Chapter One

 

 

The wall outside my office held an imitation mahogany plaque inscribed with gold-colored letters: "Raphael LaFontaine - Special Inquiries - Licensed Private Detective."  When I reached the top of the stairs I discovered a pink-cheeked little man wearing a thirty-year old brown wool suit standing outside my door.

"Mr. LaFontaine?"

"Who are you?"

"Stuart Willoughby, attorney at law." The little man held out a fleshy palm.

"What's this about, Mr. Willougby?"

In my almost five years on the Baltimore PD I had learned to distrust lawyers to the same degree I was wary of strange dogs and wandering snakes.

"Could we go inside?" Willoughby turned toward the door but I didn't move. "My client needs your services," he said. "I have a case for you."

I gave Willoughby a long, careful look, then unlocked the door. My office is a single fifteen by twenty foot room. The desk, fronted by two Office Depot chairs, faces the door. There's a couch along the right-hand wall, file cabinets, a fax-printer-copier-scanner combo and shelves of office supplies along the left. A cheap PC crouched on the floor. Willoughby gave the room a quick once-over and settled into one of the client chairs.

"Very compact, very efficient," he said with a polite smile as he handed me his card. I glanced at it and tried to suppress a frown. The address was in Carroll County, about thirty miles north-west of the city.

"You're a little way from home."

"A referral from an old client. The foundation of my practice is the personal touch."

I took a close look at Willougby but he remained something of an enigma. Somewhere north of sixty and south of eighty, he dressed like a manikin out of a post-war Sears catalog. Defeated, I gave a little shrug and grabbed a memo pad.

"So, to business," Willoughby agreed. "My client is a lady who lives here in Baltimore. She dated a gentleman who wanted more from the relationship than she did. When she tried to break it off, he refused to take 'no' for an answer."

"Has she contacted the police?"

"That would present something of a problem. She considered it, briefly, then called me. . . . You see," Willoughby continued after a brief pause, "the gentleman in question is a Baltimore police officer. Frankly, I'm concerned that a formal complaint to the BPD might cause more problems than it would solve."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I've heard that you have an excellent rapport with BPD and I hoped that a friendly word from you in the gentleman's ear, without any official intervention, might prove a more, uhhhm, tactful solution." Willoughby gave me a plastic smile.

"What, exactly, has the guy done?"

"Oh, more or less the usual in this sort of a case -- watches her house, follows her around, leaves little things on her doorstep. At first it was gifts, a box of candy, a cheap bracelet, an unsigned card. Then the . . . deposits  became more problematic. The last one was a dead rat."

"Is there any proof that the culprit is the boyfriend?"

"Ex-boyfriend. And no, nothing that would hold up in court. We tried a surveillance camera but he was skilled enough to avoid leaving an identifiable image. Just an adult male in a bulky jacket, a turned-up collar and a baseball cap."

"Have you gotten a restraining order?"

Willoughby frowned.

"Without evidence I'm loath to file an action against a serving member of the police. Again, I was hoping that a friendly talk with one of his own might convince him that the lady is sincerely uninterested in resuming the relationship."

I stared blankly at the wall behind Willoughby's shoulder, then picked up my pen.

"Okay, what's his name?"

"Officer Victor Manchuko. I believe he serves in the Northeast Division."

"Description?"

"Caucasian, almost six feet tall, mustache, no glasses. Brown hair, brown eyes. About thirty-five. He told her he was divorced but, well . . . ." Willoughby let the sentence hang.

"What's the client's name?"

"Carolyn Simpson, 5691 Fortis Avenue. You can call her on her cell, 410-555-6739. She doesn't want anyone at work to know about her personal problems."

"When can I meet her?"

"Is that really necessary? I'm fully authorized to act on her behalf."

"I never take a case without meeting the client."

Willoughby gave me a long stare then a little shrug.

"Of course. I told her to be available in case you might call."

I punched in the number.  The phone was answered on the second ring.

"Ms. Simpson? This is Raphael LaFontaine. I'm here with your attorney, Mr. Willoughby."

"Yes, Mr. LaFontaine. Thank you for taking my case."

"I haven't taken it yet. I'll need to talk with you directly before I can start any real work on your problem."

"I was hoping that you could handle all this with my lawyer."

"No, I can't. Where are you right now? If you could come to my office, the three of us---"

"No, that's impossible. I'm working a split shift. I won't be free until after ten."

"What about sometime tomorrow?"

"Uhh, that's not good either. Could we meet later tonight, someplace public? A restaurant or something? Maybe around ten-thirty?"

I paused and studied Willoughby's pudgy face.

"I usually collect a retainer before I start a new case."

Willoughby pulled a pile of bills from his inside pocket and counted out ten one-hundred dollar notes on the edge of the desk.

"All right, ten-thirty tonight at La Boehme Café on Franklin. We can have coffee on the terrace. Ask for me at the hostess station. Do you want directions?"

"No, I'll find it."

The line went dead.

"I'll give you a receipt," I told Willoughby and picked up the bills, counting them a second time.

 

*    *     *

 

I left my apartment a little after ten and headed for the gravel parking lot behind the building. There was barely a sliver of a moon and I negotiated the stepping stones by memory. As I emerged from the path I sensed an onrushing presence and jumped to my left. A blinding pain seared across my ribs. Already falling I flailed at my attacker and a second man grabbed me from behind and then the world vanished in a thick, black fog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

 

For most of my early life I didn't realize that my dreams were not like those of normal people. I thought that when people dreamt they saw colors, felt textures and experienced an alternate existence almost as real as that of their waking life. It was only when my father, Remy LaFontaine, began training me to concoct dream potions and cast dream jinxes that I became interested enough in the topic to borrow a psychology primer from the school library. The  chapter on human dreaming was a revelation. Most people had no sense of touch or smell in dreams? Some rarely dreamt in color? And the content of their dreams -- vague, disjointed events that upon waking vanished like mist on the water? By comparison my dreams were a study in order and precision. Each was a little play, some from my past, some depicting things that might have been, and a few portraying events that might yet come to be.

With increasing frustration I had flipped the psychology text from page to page looking for explanations of dreams like those that I experienced. Eventually, I realized that I was different from "normal" people in many fundamental ways. During my years on the run, living out of flea-bag hotels and squatting in abandoned buildings, I would pass the dreary, solitary hours by reading books I had picked up at garage sales and a swap meets. Often my studies were little more than an attempt to understand myself. It's a work in progress.

The logical part of my mind told me that the herbs and infusions, the teas and potions that my father and mother had both imbibed before and after I was conceived had altered me in some fundamental way, cracked the chains of my DNA and warped my glands until my own peculiar hormonal soup was contaminated beyond repair. But then I thought about my brother, Zion, whose name my father claimed was ordained in a vision from the Spirit Gael, and I wondered if hoodoo and magic, demons, spirits and spells might have some reality of their own.

My father, a light-skinned Redbone named Remy LaFontaine, claimed to be the seventh son of a seventh son. My mother, Malina Elise, a coal-black beauty with a Caribbean accent and murky past, told various stories of her history. In some she was a hoodoo priestess from Jamaica; in others her home had been someplace between Bimini and St. Barts, Trinidad and the Caicos.

