Westermann stood motionless, frightened by the intensity with which he was experiencing the ceremony, this frenzy of sound, motion, release. He felt Frings’s eyes on him but couldn’t pull his gaze away from the scene in the Square.
Father Womé, his jacket off, his white shirt soaked with sweat, circled the pole, head down, doing a funny shuffle that emanated from his hips. The assistant priest twirled one of the women around and her dancing grew increasingly frantic.
Lenore rotating as she floats downstream.
Something foreign in his blood.
Ed Wayne and Art Deyna.
Marijuana smoke rose from all sides of the Square. Westermann wiped sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Another man entered the square, a loose shirt hanging from his skeletal frame. He wore dark glasses and a shapeless hat and had the strangest walk that Westermann had ever seen, limbs seemingly controlled from without, not quite moving naturally or in concert. He carried a cane that he mostly waved as he whirled around and made little jumps while leaning way back from the waist. His appearance was greeted with a cheer from across the Square.
Photos with Mel Washington.
Sam “Blood Whiskers” McAdam standing over Klasnic, whose chest is blown open.
Big Rolf looking confused, scared.
Close to twenty people danced now. Womé was making the rounds, talking animatedly to this person or that, dancing all the while. Some danced subtly, moving their hips and heads; others whirled and shook and occasionally fell, writhing, only to be picked up by people from the crowd. The man with the funny walk weaved through all this, rubbing up against the women, clasping hands with the men, and spinning in circles with them.
Are you good with Legba?
Westermann swallowed great gulps of air, feeling somehow outside himself. He had to leave.
The drums lost nothing of their power out in the shanty alleys, but he was away from the intensity of the people and the feeling that had threatened to overwhelm him. He careened through the maze of alleys; his thoughts seemed beyond his control, the drums disorienting. A few people still walked through the shanty passageways and he felt their wary eyes on him. He’d lost track of how long he’d been walking when he happened upon a gap in the shanty walls. He slipped through in a daze, greeted on the outside by two uniforms, guns drawn.
Recognizing him, they lowered their guns, but remained on guard, nervous. Behind them, in the near distance, Westermann heard the powerful rush of the river. He’d emerged on the opposite side he intended.
“Lieutenant, I think you’d better find Detectives Morphy and Grip.” One of the cops motioned around the corner of the shantytown wall.
Spurred by the cops’ urgency, Westermann hurried around the corner, but was brought up short by the scene before him. Flames licked over the edge of the oil drums, dense black smoke rising to the sky like skeletal fingers, while a group of about twenty young men from the shanties paced manically back and forth, some carrying sticks or clubs. Past them was a group of cops, spread out along the length of the shanties. Some watched the men by the oil drums and the others watched the crowd of white men—now close to a hundred strong, Westermann guessed—two dozen yards or so off.
The drums were loud even out here, and the men from the shanties and the group of white men had to shout for their epithets and threats to be heard. The cops between the two groups of men moved tensely, unsure where to focus their attention. Westermann jogged between the oil drums and the shanty walls to the front of the shanties. There weren’t enough cops here.
Ten yards from the corner, he saw Morphy and Grip coming in a hurry.
“Jesus,” Grip said. “Where’ve you been?”
Westermann nodded toward the shanties.
Grip stared at him. Westermann saw the concern in his eyes.
“What’s going on here?” Westermann asked. “Is support coming?”
“Yeah, that’s what they say. Lieutenant Ving is calling the shots with the uniforms.”
“Okay. Good.” Ving was competent.
Grip shook his head. “No. Not good. A couple of the uniforms say they saw Koss, got a couple of shots off at him, but missed.”
“Yeah?”
Morphy jabbed a thumb toward the shanties. “He’s in there.”
Jane Morphy, stretched naked on her bed.
Do you love me?