by Bryan Camp
Or more accurately: everyone.
“You look like you’ve thought of something,” Regal said. When he started to explain, she held up a hand and talked over him. “Can you explain it back in the real world, please? This place gives me the heebie-goddamn-jeebies.”
They left the card room, the door slamming shut behind them. The frame tipped backward as the door swung closed, and so with a single, solid bang, the Red Door became ordinary floorboards once more. Regal made a little grunt of surprise at the noise, her hand darting to the small of her back, as if she were reaching for a gun tucked away in the back of her jeans. Jude pretended he hadn’t noticed. Instead of mentioning it, he busied himself making a pot of coffee, trying to put the idea he’d had in the card room into words. By the time he filled two mugs with steaming chicory—black for Regal, lots of cream and sugar for himself—he knew what he wanted to say, and where they had to go next.
“I’ve been coming at this all wrong,” he began. “My thinking was that we had to figure out who could kill a god. As in, who had the juice, right?”
Regal made an affirmative noise, sipping at her coffee.
“But really, I should have been thinking about who had access. The game was invite only. I had trouble finding the way in, and I had directions. You had the door right in front of you, and it wouldn’t open when you tried. Don’t you see? If Dodge was killed in that room—”
“Then the killer has to be one of the players at the game,” she finished. “Not bad, Dubuisson.” She set her phone on the kitchen counter and scrolled through the pictures she’d taken of the card game. “You just narrowed the suspect list down to five.”
“Four,” Jude said. “The vampire, the angel, Legba, and Thoth. That’s four.”
She spun her phone around, showing Jude a picture she’d taken of him at the table. “And the bastard named Jude,” she said. “That’s five.”
“Seriously?”
Regal pulled a face that said she wasn’t entirely joking, took another slurp of her coffee. She looked back down at her phone. “Thought you said your cards were blank.”
Jude’s breath caught in his chest. “They were; they are. What did you see?”
Regal did something with her fingers and enlarged the image she’d taken, focusing in on the spread of cards on the table in front of Jude. Most of them were blank, but one of them had a stick figure sketched on it, one arm up and the other down like some sort of yoga pose. Jude studied it for a long time, and then pushed it away.
“Well?” Regal asked.
Jude could only shrug, staring into his coffee. He’d felt like he was getting a handle on things, figuring out where he stood, and now this. Another mystery knot without a thread to pull on. Regal cleared her throat. “Didn’t mean to piss on your parade, sorry. You were saying? We’ve got our list, but as far as I can see, we’re back to square one. Got any ideas on how we find these shit-weasels?”
Jude took the phone from her and scrolled through until he got to the picture of the woman in the straw hat, smoking a pipe. “Him,” Jude said. “We start with him.”
Regal smirked. “Hate to bust your balls when you’re getting your detective on, but that there is a woman, Columbo.”
“That’s Legba. He’s a voodoo god, a loa. The rules are a little different for them. Most gods let the prayers come to them. When a voodoo priest calls on the loa, he—or she, in this case—opens herself up to be possessed by the god.” He tapped the phone. “That makes her a mamba. We find her, we’ll get her to get Legba to come down and have a little chat.” He swallowed down half of his coffee, poured his cup full again. “Problem is, you and me? We’re what she would call bokor, sorcerers. Means we’re about the last people in the world she’s going to want to discuss her faith with. We’ll have to arrange an introduction. Luckily Leon Carter still owes me a favor.”
“Leon—you mean Sweetwater Carter? The musician? He’s a voodoo priest? Or a—what—a bokor, like us?”
Jude laughed. “No, not even close.”
“Thank Christ,” Regal muttered, putting her coffee mug into the sink.
“He’s a zombie.”
Chapter Six
Every culture in the world has its theories about what happens to a person on the other side of death. For many, crossing the threshold between life and that other realm is not a thing to be feared; rather, it is a natural, even sacred step that should be embraced. What almost all cultures agree on, though, is that one should be very afraid of anyone who finds the way back. They are spoken of throughout human history, even as far back as The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Germanic peoples of the far north call them afturganga, the “after-walkers.” In the mountains of Tibet, doors are built with low lintels, in the belief that the Ro-lang, the risen, cannot bend at the waist. Whether they are shambling, ravenous beasts or reanimated bodies devoid of a soul, they are known throughout the modern world by the name given to them by the practitioners of Haitian voodoo: zombie.
