by Jeff Lindsay
I couldn’t say it. I shook my head.
“What,” he said. “What does that mean? How bad is it? Come on, Billy, I need to know.”
“She’s gone,” I said. “They took her.”
Nicky turned pale green, as if all the blood in him had suddenly poured down into his feet. “Aw, no,” he said softly. He looked for a place to sit down. There wasn’t any. He leaned against the wall, looking old and beat up.
Beyond him, at the far end of the hall, I saw The Deacon coming towards us with his easy, gun-fighter’s walk.
“They tell me you think you’re leaving,” Deacon said to Nicky as he came up to us.
Nicky turned to look at him.
“What’s that?”
“This is The Deacon,” I explained. “The man I told you about. The number I gave you.”
“The copper?”
“That’s right,” Deacon said. “And I have a few copper questions to ask you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The Deacon generally worked out of the front seat of his car, but he had a small office that he never used. It was in the regional F.D.L.E. headquarters, near the airport. It had a window, a desk with a telephone and computer, and two metal folding chairs.
I’d been a cop in L.A. for seven years, and I’d gotten to know a couple of the movie people out there. One of them once told me that you could tell how important somebody was by their office. A corner office with lots of windows, a potted plant, art on the wall and a couch meant this was a major player, somebody really important.
The rating system was so clear, my friend said he could tell at a glance where somebody ranked, even by what kind of plants they had. “Anybody can have a ficus,” he told me.
Deacon didn’t even have a ficus. It didn’t seem to bother him. He led us into the office with his name on the door like somebody going into a strange room. He looked around once, as if trying to figure out where everything was, and then settled uncertainly into the chair behind the desk. “Sit down,” he said, waving vaguely at the folding chairs.
I gave Nicky the chair directly across from Deacon and sat with my arm wedged against the wall. I felt sick, empty, tired. I closed my eyes. Too many hours had gone by since Anna had been grabbed. It was already too late, and I wasn’t doing anything. I hadn’t done anything right yet.
“Okay,” Deacon poked with his pointer fingers at the keyboard. His dark triangular eyebrows were wrinkled down and his tongue was shoved out the side of his mouth.
He punched in a final command, shook his head, and looked at Nicky. “Now, son, I’d like to get a description of the guy that clobbered you.”
Nicky shook his head. The Deacon just looked at him.
“Aw, look, I dunno,” Nicky said. “I barely saw him, it was so fast—I dunno what I can tell you.”
“Anything at all might help,” Deacon said.
Nicky frowned. “He was a black fella, I know that. But—” Nicky looked over at me. “I’m sorry. But I didn’t even get the door open and he was upside my noggin. And I’m on the floor, on my side, and that’s it. Lights out.”
“Sometimes it helps,” said the Deacon, “if you close your eyes and try to see it all in slow motion.”
Nicky looked up at him, surprised. He blinked. “Of course,” he said. “I’m a silly shit. Self-hypnosis.”
“What’s that?” Deacon asked him.
“Self-hypnosis. I can put myself into a trance, right? Do it all the time, for channeling and that.”
“Nicky,” I said. I didn’t want him going off on one of his Spiritual Odysseys right now and channeling the spirit of a 12th century Tibetan monk.
But he was already into it, leaning back in the chair, pointing his chin at the ceiling, blowing his breath out and sucking it back in again.
I looked at Deacon. He raised one of those eyebrows at me and I shook my head. We both stared at Nicky.
His face looked subtly different. Some of the lines on it had smoothed out and he seemed—I don’t know—more serious or something. Not his usual elf-self.
“Okay,” he said. His voice was breathy, but clear.
Deacon shrugged. “How does this work. Somebody knocks at the door, is that it?”
“Who can this be?” he says, and I feel ice cubes along my spine. It’s Anna’s voice.
“Must be Billy,” he says in his own voice.
“And you go to the door,” Deacon says.
Nicky laughs, a high-pitched cackle. “He’s forgot his key!” he says, and then changing to Anna’s voice again, “Nicky, no! Wait!”