I often had visions, the extreme ones I called 'spells.' Perhaps a psychiatrist would label them 'visual hallucinations' but I didn't think that was correct. I am not psychotic or schizophrenic. Sometimes, more and more often of late, I just see on the outside more of what people are on the inside, their cruelty or passion warping their faces, their emotions haloing their heads like a colored fog. It's disturbing but often useful in my business. As I said, both a gift and a curse. Is all that from the hoodoo herbs, potions and infusions? Perhaps as the first born son of parents like Remy and Malina it was inevitable that I would be irretrievably different from what I came to think of as "normal" people.

Or maybe the real explanation for my peculiarities is a little of both. Despite the persona I struggled to present to the world, I knew that I wasn't really human, but something different, a fake human, a changeling, someone who always needed to be in disguise lest the normals discover my true nature and cage me like some animal in a zoo. As I slept under the combined effects of high voltage electricity and an ether-soaked rag, I dreamed.

 

*     *     *

 

I was back in the cabin near the banks of Pig Run Creek, a tiny stream that meandered west until it joined the Sabine River near the Texas border. A boy again, I awoke in my narrow bed to the calls of the jays and woodpeckers and the croaking of the big frogs. Crisp dawn light peeked through the cracks in the plank walls and by its color and the smell of pine trees and slow-flowing water I knew that I was dreaming, but it was a dream that I could no more ignore than I could disregard a tiger leaping for my throat.

I threw off the covers and pulled on clean underwear, jeans and a black t-shirt. I felt the laces tighten my sneakers across my feet. I knew this dream by heart. I knew that this was the day that had shattered my life and that I was powerless to change a single instant of it.

I tiptoed to my parents' bedroom and found my mother awake, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. My father was gone. He had left after dinner, off to spend the night with the fat women.

"It's time," I said and crawled beneath the bed. The floorboard squeaked as it pulled away. I removed the worn Romeo & Julieta cigar box from its hiding place and slithered out from beneath the bed frame. My mother stood there, her eyes blank, her face more like black plastic than human skin. She was wearing her blue dress and black shoes. Her hair was contained beneath a burgundy turban, making her look more like an African tribes' woman than a resident of Beauregard Parish, Louisiana. I remembered what my mother had really looked like that day, the excitement and fear that had laced her face, but in this dream she displayed only abject acceptance of her fate, as if the dream-woman knew what would happen next as well as I did and how it all would end.

I shoved two bundles of greasy bills into my pockets and grabbed my mother's flaccid hand. In this terrible dream it was the doughy hand of the walking dead. Silently we slipped past Zion's room and out onto the porch, what the locals called a gallery. The planks creaked beneath our feet as I led her down the steps and onto the path to the highway. I checked my watch. In ten minutes the bus would be passing the trail-head on its way down Highway 190 to Baton Rouge.

Beams slipped between the branches of the gum trees and the loblolly pines and dappled the ground. Where the grass was worn away patches of red earth glowed in the morning light. We were barely a hundred yards from the highway when, as if by magic, my father, Remy, appeared on the trail ahead of us. Tall and thin, his skin the color of pale rust, he stood with legs wide apart, blocking our way.

"Where you goin', Boy?"

I tried to push my mother behind me, as I always did in this dream, but somehow she got past me.

"I be leavin' you, Remy. I be takin' my son wit me."

"The boy can go, if he wants. You, wife, you stay here with me."

"I got a broomstick. I be jumping over it. Wife no more."

"You not my wife no more?" Remy asked, grinning.

"You on your own."

"What about Zion?"

"He be your son. You do wit him like you want."

"You're right. Zion is my son. How do you think I knew what you were up to? Zion hear you planning this with Rafe."

"He don't hear nuthin'."

Remy smiled. "Not with his ears. He hear it in his head, in his dreams. I know what Rafe there's got in his pockets." Remy pulled out a knife. "So, woman, you my wife or you just some thief stealin' my money?"

"My money too."

Remy raised the blade. "Wife or not?"

"Wife to you no more."

Fast as a snake Remy leaped forward and plunged the blade into her stomach. Her mouth opened in an "O" and blood tricked through her grasping hands.

"Like you say, wife no more." Remy's lips split into an evil smile and he raised the blade for a stroke into her heart. I watched my own hand as it pulled a cue-ball sized rock from the mud, watched as I leapt forward and threw it straight at Remy's face, but at the last instant he turned and the stone caught him in the side of his head. It made a crunching sound, like the snap when a hammer splits a pecan shell. Remy gave me a surprised, disbelieving glance then fell forward almost at my feet.

I watched in remembered horror as my mother's knees buckled.

"Mama," I cried, reaching for her but she feebly pulled away.

"Run," she whispered.

"I'll get the doctor."

"Run, he's coming."

Though the trail to the cabin was screened by foliage, I knew that my brother, Zion, gun in hand, was racing toward us. I looked back at my mother who gave me one brief smile, then tumbled forward, face down. From the direction of the cabin I heard a branch being slapped out of the way. Without conscious thought I grabbed the bloody rock and dropped it next to my mother's outstretched hand, then fled. I reached the highway just as the bus wheezed around the turn at the top of the grade. I pulled two wrinkled bills from my father's bundle and waved them at the driver. For a moment I wondered if the old man would stop for a Redbone kid like me but the only color he cared about was green.

I jumped aboard, gave the pale old man the bills and crouched in a seat at the back of the bus. I peeked out the window until the we rounded the next bend but Zion did not appear. Off and on, all the way to Baton Rouge, I checked the highway for the red lights of the Sheriff's cruiser but, unmolested, the bus pulled into town on time. I tore my gaze from the windows.  As I looked down the aisle toward the front door, the light dimmed, then disappeared and then, cold and damp and lying in patch of weeds, I woke up just as the last sliver of moon slid from the sky.

 

*     *    *

 

My head throbbed and the stink of ether and manure hung in the air. I struggled to sit up and found myself sprawled in the grass.  I ran my palms across my chest and thighs but I didn't feel the sticky wetness of leaking blood. My back throbbed and the rest of my body joined in with a chorus of aches but as far as I could tell, nothing was broken. After a couple of deep breaths I struggled to my feet and slowly made a three-sixty turn. To my right was a hint of a line of trees. To my left I caught a glimpse of a slightly lighter charcoal streak. I slapped my pockets but my wallet, keys, pen-knife and cell phone were all gone. I shoved my fingers inside my right sock and felt the edge of my emergency hundred dollar bill. Shakily, I tramped across the pasture toward the deserted two-lane.

A mile down the highway I spotted a farm house with a light burning above the door.  I pounded on the framing off and on for half a minute before a sleepy voice called, "Who's there?"

"My car broke down. I need to call a friend to pick me up."

"You know what time it is?" the man called back without opening the door.

"My friend won't mind. I'll give you the number. You call him and he'll pay you twenty dollars when he gets here."

"What if he don't come or he comes and he don't pay?"

The door opened a crack and a slice of a weathered face topped by one blue eye peered out. I held up the hundred dollar bill.

"I'll leave this with you as security. If my friend doesn't pay, you can keep it."

The eye warily regarded the c-note.

"Where do you want to go?"

"Back into town, Baltimore."

The door opened a bid wider. The man's head was topped by a wild thatch of white hair, his face seamed, his cheeks covered with patches of gray stubble.

"That all you got?"

"I've got another hundred in my apartment."

"Two hundred?"

"Two hundred."

"I'll get my coat."

The old man led me to a battered Ford F150 whose doors groaned like men in pain.

"I'll take that hundred now," the farmer said, leaving the keys in his pocket.

"When we clear your driveway."

The old man cackled, and pulled out his keys.

