The Devil in Gray (17 page)

She was wearing a filmy dress of white linen, through which Decker thought he could
almost
see the heavy curves of her breasts, and dozens of thin gold bangles. Her feet were bare, and she had gold rings on her toes, too.

“So what is all this you say about Junior Abraham?” she asked.

“Well … I was kind of hoping that you knew more about that than I do.”

She shook her beaded hair. “This is the first I've heard of it. I'm very sorry. Junior wasn't such a bad man. A boaster, maybe. And not to be trusted. But he didn't deserve to die a violent death.”

“Maybe you found out that poor old Junior wasn't being entirely honest with you. You know, like dipping his hand in the cash register.”

“Why must we complain that the moon is slanting?” Queen Aché said. “Can't anyone reach the skies to straighten it?”

“Well, I don't know about the moon, but somebody sure straightened Junior.”

Queen Aché smiled. Decker thought she really did have the most erotic smile. It made you think that something very sexy and very dangerous was going to happen next. But all Queen Aché said was, “He who has a head has no cap to wear on it; and he who has a cap has no head to wear it on.”

“You said it, Your Majesty.”

She kept on smiling. “There is nothing I can help you with, Lieutenant. If Junior was cheating me, I didn't know about it, and if I
had
found out about it, I would have made him pay me back, no more than that.”

“You expect me to believe that? If there's one thing I know about you, it's that you don't forgive anybody anything, ever.”

Queen Aché drew on her pipe and blew out a long thin stream of smoke. “You know nothing about me at all, Lieutenant. To you my soul is a closed book. And you have no evidence whatsoever that I was involved in any way in the killing of Junior Abraham.”

“Oh, really? This was a little bit more than a straightforward hit. It happened in Jimmy the Rib's, in case you're interested, which you don't seem to be, because you probably knew that already. The killer came out of the kitchen and blew Junior's head off, which seems to happen to everybody who gets in your way. But the interesting thing is that nobody saw the killer in the kitchen beforehand.”

“I don't understand why that should be any concern of mine.”

“Well … there are only two possible explanations,” Decker said. “One is that the kitchen staff simply failed to notice him.”

“And the other?”

“It was a Santería spell. And who is the only person in town who would arrange for a hit using a Santería spell?”

“I might make an
ebbó
to protect me from my enemies, but nothing more than that.”

“An
ebbó
?”

“An
ebbó
is more of a sacrifice than a spell, Lieutenant. An offering to our
orishas
so that they will give us the things we crave the most. Love, for instance, or money, or good luck; or protection from evil spirits.”

“How about being invisible? What's the
ebbó
for that?”

Queen Aché shook her head and again her beads made a soft rattling sound. “There is no such
ebbó
and no such spell. All that one would ask is that one's misdeeds went unnoticed.”

Hicks, said, “That would be quite a request, though, wouldn't it? Like, even more all-inclusive than just being invisible.”

“What do you mean?” Queen Aché asked, without looking at him.

“Well, if your misdeeds went unnoticed, nobody would ever know that it was you, whether you were invisible or not. Like, you might leave evidence, but nobody would ever be able to see it.”

Queen Aché said nothing, but slowly turned her head and gave Hicks a hair-raising look, with slightly narrowed eyes, as if she were trying to remember not only his face, but his soul, too.

Decker said, “I want to ask you one more question, Queen Aché. Do you know of any reason why anybody should have wanted to kill Junior Abraham?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Well, thank you for your time. When I've had the chance to check out Junior's bank account, I may ask to take a look at some of your books. You know, for comparison. It would be very educational to know how much he was taking you for.”

“If I hadn't noticed, it couldn't have been very much. You know how careful I am with my business affairs.”

“Oh yes.”

“Still, one can't know everything. Some great scholars of Ifa cannot tell the way to Ofa. Others know the way to Ofa, but not one line of Ifa.”

“Some detectives don't know who shot Junior Abraham, but they never fail to recognize bullshit, even when it's metaphorical bullshit.”

