Tropic of Night (49 page)

The woman did so, the whole story, thousands of years, the various botanicals, the pineal body, the melanocytes, the exohormones, the supporting neurophysiological research, with actual references added. Barlow was silent for a while after this, the tape softly whirring, recording nothing.

“You got any idea why, ma’am?” he asked.

“Why what?”

“Why he’s doing this?”

“I thought I explained that. The neuroleptic substances in the excised and consumed organs …”

“No, I got that part. He’s going to get some boosted power for his witchcraft. I mean why does he want it? What’s he going to do when he gets it?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea what he’s like now. I think maybe he sees himself as the revenge of Africa on white America. He wants to show us that there’s a black technology that sets all our technology at naught. Stuff like that. He’s an extremely angry man.”

“I reckon,” said Barlow. “And he got this idea in Africa?”

“He got the means in Africa. Maybe he always had the idea. No, that’s not true. He had a desire to be seen, really seen, as himself, not as a ‘black’ fill-in-the-blank, a black poet, black playwright, black husband of a rich white woman. And he thought he never could be, I mean seen in that way, and it made him crazy. He got the idea that what the race needed was a Hitler, that the white people would never take blacks seriously until then. And Africa, where we went, what he learned there, I think it transformed him, the sad, angry stuff that was deep inside?it just took over and ate everything else, until only the Hitler part was left. It happens. Maybe it even happened to Hitler. That’s one theory. A friend of mine used to say that dealing in the magical world without some transcendent moral authority was about the most dangerous thing anyone could do. And Witt didn’t have one.”

“That’s quite a story, Jane,” said Barlow, after a long pause.

“Tell us about your sister,” said Paz, abruptly, and got a questioning look from his partner. He didn’t care. He felt angry, and not just at the killer.

Jane Doe asked for some water then, and Barlow stepped out and brought a large plastic cup back with him. She drank deeply and resumed. “I got sick in Africa. Ended up at a Catholic hospital in Bamako. I was out of it for a long time, dying really, and someone got in touch with my brother and he came and got me and took me back to Long Island, and they stuck me in a fancy clinic. I don’t recall any of this. They couldn’t find anything wrong with me, no pathogens, but I seemed to have lost the ability to metabolize food. Witt showed up a month or so later, looking just like he always did, being charming. I started getting better around then. Of course, he had got me sick in the first place, for amusement, to punish me for … whatever, and then he made me better. I didn’t say anything to my family about this, or about what had happened. It’s hard to describe, or explain, but … being back in Sionnet, Africa seemed like a long bad dream. I think I wasn’t in my right mind. I was sick for a long time, I told myself, I wanted all of it not to have happened, and so I convinced myself that it hadn’t really happened. And he had a power about him now, an aura … terrifying. It was like a bird hypnotized by a snake. I had dreams, too. He was getting at me through my dreams.” She let out a peculiar nasal sound, like the start of a hysterical laugh, throttled. “It sounds crazy. Anyway, I didn’t do anything. And one day he killed Mary and her baby. I think it was just to show me he could, and to hurt me and my family. Who were never anything but kind to him. I was terrified that he was going to kill them all. So, really, to save them I took Kite out and killed myself.”

“But you didn’t kill yourself,” said Paz.

“Didn’t I? It felt like it. I decided to become Dolores. I had all her ID because of a mix-up in Bamako, and I took that tin box, with that in it and some other stuff. I filled the bilges with diesel and poured gas from the outboard around, and cracked off the regulator on the butane gas tank for the stove. And then I couldn’t do it. I wanted to live, to, I don’t know, bear witness to what he was. I felt my line wasn’t ready to be cut, that Ifa had something for me to do. I had a pistol. I was going to light it off and shoot myself, but I didn’t. We had an emergency inflatable aboard. I inflated it, crying like a baby. Then I rigged the boat to explode. I used a kitchen timer, ran two wires from the starter battery and fixed them with duct tape, one to the pointer, one to the dial at zero. I opened the gas valve, set the timer for half an hour, sealed the cabin, and got into the rescue dinghy. I paddled to a beach outside of Bridgeport, shoved the dinghy and paddle into a Dumpster; while I was doing that, the boat exploded and burned. I didn’t look. Then I walked into town. I checked into a motel under Dolores’s name. I had big sunglasses on and a floppy hat pulled down low, and it was the kind of motel where they don’t look at your face. I bought dye and changed my hair and stuffed cotton wads in my cheeks and then I went and bought a cheap car in a Vietnamese used car lot.”

