Kiss Of Evil

72

He looks so ordinary, Paris thinks. Better than average looks, he had thought when the man had played the part of Julian Cruz. Charming and easygoing.

He had shaken hands with a monster and not known it.

But now, seeing him sitting in a chair on the computer screen, in the upper-right-hand frame of four, he looks ordinary. In the upper-left-hand frame, Paris sees himself, sitting on the chair, live, courtesy of the small digital camera clipped to the monitor and the track lights overhead. In the lower right is the old video of himself on the steps of the Justice Center.

“Mr. del Blanco,” Paris says.

“Christian, please, detective,” the man says.

“Call this off.”

“Did you enjoy your hot dog? Tasty?”

“Call this off.”

“Too late for that.”

“Let me ask you something,” Paris says, trying to sound a lot more in control than he really is. The magic mushroom is still making his mind take wing in a thousand directions. “I understand why you’re after me. I even understand why you went after Mike Ryan. But why the Levertovs?”

Christian reaches off camera. He brings back a trio of photographs. To Paris, they look like pictures of Christian coming and going from La Botanica Macumba. “Can you believe these? Clandestine pictures of me.” He laughs, holds them closer to the camera. “Turns out old Ike wasn’t just selling kosher hot dogs on that corner, detective. He was one of these block-watch people. I’d seen him around the corner a few times, passed the time of day with him, even met his wife. But about the fifth time I visited the botanica, he started to become suspicious, it seems, began taking pictures. Guess I wasn’t the right breed. Believe me, the minute a voodoo murder and a sketch of the suspect showed up in the press he would have been on the phone. I needed time. Old Ike just meddled in the wrong man’s business. Edith made the mistake of loving him.” Christian puts the photos aside, leans forward, adds: “The important question is, how did you feel?”

“What do you mean?”

“To be a suspect. Even for a minute. How did it feel when people, people you’ve known for years, looked you straight in the eye and thought you were a fiend? Did the shame of it all make you want to kill yourself? Make you want to get drunk and set yourself afire? Hmm? Show the world that Paris is, indeed, burning?”

In his mind’s eye Paris sees Bobby’s face, and how only ninety-nine percent of it believed him. “I know who my friends are. They know the truth.”

“Truth,” Christian says, wistfully. He reaches out of frame, returns with a sterling flask, sips from it. “Amanita muscaria. Very potent. Have you ever tried it?”

Paris remains silent.

“Where did it take you on its brief, exhilarating voyage?”

Dad, Paris thinks. “You wouldn’t begin to understand.”

“Oh, I bet I would. The Hinchi Indians say it invokes ancient memories. What are your ancient memories, detective?” Christian leans forward, taps a few keys. Instantly, in the lower-right-hand frame, a picture appears. A picture of Frank Paris. A picture that was in the newspaper next to his father’s obituary. The anger rises in Paris’s chest. His training pushes it back. Barely. He now knows what triggered his hallucination.

Christian says, “The first thing you should know is that I am in the very next room.” On-screen, Paris sees Christian walk out of frame. Then, faintly: “Hear this?”

Paris hears a muffled pounding from behind him. “Yes.”

Christian walks back into frame. “As I’m sure you know by now, you have only one bullet. In your life, right now, that bullet is currency. How will you spend it? The lock on the door? You could shoot it off, but then your gun would be empty and I would kill you.”

Before Paris can stop himself, he looks back at the picture of his father, thinks about the photograph in this butcher’s hands. He says: “Fuck you.”

Christian stares into the camera, motionless, as if a DVD had been put on freeze frame. Then, in a smear, he bolts out of frame, and, for twenty seconds the screen is a gray, out-of-focus blur. Then, the point of view changes to a longer shot, and Paris can now see that, in the bright white room next door there is an altar not unlike the chantry in Evangelina Cruz’s basement. But this one is larger, covered in a huge, brilliant white cloth. There seem to be candles everywhere, starring up the lens of the digital camera. On the steps of the altar Paris sees dried animal claws outlined against the cloud white sheet. He sees earthen cruets bearing ancient symbols. He sees a half-dozen brass plates bearing cones of incense, stacks of copper coins.

But it is what Jack Paris sees behind the altar that terrifies him.

There, against the white wall, behind the shimmering candles and mysterious pottery and vaporous urns, is a huge white crucifix. And on it hangs a figure.

A familiar figure.

The figure of Rebecca D’Angelo.