Broken Monsters (16 page)

The woman
with skunk hair, black with white streaks, standing behind the counter in front of a wall of candles and glass bottles is not happy to have the police in her establishment.

“No. Sorry,” she says. “I don't know anyone who does witchcraft. We sell blessings here.”

“I see that,” Boyd says, picking up a fat white wax cylinder with a label that reads “Pussy licking candle.”

“I don't judge my customers,” she sniffs. “I order in what they ask for. Rich people have psychiatrists. These people come to me. I listen to their problems.”

“Maybe you listened to a customer saying that they practice santeria. Or lucumí or vodoun?” Gabi says.

“We'll go with any kind of witchcraft,” Bob agrees. “Especially if there's sacrifice involved.”

It's times like these that Gabi wishes her parents had taught her more Spanish. They were so dead-set on naturalizing themselves, and her especially, that it was always English, English, English. She grew up in Kentucky, where they pretty much
were
the Hispanic community, and only moved to Miami when she was sixteen. It was her first real exposure to Cuban culture, and for a while she ate it all up. The cuisine, the language, the boys.

“You're scaring off my customers.” Skunk Hair shoos them aside to let a slight, bedraggled man with red shoes through. He puts down a candle on the counter. “Triple Strength Lottery Win.”

“That'll be five dollars,” the owner says. “You have a fine day, Ramón. Good luck. Give my best to your lady.”

The man leaves, setting the heavy oriental bell clanging sonorously.

“How do you do that in good conscience?” Boyd says, leaning on the counter. “That man doesn't have five dollars to spare.”

“I sell mindfulness and self-reflection. He lights that candle, every time he walks past it, he's thinking about it. Maybe he buys a lottery ticket, or maybe he's thinking about money so he applies for a job. I sold him a love candle and he tells me now he's with someone, very happily.”

“What's this?” Gabi says, holding up a paper pouch with a handwritten label that says “wolf's heart.”

“It's not really a wolf's heart.”

“Can I open it?”

“Only if you buy it.”

“Do you normally sell animal parts?”

“No.”

Gabi holds up another pouch, a narrow twist of paper. “Then what's this ‘black cat bone'?”

“Excuse me.” A woman in white with strings of colored necklaces and a white scarf wrapped around her head emerges from a small curtained-off booth at the back of the shop. She looks decidedly pissed off, Gabi decides. It's something in the way she moves, her bracelets jangling. “I heard you talking—”

“You tell 'em, Iya! Scaring my customers off.”

“You're asking about animal sacrifice and santeria?”

“We're making inquiries—” Gabi starts.

“Like you're some Podunk ignorant cops from the country,” the woman says, inflamed.

“Now hold on there,” Bob says, “we may be podunk, but you don't gotta insult us. I'm Detroit city born and bred.”

“What did you find? Some shrine in the woods with bones and antlers that scared you? That's palo monte, not santeria. Or kids copying nonsense they've seen on TV.”

“I'm sorry. We've got off on the wrong foot. Can we start again? I'm Detective Gabriella Versado, this is my partner Bob Boyd. Can we talk about this in private somewhere so we can be
less
ignorant? It's about a murder investigation where the body was found with animal parts.”

“I do
consultas
in the back. We can talk there. But only until my next appointment arrives,” she says crisp as frost on grass, leading them to the curtained booth.

“Thank you,” Gabi says, taking a seat behind the low table, Bob wedged in behind her so they can close the curtain. “I saw a sacrifice once—
ebo
—with my uncle in Miami. A chicken.”

“You're lucky,” the santera says. “It's a very spiritual experience, an animal sacrificing its life for you. You should be respectful of that divine gesture.”

“I know you also kill goats sometimes too. Would you ever do deer?”

“We only sacrifice goats and rams—no cows, pigs, horses or deer—and tradition dictates that we eat the animal afterwards, so there would be no remains. We believe in…karma, for lack of a better word. When you do harm to other people, in one way or another, you're also harming yourself. Performing witchcraft is only going to cause problems for you.”

“Like violence,” Gabi muses, “it has a way of playing pass the parcel.”

“That's a nice way of looking at it,” the woman says, reevaluating her.

“Can I show you a picture and you can tell me what you think?” Gabi slips the photograph of Daveyton out of her jacket pocket and puts it faceup on the table.

She glances at it and flinches. “What I think? It's psychopathic! This is the work of someone who is very disturbed.”

“Not palo monte?”

“No.” She flaps her hand at Gabi to take the photo away. “Palo monte don't mutilate living people, and there would be no ritualistic purpose in mixing a human body with a deer body. It doesn't make sense.”

