Cry Havoc

by Baxter Clare

  “You know why I did that? To make you mad. You know why I wanted to make you mad?”

  When Frank shook her head he’d said, “Because mad is better than afraid. Anger you can use. You can fight with it. But fear’ll just eat you up. You may as well lie down and die if you’re afraid. I’m not always gonna be there to protect you. Your mom neither. You gotta learn to protect yourself. Next time somebody wants to fight you, get mad at ‘em. Remember me slapping you, okay?”

  The old memory came like a benediction, allowing Frank to rein her fear. She forced a cool smile. To her surprise the Mother bent double, erupting in laughter. She clapped gleefully and capered in circles. Her eyes flashed at Frank, hands cracking like a bullwhip.

  “Who’s got the Spirit here?”

  She cocked an ear at the assembly. Frank looked around, hiding her shaking hands in her pockets. Maybe twenty-five, thirty people were scattered among the pews. About a third were black, the rest Latino. Roughly the same ratio of men to women. They all appeared expectant.

  A hand shot up and a woman claimed, “I got the Spirit, amen!”

  “She say she got the Spirit! Ache!” the Mother clapped, her s’s tangling in their hurry.

  “Who else got the Spirit now?” she demanded.

  “I do! Praise be, I do!” a voice called out.

  The clapping increased. Against the walls, toward the front of the church, Frank counted eight men sitting around an array of drums—round ones, cone-shaped, hour-glassed, congas. They sipped from glasses, nodding at the Mother. Frank watched one poke around in his nose then inspect his finger with great care. They were older men with more lines between them than a Rand McNally atlas. Blue incense drifted over their heads.

  “Who else is filled with Spirit?” Mother Love howled.

  Souls cried they had the Spirit. The Mother’s hands moved faster. Her flock followed the tempo, clapping, rocking, nodding in time. The Mother bellowed her queries in the same meter, but faster now. Testimonies rang out like rifle shots. The Mother praised each one, chanting a rhythmic sing-song.

  “I call down the Spirit—ache!—of the god of the earth! Praise be! I call down the Spirit—yes sir!—of the Lord of the skies! Amen! I call down the Spirit—ache—of the god of all Spirits! Amen! Come down! I call the Spirit—praise God!—to fill our hearts. Come down! Fill us now! Ache!”

  The hypnotic litany gained speed. Mother Love equally thanked the wind and sun and rain, ancestors, spirits and saints. Her followers joined in, shouting, “Amen!” and “Ache!”

  Frank watched one of the old men touch his drum. He listened intently between pats, his eye following the Mother. He tapped to her rhythm, hesitant until he’d captured it, then he beat the skin firmly. Another man followed him, then one drummer after another picked up the beat. Deep boomings rolled under lighter, faster notes. It sounded like raindrops falling into puddles while thunder rumbled in from an ugly horizon.

  The rhythm was hypnotic and Frank had to force her concentration. At the front of the church, the Mother whirled round and around. Ropes of beads on her neck whirled in the same orbit, dizzyingly red and white. The Mother chanted half in English, half in a foreign language. Like Spanish, but not quite, Frank thought. Maybe Portuguese. She whipped her crowd with the mysterious words. They knew the refrain, joyfully shouting it in time. Standing, clapping, they danced and twirled in the aisles. One old man pounded his cane to the beat. His wife wiggled next to him, her arms waving in the air like thick snakes. A young girl writhed in the aisle, her eyes white where there should have been pupils.

  The Mother danced and Frank watched. Seeing but not believing. The Mother carried almost sixty years on her wiry frame, yet she whirled with the force of a small tornado. Her red and white skirt blurred to pink. She turned faster than Frank’s eye could follow. Bending her head to her toes, the Mother hurled herself backward with inhuman force. Frank was certain bone must have bent and muscle snapped, but the Mother whirled on.

  The hair rose on Frank’s skin.

  The drummers pounded in glassy-eyed fury. Their hands galloped like headless horsemen across the plains of their drums. The Mother twirled faster, arching brutally and impossibly. She leapt like a jungle cat, landing on hands and knees. Then she twisted and rose, continuing the dance, all the while calling down her dark gods.

