CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

He parked outside Moses Adebolu’s building and shouted, “Come on, Hicks! You should find this very instructive. It’ll take you back to your ethnic roots.”

“What ethnic roots? I was born in Fairview Beach.”

The same kids were playing with rat bones on the steps. Decker took out a pack of fresh-mint gum and gave them a stick each. “Watch my car, okay?”

“So who’s this we’re going to see?” Hicks asked, dubiously.

They climbed up the creaking stairs. Somebody on the floor above was having a shouting match, and there was a clatter like saucepans being thrown.

Decker said, “You’re going to meet Moses. He’s a santero. One of the best, according to Jonah. Yesterday we sacrificed a rooster and today he’s going to give me my omiero.”

“What the hell is an omiero?”

“It’s my magic antidemon potion. Rooster blood and herbs. I have to take a bath in it and then the great god Changó might forgive me for whatever it is I’ve done to piss him off.”

They had reached the second-story landing, under the headless image of John the Baptist. Hicks stopped and said, “Wait up a second, Lieutenant. Are you serious about this?”

“Never more so. You saw that image of Cathy that Rhoda conjured up. Whatever’s happening here, it’s supernatural, whether we like it or not. Or at the very least it involves some pretty weird influences. So it’s no good trying to hunt it down with procedure. It’s Santería magic, and that means we’re going to have to use Santería magic to find it.”

“Have you talked to the captain about this?”

“Cab? Uh-huh. It’ll only make him sneeze.”

“Well … I know what I saw when Rhoda did that séance, and I’ll agree with you that it was something extremely strange. But what are we really talking about here?”

Decker laid a hand on his shoulder. “If we can safely believe Moses Adebolu, which from all the evidence I believe we can, then all we are up against is the single most vengeful god in the whole of the Santería religion.”

“And that’s his name? Changó?”

“You got it.”

“All right,” Hicks said. “Supposing I go along with this. Supposing it’s true. What’s this goddamned god so goddamned vengeful about?”

“I have no idea, specifically. But the nightmares I’ve been having … and the way that the victims were killed … I think it has something to do with the Civil War, and with the Battle of the Wilderness in particular.”

“You’re talking about the Devil’s Brigade?”

Decker nodded.

“But all that happened in 1864. Over 140 years ago.”

“I know. But gods don’t die, do they? Not so long as people go on believing in them. Maybe they don’t die even if people don’t go on believing them. They’re not fairies, after all. They’re part of the earth, part of the sky, part of everything.”

“I don’t want to step out of line, Lieutenant, but you’re beginning to sound, well—this is kind of Lord of the Rings here.”

“Come talk to Moses, see if he doesn’t change your mind.”

Decker knocked on Moses Adebolu’s multicolored door. He waited patiently, turning to Hicks and lifting his eyebrows. “You wait till you meet this guy. He’s a character. And you should see his daughter. That’s if she is his daughter, which I seriously question.”

He knocked again. “All right,” Moses called. “I can hear you, my friend. I just have to pull up my pants.”

They could hear him shuffling toward the door. As the handle turned, however, there was an extraordinary warping sensation in the air, as if the whole of perception had been twisted. This was instantly followed by a sharp, intense sucking sound, like a high wind, which Decker instantly recognized—oxygen being dragged violently into Moses’ apartment through every crack and crevice around the door.

“Down!” he shouted at Hicks, and football-tackled him across the landing.

Hicks, sprawling, said, “What? What is it?”

“Down! Get downstairs!”

He shoved Hicks square in the back and Hicks lost his balance and went tumbling and bumping down to the hallway. Decker himself seized hold of the banister rails and swung himself down, six stairs at a time, like an acrobat.

As they reached the front door, there was a shattering explosion, and the whole building seemed to jump sideways. Chunks of plaster dropped from the ceiling, rails were ripped up like railroad tracks, and what was left of the John the Baptist window burst apart in a million sparkling fragments.

Hicks stared at Decker and his face was white with plaster dust and shock.

“Was that a bomb?”

Decker was busy jabbing out the fire department number on his cell phone. “God knows. Come on.”

Up above them, doors were opening and people were shouting and screaming. A large section of the third-story staircase had collapsed, and lumps of plaster were still falling down the stairwell. Decker shouted, “Police! Don’t panic! We’re going to get you out of here!”

He approached Moses’ door. All the paint on it was already blistered, and only one painted eye remained, staring at him with the serene knowledge that all things must pass. He cautiously touched the door handle but it was too hot for him to try turning it. There was no smoke coming out from underneath the door. Instead, the air from the landing was still being steadily sucked inward, with a soft whistling sound, which told him that the interior of the apartment must be incandescent.

“Hicks, come on, sport—let’s get these people out of here. This building doesn’t have long.”

A woman with dreadlocks and a black leather minidress was leaning over from the landing above, screaming, “I got to get my clothes! I got to get my DVDs!”

“Lady, no chance. This house is going to be ashes in two minutes flat.”

