Burnt Black

by Ed Kovacs

  “This enough for now.”

  She had just made a hot plate of food for her dead husband, and who was to say she was crazy to do it? Not me; I was actually touched. But I stayed focused.

  “Mrs. Sanchez, did Felix practice black magic?”

  “When he young, but not for many year. He no do bad thing. He try to help people.”

  “If your husband was so good, why did he have three human heads in an ice chest in his truck?”

  Her knees buckled just a bit. “Ay dios mio,” she whispered, as an expression of extreme disappointment. She shook her head in disbelief.

  “You knew about the heads, didn’t you?”

  After a long pause she said, “I tell him no do that kind of thing. He think he can make easy money.”

  “I hate to say this, but I need names. Otherwise, I’m afraid you will be in some trouble.”

  “You find heads in his truck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he no get paid for them. So I already in trouble. Better if you arrest and deport me.”

  “We’re not allowed to do that.”

  “But I am illegal and you are policeman.”

  “Yes, well, we live in strange times. Tell me, why would you be in trouble because of the heads? Felix is dead.”

  “Death no erase this debt. Better I go to La Migra myself. They deport me and I find work in Mexico City, where Las Calaveras no have power. But if I stay here, they will come for money. And I no have cash, so Las Calaveras will kill me.”

  Las Calaveras, or the Skulls, was a bloodthirsty, brutally ruthless Mexican drug cartel. The gang’s logo was a human skull with a rattlesnake intertwined through the eye sockets and its hissing head emerging from the mouth cavity. I couldn’t blame Sanchez for being fearful of their wrath. “Sorry, but I can’t allow you to leave New Orleans right now.”

  She looked at me with hard eyes for a long moment. She turned away, retrieved a soft box of Swisher Sweets from a drawer, and lit one of the cheap cigars. She then took a swig right from a bottle of Ronrico rum and, taking me completely by surprise, spit the rum onto me.

  I flinched. Before I could say a word, she began puffing madly into the cigar, never taking it from her lips as she blew smoke up and down my body.

  This was all new to me. After several seconds, she stood back and closely examined the long ash on the cigar tip, then fixed me with a stare.

  “You are strong, you have much power, much help. Maybe you can find this killer. Or maybe some killer will find you.” She crushed out the cigar in the sink. “But the spirits tell me to help you. So let’s go.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Felix’s truck had been towed to the Broad Street evidence cage, part of the police headquarters complex, so I took Gina Sanchez there first to confirm her story about a secret hidden compartment under the rear fender. The compartment was there; the money wasn’t. Gina didn’t look surprised.

  “I searched this truck myself at Professor Drake’s house. But we looked in the truck, not under the truck. I don’t think any police or the tow-truck driver or any of the yard workers looked there either, Mrs. Sanchez.”

  “I know who take it.”

  “I need a name.”

  “She just want money and power.”

  “You’re talking about one of Drake’s students. Which one?”

  “If I help you, they kill me!”

  “The Skulls? Las Calaveras?”

  “No, this different.” My built-in bullshit detector started to beep inside my head. Sanchez was now claiming that if she talked, she’d have two groups out to kill her.

  “We can protect you, put you in protective custody,” I said, thinking it would be a good way to keep an eye on her and keep her from skipping town or sliding into the netherworld of illegals. The truth was, there was very little a police department could do to stop a foreign national from leaving.

  “You can protect me from demons?”

  I gave her the blankest look I could muster.

  “What kind of police can do that?” she asked as a follow-up.

  I’m not a religious guy, even though I go to church sometimes. I like to think I’m spiritual, but what exactly is a spiritual person, anyway? My smart-ass response to Gina Sanchez, which I kept to myself was, Due to budget cuts, we shut down the unit that used to protect people from witches.