"Good for you. I like a man with a head on his shoulders."

When we reached the highway, I wordlessly handed over the bill. The old man laughed and shoved it into his pocket.

I kept an emergency key hidden under a rock at the edge of the parking lot and led the old man, Roger something, inside where I gave him the promised second payment.

"Whoohoo," Roger said happily. "Two hundred bucks! Not bad for an old man who can't sleep nights anyway."

"Thanks for your help."

"Hell, son, for this kind of money, you can call me any time you need a damn taxi driver."

Cackling happily Roger limped down the stairs. I didn't pay any attention. I figured I didn't have any time to spare. Racing through the apartment I grabbed a couple more bills, Carolyn Simpson's address, a six inch kitchen knife and my spare set of keys.

"Pretty girl." a voice screeched from the corner of the darkened room.

"Go back to sleep, Shantrell."

"Pretty girl!" she squawked, louder this time.

I grabbed a handful of sunflower seeds from a jar next to the TV and dropped them in Shantrell's dish. The African Blue parrot appraised me with a quizzical eye, then dipped her beak into the bowl. Idly, I brushed her wing with the backs of my fingers, then hurried for the door. My attackers had been waiting for me in the parking lot which meant somebody knew I was going out tonight. Somebody wanted me out of the way. It was a good bet that somebody didn't want me meeting Carolyn Simpson. Her stalker was a cop. He'd have access to a Taser.

Had the lawyer tipped him off? Had Simpson herself let something slip? Cell calls were pretty easy to  capture and decoding them was a joke if you knew what you were doing, like maybe a cop would. Had Manchuko set up an intercept on her phone? If he was serious enough to do that and have a couple of his friends kidnap me, what the hell did he have planned for Carolyn Simpson?

I raced down the stairs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

 

Carolyn Simpson lived in a two-story colonial north-east of Fells Point. Pretty nice place for a single woman working the swing shift, I thought as I pulled over a couple of houses down the block. Towering big leaf sycamores shielded the street from the faint glow of the stars. The building's front rooms were dark but at the back a second floor window showed a butter-yellow glow.

My knocks echoed hollowly and the door was solidly locked. I jogged down the driveway. At the touch of my hand the back door swung open. A quick glance showed that the lock had been jimmied.

I moved silently through the kitchen. To my right a stairway lead to the second floor. I paused and held my breath, listening. The house seemed deserted. I called out: "Ms. Simpson? It's Raphael LaFontaine. Ms. Simpson?" Nothing. I hurried up the stairs and, at the top, saw a strip of light leaking from beneath the door at the end of the hall. I pushed it open with the heel of my hand.

A king-size bed abutted the far wall. On the near side a tiny lamp cast a yellow pool across a woman's body sprawled in the center of the bed. Her head was canted back exposing a wound across her throat. Blood had spilled down the duvet to form a sticky puddle on the hardwood floor.

My first instinct was to run, but I smothered the impulse. Someone had wanted me out of the way while they murdered this woman. Phone records would show I had spoken with her. The lawyer could testify that I was scheduled to meet her. I had no real alibi, just a crazy story about being kidnapped and dumped out in the country. How long had she been dead? Was it long enough ago that the police could claim that I had the time to kill her then have had an accomplice drop him off outside the old geezer's door as part of some half-assed alibi? I was being set up. Hurriedly, I searched the room, then got down on my hands and knees and peered under the bed.

A foot from the edge was my blood-stained wallet and a few inches away lay a commando-style knife with blood on the blade. I was willing to bet that my prints were on the handle, applied while I was unconscious. I pulled a tissue from the box on the night table, wiped the knife down, then tossed it back where I had found it. The Kleenex showed a few smears of blood. I vigorously rubbed my hands until the tissue began to shred then tore it into three pieces and, careful not to leave any prints, flushed it down the toilet. I left the wallet where it was. The table on the far side of the bed held a wireless phone. Picking it up with a second tissue, I dialed the number for the murder police.

"Homicide, Brewster," a bored voice answered. I wondered what Brewster had done to piss off the LT enough to exile him to the night shift.

"Matt, its Rafe LaFontaine. I'm looking at a DB."

"Where are you," Brewster snapped, no longer bored.

"I'm in on the second floor of a house at 5691 Fortis Avenue. I'm guessing the victim is a new client, Carolyn Simpson."

"What happened?"

"Looks like somebody slit her throat."

"Get the hell out of the crime scene and wait for me. I'll be right there."

"Matt, one more thing."

"What?"

"My wallet is under the bed. It looks like it's got blood on it."

"Jesus, LaFontaine what the hell---"

"Someone's trying to set me up."

"No shit! Anything else you want to tell me?"

"If I had done it, I would have grabbed it and stuck it in my pocket."

"Yeah, unless you figured we'd search you."

"I didn't do it."

"Yeah, stay there and don't touch anything." The phone went dead.

I took one more look around then carefully made my way down the darkened stairs. I took three deep breaths and paused. No night birds sang. The chirps of the crickets had disappeared. A creak sounded from the front steps followed by the muffled footfalls of two men. I pulled out my kitchen knife and pushed it under the couch cushions. An instant later the front door crashed open and lights blazed into my eyes.

"Police! Down on the floor!"

I dived for the carpet like a lineman leaping for a loose ball.

"Hands on your head! Don't move!" I clasped my hands behind my head. I knew that the worst thing I could do right now was speak. Any distraction might cause one of the freaked-out uniforms to shoot first and ask questions later. A heavy boot pressed on my back while my wrists were roughly forced into a pair of cuffs. The cop closed them so tightly that my hands almost instantly began to go numb. The foot remained on my back while questing hands patted me down for weapons.

"Anyone else here?"

"No."

Scotty, check the back."

A pair of footsteps rushed toward the kitchen.

"Clear. . . . Clear . . . .Clear." A moment later the footsteps returned. I was pulled to my feet.

"Anybody upstairs?" the first cop asked. I decided things had calmed down enough that I could try to talk.

"Matt Brewster from Homicide's on his way."

"What's Brewster got to do with this?"

"I was on the job out of the Southeast District. I called Brewster when I found the body."

"What body?" the cop shouted into my face.

"The woman's body in the upstairs bedroom. Somebody slit her throat. I called Brewster as soon as I found her. He told me to get out of the crime scene and wait for him."

"Oh, you'll wait for him, all right. . . . Frank." Scott looked at his partner and nodded toward the stairs. I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut. The uniform returned half a minute later.

"Dead as a mackerel," Frank said in answer to his partner's unspoken question. "What a mess. Blood all over the place."

"Did you touch anything?" Scott, demanded.

"I pulled a tissue from the box next to the bed and used it dial the phone. I left it in the room. I got down on my knees and looked under the bed. There's a knife and a wallet under there. I left them where they were."

"We'll see. You being an ex-cop and all, you ought to know that if we find any of her blood on you, you're SOL. You know that, right?"

"And considering how her throat was slashed, if I don't have her blood on me, then there's no way I did it."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you had a partner. Maybe he sliced her. Maybe you two got your freak on, took turns with her, then he did the job while you watched."

"Sure, then I hung around, left the knife and my wallet, called homicide and waited for you guys to collar me."

"Yeah, well, we'll see. Whoever said skells were smart?"

Outside a car screeched to the curb and a dying red light reflected off the living room window.

"You know this guy, Detective?" Scott demanded, shoving me forward like a prize.

"Yeah, I know him. Unhook him."