Nicky turned in his chair, a quarter-turn to where Anna is. “Eh?” he says, and frowns.
“You open the door,” Deacon suggests.
“Oh… Yeah,” he says, in his slow, breathy voice. “I… open the door. I’m half-looking at Anna. She’s rising up off the chair. And something… Uh,” he says.
“What is it?” Deacon asks.
“He… hit me.”
“Who did?”
“The guy. The guy at the door. He grabs my throat, really tight. Christ, he’s a strong one. And he smacks me on the head… Ah, fuck…”
“Can you see him, Nicky? What does he look like?”
“He’s black. Seems too thin to be that strong. And fast. Christ on a bun, he moves faster than… anything.”
“Describe the guy who hits you, Nicky.”
Nicky frowned. “Pencil…” he said.
Deacon shoved a pencil and a legal pad across the desk and without looking, Nicky grabbed them up. Eyes still closed, he began to sketch quickly.
I watched as a face began to take shape. It was lean and triangular, running from a wide forehead across slightly slanted eyes, a strong, wide nose, down to a sharp chin. High cheekbones stood out, and so did the bones around the deep-set eyes.
The face was handsome, even pretty, without being even a little bit attractive. “Guy’s about thirty-five, thirty-six,” Nicky said, eyes still closed. “About five foot ten, 165 pounds. Moves like a fucking snake. Oh,” he said, sounding surprised.
“What is it?” Deacon asked.
“The snake. He’s got a snake tattooed on his arm, left arm, just above the wrist.” Nicky frowned, shivered all over, and opened his eyes. “How’d I do?”
“How the hell would I know?” Deacon said, staring at the picture. He reached over and picked it up. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
Nicky looked offended. “You’re supposed to use it,” he said.
Deacon shook his head, looked at me. “Billy?”
“I think the description is probably pretty good,” I said.
“A snake tattoo?” Deacon said. “I’m supposed to put out a BOLO for a guy with a snake tattoo because Captain Marvel here saw it in his magic trance?”
“You have something better?” I asked him.
He shook his head again. “I got nothing, buddy.”
“He’s had Anna for twelve hours,” I said.
Deacon looked at the picture again, then at Nicky, then at me. “I’ll put this out,” he said. “And then you and me are going snooping.”
He turned back to the computer and typed in the description. When he was done he punched a final button extra hard and a printer whirred behind him. “All right,” he said. “I’ll put that out as a BOLO. Now let’s us do the real work.” He crammed himself in behind the desk again and leaned on an elbow. “We’re figuring this is connected to these two murders,” he said. “Nagle and—what’s the other guy?”
“Oto,” I said. “I don’t remember his last name.”
“Don’t matter,” he said, turning back to the computer. “I’ll have it all up here in a second.” He slowly punched at the keyboard, looking more like he was sparring than typing. The printer whirred again and he pulled out a page.
“Otoniel Varela,” he read in the syllable-by-syllable way cops from the South use on Hispanic names. “Age thirty-four, occupation merchant seaman. Currently unemployed.”
“You think that’s where she is?”
I shrugged. It took all my energy. “It’s all I can come up with. It’s a start, anyway.”
He started whacking away at the keyboard again. “Shouldn’t be a problem. I can call up the records from the Union rolls, and…” He trailed off, lost in trying to work the computer. “Bingo,” he said after a long moment of silence. “The Maria Chinea, about six months ago. Been on shore since then.”
“Before that?”
Deacon frowned. “Little bit confused here. He’s down for a couple of them at the same time, and then it shows he didn’t take either one. Then before that, about two years on the Petit Fleur.”
“It’s one of those two, Maria something or Petit Fleur. It has to be.”
“I’m with you on that, buddy. But which one?”
I shook my head. “Can’t say. It could have worked out that he worked the Fleur, got fed up, and went through a couple of jobs fast. Or it could have been the Maria. But one of them is the Black Freighter. It has to be.”
