The Sleepless (29 page)

But now he looked at Victor in a very different light, and he was surprised, and disturbed; and in a strange way, he was pleased, too. The thin, prickly medical examiner from Newark, New Jersey, had suddenly shown a willingness to think obliquely, to use his imagination. Victor looked back at him darkly, intently, without any suggestion of a smile, but there was strong professional empathy between them, and some kind of personal understanding, too. 

‘I don’t know,’ said Victor. ‘1 can’t be sure. But some kind of pattern is coming out of this – some kind of reason, some kind of motive. I’m just thinking aloud, really. But I’ve dealt for most of my professional life with death. My uncle was a mortician, and when I was nine I helped him to lay out my own father. How about that for an education? I know about death, Michael. To me, death is like an empty house, when everybody’s moved out, and all the furniture has been toted away. I can walk around in it, it makes me feel regretful, but it doesn’t scare me. But plenty of people never want to die, never, and I mean
never,
and what they’d do to stay alive ... well, just stick it up there in your brain in that pigeonhole marked “possible motives”, okay?’ 

Michael looked at his watch. ‘Are you busy tonight?’ he asked Victor. ‘I wouldn’t mind talking this over some more.’ 

‘I have some notes to write up.’ 

‘And then?’ 

‘Then nothing, I guess. A TV dinner and some sleep.’ 

‘In that case,’ said Michael, ‘you’re invited for supper. I live right over the Cantina Napolitana on Hanover Street. They serve a veal saltimbocca that will make you cry.’ 

Victor had a short think, and then he nodded. ‘Okay, you’re on. I could use a good weep.’ 

The shades were drawn down in Matthew Monyatta’s living-room in the Mission Hill housing project, so that only a thin triangle of sunlight fell on the left-hand wall. The room was bare, except for large black beanbags and a low black Japanese table. In the middle of the table, three sticks of sandalwood incense smouldered in a copper bowl. Matthew Monyatta himself was reclining on the floor next to the table, dealing out the bones. His face was serious and sweaty. His CD system was playing ‘Jah Africa’, a hypnotic tip-tapping Afro-Caribbean rhythm, very quietly. 

The bones had been read by witch-doctors long before the slave trade. Originally, they had always used human bones – people had been specially killed for the purpose of providing bones, and human bones still gave a better prophecy. The secret of the bones had been carried across the Atlantic on the slave ships, and in the Southern plantations the same predictions had been made with chicken bones, or pig bones, or better still, with the bones of miscarried babies. 

Matthew had been taught by his grandfather how to read them; and he was reading them now. Bones that fell in a star-shape meant bad times to come. Bones that fell in a criss-cross pattern meant conflict. Two parallel bones meant white men. Three parallel bones, and bones that fell like a goat with horns, that meant more than white men. That meant white-white men. That meant sacrifice men. That meant horror and horror and horror; and the world turned upside down. 

He had sensed the growing activity of the white-white men for more than ten years now. Each time he read the bones, there was always something to suggest their presence, no matter how insignificant. Maybe he was wrong: but he had begun to draw a parallel with the gradual erosion of Jamaica Plain and Roxbury and other areas of southern Boston. Roxbury had once been a solid middle-class Jewish community, with excellent shops and exemplary schools. Now it was riddled with crack and crime and drive-by shootings. The last supermarket had closed its doors, and the last bank had just closed down. 

And however Matthew cast them, the bones said: the white-white men. The men who never closed their eyes. This was the world they wanted. This was Armageddon come to pass. 

Matthew was gathering up the bones when he heard the phone ringing in the kitchen. After a moment his daughter Yasmin came in, slender and graceful in her scarlet sari. 

‘Papa, it’s for you. Patrice.’ 

She handed him the phone. Matthew said, ‘Patrice? I thought I was whiter than fucking white.’ 

Patrice sounded strange and scared. ‘Matthew ... you have to help me.’ 

‘What are you talking about, Patrice? What kind of help could you want from me?’ 

‘Listen, Matthew ... what I said earlier, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I said it. I came home two o’clock and the door’s locked and somebody’s holding Verna hostage.’ 

‘Are you serious? Who would want to hold Verna hostage?’ 