Scott gave Brewster a hard stare then, reluctantly, removed the cuffs. I tried to rub the circulation back into my wrists.

"Start a sign-in sheet," Brewster ordered the uniforms, then led me up the stairs.  We paused at the threshold and Brewster leaned inside.

"Knife's under the bed, about foot this way and a foot in from where her hand is on the mattress," I told him. "Wallet's a couple of inches closer to the headboard."

"You didn't touch them?"

"It looked like my wallet and it looked like it had blood on it. Last thing I wanted to do was get any of her blood on me."

Brewster gave me a hard look, then turned away.

"Okay, let's get out of here until Crime Scene's done its thing."

Once downstairs Brewster took out a mini-recorder.

"Recording interview with Raphael LaFontaine." Brewster recited the time, date and location, then put the machine on the mantle next to me. "Take me through your day all the way until I got here."

I gave an abbreviated version of the day's events until my meeting with Stuart Willoughby, then I went through things with careful precision. Brewster frowned when I  described my kidnapping and waking up in a cow pasture.

"You say they stunned you? Show me the marks."

I pulled up my shirt and Brewster carefully examined my chest and back.

"Hey, Bobby, get a picture of this," he ordered one of the Crime Scene techs, pointing to the pairs of burn marks on my back and stomach.

"You see."

"You know as well as me that you could have done that to yourself."

"How am I supposed to have reached around to my back like that?" I futilely tried to twist my hands into a position where I could have used the stun gun on myself.

"You could have had an accomplice."

"Jeeze, Matt!"

"I'm just sayin'."

"The old guy will back up my story."

"Doc," Brewster called to the Medical Examiner who was descending the stairs, "what's the TOD?"

"Based on liver temp someplace between three and four hours ago."

Brewster looked at his watch. "Okay, it's now about two a.m. That puts the time of death at between ten and eleven p.m. You called me at, what, one? So, you kill her at ten-thirty, get a friend to drop you off out to the sticks at maybe eleven, eleven-fifteen. The old guy gets you back to your place around midnight. You're back here by twelve-thirty tops. Plenty of time to call me and establish your alibi."

"So, I killed her, went through this elaborate routine, then came back here so that I can be found here with the body, after being careful to leave my wallet under the bed? Is that your theory?"

"I'm just sayin' it's possible. Maybe you killed her, set up your kidnapping, then realized that you had lost your wallet and you had to come back to get it."

"And why would I do that? I'd never heard of Carolyn Simpson until her lawyer hired me this afternoon."

"You said he paid you a thousand dollars. Show me."

"The kidnappers took it, along with my wallet," I snapped.

"Right."

"Talk to the lawyer, Willoughby. He'll tell you I had nothing to do with Carolyn Simpson before today."

"Yeah, well, that's another problem," Brewster said, frowning. "Victim's name isn't Carolyn Simpson. It Lisa Macintire."

"What?"

"Mail on the counter. Driver's license in her purse on the kitchen table. So, what's your relationship with Lisa Macintire?"

"I've never heard of her. This is the address Willoughby gave me for Carolyn Simpson. . . . Don't look at me like that. Ask him yourself."

"Oh, I will. And I'll do a dump on the victim's phone and your phone so if you've ever had any contact with her, you'd better tell me now."

I held up my hands in frustration.

Brewster turned off the recorder with a sharp click.

I glanced at one of the uniforms at the front door and realized that they had known nothing about Brewster being on the way.

"What were the uniforms doing here? You didn't call them."

"Anonymous tip."

"What a coincidence. Somebody else just happens to report the murder. What are the odds? You can't believe I did this.

"You're not wearin' cuffs, are you?"

"Then why--?"

"Jesus, LaFontaine, you were a cop. You know how this works. Guy's in the victim's house in the middle of the night. His wallet's got what looks like her blood on it. He's telling a story straight out of some whack-job conspiracy novel. He has no real alibi for the time of the murder. Christ, the only reason you're not locked up right now is that as far as I know you had no motive and I don't figure you for the kind of guy to do something like this without a good reason."

"Well, as long as I don't have a good reason," I snapped. "So, I'm free to go?"

"Just don't go too far. If I find you had any motive to hurt this woman I won't have any choice. I'll have to lock you up. If there's something you need to tell me, better tell me now. You know how this works."

"Yeah, I know how this works and no, I didn't do it."

"Okay, if I need anything more, I'll give you a call. Just make sure you answer."

"You know where to find me."

"That I do, Rafe. That I do."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

 

After my kidnapping, discovering a dead body and an all-night session with the homicide police, doing something that passed for normal PI business seemed almost surreal. I found it hard to shake the feeling that I was oscillating between the real world and a waking nightmare and not sure which was which.

Several days before I had made a lunch appointment with one of my regular clients, a criminal defense lawyer named Elizabeth Russell. If I could have afforded to blow her off I would have, but given the mess I was in, I figured I was going to need all the business I could get, not the mention possibly needing a good lawyer to defend me if Matt Brewster's paranoia got the better of him and he decided to lock me up on general principals.

A defense attorney on the way up, Elizabeth Russell wore a black power suit with a burgundy blouse to our lunch. After nine years in the Prosecuting Attorney's office she had opened a practice specializing in defending men accused of attacking women, the idea being to suggest to the jury that an educated, attractive woman would not defend a man who criminally abused women. Of course this theory ignored the fact that defending men who abused women often paid very well and that criminal lawyers were not in the business of promoting humanitarian principles.

Over the preceding year Elizabeth had hired me twice, once for a client who was an accused rapist and the second time to help defend an alleged stalker. On both occasions I had turned up derogatory information on key prosecution witnesses, information Russell had used to win one case outright and to negotiate the sentence in the other down to simple probation. Recently, she had retained me in connection with a client accused of pistol whipping a cashier during an armed robbery. I slipped into the chair opposite her and wondered if Brewster did arrest me if she would give me a professional discount on her fees.

"The Fogerty Pinot is very good," Elizabeth said when the waitress arrived. "I'm buying." She glanced at my copper-colored skin and hazel eyes, my broad shoulders and long-fingered hands and gave me her best smile, the one she reserved for old men from whom she needed a favor and younger men from whom she wanted benefits of a more personal nature. She called it her Gay-Dar smile because she believed that it only failed on men who were gay or dead, and she was pretty sure she could figure out if a guy was already dead.

I gave her an impersonal smile turned to the waitress. 

"I'd like an iced tea."

Elizabeth stifled a frown and took a sip of wine. He doesn't seem gay, I knew she was thinking.  I was having one of my increasingly frequent spells and I forced my face into an expression of polite interest. Where a normal man (and this was one of those increasingly frequent occasions when I reminded himself that I was in no sense of the word 'normal') would have seen a Hollywood-class face, I saw a protruding chin, sallow cheeks, bulging cheekbones, and narrow, flinty eyes. To me, Elizabeth's lustrous mahogany hair was dull and straggly and the color of long-dead leaves.

My iced tea arrived. She clinked our glasses and gave me another glance that looked like nothing so much as aging-crone's leer. I forced my lips into a used-car salesman's smile and decided that I had to stop doing business with this woman before my self-control cracked and I found himself flinching away from the threatened touch of her hand.

"Have you had any luck finding witnesses in the Padilla case?" she asked. I noticed how pointy her teeth were and how her tongue darted around inside her mouth like an eel in an underwater cave.

