by Brian Hodge
Flashing around a picture of the renegade witness Napoleon Trintignant had finally paid off. Some hustler on Canal thought the dude looked familiar from a week or more ago, and the dude’s friend at the time was a definite fixture on the Quarter scene. He, she, it…? Whatever. They’d slipped the hustler some extra bucks to finger him when he came strutting across Canal in full hooker regalia, just after dusk. They’d told the hustler to get lost, then cruised up and did the usual negotiations through the car window. Two blowjobs, how much? It was easy bait, and no one ever remembered seeing whores ride off in strange cars.
They’d showed him Napoleon’s picture, gotten only denial. Clearly more persuasion was needed.
Eel nodded, strolled up to the long workbench where this black transvestite whore lay tied down, flatbacking. Eyes meeting for the first time, and these were the moments to savor: the terrible understanding of who was master, and who was meat.
“You’re Magenta,” Eel said.
The transvestite nodded, all eyes and quivering rouged lips beneath a snuffling nose. With a cracking hushed voice, “Yes.”
“And I’m God.” Eel nodded back. “Do we have an understanding?”
It would never do to leave him within these raiments of a chosen identity; meat needed no identity; identity gave strength and composure. Eel yanked the wig of wild copper tresses from his head and pitched it aside. Stripped away the heavy false eyelashes with two flicks of his wrist. Asked for a rag, and when one of the two soldiers standing back to watch provided, Eel spat on it and roughly scrubbed the heavy makeup from Magenta’s face.
Eel took his bone-handled knife from its scabbard along the furrow of his back, angled its blade in to slit up the front of the cheap red cocktail dress, then sever the bra between the cups and pluck out two plump falsies. They landed on the concrete floor with quiet slaps. Lastly Eel hiked the dress above Magenta’s waist, took the knife to the silken panties, and stripped them away in rags until he was bared for all to see, the transvestite straining with trembling legs to hide the truth of physiology.
“Better,” said Eel. “You’re not Magenta anymore.”
He left the knife sticking into the wooden top where the transvestite could see it, and slowly circled the table for appraisal. All thin bones and tight skin, this one, close-cropped hair and fearful eyes, with the male now revealed. Tears cut tracks through the smeared wreckage of makeup. This wouldn’t take long. Eel knew his work.
When he’d returned from his apprenticeship with the Tonton Macoute, back to the fold of Nathan Forrest, Eel had really done nothing more than exchange one fascist regime for another — he had no illusions. Fascism was a great educational romp through the many varied techniques of interrogation. The application of torments physical and psychological was no less than science; in skilled hands it could aspire to art. Minds would usually break before bodies; somewhere in the limbo between hovered the soul.
Magenta, Magenta … what did he have here? Sexual torture would be risky. Freaks like this, you could never tell what they might find a turn-on. No sign of plans for sex change surgery, but no way to tell for sure. This one might dream, in private, of emasculation.
And then he knew where to work, should it come to that.
Eel leaned in close enough to smell the fear on Magenta’s quickened breath. Saw those big wet eyes roll his way with pleading as he lifted Napoleon’s picture for one more look, last chance, sure you don’t recall him?
“I don’t remember that boy, I swear I don’t remember, I meet a lot of men most nights, but faces, you know, that’s not the part I’m looking at most the time, oh please please, you gotta know that.” Magenta swallowed heavily and gulped for air.
Eel tapped the photo on the bridge of the transvestite’s nose. “Now that’s where your argument falls apart. As little as I’m sure you charge for your services, he wouldn’t have had enough money to waste on you. Even if he did like boys in dresses. And what we hear is that you were doting over him a lot more like a mother than a whore.” He drew the photo’s edge sharply across Magenta’s nose, brought a thin whimper with the paper cut. “What did you do with him?”
Magenta’s eyes pressed shut, muscles in taut strain against the bonds to the table, voice a keening wail, “I just work the streets, I don’t ask no names.” Sobbing now, “Oh sweet Jesus help me help me.”