  The faithful fell about in fits. They screamed for Jesus or Saint Jerome to come into them. Some yelled names Frank didn’t recognize. The din was mesmerizing. The drums sang an old song, as old as the first moon, and the crowd responded convulsively.

  Frank sought Mother Love.

  She stood at the pulpit, staring back. A grin twisted her sweating face. Recognition hit Frank like a sledgehammer. Memory replaced present time. She’d already been here. She relived the Mother’s triumphal grin, the drums calling her to an ancient home, the rolling eyes and writhing bodies. The incense mingled with sweat, the leafy church, and cries to heaven—it all played in Frank’s head with a familiarity that made her dizzy.

  The chimera passed as quickly as it had come. Frank drew a hand over her face, unable to look at the Mother. It was enough to hear her keening in the crowd, a wolfish howling that made Frank’s blood tingle. Frank stood, clutching the pew in front of her.

  The drummers began to slow. The Mother walked among her followers making sure none had hurt themselves in the frenzy. Frank watched the Mother soothe her faithful, bringing them up, down, or wherever they needed to be. The drumming ebbed to a single instrument beating the time of a resting heart. The Mother worked her way to the back of the church.

  After drying her tears, Frank’s father had taught her how to place a chokehold and lay a chop at the back of the knees. How to roll and block and land a double chin shot. How to jab and hook. Watching the Mother come down the aisle, Frank doubted any of that would help her now.

  “I knew you’d come,” the Mother said. Her voice was smoky and sweet. “You couldn’t resist. You’re like a child after candy.”

  She leaned closer. Frank smelled the flowery bodega scent and sweat and the dust of dry places.

  “My church is open,” she whispered. “Come join us.”

  The invitation was sensual and erotic, a lover’s desire. Frank had an urge to get up and follow the Mother, to dance with her around a blood-red fire in a place where beasts still stirred beyond the pale. She wanted to cry at the moon then bow low to receive the warm sacrament…

  Frank was surprised to hear herself say, “Never.”

  The Mother’s wolfish eyes almost closed. In a voice like snakes slithering over each other, she warned, “Don’t be so sure, child. Never’s a very long time.”

  29

  Darcy leaned in after the briefing.

  “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure.”

  He closed the door and perched on one of her chairs.

  “Marguerite called last night. She says she’s worried about you.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded.

  “She says you don’t know what you’re into, but that it’s bigger than you can handle. She wants you to go see her.”

  “What for?”

  Darcy shrugged.

  “She says you need a cleansing and some serious protection. She sees bad juju all over you.”

  “Bad juju, huh?”

  Frank grinned, partly out of condescension and partly to convince herself the Mother’s malevolence last night had been routine good guy-bad guy antagonism. Ignoring the reptilian voice asking, then why were you so scared, she concentrated on Darcy and how much money he made. She knew he couldn’t foot too much for alimony and child support and wondered if Marguerite thought she had a fish on the line.

  “How much she gonna charge me?”

  “I don’t know. That’s irrelevant. The thing is, she wouldn’t call like that unless she had a good reason. Marguerite’s very selective about who she works with. New clients all have to be recommended by established clients. She doesn’t
deal with dabblers.”

  Her logic crippled, Frank admitted, “Look. I just don’t get any of this hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo shit.”

  Darcy shot back, “You don’t have to get it. It’ll happen whether you believe in it or not.”

  The only sign of Frank’s annoyance was the slight jump in her jaw.

  “What’ll happen?”

  “I mean if Marguerite sees the Mother’s influence around you, then it’s there. It’s like radon. Just because we can’t see it, that doesn’t mean it’s not there doing damage.”

  “Everybody keeps saying you have to believe in this shit to make it work. How can the Mother hurt me if I don’t believe in her?”

  Darcy hunched forward. He was about to speak but stopped. Frank gave him the time he needed to pull his words together.

  “Remember when you asked me if I believed in voodoo?”

  The question wasn’t rhetorical, so Frank nodded.

