“No. He may be drawn to places or people that were familiar to him in life,” Max said. “But, as Puma has indicated, he is devoid of reason or awareness. Whatever he does, he will not behave as if he were still alive.”
“Oh, my God,” I said slowly. “Max, I think I know why the baka attacked Darius!” I recalled the way the two little creatures had made a swift beeline across the street that night to the spot where they assaulted Darius. They were
hunting
him. “If he awakened and, er, wandered away from home—”
“Or fled captivity,” said Puma.
“Then maybe the baka were
sent
after him,” I said.
“Ah!” said Max. “To retrieve him for the bokor?”
“Yes.”
“Or maybe the bokor wanted to get rid of the evidence before anyone saw his runaway zombie and started asking questions?” Biko suggested. “Maybe the baka were sent to dismember Mr. Phelps and scatter the parts!”
“Okay, what do you say we put away these leftovers?” Jeff said loudly.
I took a deep breath. “So what we’re saying is—”
“What do you mean ‘we’?” said Jeff as he and Puma rose to start packing up the food and throw away our paper plates and plastic utensils. “
I’m
voting for the robot theory.”
“It’s a stupid theory, man,” said Biko.
“Okay, then I’m voting for the detective’s theory,” Jeff shot back, folding aluminum foil over what was left of the chicken.
Puma frowned. “What’s the detective’s theory again?”
“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “But it’s got to be better than
this
.”
“Let’s get
our
theory straight,” I said. “Darius dies of a freak medical problem, and there happens to be a bokor in the neighborhood who decides to raise him from the dead, wanting a slave who’ll be completely obedient to his or her will. Is that what we’re saying?”
“Actually, I think we should consider the possibility that the death was not accidental,” Max said.
We all looked at him in surprise.
Then Jeff said, “It was a ruptured intestine, Max. If there had been anything suspicious about it, the doctors would have told the cops. And the cops would have started sniffing around Darius’ life—including his workplace. But nothing like that has happened.”
Max said, “A bokor powerful enough to raise a zombie from the dead and conjure baka could, I’m sorry to say, commit murder and make it appear to be natural causes.”
This statement had a sobering effect on us all.
“Mr. Phelps might have been killed?” Biko said. “Deliberately?”
“Perhaps,” Max said.
“To
make
him a zombie?” When Max nodded, I said, “That’s awful! Why would someone do that?”
“I suspect,” Max said, “it may be that someone has been raising a small army of zombies and needed at least one more—and quickly, too.”
“
Excuse
me?” said Jeff.
“The disturbance in the directional flow of mystical energy that has been building steadily in this locale is consistent with Darius’ reanimation,” Max said, “but not explained by it. Not entirely, that is.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because it is too powerful to be the result of one isolated incident. Something more is happening than just the mystical enslavement of Darius Phelps.” With a frown of concentration on his face, as if focusing on the disrupted spiritual flow of this dimension from his folding chair right there in Puma’s Vodou Emporium, he said, “I believe there are more zombies out there. And I believe the bokor has raised them to assist with some devastating plan that is unfolding even as we speak.”
12
“
I
don’t think it’s the best possible idea for us to bring Max in there with us,” Jeff said to me in a low voice.
“He wants to see Nolan,” I said.
“But—”
“He’s coming with us,” I said firmly. “You, on the other hand, are entirely expendable if you keep irritating me.”
Jeff gave a disgruntled sigh but dropped the subject.
We were entering the hospital where Nolan was a patient, a few blocks away from Puma’s shop. I didn’t want to make a bad impression on the
D30
production office by missing my visit altogether. It was early evening now, well past my afternoon slot on the visitation schedule; but I figured better late than never. I also thought that the sooner I introduced Jeff to Nolan, the sooner I could shed him; his skepticism was getting a trifle shrill. Meanwhile, Max wanted to interview Nolan and assure himself that the heart attack was exactly what it seemed to be, rather than a devious voodoo assault that mimicked natural causes.
Apparently crack whores weren’t that unusual a sight at the hospital, since the nurses on staff scarcely even blinked at my appearance. Or perhaps they just had very low expectations of the sort of person likely to visit Nolan. In any case, my name was on the security list that the
D30
production office had given the hospital for its star’s private room, and my two companions and I were told where to go.
Puma, who had already been anxious about angry spirits and voracious baka when we’d first met, was now totally freaked out by the prospect of an army of zombies being raised in Harlem as part of some major dark mojo that Max believed was in the works. So she was going to consult Mambo Celeste about holding a community ritual to appease the gods and seek their protection. It should be done soon, Puma thought—
very
soon. Meanwhile, she would also try to learn if the ruptured intestine that killed Darius might have been magically inflicted on him.
With zombies and baka on the loose in this neighborhood, Biko didn’t want his sister walking home alone from the store, even though it was still light out. So he would help her close up the shop, take her home, and then meet us at the hospital. Max wanted to see the places where Biko had encountered baka during his recent nocturnal adventures, as well as the spot where I had met Darius’ zombie. And since I wasn’t keen on making that tour after dark, I wanted to get this visit to Nolan over with in a hurry and get back outside while there was still some evening light left.
The door to Nolan’s hospital room was guarded by his personal assistant, a plump, anxious, bespectacled woman whose appearance suggested that, like me, she hadn’t been home since the actor had fallen ill last night.
She checked off my name on her list. “You’re late.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“
Very
late.”
“We were unavoidably detained,” Max said. “Please accept my humble apologies. The fault is mine, I fear.”
