The Darker Saints

by Brian Hodge

  Eel nodded. Nathan was speaking of more than culinary skills. Every man needed to find his own life’s philosophy somewhere, and a bowl of bisque was as good as anyplace. In Eel’s experience most men never managed to find even that much.

  “Eel,” said Nathan Forrest, and his entire tone of voice had sombered. “I have a problem.”

  Eel nodded again. It was all the man needed to say. Tone of voice implied everything else: Take care of it.

  “Who is it?”

  “Henry Cobb.”

  Nathan’s private accountant. The man who took the cash flow from all the ill-gotten sources and cleaned it up, made it pure as the driven snow. The laundry man.

  “Henry’s been audited. They were … quite persistent. And very thorough.”

  Eel sighed. “This isn’t good.”

  “If it was a problem with local jurisdiction, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. No need. I could make some calls, send out a few campaign contributions and the like. That’s the civil way to do business.” Nathan had a contemplative spoonful of bisque. “But the IRS … that’s federal. Lots of weight there, people I don’t know, people I never even heard of. They’re leaning on Henry pretty hard.”

  Eel began to catch the unspoken current. “Are they trying to turn him?”

  Nathan grimly compressed his lips and nodded. “Burke, at the state’s attorney’s office? Says he’s heard they’re offering him a clean slate and Federal Witness Relocation.”

  “Has he accepted?”

  “He’s still thinking, that’s what I hear. What I do not want to hear is him saying yes. I don’t want to hear him saying no. I don’t want to hear anything about Henry Cobb, ever again, after his obituary.”

  “I’ll take care of it tonight.”

  “You do still have a little china pot down there with his name on it, don’t you?”

  “Like a book in a library. And do you want the usual, for someone in his position?”

  “Definitely.” Nathan rapped his spoon inside his bowl. “Anybody who talks against me, anybody who even thinks of talking against me, the signature is the same. So hell yes, do it.”

  Eel shrugged. “New accountant, you can always buy another one of those.”

  Nathan ticked his mouth to one side. “You know what the problem is with men like Henry? Computers for brains, they’re too logical for their own good. No loyalty.”

  As Nathan supped the last of the bisque, Eel finally noticed the things in the bottom of the bowl. He peered apprehensively as Nathan set upon them with obvious relish, spooning them out one at a time. Six fat shell-like things, big around as his thumb but half as long. Nathan pried each one open — they halved easily — and scooped out some sodden mass, ate it with delight.

  “Stuffed crawfish heads,” he explained. “The best part.”

  Eel shut his eyes and tried not to shudder. The things these people down here ate. If they could catch it, they would eat it.

  Nathan turned on him again, bright-eyed. “Sure you wouldn’t like a bowl?”

  “Positive.”

  “Let me send one home with you, then.”

  “Really, no,” he groaned.

  “Well you stubborn fuck, you.” Nathan reached behind himself and flipped open a small panel built seamlessly into the wall. He lifted out a phone receiver linked directly with the kitchen. “Send somebody back up here with another bowl of that crawfish bisque, for Mr. Fletcher’s driver. Pack it to go.” He hung up, self-satisfied, and looked at Eel with triumph. “Food that good, it’s just got to be shared. Your driver’ll thank me.”

  “I’ll have him write you a note when he gets home,” Eel said, and Nathan seemed mildly amused.

  Justin smiled to himself as he reassembled the emptied crawfish heads, shell half to shell half. He lined them up neatly across the china saucer.

  And with six soft, slow crackles, ground each one apart beneath his thumb.

  To step beneath the crust of streets was to step back into history.

  Few paid any mind to the locked door in one of Charbonneau’s back rooms, behind which a stairway led to its basement. Fewer still knew of the trapdoor that led even deeper, to a subbasement. And there, only a handful knew of a second trapdoor rebuilt to blend in with the surrounding brick floor, with the handle concealed beneath a removable slice of brick. Throw it back, descend an aged wooden staircase anchored to a stone wall, and time travel was achieved. Brick and masonry sweating out two-and-a-half humid centuries of blood money and passion. They were cool and dank and heavy with age, these forgotten catacombs, built on the shore of a slow Mississippi-bound underground river used by French smugglers and pirates in another era, whose topside descendants of today were far more bold.