“So what do
you
think this is, looking at the photograph?”

“You've got someone with a bad head. A crazy person.”

“What does that mean,” Gabi presses, “a bad head?”

“In our
patakis
, our folk myths, we believe that we come to the world with a destiny we picked for ourselves in Arun. Obatala creates the human body, but you have to get your head from the potter who molds them out of clay in his warehouse. On a good day he makes beautiful heads, but sometimes he gets drunk and makes a bad head. It's a divine defect. There's no way to tell from the outside, but once you've chosen your head, you have to live your destiny.

“Most of us have a medium head. It's not perfect, but there is enough good in there that with the help of the orichas you can be pulled to the good side. But people with a bad head are so damaged they can't be fixed. There's no remedy, the only thing you can do is stop them and recycle them back into the universe.”

“So we've got your blessing to shoot this guy dead then? I'll be sure to explain that in my report,” Boyd quips.

The santera ignores him. “You know, detective, there is a lot of dark energy attracted to you because of the nature of this crime. You have to be careful. It makes you vulnerable to bad things happening to you or your loved ones. You should let me give you a blessing, or cleanse you.”

Bob snorts. “Yeah, I'll skip, thanks. We done here, Versado?”

“I'll take it,” Gabi says, mainly out of politeness but also remembering the teenager she once was in Miami.

“Whatever.” Bob pushes through the curtain. “I'll wait outside.”

The santera picks up a bundle of bay leaves and brushes them over Gabi's body, sweeping over her while she murmurs a prayer in another language. Yoruba, she guesses. It's over in a few minutes.

“Thank you.” She tries to convince herself that she feels lighter, but that's just the smell of the herbs. She's too old and jaded for magic.

“You should take a talisman for protection.
Asabache,
jet, will help repel evil.”

“Ah, but that's the problem,” Gabi says. “I'm not trying to repel it, I'm trying to find it.”

Cas's apartment
building has a coffee shop in the lobby and a gift store because it's a historic building, one of the highlights of Detroit's architecture, with genuine Miskwabic tiles, elaborate floral designs on the exterior and gold art-deco patterns in the entrance hall. It's a beautiful place to live, but more than that, it's prestigious. There's even a doorman who remembers her name, just like the story about the little girl who lived in the hotel in the kids' book Layla used to love. But he's not old and gentlemanly in a suit with brass buttons. He's in his twenties, in an eggplant-colored dress shirt that's the uniform around here, with a skinny mustache, and he's kind of checking her out. “Hi, how you doing this afternoon, Miss Cassandra. And it's Miss Layla, right? Nice to have you back with us.”

“Hey Javier!” Cas waves as she walks straight to the beautiful old elevator and jabs the button repeatedly.

“Hi.” Layla ducks her head.

“You need anything, you just ring down.” He leans out from his desk to say it with a special intensity, like he really, really means it.

“Was he hitting on me?” Layla says as the elevator doors close behind them.

“How long have you been alive? Every man is hitting on you always. But don't feel special. It's how management trains them up. Apparently ‘have a nice day' doesn't sound sincere anymore.”

“That's terrible.” But she can understand it, how words can get worn down like shoes.

“Why, are you into him?” Cas asks.

“Not unless he's an arty skater boy way out of my league,” Layla says breezily. “Why, are
you?
”

“Boys. Gross.”

“Girls?” Layla prods.

“Hey, chicken, I love you, but not like that. I'm just flying solo.” Cas pulls a ridiculous sexy pout at the gold mirrored walls. “Besides, I am also out of your league. Ow! Don't hit me.”

 The old elevator rattles them up to the fourteenth floor and Layla thinks how it's weird that Cas isn't into anyone. Maybe she's asexual or trans like Eric Redding (formerly Erica). Going to a super-liberal charter school means that kids are open about who they are, but also that everyone is up in everyone else's business. Even before she started the semester, she knew about the girl nicknamed Chlamydia (for obvious reasons) from the online gossip about her. Shakespeare would have it wrong these days. It's not the world that's the stage—it's social media, where you're trying to put on a show. The rest of your life is rehearsals, prepping in the wings to be fabulous online.

There's a red roller suitcase by the front door, which means that Cas's mother, Helen, is either coming or going. She wears smart suits and high heels and twice a week she flies to flat parts of the country with wheat fields and silos, doing labor resolution for a grain company. Layla doesn't think she's ever seen Gabriella in heels. Maybe in the wedding photos—which have been relegated to the basement along with the other souvenirs of the life they used to have.

Cas's mother is thin and beautiful. Her makeup is always flawless and her blond hair looks like she just stepped out of a shampoo commercial.

