The Devil in Gray (22 page)

“Changó hears me,” Moses said. “Changó speaks in my ear.”

“What does he say?”

“He says he has been waiting many seasons.”

“What for? To come looking for me?”

“You are only one among many.”

“Can you ask him why he's so mad at me?”

“Changó answers no questions. There is only one way to tell what his wishes are.”

He rang his bell again and Aluya came back in. “Aluya, bring me the coconut shells.”

While they waited for her, Moses stood with his eyes closed and his hands pressed together as if he were praying. Jonah kept looking uneasily around the room as if he, too, could sense the presence of something dark and powerful.

Aluya returned with a red and green silk scarf. She waited patiently until Moses had opened his eyes again and then she handed it to him without a word. He took hold of one corner of the scarf and whipped it in the air. Four quarters of coconut shell fell out and scattered on the floor.

Moses said, “I was afraid of this.”

“What is it?” Decker asked. “What's wrong?”

“You see how all four pieces of coconut have fallen with their brown side upward? This is one of five patterns. When two pieces fall with the brown side upward and two with the white side upward, this is a good sign, and means yes. But when all the pieces fall with the brown side upward, like this, this means no and predicts death.”

“So what can I do?”

“You can only cleanse yourself, my friend, and pray that Changó decides that you are truly sorry for whatever it is that you have done. Come back tomorrow, and I will give you the blood and the
omiero
.”

With that, he helped himself to another cookie and stood chewing it thoughtfully, staring at Decker with his bulgy eyes as if he had already given him up for dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

That afternoon Decker drove around to see Maggie. He parked around the block from Cab's house, as he always did, and walked the rest of the way. Cab and Maggie lived in a single-story three-bedroom house on the south side of the river, opposite Forest Hill Park. It had an orange-tiled roof and a bright yellow door, and elaborately-tied-up nets at the windows. Maggie had a taste in interior décor that reminded Decker of the early editions of
The Cosby Show
.

The summer heat was still stifling and the sky was so dark that Decker took off his sunglasses. His shirt clung to his back and if he hadn't been wearing his shoulder holster he would have taken off his black linen coat.

Maggie was waiting for him and opened the door as he walked up the driveway. Her hair was braided and beaded and she was wearing a loose, flowing dress in diagonal stripes of purple and pink.

She glanced up and down the street and then she put her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss. “I missed you, lover man.”

“Yeah, me too. Any chance of a beer?”

She closed the door and led him through to the kitchen. “Cab called and said that he may have to stay in Charlottesville until tomorrow … so, if you're interested in some all-night moving …”

He took off his coat and his holster while she took a bottle of Heineken out of the icebox, and opened it. “I don't know. We're pretty tied up with these homicides. I'll probably have to go back to headquarters later.”

She came up close to him and pressed the cold bottle of beer against his cheek. “You look tired. Maybe you should take off those clothes and come to bed.”

“I'm bushed, as a matter of fact.”

“Not
too
bushed, I hope?”

“These killings, I think they're beginning to get to me. Every time I think we've got a handle on them, it turns out to be the handle on something so goddamned weird I can't even understand what we're supposed to be looking for, or who, or why.”

“Cab was saying that Queen Aché might have something to do with them. Now, that's one evil woman.”

“Queen Aché was probably involved in Junior Abraham getting whacked, but as for the other two … who knows? We don't have any evidence to connect one with the other, because we don't
have
any evidence.”

Maggie kissed him. “You should come to bed. Ease your troubled mind. Exercise your booty.”

“You're some red-hot lady, you know that? You're going to wear me out.”

She took hold of his hand and tugged him toward the bedroom. “You know what's on the menu today? The four-course special, with extra gravy.”

She unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, kissing and nipping his nipples with her teeth. Then she unbuckled his belt and pushed him back into a sitting position on the side of the bed. “Let's get those shoes and socks off. Ain't nothing look more stupider than a bare-ass man in nothing but his shoes and his socks.”

