The Arcanum, page 9
“I’m ordering you to stop this car!” But even before he spoke, Doyle recognized that he was in no position to give orders. And even if the door were to open, a dive out would most likely kill him.
The taxi careened around a corner, missing a pedestrian by inches and throwing Doyle across the seat. His head cracked the window glass. He was sobering fast as the taxi sped up Central Park West, past the Museum of Natural History. Central Park whizzed by on the right. Doyle had at first assumed that the police had found him, but the situation suggested otherwise. It seemed he’d blundered into the hands of Duvall’s killer.
He cursed himself. “Old fool.” He still knew how to fight, though. This would be one victim his captors would not forget. THE STREETS OF Harlem pulsed with activity as motorcars honked and jockeyed for position on the packed streets. The sidewalks were clotted with ticket lines and laughing couples. Club lights sparkled. The Novelty Fire played across from Wilbur Sweatman’s Jazz Band. Even through the closed car window, Doyle could hear the wail of jazz trumpets. There was a refreshing mix of whites and blacks together on the streets, all dressed in tuxedoes and evening gowns.
The assault on the senses was such that, for a moment, Doyle did not realize that the taxi had taken a sharp left into an alley, then screeched to a halt.
Bodies converged on the car. The back doors swung open. Doyle thrust his cane at the groping hands that reached for him, but he was dragged out from behind by the scruff of his neck. He landed on his back on the pavement. Legs shuffled in the gloom. He expected a volley of blows but none came. Instead, he was wrenched to his feet and his arms pinned behind his back. Doyle weighed two-hundred-plus pounds, yet he scarcely touched the ground as he was ushered through a rusted back door.
“Tell me what this is about! Tell me—”
The bwwaaaaap of a horn solo greeted him, and his words were lost in the music. The nightclub stench of cigar smoke and sweating bodies made his eyes water. He was pushed through the mob.
Doyle felt faint by the time they reached the velvet staircase. The soft carpet muted the sounds of the music. And, like Alice hurtling down the rabbit hole, he entered another world beneath the jazz club. Beaded curtains gave way to warm, candlelit corridors, where the dark eyes of suspicious children peeked out from behind cracked doors. There was a delicious combination of kitchen smells: baking breads, spicy soups, and fried meats. An attractive black girl with a jeweled necklace pulled red curtains aside as the men forced Doyle into a voodoo parlor. Circulation returned to his arms as the well-dressed black men set him free and departed.
Only the driver remained. He circled Doyle aggressively, bare-chested beneath his suit jacket. Doyle flinched as the man patted him down for a weapon. As the driver’s rough hands swept down each pant leg, Doyle surveyed the room. Hundreds of dripping candles warmed the chamber. Ornate chaises lined the walls, reminding him of French New Orleans. A rooster clucked in a small cage atop a table decorated with human skulls.
Then, without a word, the driver was gone. Doyle’s heartbeat increased. Then from behind came a rustling of skirts and a tinkling of bells. A perfume of gardenias and raspberries filled him with longing, then memory . . .
. . . then terror.
Doyle spun around.
A beautiful young woman with chocolate-cream skin stood before the red curtains, her hair tied in a tignon. She batted her long lashes. “Been a while, non?”
Doyle held up his hands to ward her off. “Are you real?”
The woman lifted her chin, the light flowing off high cheek-bones. She was in no rush to dispel the mystery. “What you think, chère ?”
“I think you’re dead, drowned in a river five years ago—or so I was led to believe.” His voice shook.
“Two graveyards in New Orleans got headstones wit’ my name on ’em. Lot of folk want Marie Laveau dead.” Her hand touched Doyle’s pale cheek. “Sometimes I oblige.”
Doyle didn’t know what to feel: rage, horror, bitterness, or relief. Marie Laveau, the famed and feared voodoo priestess of New Orleans, was a living tempest. The fact that she had once allied herself with the Arcanum did nothing to allay his fears. For her loyalties were as mercurial as Duvall’s, and her influence almost as sweeping. Her power over Louisiana culture and politics was unprecedented. The mere threat of one of her curses could force judges to commute death sentences and drive adultering husbands back to their wives. A living enigma, she was a saint to many, and a demon to more. And it only enhanced her legend that there were, in fact, two Marie Laveaus. Marie Laveau the First gave birth to fifteen children, one of whom went on to carry her mother’s name and mantle.
