The Voodoo Murders

by Michael Avallone

  I didn’t sit down and I didn’t take my hat off. I watched her sprawl on a maroon divan near a glass table, and fumble a tall highball glass around in her dark fingers. She took what amounted to a long, unladylike swallow.

  “You can start talking any time,” I suggested drily. All the time I had to wonder what gave. What was what.

  She let out a long breath over her glass. Her face was still wide and sensuous in spite of her obvious fear. Her eyes were tigerish, her mouth like a lioness’s, her every movement something a king cobra could envy.

  “This is trouble, man. Bad trouble. I need your help. I need you more than I ever needed a man in my life.”

  I couldn’t buy the voice. It didn’t belong with her body. Or her look. She was the jungle and Harlem and jazz personified. But her accent was English. Almost Bryn Mawr. And it certainly didn’t match the man-eating reputation that Peg Temple had hung on her.

  But I was way ahead of her. “How can you be sure I’m Ed Noon? You never saw me before. You might be talking to your killer right now. I assume you’re afraid of being killed.”

  Her smile was brief.

  “You’re Ed Noon, right enough. I watched you ringside tonight. You are a man.” She said it as if being a man was a special privilege that was not shared by fifty million other Americans. “I know the man I was sending a telegram to.”

  “Good. Now about that telegram—let’s start from there, Voodoo. I’ve been on a merry-go-round since I got it this afternoon.”

  Voodoo looked at me. Fear dominated her eyes as her body uncoiled slowly on the divan. It was like watching a tigress stretch in her cage at the Bronx Zoo. She beckoned with one long naked arm, the red dress seeming to peel off her as she did it. But she wasn’t undressing. That was illusion. She was merely inviting me to sit down.

  “Mr. Noon, I will tell you everything,” her unmatched voice clipped out.

  I sat down on the divan next to her. About three feet away. I put my hat in my lap. She handed me a highball glass without asking me what I wanted. I took it and swilled the ice around in the glass. I didn’t drink any.

  “I’ve got a lot of questions to ask you,” I said.

  “No questions,” she said. “I will tell you about things from the beginning. Everything will fall into place. Like a Trinidad beat. Like the music from the bongos. You will see. Then you will help Voodoo. You will be glad to help Voodoo. Poor little Voodoo.”

  I could have given her an argument there. There was nothing poor about her. And certainly nothing little. She was big and rich in all departments. But I just nodded to show I was listening and gave her the go-ahead by tilting my glass at her.

  She closed her eyes for a minute in deep concentration. She looked like an ebony statue of a beautiful woman. Her shoulders started to sway, then settled into a rigid mold. The statue idea persisted in my head until she opened her eyes. Fear dominated her face once again.

  She began to talk. In her clear, cold voice, it was more like a recital. Or a requiem. While she talked, I checked the room.

  “Voodoo was a little girl in Port-of-Spain. She was a product of Trinidad to the bone. Clear through. The music of the island, the heart, the soul. And the superstitions. All the Calypso legend. Voodoo grew to be a tall, beautiful woman. Though very young, she wedded her body to the dance. The true Calypso dance, the true spirit. Voodoo came of age and left the island. She gained her glory and achievement through her body’s performance of the dance. The world soon knew her as a great exponent of female artistry in dance. But it was the Calypso dance that was her true mission in this life—to make the world aware of Calypso, the fever, the beat, the beau ideal of Trinidad. But Voodoo met men. Many, many men.”

  I smiled.

  “Looking the way you do, it figures. Even if you were Sadie Plotz of Brooklyn it would come out that way.” I had to say it because her words were wooing me away from what I should be thinking of. She was like a drug.

  Her eyes flashed at me for interrupting, but the meter of her words wasn’t lost.

  “Kings, presidents and famous names were attracted to Voodoo,” she droned on. “But through all of them and beyond, there was Coffee. A giant handsome brute who was also Trinidad, also Port-of-Spain. Also the true Calypsonian. Voodoo belonged to him as surely as a mango belongs on the tree that gives it life. This Coffee knew. It was written in the sands of the islands long ago. And for Voodoo’s body, Coffee’s fingers on the drums were the machinery that gave that body its true life. Do you understand all this, Mr. Noon?”