“Don’t want to jump on the Petit Fleur, just ’cause it’s a Haitian name,” he said.
“Why not?” Nicky blurted. “Man’s a voodoo priest, stands to reason.”
Deacon shook his head. “These old freighters go back and forth all over the Caribbean. Might change hands a dozen times.”
“But the name,” Nicky insisted.
“It’s bad luck to change a boat’s name, Nicky,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Check ’em both,” I told Deacon.
“Uh-huh,” he said, and began pecking at the keyboard again. “Let’s us just see what we can find…”
Deacon hammered at the computer for about five minutes, muttering softly to himself and a couple of times to me, saying things like, “Hang on, buddy.”
Finally he slapped the keyboard and the printer started to whirr again. Deacon leaned back, looking satisfied. “Well,” he said.
“You found something?”
“Yes I did, Billy. I surely did find something.” He grabbed the paper from the printer. “Gervasio Lopez is the master of the Maria Chinea. He has stayed at our fine hotel in Raiford on two occasions. Once for drug smuggling, once for manslaughter.” He looked up. “That one was a plea bargain down from Murder One. Apparently he’s in with the Cali syndicate. They can buy some pretty good legal help.”
“He sounds like a drug smuggler. We’re looking for a witch doctor,” I said.
Deacon held up a finger. “Now don’t go jumping to any conclusions, Billy. A lot of the Colombian syndicate guys do a kind of black magic version of santeria. Human sacrifice and everything. Remember that thing in Mexico a few years back?”
“Matamoros,” I said. I remembered.
“That’s it. They thought eating human body parts would make ’em rich and keep them from being arrested. This Lopez could be another one.”
“What about the other ship?”
Deacon glanced at the printout. “Patrice du Sinueux. Known as Cappy.” Deacon frowned. “Funny. We got some detail on this guy but no arrest record. And so no picture.” He ran a finger down the page. “Okay. That explains it. He was a mid-level guy in the ton-ton macoute. Guess that would be with Baby Doc Duvalier. Got in some trouble, tried to claim political asylum here in the U.S.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Deacon frowned. “Doesn’t say here, but it’s a good rule of thumb that if you’re running from that crowd you’re a good guy.”
What Deacon said made sense. All we had heard from Honore about the Black Freighter had said its captain was a voodoo houngan. But Honore was Haitian. He would put things in those terms. And palo mayombe, the dark side of Santeria, was similar enough to voodoo that somebody who knew about one of them would recognize the other.
So although a small voice in the dark of my head was telling me the Haitian captain ran the Black Freighter, my head said it made more sense to go for the convicted felon, rather than a man who had apparently tried to escape from the ton-ton macoute.
“All right,” I said to Deacon. “I vote for Lopez.”
Deacon nodded. “Me too. I just hope we’re right, Billy,” he said, reaching for the telephone. “Let me call my buddy in Customs.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Maria Chinea had probably been a nice ship once—maybe fifty years ago. Now it was a bucket of rust held together by the greasy cables around its deck cargo. There was a thick smell of old fish dipped in diesel clinging to the deck.
The mate was on deck when we got there, smoking a cigar that looked like it had been launched about the same time as the ship. He was a tanned, creased guy in his fifties, dirty and unshaved, with a face like a disappointed gorilla. As our car pulled up he stood, knocked the coal off the end of his cigar, and stuck the battered old thing in his shirt pocket.
Ray Hall got out first. He was Deacon’s friend in Customs, an out-sized good ol’ boy who had played tackle for the Gators and come home to South Florida to fight crime.
Whatever else people may say about the Good Ol’ Boy Network, if you’re inside it, it works for you. And Deacon was definitely inside it. Ray had been happy to pull a couple of spot inspections for his ol’ buddy Deacon. Customs does them all the time anyhow, randomly picking ships from a master list of everything in the harbor. Having Deacon suggest a couple of ships was no problem.