And Marie Laveau the Second invited even more controversy than her mother, if that was possible.
And this was the woman Doyle knew, feared, and had briefly loved.
Where her mother had balanced the darker aspects of the voodoo by showing a charitable, more humanitarian side, her daughter was content to be feared as a sorceress and a witch. This earned her enemies by the legion. Corrupt politicians, racist police, rival voodoo cults—all wanted her dead. But was her magic real, as her followers swore? Or were she and her mother merely accomplished fakes, preying on the public’s fears and superstitions?
Doyle thought he knew the answer, but as he touched a face unlined by age, his thoughts turned to trickery. “You’re a daughter. Another Marie Laveau. You’re not the woman I knew.”
She took his hand, held it to her cheek. “Non. C’est moi.”
Doyle pulled his hand away. “You expect me to believe you’re eighty years old? Look at you. You’re a young girl.”
Marie cocked an eyebrow.
His head swam. “But Duvall told me . . .” He rubbed his eyes, feeling confused and betrayed.
“I lied to him, too,” she said.
He rubbed his shoulder, still sore from the rough handling. “So why all this? Why treat me like an enemy?”
“Enemies are what I protected you from, chère. You were followed. And we are in danger, all of us. All who knew Konstantin.”
THE LOOK IN her brother’s eyes tells her something is wrong. He is quiet, but has always had a sense about spiritual matters.
“Something evil,” he hisses, “in the forest.”
Marie steps past her younger sibling and onto the porch, where she is bathed in the light of the bonfire. She knows something is wrong; her stomach tells her. Something has twisted in her belly all day. Now she watches her dancers framed against the fire, naked and sweating, their voices trilling, their pupils rolled back in the sockets. They are keeping the evil at bay. But Marie senses it just beyond the lick of the flames, hiding in the trees, waiting.
She pulls up her skirts and walks down the porch steps.
“Marie, non!” her brother calls.
Marie passes the dancers and the raging fire, and stops to pull a torch free. Then she crosses into the high grasses, toward the trees. She will meet this spirit in her forest.
The moment she crosses the border of the woods, a quiet falls. She hears the dancers in the background, but nothing else. No mosquitoes. No frogs. Not even a wind rustles the leaves. She walks deeper into the forest’s heart, until the ground is muddy and the willows bend in grotesque shapes.
Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap.
Marie whirls in the direction of the sound.
Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap.
Marie pushes through underbrush, her flame skimming the ground until she finds it.
It’s a dying owl. It writhes on the ground, wings thumping.
Above her, something snaps small branches and plunges to the earth. She hears it behind her now, flapping.
Another owl dies in front of her. They fall out of the trees. She hears their soft bodies collide with the ground. Some plague has struck them.
Marie walks over to one of the birds, kneels beside it. She still hears the fluttering around her, but softer now. She strokes the owl’s broken neck. There is no pulse. Marie covers her face and cries over the owl. Her shaking hands cradle the body, press it to her breast and throat.
“Konstantin,” she cries. “What did they do to you, my Konstantin?”
MARIE WALKS PAST the bonfire. The dancers have stopped. Their chests heave from exhaustion. They watch the priestess climb the steps of the house with a bloody owl clutched to her chest.
She enters. Her younger brother sees her tearstained cheeks, but knows better than to ask. Marie goes to the kitchen and places a wooden bowl on the cutting board. Then, displaying little emotion, she takes a carving knife and guts the owl, groin to throat. She pulls the organs free and slaps them into the bowl.
“Tell me, my love.” Marie stirs the organs with her bloody hand. “Tell me who do this.”
Her eyes scrutinize the deep purples of the arteries, the brownish hues of the lungs. She sees patterns in the viscera. Her eyes are dry, the tears replaced by horror. “Oh God . . . oh God.”
Marie leaves her body.
When she opens her eyes, she is in England, floating above the British Museum. She hears guttural screams. Her attention floats to the road, to a car on the grass by the museum fence. Young men pull themselves free of the car to run to a broken body in the road.