Prayers to the remote, it was always gratifying to push one so far, so early. So many prayers had he heard, just like this, and none had he ever seen answered.
Eel looked back to his soldiers with an outstretched hand. “Give me the needle-nose.”
One handed him the pair of pliers, and he lay them upon Magenta’s bony chest, let him feel that cold weight of metal and all its possibilities. Popping out with new sweat, new tears. What mad compulsion made some people bleed for the sake of others they could barely know?
“Hold his head,” said Eel, and his man in the leather jacket came up behind Magenta to wrap one thick arm around, over the throat, catching his chin in the crook of the elbow.
While Eel took up the knife.
Such dispassionate care, the touch of blade to cheek. What more would a whore — genuine or faux female — prize than the face? Such care was taken to paint it. Knife’s edge, shining silver in the glare, and Eel knew anatomy: epidermis, through to the lower dermal layer, two parallel incisions an inch apart, and the muffled shrieks through clamped jaw were less than an insect’s buzz. One short stroke of the blade to connect the longer two, at one end, and he gripped the loosened flap of skin with the pliers. Slowly peeled it free to dangle.
While the other soldier crowded in, holding a hand mirror. So Magenta could watch, see what you could have avoided? See what we can do all night?
You have so much more skin.
And when they backed away, and Magenta finally drew breath after an endlessly sobbing wail, it appeared there was much more to tell after all.
Night came early this time of year, and on the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain its grip seemed so deep as to be primeval.
The five of them gathered in the gravel driveway of Mama Charity’s house. Granvier performed the introductions, and Justin watched the comfortable familiarity between him and this woman he seemed to so believe in. He found it rather inspiring.
Mama Charity unlocked the door to her house and led them inside. Flicked on lights as she passed from room to room; it smelled of comfort and meals, of seasons without end, and water.
“Set yourselves at the kitchen table,” she told them. “Be with you in a minute. That bladder of mine, not much good anymore, get me in a car.”
“She’s not what I expected,” said April, softly, once she had disappeared.
Granvier grinned. “And what was that?”
“I think … somebody … more mysterious. Less earthy.” She smiled in the direction of the hallway, the bathroom. “But I like her this way better.”
“Everybody does.”
Mama Charity returned, with a subtle change in her demeanor. Focused attention, no room for frivolities. She joined them at the table without offering drinks or other mundane hospitalities. This was to be no idle chat over mugs of coffee.
“You didn’t tell me much on the phone,” she said to Granvier. “You want my help, you best be telling me what I’m up against, who’s deviling you.”
Granvier tapped his fingertips together. “The Mullaveys. You know what is said about them.” He gave her an abbreviated rundown of the events that had brought them all together, sent them scurrying to and from hotel and motel rooms across the city.
She listened without interruption, and Justin watched anger smolder behind the calm of her eyes. It brought out a fierce magnificence, an almost brutal sense of her will. When it came to what mattered, she would have no price, and this was humbling. She would never have betrayed her convictions.
“Those Mullaveys. I already heard of enough miseries they been causing the past week.” She swung one arm around to
point out the kitchen window, into the night. “Boy out there I told you about? In retreat? He’s on the run from ’em too. Used to drive for Mr. Andrew himself, ’til he saw something he wasn’t supposed to.”
Justin kicked himself out of his slump. “That’s Napoleon out there?”
“You know him?”
“He drove me to and from the airport a couple months ago. I liked him. Before we left, it was like … like he was trying to warn me about something, but couldn’t come right out and say what it was. Can I see him?”
“No you may not.” She was stern as a schoolmarm. “This’s one of the most important weeks of his life. You don’t go interrupting an initiate in retreat. I take him his food, but even I don’t see him.”
“Sorry.” Slinking back into his seat. “I’d like to ask you something, about that weekend I met him.” He reached into his shirt pocket, two-fingered out the bird claw charm. The uneasiness about touching it, even having it around, had largely given way to curiosity. “Somebody at Mullavey’s house hid this on the nightstand by my bed. I was just wondering what it meant.”
