Old Black Magic

by Jaye Maiman

  “What are you talking about?” His tone was vinegary. Maybe New York City didn’t agree with him. I smiled at the thought.

  “Ryan will fill you in later.”

  “Uh-uh. That’s why I’m calling. I want to meet with you first.”

  My antennae hissed. “Why?”

  “In person, Miller. Where can we meet?”

  “Hold on.” I asked Jill to find out if Tony had arranged for me to meet Peltier. She returned a second later with the information. Eleven-fifteen, at the pizzeria near the Carroll Street train station in Brooklyn. I knew the place well. They made the slices too thick and the sauce was runny. To make up for it, I’d have to get a chocolate Italian ice. Darn. I told Sweeney about the meeting and arranged to meet him at the same spot, one hour later. He yammered at me a few minutes more, clearly pissed off that I hadn’t given him the full dope.

  After I hung up, Jill took me aside. “Tony’s taking a nap.”

  I shot a look at his closed office door. My partner had waged a valiant battle with his disease, but the white flag was slinking up the pole. “Okay,” I said. “The two of us can handle this. How’s the rest of our caseload?”

  She scowled briefly. “One client fired us yesterday afternoon. Samson Ink. Real Data called me at home last night complaining about our lack of responsiveness. The others seem okay. We hired seven more undercover agents to float through Gemini’s employment office. I’ve subcontracted out some work to Luce Lorelli and Hanson Associates.”

  I had a new appreciation for the urgency behind Tony’s offer to Ryan. My watch read nine-forty. Time enough for me to log in some of the make-nice calls Tony excelled at and I usually bungled. My office door yawed open. The first thing I noticed was the picture John Zimmerman had taken of me and Geeja in my back yard last Halloween. I flopped onto the couch. I never did get around to making those calls.

  At ten-thirty, I peeled myself off the sofa, whisked through the reception area and lobbed a half-felt wink at Jill as I headed out for my appointment. Beth and K.T. had taken my car, so I was at the mercy of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. On the way to the Seventh Avenue station, I patted myself down to make sure the handle of my gun didn’t make my shirt bulge. The last thing I needed was for some punk to snatch my twenty-two.

  It was a bizarre sensation to feel the warm metal of the handgun against my flesh as I strolled along the avenue in my neighborhood where on any given day I dropped off dry cleaning, bought groceries, sipped café latte, downed scones and bumped into vendors, friends and strangers I’d known for years. I passed the newsstand and descended into the station. My ankle had begun to heal, but I could feel it throbbing as my feet hit each step. A burst of ammonia greeted me at the first landing. Welcome to the bowels of Brooklyn, I thought. I heard the rumble of the train and bolted for the turnstile. The singular ding of a New York subway car told me the doors were about to close. I poured on the steam and slipped through the opening sideways.

  Carroll Street was just three stops away. I didn’t even have time to read the latest installment in the banner-strip on Rafael and Desiree. Would she abort or continue her unplanned pregnancy? Maybe on the way home I’d find out.

  I was twenty minutes early, so I had to order a slice. A fresh pie had just emerged from the oven, but I insisted on my pizza being reheated anyway. The Al Pacino look-alike on the other side of the counter eyed me conspiratorially. “You like your pizza to snap,” he said, nodding with confidence. Finally, someone who understood me.

  My friend served me at an outside table. I heard the crust crack as I folded the slice in half and took a bite. It was better than I’d remembered. There was nothing left but crust when I crossed back to the counter. “Is this place under new management?” I asked.

  The young man smiled. “My father,” he said, chin high. He wiped a hand on his sauce-stained apron and extended it to me. “Sanguino, Junior. You like the pizza?”

  “Here’s my answer. Heat up another one.”

  He smiled broadly and tossed a slice into the oven.

  “Does Officer Peltier eat here often?” I asked casually.

  Sanguino beamed. “You know Clyde?” he asked. “Absolutely. He’s a good man. Some of his friends come in, they make an order and then they stand there, hands in their pockets, waiting for someone to say, on the house. My father, he does it all the same. Me, I say, put the money on the counter. Officer Peltier’s not like that. He even tips.” He gestured over my shoulder. “Here he comes now.”