  “And what did I say?”

  “Somewhat.”

  “And I told you not to underestimate the Mother, right?”

  Frank tapped her watch.

  “Where we going, Darcy?”

  “To a place you don’t know anything about. I know you’ve got no reason to believe me, but all I can tell you is that I’ve seen situations that defy practical explanation. Marguerite’s cousin was my best friend. I practically lived with him and I spent a lot of time with his family. We used to stay out at his uncle’s in Simmesport, go hunting and get drunk, just being boys. This was in the back country, where the old ways are still pretty common. Jeff had a couple, three-four aunts and uncles up there. Understand, the LaCourts had been there a long time. They were part of a pretty tightly knit community. A lot of the women called themselves root workers. Some were better at it than others because they had a talent for it. A gift. Jeff’s grandmother, Pearl LaCourt, she was one of those women. All the other root workers came to Pearl when they needed advice or couldn’t help themselves. She was tremendously respected. And feared. Hell, even I was afraid of her, and I was too young and stupid to be afraid of anything.”

  Frank tapped her fingers against the desk and Darcy said, “I know. My point is I knew her fairly well. I didn’t just hear stories about her or catch a glimpse of her on the porch now and then. I spent almost every weekend and half as many weekdays up to Jeff’s and every Saturday evening we’d go to revival. It was out in a scythed field behind the church which was really just poles and a roof with hay bales and stumps for seats. I know that sounds like a strange way for two hell-loving, hormone-addled boys to spend a Saturday night, but for one thing, Marguerite was there.

  “Even more importantly, I wanted to go. Jeff too. We only talked about it once, after the first time he took me, and then we never mentioned it again. Jeff couldn’t explain what happened. It’d just always been that way. That was all. These people accepted that his seventy-year-old grandmother could suddenly jump up in the air and do somersaults like a girl a quarter her age. They accepted that a bite from a copperhead could cure arthritis. They accepted that Loula Tremaine’s husband fell down a well and drowned while she was at the revival praying for God to wash his wife-beating sins away.

  “Jeff had a cousin that liked little girls. No one did anything about it because he was a big, mean, son of a bitch and everyone was afraid of him. The last girl he raped started praying at the revivals for vengeance. The women would join in with her, crying and praying. A month after he’d raped her, a car punched out his backbone. He’s a quadriplegic.”

  Frank interrupted, “That’s coincidence.”

  Darcy shook his head. “That’s the tip of the iceberg. Things like this happened routinely. It was a matter of course. No one thought anything of it. I could go on, Frank, but I know you don’t want me to. The point is, not every question has an answer. When the bounds of coincidence and logic get stretched, one has to accept the inexplicable or go crazy trying to figure it out. Jeff’s cousin didn’t believe. Loula Tremaine’s husband didn’t believe. I can name a dozen other examples.”

  Frank held up a hand.

  “So Marguerite’s a root worker too? I thought you said she was a priestess.”

  “She grew up with root workers, in the hoodoo tradition, but it wasn’t enough for her. She wanted to learn more and went to Haiti to study Vodun religion. That was when her talents really emerged.”

  “Like being able to see the Mother’s evil influence on me,” Frank mocked. “Think she could tell if I’m going to meet a tall, handsome stranger?”

  Darcy’s answer was slow in coming.

  “She knew there was something wrong with Gabby even before she was born. The doctors didn’t pick up on it but Marguerite knew. She kept saying Gabby’s lungs were heavy. She’s got cystic fibrosis.”

  Frank regretted her flippancy, but maintained a mother could intuit something wrong with an unborn child without being psychic. Sensing her doubt, Darcy added, “It’s not just Gabby. She sees a lot of things. She saw the Oklahoma bombing. She was seeing it for about a week before it happened. She had this picture in her head of the building blowing up and scores of people dying. It got stronger and clearer the closer it got to that day. She actually pegged the time of the explosion by an hour. It was that strong. Only she thought it was a building in L.A. She didn’t realize where it was. Not that it would have mattered anyway. Who’d have believed her?”