“Good-bye, Lieutenant. Michael will show you out.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

They worked until 8:15
P
.
M
., and then Decker took off his glasses and dry-washed his face with his hands. “That's it, let's call it a night.”

Hicks came over and dropped a list of names on his desk. “Those are all the known members of the Eguns who could have been in the vicinity of Jimmy the Rib's at lunchtime today. I'll start tracking them down tomorrow and checking their alibis.”

Decker picked up the list, scanned it quickly, and sniffed. “You can forget about Wendell Brown. The Strutters cut his balls off last February for messing with one of their women.
And
made him eat them. Otherwise—fine. You're doing good work.”

Hicks checked his watch. “Listen, I know we were all supposed to be going out for a Mexican meal, but why don't you come round to our place for supper tonight? Rhoda always makes plenty.”

“Ahh, I wouldn't want to put her to any trouble. Besides, don't you want to leave your work behind you for a few hours?”

“No, I'd really appreciate it if you'd come. Maybe you can give Rhoda some idea of how important this is. How much the city needs us, you know—people like us.”

“She's still hankering for Fredericksburg, huh?”

“If you could maybe just talk to her.”

“All right, then,” Decker agreed. He stood up and shrugged on his coat. “So long as you bear in mind that I'm not a marriage guidance counselor. My whole life has been one dysfunctional relationship after another, with a lot of floozies in between.”

“Except for Cathy,” Hicks said.

Decker glanced down at the photograph of Cathy in her straw hat and then he looked back at Hicks. “I think you're speaking out of turn,” he said, coldly.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—”

Decker closed his eyes for a moment and then he said, “No. I know. I'm the one who should be saying sorry. It's just that—I've been feeling her presence lately, very close. Almost like she's still alive.”

Hicks looked embarrassed, so Decker patted him reassuringly on the back and the two of them left the office.

In the elevator they met Detective Bill Watkins, a broad-shouldered shaven-headed man with a broken nose. He looked like a linebacker for the Richmond Speed.

“Hear you talked to Queen Aché today, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah, for what it was worth.”

“She didn't admit to nothing, then? That woman …
whewf
, if she wasn't so evil, she'd be
bad
. Give me twelve hours and a king-size bed and I'd have her confessing to anything.”

“She'd eat you alive, Detective, and then she'd suck your bones.”

Hicks opened the front door. “Where the elite meet to eat.” He grinned. The house was small, with a narrow hallway and a steep flight of stairs. Decker could smell frying chicken in the kitchen, and he suddenly realized how hungry he was. He hadn't eaten anything since: Captain Morello had courteously but very firmly turned down his lunch invitation and he had been forced to resort to that soggy double cheeseburger.

“Tim, is that you?” Rhoda called. She came out of the kitchen in her apron, her hair tied up in a scarf, and immediately flushed in embarrassment.

Hicks said, “Hey—I know I should have called, but I thought I'd surprise you.”

“Lieutenant, I'm so sorry … I must really look a mess.”

Decker smiled and held out his hand. “You look great. I told Tim to ask you but he was afraid you'd say no.”

Rhoda wiped her hand on her apron. “Of course I wouldn't have said no. This is an honor.”

“Let me take your coat,” Hicks said. “How about a beer?”

“Do you want a hand in the kitchen?” Decker asked Rhoda. “I make a chili-tomato salad dressing that some people would sell their kidneys for.”

“No, no, I'm fine. Go into the living room, take the weight off.”

Rhoda went back into the kitchen and Decker could hear her arguing with Hicks. “—could have let me
know
, I would have cooked something special—”

He went into the living room. It was wallpapered with a pale brown bamboo pattern, and furnished with big beige leather chairs. A crowd of Barbie dolls sat in one corner of the couch, where Hicks's daughter had obviously been playing before she went to bed. On top of the huge wide-screen television were at least a dozen family photographs, as well as a vase of artificial lilies in artificial water, a china church, and a painted-plaster figure of Jesus with His hands covering His eyes.