“And you are?”
“Dr. Maximillian Zadok,” he said, taking off his straw hat. “A specialist from Oxford University.”
“A specialist? Oxford? All right, you can go in, too.”
“And I’m Jeffrey Clark.” Oozing charm, my old boyfriend said to Nolan’s twitchy assistant, “You’ve had quite a day, I’ll bet. Maybe you want to go get yourself a cup of coffee or something while we visit with Mike?”
She was too accustomed to actors to be flustered by his flirting with her. “I can’t. He likes me to be within shouting distance at all times.” She looked down at her notebook. “Jeffrey Clark? Your name’s not on my list.”
Jeff nudged me. I said, “He’s with me.”
“Hmm. Well, there’ve been two no-shows already, and Mike’s cranky about how few visitors he’s had so far. The star of
Criminal Motive
was hospitalized for exhaustion last year,” she said, naming an Emmy Award-winning drama in the
Crime and Punishment
franchise. “Mike found out how many visitors
he
had while he was in the hospital, and now he’s keeping score. We’ve only been here one day, and we’re already way behind.” She said to Jeff, “So I guess you can go in. It’ll help the tally.”
He beamed at her. “Thanks.”
It was a good thing that I hadn’t really expected a brush with death to change Nolan’s personality, since it took only a few seconds at his bedside to establish that this was indeed not the case.
He told me I looked like shit, then glanced at Jeff and Max and asked me, “Who the fuck are they?”
I introduced them to him. Jeff, a dedicated self-promoter, immediately tried to engage him in conversation. Nolan interrupted him, without apology, to shout for his assistant, demanding that she come straighten his pillows for him.
Jeff again tried to strike up a conversation. Nolan again interrupted him, asking me, “Are those for me?”
“Huh? Oh!” I realized he was nodding to the two books tucked under my arm. “No. This is some, uh, research I’m doing.”
They were books about Vodou. Puma had given them to me when I left the shop a little while ago, insisting I take them free of charge. She thought they might help me better understand the ritual we’d be attending soon.
So you didn’t bring me anything?” Nolan was looking at me as if he’d just learned I was a shoplifter. “Not even a card?”
“I was mugged after you collapsed last night,” I said wearily. “My purse was stolen.” It was as good an excuse as any.
“No shit? Jesus.” He shook his head. “The cops need to do a better job around here.”
That struck me as the sort of sentiment that the star of
The Dirty Thirty
should probably keep to himself.
Nolan looked weak and pale, but he certainly didn’t seem to be at death’s door. He also talked like he expected to be back on the set within a few days to finish shooting our final scene together. If he felt any curiosity at all about why I was wearing my costume while visiting him, he concealed it manfully.
I glanced at the clock on the wall, figuring that ten more minutes was a reasonable length of time for this visit. The next time I looked at the clock, I was appalled to find that only three minutes had passed since my previous glance. Could a voodoo curse slow down the passage of time inside this hospital room, I wondered?
Max questioned Nolan about his health, his symptoms, what he remembered about his collapse, and his diagnosis. After a few more minutes, during which time I kept my gaze fixed on the agonizingly slow revolutions of the clock’s second hand, Max fell silent. When I met his eyes, he gave me a cheerful little nod, indicating that he was satisfied.
Jeff started chatting with Nolan again, and for all his own self-absorption, he was smart enough to recognize by now that the way to Nolan’s heart was to pretend to be fascinated by him. A certain natural revulsion had prevented me from mastering this technique with Nolan myself, but Jeff was made of sterner stuff. Before long, Nolan was yammering away about himself in an animated manner, clearly delighted to have as attentive an audience as Jeff.
When I announced, with considerable relief, that it was time for us to go, Jeff’s face fell. So I added, “I mean, Max and I have to go. But if
you’d
like to stay . . .”
“Sure, he’ll stay,” said Nolan, not about to let his captive listener escape so easily.
The two men gave us a quick wave of farewell, and Max and I left.
As we exited the room, Nolan’s assistant tried to block our path. “You’re supposed to stay a half hour,” she hissed. “That’s the rule!”
“We can’t stay,” I said. “Places to go, bokors to stop.”
“What?”
“I want credit for this visit,” I said.
“You show up hours late and stay barely fifteen minutes, and you want credit?” she said incredulously. “You’re going to have to come a second time.”
“That’s not fair!” I protested.
Max said, “One of our party is remaining behind. Will that suffice?”
She blinked. “Oh! The cute bald guy is staying?”
“You
like
that look on him?” I said.
She picked up her pen to make a note on the visitation log. “Okay. How long is he going to stay?”
“Probably until Nolan gets well and checks out of the hospital,” I said.
I got credit for the visit.
As we rode the elevator back down to the main floor, Max said to me, ”Mr. Nolan clearly suffers from an excess of choler. I do not find it surprising that his temperament has affected his health.”
“So you think his heart attack was strictly due to natural causes?”
“All things considered, it is impossible to say for certain, but, yes, I believe so. In truth, based on what he says about his condition, it sounds as if he’s lucky the attack wasn’t more severe. It may not be wise for him to return to work as early as he evidently intends to.”
I nodded in agreement, though I wasn’t sure who had the strength of will to stop Nolan, if returning to work too soon was what he decided to do.
Biko was waiting for us outside on the sidewalk. His sword case was slung over his back. Although there were plenty of people around and it would be light for a little while longer, I was still glad he was armed, since we were about to go visit baka stomping grounds.