Grip leaned into Morphy as they approached the entrance to the Community shantytown. “There’s something different. You feel it?”
“Feel what?” Steam was rising off the broken asphalt of the roads around the shanties, the traces of the morning’s rain evaporating, the air becoming suffocating.
The answer was Something different, but Grip knew this sounded stupid and instead mumbled something about the noise. Now that he’d thought of it, there did seem to be more noise coming from the shanties. Nothing in particular, just more of the ambient shanty din; behind it, the whine of insects in the field, the giant whoosh of feathers as enormous turkey vultures dipped and then ascended again, waiting for something unseen in the weeds to die.
He’d put out word that morning that he needed to speak with Ed Wayne and was disconcerted to find that no one knew, exactly, where he was. Headquarters had instituted the usual protocol for cops missing-without-leave. Grip thought about the skull graffiti and the man with the funny walk. He’d feel better once he heard that Wayne had been tracked down.
As seemed always the case, Community kids were playing in the weeded lot outside the shanty entrance, their skin gleaming with perspiration as they ran in the heat. Grip pulled from his pocket a piece of paper with a rough copy of the skull-and-top-hat design. He pulled out a handful of dimes.
Morphy, as they’d planned, slipped inside the shantytown and stood by the entrance, notebook in hand, to delay anyone coming out. Grip shook the coins in his hand and smiled kindly as the kids forgot their game and gathered around him, wondering how they could get at the money. Grip didn’t even have to ask; just showing his drawing got the kids going.
“Samedi. Baron Samedi.”
Grip threw some dimes out. The kids muscled each other to catch them.
“Who’s Baron Samedi?” Grip asked, jingling the dimes.
The kids looked at him as if they could hardly believe his ignorance.
One of the older ones, maybe ten years old, flashed a hopeful grin. “Samedi’s a lwa. A spirit.”
“Okay, a lwa. Sure. Why would someone paint him on a door?”
The kid shrugged. Grip tossed him several dimes.
The kid shifted them around in his open palm, counting. “Maybe Samedi is someone’s lwa. Maybe somebody wants Samedi to visit the person behind the door.”
“What do you mean?” Grip asked, tossing a few more dimes over, aware that he only had a few left.
“When Samedi visits you? I don’t know. Is Samedi your lwa? If Samedi isn’t your lwa, you don’t want him to visit.”
Grip tossed him the remaining dimes. “You know a man, kind of thin; not like me,” Grip said, forcing a carefree chuckle of sorts. “Walks funny? Like a puppet?”
The kids looked among themselves, not really confused, just consulting. Finally the same kid said, “Could be anyone, any of the lwas.”
“What do you mean, lwa?” Grip asked, but the kid was turning away from him, laughing. The kid threw some of his dimes up in the air, and his friends scrambled madly to pick them up where they lay, glistening in the sun, like tiny pools of water.