Voodoo Eyes (34 page)

Max walked around the building, which backed on to a small stagnant lake. The water’s surface was a murky green gloss, part-matted with leaves and droning with flying insects. The prow of a capsized, half-submerged rowing boat stuck out of the middle, held there by the head of an uprooted palm tree.

He returned to the front entrance and tried the door. It was unlocked.

The inside was cavernous, dark and quiet; a place where day never broke, a place that felt completely abandoned. He wedged the door open with a rock while he searched the walls for a light switch. He couldn’t find one.

‘Hello?’ Max called out. He was answered by echoes.

He stepped in and let his eyes adjust. Gradually, the darkness yielded to him, parting around sequinned voodoo flags hanging from the rafters and separate clusters of lit candles placed close to the walls, four on either side, two at the very end.

The candles were on a pair of altars, wooden blocks painted black, each laden with an icon in the middle – a plaster Black Madonna cradling a small, pink-skinned Jesus. The statue was surrounded by foot-long crucifixes, bowls of drying fruit, bottles of rum, human skulls, coins, machetes, postcards of Miami and American flags in small glass jars. The wall to his right was painted with vast murals of voodoo deities, the gods and their goddess wives. He recognised some of them: there was Baron Samedi – the god of the dead and dweller of graveyards – in his top hat, tails and cane, his face pancaked white and his eyes red and staring right at Max. He thought immediately of Solomon Boukman, who’d worshipped Baron Samedi and offered enemies to him in sacrifice. Here Samedi was depicted alongside his foul-mouthed spouse, Maman Brigitte, dressed like a cheap hooker in a short tight black dress with half-open zippers on the thigh. She was brandishing a champagne glass full of red chilli peppers in one hand, and a black rooster in the other. Close to them, dressed in green, was the beautiful Ayida-Weddo, goddess of fertility, rainbows and snakes, holding a small baby in her arms, as her husband, Damballa, dressed in a white suit and a cravat with an egg-shaped pin, watched over her shoulder. Further on was the religion’s only white god, Mademoiselle Charlotte, shown here as a sexy but sinister Californian surfer babe, long blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, coming out of a pool of boiling water, naked and dripping wet, her fists clenched. And then there was Ogun Feraille, god of fire and war, sitting cross-legged on skull-shaped hot coals, holding crossed machetes with white-hot tips. All of the giant figures were painted against a background Max initially mistook for smoke or clouds or some kind of fog, but on closer inspection he saw that it was actually images of people fucking, fighting, dancing, eating, working, sleeping: life’s crude tapestry realised as a nebulous pagent of end-results. The candlelight intensified the colours of the mural, and as Max walked by the flames, the gods seemed to move, to turn a fraction in his direction, to follow him. He crossed to the other side of the room and found that the wall was identical in design, as were the twin altars, which bore the same objects as their opposite counterparts.

He moved to the end of the building, where a huge group portrait filled the back wall. His eyes were quickly snared by the painting’s focal point – Vanetta Brown, staring right at him, her earthy supermodel looks intact, her expression part welcoming, part quizzical, the glint in her eyes matched by that of her hoop earrings. She sat in the middle of a small gathering of men and women stood behind her in a tight semi-circle. Vanetta’s hand was resting on the head of a small black animal, which appeared to be some kind of cat. It had its tail hooked around her lower leg.

As Max came closer, the painting yielded more details. He recognised the backdrop – Caille Jacobinne itself, and the forecourt he’d crossed. He also noted the incongruous design running along the bottom of the portrait: two skylines, silhouetted in white. Havana and Miami.

His gaze travelled back to the phalanx around Vanetta Brown. Men and women, all but one dark-skinned. He took in their clothes – shabby, patched, too short, too big, too long. They contrasted with Vanetta’s blue denim jeans and long-sleeved blouse with white buttons. He followed her left arm to the hand she’d rested on the animal’s head.

He scrutinised the black shape by her feet. It had no features, no face of any kind.

And that’s when he realised he wasn’t looking at a cat, nor any kind of animal, but at the silhouette of a person. A child.

Max shuddered. He looked around quickly.

Someone had been here to light the candles, but the place felt empty.

