Sacrifice (10 page)

Malloy sat silently for a moment. “Yeah, okay, I felt it too.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, if the kids hadn’t killed him I was almost ready to do it for them.”

They drove the rest of the way without saying another word.

Mohammed looked at his partner and casually appraised him. Malloy’s stepfather was black. An ex-con and former gang member and the only father Malloy had ever known. John’s mother Elizabeth Leary had been a counselor at the prison where Isaac Malloy had been incarcerated for attempted murder, and they had developed a friendship that had continued long after he’d gotten out of prison. Elizabeth had helped him find a job and stay out of trouble, and he had in turn helped her leave her drunken husband after he’d beaten her up and sent her to the hospital with two broken ribs and a concussion when she was five months pregnant with John. Isaac had even paid her husband a visit to make sure he left and never came around her again. Then he’d asked her to marry him.

They had never even been on a date. No romantic words had ever been spoken between them, and she was pregnant with another man’s child. Still, she accepted and Isaac adopted her child on the same day Elizabeth said, “I do.”

“What’s it like growing up in the seventies with a black father?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Okay, smartass. But I’m black. What’s it like for a white boy to grow up with a black father? That must have been a fucking trip.”

“There were a lot of interesting moments.” Malloy kept his eyes straight ahead. His grip on the steering wheel tightened until his skin blanched around the knuckles and his jaw and shoulders tensed.

“I could imagine. Isaac ain’t exactly the kind of dude most folks would want to mess with, but with Civil Rights goin’ on and all, it’s no wonder you guys moved here from the Bay Area. He must have been catching it from both sides.”

“Vegas was better, but not that much. I mean, here all we had to worry about were the white folks. But Vegas then was nothing like Vegas is now. There was nothing but a bunch of shit-kicking rednecks and yuppies here when we moved. There were lots of rich folks and entertainers too, but they mostly lived off by themselves in big custom homes, not in the neighborhoods. The regular neighborhoods were mostly filled with rednecks.”

“That ain’t much different from what it’s like now.”

“Oh, it was a lot different. Vegas is a lot more ethnically diverse now than it was then. There was a big middleclass back then, and there wasn’t a black face among them. The black community was small and was all grouped together on the north side of town. We moved into an all-white neighborhood on the east side. Isaac would get harassed by the cops all the time just driving home from work. You can imagine how that went over, a black ex-con driving through a middleclass white neighborhood. When they found out he lived there with a white woman and her kid that he was raising as his own, it would just get worse. We had a cross burned on our lawn once.”

“You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me. I thought that only happened in the south.”

“It wasn’t the Klan or anything. It was a bunch of high school kids, but Isaac didn’t take it lightly. He found out who each and every one of the kids involved were and went to their houses to speak to their parents. You know how he is now. You can imagine what he was like back then. He told them that if anything like that happened again he’d have all his Black Panther friends come down here and start a race war right here on their block. We never got invited to any barbecues, but nothing like that ever happened again.”

“That’s deep. Even at sixty-four I still wouldn’t fuck with your pops.”

“So what now? You want to go talk to the guys at Missing Persons or you want to call it a night?”

“I’d better head on home before Emily starts tripping. She already thinks you’re my secret lover.”

Malloy coughed, choking on his Pepsi and spraying soda all over the dashboard as it exploded from his nostrils. “She what?”

“I think she thinks you’re gay, man. She says a guy your age should be married or at least in a serious relationship unless he’s a faggot on the down low.” Mohammed looked at his partner almost as if he was asking a question.

“Well, you’ve seen me with dozens of women. Just tell her about them.”

“One-night stands? Whores you pick up at nightclubs and titty bars? I can’t tell her about those. Then she’d never let me hang out with you. She’d be afraid you’d rub off on me and turn me into a pussy hound too.”

“So you’d rather she thought I was some fucking queer?”

Mohammed laughed then shrugged. “You do have pretty good taste in fashion. I mean I get all my suits at JC Penny’s and you run around wearing Calvin Klein and Hugo Boss.”