Jude and Regal hurried to the Lee Circle stop and caught the streetcar down St. Charles, riding it all the way Uptown to Carrollton. They got off at Oak and walked the few blocks down to the Maple Leaf, where the crowd spilled out the door and onto the sidewalk. The ground throbbed with the music coming from the bar. There was a short line to get in, but it wasn’t moving. The Asian girl in front of Jude turned around as they approached. She wore a black Voodoo Fest T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and her tight midriff bare. She shrugged, waving her hand in the direction of the bouncer at the door. “They won’t let more people in unless somebody leaves,” she said. “Sucks for us.”
“Yeah,” Jude said, rummaging around in the magician’s bag hanging at his hip. “We’ll see.” Since the card game, it seemed like the bag was fighting him, hiding what he was looking for; after a couple of wrong guesses, he took out a small dark bottle and unscrewed the top, letting out the acidic stink of crushed insect. The slim glass rod of an antique medicine dropper extended from the bottle’s lid, a single liquid bead glistening on its tip.
Regal wrinkled her nose. “Dude, that stuff is noxious.”
“You remember how it works?”
“I remember ruining two marriages and getting a lifetime ban from the Tulane library. Shouldn’t it be your turn?”
Jude grinned and tipped his head toward the bouncer. “He look like he swings my way?”
Regal didn’t answer, just smirked and licked the potion off the dropper. She shuddered.
Jude had used the philtre before; when it hit your tongue, it felt like you’d stuck a live wire in your mouth. Regal’s shoulders drooped, and a sleepy smile spread across her face. She ran the tip of her tongue along her lips. Jude made sure he looked away before she opened her eyes. Using magic to make someone love you was pretty much impossible, but sex magic was almost comically easy. The philtre made whoever drank it irresistible to anyone who locked eyes with them, so long as they were into your particular flavor. Jude had found that being the sexiest guy in the room for a few hours could open up a lot of doors. He tried not to use it on himself, though; the magic made you desirable, but it also made you horny as a fallen priest and more than a little stoned. Jude slipped the bottle into his bag and led Regal toward the door.
The bouncer held up a meaty hand as they approached. “Whoa there,” he said. “You don’t see the line? We’re full up tonight. Pushing fire code as it is.”
Regal slinked forward, her voice somehow husky and pouty at the same time. “Don’t tell me you forgot me already,” she said. “You said we could get back in if we went to pay for parking. You’re not really gonna make me wait, are you?”
He looked down her body and then back up, flinching when his eyes met hers as if she’d slapped him. A flush rose into his cheeks and across his bald head. “Damn,” the bouncer said, drawing the word out, probably not realizing he said it out loud. “No, you’re good. Go on in.”
As they walked through the door into moist, hot darkness and noise, Jud
e leaned in and shouted into her ear so he could be sure she heard. “Meet me after the show,” he yelled. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!” She nodded and went straight for the bar. God bless whatever handsome bastard she picks to get that potion out of her system, he thought. Normally Jude would want her watching his back, but one look in her eyes and he’d forget all about why he was here. Besides, he shouldn’t need backup for this. Leon Carter had been a friend, once.
Jude fought his way through the crowd, crammed in tight between the bar and the stamped-tin-sheet-covered wall. Above the roar of too many people in too small a space, the room shook with the fast, deep pulse of a tuba, slapping drums, the throaty warbles of trumpets and trombones. A voice sang out, as thick and smoky as the air it drawled its woes into. Up on stage, past the rows of outstretched hands and upheld drinks, Leon “Sweetwater” Carter leaned on a stool in the center of a hazy spotlight. There was a drummer and a couple of other horn players, but the light and the crowd’s focus were only on him.