‘I don’t know, man. There’s two of them, they’re both white. I seen them looking out of the window.’ 

‘Have you talked to them?’ 

‘I asked them what they wanted, that’s all.’ 

‘So what did they say?’ 

‘They said they wanted their money.’ 

‘What money?’ 

‘How the hell should I know? I don’t have anybody’s money.’ 

‘Maybe you robbed somebody and forgot.’ 

‘Listen, man, this isn’t no joke! I never robbed nobody! There’s two white dudes in my apartment and they’ve got hold of Verna and they’re going to
hurt
her, man, that’s what they said!’ 

Matthew glanced up at Yasmin and gestured that he wanted a Coke. Yasmin went to the kitchen, while Matthew said, ‘What can I do? This is a crime thing, Patrice. This is nothing to do with black identity. You need help, you call for a cop.’ 

‘How can I call for a cop? This is a goddamned war zone, man. There are buildings burning and they won’t even send in the fire department.’ 

Matthew knew what he was going to have to do. No matter how much Patrice Latomba irritated him, no matter how much Patrice Latomba undermined his credibility and his work on black self-sufficiency, Patrice Latomba was a brother in need, and Matthew was going to have to go. 

‘You going to drive me down to Roxbury?’ he asked Yasmin. ‘Reckon I can just about squeeze into that itty-bitty Volkswagen of yours.’ 

Yasmin said, ‘You break my car, you die.’ 

Followed by Patrice and Bertrand and two other brothers, Matthew cautiously approached the doorway of Patrice’s apartment. The building was thick with the stench of woodsmoke and burning rubber, and something else, too – the stink of burned potatoes. 

Matthew hesitated for a moment, and then pressed the doorbell. 

The answer was almost instantaneous, as if somebody inside had been waiting for them. ‘Who’s that?’ 

‘Matthew Monyatta,’ said Matthew. ‘I’m a friend of Patrice. I came along to see what I could do. You know – to see if I could make things easier.’ 

A few moments’ pause, and then: ‘We want our money, that’s all.’ 

‘Ask him what money,’ hissed Patrice. 

‘Patrice says what money,’ Matthew repeated. 

‘The money that was taken, after his baby was shot.’ 

‘What are you talking about?’ Patrice screamed out, in fear and frustration. ‘I never took anybody’s money!’ 

‘Oh, no ... we know that,’ the voice replied. ‘But one of your friends did, Patrice. One of your so-called brothers. Look around you, see who’s missing. Ask some questions, Patrice. Somebody picked up that money and it wasn’t the cops and it wasn’t our man so it must have been one of yours.’ 

‘Can I talk to you face-to-face?’ Matthew interrupted. 

There was another pause. Then the voice said, ‘Okay ... you want to come in? So long as it’s you and nobody else.’ 

‘That’s my wife you’ve got in there!’ shouted Patrice. ‘If you just touch her – ‘ 

Matthew grasped Patrice’s arm. ‘Stay cool, okay? It’s all for the best. Please.’ 

Patrice thumped his fist against the wall and cracked the plaster. He was close to tears. ‘That’s my wife they’ve got in there. First of all they kill our baby – now this.’ 

‘I’ll be doing my best for you, man,’ Matthew reassured him, and gently knocked at the door. 

The door was opened, but only by an inch. 

‘Everybody else stand well clear,’ the voice demanded. 

Bertrand had been edging closer to the door, but Patrice jerked his head to indicate that he should do what he was told, and keep away. 

The door opened wider. Matthew turned around to Patrice and gave him a long, sympathetic look. Then he pushed the door wider still, and stepped inside the apartment. 

The door swiftly closed behind him. He found himself in the living-room, confronted by a tall, thin, white-faced man in black sunglasses. 

The white-faced man looked him up and down. ‘Heavy reinforcements, huh?’ he said, with a sloping smile. 

‘I don’t think this a time for jokes, do you?’ said Matthew. ‘What have you done with Verna?’ 

‘Not very much, as yet. But we will, if provoked.’ 

‘I want to see her.’ 

‘You want to see her? For sure! We’ve got her in the kitchen. Come on in. By the way, my name’s Joseph, and this is my friend Bryan.’ 

