Carrion Comfort (60 page)

“We still don’t know what that little gang fight was about last night,” said Colben, “with the coons shooting each other up. Maybe it’s something Willi or the old broad is involved in. But the mounting casualty rate around here must have helped Barent decide. He’s given us the go-ahead. The operation’s on.”

“Great,” said Harod, “because I’m getting the fuck out of here by tonight.”

“Negative,” said Colben. “We have forty-eight hours to flush your friend Willi out. Then we move on the Fuller bitch.”

“You don’t even know Willi’s here,” said Harod. “I still think he’s dead.”

Colben shook his head and leveled a finger at Harod. “No you don’t. You know as well as we do that that old son of a bitch is around here and up to something. We don’t know if the Fuller woman is working
with
him or not, but by Thursday morning it won’t matter.”

“Why wait so long?” asked Kepler. “Harod’s here. Your people are in place.”

Colben shrugged. “Barent wants to use the Jew. If Willi rises to the bait, we’ll move immediately. If not, we’ll terminate the Jew, finish the old woman, and see what develops.”

“What Jew?” asked Tony Harod. “One of your friend Willi’s old catspaws,” said Colben. “Barent did one of his $29.95 conditioning jobs on him and wants to turn him loose on the old kraut.”

“Quit calling him ‘my friend,’ ” snapped Harod. “Sure,” said Colben. “Does ‘your boss’ sound better?”

“You two knock it off,” Kepler said emotionlessly. “Tell Harod what the plan is.”

Colben leaned over and said something to the pilot. They hovered motionless five thousand feet above the gray-brown geometries of Germantown. “Thursday morning we’ll seal the entire area,” said Colben. “Nobody in, nobody out. We’ll have the Fuller woman located precisely. Most of the time she spends the night in that Grumblethorpe shack on Germantown Avenue. Haines will lead a tactical team in a forced entry. Agents will take care of the Bishop woman and the kid she’s been Using. That leaves Melanie Fuller. She’s all yours, Tony.”

Harod folded his arms and looked down at the empty streets. “Then what?”

“Then you terminate her.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that, Harod. Barent says that you can Use anybody you want. But
you
have to be the one to do it.”

“Why me?”

“Dues, Harod. Dues.”

“I would think you’d want to interrogate her.”

Kepler spoke. “We considered it, but Mr. Barent decided that it was more important to neutralize her. Our real goal is to bring the old man out of hiding.”

Harod chewed on his thumbnail and looked down at rooftops. “And what if I don’t succeed in . . . terminating her?”

Colben smiled. “Then we take her out and the Club still has a vacant seat. It’s not going to break anybody’s heart, Harod.”

“But we still have the Jew to try,” said Kepler. “We don’t know what results that may bring.”

“When does that go down?” asked Harod.

Colben looked at his watch. “It’s already started,” he said. He motioned to the pilot to go lower. “Want to see what happens?”

W
e had a quiet weekend.

On Sunday, Anne made a pleasant dinner for the three of us. The stuffed pork chops were quite good, but I felt that she had a tendency to overcook the vegetables. Vincent cleared the table while Anne and I sipped tea from her best china cups. I thought of my own Wedgwood gathering dust in Charleston and felt a twinge of loss and homesickness.

I was too tired to send Vincent out that evening despite my curiosity about the photograph. Everything could wait. More important were the voices in the nursery. Every evening they became clearer, bordering on the understandable now. The previous night, after bathing Vincent and before going to sleep, I had been able to separate the whispers into discreet voices. There were at least three— a boy and two girls. It did not seem unlikely that children’s voices were to be heard in the two-century-old nursery.

Late Sunday night, after nine, Anne and Vincent returned to Grumblethorpe with me. Sirens wailed nearby. After securing the doors and shutters, I left Anne in the parlor and Vincent in the kitchen and went upstairs. It was a cold night. I crawled under the covers and watched the heater filaments glow in the shadowy room. The eyes of the life-size boy reflected the light and his few remaining tufts of hair glowed orange.

The voices were very clear.

On Monday I sent Vincent out.

I did not like to let him go out in the daytime; it was a bad neighborhood. But I needed to know about the photograph.

Vincent carried his knife and the revolver I had borrowed from the Atlanta cabdriver. He squatted in the torn-out backseat of an abandoned car for several hours, watching colored teenagers pass. Once a stubble-cheeked drunk thrust his face in the rear window and yelled something, but Vincent opened his mouth and hissed and the drunk quickly disappeared.

Finally Vincent saw someone we recognized. It was the third boy, the young one who had run away on Saturday night. He was walking with a heavyset teenager and an older boy. Vincent let them get a block ahead and followed.

They passed by Anne’s house and continued south to where the commuter train line created an artificial canyon. A narrow street ran east and west and the three boys entered an abandoned apartment building there. The structure was a strange caricature of an antebellum mansion; four disproportionate columns falling from a flat overhang, tall windows with rotting lintels, and the remnants of a wrought-iron fence demarcating a plot of frozen weeds and rusted tin cans. The windows on the ground floor were boarded up and the main door chained, but the boys went to a basement window where bars had been bent, the pane broken out, and slipped in there.