  I had my superstitions, true. Compared to Honey, I was a true believer. But in a million years I wouldn’t believe what Drake had said about a demon or that somebody could send demons to kill Gina Sanchez. But I had to honor the notion that she believed it. In fact, I respect the superstitions and beliefs of all cultures, because not to do so is to stake out a platform of arrogant scientific materialism, an intellectual superiority implying that “we know better.” Well, the physics and history and archaeology textbooks keep getting rewritten, don’t they, by smug academics who never pony up any mea culpas? So I don’t know who holds any ultimate truths. I simply try to avoid exercising cultural imperialism.

  Sanchez feared the Skulls cartel would kill her for the money owed. There was nothing arcane about that organization: They were psychopathic killers. A simple Internet search would turn up numerous videos made by the Skulls of them torturing and beheading their opponents. They often displayed the decapitated heads of their enemies on poles or hung from trees or public monuments, and were rumored to be involved in sorcery.

  Demons sent from a witch, however, was an issue I would use only to the extent that I wanted the name of Drake’s student, whom Gina believed killed her husband, Felix, and their friend Roscindo.

  * * *

  Gina Sanchez didn’t have an alibi. She claimed to have been at home all day, but Fred Gaudet told me the neighbors couldn’t confirm that. She and Felix were a one-vehicle family, and she said she usually got around by bus. I placed her in an interrogation room at Homicide, and Mackie took over to get her statement. I’d given her chewing gum and a soft drink so we could get her prints and DNA if she refused to submit a sample.

  Drake sat parked in an adjacent room with his lawyer. They were trying to come off as cooperative without really cooperating. Kruger, maybe the best interrogator we had, was handling the questioning when Honey returned from the autopsies. After she checked in with Kruger, I caught her in the hallway and filled her in on what I’d learned from Sanchez.

  “The Skulls are some bad mothers,” said Honey. “My SWAT commander had some ICE agents come in and give us a presentation. There’s a small group of them that come in and out of NOLA. Since the Storm. Bringing in dope.”

  “And heads, apparently.”

  “Apparently. Will she accept protective custody?” asked Honey. “Or is she a top-tier suspect?”

  “I wouldn’t make her a prime suspect, but we can’t rule her out yet. And no, she won’t accept protective custody. But I do believe she’s scared: She wanted me to arrest and deport her. Does the VCAT have a line on the local Skulls gang? Maybe we need to go proactive.”

  The Violent Crime Abatement Team follows and apprehends the most vicious local thugs. Since the chief had, de facto, made this a Five Alarm case, Honey and I would have a free hand in using other NOPD resources for the investigation.

  “I’ll find out,” Honey said, walking into the big office toward her desk. “Is Fred Gaudet here?”

  “I cut him loose after we finished up at Sanchez’s place.”

  “Tell him he’s on assignment with Homicide for now. I need a Spanish speaker to run down all the numbers in Felix and Roscindo’s phones.”

  She handed me two cell phones in evidence bags.

  “Any duty that gets him close to Mexican food, he likes. Hey, did anything new turn up with the coroner?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “He’s still thinking overdose but will run broad tests for poisons.”

  “Since these guys were bush doctors, and considering Drake’s background and all this talk about witches, there may have been some very esoteric herbs o
r plants used on our victims, assuming they were poisoned. Not sure how much help a broad test will be.”

  “Agreed. But we got what we got.”

  “So you want to start with Drake’s students?”

  Honey nodded and handed me the list of names that Drake had provided.

  As I scanned it, Sgt. Penny, a black lady in her fifties whose uniform had the sharpest creases in town, walked up, holding a parcel. I liked Penny; she’d been a good street cop back in the day and always looked ready for a uniform inspection.

  “You two newbies probably never met Tony Fournier, retired homicide detective,” said Penny, without preamble. “He was the department’s unofficial occult specialist once upon a time. Been out for at least six years or so. He dropped this off for ya’ll. His old case files on Professor Robert Drake.”

  “Case files? But Sarge, Drake doesn’t have a record,” I said, a little confused.

  “No thanks to Tony. He tried to put Drake away for over a decade. Mostly on his own time.” She hoisted into my hands a huge manila envelope that weighed about the same as an old Los Angeles phone book.

  “The department needs a new expert on hoodoo and all that spooky stuff. Which one a’ you will it be?”