“What did you use for money?” Paz asked. “You didn’t touch your accounts. They checked.”

“Dad always kept a couple of grand in a jar in the sail locker, for emergencies in foreign ports. I drove to Miami and set up housekeeping.”

“You thought he’d come after you?” Barlow asked.

“Yes. He … some things he said, before … Mary. He wanted to … recruit me, I think. He thinks we belong together. He wants me to observe his deeds and admire him. Because I understand what he is, what he can do. And you guys don’t.” She looked at Paz. “You can’t really stop him, you know. You think you can, because at some level you think all of this is lunatic garbage. You think guns and handcuffs and jail cells and the rest of it are going to work for you. But they’re not.”

Barlow said, “Well, what would you recommend we do? Give him a free pass?” She mumbled something. Paz snapped, “Speak up! What’s the answer? Holy water?”

“Jiladoul.”

“What the fuck is that?” snapped Paz. He saw Barlow’s mouth tighten.

There was a knock on the door and a harassed-looking policewoman burst in and told them that Ms. Doe’s lawyer had arrived, demanding to speak to her immediately, and that Captain Mendés wanted to see both of the detectives, also immediately. The two detectives looked at each other. Paz snarled something under his breath and stomped out. Barlow turned off the tape machine and walked out with it, leaving the cop with the detainee.

Mendés was not in good shape. Paz thought he was on the edge of collapse and he felt a tremor of fear. The captain had always been a neat, even dapper, man, a cool manipulator of people and situations. Now he had his tie halfway down his chest, the first two buttons of his silk shirt open, and the shirt had a large coffee stain at the belt line. The ashtray on his desk was filthy with cigarette and cigar butts. Paz and Barlow sat down, but Mendés continued to pace. The phone was buzzing, but he made no effort to pick it up.

“The mayor got a call from the governor’s office about that bitch you picked up,” Mendés began, “that rich bitch. You got any idea who the fuck she is? The fucking archbishop was on the horn, too. You talk to her lawyer?”

“No, boss, the guy just got here, and then …”

“Did she do it? Do you have evidence to charge her?”

“No,” said Barlow, “and no. She says her husband did it. Witt Moore.”

Mendés stopped his pacing. “Did he?”

“If she ain’t completely crazy, it looks like he might’ve. The problem is, there’s no physical evidence, and he’s going to be alibied up to the neckbone for all the murders. And he’s no homeboy. He’s a famous black writer.”

“I don’t care who he is. I need someone to show here. You got any idea what’s going on out there? Half the goddamn reporters in the country are outside the building right now. It’s not local anymore. There’s network TV people here now. They want to know how some maniac slipped into a building guarded by the police and chopped up a woman in her own room, without waking up the woman sleeping next to her. I’d like to know, too. I got to go down and talk to those people. I got to explain to Horton and the mayor. So what do I say? You’re the fucking detectives?what do I say? “

Mendés’s eyes bulged and his face grew dark. Paz said, “He used drugs, psychedelic powders from Africa. He confused the guards and did it.”

Mendés stared at him. “Who, Moore? You know this?”

“It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” offered Paz, carefully. “He can confuse people, put them to sleep temporarily. That’s how he does it.”

Barlow said, “It’s a theory, Arnie. We got no evidence for …”

“Then fucking find some! Concoct some! I don’t give a nickel shit. But I got to have something. I can’t go up there naked with my dick waving. Go pick up this guy. Use the whole SWAT team, gas masks, disaster suits, whatever you need. I’ll clear it. Go!”

They got up. Paz said, “And about Jane Doe?”

Mendés made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, cut her loose! That’s all I need, the archbishop on my ass in the middle of all this.”

They went back to the interview room, Barlow marching ahead, silent, his back stiff. Paz could tell he was angry, although whether at Mendés or himself he didn’t know. In the room, Jane Doe was speaking with a large, balding man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a gray suit of marvelous silkiness and cut: the lawyer, Thomas P. Finnegan. He informed them that Ms. Doe was through talking for the day.