Mama Charity frowned down her nose at the thing, drew it across the tabletop for a closer look. While she did so, Moreno pushed himself away from the table after checking his watch, went over to the nearest window, glanced out and about from one side. Old paranoias must die hard.
“You tell me something, Justin,” Mama Charity said. “How’d you sleep while you’s there?”
“I didn’t, really.”
She nodded. “Bet you kept waking up, didn’t you.” Hooking one hand into a claw, she leaned in with a perverse delight, reached toward his face, and maybe April had spoken too soon. There was something mysterious about this woman. “Nightmares just scratching at you all night long, like a bird trying to fly in a window. No rest for you.” She chuckled, dropped her hand back to her lap.
“Why would Mullavey, or whoever, do that to me, it doesn’t make sense.”
Mama Charity shook her head firmly. “Wouldn’t be none of his doing, or his brother’s people. What I hear from Napoleon, sleep’s just what they like people to do there. Or make time with them painted ladies, so they can lay their hands on hair, and nails … little bits of the body nobody’d miss, but in the wrong hands, gives the spirits some control. My guess is, that’s how your friend come to die back home, tongue all swollen up like that. Had his poor soul right in their hands.”
“But not mine,” he murmured. Remembering great white Leonard, blissful in Mullavey’s pool while recounting tales of his weekend playmate. Manicure; pedicure, even. Justin’s head swimming, how close had he come that weekend to handing his life away.
Mama Charity picked up the charm, placed it back before him. “You got nothing to fear from this, wasn’t no one trying to do you harm, child.” Her voice had become gentle, instructive. “Was someone watching out for you, keep you on your toes. Napoleon tells me there’s a housekeeper woman there, knows some of the old ways, maybe it was her.”
“But not Leonard. She didn’t do it for Leonard.” He slowly drew a fist to his mouth. “He’d insulted her earlier.”
“Guess she don’t take an insult lightly. Haitians got a saying about debts owed and debts paid.” Mama looked at Granvier. “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
He nodded. “We can be sweet as honey … or bitter as bile.”
“Oh, fuck,” Justin moaned. As if Leonard had deserved to die simply for behaving like an asshole. Could’ve been me, just as easily, I was just drunk enough to feel mellow about it all. He felt April’s hand on his arm and could not look at her.
“Don’t you be thinking about it now,” said Mama Charity. “I got work for you.”
She needed them to tote buckets of warm water from inside the house out to a washtub in the temple, fill it around three-fourths full. When she brought out buckets from a utility closet, Justin gladly lost himself in the task.
How different her sanctuary felt from the sterile houses of Protestant worship that to him had meant religion, with their stolid architecture and solemn, even dour, rituals. Such contrast to this loving riot of sacrament and symbol, each with its intricacy of meaning. Even though these meanings were beyond him, the passion invested in them by worshiper and worshiped defied all who would dismiss them as superstitions born of ignorance.
When the tub was filled, Mama Charity had them gather in this rustic sanctuary. Their reverence felt born of desperation, a need to believe because their enemies did. Even Moreno gave no indication of going through with this to merely humor his friend.
The washtub sat beside a burdened altar of lit candles and bottles. Water steaming into the cool night air, murky with powders, with jasmine flowers floating across the surface.
She had them kneel on a pattern traced in cornmeal upon the hardpacked dirt, two parallel serpents. While they did so, Mama Charity prayed at the altar and went about salutatory rites whose significance Justin could only guess at.
Four white chickens pecked listlessly along one wall, in cages, and when she was finished praying, Mama Charity took them out one at a time. A bird for each of them, she passed it before their bodies in stylized patterns. Snapping the neck of each before its designated supplicant, then drawing a knife across its throat so its blood spilled into a wooden bowl.
She drew wet crimson crosses upon their foreheads, and had them tear tufts of feathers from the warm carcasses, then dropped them to the ground in the still aftermath of sacrifice.
Mama Charity drew back. “It’s time to bathe you.”
