Kiss Of Evil

10

The snowstorm starts at noon. Five inches by rush hour, the radio says. More on the way. As always, whenever the city of Cleveland is pummeled for the first time of the season, a general traffic-psychosis descends upon the town and everyone seems to forget how to drive on ice. On his drive to the west side restaurant, Paris had seen a trio of rear-enders, had heard a half-dozen accident calls go out on the police radio.

He is sitting in a back booth at Mom’s Family Restaurant on Clark Avenue and West Sixty-fifth Street, waiting for Mercedes Cruz, whom he fully expects to be late.

On the table, next to his coffee cup, sits his leather handcuff case. He had never gotten used to sitting in a booth with it at the bottom of his spine. Next to the case: a small but daunting pile of material on the religion called Santeria, courtesy of a quick jaunt through Google.

He has learned that Santeria originated in the Caribbean and means, literally, “way of the saints.” It is a religion that combines the beliefs of the Yoruba and Bantu people in southern Nigeria, Senegal, and the Guinea coast with the god, saints, and beliefs of Roman Catholicism.

Paris is a long-lapsed Catholic, spiritually afloat between the Latin mass and the English mass, between the austere dictates of Vatican I and the somewhat looser views of Vatican II. It was a time when the church was beginning to get bombarded with issues it had not had to deal with in two thousand years: birth control, abortion, open homosexuality, women in the priesthood.

But long before the reforms of Vatican II, when Catholicism was forced on African slaves, native practices were suppressed. The slaves developed a unique way of keeping their old beliefs alive by equating the gods and goddesses of their traditional religions with the Christian saints. Slaves would pray openly to St. Lazarus over a suffering child, but the offering was really to Balbalz Ayi, the Bantu patron of the sick.

Since that time, the religion, and its many offshoots, has continued to flourish in a number of Latin countries. Mexican Santeria favors its Catholic beginnings; Cuban Santeria leans toward African origins. In Brazil, the followers of Candomble and Macumba are said to number one million.

Like many Catholics, Paris was scared shitless by movies like The Exorcist. And his own mystic vision of hell. But the liturgy of being a Catholic-especially the rites of confession and communion-had long since dissolved into Jack Paris’s past. He has borne witness to too much inhumanity to bank on a benevolent God these days.

Just as Paris is about to try and reconcile all of this with his strict Catholic upbringing for the millionth time, a shadow darkens his table.

It is Jeremiah Cross.

Again.

Behind Cross stands a woman-a brunette with a long, swanlike neck, round oversized sunglasses, short black jacket. Paris sees her only in profile for a moment before she proceeds to the register to pay the check. Cross, wearing a dark overcoat and paisley silk scarf, approaches. “We meet again, detective.”

“Lucky us,” Paris replies.

Cross deliberately puts on his leather gloves, stalling, clearly as misdirection, as prelude to something. After the ritual, he says, “I was wondering if you were aware of the fact that the Geauga County prosecutor’s office is looking into new evidence regarding the Sarah Weiss so-called suicide.”

Paris sips his coffee. “Well, as you know, counselor, Cleveland is in Cuyahoga County. I’m not at all certain why this would concern me.”

“It seems there may have been a second car on the hill where Sarah Weiss burned to death that night.”

“Is that right?”

“It is. A little yellow car. You don’t drive a little yellow car, do you, detective?”

“No, I’m afraid not. You?”

“No,” Cross replies. “I drive a black Lexus, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m stunned.”

Cross takes a step forward. “But it gets one to thinking, you know?”

“Thinking, too?” Paris asks. “Thinking’s extra in your line of work, isn’t it?”

Cross ignores the shot, places his hands, knuckles down, on Paris’s table. One glance from Paris apparently makes him rethink and withdraw.

“Consider this scenario,” Cross begins, lowering his voice. “A veteran cop eats a bullet doing a dirty deal. The innocent woman the cops try to hang the murder on is acquitted. A year and a half or so pass, the press and public move on. But not the cops. One Friday night, a couple of the boys from the unit start slamming the Buds back at the Caprice, then the Wild Turkey. Around midnight they decide to take a drive out to Russell Township-off a street called Hemlock Point no less-and pay back the woman who dusted their pal. What do you think?”

“I think it’d make a great movie of the week,” Paris says. “I’m seeing Judd Nelson in your part.”

“It is a compelling story, isn’t it?”

“I see it a little differently.”

“How’s that?”

“I see a peacock defense attorney who falls hard for his sexy client, gets her off by smearing the victim. After the trial, the sexy client rebuffs the advances of this perfumed rustic and, on the aforementioned Friday night, he downs a bottle of absinthe or Campari or aquavit or whatever perfumed rustics drink these days, drives out to Russell Township, flicks his Bic, et cetera, et cetera. Compelling, yes?”