"I've tracked down another one," I told her, looking down as I squeezed a slice of lemon into my tea. "He was outside the restaurant when the gunman emerged." I slid a scrap of paper bearing the man's name and address across the table.

"Criminal record?"

I looked toward her but concentrated on the space just above her left ear.

"Some small stuff. Nothing major, nothing the P.A. would be able to use to discredit him on the stand."

"Will his ID match our client?"

"The cops never interviewed him. I'll try to get a statement from him tomorrow."

"What does he look like?"

"White, five feet eleven, brown hair, no glasses, no beard, a hundred eighty pounds, more or less."

"Not that different from Mr. Padilla. Okay, get his statement but don't push too hard. If his ID doesn't match, well and good. If it does, then, well, he was there. He looks as much like the robber as Padilla, and he's got a criminal record. Maybe he's the real robber." The air around Elizabeth's head pulsed an ugly shade of red.

"Reasonable doubt," I said, turning away. The waitress arrived with a pair of thick, white plates. Somewhere along the way I had zoned out and I had no idea what I had ordered. Elizabeth's lunch seemed to consist of a slab of raw meat which leaked purple blood. I stared at my own plate, some kind of fish I decided. I forced himself to take a bite. It seemed as tasteless as a slice of bean curd. I knew that I should have cancelled this meeting. I had learned from bitter experience that my spells intensified when I was under stress. I glanced around the restaurant but my gaze encountered only bloated, awkward men and stick-figured women, most of them babbling and slicing and stuffing their distorted faces. Clouds of emotion -- gluttony, hatred and fear, swirled around the diners like a fog.

"--you all right?"

"What?"

"I said, 'Are you all right?' You seemed like you were drifting away."

"Fine, fine," I answered. "I just had a bad night."

"Anything I can help you with?" Elizabeth asked, her chin getting pointier and the tip of her tongue whipping back and forth like a hungry snake.

"No! . . .  I mean, I discovered a body, a murder victim, yesterday and the cops had me answering questions all night."

"One of your clients?"

"Not exactly. It's all a little confused."

"If you need my help, you know where to find me." Elizabeth reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Her fingers felt as if they were coated with battery acid.

"Thanks, I'll let you know." I pulled my hand free and picked up my fork but somehow my food had disappeared leaving an empty plate behind. I glanced at my watch and gave my head a small shake. In my funk somehow almost an hour had slipped away. "I'll email you the full report this afternoon," I said, pulling a twenty from my pocket.

"It's on me, Rafe. Client expense. Are you sure you're all right?"

"Just a little worn down," I said, pushing back my chair. "Thanks for lunch. . . . I'll be fine."

I gave her a tired smile and turned away. Behind me I felt her confusion like a faint, distant cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Five

 

 

Since it was impossible to run a whodunit murder case from the night shift, Lisa Macintire's death forced the Lieutenant to re-assign Matt Brewster back to days.

"You drive," Brewster ordered his old partner, Stan Franklin, the afternoon following Lisa Macintire's murder.

"Jeeze, you look like shit," Franklin said, sliding the Crown Vic's seat as far back as it would go.

"I'd like to see how you'd look on four hour's sleep. I'm no kid anymore." Brewster laid his head against the backrest and closed his eyes.

"No kidding. Crap, is this right? This guy Willoughby's office is in Westminster? There aren't enough shysters in Baltimore, the vic had to hire one from out of town?"

"Maybe the vic's a relative," Brewster muttered, not opening his eyes.

"So, do you think Wonder Boy did it?" Franklin asked a minute after he pulled onto Highway 140.

"Depends on if he's smart enough to be this stupid. Where the hell are we?" Brewster squinted out the side window then leaned back. For a moment Franklin thought Brewster had gone to sleep.

"The way I see it, somebody wants LaFontaine out of the way real bad," Franklin said..

"And he doesn't know who that is?" Brewster said without opening his eyes.

"Claims not to."

"Excuse me for thinking that's a pile of shit. Somebody comes after you this hard, slits some woman's throat, a guy like LaFontaine's got to know something."

"You'd think."

"Damn straight."

Franklin lurched the Crown Vic through traffic alternately prodding the gas and tromping the brake, maneuvers Brewster found easier to endure with his eyes closed.

"You sure this guy's here?" Franklin asked when they reached the Westminster city limit.

"Nah, I figured we take a thirty mile drive for the hell of it and just take our chances."

"So you called his office?"

"Jesus, Stan, I told his secretary I wanted a consultation about a confidential matter and made an appointment for two-thirty."

Franklin glanced at his watch. "We're going to be a little late."

"Blame it on the traffic."

"I'm just sayin'."

Brewster turned away and laid his forehead against the side window, not speaking until the car squealed to a stop. They parked in a small, cracked asphalt lot behind a two-story brick building. A set of names on black plastic slats were mounted next to the rear door: Robert Alderson, CPA; Hi-Ho Travel Agency; Dr. Marvin Shapiro, Family Dentistry; Stuart Willoughby, Attorney and Counselor At Law. A set of worn stairs led to the second floor.

"This guy ain't eatin' too high on the hog," Franklin muttered as they trudged up the steps.

Willoughby's office consisted of an almost empty twelve by fifteen waiting room walled with fake mahogany paneling. At the far end a scared desk holding an ancient CRT, a keyboard and a printer was manned by a gray-haired woman in a pink and green print dress.

"Can I help you?" She peered up uneasily at Franklin's huge shoulders and ebony skin.

"Detective Franklin, Baltimore Police. This is my partner, Detective Brewster." Each man flashed his tin.

"We have an appointment with Mr. Willougby," Brewster added. "Two-thirty."

The woman consulted a calendar with tear-off pages, then gave Brewster a nervous smile.

"Yes, I see it right here." She paused and, getting no further explanation about why two Baltimore detectives had made an appointment with her boss, picked up the phone and pressed two buttons.

"Mr. Willoughby, your two-thirty is here. A Detective Brewster and a Detective . . . ?"

"Franklin."

"A Detective Franklin." She listened for a moment then put down the receiver. "He'll be right out."

Five minutes later Willoughby's pudgy form appeared. Franklin thought he looked like an aged Pillsbury Dough Boy stuffed into a tweed suit one size too small.

"Gentlemen. Which of you is Detective Brewster?"

"That's me."

"This is a bit awkward, Detective."

"How's that?"

"You made an appointment and, as you know, attorneys charge for their time."

Franklin made a little snort which earned him a sharp look.

"Sorry, Mr. Willoughby, but if the police started paying witnesses for their time, where would it end? Why don't we go into your office."

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable giving you a free consultation."

"The alternative is that we take you back to Baltimore and interview you at the station."

"On what grounds?"

"Or we could put the cuffs on you right now for obstruction of justice. Of course, then we'd have to notify the State Bar Association. They might have to put you on probation until the case was over. Your choice."

For a moment Willoughby's glaze flickered randomly around the room. 

"Well, since I've already cleared the time on my calendar, I suppose the simplest thing would be to talk to you and get this over with."

Franklin started to say something but Brewster tapped his shoulder and they followed Willoughby into an office barely larger and better furnished than the waiting room.          "What's this all about?" the lawyer demanded once seated in an executive chair extended to the limit of its vertical travel so that his eyes were almost on a level with Franklin's massive head.

"You have a client by the name of Carolyn Simpson?"

"I make it a practice never to discuss client matters."

"Attorney-client privilege only extends to information you haven't already disclosed to a third party. We have a statement from a Raphael LaFontaine that you told him that she was your client. Is that true or not?"