  “I’m staying right with you,” I said. “Go on.”

  She smiled an ancient, mysterious smile that left me out of everything. Me and the present.

  “Coffee fought for Voodoo, as a man will for the thing he loves. This was good. This was proper. But then came the Calypso Room. And the message.” She paused to sip from her almost empty glass. The ice tinkled.

  “What message?”

  She stared at me. “It is the week of the Bacchanal, Mr. Noon. The pre-Lenten festivals of our island. All Trinidad will come alive in two days. And the Old Brigade will march again. If you have never heard of the Old Brigade, Mr. Noon, it is time you did.”

  “Now’s the time to learn about everything, Voodoo,” I suggested.

  “It is,” she agreed. “The Old Brigade is the true Calypso. The Calypsonians. Men who were born on the island, men whose ancestors toiled in the fields making the songs, singing the chanties, shouting the rhymes that all of this country is now making a mockery of with Tin Pan Alley imitations. Save for a very few exceptions. Calypsonian—songs sung the way our fathers sang them, songs of life, death and murder. And the weather. And what the neighbor’s wife might be doing on a lazy afternoon with the plantation boss. That is true Calypso, Mr. Noon. And the Old Brigade carries that tradition on yearly. And during the Bacchanal, every one hopes and prays that a new Lord Invader will arise. Or a Duke of Iron.”

  “And a Lord Flea or an Attila the Hun?” I still hadn’t touched my drink.

  Her eyes showed their appreciation of my scant knowledge.

  “Yes,” she said huskily. “A king will be chosen from the contestants. All week long the Old Brigade pitches their tents along the Trinidad roads and sing and rhyme in contest. The people of the island will signal the winner by their applause. The man who downs all the opposition will become King of the Bacchanal. For one year. It is as important to a true Calypsonian as being President of the United States might be to such a man as you.”

  “I’ll buy that. But tell me about the telegram. And Coffee.”

  She did what I’d like to have done. She placed both her hands against her breasts and squeezed them. Her eyes were misty, but the expression of her face didn’t change. She still looked sexy in a naked way.

  “Last week—this year—I was passing up the Bacchanal. Coffee would not go either. America had made us forget our Calypsonian vows, our early beginnings. We were dismissing the Bacchanal as unimportant. We had too many important contracts here in the states. We forgot what the Bacchanal means. That was a mistake. Someone else pointed out that mistake to us.”

  A sudden change in her tone transmitted itself to me. I sat up straighter and stared at her.

  “Who?”

  For an answer, she got up and walked over to an inlaid ivory table directly under one of the Van Goghs. She came back with a stack of white sheets. She had put a rubber band around them because they made a substantially thick pile. She handed them to me slowly. “I began to get these at the club. One almost every four hours. They were not handed to me. I found them all over. In my make-up box, pinned to the door of my wardrobe closet, over the bathroom sink. Look at them.”

  Putting the notes under Van Gogh’s picture was the right idea. Because if the letters were true, Voodoo was in Dutch all right. They weren’t exactly Valentine messages.

  Voodoo:

  Gal who pass up Bacchanal maybe get drownded in canal

  Count Calypso
r />   Another one read:

  Change your mind now mighty soon

  Else you may be dead by noon.

  Another read:

  Sticks and stones will break your bones

  When your name aint Smith or Jones.

  They all had things in common. They were all addressed to Voodoo. They were all signed by Count Calypso. And they all promised everything from soup to nuts in the death department.

  And they also smacked of the two notes I’d gotten. Other than Voodoo’s weird telegram S.O.S. Now that Coffee was dead, I knew he hadn’t sent me the one at Benny’s bar by dead messenger. It didn’t make sense. I tried to forget about Benny. I handed back the stack of notes.