Jeremiah Cross stares at Paris, trumped for the moment, then notices that Paris has begun to tap his coffee spoon on something sitting on the table. A police-issue handcuff case. Cross smiles, holding up his hands, wrists together, arrestee-style, revealing a gold Patek Philippe watch, white French cuffs. “I never mix stainless steel and gold, myself, detective.” He turns to leave, stops, adds: “Only a rustic would do that.”

With this, Cross lingers for the proper amount of time, exchanging resolve with Paris, then heads to the door. Without a final glance, he and the woman exit.

It takes Paris a few moments to return his blood pressure to normal. Why does this guy bug the shit out of him? But he knows the answer to that, a basic premise that has driven him for years. The belief-the conviction-that you do not have to destroy someone’s family to exact justice.

Jeremiah Cross had all but destroyed Michael Ryan’s family.

Paris tries to return to the information on Santeria but finds his mind drifting to a hill in Russell Township, to the image of a burning automobile carcass lighting the night sky. His cop-mind now adds a small yellow car to the scene-lights off, engine humming, two unseen eyes behind a dark windshield, watching the manic ballet of red and orange flames, the thick black smoke curling skyward.

Before he can let the scene take hold of his mood, Paris sees Mercedes Cruz loping toward the back of the restaurant, smiling broadly, dressed, it appears, for arctic exploration.

“Good afternoon, Detective Paris,” she says brightly, removing her huge parka, ski vest, wool cardigan, scarf, gloves, muffler, earmuffs, and hat. Today, Paris notices, the barrette keeping her sweat-dampened hair to the side is a red reindeer. Her dress is blue denim, shapeless. Her glasses are completely fogged over.

“Good afternoon,” Paris says. He motions to the waitress.

Mercedes wipes her glasses with a napkin, looks at some of the material on the table. “Santeria, eh?” she asks, rolling the r perfectly. She slips into the booth, orders coffee, sunny-side-up eggs and cinnamon toast. She takes out her spiral notebook and pen. “What is your interest in Santeria?”

“Off the record?”

“Off the record,” Mercedes repeats, hand over heart. She drops her pen into her bag.

Paris studies her earnest face for a few moments. He couldn’t give her too many details of the investigation into Willis Walker’s murder but decides he will trust her about the record. “It may be involved in a homicide I’m working on.”

“I see.”

“Are you a… um…”

“Am I a follower?”

“Okay. Are you?” Paris asks.

Mercedes laughs. “No, far from it. I’m a Catholic girl, detective. Twelve years of nuns at St. Augustine’s, four more with the Jesuits at Marquette. Skirts an inch from the floor when kneeling, confession every Saturday, communion every Sunday.”

Paris smiles with the recollection of his own youth and the dreaded confessional. Father O’Hern and his booming baritone, bellowing Paris’s sins for half the church to hear. “Catholic Youth Organization, too?”

“Oh yeah. I was the talent coordinator for CYO dances for three years. Got the Raspberries once.”

“Impressive.”

Mercedes’s food arrives. She begins a ritual of making two half-sandwiches of the cinnamon toast and eggs-including a carefully placed dollop of ketchup on each slice-then meticulously stacking them on top of each other. A fried-egg-ketchup-and-cinnamon club sandwich, Paris thinks. That’s a new one. She tucks into the drippy yellow-and-red concoction like a long-haul trucker after a three-day speed run.

“Anyway,” Mercedes continues, wiping her lips, “with that resume, I guess I’m about as far from a santero as a gal can be, eh?”

A santero, Paris had learned no more than a few minutes earlier, is a type of Santerian priest. “I’d say so.”

“But I do know that there is a popular botanica on Fulton Road,” Mercedes says. “Right near St. Rocco’s.”

“A botanica?”

“A botanica is a place to buy charms, herbs, potions. Most of the items are for followers of Santeria, but sometimes I think they get-how shall I say-more diverse requests for materials.”

“Such as?”

“I’m not really sure. Like I said, I still carry a St. Christopher medal, okay? That’s how Catholic I am. I have a few friends in the old neighborhood who dabble in Santeria. What I’ve told you is about all I know about it.”

“Have you ever heard of Palo Mayombe?”

“No. Sorry.”

Paris thinks for a moment. “So, if somebody was into the darker ends of Santeria, they might frequent this botanica?”

“Or one like it. Like Catholicism, Santeria is full of ceremony. Ceremony needs props. There’s always an ad or two for botanicas in my newspaper.”

Mercedes rummages in her bag, produces a copy of Mondo Latino. She opens it to the center, then taps a small display ad in the lower right-hand corner of the page.

