Strange Trades (34 page)

“Before I can sleep, I go around to all our businesses and make sure they’re locked up safe. The Koffeehouse is last, at midnight.”

Thurman thought this sounded obsessive, but only said, “Even on the weekend?”

“Like maybe thieves don’t work weekends?”

“Well, I guess I’ll say goodbye then—”

“No, don’t! Please. You can keep me company.”

“Ride shotgun?”

Shenda made pistol fingers and fired a few imaginary shots into the dust. “Dance, pardner!”

The three of them got into the Jetta, Bullfinch sprawled in the back seat, and were soon circulating down lonesome urban trails.

Their small sedate city was winding down by the time they pulled up to the Karuna.

All dark, save for a lone light still on in the kitchen.

“That’s probably Fuquan, getting the beans ready for tomorrow so he can sleep in late. He’s got a key.”

Emboldened by this time spent together, Thurman was about to inquire just what, if anything, Shenda felt for that obnoxious guy.

Then a gunshot sounded, plain as a million dollar vase shattering.

From inside the Karuna.

“No!” yelled Shenda.

The woman and the dog were out of the car before Thurman could even get the unfamiliar door open. Damn, where was the
handle
—!

All hell arrived, with bells on.

An enormous
CRUMP!
, followed by a
WHOOSH!
, and the Karuna burst into flames, sending glass flying like deadly stars into the street.

A stick figure in a business suit emerged from the storeside alley like a demon stepping from an inferno. He walked calmly away from the blazing structure, gun hanging down by his side.

Shenda hesitated, but Bullfinch did not.

The dog raced across the street and catapulted himself at the man.

The living skeleton’s reaction was out of all proportion to the unarmed assault. As if facing some supernatural creature, the arsonist-killer dropped his gun, screamed, threw up his arms and tottered backward.

Bullfinch impacted, sending the man over completely to bounce his head off the curb.

By the time Thurman made his lame way over, Shenda was kicking the unconscious man in the side and screaming.

“Bastard! You fucking killer
bastard
!”

Thurman pulled her back. “Shenda, stop!”

Shenda collapsed like a string-and-bead toy whose pushed button releases the tension that sustains it. Thurman kneeled to hold her up. A migraine was flowering behind his eyes.

And then he saw the killer’s face.

Furnace skies. Sand lacquered with blood. Greasy, roilsome black clouds.…

And to his instant horror, Thurman knew he knew him.

11.

La Iyalocha

Nothing would ever, ever be the same.

And Shenda Moore was the one to blame.

This sad couplet ran and ran in Shenda’s brain. Like a mean virus of found poetry self-assembled from fridge-magnet vocabulary. As towers and spurts of crackling fire illuminated her dog and the two men and her own crumpled self on the oil-slicked macadam, Shenda realized with absolute certainty that what she had long awaited and pretended not to fear—like a child whistling in Oya’s graveyard—had now found her. The unraveling of all her careful labors. The major fuck-up. The explosion of chaos you’re lucky to walk away from. The shitstorm that takes innocent bystanders and chews them up like pumpkin seeds.

Innocents like Fuquan Fletcher.

Poor Fuquan!

And despite all prior pretense of equanimity, the disaster scared her.

Scared the piss out of her—

And made her fighting mad!

Some sick and evil motherfucker was going to pay.

Sirens began to wail like delighted banshees. Shenda leaped to her feet.

“In the car with this pig. Quick!”

Thurman’s expression revealed major perplexity. “But the police—”

“The police are whores! They
know
this man and his bosses! They suck at the same hindteat! Believe me!”

Thurman bent and lifted the unconscious killer’s arms. Shenda saw the crippled Swan try to hide a wince and grunt.

“Oh, Thurman, I forgot. Can you do it?”

“I can do it—”

Between them they hustled the guy into the back seat of the Jetta. Shenda lashed his arms and legs together with rope from the trunk. Bullfinch leaped in and sat atop the man’s chest, proudly on guard. Shenda and Thurman piled in. They tore off in the direction opposite from the hastening firetrucks just a block away.

“Where are we going?”

“To my aunt’s house.”

Shenda hadn’t known the answer to Thurman’s question until he asked it. But as soon as she opened her mouth, their destination was obvious.

Only Titi Yaya could help her now.

As she drove, Shenda filled Thurman in on the shakedown moves being directed at the Karuna and other businesses in town.

“This has to be Maraplan’s doing. Mealey and his fucking Zingo! He practically told me something like this was coming. And me, the stupid smart bitch, so
muy
competent, thinking I could handle everything myself! Look where it got me. Look where it got Fuquan!”

Shenda could feel tears threatening to spill out. No, not yet. She sought to relieve some of her feelings by smacking the steering wheel with her fists; the car veered; she recovered.

Thurman looked appalled. “Shenda, don’t be so hard on yourself. If the authorities were in on this, what else could you have done?”

“A lot! I could have hired some security guards, for one thing.”

“And then maybe more people would have died. No, these are jokers who don’t mind how many bodies they leave in their wake.”

Shenda turned to study her passenger’s face. “You sound so sure. What do you know?”

Thurman shared what he knew.

“Louie Kablooie,” whispered Shenda.
El pulpo
grew more and more tentacles. In a louder voice: “Then the jerks behind Zingo—they’re the same ones who fucking poisoned all you Gulf War vets!”

“It sure looks like it.”

“I hate them!”

Thurman said nothing for a moment. Presently: “Well, I was full of hate for a long time too. Then you told me it was all old shit.”

Shenda was too angry to listen to her own past advice. “Well, it’s new shit again. Get pissed.”

Their cargo did not awake during their journey cross-town. Within twenty minutes, Shenda was in the neighborhood, parking in front of the brownstone where Titi Yaya lived.