  “Did she tell you this post facto?”

  “No. I was picking up Gabby the weekend before it happened, and she was pretty upset. It was hard for her to keep seeing it, knowing it was coming, and not being able to do anything about it. Then it happened that Wednesday.”

  “And you just accept all that?”

  “I do,” he said simply. “I accept without understanding. It happens to me sometimes, too. That’s one of the things she hates about me. She dunks I’m lazy, because I have a gift and won’t use it. I tried, but it’s just not for me. It’s not an avenue I want to explore anymore than I already have.”

  “Great. You’re telling me I’m sitting here and you can see what color my underwear are?”

  Darcy blushed.

  “I’m not that good. I just get glimpses now and then. Like when I saw that kid stashed in the dumpster. I think it’s something everybody has. Cops use it all the time, only we call it instinct or a hunch. Some of us just listen more than others.”

  Frank couldn’t argue with that. Listening to her instinct wasn’t always logical, but it was usually right.

  “She gave me her card. Told me she saw the Mother’s hand on me. Like a black cloud.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Told her I could take care of it.”

  Darcy assessed his boss, then shrugged.

  “Maybe you can. But if I were you, I wouldn’t risk it.”

  Frank sat back, sighing. “I gotta tell you, I’m tired of all this superstitious shit. I’m trying to solve murders here and for all I know half my squad’s packing silver bullets and garlic necklaces. You’d think there’d be a little more logic to all this.”

  Darcy stood with his palms up.

  “Hey,” he groused, “don’t shoot the messenger. I’m just telling you what she said. Maybe if you weren’t so defensive about all this you could see that logically you’ve got nothing to lose by seeing her.”

  He strolled out, leaving Frank stewing in her skepticism.

  30

  What the hell, she’d rationalized all the way down the 405. She had questions Marguerite might be able to answer, and she’d been meaning to visit Orange County Sheriffs anyway. She’d called Homicide and set a time to go through a couple of their murder books. Frank hoped they might tie into a series of execution-style hits the nine-three caught in June. Her appointment was at two-thirty. Meanwhile, here she was back in Marguerite James’ apartment.

  Dressed all in white, Marguerite had led her in with no preliminaries.

  “This will be easier and more effective if you
take all your clothes off.”

  Frank folded her arms and stared.

  Indicating a chair in the center of the room, Marguerite said, “At least your shoes and socks then. And your belt and everything in your pockets. I want the energy to move through you as freely as possible.”

  Frank did as instructed, suppressing a sigh. Entertaining this new-age, woo-woo crap was embarrassing. If anybody found out, she’d pull a Sandman on Darcy’s ass.

  “What exactly are you going to do?”

  “Did you ever play with a Wooly Willy when you were a child?”

  “A Wooly Willy,” Frank repeated. “Was that the bald guy with metal shavings you made hair with?”

  “Exactly. That’s similar to what I’m going to do. I’m going to draw the shavings off you, then I’m going to put a fresh new set of them around you.”

  “But I’m not a Wooly Willy.”

  “No, but you do have an energy field. Call it an aura if you like.”

  “So you’re going to rearrange my aura?”

  “Like that, yes.”

  “Is it going to hurt?”

  Marguerite scowled and lifted a brow. It was a look Frank would know well by the end of the day.

  “Basically, I’m going to do to you what I did to Mr. Hernandez. I’ll cleanse you, then we’ll invoke the proper spirits and ask for protection. While we’re doing this I want you to picture this woman. Envision a large black envelope flying straight toward her. You’re going to send all her negativity back to her.”

  Frank joked, “How much postage do I use?”

  “Lieutenant, I assume you’ve come here for a reason. Now be silent and let me do my work.”

  Frank watched Marguerite fussing with jars of herbs and a pitcher of water. She started singing, her voice light and soft. Frank thought the words sounded French, Creole maybe. She came to Frank, still singing, dabbing at her roughly with a rag she kept dipping into the pitcher. Frank closed her eyes. She felt like a kitten getting cleaned by its mother and despite her cynicism, she felt oddly safe.