A rooster was crowing.
McAllister Fain pried his eyes open and saw nothing but darkness. The rooster crowed again, splitting the silence of the night. Fain coughed and licked his lips. They were dry and tasted salty.
Damn bird, he thought. If the Cuban next door had to keep those suckers, why couldn’t he teach them to crow when the sun came up the way roosters were supposed to?
His mind began to function, slow and balky like a cold engine on a winter morning. He had a growing feeling of unease. Things were not as they should be.
In the first place, he was not in his bed. He was not in anybody’s bed. He was sitting in the reclining chair in his living room. He had not fallen asleep watching television, because the screen was dark. And the heat was turned off. He felt cold and cramped. He groped beside him for the switch to the table lamp and snapped it on.
It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the sudden light. He looked down and saw that he was fully dressed. There was a faint rancid smell that seemed to come from his clothing.
Beside him, on the lamp table and the floor beneath it, was a collection of jars, bottles, scraps of paper, bits of fur, and feathers. There was also a bundle of oddly shaped candles in assorted colors.
He sat back in the chair, closed his eyes again, and slowly began to remember. He had talked to Cruz next door about the voodoo business; then he had gone to the People’s Sunshine Clinic on Sunset. There he had met the big black man called Le Docteur and followed him into that metal shed out behind the clinic. That was where his memory became jumbled. He had no conception of how much time the two of them had spent in the shed. His digital wristwatch told him it was now 4:35. That would be A.M., Wednesday, unless he had lost a day somewhere.
Fain stood up and stretched. His muscles and joints ached as though he had come through a vigorous physical workout. He turned on more lights and went into the kitchen, where he drank two glasses of cold water. A sudden chill made him shiver and raised gooseflesh on his arms. He went back out to the living room then and shoved the thermostat lever forward until the gas wall heater came on with a soft whump.
He took time then to examine the objects on the lamp table and on the floor. He had a vague memory of Le Docteur loading him down and explaining in rapid accents what each was for. What the hell were they all for?
The jars contained powders and ashes in many colors and consistencies. On the bits of papers were scrawled barely readable passages in some language that was not English and not quite French. On others were sketched inticrate designs. These Fain recognized as vévés from his reading of the voodoo book. They were diagrams to be drawn on the floor with the powders to call up desired spirits, or loa.
He picked up one of the candles, thick as a man’s wrist. This one was an unhealthy gray-green and gave under his touch like the body of a snake. The wax, or whatever it was, gave off an unpleasant odor. Fain put it down quickly.
He was even less anxious to handle the little shriveled bits of fur and feathers. They reminded him of the shadowy hanging things on the wall of the voodoo shed. He resolved that whatever use he made of the other things, these he would do without.
Bits and fragments of the time he had spent in the stifling shed with Le Docteur began to come back. He saw again the huge face like a black jack-o’-lantern in the candlelight, eyes glowing deep in their fleshy pockets. He heard in his mind the voice of the houngan, sometimes high and piping, at other times dropping to a hoarse rumble. The words were partly in English, partly in French, and partly in a Creole dialect, which Fain could not understand.
The acrid smoke from the sputtering candle, the heat, and the lack of oxygen in the shed had numbed his brain, distorting the memories. Sometime during the night he must have left and returned to his apartment, but of that he remembered nothing.
On a sudden impulse he grabbed for his wallet. He counted the bills inside. All there. So were his Visa and his Mobil credit cards. At least he had not been rolled. And apparently he had not paid anything for the material he had brought home. Mentally he added a hundred dollars to his expense account. What the hell.
Suddenly he was very tired. Without bothering to turn off the lights or the heater, he stumbled into the bedroom, stripped off his clothes, and collapsed on the bed. The rooster crowed several more times before dawn, but Mac Fain did not hear.
• • •
At nine o’clock he was awakened by a persistent knocking at the door. Still groggy, he stumbled out to find a uniformed messenger there with an envelope for him from Elliot Kruger. He signed the man’s book, took the envelope inside, and ripped it open. The amount written on the check snapped him wide awake. He sat down and spent a full five minutes savoring the beautiful symmetry of the figures.
One-oh-comma-oh-oh-oh. Ten thousand dollars. It was easily the largest check Mac Fain had ever seen. He hummed softly to himself and petted the slip of paper as though it were a small, lovable animal.
He was still carrying the check when he went into the bathroom. There he leaned across the sink and studied his face in the clouded mirror. There were dark smudges on his cheeks and forehead. Grease or ashes, or something. His hair was matted, and he needed a shave.
“So what?” he said to the reflection. “You don’t have to look good; you’re rich. Anyway, a lot richer than you were yesterday.”