He followed the painted Miami skyline. It wasn’t the modern one, but the cityscape he remembered from his youth, before the drug money added the fangs and the economic boom the incisors.

He noticed a building he didn’t quite recognise, close to the Freedom Tower. He’d thought it was the old courthouse, but it was too broad, unless the artist had made a mistake.

And then it moved.

Someone was sitting there, facing the wall, painting.

‘Excuse me?’ said Max, walking over slowly. The painter was working on the tip of the Freedom Tower. ‘Per
favor?’

The painter stopped what he or she was doing, frozen in mid-motion – arm extended towards the wall, the tip of the brush an inch away from it – as if their power switch had been tripped and their body had immediately shut down.

Max looked the painter over: dressed all in black, a broad-brimmed hat and leather gloves, a shapeless garment like an overcoat or a cassock, shoes with thick, bulbous, upturned caps poking out from under the hem.

‘Do you speak English?
Hablas Inglés?
’

No reply. No motion. It was as if he were talking to a mannequin. Max stepped closer and his foot kicked something metallic. He looked down and saw a ring of paint pots, all different sizes and colours, four deep around the figure by the wall.

‘You been to Haiti.’ It was a statement rather than a question, and the person who’d made it was male and spoke in a rasping voice with an accent that had made the round trip from Haiti to New York: Afro-Franco-Brooklyn.

‘How do you know?’ asked Max.

‘The smell.’

‘What smell?’

‘Of the country.’

‘What about it?’

‘You still carry it.’

Max stopped just short of acting on an impulse to sniff himself. He glanced around to see if they were alone. The gods on the walls made him feel crowded and observed, and Vanetta Brown’s gaze was suddenly intimidating.

The painter still hadn’t moved, the tip of his brush poised close to the drying spire.

Max tilted his head to get a better look at the man. He was wearing an opaque black veil that fell from the brim of his hat down to his shoulders.

‘I’m looking for Vanetta Brown,’ said Max. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘I ain’t seen anyone in years.’

‘Do you know where she is?’

‘No.’

The painter remained as rigid as before. Absolutely no movement, not even when he spoke. Max was amazed at how steadily he could hold his arm, without the merest hint of a tremor.

‘What about the child at her feet?’

‘Osso?’

‘Osso – is that its name?’

‘What about him?’

‘Why did you paint him that way – all black?’

‘Black was what he was.’

Max looked at the silhouette. The child couldn’t have been older than four or five.

‘What happened to him?’

‘Left here long ago. Went Santiago way, I heard. Fell in with a bad crowd.’

‘What kind of “bad crowd”?’ asked Max.

‘A crowd that’s bad instead of good.’

Max studied the mural again, scrutinising each of the dozen or so faces around Vanetta. The man immediately behind her, almost in the middle of the group, was light-skinned. He stood out not only because of his complexion, but because his clothes were different from the others’ – grey mechanic’s overalls instead of tatty hand-me-downs. And he had been painted slightly larger than the rest of the group. When Max moved a few steps further back, he saw that the man was actually standing a little in front of the gathering, closer to Vanetta.

He returned to the child’s silhouette. Pale traces glistened through the black matt paint, hints of features, a head and eyes and fingers.

‘You painted
over
him,’ said Max.

The painter rested the brush on the nearest paint pot and turned towards Max. He took the hem of the veil between his fingers and slowly lifted it, uncovering his mouth and nose, then the rest of his face.

Max took a step back, surprised and confused.

The painter was old, his dark skin floppy and lined, his beard pure white. His eyes swam about in their sockets, their gaze forever swivelling in random directions, like a pair of ball compasses trying to catch a bearing off fluid poles.

The man was blind.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know,’ said Max. ‘How long … ? How do you manage? How do you
paint?’

‘From memory.’

Max looked around the walls again, coming back to the spire the man had been working on, its delicacy and detail, guilt piggybacking his amazement and wonder.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘The night I finished this, Osso poured battery acid on my eyes while I was sleeping,’ said the painter.

‘Why?’

‘Guess he didn’t like my work.’

‘What didn’t he like about it?’

The painter didn’t answer. Max looked at the silhouette, at the head, stared into the black, focused on the faint hints beneath, trying to draw out the child’s features, but couldn’t.

‘What happened to him?’