“What the fuck are you saying? You think I’m gay because I like nice clothes?”

Mohammed laughed again. “I’m just saying that an argument could be made. It’s all about appearances.”

“No, what you’re saying is that you want me to get a girlfriend so that your old lady will get off your back because you ain’t got the balls to put her in check. Don’t start trying to make your problems my problems.”

Mohammed smiled broadly and draped an arm around Malloy’s shoulders. “I’m your partner, man. My problems are your problems. That’s just how we roll.”

Malloy laughed now and shook his head, sighing heavily. “You’re a fucking trip, bro. Okay, so what do we do about
our
problem?”

“Just, you know, call up one of your girlfriends and bring her by the house a few times. You know, just so it looks like you two are serious. Maybe even have her come to dinner with me and Emily.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? Is it really that deep?”

Mohammed’s eyes swept the floor, clearly embarrassed. “Yeah, bro, it’s that deep. You know how Emily is when she starts trippin’ about something. It would just make my life a whole lot easier. She’d feel more comfortable about all the time we spend on the job and maybe she wouldn’t be callin’ me and trippin’ on me all the time.”

“So what happens when I start bringing some chick around you guys and then she starts thinking that we’re a fucking couple or something? Are you gonna help me get rid of her when the chick starts getting too attached?”

“What’s wrong with getting attached? Maybe you
should
try getting attached to someone. I mean, you ain’t getting any younger. You want to be that pathetic old guy at the nightclub still trying to pick up young chicks?”

“Nope. I want to be that pathetic old guy at the nightclub who succeeds at picking up young chicks. I don’t do attachment, Mo. I like my women with no strings. I mean, could you imagine me getting serious with a woman?”

Mohammed looked at his partner long and hard, giving the question more thought than Malloy believed it deserved. The look made him uncomfortable. Malloy began to squirm under his partner’s scrutiny.

“Why the fuck are you looking at me like that? Now who’s acting queer?”

“You know what I really think?”

“What?”

Mohammed’s expression grew serious. He turned around in his seat so that he was facing Malloy when he spoke. “I think some chick screwed you up real bad, man.”

Malloy laughed unconvincingly.

“I’m serious, John. I think she fucked you all up and you’ve never gotten over that shit. They say that the biggest assholes are frustrated romantics, and that’s you. You were probably one of those na‹ve young geeks who showed up on your girlfriend’s doorstep with a fistful of roses and caught her in there moanin’ and screamin’ for some other stud, maybe the dude was your best friend or something. Now you treat all women like whores so you ain’t never gotta feel like a sucker again. Am I right?”

Malloy turned and looked out the window. When he turned back the pain was clear on his face. Mohammed knew he’d hit a nerve.

“You’re close. It wasn’t my girlfriend. It was my fianc‚ee, and the dude wasn’t my best friend. He was my stepfather.”

“Oh, shit. Isaac and your fianc‚ee? My bad, man. I didn’t know.”

“I never told my mom about it. I never even told Isaac I saw them together. I think he knew it though, when I called off the wedding. He called me up that day and told me he was glad I wasn’t marrying her because she was too promiscuous. ‘You can’t turn a whore into a housewife,’ he said. But you know what, Mo? They’re all whores. I mean, you’ve been on this job as long as I have. You’ve had women offer you blowjobs to get out of a traffic ticket while their kid is sitting right behind them in the backseat. You’ve seen them sell their bodies for the price of a hit of crack or some crystal meth. You’ve seen them having kids by three or four different fathers and still going out to nightclubs every night, leaving their kids home alone while they’re out trying to pick up somebody new, hoping the fifth baby-daddy will be their Prince Charming, then stumbling home drunk and disillusioned when he fucks them in an alley and kicks them out of the car without so much as cab fare. You’ve seen them get their asses kicked by the same drunken idiot every weekend yet still refuse to leave or press charges just because he’s a nice guy when he ain’t drinking. We’ve seen them shaking their asses for dollars and giving blowjobs in the VIP room for the price of a bottle of champagne. And how many times have we seen a woman beaten or killed because her man caught her fucking around on him? That’s why I can’t take any of them seriously. Because no matter how much they pretty themselves up, no matter how sweet and innocent they look, I still know what they’re really like. I know all the sick, evil shit inside them. I pity them sometimes, but I can’t love them.”