  Such heritage, such legacy.

  If Eel were to consider anywhere a true home, this place was it. His was a vaulted chamber fifty feet along a corridor beneath the restaurant, heavy stone walls thick with the scent and sight of ceremony. Lit with the glow of candles, a hundred or more, on the altar, or their soft wax molded into crevices of the walls themselves. The smoke was sucked away by natural ventilation, a perpetual subterranean breeze skimming passages and waters, and emptying blocks away just above the Mississippi.

  The temperature never varied throughout the year, and while the pirates hadn’t built this place for comfort, they had no doubt made provisions for longevity. Into one wall was built a large stone oven.

  Shelves ran the length of the far wall, row upon row of small white china pots. Dozens. One pot-tête was committed to the upkeep of Dorcilus Fonterelle, the rest with identical functions; only the unwitting donors of hair clippings and nail parings were different. All with the blood and feathers of sacrificial fowl. A gallery of what the Haitians had long ago termed le bon-ange, or “good angel”: the soul.

  From the center of the sanctuary’s ceiling descended the poteau-mitan, a post that served as the ladder for the gods, the loa, to make their entrance. Altar table and walls were a loving jumble of objects both useful and sacred. Bottles of rum and wine and other libations, bowls and jars, jugs and platters. And the possessions of the gods: the sword of Ogu, the peasant bag and straw hat of Zaka, the top hat and frock coat of Baron Samedi, the crutch of Legba.

  After midnight, now Friday, and how fortunate this was. The casting of sorcery was a Friday activity. These more savage gods and goddesses, who could be bargained with for cruelty, considered Friday their holy day.

  Candlelight and the murmur of the river, and Eel took whip in hand to lash the air, sharp cracks and twirling the lash into intricate patterns. The sound was pleasing to their ears, and with that done, Eel grabbed a poker from the brazier of coals. Touched the glowing red tip to several small bowls of gunpowder charges placed around the sanctuary. Bright flashes of detonation, blinding bursts of smoke and sulfur stench, and the smell was pleasing to their nostrils. He took a bottle of peppered rum from the altar, sprinkled libations to the cardinal points, spewed it from his mouth to the floor, and the taste was pleasing to their palates.

  The gods and goddesses of vodoun were legion, and none more feared than those of the petro rites. Fearful Haitians knew them as devils, or red-eyes, or eaters of men. Lovers of fire and ferocity, they were. Eel knew them well, and they knew him.

  He approached the altar, the crutch. “By thy power, Master of Crossroads,” he began the prayer, the invocation of Legba, a liaison between mortals and the gods they served, and the prayer was fervent and brutal.

  Eel was soaked head to foot with divine sweat, the stink of gunpowder in his nostrils as he twitched, felt the touch of some distant hand as he whirled to the center post. Lips skinning back from teeth, his limbs locked rigid — the god was close, and eager.

  He lurched to the altar and took pen in hand, scratched the name of Henry Cobb upon a scrap of paper. Traded pen for bone-handled knife and bent over the curled pink thing lolling across one of the platters. A beef tongue, root and all, thick and moist. Eel sliced it
lengthwise, peeled it open down the center and placed Henry Cobb’s name in the split. Packed it tight with handfuls of a congealed mass from a china pot given to Henry’s upkeep, rotted shreds of banana leaf and blood and feathers and the trimmings Henry had never known had been taken from him. Eel pressed it tight with slippery fingers; with needle and thick black thread, he hurriedly sewed it shut with crude stitches.

  And the caged black piglet began to squeal.

  He had seen animals consecrated for the honor of the more benevolent rada gods approach their end with calm and quiet, with dignity, as if sensing the presence of divinities and thus giving themselves willingly. Stroked and soothed by hands from another realm.

  Such insipid mercies were irrelevant to the petro.

  The squealing piglet, taken from its cage, scrabbled with small trotters, and Eel held it firm. It had eaten earlier of consecrated food, had accepted its fate by free choice. Eel trembled and oriented the squirming animal, north south east west…

  …grabbed the knife…

  …moment of transformation, taking the waiting god into himself, Eel now its vessel. With a compression of mind and soul, he was squeezed from the inside, bulging like a glove two sizes too small for the fist forced within, and now it was the god from dark and shadowed recesses who wielded the knife. And offered the sacrifice to himself.