  I spun around. Sure enough, a cop strode through the open door, one hand poised awkwardly over his holster as if he wasn’t sure whether he’d need to draw his gun or adjust his pants. The only people in the place were me and Sanguino. Peltier gave me the once-over, which gave me time to do the same. He was five-nine, at most, with prematurely gray hair, chipmunk cheeks, thin lips, bright steel-blue eyes and a hangdog expression. His body was surprisingly slight. Narrow shoulders, narrow hips. I checked out his hands. They were almost delicate. I couldn’t imagine this guy on the streets of New York.

  He looked a little edgy so I walked up to him, introduced myself, then added quickly, “I’m carrying a gun for protection only. I’ll be happy to show you my P.I. and gun licenses before we sit down.”

  He nodded, tapped his foot rapidly while I flipped through my wallet and pulled out the necessary papers. I handed them over, but he appeared to skim rather than read them. Sweat beaded up along the tops of his eyebrows. It was a gorgeous spring day, seventy-five degrees, with a stiff breeze rolling along the streets. I had on a long-sleeve dungaree shirt and a jean jacket and I was perfectly comfortable. Peltier was nervous.

  I offered to buy him a slice, but he declined with a sniff. Sanguino slid my second order to me, then Peltier and I retreated to the patio.

  “Did Tony explain the situation to you?” I asked.

  “Frankly, no. I was pretty sure we had covered everything the other day.” Peltier had retained a bit of the Cajun accent.

  “Well, I have a few other questions about Galonardi.”

  He dropped his eyes to his hands. “Cold case,” he muttered.

  “Too bad no one listened to you about the voodoo angle. It was quick thinking,” I said, oddly compelled to stroke his ego.

  He shrugged. “It was Cajun thinking. Back then, I still had the swamp between my ears. My mama was always telling me tales about Congo dances and gris-gris. When my partner hooted at me, I don’t know, I figured it were better to shush up. I didn’t want the guys to think I was some scaramouch.” He snickered to himself. “That’s what my daddy used to call me. I’m not even sure what it means, but I knew it was real bad. Roger, that was my partner, he was a lot like him. Tough, but darned sharp. He retired last year.” Peltier had to be in his late twenties, but he seemed about sixteen years old despite the gray hair.

  “Can I ask you to go over what happened once again?”

  He looked askance at me. “Your partner wouldn’t tell me what this is all about. I don’t get why you two are hunting down a squirrel who got no meat on his bones. Why so much interest in Galonardi?”

  Tony believes that a good investigator never gives out information, he only takes it in. I decided to violate his rule. “We think the killer has struck again. This time in New Orleans.” Peltier frowned sharply as I described Lisa Rubin’s murder.

  “Could be related,” was all he said when I was done.

  “Did you have any other leads back then that could help us now?” I asked.

  “Just the wanga stuff…you know, hoodoo rites. And you-all already picked up on that.” Peltier might be a good cop, but he was a lousy liar. He shrugged three or four times while he spoke, his eyes never once meeting mine.

  I tried a different tack. “Did you know Galonardi was a lesbian?”

  A flicker in his eyes, then the lids descended in a slow blink. “That’s what some said.”

  “You didn’t buy it?”

  He hemmed a bit. “That’s jus
t flubdub. Galonardi was a big-boned lady with short hair. So was my mama. After my daddy passed on, she wouldn’t look at another man no matter what wares he tried to sell her. Some of the neighbor folks thought she’d gone queer. But she hadn’t. She just liked living alone.”

  I lowered my eyes to the slice in my hand and zeroed in on Peltier’s conscience. “Too bad you couldn’t nail the perp back then. It could’ve saved this poor woman down in New Orleans.” I tore off a piece of pizza. “By the way, Galonardi’s super made some comment about her having a special friend.”

  Peltier squirmed in his seat. “You’re not from internal affairs, are you?”

  The pizza was cold and my interview hot. I dropped the slice and leaned over the table. “None of this goes back to the job. I promise you.”