Vincent jogged the four blocks back to Anne’s house. I had him take the large feather pillow on Anne’s bed, stuff it in his oversize rucksack, and jog back to the apartment building. It was a gray, tired day. Snow fell in desultory flurries from a low sky. The air smelled of exhaust fumes and old cigars. There was little traffic. A train roared by as Vincent stuffed the backpack in ahead of himself and slipped through the shattered window.

The boys were on the third floor, crouched in a tight circle among shards of fallen plaster and pools of icy water. Windows had been broken and there were glimpses of gray sky through the rotted ceiling. Graffiti covered every inch of the walls. All three of the boys were on their knees, as if worshiping the white powder that bubbled in spoons held over a single can of sterno. Their left arms were bare; rubber cords were bound tightly around their biceps. Syringes were set out on dirty rags before them. I looked through Vincent’s eyes and realized that this
was
a sacrament— the holiest sacrament in the urban Negro’s modern Church of Despair.

Two of the boys looked up and saw Vincent just as he stepped out of hiding, holding the pillow in front of him like a shield. The young boy— the one we had let get away on Saturday night— started to shout something just as Vincent shot him through his open mouth. Feathers fluttered like snow and there was the smell of the scorched pillowcase. The older boy pivoted and tried to run away on his knees, scrabbling over chunks of plaster. Vincent fired twice more, the first shot slapping the youth onto his stomach, the second one missing. The boy rolled over, clutching his stomach and writhing like some sea creature thrown up on an inhospitable shore. Vincent set the pillow firmly over the Negro’s terrified face, pressed the pistol deep, and fired again. The writhing ceased after one more violent kick.

Vincent lifted the revolver and turned to the third boy. It was the heavyset one. He continued to kneel where he had been, syringe still poised above his left arm, eyes wide. There was a look approaching religious awe and reverence on his fat, black face.

Vincent dropped the pistol into his jacket pocket and flipped open his long knife. The boy began to move— slowly—every movement as exaggerated as if he were underwater. Vincent kicked him in the forehead, toppling him over backward and kneeling on his chest. The syringe spun away on the filthy floor. Vince inserted the point of the blade under the skin of the boy’s throat, just to the right of the Adam’s apple.

It was here that I realized I had a problem. Much of my energy at that moment went toward restraining Vincent. I needed this boy to tell me about the photograph; who brought it to Philadelphia, how this colored riffraff received it, and what they were using it for. But Vincent could not ask the questions. I had vaguely considered Using the boy directly, but this now seemed unlikely. It is possible to Use someone you have not seen firsthand— difficult, but possible. I have done it on several occasions where I have used a conditioned catspaw as the instrument of making contact. The difficulty here was twofold: first, it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to interrogate someone while Using them. Although there is a glimmer of the surface of their thoughts, especially at the second of contact, the very act of suppressing their will so necessary to Using them also has the effect of inhibiting or eliminating rational thought processes in the subject. I could no more read the subtleties of this fat Negro’s mind than he could read mine. Using him would be like sitting in a repugnant but necessary vehicle for a short drive; it would take me to my destination but could not answer my questions. Second, if I shifted my focus sufficiently to Use the boy— perhaps to return him to Anne’s house— I was not sure that my conditioning of Vincent was sufficient to keep him from following his own impulses and cutting the Negro’s throat.

A dilemma.

In the end, I had Vincent keep the boy there while I sent Anne to join them. I was not comfortable with staying alone— even in Grumblethorpe— but I had little choice. I did not want to bring the boy back to either house while there was a chance of him or Vincent being seen.

Anne drove the DeSoto and parked it down the street, taking care to lock the car. It was difficult for her to go through the basement window so I had Vincent drag the heavyset boy downstairs and the two broke the lock on a side door. It was quite dark in the first-floor room when Anne began asking questions.

“Where did the photograph come from?”

The boy’s eyes widened further and he licked his lips. “Wha’ photograph?”

Vincent struck the boy, low, very hard. The Negro gasped, struggled. Vincent brought the blade up against a raw throat.

“The photograph of the elderly woman. It was on one of the boys who died Saturday,” Anne said softly. Because of the conditioning, it was not difficult to Use her while restraining Vincent.

“You mean the Voodoo Lady,” gasped the boy. “But you ain’t her!” Anne smiled when I did. “Who is the Voodoo Lady?”

The boy tried to swallow. His expression was comical. “She be the lady who make the honky mo . . . who make this dude do what he does. That is what the woman say.”

“What woman is that?”

“The one that talks funny.”

“How is it that she speaks funny?”

“You know,” the boy was panting as if he had run a race, “like the fat honky pig. Like they from down south somewhere.”

“And she brought the photograph? Or did the . . . overweight police officer?”

“She did. Day before yesterday. She be lookin’ for the Voodoo Lady. Marvin saw the picture, he remember right away. Now we all looking.”

“For the woman in the photograph. The . . . Voodoo Lady.”

