Kiss of Evil (29 page)

Elliott asks: “How do you know that someone at the party didn’t tell him about you and Carla?”

“Believe me, nobody looked at me. Carla’s the only reason we got in the door in the first place. They know us as Cleopatra and John. I don’t think he has any idea we would come at him from this side. I vote for hitting that party tonight.”

Elliott looks at Carla Davis. “You agree?”

“Absolutely,” Carla says. “If we bring in Herb now, or whoever actually lives in that house, and sweat him, we tip our boy for sure. We lose the possibility that he shows up at the party. He’s in the wind. I say we raid the party at midnight.”

“What time does this thing start?” Elliott asks.

“Ten o’clock,” Carla says. “Herb sent me an e-mail this morning.”

51

The stairway to the basement is narrow, unlit, paneled haphazardly with three different types of Masonite, all overlapping each other by a few inches or so, all banged into place with bent and tortured sixteen-penny nails. At the bottom of the stairs is a rack of garden tools—rakes, picks, shovels, hoes, mattocks—hung on a Peg-Board. Paris and Mercedes reach the bottom, turn to the right: low ceiling, crosshatched with exposed wire, heat ducts, copper pipe. A single bare bulb hangs, casting brusque shadows.

They turn the corner, skirting the furnace, and see a slight brown woman of seventy, her chalky hair pulled back into a bun and infused with an elaborate network of colorful shells and beads. She wears a multicolored caftan and Dr. Scholl’s sandals. Behind her oversized, cat’s-eye framed glasses, Paris can see that she has a lazy left eye.

“This my
’buela
,” Mercedes says after hugging the old woman. “My grandmother. Evangelina Cruz.”

“Mrs. Cruz,” Paris says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Evangelina Cruz holds out her small calloused hand. Paris shakes it, noticing that Mercedes is right to say they favor each other. For a moment, when Evangelina Cruz smiles at him, he can see the young woman rise to the surface.

“
Bienvenido
,” she says.

“Thank you,” Paris replies.

Evangelina Cruz looks to her granddaughter for a sign, then turns and parts the curtain of garnet-colored glass beads in the doorway behind her, steps through. Paris and Mercedes follow.

It is a small, square room, perhaps ten by ten feet, damp concrete floor, painted masonry walls. Against the far wall is an altar, a four-foot-tall, three-foot-wide structure that appears to be a series of five steps, leading upward, covered in a bright white cloth. Each of the treads bears a number of items—candles, bowls, loose shells and shell necklaces, statues, cards, small pieces of pottery. But mostly candles. There are candles everywhere, all of them scented. The mélange of sweet and bitter and earthen aromas is overpowering.

Then there are the animal smells. The smells of cages.

Evangelina Cruz steps to the right of the altar, reaches beneath the white cloth, presses a button. Within seconds, music begins to play, a vibrant African beat, mostly drums. She looks heavenward, then reaches into the pocket of her caftan and produces a cigar. She lights it slowly, methodically. When it is fully lighted she draws the smoke into her mouth, then exhales it over the altar. She then blows smoke at Paris and places the cigar onto a brass incense plate.

“
Donde está tu fotografía?
” Evangelina asks.

“She needs the photographs now,” Mercedes whispers.

Paris reaches into his pocket and produces photocopies of the photographs of the four victims. Fayette Martin, Willis Walker, Edith Levertov, and Isaac Levertov. He hands the paper to Evangelina Cruz. Without looking at the photographs, she drops them into a large terra-cotta bowl on the bottom step of the altar. She then leans over and picks up an earthen cruet and pours what appears to be water into the bowl, half-filling it. She places the pitcher back onto the altar, then dips her fingers into the liquid and flicks them over the altar.

Before Paris can react, she turns and flicks the last few drops over him.

“
Maferefún ashelú!
” she says.

Then, without a word, she leaves the room, the glass beads clapping behind her. Paris hears a door open and close. Then again, fainter. After a few moments, Evangelina returns, carrying a chicken. A
live
chicken. She turns up the music.

