The Clairvoyant Countess (11 page)

“Where do I tell the Chief you’re going?” asked Benson at the switchboard as Pruden hurried past him.

Pruden smiled. “Tell him I’m on my way to see a voodoo ceremony,” he said, and was more than rewarded by the look on Benson’s face.

Madame Karitska met him in the alleyway next to 108 Third Street. “It’s begun,” she told him, “so we must walk and speak very quietly. Madame Souffrant examined Luis and confirmed that three spirits of the dead have been sent after him and that his soul has already been given to the lord of the cemetery.”

“Good God, and you believe this?” he said, his brows slanting incredulously.

She brushed this aside impatiently. “What does it matter what you or I believe? It is Luis who believes.” She regarded him with exasperation. “It has been very tiring trying to find a banana tree and we have had to substitute a young willow tree instead. You think it is easy looking for a banana tree in Trafton? Also it is seven o’clock and I’m hungry. Madame Souffrant is
confident, however, because her cult is very similar to Luis’.”

“That’s good. Where the hell are we?”

“At the
oum’phor,
or temple as you might call it. Shall we go in now?”

He followed her down the alley into the rear, where a high board fence had been erected around a dilapidated old garage. The yard inside the fence was grassless and contained what looked to be junk: stones, jugs, lamps, and innumerable drawings made in chalk or lime on the hard-beaten earth. Madame Karitska led him through a small gate at the side and they tiptoed inside the garage.

Here Luis Mendez had been laid out on the earth floor beside an intricately decorated vertical pole; he had been stripped of everything but white shorts. All kinds of delicate white designs had been drawn on the earth around him. His head was wrapped in a bandage that ran from the top of his head to his jaw, and a second bandage bound his two big toes together. His eyes were open but vacant. The garage was dark except for candles burning at various points beside Luis’ body and several lanterns hanging on the wall. The air was thick with incense. Half a dozen people surrounded Madame Souffrant, who was intoning, “In the name of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, in the name of Mary, in the name of Jesus, in the name of all the saints, all the dead …”

A strange and eerie chill rose at the nape of Pruden’s neck and traveled across his scalp. That stern and declamatory voice rose and fell like a bird in the hushed and darkened room, like a hawk or an eagle, he thought, beating its wings against the walls until the
walls appeared to recede, disappearing altogether, and he stood in astonishment, centuries removed from Trafton, listening to a priestess speak to the gods.

When the incantations abruptly ended he felt disoriented and confused; he discovered he was sweating profusely for reasons he couldn’t understand and which his rational mind could not explain. He stole a glance at Madame Karitska and saw that her eyes were closed and her face serene. As the rituals continued he returned his attention to Madame Souffrant, but if what followed seemed to him bizarre and preposterous he didn’t smile; he was unable to forget what he had felt during the incantations, unable to forget a sense of Presences, of forces appealed to and converging.…

Luis Mendez lay like a corpse except for an occasional twitching or shouting of what sounded like obscenities. As Pruden watched, small piles of corn and peanuts and pieces of bread were distributed at certain points of his body, and just as he wondered why in hell somebody’s leftover breakfast was being heaped on Luis, two hens and a rooster were carried into the
oum’phor
and given to Madame Souffrant. She grasped the chickens, one under each arm, and held them low over Luis so that they could peck at the food on his body while at the same time she began a curious crossing and uncrossing of Luis’ arms, chanting
“Ente, te, te, tete, te …”
When the piles of corn had been reduced in size the chickens were exchanged for the rooster, and Pruden felt a stab of alarm. The angry cock left small, bloody wounds as it moved up Luis’ body, heading for his face: barely in time someone stepped forward to cover the man’s eyes. After this the cock was carried away and turned loose in the yard outside,
and lighted candles began to be passed over Luis from head to foot, again weaving that same strange pattern while the incantations of
Ente, te, te, tete
rose in volume.