Mohammed’s jaw hung open as he looked at his partner and realized for the first time in five years that he didn’t know the man at all.

Chapter 14

The congregation began arriving while Delilah was still in her bath. The hot water felt good on her skin. She didn’t want to leave the big eighty-gallon claw-foot tub. Outside the tub reality waited, and the reality of Delilah’s world was pain and terror. She wanted to sink down into the water and disappear forever.

Delilah ran an exfoliating sponge down her long thick limbs, lifting one leg out of the water, flexing her powerful quadriceps and pointing her toes like a ballerina. Downstairs, she could hear her followers filing out into the yard. Soon the drumming would begin and it would be time for her to join them. Delilah sighed and closed her eyes. She was exhausted and afraid. With the rituals would come the pain. All of the pain and fear and rage of her entire congregation would be funneled into her and then into another young girl, a sacrifice to keep Delilah safe and sane. The guilt was almost as crippling as the coming agony.

Within her she could feel the Loa awakening. It knew the ritual was at hand. Delilah could feel the demon’s growing excitement. It was hungry. It fed on the worship, the adoration, as did Delilah herself, but tonight she was more than tired, she was distracted. She was thinking about April, the young college student who had been coming to see her every day.

Delilah smiled as she pictured April in her mind. The pretty young woman with the long mouse-brown hair half hiding her face had seemed so timid, so afraid, as she sat at the foot of Delilah’s bed listening to the priestess’s tale of magic and woe. All of that had changed after their first kiss. In the bedroom, April was not nearly so timid.

April’s entire temperament had been so different. There was none of the desperate hunger, the profound need, the greed she felt from her regular worshippers. It was not the nervous excitement she was used to seeing on the faces of new participants. It was not just the young woman’s skepticism. Delilah was used to that. April had seemed terrified of her the first time they met. There was so much pain inside the young woman that Delilah could feel it boiling off her in waves. It was staggering. But the woman had seemed more afraid of Delilah than of the misery she held inside. It made the young priestess want to help her. As much as she knew it would pain her, Delilah had wanted to know the young woman’s pain. She wanted to drink deep of it and savor its unique flavor, to know it as intimately as she knew her own.

It had taken a little coaxing but April had finally allowed her to help. That was, after all, why the woman had come. What Delilah found was a deep reservoir of fear and anguish but no hate. The girl literally hated no one. That was when Delilah knew that she was in love. Now April was addicted to her just like the rest of Delilah’s followers. It was impossible to tell how much of what April felt toward her was genuine love or just a desire for what Delilah could do. The young voodoo mambo had always been good at feeling the pain and fear and hatred of others; feeling their love was a talent she lacked.

April would be among the worshippers tonight, dancing to the drums, inviting the Loa to take possession of her body and finally coming to Delilah for the gift of freedom. The thought excited the mambo for reasons she could not fully understand. She should resent the girl for it. She should resent them all for the pain they caused. But she needed them as much as they needed her and she didn’t know why. Their addiction to her power was the only love she had ever known. It was the only way she’d ever felt wanted, appreciated.

The steady rhythmic thrum of congas began their thunderous beat. Delilah sighed deeply as she rose from her bath and walked naked across the bathroom floor leaving puddles on the marble tiles. She walked down the stairs and into the yard without bothering to dress or towel off. Even though the sun had set hours before, it was still well over a hundred degrees outside and Delilah knew she would be dry in minutes. Her nudity did not bother her at all. The demon that inhabited her abhorred clothing as did most of the Petro Loa. Her soul had been married to the spirit of the Loa for so long that Delilah now shared many of its personality traits, including its lust for worship.

From some dark place inside her demonic laughter erupted, echoing through her. It filled her up and came spilling out of Delilah’s mouth as she picked up her dagger and whirled and twirled out into the garden to begin the ritual.