Uneasily, Matthew followed the white-faced man into the kitchen. What he saw made him immediately turn away. Verna had been stripped naked, and hogtied face down on the formica-topped kitchen table, her feet raised up into the air. 

Bryan was as white-faced as Joseph. He didn’t look up when Matthew came in. He was concentrating on holding a lighted white candle over Verna’s bare back. Every now and then, when it brimmed with molten wax, he tipped it carefully sideways, and the scalding white wax dropped and solidified on her dusky bare skin. She winced with every drop, and let out a soft, small cry. There were twenty or thirty drops on her back already, all across her shoulders and down her spine. 

‘What, are you
sick
or something?’ Matthew breathed, his voice shaking with emotion. 

‘ “He who steals my purse doesn’t steal trash,” ‘ Joseph misquoted.’ “He who steals my purse is going to suffer, and suffer, and suffer some more, till I get back my cash.” ‘ 

‘This woman’s done nothing to you!’ 

‘I don’t think that’s very relevant,’ said Joseph. ‘She’s a victim, that’s all, and we can’t help that, can we, Bryan?’ 

‘No,’ said Bryan, dropping more wax onto Verna’s back. ‘We can’t help that.’ 

‘You realize that Patrice will kill you,’ said Matthew. 

Joseph circled around the table, gently trailing his fingertips across Verna’s wax-measled back. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Monyatta. In fact, quite the reverse.’ 

‘Let Verna go,’ Matthew insisted. ‘You have to ... she’s totally innocent.’ 

‘Oh, we won’t hurt her very much, unless it’s necessary,’ 

Joseph replied. ‘But, you know, somebody picked up our bag when Jambo was arrested – and there was a whole lot of money in that bag, as well as cocaine and ammunition. That’s all our property, and we want it back.’ 

‘I don’t think Patrice knows who took it,’ said Matthew. ‘Somebody just picked it up and ran off with it, as far as I can tell.’ 

Joseph took off his dark glasses, and Matthew froze at the sight of his eyes. They were blood-red, like the eyes of a demon, and they were filled with contempt and hatred that he couldn’t help himself from shivering. 

‘I want that bag back and this lady will stay here with us, enjoying our attentions, until I do.’ He smiled, and produced a double-edged razor blade between his index finger and his middle finger, like a conjuring trick. ‘You don’t think she’s enjoying it? Let me show you.’ And with that, he reached down between Verna’s buttocks and spread them wide with the fingers of his left hand, exposing her dark wrinkled anus and her curly-haired vulva. 

‘You see this?’ he said, dipping the tip of his fingers into the soft scarlet flesh of her vagina. ‘She’s wet, she’s ready for sex. Terror always does that, it turns women on. If you want to excite a woman, Matthew, I mean
really
excite a woman, then frighten her to death. She’ll be soaking, I promise, before you can say “Monyatta”.’ 

He took the razor blade, and very carefully drew a noughts-and-crosses-grid on her left buttock. It scarcely drew blood; just a few fine beads, which congealed almost at once. 

‘Tell your friend that we want our money, Matthew. Otherwise, Verna’s going to suffer very much more than she needs to.’ 

Matthew walked around the table. He was so shaken that he had to lean against the kitchen hutch. Verna’s face was pressed against the red formica. Her eyes were blotched with tears, and her lips were swollen and bruised. 

Matthew leaned over her, and said gently, ‘Verna ... can you hear me? My name’s Matthew ... Matthew Monyatta. Maybe you’ve heard Patrice mention my name.’ 

Verna didn’t seem to register. Her eyes flickered up at him but they didn’t focus. 

‘Verna ... we’re going to get you out of here, I promise.’ 

Bryan said, ‘You’ll get out of here, Verna, don’t you worry about that. Cut up like hamburger, probably ... but you’ll get out.’ 

Matthew reared up, furious. But Bryan instantly lifted his left hand to him, with his index-finger and his little finger stiffly raised, and all of his other fingers folded down, the
cornu,
the goat-sign, and it was then that Matthew was quite convinced that he was right – and that what the bones had been warning him about was all true.