Willoughby paused a moment then gave a little shrug.

"Yes, I told Mr. LaFontaine that Carolyn Simpson is my client, though I must say that I am disappointed that he would breach my confidence by repeating a conversation concerning a client matter."

Brewster opened his notepad and flipped the page.

"You were present when Mr. LaFontaine called Ms. Simpson at 410-555-6739?"

"Yes."

"You heard Mr. LaFontaine set up a meeting with Ms. Simpson for ten-thirty last evening?"

"Yes." Willoughby fixed Brewster with a stony stare.

"You gave Mr. LaFontaine a retainer of $1,000 in one-hundred dollar bills?" Brewster asked, not looking up from his notes.

"Yes."

"You told him that Ms. Simpson was having problems with a stalker."

"I refuse to answer any questions about my client's legal situation."

"Mr. Willoughby, this is information that you've already told Mr. LaFontaine."

"If that's true, then you don't need anything further from me."

"I'm just trying to confirm Mr. LaFontaine's story."

"Then do it some way other than asking me questions about information I may or may not have received from my client."

"You told Mr. LaFontaine that your client's address was 5691 Fortis Avenue in Baltimore?"

"Same answer."

"It's just an address."

"You're a detective. If you want to check an address you don't need me."

"Did Ms. Simpson give you that address?"

"Same answer."

"You apparently told Mr. LaFontaine that Ms. Simpson was referred to you by another client. Who would that be?"

"Same answer."

"I hardly see how that falls under the heading of attorney-client privilege."

"Well, I do."

"We could do this the hard way."

"Don't threaten me detective. If you want any more information, serve me with a subpoena and get a judge to order me to answer your questions, because that's the only way I going to tell you anything."

"We can do that, but before we leave, I need to know what--"

"I told you, I'm not answering any more of your questions. I'm a lawyer and I know my rights. Your badge is no good here. You don't have any authority outside the Baltimore city limits. Now, I'm asking you to leave my office or I'm going to call the Westminster Police and ask them to escort you out."

"We'll be back," Brewster warned as he got to his feet.

"Don't bother unless you've got a subpoena." Willoughby climbed down from his highchair and opened his office door. "Ms. Waldritch will see you out."

The secretary peered up at the two detectives, uncertain if she was supposed to eject them from the office.

"Ms. Waldritch," Brewster said politely as he passed her desk.

"Detective Brewster, Detective Franklin," she said equally politely in return, then peered at her boss through the narrowing gap of his closing door. A moment later she saw the light on her telephone console glow and heard a muffled conversation from his office. Try as she might she couldn't make out a single word, though she recognized Mr. Willougby's tone. Angry and a little scared she decided. She had heard those emotions in his voice more and more over the previous few months and she wondered what trouble the silly little man had gotten himself into this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Six

 

 

Winton Deets sat behind his steel desk in the Get-U-Out Bail Bonds office and watched the door. A desk all the way in the back could give some skell enough time to run in and steal something before Deets could stop him. A desk next to the door might encourage a dissatisfied or fleeing customer to take a whack at him before disappearing into the Fayette Street traffic. So, being a thoughtful man, Deets positioned his desk in the middle of the room, just far enough back so that the tint on the windows would make it difficult for a crook on the lam to take a pot shot at him on his way out of town.

A pudgy man with close-cropped curly hair above a half-moon face, Deets, Dee to his friends, had always been a careful man. When his friends spurned school in favor of boosting cars he waited, often buying their meager possessions for pennies on the dollar when they needed money for bail. For a while he figured that when he got out of school he would go into the pawnshop business but he realized that it held too many problems. Half the stuff was stolen, which got you into trouble with the cops, and the stuff that wasn't made an attractive target for the legions of mopes who were always looking for something to grab, if they didn't just shoot you for the cash in the till.

The bail bond business was much simpler. The ten percent fee was paid up front and there was no inventory to worry about. The only real problem was the skips, and that risk could be controlled. Most mopes were creatures of habit, never venturing far from the neighborhood where they grew up, and when they did leave town it was usually for someplace where they had kin. You got the mother to give you the title to her car and sonny wasn't gonna run and if he did mom and all his uncles and cousins were gonna turn him in as fast as they could dial the phone. You got the family on your side and the punks had no place to hide.

And for those few crooks, like Benny Cianfone, who could add two and two in their head and come up with four, guys who were smart enough to make a decent run for it, you called in somebody like Raphael LaFontaine.

 

*     *     *

 

Like everybody else around the courthouse, Deets had heard about the dead woman I had found and figured out that I was going to need some personal time to get myself straight with the cops which meant that I needed quick cash work. Deets looked up when the bell over the door jangled. A buzzer wouldn't work if the power died but bells never failed. Winton Deets was a careful man.

Deets raised a hand the size and color a center fielder's mitt and waved me in.

"Dee," I called and worked my way through the dimly lit office. Deets never liked people watching him from outside. A single CFL bulb cast a harsh blue-white light across the papers on his desk. I pulled a steel chair into the aisle so that I could talk to him without turning my back toward the door. "What's up?"

"I got a guy I need your help with." Deets slid a folder to my side of the desk.  The left side held an eight and a half by eleven color photo of Benny Cianfone. Winton kept a ten megapixel digital camera in his desk and the first thing he did with a new client was to take a head and shoulders shot. The second thing was to have the client place his right hand on a high-resolution scanner so that he would have his palm print and a full set of digitized fingerprints. If he had had the equipment to run a DNA scan Deets would have done that too.

The picture showed a sallow-skinned man with a sly smile, wavy black hair, thin lips and bleached-white teeth. I was never ever able to read a person from a photograph. Photos were dead for me, but the expression on Cianfone's face, the curl of his lips, the slight, sideways look in his eyes all painted a picture of a clever, deceitful man.

"Burglar," I said, scanning the charge sheet.

"Degenerate thief, gambler and tail-hound. If you got it, he'll either steal it, bet it or hump it."

"Fancy dresser." I noted the beige sport coat, caramel-colored silk shirt and the gold chain around Cianfone's neck. "How long has he been gone?"

"His lawyer lost a motion to suppress last Tuesday and the P.A. added a couple of new charges to the indictment. Benny was supposed to show up Thursday morning to enter a plea to the new counts but he was a no-show. His lawyer got the bench warrant stayed until yesterday. Benny's now officially AWOL."

"Why'd you wait?"

"When the new charges came down his lawyer asked for more money and I figured Benny was out of town doing another job to get the cash." Deets shrugged. "I guess I was wrong. There's a grand in it if you can find him. Vinny will do the rest."

"What's the bond?"

Deets hesitated for a second then answered: "A hundred K."

"Your fee was ten. I ought to ask for five, but since we're friends I'll do it for $2,500."

Deets considered his options: lose the whole hundred thousand and wait for Cianfone to get himself arrested someplace else, which might take years, or pay me.

"Done," Winton said, extending his hand. "But you'd better give me a chance to win it back next Friday."

"That'll be the day when you take money off me in poker." I turned back to the file. "I need to know where he likes to go when he's got money."

"The Hot Spot, the Del Rio or the Harbor Crash, take your pick."

"Which will be the easiest for Vinnie to drag him out of?"

"The Harbor Crash likes its patrons to take their problems outside."

A thick manila envelope was stapled to the back of the file. I pried it open and removed three small glass vials marked with a "U" an "S" and an "F."