Hicks came in with two cans of Budweiser and a plate of tortilla chips. “Rhoda okay about this?” Decker asked him.

“Sure, you know what women are like.”

“I'm beginning to wonder.”

They sat down and Hicks eased his shoes off. “That Queen Aché's something, isn't she?”

“Oh, for sure. She's a
very
astute lady. If there's any racket in Richmond that she doesn't have some kind of a finger in, I'd like to know what it is. She calls her organization the Eguns, which is the Santería word for ancestors. Santeros worship their ancestors and she always worshiped her father. I mean, anybody who
dares
to insult King Special's sacred memory is lucky to end up with no teeth. But she's outdone her old man a hundred times over.”

He popped the top of his beer can. “King Special started out as a fire-raiser … he burned down businesses when their owners were going bankrupt so that they could claim the insurance. Then it occurred to him that if he lifted some of their stock before he torched the place, he could use the stolen stock to set up his own businesses and burn them down himself.

“After that he got into extortion, money lending, dope dealing, property scams, you name it. His real name was Rufus Douglas but nobody ever called him anything but King Special.”

“When did he die?”

“About three years ago. Liver cancer. I'll tell you, the funeral cortege stretched along Second Street from Jackson to Cary, eight blocks. Forty-eight Cadillacs, covered in flowers.”

“And Queen Aché took over?”

“Not only took over but expanded—and expanded fast. King Special might have had a reputation for crushing anybody who crossed him, but believe me, he was
nothing
compared to his daughter. A guy from D.C. tried to muscle in on her dope trade. Charles Noone, his name was, and he always wore a yellow Derby hat, that was his trademark, that yellow Derby hat. Usually Queen Aché arranges for her victims to have their heads blown off, that's part of the Santería thing, so they can't be recognized when they try to be reunited with their ancestors. But when Queen Aché had Charles Noone offed, she had it done the other way around. A street cleaner found his severed head right in the middle of Main Street, still with his yellow Derby hat on. Never found the rest of him.”

“Shit. I seem to remember reading about that.”

Decker helped himself to a tortilla chip and dipped it into a saucer of homemade salsa. “I just want you to realize what we're up against when we're dealing with Queen Aché. She has everybody around here under her thumb, one hundred percent. She does it partly by violence but mostly by Santería. She uses their secret rituals to discourage her people from betraying her … if you betray Queen Aché, that's the same as betraying your religion. And she controls all the most powerful
santeros
. Everybody knows that if you offend Queen Aché, even a little, some
santero
is going to be casting a very nasty spell on you, and you're going to get the stomachache, or your hair's going to fall out, or your goldfish are all going to die.”

“In that case, I'll remember to keep on her good side.”

Decker said, “I think we ought to look into this Santería thing a little deeper. Like, we have three homicides in less than a week and in each homicide the perpetrator is invisible or partly invisible? What you said to Queen Aché about evidence going unnoticed, Hicks—that was very sharp thinking. I think the evidence is right in front of our noses but for some reason we just can't focus on it. Like Sherlock Holmes said, we're looking, but we can't see.”

“Supper's on the table!” Rhoda called.

Rhoda had brushed her hair into shiny flick-ups and put on some bright red lip color. She looked almost too young to be a wife and a mother, with a round face and a little bobbed nose. She had spread the kitchen table with a red-checkered cloth, and served up fried chicken, sweet corn, flowering broccoli, candied potatoes and gravy, with a salad on the side.

“It's pretty simple Monday-night eating, I'm afraid,” she apologized.

“It looks great to me. I keep planning on cooking myself all these fancy meals like
pollo à la vinagreta
and the trouble is I'm always too tired to get around to it. And even when I
do
get around to it, I'm too tired to eat it.”

He sat down and unfolded his napkin. He was suddenly aware that Rhoda was staring at him.

“Is everything all right?” he asked her. “I don't have salsa on my chin, do I?”