Sweat beaded on the dark skin of Leon’s forehead and fell from the tips of his dreadlocks, black hair streaked through with coarse wires of gray. Thin-framed spectacles hung low on his nose. The fervor and strain that he blew through the mouthpiece of his saxophone gave him the appearance of a revivalist preacher. His fingers stabbed up and down the neck of his instrument with the precision of a sewing machine’s needle, weaving a tapestry of sound. A battered black case, too small to hold a guitar, rested at the foot of the stool he sat on.
Jude stood in the middle of the crowd, a lone, still figure among a seething, writhing dance. It took four songs for Leon to notice him, impatience beginning to clench the muscles of Jude’s neck and shoulders. When Leon recognized Jude, his hands faltered on the keys. Though he recovered, turning it into a sliding moan from the sax that seemed deliberate, the other musicians noticed, exchanging a glance behind him. Jude caught the reaction, too, pointed to the side door, and mouthed, “After.” Leon nodded and turned that into part of the act as well, shouting, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and getting an echo from his audience.
Relaxing a little, Jude made his way to the bar. Leon would play for another hour at least. Might as well get a drink and enjoy the show.
Jude watched as Leon rose to his feet, pulling the sax’s strap from his shoulders. He leaned the instrument against one of the speakers, which let out a shrill burst of feedback until he cut it off. Behind him, the drummer and the tuba player kept a beat going. Slow, tired, the musician eased back down, then leaned in close to the microphone. “If y’all don’t mind,” he said, his speech thick and heavy with an old Ninth Ward accent, “I got a real special tune I wanna play tonight.” Leon reached beneath his feet and picked up the small case, a bunch of his fans cheering the gesture, knowing what it contained. Jude finished his drink and threw the plastic cup away, rolling his shoulders. Surely Leon wouldn’t try something here, in front of all these people. But if he did, Jude wanted to be prepared. Not that he had anything in his bag of tricks that would help him if Leon really cut loose. Nothing he was willing to use on Leon, anyway.
The musician opened his case and pulled out an old trumpet, the tarnished brass gleaming in the light of the stage. An audible hush moved through the crowd like the sound of a wave retreating from the shore. For a moment, the room was silent save for the thump-thump-thump of the bass drum, like the beating of a huge, patient heart. Leon looked straight at Jude and smiled. “Listen now,” he said. “Listen close and listen good. You give ol’ Sweets just a couple three minutes of your time, I got a story might save you a whole world of trouble. You see, I had this here horn a long, long time.” He toyed with the trumpet’s slides as he spoke, as if out of his hands it might have gotten just slightly out of true. “Means a lot to me, this horn. More than any hunk of brass and spit ought to mean to a man, ’cause one hot summer night just like this one, at midnight, I went down to the corner of—well, I ain’t gonna tell you where.” His sly wink elicited laughter from the crowd. “I ain’t tellin’, ’cause there at the crossroads I met the devil.” Cheers went up at this, a few at first, then more and more, as people caught on. He pressed the mouthpiece to his lips and blew one clear, trembling note. “I sold that ol’ devil my soul, and this is what I got,” he said. “Y’all tell me if I made a good deal.”
What came from his trumpet then was far more than music. It was more, even, than magic. It sounded like the sweet love child of blues and jazz, but it was more haunting, more evocative than mere sound. Music could be ignored, magic could be fought, but what came out of Leon “Sweetwater” Carter’s horn slipped past the skin as gentle as a lover’s sigh, seeping down into the meat and marrow of you. He could open a door into the soul in a way that was beyond any power Jude had ever commanded. Truth was, Leon’s story was more history than fiction. All those years ago, Leon had met someone at midnight, but not the devil; it had been Legba, the voodoo loa of the crossroads. Legba had shaken Leon’s soul loose from his body, leaving him a zombie, a creature not alive and not dead, existing in the seam between this world and the world to come. This music, this power, was what he’d gotten in return.
Jude slipped through the crowd and out the side door into a small alley, where he waited for Leon to finish weaving his spell, whatever it might be, on his unsuspecting audience. A shallow drainage ditch, still slick from a recent rain, ran down the center of the cobblestones and disappeared beneath the locked iron gate that blocked the way out into the street. A high wooden fence separated the bar from the restaurant next door whose dumpster filled the alley with the pungent, moist odor of deep-fryer oil and seafood shells spoiling in the heat. Jude’s ears still rang with the insistent whine of speakers turned up high and loud. Between the heat and the stink and the past two days, his skin felt like it had a coating of grime. The beginning of a headache tightened at his temples. He wanted, badly, to get what he needed out of Leon and get home to a long, hot shower.