They hustled the killer up the steps like a sack of cornmeal, the pudgy daffodil Bullfinch somberly following, one awkward jump at a time, tags on his collar jingling. Shenda rang her aunt’s bell just to alert the woman, but used her own key. They were quickly in the tile-floored foyer without anyone seeing their unconventional arrival.

Thurman was gasping. “Is there an elevator?”

Shenda was winded too. And everything felt unreal. “Not needed. Just down the hall.”

They half dragged their captive down the hall. At the end, a door was already opening.

There stood Titi Yaya, elder sister of Shenda’s Mom, Consolacion Amado.

La iyalocha.

The small and trim old woman wore a blue-striped white-flannel robe and corduroy slippers. Necklaces and bracelets adorned her form. Long, unbound coal-black hair was at odds with her age-lined, dark honey-colored face. Equally unlikely—yet so comfortingly familiar to Shenda—was a vibrant power, tinged with sexuality, that radiated off her, blazed in her eyes.

“I was not sleeping,” said Titi Yaya. “The cowries told me there would be trouble tonight, Shen-Shen. And I encountered the twisted branch of Eleggua in my path on the way to the store this morning. I knew that you would need me.”

“Oh, Titi! Everything’s gone wrong!”

“We’ll fix what we can. Although I have to tell you the signs are not good.”

They were inside, door shut, as safe as possible, considering.

Shenda looked around. Nothing had changed since the day a scared and tearful five-year-old had come to live here, after the child’s father, Tresvant Moore, crack-addled, had killed Consolacion and himself.

All the furniture was old-fashioned and immaculate, much of it in transparent plastic covers. Worn rugs had been vacuumed speckless. Artificial flowers and innocuous prints decorated end tables and papered walls. Smells of cooking, ancient and recent, permeated the air—and below that olfactory layer, the unmistakable whiff of
omiero
, that potent herbal concoction.

So far, so normal, an apartment like that of any other
aleyo
, any other nonbeliever.

But then Shenda’s eye traveled to the altars and shrines, earthly homes of the celestial
orisha
gods and afterlife
eggun
spirits. Colorful and cloth-draped, laden with statues, pictures, vases,
sopera
tureens, instruments of sacrifice. Sumptuously bestrewn with offerings of live flowers, toys, cigars, rum and food.

Titi Yaya’s apartment was a
casa de santo
, a Santeria temple, site of a thousand, thousand ceremonies, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly observances and propitiations, possessions, beseechings and repayments, spell-castings and curse-cleansings, a refuge for petitioners and meeting place for Titi Yaya’s peers, the male
babalawos
and female
iyalochas
.

All of this had been taken for granted by the growing child named Shenda Moore. She had hardly given a thought to the various sanctified weirdness that she had often witnessed. The
tambors
, the
rogati
ó
n de cabeza
, the
Pinaldos
. It had all been part of the new stability she had experienced upon being taken under the wing of her unmarried aunt.

And yet, somehow, she had never penetrated fully into the Religion—or it had failed to penetrate her. About the time she would have been expected to commit to Santeria, she began hanging with the Black kids at school—her father’s seductive heritage—and the Cuban half of her background grew even less interesting to her. Analogue, antique and uncool.

After testing the stubborn strength of her niece’s convictions, Titi Yaya had refrained from coercion. Only an occasional mild reminder from time to time that the door was still open.

Santeria didn’t proselytize, didn’t do missionary work.

You came to
la iyalocha
because you
needed
the
orishas
.

And now Shenda was here.

But maybe too late.

Titi Yaya stooped to pet Bullfinch and whisper in his ear. The dog’s tail propellered. Rising, the
santera
addressed Shenda.

“Get that man in a chair. And untie him.”

“But Titi, he’s a killer!”

“He can cause no harm here.”

With Thurman’s help, Shenda did as she was told. Shanghaied into this mess, the man was being more accepting than Shenda had any right to expect.

Thurman whispered. “Your aunt. She’s some kind of witch?”

“Not witch. Priestess.”

“Oh. Her place is weird. But nice. You know—I had a massive headache when I came in here, but it’s gone now.”

“That always happens.”

Across the room, Titi Yaya, now barefoot, took no notice of them. She made the
foribale
, the prostration before the altar.

The altar of Babalu-Aye.

Louie Kablooie, as five-year-old Shenda had dubbed him.

Saint Lazarus was the plaster Catholic disguise the
orisha
wore: a loincloth-clad, sore-riddled, bearded beggar with crutch, his loyal dog always by his side.

Standing now, shredding coconut husk fibers before the statue, feeding with liquid the saint’s sacred stones concealed in the ornate tureen, chanting in Yoruban, Titi Yaya was invoking his help.

She paused, turned to her visitors.

“I need the
derecho
.”

Shenda’s purse was forgotten in the car. She said to Thurman, “Give me a dollar.”

Thuman dug in his pocket and came up with a bill. Shenda passed it to
la iyalocha
, who tucked it into a niche of the statue.

The ceremony was long and complex. The day began to catch up with Shenda. Despite all the terror and turbulent emotions, she found her eyelids drooping. She cast a glance at Thurman Swan. He seemed riveted, as did an alert Bullfinch. The Mara- plan-Isoterm hireling remained eyelid-shuttered and unstirring.

Suddenly Titi Yaya spun and was upon them. It was not as if she had moved, but as if the room had revolved around her.

Behind her face Babalu-Aye dwelled.

The old woman clutched the killer around the waist with both hands. His body jolted as if electrified, his eyes snapping open.

Then she—or rather, the orisha within her—lifted him as if weightless, holding him effortlessly aloft.