  “Is that why you wanted to see me so badly?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t afford to change my mind about going to Trinidad. No matter how frightened I am, all of this costs too much.” Her lovely shoulders jerked to indicate her million-dollar layout. “But I wanted protection. The protection of a man who is famous for protecting his clients.”

  “The curse of civilization, Voodoo. You have to keep up appearances, I guess. But why send me such a screwy call for help? A nice polite telephone call would have worked just as easy.”

  She shivered and her breasts danced.

  “The warning notes had done such a good job on me, I imagine I was carried away by the technique. And I was afraid you might be too busy to bother. But I’d heard enough about you to know that such an intriguing summons would bring you running.”

  “You’ve got me there. But—I did have a terrible stomach ache after your telegram. I felt as if somebody was sticking pins into my doll.”

  Her eyes batted at me. “Don’t make bad jokes, Mr. Noon.”

  “I’m not joking. I thought I was dying.”

  Now I really had her. “Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” she suddenly wailed. “No, no, no, no—it can’t be true—”

  I’d really started something. She jumped erect and started pacing the floor, wringing her hands, her hips moving ecstatically as each silken leg pushed out from her staggeringly slit evening gown. She put her hands over her lovely eyes and her shoulders heaved. She shivered all over. It had been sexy before; it still was, but now it was scary too.

  “Grab hold of yourself, lady,” I said. “What can’t be true?”

  She whirled on me, her hands flying away from her eyes. I wasn’t exactly prepared for the stark naked terror shining out of her lovely dark face.

  “The Count!” she wailed. “It’s true, then. He is here in the States! That terrible man. His Voodoo is all-powerful. Black magic—”

  “Simmer down, simmer down. You know who Count Calypso is? I thought it was just a bum alias.”

  “No, no,” she shook her head violently and came over to me. She put her hands on my shoulders and leaned toward me, her magnificent breasts thrust forward. “The Count—very bad man. He’s a wizard. Voodoo is his god. He can do anything.—anything—” Her voice had dropped its Jamaican-English mask now. She was babbling almost incoherently.

  “Easy, lady, easy.” It wasn’t going to do anybody any good if we both lost our marbles. “Then the Count killed Coffee—is that it?”

  She could only nod and wail at the same time. I suddenly decided my drink wasn’t poisoned. I needed a drink anyway. I gulped it down gratefully. Voodoo’s agitation had crept under my skin.

  The room was quiet now. Real quiet. All modern and beautiful and designed for love and comfort and pleasure. Easy living. But something else had crept into the room, on noisy, dirty, frightening, ugly feet. Superstition and fear. Old ghosts were rattling. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the way it made me feel.

  I stood up.

  “Why don’t you put the radio on, Voodoo? There’s a station in New Jersey that plays great music all day long—”

  I stopped talking, because she was stumbling dazedly over to the far wall. I watched her fumble with a low, long walnut-stained cabinet. It looked like anything but what it was—a radio. It had to be a radio because pretty soon the lilting strains of music pouring out of it smacked of station WPAT. I guessed Voodoo had discovered that radio wonder for herself. She hadn’t heard me tell her what station. I cocked an ear. “Belle of the Ball” filled the room. Voodoo staggered back in her low-cut red evening gown looking like the belle of anybody’s ball, anywhere in the wide, wide world.

  “Yes,” she muttered thickly. “Coffee’s dead. The Count killed him—just as he’s going to kill me.”

  “That’s crazy talk,” I said. “Knock it off. This is America. There are no witch doctors here. Just murderers who kill for good reasons. Stick to your guns, lady. I can help you through this if you’ll let me.”

  She stared at me through a haze of her own making. Fear.

  “What do you mean, Mr. Noon?”

  “I mean we have to stop being kids about all this black magic hocus-pocus. A man stuck a knife in Coffee, not an idea or a wish from miles away. So grow up and let’s start doing our terror arithmetic the right way. So it adds up right.”

  “You’re confusing me,” she wailed again. “Please don’t confuse me. I’m half out of my mind—”

  I held up my hands. “Okay, okay. Here’s what I mean. Somebody’s trying to scare you into going to the Bacchanal. They’re willing to murder to do it. Now I’m asking you why. Why should it be so damn important to somebody else that you should show up at the Bacchanal? Look at it that way and see if you can give me the answer.”