Marie hurtles down to Konstantin Duvall as he gasps, “He’s in my mind!”
The boys kneel by the body, but Duvall’s eyes are locked on the incorporeal Marie.
“Warn them . . .” he says, “. . . warn the Arcanum.”
Marie sobs and reaches for him through the ether, but her cries are lost in a vacuum. Life ebbs from Duvall’s body like seeping gas. It rises like steam away from the shell of Duvall and dissipates in the cool London night.
Then Marie feels a sub-aural hum and turns her attention to the pulsing energy near the trees of the museum park. A figure in a top hat stands in the shadows, watching. He shifts, and the moonlight glints off a blue monocle. There’s something in his arms, a book.
She cannot see his face.
He whispers to Marie through the ether. “Yaji-ash-shuthath,” he says, and chuckles.
Marie recoils, hurtling away from Duvall’s shattered body. She hovers above the world. The Earth turns before her eyes. Then suddenly she speeds into the clouds, until she floats above white feathers in a puddle of human blood. The blood becomes a fire. Now she is in a corridor of fire. Long bodies sway in the flames, and gaze at her with ruby eyes.
Their squeals become screams.
They see her.
DOYLE STROKED HIS moustache as he listened.
“The owl was Konstantin’s animal spirit,” Marie told him. “It was his message. His warning.”
“What message?”
“A man with the blue eye. I saw New York City, and blood. And a book . . .”
“The Book of Enoch,” Doyle finished. “What do we know about this killer?”
Marie paused. “He is not as powerful as he thinks. He’s in danger, too.”
It was a moment of consequence. They allowed it to linger.
“So, he’s brought us together again, hasn’t he? Even in death.”
“You are still angry?” Marie asked.
Doyle’s jaw tightened.
“C’est fou. What was I to do, Arthur?”
“Nothing.”
“You want to discuss it?”
“What is there to discuss? I was a fool. Duvall was my friend for thirty years and . . .” Doyle faltered as he met her gaze.
“And what choice did you give me? To follow you to England?”
“No, of course not—”
“Meet your wife, perhaps? Your family?”
“Stop it.”
“I’m no man’s secret save I choose to be.” Marie’s voice was sharp.
“I was selfish.”
“Spoiled,” Marie added, with emphasis.
Color rose in Doyle’s cheeks. “Is this why you went to all the trouble of dragging me here? To tear the dressing from old wounds? There was enough injury done on all sides, my dear. None of us was innocent—least of all you.”
Marie stiffened. “I was the cause, then?”
“Let us put the matter to rest,” he growled. “I’ve lost a dear friend; you, a lover. In his memory, let us try to heal the breach.”
Marie’s expression softened. “I was never good enough for either of you, was I?”
Their eyes locked. Doyle swallowed. The left side of her lip curled in a question mark, an enticement.
He broke the spell, not trusting himself further. “Howard’s in prison.”
“Oui. I know.”
“He’s in terrible shape. His mind. Someone’s gotten to him.”
“Howard, he’s been courting the fire too long.”
“He wouldn’t . . . he couldn’t tell me everything. He believes he’s being watched.” Doyle acknowledged Marie’s smile. “Yes, I know he always thinks that, but this Book of Enoch is different. We need him.”
“So, how we s’posed to get him outta that jail?”
Doyle did not answer. His eyes said it all.
“You went to see him?” Marie demanded.
“I had no choice.”
“Encore, c’est fou! Why? You know what he say.”
“I had hoped he’d changed.”
“Better chance of a thousand sparrows flyin’ out of my behind. We better off without that magician.”
“Then how do you propose we free Lovecraft?”
Marie stretched her arms over her head and arched her back. Her breasts strained against the low-cut bodice of her dress. “We all have certain powers of . . . persuasion.”
Doyle cleared his throat. “So it appears.”
17
THE BURST OF flash powder turned Detective Mullin’s head. The alley lit up briefly with daylight.
“Got a smoke, Detective?” Rags asked. She was a rail-thin prostitute with the face of a horse and only a tattered shawl to protect her from the cold.