  “Not me,” said Honey quickly. “Who wants to be an ‘expert’ on something that’s a load of bunk?”

  Sgt. Penny noted Honey’s reaction with a raise of her eyebrows. “My great-grandma knew Marie Laveau, so I will just have to bite my tongue, detective.”

  Marie Laveau (there may have been more than one Marie Laveau) was the most famous, and infamous, voodoo priestess in New Orleans’s long line of occult personages. A larger-than-life legend, for many decades in the 1800s she wielded enormous influence over the police, city officials, and the movers and shakers of high society. And to the true believers, her power was unequaled.

  “Is Fournier still in the building?” I asked, ripping open the envelope and eyeing the files.

  “Wouldn’t know. His number’s inside. He said to call if you wanted to talk.” Sgt. Penny winked at me, then started to slowly saunter off as I thumbed through the folder.

  “Thanks, Sarge. You still using hairspray and a hot iron to make those pants creases so sharp they could cut a poor boy like me?”

  “Mop & Glo, not hairspray, newbie,” she said, and shuffled off.

  I was still absorbing the sheer magnitude of the files in my hands when I heard Honey ask, “You coming or not?” with an impatient bite to her tone.

  “You don’t want to look at the files first?”

  “I want to interrogate suspects. Living and breathing ones. Looks like you could spend a week reading all that.”

  I arbitrarily opened a folder and saw something that caught my eye. I pulled a newspaper clipping.

  “Okay. Let’s go.” I checked my curiosity, put the fat envelope of files under my arm, and followed her out. “Where to?”

  “Crafty Voodoo in the Quarter.”

  “You want to go to a voodoo store?”

  “Kate Townsend, the first name on Drake’s list, is the owner and lives upstairs,” said Honey.

  “Allow me to suggest making a stop first. Drake owns a curio shop over in Riverbend. A curious curio shop. Selling occult items.” I handed her the clipping from Fournier’s files. “This old Times-Picayune article mentions that Drake had a lamp for sale with a special lampshade. A lampshade made from human skin.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Late autumn darkness swallowed up the residential Riverbend street, and the brisk wind nipped like a cold, hungry dog. Honey and I got out of her unit, and I zipped my jacket all the way up. Damp cold could chill you to the bone, and the strange weather front that had snuck in earlier today loomed over the city with the welcome of an icy blanket. The street lay black and quiet, and as I glanced around I saw lights shining in some homes but no one outside on porches, in yards, or on the street.

  We approached Drake’s curio shop, a faded-gray, two-story wooden corner structure that bore no signage. Honey shined her xenon flashlight on the windows. The glass looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the Korean War, making it hard to see beyond the dusty window displays of Black Cat Oil, Lucky Jazz, Get-Together Drops, Hell’s Devil Oil, and Drawing Powder. These old voodoo potions stood like a presentation frozen in time. Maybe the place used to be a drugstore.

  The windows and doors were securely barred, and the crud collected around the front suggested the doors hadn’t been open for business in a long time.

  “Sure would like to see what’s inside,” I mused.

  “Don’t get any ideas just yet,” said Honey, looking at the second-story windows, which were heavily curtained. “I’ll talk to Second District. Get the four-one-one on this place.”

  “You’re not suggesting I would commit an illegal act to gain entry, to get the unvarnished truth of what’s inside before Drake walks out of police headquarters and has a chance to sanitize the interior, are you, detective?” I asked with mock indignation, as I pulled a lock-picking tool from a cargo pocket.

  “I might feel different if Felix and Roscindo had their heads cut off. But what if the coroner is right? What if they OD’d? Gives us zero excuse to ‘accidentally’ break in here.”

  I put the tool away. We rounded the corner to check the other street side. There were two heavy doors locked tight. “One of these doors is probably a separate entrance for the upstairs, but I doubt anyone lives here.”

  The other, unseen sides of the building directly abutted neighboring homes, so entering or exiting via a door could only be done street-side. I quickly calculated the best way to break in, since I held no hope Honey could get us a search warrant and didn’t even bother asking about it.