“It's formaldehyde,” Cas told her once. “This special hair treatment which is like seriously poisonous. And she's only skinny because of ballerina syndrome.” She sighed in exasperation at having to explain. “You know. Bulimia and anorexia sitting in a tree, P-U-K-I-N-G. Don't worry, there's an app for that now.”

“For anorexia?” Layla was shocked.

“Probably. But I meant for counting calories. And offsetting them against the ones you burn on the treadmill. My mom spends like an hour in the gym every single day. And she does like this power walk thing through the airport. I swear she'd use weights if they'd let her take them in her hand luggage.”

“Cassandra, is that you?” Her mom looks up from her laptop in the living room.

“Hey, Mom. We were just talking about the doorman.”

“Is he new?” her mother says, going through the motions, but her attention drifts back to her screen as if it's tied to a sinker.

“Same one as always. We were just talking about how
cute
he is.” Layla realizes Cas is baiting her mother.

“Mmm-hmm,” Mrs. Holt says vaguely, but Layla notices her shoulders tighten.

Her father is cooking in the kitchen. Layla thinks of him as hipster sitcom dad—sweet and funny, but somehow tragic. He's shaved his head to hide that it's balding. “Is that Lay with you? You pulling in for eats?”

“Thanks, Mr. Holt. Only if it's no trouble.”

“Are you kidding? You're our favorite dinner guest. And it's Andy, please. Shrimp pasta with chili good for you?”

“Sounds amazing,” Layla says.

That's what Layla envies. The almost normal. And sure, stats will tell you that divorce is normal, but she wants this. A home with two kids and two parents and something good on the stove, the smell expanding to fill the whole house.

Her parents always planned to have more kids, but they were busy and a friend of theirs got shot and they got freaked out, and in the end they just never got around to it.

“Is Ben home?” Cas says, peering around for her kid brother. He goes to a different school, for reasons Layla hasn't been able to ascertain. Special needs or something, although there doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong with him. Cas has assured her it's because she hasn't spent enough time with him, but for all her bitching, she's insanely protective of him.

“He's at practice. Be back by half past.” Her dad is a techpreneur. Name a major company in Silicon Valley and he's “pulled a stint” there—his words. It's why they moved from Oakland, California. Detroit is friendlier to start-ups: lower overheads, tax incentives, hungry talent, cheap office space in TechTown. He's bought into the city's revitalization “with bells on.” Layla loves hearing him talk. It's another language, where any word can be verbed. She and Cas have a secret drinking game they play during dinner, taking a sip of juice every time he uses techno jargon like “angel investor.”

“How's Crater going?” Layla asks him, trying to remember the name of his big start-up project.

“Curatr,” he corrects her automatically, rolling the
trrrr.

“Please don't get him started,” Cas complains.

“I still don't know if I get it. So, it pulls in all your social media to one place?”

“Yes, it's an aggregator. It pulls all your feeds to one platform.”

“Aren't there social networks that do that already?”

“Right you are, missy!” he says in some kind of cheesy British accent, and she's almost relieved she's not the only one with dorky parents. “But the difference is that Curatr is an antisocial social network. It's a private diary, only for you and the people who are really close to you. It's about giving you kids back some privacy, a space that's yours alone, and totally safe. It's tied in with our other offering, Walled Garden reputation management, using a subscription model to better customize SEO.”

“I don't really know what that means,” Layla says, although she thinks that was an upcoming module in Future Promise. Search Engine Optimization: Hitting Your Target Audience.

“It means we partner with the major search engines to promote results you approve and push down ones that might be damaging.”

“Like doing a duck face when you were twelve.” Or being nicknamed Chlamydia, she thinks.

“Yes.” He shifts uncomfortably. Maybe he doesn't know what a duck face is and assumes it's something worse. “Think of it as having your own publicist. We can't get rid of anything forever, but we can push it four pages back on the search results. Maybe as much as ten.”

Cas yawns dramatically. “Dad, can we eat in my room? We have homework.”

Her father is stung, but he covers it up. “No problemo. Two times desk dine-ins coming up.”

“Three please,” Helen shouts from the living room.

“Oh no. Someone has to eat with me!”

“Your son will be home soon.”

And on cue, Ben comes in the door, frowning intensely at his phone from under the flop of his sandy hair, and jabbing at the screen. Cas bounds up to him and snatches it out of his hands.

“Whatcha looking at?” she demands. “Message from a girl?”

He flushes and tries to grab it back from her. “Hey c'mon! Phones are private!”

“Big sister privileges.”

“Give it back! Iza!”

Cas examines the screen, then tosses it back to him, satisfied. “Shut up, dumb-ass. I was just teasing. Here's your stupid phone with your stupid game.”