Abruptly Madame Souffrant became silent, moved to a basin, gathered up liquid in cupped hands, and vigorously slapped Luis’ face. Others moved in and began to thrash Luis with water; he was helped to a half-sitting position and whipped with small, dripping wet sacks until the bandages fell away from his dripping body. Cloves of garlic were thrust into his mouth while Madame Souffrant continued to call on the dead spirits to depart, her voice rising to a crescendo.

Suddenly Luis shuddered violently from head to foot and fell back on the earth almost unconscious.

Madame Souffrant ceased her incantations and leaned over him. “Luis,” she called. “Luis Mendez. Luis, is it you?”

“Yes,” he said in a calm and normal voice.

“I think the dead spirits are leaving now,” whispered Madame Karitska, her eyes bright and intent.

A jar filled with something alcoholic was poured over a stone lying in a dish, and flames sprang up. The steaming dish was carried to Luis and passed over his body, again describing that same intricate pattern of movement, after which Madame Souffrant put it down, seized a bottle of fluid, lifted it to her lips, drank from it several times, and each time spat it through her teeth over Luis.

“We move out into the yard now,” said Madame Karitska in a low voice, nudging Pruden, and he followed her and the others outside to a corner of the enclosure where a deep hole had been dug. To Pruden’s
surprise it had grown dark while they were inside, and the lamps encircling the hole sent bizarre shadows flickering up and down the fence. He turned to see Luis limp from the building on the arms of two young men, and as Luis approached the illuminated circle, Pruden saw that he looked stronger, his eyes wide open and no longer clouded. He was carefully helped down into the hole and a tree of equal stature was placed in it beside him. The rooster, protesting, was again passed over Luis’ body and the incantations begun again, concluding at last with Madame Souffrant calling out in a ringing, down-to-earth voice, “I demand that you return the life of this man.… I, Souffrant, demand the life of this man. I buy for cash—I pay you—I owe nothing!”

With this she grasped a jug, poured its contents over Luis’ head, broke it with a blow of her fist and let the pieces fall into the hole. She was still chanting as Luis was pulled out of the hole. The rooster was placed inside it instead, and buried alive at the foot of the tree.

The ritual was not over yet but Pruden’s gaze was fixed on Luis now, who was being helped into a long white gown. He stood unsupported; his skin had color again and his eyes were bright, no longer haunted. It was unbelievable when Pruden remembered the prostrate, gray-faced, nearly lifeless man he’d seen lying on the earth only a little while ago.

“He will remain here now near the sacred peristyle for several days,” said Madame Karitska briskly. “If the tree dies, Luis will live. If the tree lives, Luis will die. Only when this is known will he leave, dead or alive.”

“Yes,” said Pruden, still bemused.

“Are you all right?” she asked sharply.

He pulled himself together with an effort. “Of course I’m all right. We can leave now?”

She nodded, and they walked back to his car. As they drove away he said, “Okay, explain.”

“Madame Souffrant would be the better person to ask,” she pointed out. “I can only tell you what she discovered when she visited Luis in his room. She is, you know, a detective in her own way.”

“Oh?” His voice was sardonic.

“She found what she called a ‘disaster lamp’ buried in the Malone back yard,” continued Madame Karitska. “We went out, all of us, and in a corner of the yard under a tree it was obvious that digging had taken place within the last week.” Madame Karitska added distastefully, “I must say the lamp was a disaster in itself when we dug it up. It smelled terribly. Madame Souffrant said it contained the gall bladder of an ox, soot, lime juice, and castor oil.”

“All right, but how would Luis know it was there?” demanded Pruden.

“Exactly,” said Madame Karitska. “Someone obviously had to tell him it was there, or add to it some other type of symbol that was terrifying to Luis. Madame Souffrant’s guess was that graveyard dust was sent him through the mail, or left on his doorstep. It would have to be someone who knew he was a believer. In any case Luis felt he was doomed and that the gods of the cemetery had taken him.”

“Well, I can’t say it’s nonsense any longer,” Pruden admitted. “I saw how ill he was, and I saw his resurrection.”