Paris takes it from her and-suddenly self-conscious for some reason-puts his glasses on. The ad is for La Botanica Macumba on Fulton Road and trumpets some of the shop’s exotic wares: brimstone, lodestone, black salt, quills, palm oil, rose water. The botanica also offers custom gift baskets that include spirit-calling sticks, dream pillows, magnetic sand, dove’s blood ink. To Paris, two of the stranger-sounding products in the ad are the Fast Luck Bags from Guatemala and something called Four Thieves Vinegar.

“So,” Paris says, “you have no idea what any of this stuff is used for?”

“A little. Most of Santeria is harmless as far as I know. People casting spells for a new job, a new car, a new house. Mostly for a new lover.”

“Of course.”

“Hey, didn’t you ever pray for some girl to like you when you were a teenager?”

Teenager? How about last week, Paris thinks. “I guess I did,” he says. “Okay. All the time.”

Mercedes laughs and attacks the last bite of her egg sandwich as Paris’s pager goes off. He excuses himself from the booth. Two minutes later he is back.

“There’s been another murder,” Paris says, grabbing his coat from the booth, slipping it on. “A woman.”

Mercedes covers her mouth for a moment, then checks her watch, makes an entry in her notebook. “Are we going there?”

“Yes. One of the other detectives is the primary on this, but there appears to be evidence that might link this murder to a case I’m working on.”

“You think it may be the same person who did this other killing?” Mercedes asks as she slides out of the booth. “The one involving Santeria?”

“Way too early to tell,” Paris says. “But this one’s a little different already.”

“Different how?”

Paris decides to see what she’s made of. A little severe, perhaps, but necessary. “Well, for one thing, she’s missing the top of her head.”

“Oh my God,” Mercedes says, the color vacating her face. For a moment, it looks as if she just realized what the Homicide Unit actually does.

“And so far,” adds Paris, dropping a tip on the table, “no one’s been able to locate her brain.”

The Reginald Building, at the corner of East Fortieth Street and Central Avenue, is a shabby, six-room structure that still holds on to ruins of its long list of tenants. One side of the building boasts faded Jheri Curl and Posner’s ads; the other side, a hand-painted takeout menu for Weeza’s Corner Cafe.

When Paris had been a patrolman he had spent many a dinner break parked across the street, partaking of Weeza’s short-rib dinners, washing it all down with RC Cola, the only soft drink Louisa Mac McDaniels would stock. He knew that the owner of the building-one Reginald G. Moncrief, also known in those days as Sugar Pop-had had big plans for the building and its adjacent lot at one time, having even rented out a pair of rooms in the back for a short period, until the housing authority shut him down. Everything, of course, changed the night someone in the men’s room at the Mad Hatter disco parted Reggie Moncrief’s hair about four inches too low with a slug from a. 44 Magnum.

The yellow crime-scene tape is wrapped around the entire building and, in spite of the snow, in spite of the cold, a crowd is beginning to gather in front of the vacant lot across East Fortieth Street.

The front doorway to the Reginald Building is busy with SIU activity. Paris and Mercedes are routed to the side door, facing Central Avenue. Paris leaves Mercedes Cruz in the care of a uniformed officer for the time being and steps into the building and is immediately solicited by the smell of death, by the damp perfume of neglect. A quick scan of the room: crack vials, spent condoms, broken glass, fast-food trash. The temporary lighting that had been brought in is throwing more light than the interior of this building has seen for years. Cobwebs hang in thick cascades from every corner; the floor is dotted with dead insects, animal feces, tiny bones. Paris notices a pair of small black mice scurrying along one wall, probably wondering why their home has been so loudly and brightly invaded.

Paris locates Greg Ebersole in this scene. He is standing near the SIU team, talking on his cellphone.

Sergeant Gregory Ebersole is forty-one, spare, and red-haired: a mongoose in an Alfani suit. Paris had seen him get physical with suspects a few times and remembers being surprised and impressed at Greg’s speed and agility. What was scary about guys like Greg Ebersole, Paris had always thought, was not the cards they showed you, but the ones they didn’t. Behind the cool, jade eyes, beneath the freckles and affable exterior, lurks a man capable of all manner of explosive behavior.

But as Paris approaches Greg he sees the sallowness of the man’s skin, the weariness in his eyes. Greg’s six-year-old son Max had recently undergone heart surgery, a fairly routine procedure, it was said, but one that thoroughly exhausted the Ebersoles’ insurance, and then some. Greg had once confided that he would owe tens of thousands of dollars before it was all over. Paris knew of two part-time jobs Greg worked. He suspected there were more. This very evening there is a benefit for Max Ebersole at the Caprice Lounge. Looking at Greg now, Paris wonders if the man is going to make it.

Greg sees Paris, nods in greeting, points toward the body.

