The 5th Witch (3 page)

Dan could see thick gray smoke billowing up from seven blocks away. He pulled his grimy black Pontiac Torrent to the curb behind the fire chief’s truck and climbed out. A pink-faced female officer approached him with her hand raised and called out, “You can’t park there, sir! Move on, please!”

He showed her his badge.

“Oh,” she said. “Detective Fisher. I’ve heard of you.”

“Nothing good, I hope.”

She blushed even pinker, and lifted the police tape for him to duck underneath. Santa Monica Boulevard was crowded with fire trucks, squad cars, ambulances, and TV vans. A police helicopter was clattering overhead, so low that Dan could hardly hear himself think.

Ernie Munoz was waiting for him beside the charred wreckage of the Crown Victoria. The blackened bodies of the three Narcotics detectives were still sitting inside it, with Cusack’s head protruding from the passenger’s window. Their arms were held up like monkeys begging for a treat, and they were grinning from the heat.

“Christ,” said Dan. “What the hell went down here?”

Ernie patted his shiny bald head, then the folds of fat around his neck with his bunched-up handkerchief. “So far,” he said, “we don’t have the least idea.” Ernie was short and big-bellied, with bulging eyes and a heavy black mustache, and a liking for glossy green mohair suits. Dan always called him El Gordo, the Fat Man.

“Like I told you on the phone, the eyewitnesses are pretty confused. But they all agree on two things. One, there was a woman standing close to the car, waving. Two, the guys appeared to catch fire first, before the vehicle.”

“So what are you trying to say? This was, like, spontaneous human combustion?”

“Well, no,” said Ernie. “But nobody saw a firebomb or a can of gasoline or nothing like that. Although one witness said that the woman was holding something that was smoking.”

“So where is this woman? Have you talked to her?”

“She’s still inside the restaurant with the Zombie. I was waiting for you to show up before I interviewed her. You know—you and the Zombie having so much history and all.”

“She’s still inside? What,
eating
? After three guys got cremated right outside?”

Ernie shrugged. “I don’t know about eating. But I told them to wait, and they said they weren’t in any kind of hurry.”

Kevin Baleno, the fire investigator, came waddling over in a bright yellow Tyvek suit.

“Any ideas?” Dan asked.

Kevin Baleno shook his head. “We’ll have to get the bodies back to the lab. There’s no odor of accelerants, and the pattern of burning is very unusual. In fact I
don’t think I ever saw a vehicle fire quite like this before. It looks like the eyewitnesses could have been right and the detectives burst into flame before their vehicle did.”

“Is that possible?”

Kevin Baleno shrugged. “If it happened, Detective, it must be possible.”

“What about Speedy?”

“Don’t know yet. They took him away a couple of minutes ago. No visible injuries. My first guess is that he suffered a heart seizure. You’ll have to ask the ME.”

“Okay,” said Dan. “Keep me in the loop, will you? I’m just going inside to have a word with my old friend Jean-Christophe. El Gordo, you coming?”

He and Ernie went into the Palm. Under the rows of globe ceiling lights, the dark wood-paneled restaurant was almost empty. Most of the usual lunchtime crowd must have left after the blaze outside, but there was still an air of subdued hysteria, and the white-aproned waiters were hurrying from one side of the restaurant to the other, whispering to one another.

Three Lithuanian movie producers had remained, crowded into their brass-railed booth in the center of the room, with beers and four-pound lobsters; as well as a party of five overdressed women who looked and sounded like department store executives from some city in the Midwest.

Jean-Christophe Artisson was still there, too, and so was the emaciated girl with the face like a fire axe and the clinging gray dress. The Zombie was sitting at his favorite corner table underneath the signed caricature of Fred Astaire, with his floppy black beret hanging on the chair beside him.

When Dan and Ernie came across the restaurant toward him, two of his bodyguards sitting at the next
table rose to their feet, buttoning their coats as they did so. The Zombie waved them both to sit down.

“
Bon jou, mesyés
,” he said, as Dan came up to his table. “
Ki sa ou vié?
”

The Zombie was very delicate-featured, almost pretty, although his nose was more bulbous than his friends would have dared to tell him. He wore his shiny black hair in ringlets and a diamond earring like a miniature chandelier. He smelled strongly of some floral perfume, like gardenias.

