Kiss Of Evil

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 melange 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 esta tu fotografia?” 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.

“Maferefun ashelu!” 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. “Maferefun ashelu!”

The chicken’s blood squirts into the bowl.

“Maferefun ashelu!”

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 brujeria 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.”