A while later, the music gone quiet and the crowd dispersed, the metal door opened with a hollow bang and out stepped Leon, looking back and forth as the door swung shut behind him. Jude had instinctively put his back to the wall, half-hidden by shadow. “You sounded great, Sweets,” Jude said.
Leon squinted into the darkness and, when he recognized Jude, nodded. He held his trumpet case in a loose-fingered grip at his side. “’preciate that, Jude,” he said, falling silent for a moment. He shook a cigarette loose from a pack, lit it with a plastic lighter. “Ain’t seen you for a minute. Not since the storm. Figured you was gone.”
“I was. I’m back.”
The musician nodded again, looking up and away into the night sky, where thin wisps of clouds obscured a sliver of moon. He sucked his upper lip between his teeth, making a hissing sound. “So we just shootin’ the shit, or is there somethin’ you need?”
“I could use a little help, now that you mention it.”
Leon blew twin plumes of smoke from his nostrils. “Yeah, Jude Dubuisson is back all right.”
“You hear about Dodge?”
Leon’s head dropped down, staring at his feet. His grip tightened on the trumpet case’s handle, his shoulders stretching taut. His whole body seemed to clench. “Got nothin’ to do with that,” he said.
“Never said you did. I just need to know—”
“No, you ain’t heard me. Got nothin’ to do with it, don’t want nothin’ to do with it, neither. You’d stay clear yourself if you had the sense you was born with.”
“I need a name, Leon.”
Leon shook his head, his dreads fluttering at his shoulders. “Boy, how many different ways I gotta tell you ‘no’? Only name I got for you is Puddin’ Tain. Ask me ’gain and I’ll tell you the same.” He flicked his half-smoked cigarette away into the darkness and turned to the door, but at a whisper from Jude the lock clicked shut with an audible snap. Leon looked back over his shoulder, the small disks of his glasses glowing in the moonlight. He shook the trumpet case meaningfully.
“I ain’t gonna ask twice,” he said, his hand still on the knob.
“Me either.” Jude took a glass bottle from his bag and uncorked it, pouring a fine white sand into the palm of his hand. Part of him, the old Jude from before the storm, the part of him that had played with fire wearing a fuck-you grin, that part of him was thrilled that Leon wasn’t making this easy. That part of him had been waiting to get let off the leash for a while. “You know what a pain in the ass it is to make zombie powder?”
The musician’s mouth hung open. Then he closed it and swallowed. “Bullshit,” he said. “You ain’t got none.”
Jude curled his hand into a fist. “I mean, making it isn’t so hard. I imagine the ingredients were harder to track down before the Internet. It’s the precautions you gotta take that are the real pain in the ass. One good sneeze while you’re grinding this up and poof.” With his other hand, Jude made an explosive motion. “Knocks the soul right out of you. Nasty shit.” Jude felt a smile that held no warmth split his face, the kind of smile Mourning or Dodge might wear. “Honestly, I don’t know what it’ll do to someone who’s already a zombie. Maybe it’ll rip the rest of your soul loose, knock you all the way dead. Maybe it’ll yank your soul back from wherever it’s hiding. Can’t imagine it would be real pleasant either way. Maybe it won’t do anything at all. Now, you can either tell me the name of the mamba Legba rode to the game, or we can find out what a face full of this does to you. Your call.”
He raised his hand to his lips, his fist becoming a makeshift blowgun. He inhaled, deeply, through his nose.
“Dorcet,” Leon said, pronouncing it “door-say.” “Celeste Dorcet. Used to stay out in the east, ’fore the storm. Think she got a shop off Rampart now.” He shuddered, turning his head away. “Now put your damn hand down.” Jude swallowed and lowered his fist, spoke the door unlocked. The old Jude wanted to gloat, but then again, the old Jude had been a real bastard, even to his friends.