“You can cut the Creole crap,” said Dan. “We just lost three good men out there, and I want to know how.”

“You don’t think I had anything to do with that, Detective Fisher? I have always been very good friends with the police, as you know. Even with vice and narcotics.”

“Who’s this?” Dan asked, nodding toward the girl in the gray dress.

The girl lifted her head and looked at Dan with defiance.

“
Ki non ou?
” Dan asked her.

“She is a cousin of mine from Haiti. She has come to Los Angeles for a vacation.”

“What’s her name?”

“My name is Michelange DuPriz,” said the girl, haughtily. “You want to ask me some question?”

“
Wi
, Ms. DuPriz. We have eyewitnesses who saw you waving or making gestures at our detectives shortly before their car caught fire. Is that true?”

The Zombie smiled, pushed his plate a little way across the table, and held out his fork. “You feel like something to
manjé
, Detective? Sesame-seared Ahi tuna with field greens and soya vinaigrette. You should taste it.”

Dan ignored him and said, “Well?”

Michelange held his stare. “I felt that something bad was about to happen to your friends.”

“What do you mean—something bad?”

“I saw a dark
loua
over their heads.”

“A
loua
? What the hell is a
loua
?”

“A spirit.”

“A spirit? You mean like a ghost-type spirit?”

“That’s right. Not a
rada
, not a sweet spirit. A bitter spirit. A
petro
.”

“You’ve lost me. You saw a dark spirit over their heads, and that’s why you were waving at them?

“
Sekonsa
. I warned them to get out of the car. But it was too late. They catch alight.”

“I don’t get it. The spirit set them on fire?”

Michelange nodded.

“So what are you? Some kind of medium? Is that what you’re saying? You can see spirits?”

The Zombie said, “Michelange is a
manbo
. But, yes, you could call her a medium if you like. She connects between the physical world and the spirit world.”

“Oh, really? Sounds to me like she’s been watching too much TV.”

The Zombie forked up more tuna. As he ate, he kept grinning at Dan, so that Dan could see the brownish flakes of chewed fish between his teeth.

“I’m so glad this hasn’t affected your appetite,” Dan told him.

The Zombie said nothing, but grinned even wider.

Michelange said, “It is true,
mesyé
. Who knows why the
petro
wanted to burn your friends. It did not speak. It gave me no sign. Maybe it was the spirit of some bad man who want his revenge.”

“This is bullshit,” Ernie retorted.

“You think so?” asked the Zombie. “That is not a wise way to think.”

“Oh, no? Let’s forget about spirits for the moment.
One witness saw you holding up something that was smoking.”

Michelange looked away. “Different people see different things.”

“Maybe they do. But why would anybody say that?”

“Maybe they saw my cheroot. I am always smoking a cheroot.”

“A
cheroot?
” said Ernie. “Who are you trying to kid?”

Dan leaned close to the Zombie’s ear and very quietly said, “Jean-Christophe, I want to know what the hell this is all about. Don’t try to tell me that there’s no connection between you and those three detectives who died out there. Or Speedy Lebrun either. And don’t tell me this has anything to do with spirits.”

The Zombie wiped his mouth with his napkin. “You always believed in magic, didn’t you, Detective?” He turned to Michelange and said, “Detective Fisher is a very talented magician in his own right. He could have been a professional if he hadn’t decided to become a policeman.”

“I am very impressed,” said Michelange, although she didn’t sound it.

“Show her, Detective. Show her your famous jackpot trick.”

“Your jackpot trick?” asked Michelange.

“You should see it,” said the Zombie. “He swallows a quarter, then pulls down his arm like a slot machine and spits out a whole handful of quarters. Isn’t that right, Detective?”

“Forget it, Jean-Christophe. I’m investigating four suspicious deaths here.”

“Of course you are. But you asked me what the hell this is all about, and I’m trying to tell you. This is all about magic. This is all about
radas
and
petros
and maybe jackpot tricks, too. Haven’t you sniffed it in the
air? Haven’t you
sensed
it? Magic has come to town, Detective, and believe me, everything is going to change.”

“This is double bullshit,” said Ernie. “Those guys out there, they all had families—wives and kids to take care of. I ought to run you in for depraved indifference.”