  Knife to throat, screaming piglet with its neck erupting into a crimson geyser, a final thrash of legs and a tiny heart spasming with fear enough to burst. The drizzle was caught in the hollow shell of a gourd, and he stirred to mix it with salt and bone ash and rum.

  Eel tasted. And the god knew that it was good.

  He dropped the carcass to the floor. One back leg twitched once, twice, as Eel took the beef tongue and slapped it onto the red coals in the brazier.

  Instant sizzle and smoke. The meat began to cook, then blister, and finally char and swell. The crude stitches were strained to their limits.

  While somewhere, out in the night, Eel’s will was done.

  Chapter 7

  Prime Time

  The leadoff Magnolia Blossom TV spot debuted the first week of September, Thursday evening. Justin and April turned the loft’s living room TV nook into a sprawl of celebration. They gorged on her crab and cream cheese dip with wheat crackers, a favored sin, and reserved the iced bottle of champagne for the Big Moment.

  Slick paper rustled in April’s hands. She slumped into the sofa, gazing at the back pages of the latest issue of Advertising Age with, so far as he could tell, fierce professional jealousy.

  “Swine,” she said. “A three-and-a-half-star review in Garfield’s column, who would’ve dreamed it?”

  He grinned crookedly. “Not bad for a grave robber.”

  She rolled the magazine and gave him a swat on the shoulder, like an unruly dog. Love tap. “A year ago I take pity on this poor copywriter on the skids and do my humble best to help him land a new job. Little do I know I’m creating a monster.”

  “Burke, or Hare?” They had trafficked in bodies, sure, but would nineteenth-century Great Britain’s medical research have been the same? Doubtful.

  She propped the stiffened magazine beneath his chin, tilting his head up. “All I’ve got to say is, pal, you win a Clio out of this, I’d better hear some gratitude during that acceptance speech or somebody around here is going to be soooo sorry.”

  And then the kiss, April leaning in, the magazine dropped, gone, forgotten. Never existed. Her mouth on his, coaxing his tongue from hiding. Her fingers on his cheeks, then drawing around his shoulders. His hands down her back, from shoulders to waist, tracing subtle outlines of bone and muscle. Sometimes it was more fun this way, the tender preceded by the tough, and he had to wonder: a carryover from last year? Not exactly their finest hours, those, but unmatched in terms of adrenals and excitement. Who could settle for the comfortably mundane after such peaks, despite the inevitable accompanying lows?

  It served as reminder, too, and probably a healthy one. Whenever he was tempted to forget, to let the comfort and ease of life lull him into muddled gratitude — How could I get so lucky the second trip to the altar? — he would remember: No, I earned this, paid for it, every moment.

  Perspective. It seemed important these days. And gratitude?

  “You’ll hear it,” Justin said. “But in case there’s no Clio and no speech … thank you.” It was for far more than exercising a contact, and she knew it as well. A lifeline or two, thrown and caught. And if in a sense he had done the same for her, it was still for lesser stakes. As fuckups go, he’d been firing on all cylinders last year. Never been the type to do a job halfway, hey.

  Hand in hand, then legs entwined, they molded into the sofa. TV date, all that goofy kid stuff they’d missed out on by not having known one another earlier in their lives.

  Eight sixteen, Eastern time. The midpoint sitcom fadeout, and now a word from our sponsors.

  “Oo! Oo! Is this it?” she cried, hand tightening around his. It was.

  Take a leap back in time to a simpler era of leisure and comfort and romance, it’s all established in that opening shot: Virginia’s Hopedowne Plantation transformed into Tara. The myth is suddenly more real than any history could ever have been. Of course: it has a familiar soundtrack.

  Soft gauzy focus on Holly Jardine, epitome of the Southern antebellum heroine, eyes of fire and independence, and a subtle hint of feisty surrender. Scarlett O’Hara reborn and unnamed, perched in her swing of satin seat and silken ropes. The camera loves her, and you can smell the flowers of this Southern summer day.