Ray had looked a little dubious about bringing us along, but when Deacon explained why he had shrugged it off. “Just you all try to look the part,” he’d said.
“What part, mate?” Nicky asked him.
Ray looked thoughtful when he heard Nicky’s accent. “We take other law enforcement personnel along with us all the time? So nobody’s gonna give two tick’s off a dog’s ass if I got a couple more with me. Just you look serious, like you know a lot more than you’re saying, and maybe I can make them fools think you’re from Australian Customs, come to learn how to do it right.”
Ray led the way up the gangway and we followed, Nicky stretching his face into the grim look of a man who’s learning to stop beer smuggling.
The mate stood waiting for us at the top, blocking our way onto the ship, arms folded, a look of passive hostility on his face.
“Customs,” Ray told him, showing his ID. “We need to see your paperwork and check your holds.”
The mate didn’t budge. “¿Qué?” he said.
Ray switched to perfect Spanish, with no accent I could catch, and repeated himself. The mate stared at him for a minute, then shrugged and turned away to get the papers.
When he disappeared into the superstructure, Ray turned back to us. “I’ll keep him busy,” he said. “Y’all go ahead and poke around. Just don’t get too messy.” And he wandered after the mate.
We searched the ship. From the mate’s attitude of half-dead hostility I was already sure it was the wrong one but we searched anyway. We went through the holds, the moldy living area, the engine room. A small, ferret-like guy with no shirt sat on a folding chair in the engine room. He looked up at us when we came in, but he didn’t move and he didn’t say a word.
Other than that there was no trace of life on board, aside from a few rats, and some things that were growing on the walls in the galley.
No sign of Anna. No sign of anyplace where they might have tucked her away.
We met up with Ray in the wheelhouse. He was flipping through a large stack of papers, firing questions at the mate in rapid Spanish. Ray looked up when we came in; Deacon shook his head slightly, and Ray rifled once through the papers and then handed them back to the mate.
“All right,” Ray said. “Anything else?”
Deacon raised an eyebrow at me.
“Ask him if he remembers a guy named Otoniel Varela,” I said. “He worked on board a while back.”
The mate had lift
ed his head up when I said Oto’s name. As Ray asked him the question he was already nodding. Before he answered the mate spat out the wheelhouse door. Then he raced through a couple of minutes of furious talking mixed with hand signals, grunts and groans, and at one point a long, shrill scream.
He talked fast and without consonants and although I speak a little Spanish, I couldn’t follow it. My ears were used to the slower, more careful, Mexican Spanish and the Caribbean variety left me far behind.
But one word I could pick out, because he used it several times, and even moaned it once right after the scream, was “sueño.” Dream.
And right around the scream, the mate moaned something that sounded like, “las loooooozes,” which I puzzled over for a while and couldn’t get.
When the mate had finished, Ray nodded and handed back the papers. “Bueno,” he said, and then added something almost as fast as the mate’s speech. Then he turned for the door and we followed, down the stairs, across the deck and down the gangway. By the time we got to the car, the mate was already sitting again, staring at his cigar.
“Quite a story,” Ray said as we settled into the car. He was behind the wheel with Deacon beside him and Nicky and I were in the back.
“He remembered Oto,” I said.
“Be a job of work to forget that boy,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re interested in Oto, but Oto like to be some major shit for somebody pretty soon.”
“Too late,” I said. “He’s dead.”
“Uh-huh. Well that ought to help the sleep problem.”
“The what?” Deacon asked.
Ray shook his head. “Your Oto worked the boat here maybe six months ago. The mate—his name’s Garcia, by the way. Providencio Garcia.”
“Old Providencio says Oto had a sleep problem,” Deacon said.
“Yep. Says he didn’t like Oto’s looks when he showed up. Sort of wild looking, one side of his face unshaved, big rings under his eyes. Smelled like a bordello floor on Sunday morning. Providencio says he would have turned Oto away if he could, but his papers were all right and with the Unions and all he had to take him on.