Paris looks at Mercedes and lets his right eyebrow do the talking.

Mercedes leans close. “Don’t worry. She eats them after.”

Up goes the remaining eyebrow. “She’s going to
kill it
?”

Mercedes smirks. “And I suppose you send condolence cards to KFC when you’re done with a bucket?”

She has a point, Paris thinks. He just wasn’t prepared for some kind of barnyard slaughter in the basement of a house on Babbitt Road. He directs his attention back to the altar.

Evangelina Cruz puts the body of the chicken under her left arm, and with her right hand she reaches into the pocket of her caftan. This time she produces a pearl-handle switchblade, clicks it open, and cuts the chicken’s neck, deeply, taking the head nearly off. It flutters wildly under her arm, but Evangelina Cruz doesn’t even flinch. She holds the chicken’s exposed throat over the bowl containing the four photographs, and Paris watches as a series of bright scarlet spurts cloud the water, blurring the photographs completely.

In the background, the tribal music plays.

Evangelina chants. “
Maferefún ashelú!
”

The chicken’s blood squirts into the bowl.

“Maferefún ashelú!
”

Paris looks at Mercedes. “Do you know what that means?” he whispers.

“Yes,” she says. “She is offering praise to the police.”

Paris is shocked. “There’s a
saying
for that?”

Mercedes smiles as the ceremony continues.

Within three minutes, Evangelina has the chicken plucked and the white feathers scattered about the altar.

Mercedes emerges from the house, walks over to the driver’s door of her car, gets in. Paris sits in the passenger seat, a little rattled by what he has just seen.

As soon as the ceremony was over, Paris had thanked Evangelina Cruz and quickly made his way out the side door, the smell of sour smoke and chicken blood filling his sinuses. The cold air had done wonders. He had agreed to meet with the old woman at Mercedes’s request, hoping to further his knowledge of Santeria. And although he could honestly say that he knows more about it now than he did yesterday, he isn’t entirely certain how this newly acquired wisdom is going to help.

Paris asks, “So . . . what did she say?”

Mercedes buckles her seat belt, starts the car. “She said you seem like a very nice young man.”

“Young?” Paris says. “I think your
’buela
may need a new ’scrip for those glasses.”

“She also said that the man you are looking for is not a real
brujo
. He is an impostor.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means he was not ordained into
brujería
or Palo Mayombe or Santeria itself. He is just using these things to frighten people. He is like a
pimp
she says. A cardboard bully.”

“Those dead bodies are not cardboard, Mercedes.”

“I know. I told her that. She says that the man you are looking for will crumble when you close your hands around him. Like paper. It’s kind of tough to translate, okay?”

“Okay.”

“But she says that if you want to know him, if you want to catch him, you have to know what breaks his heart.”

Paris’s mind races around the evidence, trying to plug all this into a reality socket. “She really thinks the Santeria angle is just window dressing?”

“Yes.”

“How can she be sure?”

Mercedes looks out the side window for a moment, then back at Paris. “This is going to sound a lot worse than it is.”

“It already does. Just spit it out.”

Mercedes fumbles with the settings for the car’s heater, stalling. “She says that if he were the real thing, he would have sacrificed a child by now.”

Paris goes cold for a moment, remembering Melissa in the hands of a psychopath. “Please. No. Don’t tell me that—”

“No,” Mercedes says as she looks both ways, then backs out onto Babbitt Road. “She really doubts that he will do that. She thinks this guy is a player. A hustler. No more a
brujo
than you. She says he has an angle, a reason for doing this that is of this earth. Nothing more mystical than that.”

Paris is silent for a few moments. “And what did she say about that spell she cast?”

Mercedes smiles broadly as she puts the Saturn in gear and heads toward the Shoreway. “She said you will have your killer within twenty-four hours.”

52

The little girl tries to lift the ball of tightly packed snow; her short arms are wrapped only halfway around the circumference. It is the snowman’s head she hoists, the third and final level of the rather portly, misshapen fellow that is already taller than she is.