  “Shit.” He whistled through his teeth. I could almost see the decision shimmy over his face. Peltier was ready to talk. “We clicked up that investigation but good. First, I was too weak-kneed to stand up for what I knew in my gut. You tell me that a jar of bull’s testicles don’t scream hoodoo. Hell, I knew it. Then all the boys were snickering about Galonardi being some bulldyke so what’d it matter, like there was a darned scorecard we could use to prioritize whose homicide we’d take serious. I spoke to the super, some Hispanic guy—”

  “Alberto Cora.”

  “That’s it.” He stabbed a finger at me excitedly. “So he tells me about Galonardi talking about this friend and it sticks out like a Northerner ordering pee-can pie in Dixie. Where’d this friend come from? How come no one else seen him? Then Cora says this man had him an accent like mine. Ding.” I thought of Chamelle. “Now, I’d met this man who reminded me of a ragamuffin I knew when I was growing up… Name escapes me now, but he was from back home and had done scut work for Galonardi—”

  “Was his name Barry NeVille?”

  His lips curled. “Barry sounds right. Don’t recall the last name. He tried to play like he was retarded, but I knew his kind. After a while, I got him off the game, talking man to man. We sat down and jawed the fat for close to an hour and the only thing I knew for sure was his cool went up like dried moss in a campfire the minute I mentioned Galonardi’s friend. He made some comment about his ‘protector,’ and then he scampered like a scared-ass mouse.” He looked at my plate. “You eating that crust?”

  I pushed the plate toward him. His hunger had suddenly returned.

  “So I tell Roger we ought to track this turkey down and he just laughed, told me that I had a lot to learn about women if I thought this dyke had herself a real boyfriend. That was when Rog heard about this lunatic up in the Bronx who’d been boasting about raping old women. The lead seemed awfully well-timed, but I was a juvie so I went along.” Peltier scratched at a cuticle and grimaced. “Rog beat this boy up bad and I stood there, dumb silent. Kid ended up confessing to the murder, so I thought maybe, you know, what the hell experience did I have?” He bit a fingernail, looked at me for understanding. I smiled back. “Turned out this nut wasn’t even in the vicinity at the time of the murder. I wanted to go back and pursue the earlier tack, but Roger told me to let it alone.” He hesitated. “Don’t get me wrong here. Rog was a great cop. I never seen him go that route again.”

  “Did you ever come across the name Fitzhugh Chamelle?”

  “You razzing me?”

  He must have seen the puzzlement in my eyes. “No, I guess you’re not,” he said. “Sure I heard of him. Fitz got himself a regular byline in the Times-Picayune, best paper in the country, in my opinion. No offense, but it beats the New York papers hands down. I was the one who called him up to New York back in ’eighty-eight. You had to read his articles, right? Man, did Roger ever chew me out about that one.”

  Peltier was an absolute gold mine. My partner must have been worse off than I realized if he could leave so much of this cache untapped.

  “Fitz covered the Galonardi case real good,” Peltier said. “He buddied up with my lieu. Ever since, he’s called maybe twice a year to see if we got anything new for him. He was the only one back then who expressed a modicum of interest in my theories, but then again he was from New Orleans. When it didn’t pan out, he’d wink at me and make it out like we was the only ones in New York City. I liked him.”

  “Any chance he was Galonardi’s friend?”

  “Nah. He was a might peculiar though. Told me he’d been chasing murders with hoodoo shades ever since his sister got raped in Berkeley with a stuffed snake carcass. He had particular interest in this…what’d you say his name was? Barry—” He snapped his fingers. “Troy! That’s it.”

  So NeVille had borrowed his cousin’s last name.

  Peltier went on. “Barry Troy. Hate when I forgot stuff like that. Anyway, Fitz told me he’d be chasing him all over the country, waiting for him to make the wrong move. He was practically begging me to nail the guy for Galonardi’s murder, but I had to tell him the truth. I didn’t make Troy as the perp.”

  A woman with a stroller craned her head at us as she strolled by. Peltier glanced at his watch suddenly and stood up. “Look, I got to get back on the beat. I’m glad I put this on the table.” He smiled sheepishly. “Now it’s your game.”

  “One last question.”

  “Shoot.”

  I swallowed hard. “Did you tell any of this to a private detective who was looking into Galonardi’s murder?”

