Age of Voodoo (14 page)

TWELVE

WANGA FETISH

L
EX HAD NO
choice but to comply. The SIG was down to the last round in its clip. A single bullet left no margin for error; if his shot didn’t find its mark in the henchman’s head, he wouldn’t get a second chance. Albertine would be done for.

“Okay, okay,” he said. He showed the man the SIG, with his index finger arched ostentatiously clear of the trigger guard. Then he bent, placing the gun on the dead henchman’s chest. He straightened again, both arms aloft. “I’m doing exactly as you say. The gun’s down. I’m no threat to you any more. Now please, let her go.”

“Lace your fingers behind your head.” The henchman had evidently watched a cop show or two in his time. That or he had been arrested himself and knew the drill. Probably both. “Go on, do it.”

Lex again complied. His mind was racing. There were ways out of this situation, various means by which he would turn the tables on the henchman and survive. But he was having a hard time thinking of one that didn’t end with Albertine dead.

“Albie!”

Wilberforce had powered down the engine, and now came clambering out of the Turbo Beaver. His panic-stricken cry echoed across the boatyard.

“Wilb, back off,” said Lex, without turning round. “I’ve got this.”

“You!” Wilberforce yelled at the henchman. He was hyped up, with anger and from the shock of watching his plane’s propeller slicing the other henchman apart. “Let her go. Let my cousin go.”

“I’ve got this,” Lex repeated.

“Cousin, huh?” said the henchman. A grin smeared itself across his face. Lex recognised him as one of the three goons who’d been at Wilberforce’s house last night. He had a gold hoop earring in one ear that lent him a vaguely piratical air.

“How much she worth to you, boy?” the man went on. “Plenty, I reckon. Maybe I should take her back to the Garfish’s place so’s he can keep hold of her for the time being. She can be—what’s the word? Collateral.”

“She’s got nothing to do with this,” Wilberforce pleaded. “Leave her be.”

“Mr Finisterre would enjoy having a fine woman like this as a house guest. He’d be sure to look after her, entertain her properly. I imagine him and her’ll have plenty of fun together while he’s waitin’ for you to pay him what you owe.”

“You—” Wilberforce began hotly.

Lex interrupted. “Let’s not let this thing escalate, all right?” he said with all the calmness he could muster. “Let’s no one lose their temper. Otherwise someone could get hurt. You.” He nodded at the pirate-like henchman. “I see you have a bandage there.”

The hand with which Pirate gripped Albertine’s throat, his left, was wrapped in surgical gauze and wadding. The thumb, index finger and middle finger were fine. The other two fingers appeared to be absent.

“Am I right in thinking you lost a couple of fingers last night?”

“Yeah,” Pirate growled. “And we know who’s to blame for that.”

“Yes. Me. Bet it hurts, eh?”

“Not so bad. I got given good drugs at the hospital.”

“Still, you’ll be feeling a nasty throbbing ache that no amount of painkillers can quite touch. Not to mention an aggravating itch. And even when it’s healed your hand won’t ever be the same again. It’ll never work properly again. Every time you use it, every time you look at it, you’ll be reminded. You’re deformed now.”

Pirate looked daggers at Lex. “Too damn right I am.”

“Bet you hate me.”

“That’s puttin’ it mildly.”

“Bet you’d like to punish me. So come on. Why not? Go ahead. Get your own back. Come and give me the retribution I deserve.”

The gun wavered beside Albertine’s head. Pirate was definitely tempted.

But then, “Uh-uh,” he said, with a firm head-shake. “No, I’m not fallin’ for that. This here’s my bargainin’ chip, this girl. I’m not lettin’ go of her.”

Lex tried not to look disappointed.

At that moment, he saw something.

The flap of Albertine’s shoulder bag was unclipped and slightly open, and she was dipping a hand inside.

She saw that he saw, and her eyes told him not to let on.

She had some strategy in mind. She was up to something.

Lex’s role now was to play for time so that Albertine could pull off whatever move she intended to make.

“So,” he said to Pirate, “what next? You’re going to make for your car, I suppose.”

“That’s the general idea.”

“Report back to your boss. Tell him how three of his lieutenants are dead. How will he take the news, I wonder?”

“He’ll be angry,” replied Pirate. “But maybe not so angry when he sees the peach of a gift I brought him.”

He gave Albertine a shake. Her hand was deep inside the bag, surreptitiously rummaging. So far, Pirate was wholly unaware of it. Lex had to continue to make himself the main focus of the henchman’s attention. He had no idea what Albertine was preparing to do, but if it distracted Pirate for even a couple of seconds, it would provide Lex with an opportunity to take action.

“Might even give me a raise,” Pirate went on. “Not as though I don’t deserve one, seein’ as how I’ve lost two fingers workin’ for him.”

“I’m surprised you don’t take him to an industrial tribunal,” Lex said. “Claim compensation.”

“Lex, what are you doing, making jokes?” hissed Wilberforce. “This isn’t the time for being funny.”

“I’m quite serious. The man has been badly injured while discharging his duties. There’s a case for prosecuting the Garfish for neglect, if not downright dereliction of care.”

“He’s a shotta!” Wilberforce exclaimed. “A fucking paid thug. Not a window washer who’s fallen off a ladder. And he’s holding my cousin hostage, in case you’ve forgotten. Stop messing about.”

“I’m just saying everyone, whatever their occupation, is entitled to safe, hazard-free working conditions.”