  “What did the article say about the human-skin lampshade?”

  “It said that Saddam Hussein had owned it. That some guy approached Drake needing money, and so Drake bought it. If you read the article you get the idea that Drake thought he was talking to a customer in his shop and didn’t know he was talking to a reporter. He didn’t want any publicity.”

  “Even though the heads were in Felix’s truck? They were on Drake’s property. I’ll try to get us a warrant. So keep your lock picks in your pocket.”

  Not likely.

  * * *

  Honey and I parked across the street from Crafty Voodoo on Chartres just after 9 P.M. We could see from the car that the joint was still busy with tourists looking for a unique souvenir from Sin City South.

  Voodoo shops were the new spin on the corner drugstores of old that used to sell physical gris-gris items, such as oils, bags, dolls, powders, ad infinitum, which were used to achieve some specific purpose, like success in gambling or luck in matters of the heart. With the acceptance of voodoo and every other kind of religious or spiritual practice, Louisiana voodoo, or hoodoo, became a local cottage industry. So aside from all the usual gear, such as ritual candles, charms, talismans, jujus, mojo bags, statues, and books, one could buy key chains, bracelets, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and every other conceivable piece of merchandise that could be tied to voodoo, however tangentially.

  Maybe Drake’s curio shop had once been one of those corner drugstores selling gris-gris to wives hoping to keep their husbands from straying, and to men trying to win the affections of young ladies. If so, the owner might be turning over in his grave at how mainstream voodoo paraphernalia had become. The commercialization of the religion seemed to almost take the mystery out of it. Almost.

  As I got out of Honey’s unit parked in front of Townsend’s shop, I caught sight of a solitary figure in a second-floor window above the store. Even from this distance I could tell she was a pale beauty, with long, wavy black hair cascading down her back, a diaphanous gown backlit by a soft light, a long, lithe figure that somehow seemed very alone. Kate Townsend? I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman, and she finally stepped aside and disappeared somewhere into the room.

  Honey hadn’t noticed the figure, so I didn�
�t say anything as we crossed Chartres and entered the store.

  Like other voodoo emporiums I’d visited in the Quarter, Crafty Voodoo also had an on-site psychic to give readings, had a separate room where various herbs and concoctions could be conjured up to order, and had several very large and unique voodoo altars, one of which looked surprisingly like the one in Drake’s “temple” chamber.

  I couldn’t help but notice that all of the clerks were extremely attractive females wearing short shorts and matching Crafty Voodoo polo shirts that showcased their ample bosoms. Perhaps that could help explain the crowd. A sign prohibited any kind of photography, which seemed petty, especially since the feel of the place was extremely commercial, kind of like walking into a Hooters franchise.

  Once Honey saw I was no longer checking out the store’s merchandise but the employee’s merchandise, she flashed her badge at the cashier. “We need to speak with Kate Townsend.”

  Before the cashier could respond, a tall, long-haired redhead confidently strode through a doorway covered by a colorful bead curtain. “I’ve been expecting you. Shall we go upstairs?”

  Townsend was a striking woman of about thirty, but I felt a pang of disappointment that she wasn’t the female I’d seen in the window. No, the woman in front of me looked more like a banker than a voodoo shop owner. She wore a sharp charcoal-colored business suit, black heels, and her trendy eyeglasses looked like real tortoiseshell, a PC no-no. Pale blue eyes, ghost white skin, and facial freckles told me her red hair color was natural.

  Honey and I followed her through a doorway and up a narrow flight of stairs. As a man mounting steep stairs below a woman in a skirt, I couldn’t help but notice that her shoes were Kenneth Cole and had to cost at least five hundred dollars for the pair.

  You never know what you’re going to get in a French Quarter apartment, and Kate Townsend’s place was a surprise: The front room featured mid-twentieth-century modern furnishings flanked by stark white walls. Even with the crown moldings, the baseboards, the pocket doors, and the ceiling medallions in place, the room felt ultramodern. Honey and I sat on a sofa upholstered in white suede, as Townsend settled into a chair.