  The muscles of his jaw tightened. “Yeah. He was the biggest asshole of them all. Swee–ney.” He stretched the name out with distaste, the way a five-year-old might say spinach. My estimation of Peltier rose steeply. “He made me feel this small.” He pinched two fingers together. “Him and Roger hit it off and the next thing I know both of them are calling me a bayou rat, like Sweeney was much better. I’ll tell you what really ticked him off…I made some comment about his medal.”

  I swept a hand to my own neck, suddenly remembering the brass medal Sweeney wore around his neck. A stabbing pain shot through my head as the image gelled.

  “Here this jerk’s making fun of me ’cause I’m reading hoodoo in a bottle of bull’s testicles and meanwhile he’s walking around with a vévé around his neck.”

  Saliva evaporated from my mouth. I gaped at Peltier.

  Ogou Feray.

  In less than ten minutes, we’d be face to face.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I asked Peltier to wait around while I went inside to make a phone call to my office. No one had answered so I scurried back to the patio, but by then Peltier had disappeared. I rushed back into the pizzeria and asked Sanguino where he’d gone.

  “His thing went off,” he said, pantomiming talking on a radio. “A domestic disturbance on Second Place.”

  Shit. I darted back outside, checked the four corners for any sign of Sweeney. According to the plan we’d made earlier, he should arrive any minute. He had rented a car, but I had no idea what kind. I scanned every parked car I passed. The last thing I wanted to do now was encounter him while I was on my own. I retraced my steps to the train station, glancing repeatedly over my shoulder. I was grateful for the weight of the gun and shifted it so I could more readily draw if I needed to.

  How the hell had I missed the clues? I swore to myself out loud. In rapid succession, I replayed every moment we’d spent together. The emblem of Ogou Feray emblazoned on the medal he wore. The gothic drama he’d staged for me in the bayou, probably assuming I’d be stupid enough to buy NeVille as the killer, or chicken enough to be scared off by his rough-house tactics. And then there was Rubin’s tooth. Most likely Sweeney himself placed it in my pocket. No doubt that bit of evidence never did end up with the NOPD. Who knew if he’d been in contact with the local authorities at all?

  Damn, damn, damn! Scenes erupted in my brain, each one triggering another bitter realization. The offhanded comment Sweeney had made on the drive out to the bayou about Galonardi being the last murder, long before I had any idea that the Andrea Allen case had been solved two years previously. His slip on the date
of Galonardi’s murder. He’d had it right all along. Why shouldn’t he, since he was the one who’d schemed and carried out each one of them? Then there was the convenient appearance of NeVille and his tattooed cousin on Bourbon Street, so near to where Sweeney and I’d just met. And the fiasco in the supposedly haunted house. All along, he’d been toying with me, testing my resolve, eating away at my nerve. Ryan was right after all. The killer had been playing a game. A game with deadly stakes. What my friend hadn’t known was that we’d both been pawns from the start.

  My mind retrieved the ghastly image of the decimated body of my cat, the cat I’d curled up with during long bouts of insomnia. Her bowels spilled on the bed where I slept. Tears sprang to my eyes. I wanted Sweeney dead.

  The subway station air was cool and damp, but sweat crawled along my midriff I slammed the token into the turnstile and tramped down the stairs to the platform. My eyes blinked to adjust to the dim, sulfur-tinged light, then I headed for the rear of the station that would let me off near the exit closest to my office. The sound of my footsteps echoed dully. I paused, took a deep breath. A trace of cheap cologne hung in the air, which made me think that I must’ve just missed the train. I watched an elderly man pass by and climb the stairs with difficulty. That’s when it struck me that no one else was around. I started moving back to the center of the platform.

  Clack.

  In an instant my fingers curled around the butt of the gun. The sound had come from in front, but no one was visible. If it was Sweeney, he was good.

  Suddenly I heard my name whispered. Playfully ominous. The same voice I’d heard on the phone this morning. He must’ve tailed me since the pizzeria, but I hadn’t detected him. And I couldn’t find him now. Sweeping my gaze from left to right slowly, I slunk around a steel pillar. There were too many places to hide. The trash dumpster was dead center of the platform, about fifteen feet from me. The staircases lay beyond that.