“I don’t think so,” said Paz. He did not wish to let go of the woman. “Ms. Doe is in possession of essential information on a extremely important serial murder case. We haven’t finished questioning her.”

“Yes, you have,” said Finnegan.

“Plus, we can charge her with impersonation.”

“Go ahead,” said Finnegan. “In which case, she will definitely not say anything.”

Some stereotypical glaring here. Jane broke the tense silence. “They don’t believe me anyway. They think I’m crazy.”

“Is that true, Detective?” asked Finnegan, gently.

Paz realized it showed in his face. He did think she was a nutcase. But … He felt blood rushing to his cheeks, and considered bringing up the little girl as leverage, but found he could not do it. Barlow said, “You can take her away, Counselor. I guess you know not to go anywhere we can’t find you.”

The lawyer made the obligatory rumblings about false arrest and harassment. As she left, Paz touched her arm.

“What’s a jillado?” he asked.

“Jiladoul,”she corrected. “A sorcerer’s war. Good luck, Detective Paz. Be careful.”

When they had gone, Barlow said, “Well, Jimmy, you got us into it now. You feel like calling the SWATs and getting into a gas mask?”

“I had to say something.”

“A fool’s mouth is his destruction and his lips are the snare of his soul, Proverbs 18:7. You got no evidence at all the man’s spraying drug powders around the city.”

“Okay, great! Why don’t you waltz back in there and give Arnie the Jane version? He can go on national TV with it. Miami police baffled by witch doctor, film at eleven.” He walked away.

Barlow caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder. “Where’re you running off to?”

Paz shrugged him off. “I’m going to pick up Moore.”

“What about them drugs of yours?”

“I’ll hold my breath.”

“This is wrong. We should think this through, calm down a little.”

“I’m calm. I’m not scared, though. That your problem? You really believe this witchcraft crap, don’t you?”

Barlow had the kind of white eyes that get harder than any other kind. “Listen, boy: Captain said take a team, and we’re going to take a team. You want to come along, fine; you don’t want to play that way, I’ll turn around and march into Arnie’s office and get you pulled off this case. I mean it.”

Paz let out a breath and said, “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

They got to the Poinciana Suites a little after seven. It was a four-story, cream-colored stucco building full of small apartments for well-off transients, set back from the street across from Brickell Park. They parked on the street out front, Barlow and Paz in Paz’s car, a big van full of SWAT guys in white plastic suits and gas masks, and a crime-scene-unit van. Barlow told the SWATs to stay put while he and Paz made the arrest. The SWAT commander, Lieutenant Dickson, objected strenuously to this plan; the whole point of his unit was to go in first and overwhelm the suspect. And what about this gas?

“They ain’t no gas, son,” said Barlow. “It’s something else, what our man’s got, and I think we can handle it. Now look here: that’s why they call y’all backup. Back up! We’re going in, me and Jimmy here, and we’re coming out with the guy. You do what you have to do to secure the building, the back exits and such. If we ain’t out in half an hour, you mask up and go in shooting. But it ain’t going to come to that.”

Dickson relented and started to dispose his troops. Paz and Barlow rode the elevator to the top floor in silence. Paz pushed the buzzer at the door of number 303. The door opened. Moore was standing there, dressed in a yellow T-shirt and baggy gray cotton pants, with leather sandals on his feet. They showed him their ID.

“Malcolm DeWitt Moore?” Barlow asked.

“That’s me.” He looked straight at Paz, ignoring Barlow. Paz saw a man of about his own size, with a lighter build and eyes that were hazel rather than brown. Paz said, “We’d like to talk to you.”

Moore backed away from the door. “Sure, come in. I’m in the middle of something. Just let me put it away.”

They followed him into the apartment, which consisted of one large room, furnished in modern light woods and Haitian cotton rugs and upholstery, high-class motel equipage, and a smaller bedroom, which they could see through an open door. Moore went to a desk, bent over it, and wrote something in a notebook. Then he sat down in a straight chair that stood in front of the desk.

He hasn’t said what’s this all about, Officer, thought Paz. Everybody the cops come visiting asks that, but he doesn’t. Moore said, “I just had something in my head I wanted to get down. It’s funny, when you buzzed I was working on a poem about a crime.” He held up the notebook. “Would you like to read it?”