Dr. Dub Corveaux was already well into a full slate of patients when Miss Fralene Farnes appeared mid-morning and begged Cecile for just a few minutes of the doctor’s time. Dub was happy to see her. He was sweet on her, he feared. But that sweetness went a little sour when he invited her into the examination room and she obliged, looking more dutiful than eager.
She started in on him almost immediately, not even offering a hello, or a how-are-you. “You’ve heard the news, I suppose?” Fralene asked.
He imagined he knew what she meant but he wanted to be certain. “That news being?”
“A laundry and a family hardware store firebombed in the night? Talk of an all-out gang war? No one was hurt this time, thank God, but that might have just been dumb luck!”
Dub tried to play it light. He grinned. “You in a gang you didn’t tell me about, Miss Farnes?”
“This isn’t funny, Dr. Corveaux,” Fralene answered, clearly not amused. “This could escalate quickly. This is bad news, and you know it.”
Dub nodded soberly. Clearly, she wasn’t in the mood for levity. “Bad news for bolito bosses like the Queen Bee and Papa House.”
“Bad news for everyone!” Fralene persisted. “If gangsters like that Merriwether woman and Solomon House start a war, then you know damn well innocent people will suffer! They’re the ones who get caught in the crossfire! They’re the ones whose children get recruited as soldiers! They’re the ones whose businesses get firebombed and whose incomes get taxed for protection from these, these, these—”
She couldn’t find the right word. Dub considered offering one, but he figured that would just make her more angry. She was in quite the twist this morning. He tried to calm her a little with cold, hard facts. “Somebody’s business gets firebombed in the course of a gang war, ten to one, they fronted for a policy bank, and you know that.”
“And why did they front?” Fralene said, holding her ground. “Probably because someone strong-armed them into giving up part of their precious store space and soiling their good reputation in order to have a squeaky-clean façade—”
Dub couldn’t listen to any more. “That’s naïve, Fralene, and you know it. I can’t speak for Solomon House, but from all I’ve heard, Maybelle Meriwether doesn’t strong-arm anyone into fronting her policy banks. She’s usually invited in. Or she owns the business outright. The ‘innocent people’ whose stores get firebombed or who end up strong-armed for protection money are willing participants, not victims.”
He wanted to drive that point home, so he said it again, perhaps a little too harshly. “Get that through your head, Miss Anne. There are no victims.”
“I told you not to call me that,” she said through gritted teeth.
He sighed. This was going nowhere. “What did you come here for, Fralene? I’ve got patients—”
“My uncle’s hosting a dinner tonight for some community leaders. Councilmen; teachers and clergy; some of Harlem’s most powerful businessmen—”
“If they’re not in with the Queen Bee or Papa House, they’re not too powerful,” Dub muttered.
“I’d like you to be there,” Fralene said.
Dub knew that was impossible. He was already eager for sundown; sure that tonight would be the reckoning. He’d begged the lwa for some sort of full-bore juju to put to use against the curse engine. No doubt he’d have little time to spare. Tonight was the Queen Bee’s Grand Opening, and with all that psychic energy loose, the thing in the drain would be active, firing on all cylinders.
“Impossible,” he said.
“Why is that?” she asked.
“I’ve got plans tonight,” Dub answered, then suddenly realized that he hadn’t constructed a solid alibi. What could he tell her? I’ve got to play body-host to a lesser African deity and do battle with the infernal powers loosed by Papa House in the Queen Bee’s new supper club. Could be a long night. Don’t wait up for me.
“What sort of plans?” she demanded.
“None of your business,” Dub snapped, and regretted it almost immediately, because he could see it hurt her. He carried on, trying to rationalize his way out of it. “Look, Fralene, I admire your concern, I do... but someone like you isn’t going to do a damn thing to change the fact that there are people like Maybelle Meriwether and Solomon House running the show in this world. So long as people want booze, games, and whores, they’ll be there. So long as people want to throw nickels and dimes at a daily lottery in the hopes of winning a week’s worth of groceries or enough scratch for a new car, they’ll be there. And as long as white cops and white crooks and white politicians control bigger rackets with bigger money and bigger ambitions, then our folk are gonna be stuck looking to the Queen Bees and the Papa Houses of the world for their own sort of protection and fair-dealing. It ain’t right, but it’s the way of things. All your do-gooding isn’t gonna chase their sort out of Harlem.”