Hicks and Decker stood at the foot of the third-story stairs and helped the residents to jump over the gap. The woman with the dreadlocks; an elderly woman in a holey bathrobe, carrying a cat; a young man with a shaven head and muscles; a middle-aged woman with a head scarf and dangly earrings.

When the last of them was clambering down the stairs to safety, Hicks turned to Decker and nodded toward Moses’ door. “What about him?”

“Don’t even think about it. Whatever happened in there, he’s toast. We try to get in there, we’re toast, too. Let’s go.”

They followed the residents down to the hallway. Decker was only halfway down, however, when Moses’ door burst open. A huge fireball roared out of it, and flames rolled across the ceiling, setting fire to the hanging lampshade and the banister. Decker felt the heat blasting against his face and he clamped his hand on top of his head to prevent his hair from being singed.

Moses Adebolu appeared at the top of the stairs, staggering like a zombie, and he was blazing from head to foot. His clothes had been burned off him and his skin was shriveling. The heat from the blast had been so intense that his glasses were welded to his face, and the TV-like lenses had turned milky white.

“Changó!” he screamed. “Changó!” His voice sounded as if it had been wrenched out of his lungs with red-hot pincers.

“Fire extinguisher!” Decker told Hicks, and Hicks jumped down the front steps and crossed the road to the car. Decker took off his coat and climbed the stairs again, holding the coat up in front of him to shield himself from the heat.

Moses swayed, and then he toppled down the stairs, still blazing. Decker had to jump out of the way as his burning body cartwheeled past him, all fiery arms and legs. He fell all the way down to the hallway where he lay with flames flickering down his back, more like a black, crunched-up insect than a man. Hicks came back with the fire extinguisher and squirted foam all over him, but it was obvious that he was dead.

Decker went back upstairs to see if there was any chance of saving Aluya, but Moses’ apartment was so fiercely ablaze that he couldn’t even make it up to the landing. The fire was actually bellowing, as if it were furiously angry. Decker went back outside and made sure that everybody was standing well back. A crowd was gathering and every time another window shattered they let out a strange, long-drawn-out moan.

“My DVDs,” wailed the woman with the dreadlocks.

“Any sign of the girl?” Hicks asked.

Decker wiped the sweat and smudges from his face. “Couldn’t get close enough. If she is in there, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

They watched the flames waving from the second-story window. One of the drapes blew out and flew off into the morning sky, like a burning ghost.

“Think it was a natural gas explosion?” Hicks asked.

“Who knows? Moses had all kinds of herbs and potions and stuff. Maybe he had something inflammable.”

The first fire truck arrived, its siren wailing and its horn blasting. Then another, and another.

As the firefighters unrolled their hoses, Decker looked behind him, underneath the shadow of I-95. Aluya was standing there, in an orange Indian-style silk pantsuit, with an orange silk scarf on her head. She was holding a woven shopping bag filled with celery and other vegetables.

Decker went over to her. “I’m sorry … there was some kind of explosion. Your father didn’t make it.”

She stared at him with her huge brown eyes as if she couldn’t understand what he was talking about.

“Is there any place you can go?” he coaxed her. “Any relatives?”

“My father is dead?”

“I’m really sorry. The whole place went up, just like that. Where have you been, shopping? You were lucky you weren’t inside.”

“It was Changó.”

“What?”

“It was Changó. I told him not to defy Changó.”

“I don’t think that he was defying him. It was more like he was trying to appease him.”

“Changó wants his revenge on you. If Changó wants his revenge, he will never rest until he has it. Owani irosun, the greatest vengeance. My father thought that he could be greater than Changó, and this was the price. Changó warned him, with the coconut shells, but he didn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry,” Decker said. Behind him, he heard the fire pumps starting up. “What are you going to do now?”

“I will stay with my sister.”

“Okay … but if there’s anything I can do …”

She looked at him for a long time without saying anything. Then she turned and began to walk away.

“I’ll need to get in touch with you!” Decker called after her. “I have to ask you some questions, and we’ll probably need you to identify your father’s body!”

“You will find me when you need me,” Aluya called back.

Decker caught up with her and took hold of her arm. “Listen,” he said.

She shook her head. “You’re not the man you once were, Lieutenant. Changó has put his mark on you, and there is no more time for you to do the things you once did. You will scarcely have time to panic.”

“Well, that’s honest, even if it’s not exactly reassuring.”

“My father also used to read the cowrie shells, Lieutenant, as well as the coconuts. He read his own shells last night, and no matter how they fell, the pattern always brought ossogbo, which is not good. The last pattern was oggunda oche, which means that the dead are angry.”

“I still need to know how to get in touch with you.”

“No, you don’t. You need to find Changó and discover what it is that he wants from you. Otherwise you will not live longer than two goings-down of the sun.”

With that, she walked away, with her shopping bag swinging. Hicks came up to Decker and said, “What was that all about?”

“You want it in words of one syllable? I’m in shitsville.”

“That’s two syllables.”