“Aw man, you messed up my high score. Thanks a lot!”

“I'm just making it more challenging for you. I'm like an extra difficulty setting. You should be grateful.”

“Whatever.” He brushes his hair away from his face, and she spots the bruise under his eye. She grabs his face, yanking up his chin to get a better look. “What the hell happened to your face? Because if someone did this to you, I will fucking kill them.”

“Chill. It's hockey. I caught Jimmy's elbow at practice. You gonna go ballistic when someone body-slams me on the ice? Cuz then you can't come to the game.” He's genuinely alarmed. “Dad! Tell her she can't come if she's going to be such a freak.”

“Like I care about your game anyway.”

“Does that mean you're not coming?”

“Of course I'm coming. Layla too. We've made cheerleader outfits and signs to hold up and everything. ‘Ben, Ben, he's our guy, watch him go: super-fly!'''

“Mo-ooom!”

Their mother does not look up from her laptop. “Would you two please stop winding each other up?”

“You going to sit and eat with me, Benjamin?” their dad says.

“Do I have to?”

“Nope. We can all eat in different places around the house, all plugged into our devices and not talking to each other.”

“Isn't that the whole point of your business?” Cas says.

“No,” her father sighs in exasperation. “It's creating new tools that facilitate new ways of expressing ourselves in appropriate ways.”

“We
are
expressing ourselves. Just not with the people in this room. Can we go now? Because homework?”

“Yes, all right,” he deflates. “But only because you have a guest. Tomorrow night we're sitting at the table like a real family.”

“God, they kill me,” Cas says, flinging the door shut and flopping backwards onto her bed. She reaches over her head to dock her phone in the speakers, and some sickly sweet shoegaze spills out. “You're so lucky that your mom's so uninvolved.”

“Yeah, it's terrific,” Layla deadpans. “You white people. My parents would never let me get away with this kind of shit.”

“Do you miss your old man?”

“I don't know. Sometimes.” All the time. The weird trivia, the geeky projects, being able to hang out together and do nothing. She never realized what a luxury that was. She's had just the one stilted conversation with him since Saturday's disaster call. “Come on, shove over,” she says, climbing onto the bed.

Cas's room is chaos and beauty, wallpapered with pictures ripped out of magazines or printed out. A goth girl in an elaborate lace dress with even more elaborate hand-carved prosthetic legs, a lightning storm over a volcano, abandoned theme parks, misty cliffs. She has a chandelier made out of origami cranes and fairy lights. It's like her whole room is a Tumblr of things that make her happy.

“You know you could just put this up online. It would be a lot easier to manage,” Layla says, glancing over the wall to see if there are any new pictures since she last visited a few weeks ago. A photograph of horses' silhouettes in streaks of sunlight, an illustration of a plump lionfish mermaid with poisonous quills, a girl with her hair dyed in a cascading rainbow.

“Online's not real,” Cas says, bored. “Besides I have to share the PC in the living room with Ben.”

“But you don't have a Facebook page or anything,” Layla persists.

“Too much effort. It's designed to make you insecure about the amazing better life everyone else is having. You're just feeding the machine.”

“It's an anxiety engine.”

“What I'm saying. You of all people should quit. You're anxious enough as it is.”

“Am not.”

“You worry if the shrimp my dad got are frozen? Maybe they're crawling with salmonella.”

“They would be killed during the cooking process.”

“Are you sure? Aren't bacteria more invincible than Superman and cockroaches put together?” Cas prods her.

“Super-roach!” Layla says, trying to distract Cas because she's succeeding in freaking her out. “I bet someone has dressed up a roach in a superhero outfit. We could check online!”

“Like I said, computer's in the living room.”

“What's your wi-fi  password? I'll look it up on my phone.”

“My dad's got spyware. Did I mention he's super-paranoid?”

Cas's dad nudges open the door with the toe of his sneaker, balancing the tray. The food smells amazing, like a restaurant.

“Come on, Cassandra,” he berates her. “You know how I feel about closed doors.”

“Sorry, we didn't want the music to disturb you.”

“I'll just turn the TV up,” he says, glum. “It's not like we're having a family conversation.”

“Thank you, Mr. Holt.”

“Mmmm, thanks Dad,” Cas says, hustling him out of the room. He leaves the door ajar. “This is why we do this shit at your house.”

“Why are your parents such control freaks?”

“It's because I once tried to off myself.”

“Seriously?”

“Or they're worried they're going to bust me touching myself. Or making like my mom.” She holds up two fingers for emphasis and then pretends to stick them down her throat.
“Blaaargh.”