She stared at him, and he had the terrible feeling that he’d never see her again. Perhaps that would be for the best. Perhaps, with his own slate of nocturnal activities, he didn’t need to be getting involved with anyone so... so... pure. So sure of herself and her place and purpose in the world. That wasn’t him—all evidence to the contrary.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“All the words I’ve read penned by your hand, published under your name... everything you’ve just said flies in the face of those words.”
He shrugged again. “I’ve written a lot, and no doubt I’ll write more. I write when the muse is on me, and I write about whatever’s troubling me at a given time. That doesn’t mean I’m living my poem or my essay, Fralene. It just means I had a thought and wanted to share it.”
“You’re just like one of them,” she said, and he knew by the venom in the statement that she meant white; bourgeois; self-absorbed and unconcerned. “You’re just here to leech off this community, make your fortune, and retire to some neat little clapboard community out on the island, or into the lazy practice of some country doctor—”
“Last I checked,” Dub said, feeling his ire rising, “healers aren’t leeches, Miss Farnes.”
She turned and opened the door. “Just because you do no harm doesn’t mean you do any good. Afternoon, doctor.”
Before he could say something, she’d slammed the door, and he could hear her heavy heels clicking on the floor of the hallway, shrinking, carrying her right to the front door.
Hell.
XX
The Queen Bee sat in her favorite seat, on the dais, facing the stage. The club was a hive of activity around her, but there was a muted, nervous silence that belied the activity; a sense of dread that turned what should have been eager mirth and light work into dirge and drudgery. She smoked a cigarette and stared at a stage crowded with band podiums and lit for a night’s entertainment. The band would probably show up around noon to start warming up, but she guessed that the pall on the place would make their “Muskrat Ramble” sound like “A March to the Scaffold.”
Gideon approached, mounted the dais, padded near like a caged panther. He took a seat adjacent to her, pulled out a cigarette of his own, lit up, and puffed placidly.
“Well? What’s it gonna be?” he asked.
“What else can it be?” she countered.
“We could postpone.”
“Like hell,” she said. “We’ve got a full slate of local lights and downtown high-rollers. We’re set. They’re coming. We can’t back out now. We postpone, those doors never open. It’ll only get worse.”
“The booze turned up.”
She smirked. “Did Officer Heaney and company get their commission?”
“They did.”
“One of these days,” the Queen Bee said, “I’d like you to deliver his fat head to me. I think it’d make a fine foot stool.”
Gideon smiled a little. “That it might.”
“Hell,” the Queen Bee said, and stabbed out her only half-smoked cigarette in a nearby ash tray.
“Maybe nothing’ll go wrong,” Gideon said.
The Queen Bee turned slowly and studied him. “It will,” she said. “You know it will.”
He nodded. “I know it will.”
“We’ve just got to be ready,” she said.
“For what?” he asked.
She shrugged now. “Anything.”
“What do we do about the banks?”
“We’ve got more,” she said, and lit another cigarette, as though she’d already forgotten her last.
“Those hits were a challenge,” Gideon pressed. “We’ve gotta answer them.”
“This is our answer,” the Queen Bee said, suggesting the club around them. “Aces & Eights opens. Papa House can’t stop us.”
“Maybe he can,” Gideon said after a long pause. “Either way, though, we can’t just ignore those bank-hits. We lost too much money to just pretend—”
“If we buck up guards on the banks this evening, or send more to hit House, we’ll be light hereabouts. We need all hands on deck this evening, in case things get hairy here.”
“We could get help,” Gideon countered. “Contract some hands outta St. John’s? Some of those strivers from over Sugar Hill way?”
“Can’t trust ‘em,” the Queen Bee said. “Besides, those Sugar Hill boys are nothin’ but swells and queers. We need muscle tonight, not hustlers.”