Decker swigged his beer. A large-framed photograph of Cab stood on the dressing table opposite him, smiling cheerily, and for the first time since he and Maggie had started fooling around together he felt guilty. He hadn't felt guilt in a long time, ever since Cathy was killed, and it came as a sour, unpleasant surprise, like the sudden taste of copper pennies in his mouth.

Maggie peeled off his socks. “Least your socks don't smell. Cab—whew!—you could use his socks to carry out the death penalty.”

“Maggie—”

“You just relax, lover man. This is my time to take care of
you
. Hey—what happened to your
feet?
They're scratched all over.”

“Oh, it's nothing. I was helping a friend clear some briars at the back of his property and I was stupid enough not to wear any shoes.”

“They look
sore
,” she said, giving them a flurry of lip-sticky kisses.

“I'll live. Teach me to wear shoes next time.”

Maggie tugged down his zipper and wrestled off his pants. Maggie took hold of him through his blue-and-white-striped shorts and gave him a hard squeeze. “And what do we have in here? Don't tell me we'll be having
boudin blanc
for starters?”

“Maggie—” he said, but she pressed her fingers to her lips.

“You hush up. I'm the one giving the orders today.”

She took the bottle of beer out of his hand and set it down on the nightstand. Then she hooked her finger into the elastic of his shorts and pulled them down at the front so that his erection was exposed.

“You need refreshment, my man, that's what you need.”

She poured cold beer over the swollen plum of his penis so that it ran down between his legs. He jolted upward and said, “Shit, Maggie!” but she laughed that famously dirty laugh and leaned over him and sucked it. Cold one second, hot the next.

Climbing onto the bed beside him, she crossed her arms and lifted her dress over her head. Her breasts were huge, and she had a rounded belly and thighs like an Olympic shot-putter. And then there were all the gold and silver beads that she had woven into her pubic hair, so that she looked as if she were wearing a glittering thong.

She sat astride him and pushed his shoulders down onto the bed. She swung her breasts from side to side so that her prune-black nipples grazed his chest. “I'm going to make you so excited you're going to forget what day of the week it is.”

He tried to smile at her, but somehow his heart wasn't in it. He kept thinking of Cathy draped in that sheet, and the sudden burst of blood. He kept thinking of George Drewry, with his intestines piled up in front of him in heaps. He kept thinking of Jerry Maitland, swinging from the hospital window like a grisly parody of a bungee jumper.

“You got to switch yourself off, lover man,” Maggie told him. “You got to think about nothing but me, and this bed, and this moment. I know you're off wandering inside your head, but I want you here and now.”

Without another word, she took hold of his penis and guided it inside her. She was very juicy, but all the same he could feel her vaginal muscles rhythmically gripping him, as firmly as fingers. She lifted herself slowly up and down on top of him, sometimes rising so high that he was right on the very edge of slipping out of her, but then lowering her hips again so that he felt as if he were penetrating her soul as well as her body.

She began to hum, as she often did when she was aroused. It was a low, hypnotic humming, like a spiritual, and Decker found that he was gradually calming down. Maggie was dreamily smiling and her breasts were dancing their own slow merengue and there was that persistent lascivious
shlup, shlup, shlup
as she rose up and down on top of him.

“Nobody knows … the feeling you give me.… Oh, Lord, nobody knows … how deep you go …”

Then something flickered across the room, just behind her. It was so fast that Decker couldn't see what it was. It was like a ripple in the air, momentarily distorting the pattern on the wallpaper. He gripped Maggie's thighs to stop her riding up and down, and lifted his head up.

“What's the matter, lover? What's wrong?”

“There's nobody else in the house, is there?”

“Why do you say that? Of course not. It's just me and you and your uncle Willy.”

“I thought I saw something, that's all.”

“Oh, come on, you're tired and you're stressed. All you need is some good home cooking.”

With that, she slowly rotated her hips, around and around, and squashed her breasts in her hands as if she were weighing them and testing them for ripeness.