  Now a tighter focus, her every move fluid grace as she reaches to a nearby stand and polished silver serving tray … pulls a Magnolia Blossom Coffee Bag from a boxful… dips it into a cup, delicate porcelain to match her complexion … fills the cup with boiled water from a china kettle … and steeps the bag as curls of steam rise to wash past her hand.

  She drinks.

  She smiles, fingers curled around the cup.

  “They say you just can’t get fresh-brewed coffee flavor with the convenience of instant, “she says with a hint of question, flawless belle accent giving every word hidden flirtation. She pauses, an ever-so-slight tilt of her head emphasizing the saucy cocked eyebrow. “I say … fiddle-dee-dee.” Her timing is impeccable.

  It ought to be. The two lines took twenty-six takes.

  The last few seconds of the commercial finished out with a foreground product shot, steaming cup beside a box of Magnolia Blossom with the plantation in the far background, no announcer voiceover, no nothing, just the music fadeout and soft breezy ambience of nineteenth-century Georgia. Minimalism.

  April whooped and set into the champagne, the cork blowing with a loud pop, firing up to ricochet off the ceiling. To Justin it sounded like nothing quite so much as someone firing a gun at his head.

  Above and before her sleepy eyes, the ceiling was a blank slate. She could list all of life’s ponderings up there. Listening to his breath beside her, Justin under the sheet. Fifteen minutes of postcoital, postcuddling silence, and his were not the deeply even breaths of sleep.

  She ached in all the right places, all the right ways. There was something delicious in the gentle throb below, from that clashing of two pubic bones trying desperately to fuse into one. Hers was a benign masochism, complement to the submission of lovemaking’s finish, rolling onto her back and letting Justin dominate. Such heights they could reach now, a gift from the familiarity of time. Justin was energetic, enthusiastically acrobatic, tender and aware enough so that he was anything but all take, no give. She was familiar enough with male stylistic variances to recognize that low breed almost from the first prolonged kiss.

  Tonight, though … Justin above her, deadlocked into particularly fierce abandon, his body there but his mind far away. It wasn’t so much that he’d not really been there for her that was the quibble; it was that he hadn’t even truly been there for himself, either of them.

  “Talk to me
,” she said.

  His customary moment of silence as he contemplated what she might mean by that. What she wanted to hear. He never merely stalled, the tensor flex across his back and shoulders belied that. That he marshaled his forces like this — just in case — was both sadly endearing and maddening. Vague of origin, too: standard male/female squaring off, nothing personal? Or still some little parcel of mistrust buried deep within?

  “Okay,” he said. “Give me a topic.”

  “How ’bout travel? Where’d you go a little earlier? You didn’t invite me along.”

  Long, long silence. Patience would be rewarded. That he was rarely prone to denying the obvious saved a lot of communications grief. In her experience, at least, this was rare. What’s wrong? Oh, nothing. They never had that conversation, from either direction. Too much respect for the other’s insight, and she considered herself blessed.

  “Kingston and Gray, Limited,” he said softly, and there was almost a nostalgic wisp in his voice. “Remember that idea?”

  Yes. Oh yes. Immediately. A halfhearted suggestion that they pool professional talents, made over raw oysters and beer a long time ago, the evening of their first genuine date. And Erik … he’d died that night. Nothing had been remotely the same after that, and the idea had never come up again. Not even when she’d brought Justin back from the Keys, with little more than a sunburn, a dull razor, and four hundred dollars to his name.

  “Sure I remember.” April reached over, found his hand under the sheet, loosely curled fingers with him. “How come?”

  “I don’t know. I just … needed to hear you say you remember.”

  Well, this was obviously career related. Justin’s demeanor had dwindled into polite quietude ever since his commercial had aired this evening. His fleeting elation should have lasted far longer. Not surprising, though, given hindsight. Ever since the account had fallen into his lap, there had been moments when it seemed as if he regarded himself as sitting at the wheel of something no longer under his control. Moments that had nothing to do with the accelerated pace of production. Perhaps that had been a blessing in disguise, distracting him from misgivings until the task was completed.