Mullin offered her a cigarette as more flash powder burst in the alley. Police officers milled on the sidewalk, their breath steaming in the wet, chill night.
“You were sayin’?” Mullin turned back to Rags.
“So, Jimmy, he’s a regular, an’ he likes to do it standin’, but he felt all strange about the playground. He’s got two daughters, y’know. So I took ’im in the alley, an’ that’s . . .” She trailed off.
“Anyone touch ’im?”
“No, Detective,” Rags answered. Mullin noticed a tremor in her hand as she brought the cigarette to her lips. Rags was one of the tougher girls. She’d seen bodies before. She’d even cut a john’s throat with a piece of broken glass, and that was one of the bloodiest messes Mullin had ever seen. Now her lips were pursed as though she might cry.
“Dexter was a special person.” Her voice broke.
“Go on home, Rags. Get warm,” Mullin suggested.
“Thanks, Detective.”
Mullin rubbed his bruised hand through his black leather glove. The cold throbbed in the bones. Flecks of icy rain added to his misery as he left the playground near City Hall and trudged over to the alley in question. The officers hunched their shoulders to stay warm and stepped aside, making a path.
The police photographer knelt in the middle of the alley, his fedora tilted back as he pointed his camera at a windswept drift of garbage and newspapers against the wall. His finger compressed a button connecting to a wire.
Mullin was blinded for a moment, dazzling suns looping behind his eyes.
He waved the photographer off. “That’s enough for now. Go on.”
The photographer rose and straightened his hat. “Just a couple more, Detective. This one’s a beauty.”
“Get lost,” Mullin ordered.
The photographer grabbed his light stand and marched out of the alley in a huff.
Mullin took his time on the short walk to the middle of the alley, perhaps unnerved by the tremor in Rags’s hand.
Dexter Collins was no senile old woman or young maid. Mullin had known Dex and thought him a decent egg. The boy had a toughness that wasn’t faked or forced, and Mullin had seen him intimidate gangsters twice his size. Dexter knew how to take care of himself.
But not this time, apparently. Blood vessels had burst in Dexter’s eyes, which, in the cold, had swelled and turned a milky blue. His close-cropped beard was caked with blood, as were his ears. Mullin counted at least a dozen puncture wounds, deep and gouging. His body was flat gray in pallor. Stranger still, intricate pathways of blue veins had risen to the surface of the skin, extending from the forehead, across the torso, to the bottoms of Dexter’s feet.
Mullin heard the officers shuffle in behind him.
“Turn ’im,” Mullin told them as he stood up and got out of the way. The officers positioned themselves at the head and foot of Dexter’s body, then lifted and turned him. Newspaper pages stuck to the frozen blood on Dexter’s thighs and shoulders as they set him facedown on the pavement.
Mullin tore aside the newspapers, revealing what he already knew. Dexter’s spine, like the others, was missing. But because of the frozen condition of the body, Mullin couldn’t tell if the body had been killed last night, or a week before. Which meant Lovecraft was still the prime suspect. But regardless of the evidence, Mullin knew that Dexter, even one-handed, could snap Lovecraft like a toothpick. It made no sense. None of it did.
Dexter had been killed by multiple assailants. And more than one meant a conspiracy, whether Paul Caleb liked it or not.
But what Mullin couldn’t determine was the reason. The victims weren’t rich, they weren’t famous, they weren’t special in any way. Except to their mothers, perhaps.
And this brought Mullin’s thinking back to Doyle. He had also found it hard to imagine the old dog as a murderer, though he swung his cane like a man half his age. But if he wasn’t the murderer, what the hell did he want with Lovecraft? And why bother lying about letters?
And who had thrown Lovecraft’s name into the ring in the first place?
THIS TRAIN OF thought was what led to Mullin freezing his ass off in a parked police car outside the Bellevue asylum next to a snoring Wally. A great many questions converged upon Mr. Lovecraft, and Mullin assumed he wasn’t the only one looking for answers. Lovecraft had only had one visitor, a Mr. Watkins, but Mullin figured it was a false name. So, was Lovecraft a killer or a convenient pawn? A man swept up by events, or an intelligent psychotic? And if he was a puppet, who pulled the strings?