Madame Karitska said quietly, “When one believes—what
is this, after all, but the demonic side of faith?”

Already the memory of the
oum’phor
was receding, releasing him from its spell so that Pruden said almost angrily, “It goes against everything believable, a man dooming himself to die.”

Madame Karitska said dryly, “Yet you are witnessing precisely this. You forget that everything that makes a person human is invisible: his thoughts, his emotions, his soul. You forget that electricity is invisible, too, and can kill.”

“Okay—the invisible can kill.
Maybe.
” He pulled up in front of her apartment and opened the door for her. “It’s late.”

She nodded. “Nearly midnight,” she said with a sigh. “I left a sign on my door saying that I would be back at twelve and—
voilà
—I am back at twelve. But not the right twelve,” she added, “and I shall wonder how many clients I lost today.”

“Well,” Pruden told her with a faint smile, “if you find your cupboard bare, give me a call and I’ll take you to dinner. But a very quick one,” he added, “because I’m probably losing my mind but tomorrow I plan to begin looking for someone who wants the Mendez brothers out of the way.”

“Thank you,” she said simply, and he watched her walk up the steps to her apartment looking as regal and grand as if she were returning from the opera.

In the morning his early call reached Mrs. Materas, the wife of the distributor. Her husband had the flu, she said, but they worked together and she knew everything that he did. She would be glad to meet him at the office if he didn’t mind waiting until she’d gone to
church: the church was only two blocks from their office.

Pruden was there at twelve-thirty, and he sat down with Mrs. Materas and proceeded to learn rather a lot about the ice-cream-truck business, and Jack Frost in particular. The parent company, Mrs. Materas explained, was in Rosewood Heights, New Jersey, with franchised distributors in thirty-five states. Her husband had been a vendor for years but had bought his franchise fourteen years ago. It was a good business. “Hectic but good,” she said. “We have ninety-four Jack Frost trucks working Trafton. They keep the trucks in our garages down the street, and we sell them all the ingredients as well as napkins, cones, paper cups, and plastic spoons. We also help them finance their trucks.”

“Any trouble lately on the routes?” Pruden asked.

“Oh no,” she said, “we’ve never had any trouble. I know a couple of other companies had difficulties a few years ago but we’ve never had any.”

“Any of your trucks move in the Dell section?”

She shook her head. “That’s Mr. Freezee territory. Our trucks operate only in the city proper.”

“Who decides all this?” he asked with interest.

She laughed. “Whoever gets there first, that’s who. We happened to be first in the city, that’s all, and never got around to expanding into the Dell section. Here, I’ll show you.” She walked over to the open door, closed it and showed him a map thumbtacked to the wall. “As you can see—”

Pruden walked over and looked at the map. The Jack Frost territories were colored in pink, the competition routes in green. He said, “The green areas, what
companies have those routes?”

“Mr. Freezee.”

“I thought you said Mr. Freezee had only the Dell section?”

“Oh, they started there,” Mrs. Materas explained, “but over the past several years they’ve been expanding. Buying out other suburban territories here and there.”

“For cash?”

Mrs. Materas shrugged. “I really couldn’t tell you. Some of those small independents often run into debt the first year and sell out cheap.”

Pruden nodded, his face thoughtful. He wondered whether Mrs. Materas had noticed lately that Jack Frost was now completely encircled by Mr. Freezee; almost, he thought, like a noose. “Well, thanks,” he said. “I appreciate your help. One other question: have you many Puerto Rican drivers?”

She thought a moment. “A fair number, maybe 30 per cent. They’re good workers. Ambitious. You can’t explain why—?”

“Not yet,” he said with a friendly smile, “but one day I will.”

He went next to see Maria Ardizzone again, because he was remembering her hesitation when he’d asked if anything in particular had upset Luis just before he became ill. It had been a very slight hesitation but he’d caught it and he decided it was time to find out whether it meant anything. When he looked up her home address he found that she lived at Mrs. Malone’s boardinghouse, which explained how she and Luis had met when the Mendez brothers worked such long hours.