She tightens her grip. Up, up, up, up . . .
no
. Not this time.

The snowman’s head falls to the ground and rolls a few inches.

The little girl circles the ball of snow, her face a twist of concentration. And it is such a beautiful face. Big eyes, raven hair, loose curls beneath her tam-o’-shanter—dark, springy ringlets that frame a face of such angelic power and purity and innocence.

She will try again. But not before consulting her almost life-size playmate, the huge bundled-up doll that is sitting on a nearby snowbank, blankly observing. The little girl whispers into the big doll’s ear, sharing little-girl strategy, little-girl tactics. She then walks back over to the snowman’s head, bends over, wraps her arms as far around as she can.

One, two, three.

She falls facedown in the snow.

I count the seconds until the first tear appears but am amazed that they don’t come. She gets up, brushes the snow from the front of her navy blue wool coat. She stamps her right foot in disgust and walks away for a few moments.

But sheds no tears.

I would love to jump in and help her, but that, of course, would make all hell break loose.

An old woman sits on the porch, a cup of steaming coffee or tea in her hands. Quiet street, old ethnics. Nothing could possibly go wrong in bright daylight.

I am fascinated by the false sense of security people have over their domain, with their deadbolts and lamp timers and Rottweilers and phony security company signs.

I am more fascinated by the feeling I get when I watch the little girl romp in the snow—trying to dominate all within her little-girl horizon—and how very much like her mother she looks.

Global Security Systems the sign on the side of the van proclaims in sleek euro-style letters. The two men working on the locks to the front doors of the Cain Manor apartments hardly look like global systems analysts, but, nonetheless, I have to figure them capable at the very least.

New locks. A problem. My key to Cain Manor came from a duplicate I had cut from a wax pressing, a pressing I made while helping an elderly lady with her groceries a year or so ago.

But why new locks today?

Regardless, I do not have time to press a new key. I pull the Yellow Pages from the backseat. Cleveland Retail Supply on Chester Avenue. Problem solved.

I will pay them a visit today on my way to Jack Paris’s apartment.

Earlier this morning, before Paris had met up with the reporter and driven out to Babbitt Road, while I was well within range of his car and my wireless transmitter, he had been on the phone with his commanding officer and was kind enough to give me his precise itinerary for the day.

It seems we both have much to do.

I swing the car onto Euclid Heights Boulevard and head for the city. Later, after making my purchase at the retail supply house, I believe I’ll make a brief stop at Ronnie’s Famous Louisiana Fry Cakes on Hough Avenue.

I hear the beignets are very good.

53

In his career on the street, Arthur Galt was known as a man without fear. A cop who would push other cops out of the way to get to the door, a First District legend who never took a dime and, in spite of a dozen incidents in his twenty-odd years with the CPD, never had a bad shoot.

But now, over the phone at least, he sounds like a man who has settled quite comfortably into the baronial life of country constable. Arthur Galt is the very popular, very connected chief of police in Russell Township.

The two men get their pleasantries out of the way and get to business.

“This is ongoing, Jack,” Galt says, a chief’s cautionary tone lying right on the surface.

“I understand,” Paris says.

“We’ve got a couple of witnesses who now say they saw Sarah Weiss at the Gamekeeper’s Taverne earlier that evening.”

“Alone?”

“No. These two guys who work at the treatment plant in Chagrin Falls say that they both did their duty by hitting on Sarah Weiss early in the evening, but were shined on. They said later in the night, she gave some time to a corporate type in a dark business suit, who left after a half hour or so. But even
later
in the evening, they said, she spent at least a couple hours talking to a woman. A real looker they said. Redhead, although, according to these guys, it looked like a wig. She says the two women left together.”

“Who reported the yellow car on the hill?”

“A woman named Marilyn Prescott. Her house is about a hundred feet from a clearing that looks right onto the hill. She said it was a full moon that night and she could clearly see the two cars parked there around eleven-thirty. She said she then went to bed, woke up an hour later when she heard the gas tank explode. I’ve already checked to see if the moon really was full that night.”