoo
and
killer
in it.

Paris inserts the VHS tape. It is a low-angle shot of himself standing in front of the Justice Center. He is younger in the shot, wearing a dark suit, burgundy tie. He looks heavier than he remembers being, which is one of the reasons he had not watched the tape for more than a year. The reason for the tape to begin with? Pure vanity. He had worn his best suit that day, in the hope he would be interviewed, in the hope that Beth would see it and it would impress the hell out of her. Only the interview part happened. He had caught it on the eleven o’clock news that night.

This statement is followed by a barrage of questions shouted from the dozen or so reporters in front of him. Although he doesn’t remember hearing it, one of the questions must have been about Mike Ryan’s own investigation, the Internal Affairs inquisition as to whether or not Mike had extorted protection money from a man who owned a chain of adult bookstores.