‘He ran away. No one knows where. He vanished.’

‘Was there something wrong with his face?’ Max asked.

‘His face was just the start of it. There wasn’t nothin’ right to that kid.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Max.

‘I’m not,’ replied the painter. ‘You can’t stop what’s coming to you.’

40

Benny still wasn’t talking as they drove away. He was locked in turmoil, nibbling the inside of his bottom lip, scraping lipstick on to his teeth. Max checked the cellphone: still no reception.

He considered what he’d found out at Caille Jacobinne.

What were the chances that the child on the mural and the man who’d killed Eldon and Joe were the same person – Osso? Vanetta had known him. The way they’d been painted, it appeared that the kid had been attached to her and she to him. She’d protected him, maybe even loved him, when everyone else had shunned him. Osso was damaged goods then, already psychotic and prone to sadistic violence: he’d attacked the painter’s eyes, the artist’s vital organ. And then disappeared. Had Vanetta taken him away?

The triggerman had a pronounced harelip. Perhaps he’d been born with a more severe deformity – a cleft palate – that subsequently had been fixed. Maybe Vanetta herself had paid for the operation. He’d been grateful to her for his new face, his new lease of life, and their bond had tightened and strengthened.

When Vanetta fell ill, she’d sent Osso to Miami to settle her scores. What better way of repaying the love she’d shown him than by killing those who’d broken her heart?

But that was all supposition, tenuous at best. And it didn’t feel right. Not right at all.

For the first few hours they were alone on the road, nothing in front of them, nothing behind. The mist cleared and the sun began slow-cooking the earth. By midday heatwaves were shimmering above the ground and every part of the car was too hot to touch. Max poured sweat and fidgeted while Benny stayed cool and quiet. The windows were open, but the smell of fresh herbs was long gone and the air was manure heavy, with a little wood and stubble smoke pouring in for diversion.

The DeSoto ran better than the Chevy. It was faster, quieter and far smoother, yet it was nothing but charmed scrap, souped-up junk rolling on mismatched, rimless wheels, powered by a too-small engine. The interior was uncomfortable. The front seats, uniform as opposed to individual, had been re-upholstered with a mixture of thin foam and what felt and sounded like stacks of old newspaper. All the backseat lining had been replaced with a flapping patchwork of towels, curtains and faded bedsheets. Still, it looked good from the outside at least, a car with road presence, taking up the bulk of the lane; its body long and flourished with art deco touches, and a grille reminiscent of bared teeth.

They passed farmers tilling the soil with hump-backed oxen and ploughs. The farmers would stop and stand and gawp at the car, as if it were something they’d heard about but never seen. Some took off their straw hats or caps and waved and yelled out greetings. Benny scowled and muttered insults.

Max tried the radio. Static and white noise came through the speaker, with snatches of music and talk fading in and out. He turned it off.

The road got worse the further into the country they ventured, the blacktop cracking and breaking up, and then gradually vanishing altogether until the way ahead was nothing but a strip of rutted and potholed dirt. They rolled through villages and small towns untouched by the tourist peso and UN handouts, desolate outposts of small, low-level buildings and high-heaped rubble where there were hardly any people. Max had to stop and brake and swerve to avoid hitting stray farm animals – goats, pigs, chickens, donkeys and, once, a huge packhorse that had blocked the road and wouldn’t move until it had taken a stupendous dump.

It was after they’d passed the horse and were heading for the next drive-through town that Max noticed the Mercedes.

He immediately recalled the pair of plainclothes cops at the hitch-hiker stop on the way to Trinidad. The car was the same model – a four-door 190 Turbo with tinted windows. It wasn’t anywhere close, but hanging back a good quarter-mile, classic tail procedure: keep your target in sight but stay out of sight, even though it was impossible on an open country road with barely any other vehicle between them.

Max spotted a small roadside fruit market coming up and stopped.

He got out and pretended to inspect the stall – one foldaway table for coconuts, one for bananas, one for mangoes and one for bottled water, everything reeking and fly-infested. The seller was an almost toothless old man in denim overalls. Max bought coconuts and water. The seller hacked crude holes into the coconuts and made eyes at Benny, who was sitting behind the dusty windshield, reapplying his lipstick in the mirror.