Gideon lost his patience, and she couldn’t blame him. She was being childish and sulky—and she knew it. “We’ve gotta trust somebody!” Gideon snarled. “We’ve gotta start making friends and consolidating territory before House makes bigger and more brazen moves. You know it’s comin’. If you do nothin’ to get ready for it, you’re failin’ everybody! These people! This place! The boys! And me!”
That shook her out of her reverie. She turned and stared at Gideon. He leaned forward now, elbows on his knees, hands clasped as if in prayer, but his face was not one of supplication; it was one of challenge.
“Don’t fade on me, Queen Bee. I need you, and all these people need you. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better. So what? You ain’t a quitter, you’re a fighter. So fight, woman, and don’t waste my time sulking like the little princess I know you are not.”
She studied the room; the warm bodies drifting through it, laying table-cloths and place settings, placing fresh-clipped flowers in table vases and dusting the deep red runners round the stage and on the proscenium. She drew a long, deep drag on her cigarette.
“You think that’s what it’ll come to? Tying ourselves to those street punks in St. John’s? Bank-rolling those pinstriped peacocks up by Sugar Hill?”
“If we don’t, House will. Numbers count.”
“Go get ‘em then,” the Queen Bee said. “And when you come back to me with more hands, bring a plan with you.”
He smiled crookedly. “I’ve got a few already.”
The Queen Bee smiled at her majordomo. “Why does that not surprise me?”
XX
Papa House studied the fat brown kid in the dim light of the warehouse, doing his best to melt the edges of his chocolate-colored skin with his eyes. “You straight on this, Calvin?”
The kid nodded emphatically, and Papa half-feared the instructions would come tumbling out through his gaping mouth. “Show up at the back door with the crate,” Calvin blathered, “tell ‘em it’s an emergency delivery; put it wherever they tell me; hightail it out within five minutes or I’m toast.”
“Fair enough,” Papa said, nodding.
They were in the Foree Imports and Exports Warehouse; the one closest to the Queen Bee’s turf, fronting the river; the one where House kept Napoleon the Alligator in his muddy crib.
Calvin seemed to be thinking something over. “Awful small bomb, sir.”
Papa frowned. The kid’s dim brain made ticking noises nearly as loud as that on the explosive timer. Where did he get off making such judgments? “You tellin’ me my business, boy?”
“No sir,” the kid said, shaking his head. “Just wanna do right by you, is all. My brother, Collie, he used to make bombs, sir. Planted ‘em in Klan houses whenever we could find ‘em. They was good bombs. Blew up big and bright.”
“You your brother?”
The kid seemed to think about that for a moment. “No, sir.”
“You make bombs as good as he did?”
Again, a long consideration. “No, sir.” His answer came with a screwed-up face, as if the boy were insulted House would even suggest it.
“Then stop beatin’ your gums,” House growled. “You do as you’re told, you hoof it. Savvy?”
“Yes, sir. Clear as a bell.”
“You play this right, Calvin, you’s and your mama’s rent is set. Six months, square.”
Calvin nodded again and House decided he’d done all he could. It was a simple errand and Calvin was a regular delivery driver for the Queen; he should be able to carry off his role in the night’s proceedings and get out without trouble.
Still, he was dim. House looked to Wash and Timmons as the three of them marched away to thread a path back through the warehouse, followed by others—gunmen, hired and regulars, all gearing up for a turkey shoot.
“Best you could find?” House asked, meaning Calvin.
Wash shrugged. “He’s a safe face around the club. Likewise, figured if we lose him in the blast, no great loss.”
House nodded, puffing on his cigar. “Fair enough.”
XX
Evening was nearly gone and night on the precipice, ready to fall. Dr. Dub Corveaux knelt in his fourth floor peristyle, surrounded by the lwa, receiving instructions. His guns were loaded, and he had belted up nine govi grenades
So his weapons were ready; all that remained was to be blessed by the lwa.
And to get horsed.
Ain’t no easy thing, Legba was saying, drawin’ out bad wanga of this sort. You gotta work some serious maji; all alone; without us.