"He thinks I keep the spit and pee for drug tests," Deets volunteered.

"What story did you give him to explain why you wanted a clipping from one of his fingernails?"

"He thinks I've got a doctor over at Hopkins who analyzes them for drugs and poison," Deets laughed.

"Why does he think you'd care if he'd been poisoned?"

"I told him I had to know in case he dropped dead someplace and didn't make it to court," Deets said, laughing harder. "Stupid mope."

I shook my head in disbelief then closed the file.

"Does he know Vinnie?"

"No, he's good."

"Okay, have Vinnie meet me at the Harbor Crash at nine. This is going to take a few hours."

 

*     *     *

 

I paused when I reached the entrance to Plegger's Alley. From this spot four months before I had watched the attendant load Hyacinth LeJeune's body into the Coroner's van. I cleared my head with a little shake and made my way to what had been Hyacinth's, and was now my little shop.

At the far end of the store's main room the manager and only employee, Santos, peered at a customer whose presence jangled my nerves like an out-of-tune melody. The man presented a confusion of tones, leather dress shoes with rubber soles, black jeans matched with a blue-linen dress shirt, chocolate-brown hair above an expanse of pale skin, massive shoulders riding on an average frame.

"What you want that for?" Santos asked, his lips barely moving.

"Personal use," the man answered.

I edged closer, catching a flicker of attention in Santos' eyes. The customer's shoulders were tense, the fingers on his right hand trembling as if he was struggling not to close them into a fist. I stared at the man with unfocused eyes and felt as if I was looking into a pit as devoid of human emotion as an empty sack. I turned toward Santos and gave my head a tiny shake.

"We don't got none," Santos said.

"Let me take a look around." The customer nodded at the banks of small cabinets and drawers studding the walls. "Maybe you missed it."

"If I say we don't got none, then we don't got none."

"You mean you don't have any for me," the man said, his lips pulled into a tight line.

"For you we don't got nuthin' a-tol."

Santos laid the barrel of a cut-down baseball bat on the counter. For a heartbeat the customer stared into Santos' eyes then turned and sauntered out the door with barely a glance in my direction.

"What'd he want?"

"Him, he be wantin' makins for somethin' no decent man be wantin' to do." I gave Santos a questioning look. "For callin' up dead things and things that make things dead. He got demon stink on him. You want me to sell him that stuff, me, I be leavin' now."

With a body like black leather stretched over a tall bundle of sticks, Santos glared at me, daring me to disagree. Four months before I had inherited Santos along with Hyacinth's ageless blue parrot, Shantrell, both of whom I regarded as forces of nature like storms and high tides.

"No, you did right. We don't want his kind in here. If he comes back, you kick his ass out the door."

The skin around Santos's mouth relaxed a fraction and I felt as if I were watching the sun beginning to peek through a squall of black clouds.

"Is there anything you need?" I asked when he handed me my order.

"I need somethin', me, I tell you."

As usual, when I let Santos' image blur out of focus I had the feeling that I was in the presence of an obsidian statue. Another one of my visions, my little spells that came and went without warning. Sometimes I thought of my hallucinations it as a gift, sometimes as a curse.

Tall and slender with skin the bronze color of a roan horse, I knew my appearance confused people on some subtle level. If asked, they variously guessed my age at someplace between thirty and forty depending on how the light struck the planes of my face. Although I struggled like some disciple of Henry Higgins to match my speech to the rhythms of Baltimore I was never totally successful, the thick sweetness of Louisiana seeping in with an occasional dropped "g" and rounded "e" so that in times of stress "Let's find out if that guy's carrying" came out "Lat's fin out if that gah's carryin'."

When I heard myself slip too far in the tones of my youth I would grit my teeth and resolve again to work harder on being "normal." My friends on the cops used to rib me about refusing to tie my life to a cell phone.

"Hey, Bro, check out my iPhone. Click, click, and I'm on the Net. My girlfriend just IM'd me. She wants me to pick up Chinese."

As far as I was concerned cells were for making calls and, occasionally, receiving them. The rest of it was just bullshit.

"Jeeze, Rafe, you're like my Grandpa or something," my last partner, Terry Mason, had taunted me.

"I was born and bred in Beauregard Parish," I had told him. "This IM stuff is too complicated for a country boy like me."

What I had never told Terry was that I had run away from home when I was just sixteen, as far as I knew then barely one step ahead of a backwoods sheriff and a pair of handcuffs. For the next several years I lived an underground life on the run, dead-end cash jobs, always looking over my shoulder for the flash of a badge and the blue steel of a gun. It was a life in which there was no place for IMs or iPods or MP3s. And even if there were, a rootless kid who's always looking behind him doesn't have any real friends to IM with; he can't afford to have any real friends. Inevitably, friends ask questions. Friends figure things out about your past. For years, I lived my life almost as a mute, barely talking to anyone beyond "The dumpster's full" or "Jerry says he needs another case of Bud." The intricacies of intimate conversation were as foreign to me as sun-tan lotion to a fish.

When I finally got serious about building a future beyond cash jobs and backroom flops, I figured that I would have to learn how to masquerade as a normal person. A freak who wants to walk around in broad daylight has to have a disguise. But what kind? I got my answers from yard-sale, two-for-a-quarter paperback novels. After passing my GED exam I read used books, searching for clues on how real people, or at least real, fictional people, talked to each other.

I quickly gave up hope that classics like Moby Dick or Jane Eyre or A Tale of Two Cities would do me any good. Their dialogs were too stilted and too emblematic of another age. A Passage To India and The Heart Of Darkness seemed equally incompatible with my plan for a new life. Deciding that my first job would be as a cop, I gravitated to books like The Godfather and Jonathan Kellerman and Martin Cruz Smith detective stories. Something about the rhythm of Arcady Renko's enigmatic comments attracted my wounded heart, a style of speech that also seemed to appeal the to the young cops I met on the job with the BPD.

What style and cadence of speech belonged to my true self remains, I think, undiscovered territory, someplace I've never allowed friends or lovers to explore, and one that may no longer exist. I've told myself that I can't miss something that I've never had. Instead I've worked at cultivating a patter as snappy as that of any of a half a dozen hard-boiled detective-heroes who fill the paperbacks in the bookstores' bargain bin. Sometimes I think about the "real" me, the real Raphael LaFontaine, and I wonder if the imposter I have created has not, at last, become the man.

"You want somthin'?" Santos asked, pulling me out of my memories.

"I've got some work to do," I told him as I let himself through the gate.

"What you gonna make?"

"A friend needs to find someone."

"You got what you need for the trick?"

"I could use a green bag."

Santos opened a cabinet on the far wall and extracted a small, draw-string green flannel bag like a prospector's poke. I entered the back room and mixed a few drops of Cianfone's urine with water and sprayed it in a fine mist on seven pieces of paper torn from the back of a hundred year old book. On each piece I wrote "Benjamin Cianfone" nine times in red ink. Into the center of each piece I sprinkled a pinch of magnetic sand and twisted the ends then dropped them in the green mojo bag. Lastly I added cinnamon, calamus root and the piece of Cianfone's fingernail to a small coffee grinder and poured the resultant powder into the center of a two inch square of paper which I folded tight. Using a cotton swab I dabbed a single drop of Cianfone's spit on the front of the packet and put it into the mojo bag with the rest. Lastly, I added a small green candle then pulled the bag closed.