Albertine’s hand slid clear of the shoulder bag. She was clasping a small object that seemed to be made mostly of feathers, black and red ones. Gripping it tightly, she began murmuring under her breath.

“Huh?” Pirate said to her. “What’s that you sayin’?”

Albertine didn’t reply, just carried on murmuring. Her eyes were closed. Her speech had a rhythm to it, somewhere between a song and a chant.

The tip of the pistol ground into the side of her head. “Shut up now, woman. I said shut up!”

Albertine’s voice rose until individual words and phrases were audible. Lex caught a mention of a name he didn’t recognise, Maman Brigitte, and another, Erzulie Dantor. Albertine was apparently asking the voodoo spirits for aid and protection.

“Stop that jabber right now, or I shoot!” Pirate yelled. “I will!”

Albertine’s eyelids parted. Her eyes had rolled up inside her head. Only the whites showed. Her whole body was shuddering, as though in the throes of some kind of seizure.

She lifted the object in her hand up high.

It was a tiny figurine, a gaudy little wooden doll festooned with feathers and brightly coloured beads, and even a couple of small bones that must once have belonged to a bird or a mouse.

Very deliberately, Albertine took hold of one of the doll’s legs.

No less deliberately, she snapped it in two.

Pirate let out a screech as his left leg collapsed backwards under him, bending like a liquorice whip. He crashed to the ground in a sitting position with his leg doubled beneath his bottom, shin folded against front of thigh, foot pressed to crotch. It was as though his knee had disintegrated—been struck by a blow from some powerful unseen hammer and utterly destroyed. He gibbered and writhed, near incoherent in his agony.

The man was incapacitated and clearly no longer a threat, but Lex nonetheless sprang over to him and snatched the gun from his grasp.

“Albie! You all right?” Wilberforce was at her side, cradling her, desperately concerned.

Albertine, emerging from her trance, nodded wanly. She looked like someone recovering from a severe hangover, brittle and delicate.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” said her cousin. “This is all my fault.”

“I’m fine, Wilberforce. Really I am. No need to worry.”

“If anything had happened to you, I’d never forgive myself. Aunt Hélène wouldn’t either. She’d kill me.”

“She’d do a whole lot worse than that, cuz. Seriously, though, I’m okay. No harm done. You can stop smothering me now.”

Wilberforce rounded on the thug. “Bastard! Holding a gun on a defenceless woman.” He lobbed a wad of spit onto Pirate’s contorted face. The man was in too much pain to notice or care.

“Defenceless?” said Lex, arching an eyebrow. “Apparently not. What did you do to him, Albertine? What is that thing?”

“This?” She held out the doll for him to examine. “What does it look like?”

“A voodoo doll.”

“The correct term is ‘
wanga
fetish,’” she said. “But essentially yes, it’s what you know as a voodoo doll. This one’s consecrated to Maman Brigitte, who rights wrongs, and also to bitch-devil Erzulie Dantor, who safeguards women, especially when they’re in danger from men.”

“And you just happened to be carrying it in your bag?”

“I have it with me at all times,” Albertine said. “A girl can never be too careful. Rapes and muggings aren’t unheard of on this island. I got the idea for keeping an emergency fetish on me when I was at Cornell. A couple of coeds were assaulted in Ithaca one night, not that far off-campus. The dean of the faculty advised the female students to buy personal alarms and pepper spray, just in case. I thought I could go one better.”

“So you break its leg”—Lex pointed to the fetish’s snapped wooden limb—“and
his
leg breaks too?”

“That’s more or less it. The fetish has to be primed with power first. You must ‘baptise’ it, giving it a name, and perform various other rituals and incantations over it. You must also offer it food and drink on a regular basis and talk to it like a friend. Otherwise the protective energies inside it will fade and it may not work when you need it to. Now and then it’s good to fumigate it with frankincense and herbs as well, keeping it sweet in more ways than one.”

“A name?” said Lex. “So what’s yours called? Psycho Barbie?”

“It has a secret name, which I can never reveal. But its public name is Woman Scorned.”

“As in ‘Hell hath no fury like...’”

“Precisely.”

Lex looked at the stricken Pirate, who was grey-faced and on the verge of passing out. He could scarcely fathom what had gone on here. Was he expected to believe that some sort of magic had just taken place? That the damage Albertine had inflicted on the fetish had somehow transferred itself onto Pirate?

He couldn’t deny the evidence of his own eyes. The man’s leg had been forced backwards at the knee without any visible physical cause. Was it possible that Pirate suffered from some underlying medical condition that would account for the knee giving way spontaneously? Some disease of the bones or joints? Extreme osteoporosis? Hyper-elastic tendons?

But even if that were so, it didn’t explain why the injury had occurred at the exact same moment that Albertine broke the doll’s pencil-thin leg, and so abruptly too. The power of suggestion, maybe. Or else an astonishing coincidence.

Lex was aware that he was clutching at straws. Unfortunately, the simplest solution here was also the one that was hardest to swallow.

Voodoo.

Voodoo existed. It was real. It worked.

That, on top of Lieutenant Buckler’s revelation of the shadowy supernatural demimonde which he and Team Thirteen operated in... It was all too much. Too many absurdities to take in at once.

This was turning into one monumental head-fuck of a day.

THIRTEEN

EXTREMELY UNCIVIL

V
IRGIL
J
OHNSON CRINGED
in his office, hunched against the wall between a filing cabinet and a steel desk bearing a vintage computer and a litter of motor parts. He couldn’t tear his eyes off Lex’s SIG, not knowing that Lex had no intention of using it on him.