Jean-Christophe held out his wrists, as if he were offering himself up to be handcuffed. “Michelange, she was nowhere near your friends when their car caught fire. Neither was she anywhere close to Speedy Lebrun, when he collapsed. As for me, I was in here enjoying my lunch. There was nothing that either of us could have done to prevent these unfortunate events. What, exactly, do you think we’re guilty of?”

Back outside on Santa Monica, Ernie said, “What do you make of that?”

“What, the spirit story? She was trying to make fools of us, that’s all. She knows why that car went up, and, believe me, it wasn’t torched by any goddamned
loua
. The question is, how
was
it torched?”

“I’ll run a check on her,” said Ernie, taking out his notebook and scribbling in it. “At the very least we could have her deported back to Haiti.”

They walked back to the burned-out Crown Victoria. The bodies of the three detectives had been carefully pried out of their seats, although fragments of crisp black flesh remained stuck to the seat springs. Ernie crossed himself and said, “Rest in peace, Detectives. We’ll find out who did this to you, trust us.”

Dan checked his watch. “Listen, I have a couple of errands to run. But I’ll drop into the station later and see what CSU has managed to come up with. If forensics can work out how these guys were burned, my feeling is that it won’t be too difficult to work out who did it.”

He opened the door of his SUV and was about to
climb in when he became aware that Michelange DuPriz had stalked out of the front door of the Palm, with the Zombie close behind her. She stopped, took off her sunglasses, and shaded her eyes with her hand.

“She’s looking this way,” said Ernie.

“You’re right. She’s staring at us.”

Michelange was saying something to the Zombie, but she was too far away for Dan to hear her. Whatever it was, though, it made the Zombie laugh.

“You know what I’d like to do to that bastard?” said Ernie. “I’d like to cut off his
cojones
and make him eat them raw with
salsa ranchera
.”

“You’ll get your chance one day,” Dan told him. “I’ll see you in maybe a couple of hours, okay?”

“She’s still staring at us. What’s she doing?”

Michelange was reaching into her long gray purse. She was calling out to them, too.

“What’s she saying? I can’t hear her. That goddamned helicopter.”

Dan took off his sunglasses. Michelange was making a flicking gesture with her right hand, and he could see something sparkling in the air. A coin. It looked like she was tossing a coin.

“That is one strange woman,” said Ernie.

“No…  I think she’s trying to tell us something.”

“What? Heads she wins, tails we lose?”

“I don’t know.” Dan kept staring at her, and she kept tossing the coin, over and over, and mouthing some words that he still couldn’t distinguish.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Ernie. “I’ll go back and ask her what the hell she thinks she’s doing.”

But at that moment Dan felt a lurching sensation in his gut. His stomach tightened, as if he had eaten far too many shellfish and needed to bring them all up. He leaned against the side of his SUV.

“I’ll tell you something for nothing,” Ernie declared.
“There’s no Haitian bag of bones is going to make no rainbow-assed monkey out of me.” But then Dan couldn’t stop himself from letting out a sharp, high, retching noise, and Ernie turned around and stared at him in alarm.

“
Dan?
You okay? What’s wrong,
muchacho?
”

Dan’s stomach convulsed a second time, and his abdominal muscles knotted up so painfully that he couldn’t speak. He pointed to his gaping mouth and blinked his watering eyes, but he simply couldn’t get any words out.

“Jesus!” said Ernie. “Hold on there, Dan! I’ll get you a paramedic!”

He stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. “Hey! Paramedic! Got a man sick here! Hurry!”

Clutching his stomach, Dan slid slowly down the side of his SUV, until he was kneeling on the sidewalk. He was shaking with cold but sweating profusely, and his mouth was flooded with metallic-tasting saliva. He had never felt anything so agonizing in his life. He had been shot once, in the shoulder blade, but even a bullet hadn’t doubled him up like this.

Ernie knelt beside him and put his arm around his shoulders. “It’s okay, man. Look, the paramedics are coming. You’re going to be fine. What in the name of God did you eat for breakfast?”

Dan coughed, and something hard hit the back of his teeth. He spat it out, and it rolled across the concrete paving and into the gutter. A quarter. A bright, shiny quarter. He coughed again and again, and suddenly a deluge of quarters poured out of his mouth and were scattered across the sidewalk.