Decker tried to get back into the mood but he began to shrink. After a few minutes Maggie had to climb off him. She took hold of him and flopped him from side to side. “What's this?” she demanded, playfully but obviously frustrated. “I didn't order no
eel
.”

Decker didn't say anything but rolled off the bed and walked naked through to the kitchen where he had left his shoulder holster hanging on the back of a chair. He pulled out the Colt and went straight to the back door. He jiggled the handle but it was locked.

Maggie came out of the bedroom. “Decker, what's wrong with you, lover? There's nobody here but us adulterers.”

He walked past her into the living room, with its white leather couch and its gilded coffee table and its enormous reproduction painting of an orange sunset: Nobody there. Nobody visible, anyhow.

“Come on,” Maggie coaxed him. “Come back to bed and let's do some real loving.”

Decker reluctantly followed her back to the bedroom. The house was silent, but he was sure that he could hear the faintest of
prickling
sounds, as if somebody or something were moving from room to room, disturbing the molecules in the air. He opened the doors to the second and third bedrooms, and the cleaning closet, too, but there was nobody there, either.

Nobody visible
.

They climbed back onto the rumpled bed, and this time Maggie lay on her back. She took hold of Decker's penis and pulled it between her bosoms, stretching it as if it were saltwater taffy. Then she pressed her cleavage tightly together, and said, “Second course. Stuffed breasts of quail,” and gave that deep, dirty laugh.

Decker moved up and down on her, and he began to stiffen again. Maggie looked up at him with that sexually luminous smile on her face, and counterrotated her breasts with her hands so that she was massaging him with warm, sweaty flesh.

“You are the lover of the century, Decker. No question. The feelings you give me.”

Decker began to feel the clock spring tightening between his legs. Maggie lifted her head and every time his penis bobbed up between her breasts she stuck out her long red tongue and licked it. Decker went faster and faster and his thigh muscles quivered with effort. Maggie let out little squeals and gasps, but Decker could do nothing but pant. At last he could feel his climax rising, and with a sound that was halfway between a snort and a cough he ejaculated over her collarbone, decorating her with a glistening necklace of white pearls.

“
Ohhh
, Decker, you're so
bad
.…”

But at that moment Decker opened his eyes, and in the dressing-table mirror he glimpsed a dark gray triangular shape, which was instantly gone. It looked like part of a coat, or a cape, but it disappeared so quickly that it was impossible for him to tell. He scrambled off the bed, picked up his revolver, and ran back into the living room.

Again, nobody there. Not only that, all the doors were locked from the inside and all the windows were closed. Maggie came after him and stood watching as he ducked down to check under the couch, and under the beds in the two spare bedrooms.

“You don't have to worry, Decker,” she said, as he opened the closet in the second bedroom. There was something in her voice that made him turn and frown at her. She didn't sound like Maggie at all. None of that throatiness. None of that suggestive banter.

He closed the closet doors. “I don't have to worry about
what?
”

“I'll protect you, I promise. I won't let Saint Barbara harm you.”

He went up close to her. “What do you know about Saint Barbara?”

“I know that Saint Barbara is looking for revenge.”

“Don't you mean Changó?”

She gave a small, evasive smile. “You can call a god by any name you like. It's still a god.”

He stared at her intently. It was then that he realized that her irises were yellow, rather than brown—yellow like a reptile's. Or maybe gold. His mother had once told him that all angels have golden eyes.

“Cathy?” he said.

“You have to find Saint Barbara, Decker, before Saint Barbara finds you. He knows who you are now. He knows where you live. It's only a matter of time.”

“Was it Changó who killed the Maitlands? Was it Changó who killed George Drewry?”

“Find Saint Barbara before Saint Barbara finds you.”

Decker took hold of her arm. “Cathy, if there's any way that you can—”

Without warning, half of Maggie's head exploded, leaving her with only one eye and only half a face, and plastering Decker in blood and brains.