  That stopped her, drove some of the cobwebs and crazy thinking out of her brain for a split second. Dried her eyes and made her think.

  “Oh,” she said huskily. “I see. I think I see what you mean—”

  Before she could see anything, or me either, for that matter, every light in the place went out as suddenly as a candle in a high windstorm—but twice as frightening.

  TWELVE

  I hit the floor faster than Godfrey fires talent and went for my .45. The dark had mushroomed all around like black magic. And Voodoo had begun to moan. Not scream. She moaned, like a kid huddling in a haunted house. Like a whimpering cat wanting to come out of the rain. I hated that sound, but all I could do was lie there on the expensive floor and wait, with my .45 cocked and ready. I couldn’t see myself wriggling around in the dark. I couldn’t see anything. Only hear Voodoo wailing in her low-pitched voice. It was an awful sound.

  But I knew whoever had flicked the lights off would act fast, so I waited in the darkness, smelling Voodoo’s exotic aura.

  Before I could imagine hearing a drum booming off in the wilderness of darkness, somebody turned on the lights. I blinked to adjust my eyes. But it was too late.

  “Take your time and stand up, Mr. Noon,” an unforgettable voice said. “It is too late for anything else. Stand up, man.”

  I say unforgettable. Not that I’d heard this voice before. But now that I had, I’d never forget it. It was the voice of death. Bones rubbing against each other against a background of whistling night wind and lonely cemeteries. If a tomb could talk, it might sound like that.

  I stood up, blinking. Electric light bombarded my eyeballs, but I kept my head. I held my .45 nosedown to the rug. Anything else might have got me shot. And I didn’t want to hit Voodoo accidentally.

  My eyesight returned.

  “Nice trick,” I said without any real admiration. “Simple, but effective.”

  Voodoo’s parlor came into focus again. And a spider had walked into it. Not a fly. A big, loathsome spider. He looked like something that crawled instead of walked. And there wasn’t much I could do about squashing him, because he was standing behind Voodoo, his head just visible beyond her naked shoulder, his body crooked and bent behind her like a cockroach with rape in mind. But no, he was all spider. Even the hand that poked around Voodoo’s superb figure clutching a .357 Magnum was clawlike and spiderish.

  The spider didn’t answer me. It merely pushed suddenly. And Voodoo’s tall, incomparable body shot
across the rugged floor, made contact with the rim of the divan, and fell across it. She scrambled erect fearfully, her hands going to her breasts again, her round eyes scared spitless with the spectacle of the spider that was crouched before us.

  I looked past his grotesque, hunchbacked figure and saw the reinforcements. There were four of them. Completely different from the spider but as alike as four Warner Brothers’ musicals. They all wore white tropical suits with panama hats and no ties. They were all dusky and native-looking. But they were also as quiet as zombies and fingering machetes. The lights of Voodoo’s parlor danced off the long, glistening blades.

  It was eerie. The spider and his silent friends, and Voodoo like a stone woman on the couch. Prickles of something ran down my back as I let my .45 slide to the floor.

  “For Christ’s sakes, say something, somebody,” I said. “Anybody.”

  The spider before me straightened up like a character actor in plays about mortgages and villains. Whatever he was wearing it wasn’t a white suit. It was baggy and flapping like old burlap, and looked just as filthy.

  His tongue licked out over impossibly jagged teeth and two things that must have been his eyes gleamed weirdly against a backdrop of hollow cheekbones, a crag of a nose and lanky black hair like a penniless violin player. He extended the .357 in my direction and pointed the crookedest forefinger I’ve ever seen along with it.

  “You ignore the warnings of the Count Calypso, Mr. Noon,” his crazy coffin-making voice intoned. “Tonight you die.”

  I raised my hands. “I never believe anything I read and half of what I see. Who are you?” It was sheer bravado because I had a feeling my knees were knocking. But the spider laughed his ghoul’s laugh.