“Yeah.” The boy began to twist away. Vincent struck him on the side of the head with the heel of his hand, rolled him over, slammed him against the wall twice, and lifted him by his torn shirtfront. The knife blade was an inch from the Negro’s eye.

“We’re going to talk again,” Anne said softly. “You’re going to tell me everything I would like to know.”

The boy did as he was told.

In the end I sent Vincent out of the room before Using the boy. There was no difficulty. I could not approximate the youth’s loose-jointed, exaggerated style of walking, but there was no reason to do that. Of more concern were his speech patterns— tone, vocabulary, syntax. I had him speak to Anne for over an hour before I began to Use him directly. There was no real resistance. At first the voice and phrasing came only with difficulty, but by relaxing, allowing some of the boy’s subconscious flair for dialect to come through, I was able to speak through him in a way I hoped would be believable.

Anne drove the two back to the vicinity of Grumblethorpe where she dropped Vincent and the boy, Louis, off on the corner. Vincent disappeared for a few minutes and then returned with cartridges for the revolver. I sent Louis back to their Community House while Vincent came in through the tunnel and Anne returned the car to the garage behind her house on Queen Lane.

The charade with the gang members went very well. Once or twice I felt my control slipping for a split second but concealed it by having Louis simulate problems with his throat. I recognized the gang leader— Marvin—at once. It had been his blue eyes that stared at me so pitilessly on Christmas Eve as I lay in the dog feces. I looked forward to settling accounts with this boy.

In the middle of the discussion, just when I was beginning to feel secure, a young black woman in the back of the crowd said, “You recognized her from my photo?” and I almost lost control of Louis. Her voice was free of the flat, ugly northern dialect. It reminded me of home. Next to her, wrapped in an absurd blanket, was a white man whose face seemed very familiar to me. It took me a minute to realize that he also must be from Charleston. It seemed to me that I had seen his photograph in one of Mrs. Hodges’s evening papers, years before . . . Something about an election.

“. . . Sounds too easy,” Marvin was saying. “What about the pigs?”

He meant police. I knew from interrogating Louis that there were plainclothes officers in the neighborhood. He had no more idea why they were there than I did, although I assumed that the elimination of five people, even worthless gang members, would bring
some
official reaction. But his use of the ugly vernacular
pigs
for police sparked the connection. The red-faced white man was a Charleston police officer— the sheriff if I remembered correctly. I had read an article about him some years ago. “Hey, man,” I had Louis say to Marvin, “Setch say bring you right away. You want to see them or not?”

Although the presence of these two Charleston people and the knowledge that there were numerous plainclothes police in the area created deep anxiety in me, the rush of concern was counterbalanced by a thrill approaching true exhilaration. This was
exciting
. I felt younger each hour this game was played.

The timing was very tricky. Vincent set off the gasoline bombs in the abandoned vehicles just when Louis led the gang leader, the sheriff whose name I could not remember, and six others onto the street near the apartment building. I stayed with Vincent then as he ran around behind the Community House, eliminated the single gang member remaining on the back porch, and went upstairs with his awkward scythe.

I had hoped the girl would go with Louis and the others. It would have been helpful, but I learned long ago to deal with reality as it was, not as I wished it to be. But I wanted the girl
alive
.

There was a brief scuffle on the second floor of the Community House. Just when Louis needed my attention, I found myself working to restrain Vincent from being too rough. Because of that temporary awkwardness, the girl escaped into the streets behind the house. I let Vincent follow in pursuit and returned my attention to where Louis stood swaying on the curb near the apartment building.

“What the fuck the matter, man?” The gang leader’s name was Marvin something.

“Nothing, man,” I had Louis say. “Throat hurts.”

“You sure they in there?” the one called Leroy said. “I don’t hear nothing.”

“They in back,” I had Louis say. The white sheriff stood nearby in the light from the only working street lamp on the block. As far as I could tell, he was unarmed except for a camera much like the one Mr. Hodges used to drag out at every opportunity. Two trains roared by, out of sight in their cement canyon.

“The side door’s open,” Louis said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” He had unzipped his jacket moments earlier. Under the sweater and rough wool shirt, I could distantly feel the cold steel of the cabdriver’s revolver. Vincent had reloaded it in the dark alley earlier.

Marvin hesitated. “No,” he said. “Leroy and Jackson and him and me will go.” He jerked a thumb at the sheriff. “Louis, you stay here with Cal and Trout and G. R. and G. B.”

I had Louis shrug. The sheriff gave me a long look before he turned and followed Marvin and the other two around to the side door. “They on the third floor, man!” I had Louis call after them. “In the back!”

They disappeared into the snowy darkness. I did not have much time. Part of my consciousness was aware of the warm glow of the heater and the staring eyes of the mannequin in the nursery, part of me ran with Vincent through the darkened alleys, heard the labored panting of our tired quarry ahead, while part of my attention had to be with Louis as the one called Calvin shifted from foot to foot and said, “
Shit
, it’s cold. You got something to smoke, man?”