 

*    *     *

 

Vinnie Malloy had been Winton Deets' dog catcher off and on for the past five years. Before Vinnie took over, Deets had used a Samoan named Lemahai Tuiasosopo until he got in a brawl with a Tongan clan over a woman who went by the name "Leila Lai." When axe handles and baseball bats failed to settle the matter knives emerged and Tuiasosopo ended up fleeing the state. Leila Lai disappeared a month later. Some said they had gone back to the islands. Others claimed they had changed their names and were living someplace in Northern California. After that Vinnie took over Lemahai's vacant position, a change that pleased Deets in numerous small ways.

With broad shoulders, a barrel chest, a craggy face shaped like the stepped course of a stream falling down a rocky slope, Vinnie looked like a brute in a Hollywood gangster film, but his menacing appearance was melded with a surprisingly placid nature. Vinnie rarely raised his voice and threats were not a normal part of his vocabulary. Mostly, he quietly told people what he needed them to do and if they refused, he applied just enough force to make them change their minds. In spite of his bulk he was surprisingly agile and, though his fists were the size of small hams, you were more likely to see Vinnie using them to brush the tangles from one of his dogs' coats than breaking the jaw of a fleeing bail-jumper.

Vinnie lived in a tumbledown house someplace off the Pulaski Highway with anywhere between three and five strays he had rescued, nursed back to heath, then convinced people to adopt. His usual method of persuasion was simple and direct. Vinnie would show up at the new owner's house and hand the recipient a leash and a five pound bag of dog food followed by a simple statement: "You need a dog. Here."

Some years ago a candidate failed to live up to his new responsibilities and was waylaid by an unknown assailant and treated to two broken legs. Vinnie greeted him upon his discharge from the hospital with a leash and a simple message: "Here's your dog." No one in the neighborhood disappointed Vinnie again.

"Hey, Vin," I called when I spotted Malloy at the end of the Harbor Crash's darkened bar.

"Rafe." Malloy gave me a little nod.

I handed the big man a draft which Malloy downed in three long gulps. "Deets fill you in?"

"Yeah, he showed me the skip's picture. I'm supposed to deliver him to the cops. I got the van out back."

"Let's take a walk around. You show me where you want to grab him from."

If Vinnie found it strange that I thought I could get Cianfone to pick a particular table he gave no evidence of it. Instead we silently walked the almost deserted club checking the exits and the location of the bathrooms.

"Over there," Vinnie said, pointing to a table near the back. "I can scoop him up and get him out the door real easy from there."

"Okay, why don't you get us that table." I pointed to one a little closer to the center of the room. While Vinnie slumped into a chair at least one size too small for him I wandered back to where Vinnie wanted the target. With my back toward the bar I removed the sweat-stained bindle from the mojo bag and sprinkled its contents at the four points of the compass then burned the wrapper in the decorative candle at the center of the table. Next I transferred the green candle and the seven twisted packets to my pocket and fastened the mojo  bag underneath the table with a strip of duct tape.

"You want a pitcher?" I asked when I re-joined Vinnie.

"I don't like to drink too much when I'm working."

"Coke okay?"

"Yeah."

I placed the order then set up the green candle in the center of our table. One by one I burned the seven paper packets in its flame. From my inside pocket I removed a powder-filled bindle which I transferred to the tip of my tongue with seven touches of a moistened finger while in my head I repeated the attraction spell my mother had taught me so long ago. At the last of the seven touches my vision blurred and the flame seemed to flicker and snap. In a daze, I barely registered the waitress deliver our pitcher and two glasses. Vinnie gave me a long look then threw a twenty on her tray and told her to keep the change. Some unknown amount of time later the room slowly came back into focus. The club was three quarters full and echoed with music and laughter. In my right hand I held an almost empty glass.

"You back?" Vinnie asked.

"Yeah." My head seemed to pulse in time to the music and the green candle's flame looked as big as a cheery.

"Are we good?"

"He'll be here," I promised, watching the flame grow fractionally bigger. Half an hour later the flame seemed to me to be the size of a ping-pong ball, snapping and popping and giving off little green sparks. "He's on his way," I said, my voice rough and tight.

"OK."

Vinnie took a set of plastic wrist-ties from his back pocket and held them under the edge of the table. I reached for my glass but found it was empty. The flame turned bright green and ballooned to the size of a small apple. Vinnie didn't seem to notice.

"He's here," I croaked.

Vinnie turned a careful eye toward the door.

"Got him," he said a moment later.

At the far entrance a slender man in an electric blue shirt and tight black pants paused just inside the doorway and nervously scanned the room. Vinnie let his eyes slide past and fasten on the blonde with the low-cut blouse at the end of the bar. Benny made a cautious circuit, pausing at the bar to order a bright red cocktail made with some fancy flavored vodka from California. Vinnie ignored him and waived the waitress down for another pitcher of Coke. It took Benny ten minutes to assure himself that nobody was interested in him and find his way to the still empty table where I had secreted the mojo bag. When Benny sat down the green candle gave one final flare and burned out.

Careful not to spook his prey, Vinnie waited until the new pitcher was delivered and he had downed another glass then he turned to me.

"I'm off," he said, nodding toward the bathrooms. Swaying slightly, as if a little drunk, Vinnie worked his way through the thickening crowd, paying no attention to Benny until he passed the burglar's chair, at which point he grabbed Benny's elbows, pulled his arms behind his back and slipped the plastic loops over Benny's wrists as smoothly as Julia Child might truss a pair of chicken legs.

Benny barely had time to croak "What the---" before Vinnie had him turned around and headed for the emergency exit. Five seconds later they were gone with hardly a ripple marking their passage.

Sweating, I chugged down a glass of Coke and headed for the front door. I caught up with Vinnie as he was forcing a struggling Benny Cianfone into the back of his van.

"You need any help?"

"What the fuck is goin' on!" Benny shouted.

"I'm good," Vinnie said, controlling the squirming burglar with one hand.

"Who the hell do you think you guys are? You can't fuckin' do this to me."

"Okay," I said, stuffing a twenty into Vinnie pocket. "I owe you for the Cokes."

"Hey, I know you?" Benny shouted, peering at me.

"I gotta hook you to the ring," Vinnie said, fishing out a second plastic tie. "You keep squirming like that you might get hurt." Vinnie climbed into the back of the van and dragged Benny to a steel shackle welded to the floor.

"Fuck, I know you," Bennie called to me. "You used to be a fuckin' cop. I heard about you. Your tit's in a wringer now." His shout was almost a laugh.

"You're the guy who's getting locked up."

"Daytime burglary, big fucking deal. I'll be out in two years."

"Practically a vacation."

Vinnie clambered out of the van.

"You pissed off the wrong people," Benny sneered.

"How would a small-timer like you know?"

"Hey, I'm plugged in. I know people."

"Say 'Hi' to Donald Trump for me."

"Go ahead and run your mouth but you stepped on some big toes, wise-guy. You think I'm making this up? I hear things."

"Yeah, have you heard this one about not dropping the soap in the shower?"

Vinnie shut the doors.

"Do you believe that guy?" I asked, my skin burning.

"You want me to ask him a few questions before I give him to the cops?"

I took a long look at Vinnie's monstrous hands.

"Don't cause yourself any trouble."

"No trouble," Vinnie said.

"I guess if a guy wants to talk, it doesn't hurt to listen."

"It sure won't hurt me," Vinnie said with a thin smile just before he slipped into the driver's seat and drove away.