Paris acknowledges him and finds the victim in the back room, near the rusted ovens that once prepared bread pudding and the like for customers of Weeza’s Corner Cafe. The body is covered with a plastic sheet, and next to it stands a very nervous, bespectacled black officer. Paris approaches, mindful of the small areas of chalk-circled evidence on the floor.

“How ya doin’?” Paris says, stepping into the room.

“Just fine, sir,” the officer lies. He is heavyset, clean-shaven, no more than twenty-two years old. Paris locates the man’s name tag: M.C. Johnson.

“What’s your first name, Patrolman Johnson?”

“Marcus, sir.”

“How long have you been on the job, Marcus?” Paris asks, putting on a pair of rubber gloves, recalling that, when he was a young officer, he always appreciated ordinary conversation at moments like these.

Patrolman Marcus Calvin Johnson looks at his watch. “About six hours, sir.”

Six hours, Paris thinks. He remembers his own nerve-racking first day in blue. He was absolutely certain that he and his mentor-a highly decorated street cop named Vincent Stella, a lifer well into his forties at that time-would stumble upon a bank robbery in progress and that Patrolman John Salvatore Paris would shoot his own partner. “Tough assignment right out of the box, eh?”

“Oh yeah,” Patrolman Johnson answers at the entrance to a deep breath, one that swells his cheeks for a moment, the kind of breath that generally precedes a roll of the eyes and a quick trip to the linoleum.

“Hang in there, Marcus,” Paris says. “It’s not always this bad.”

“I’ll try, sir.”

Paris tucks his tie into his shirt pocket, nods to the officer, then hunkers down next to the body. Patrolman Johnson pulls back the sheet. Immediately, Paris wants to amend his pearl of wisdom for the rookie cop.

It’s never this bad.

Because there is something so very wrong about what Paris is looking at. It is the body of a partially clothed young white woman, lying prone, her face turned to the left. She has very pretty legs, is wearing a short white skirt, white high heels. She is wearing no blouse or bra, and Paris can now see that the same symbol he had seen on Willis Walker’s tongue is carved between her shoulder blades. The primitive-looking bow and arrow. But even the horror of that symbol, at this moment, cannot compare to the hideousness that is to be found just a few inches away.

The victim-a woman who surely had friends and family and coworkers and lovers, a woman who quite possibly had children of her own-simply stops at her forehead. Above it, above her ears, there is nothing.

Air.

Paris forces himself to look at the top of the woman’s head. It is lying next to her right shoulder, a clotted, empty bone-bowl, framed by tendrils of blood-blackened hair that seem to reach for him like Medusa’s snakes.

Like deadheading a flower…

“Okay,” Paris says to the grateful Patrolman Johnson, who has been staring at the ceiling and hyperventilating. “You can cover her.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Paris walks over to Greg Ebersole, who is standing near the front door; he can see that Greg is pumped and primed for this one: arms crossed, nostrils flaring, fingers beating out a rhythm on his biceps, detective’s eyes re-drawing the crime scene over and over in his mind. Floor, ceiling, wall, door, window. Silent witnesses, all.

And while it is true that homicide detectives have absolutely no power to prevent murders from occurring, whenever something like this happens-an arrogant, vicious killing after which the perpetrator does not even have the decency to turn himself in or kill himself-it is tantamount to saying to the detectives that I, a murderer, am much smarter than you are. And, to some cops, that is almost worse than the murder itself.

Jack Paris is just such a cop. Greg Ebersole, too.

“Who found her?” Paris asks.

“Fifteen-year-old kid and his girlfriend,” Greg says. He flips a page in his notebook. “Shawn Curry and Dionna Whitmore.”

“Any reason to hold them?”

“Nah. We’ve got their statements.” He gestures to the mattress in the corner. “This was just their love shack.”

“How’d they get in?”

“Back door,” Greg replies. He turns another page, holds up his notebook, showing Paris the now familiar bow-and-arrow emblem, a replica Greg had drawn in pencil. “That your symbol?” he asks, staring straight ahead.

“It sure looks like it,” Paris says, then lowers his voice. “Did I hear this right? No one’s found her brain?”

“Nope,” Greg says. “We’ve cleared the building. Nothing.”

“You think this fucker took it with him?”

Greg turns, fixes Paris with an adrenaline-charged stare, a look that Paris had seen a thousand times before, the one that says: We have eleven-year-old hit men in this country, Jack. People who fuck and strangle their own children. We have guys who dress up in clown suits and bury thirty boys under their houses; drug gangs that harvest unborn babies right from the womb. We’ve both seen these things. Shall we now be shocked that someone is making doggie bags of human brains?

“I guess I have my answer,” Paris says.

“I guess you do,” Greg replies, nearly salivating at the prospect of this new chase, this fresh opportunity to catch a murderer and put him on the other side of the bars. Or, preferably, in this case, the other side of the sod. “I guess you do.”