Dub was impatient. “Just give me what I need,” he insisted. “And tell me how to use it.”
First, Erzulie purred, whatever you’re gonna draw’s gotta be bound; like a tourniquet to keep venom in the bit limb and away from the heart. For that you make a circle with the Petro Packet.
Dub saw the packet she referred to; a long-necked gourd bedecked with beads and a rainbow of colored threads, stopped with a cork. He lifted the packet, found it heavy and full, then slipped it into one of the deeper pouches within his coat.
“So I make a circle—”
Then set it aflame, Erzulie reminded.
“—then set it aflame. Protective proscriptions. Basic magic one-oh-one.”
Make the circle big enough to contain the quarry, Erzulie said.
“Of course,” Dub said.
And yourself, she added.
“I’ll be inside the circle? The flaming circle? With the beast?”
Ain’t no other way, Erzulie answered.
Dub sighed. “Fair enough. Then?”
You got it bound, Legba said, you gotta flush it out. Make it manifest. That’s what the mummified dog’s for.
Dub studied the cluttered altar, saw the shriveled, dead black pup that Legba suggested, and lifted it. The little corpse felt like a wad of crumpled paper in his hands, and just as hollow. He carefully stowed it in another side pocket of his long black coat.
You place the pup on the hex engine, Legba instructed, then annoint it with some of your blood. That should wake the beast up and draw it out. hungry. Full-on.
“Okay,” Dub said, nodding.
Be ready, Erzulie interjected. What springs forth when you bloody it won’t be pretty.
“I can handle it,” Dub said, eager to be on his way. “Once the circle’s lit and the thing’s drawn out, then what?”
Then you kill it, Ogou said, and Dub could almost hear the bemused chuckle in the war lwa’s voice.
“Understood,” Dub said, trying not to let his frustration sound through. “Will standard lead-loads do, or do I need something else? Iron? Silver?”
Silence. He waited. None of them replied.
“Well?”
Still no answer.
“Give me something,” he said testily.
It ain’t our maji, Legba huffed, as if insulted.
“I’m your maji,” Dub snarled. “I’m doin’ your dirty work, and you ain’t givin’ me the tools to do it. You want your people protected, you gotta give me more than just a shield to hide behind and a horn to call my quarry with.
“You gotta give me a sword.”
A long silence followed.
He’s ready, Ogou finally muttered.
Put that in his hands, there’ll be hell to pay, Erzulie purred. Ain’t there another way, Ogou?
Thing ain’t gonna flee for Florida water and incense, ‘Zulie, Ogou countered.
He’s got guns, Legba whined.
Lead’s like flies to the Furies, Ogou argued. He’ll do little more than piss it off.
“I’ve got work to do,” Dub snarled.
And then, as if in answer, the air seemed to open before him. He smelled brimstone and coal-smoke, and something heavy and metallic thumped on the dirt floor before him. Dub, having closed his eyes to palaver with the lwa, opened them. Before him lay what looked like a long, broad knife in a beaten leather scabbard.
A machete.
He laid one hand on the grip, the other on the scabbard, prepared to loose the blade. He heard Ogou in his ear, as if the god of war stood just over his shoulder.
That’s my saber, the war lwa said. The Machette d’Ogou. She’s thirsty, doc. You loose her in the night, she’s gonna want guilty blood before dawn.
Guilty human blood.
“So you’re tellin’ me this’ll do against the Furies,” Dub said, “but I still gotta give it some human blood before the night’s done?”
Just so, Legba said gravely.
“And if she doesn’t get it?” Dub asked, still waiting to draw the machete.
If she don’t get blood from the guilty, said Ogou, she’ll take it from the innocent. If you sheathe her before she’s tasted it, she’ll put the hunger in you, and you’ll never be rid of it, long as you live.
“Can I see her safe hereabouts?” Dub asked, sure he could hear the machete cooing at him, purring inside its scabbard like a woman awaiting his touch; eager to be undressed and caressed.
Just this once, said Ogou.
Dub drew the machete from the scabbard.
When it touched the air, the blade caught fire.