She had Granvier and Moreno wait outside while April went first. Justin sat on a rough-hewn bench as Mama flicked off the overhead lights and ringed the tub with lit white candles, and April shed her clothes.
Such a simple, tranquil beauty about it all. April, clothing left behind, stepping toward the tub and its curling wisps of steam, lifting one slim leg, then carefully lowering it with delicately pointed toes into the water. Soft candlelight flickered a mellow gleam across her skin, every smooth curve and shadow doubly emphasized.
She sat with her hair dampening against her shoulders, like a child ready to be bathed by a parent. Mama Charity knelt beside the tub, and with a scalloped white seashell began to dip water, to let it pour down over April’s hair, neck, shoulders, the tops of her breasts. It splashed, it trickled, time and again, and with eyes closed and jasmine petals clinging to her hair, April tilted her face up to receive the next gentle cascade, parting her lips to take some of it within.
He longed to touch her, to lean over the edge of the tub and wrap his arms around her. It was far less arousal than simple desire to begin making up for all he had put her through, every impulse to which he had surrendered without counting the cost. Let it begin this night.
April stepped dripping from the tub into the towel he held. She swabbed most of the water away, then slipped into a flannel robe provided for her, her alone. He could feel the water’s heat radiating from her skin, smell the fragrances that appealed to ambivalent saints unseen, oh, protect us from harm. April leaned her forehead against his shoulder, and he kissed her damp hair.
And with his own turn come, Justin took her place in the tub. Submission, submersion, they became one and the same, engulfed in waters of the infinite. If he could use this moment as a pivot on which to turn and mend ways, then he would owe to this woman a debt greater still.
When he was finished, April held a towel for him, turnabout. He slipped into his jeans, and they gathered the rest of their clothes and left the sanctuary. Candles exchanged for moon and stars, while the damp chill of night felt good, and proper. Moreno and Granvier were leaning against the outside wall.
“Next,” he said.
Moreno nudged Granvier. “You go. I’ll bat cleanup.”
When Granvier passed, April lay a hand upon his arm. He smiled, patted her hand, disappeared into the warm orange glow.
April cinched her robe more tightly. “I want to go to the hous
e before I change back into my clothes. My feet got grubby really fast.”
He said okay, but Moreno caught his arm before he stepped out of reach.
“Spare a minute?” Moreno asked.
He nodded, squeezed April’s hand. “I’ll catch up.”
She squeezed back, and turned for the house. Bare feet skiffing through thick grass as she weaved between the trees, dark hair lost in shadows, the robe a pale drift moving steadily away, until she reappeared whole in the glare of the outside lights.
“Telling somebody you know how they feel, those are the easiest words in the world.” Moreno cleared his throat and leaned back against the wall. “I, uh, I caught that look on your face in the kitchen, when you were thinking about Leonard. But take it for what it’s worth: I know how you feel. Sometimes the wrong people die. Sometimes it’s not your fault, sometimes it’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way things happen.”
Justin nodded. Maybe it did mean more coming from a man like Ruben Moreno than it would from one who had never risked. Because he would know, wouldn’t he?
“They call it survivor’s guilt,” Moreno went on. “They tell you it’s normal, but they never tell you why it’s so bad.”
“Figure it out for yourself?”
“Yeah.” Moreno heaved a quiet sigh to the heavens. “Because you didn’t have that one minute more to say you were sorry.”
“You think it would make that much difference?”
Moreno shrugged. “You think it would hurt?”
Justin shook his head.
“Whatever you need in its place, use it.” Moreno looked him square on. “Just remember one thing, if you were telling me the truth this weekend: You didn’t drag Leonard into this. He called you. Don’t forget that.”
“It was the truth.”
“Then the truth should set you free.” One corner of Moreno’s mouth hooked into a twisted smile. “Been through some real shit, haven’t you? Already, I mean. Before any of this.”
He nodded.
“Thought so.” Moreno regarded him with a new light in his eyes. “You’ve got a classified file, I saw when I went to Langley. Little over a year old. You got any idea how curious I was when I saw that?”