He cocked his head and stared into the eyes of his image. The whites were clear, the irises pale gray, almost silvery. What was it Le Docteur had said? Eyes of a gangan. Whatever that meant. Fain had no objection, since it seemed to be his ticket to the club. He leaned closer. There did seem to be something different about his eyes today. A cold spark in the gray depths that he had not noticed before.
Fain turned away from the mirror with a little snort. Power of suggestion. The fat old fraud had hypnotized him. No matter, he had gotten what he wanted: a little information and the raw materials to put together a ten-thousand-dollar — no, make that twenty thousand — performance for Elliot Kruger.
He got into the shower and turned it on steaming hot. Feeling great, he started to sing at the top of his voice, then stopped suddenly. What the hell was that he was singing? Something in a monotonous minor key that he had never heard before. And words he did not understand — nonsense syllables. More of the old houngan’s doing, he supposed. He finished the shower silently, but the echo of the strange chanting song lingered in his mind.
He was shaved and brushed and feeling quite healthy and wise when Jillian Pappas arrived.
“Where the heck were you last night?” she asked, dropping her tote bag at the door. “I tried to call you three times.”
“I was taking witch-doctor lessons,” he said.
“Very funny.” Jillian stood looking at the paraphernalia on the end table and the floor beside the recliner. “What’s all this junk?”
“That junk, my love, is what is going to make you and me a bundle of money.”
“No kidding.”
“Absolutely.”
“How?”
“Trust me.”
“Where have I heard that before?” She picked up the book he had left lying there the previous afternoon. “Voodoo Practices of the Caribbean. Oh, no, Mac, you’re not going to try to do this stuff.”
“No, of course not. But I needed something for a convincer. This sort of thing is not part of my routine.”
“I thought you were going to fake it.”
“Well, sure, but I want to look like I might know what I’m doing. I can’t pull coins out of Leanne Kruger’s ear and tell her husband that’s how we bring people back to life.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” Jillian said. “I don’t feel good about it.”
Fain skipped into the bedroom and hurried out with the check. “Take a look at this and see if you feel any better.”
Jillian examined the check and handed it back to him. “Is it good?”
“People like Elliot Kruger do not write bum checks. And this is only the first installment. After the job there’ll be another just like it.”
“Jeez, he must really believe you can do it. Bring his wife back to life.”
“Let’s say he’s betting I can do it. If he wins, he’s got his loving young wife back. If he loses, it’s only money.”
Jillian put out a hand to slow him down. “Wait a minute; did you say, ‘If he wins’?”
Fain gave her a disarming grin. “Just psyching myself up, babe. If I don’t act like I believe, nobody else will.”
“You scare me sometimes.”
“Why not?” He gave her a wide-eyed stare. “I’ve got the eyes of a gangan.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Just practicing.”
“The eyes of a what, did you say?”
“Never mind. It’s an old voodoo expression.” Jillian shivered. “Got any coffee?”
“No, I just got up.”
“I’ll make some.” She went into the kitchen and started a kettle of water heating while she spooned Hills Bros. into the funnel of a stove-top drip coffee maker. She moved among his kitchen things with easy familiarity.
“I’ve got some news, too,” she said. “I got a job.”
“You got the equity-waiver thing?” Mac said, coming into the kitchen.
“No, that went to Miss Bajoomies, like I figured.”
“What, then?”
“It’s more modeling, really, than acting. But it’s three days’ work, and the pay isn’t bad….”
“Not the RV show out at the Rose Bowl?”
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact.” She turned to face him. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s wrong because you’ve got too much talent to be spieling Winnebagos to a bunch of shitkickers from Saugus.”
“I agree with you, but while I’m waiting for Aaron Spelling to call, I can be picking up a few bucks.”
Fain flourished the check. “Hey, you’ve got a job, remember. My valued associate.”
“Bolshoi.”
He put an arm around her and pulled her close. “I’m serious, honey. With twenty thou I can put a down payment on a condo in the Valley or Orange County or somewhere. Put down some roots. We can move in together, and you can work on your classes and hang tough till something good comes along. You won’t have to take these Mickey Mouse gigs with a bunch of yokels grabbing at you.”
“Wait a minute. You’re not talking marriage, are you?”
“Lord, no.”
“For a minute there you really had me scared.”
“So how about it? Will you tell the Winnebago people to stuff it and come help me with the Kruger business?”
Jillian relaxed against him and sighed. “I suppose somebody ought to be there to keep those people from drowning you in the pool when you make a big fool of yourself.”
“That’s my girl. Confidence.”
“Ha.”
“Tomorrow we can work out a routine. Tonight we’ll celebrate.”