Darkfall

maybe…”
    “Yeah. If maybe…”
    Jack saw that the old man’s eyes had changed. They were still hard, still cold, still watchful, but now there was something new in them. Fear. It was an emotion to which this vicious old bastard was long unaccustomed.
    “Find him,” Carramazza said.
    “We’ll try,” Jack said.
    “Because it’s our job,” Rebecca said quickly, as if to dispel any notion that they were motivated by concern for Gennaro Carramazza and his blood-thirsty family.
    “Stop him,” Carramazza said, and the tone of his voice was the closest he would ever come to saying “please” to an officer of the law.
    The Mercedes limousine pulled away from the curb and down the hotel driveway, leaving tracks in the quarter-inch skin of snow that now covered the pavement.
    For a moment, Jack and Rebecca stood on the sidewalk, watching the car.
    The wind had abated. Snow was still falling, even more heavily than before, but it was no longer wind-driven; the lazy, swirling descent of the flakes made it seem, to Jack, as if he were standing inside one of those novelty paperweights that would produce a neatly contained snowstorm anytime you shook it.
    Rebecca said, “We better get back to headquarters.”
    He took the photograph of Lavelle out of the envelope that Carramazza had given him, tucked it inside his coat.
    “What’re you doing?” Rebecca asked.
    He handed her the envelope. “I’ll be at headquarters in an hour.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Two o’clock at the latest.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “There’s something I want to look into.”
    “Jack, we’ve got to set up the task force, prepare a- ”
    “You get it started.”
    “There’s too much work for one-”
    “I’ll be there by two, two-fifteen at the latest.”
    “Damnit, Jack-”
    “You can handle it on your own for a while.”
    “You’re going up to Harlem, aren’t you?”
    “Listen, Rebecca-”
    “Up to that damned voodoo shop.”
    He didn’t say anything.
    She said, “I knew it. You’re running up there to see Carver Hampton again. That charlatan. That fraud.”
    “He’s not a fraud. He believes in what he does. I said I’d get back to him today.”
    “This is crazy.”
    “Is it? Lavelle does exist. We have a photo now.”
    “So he exists? That doesn’t mean voodoo works!”
    “I know that.”
    “If you go up there, how am I supposed to get to the office?”
    “You can take the car. I’ll get a uniform to drive me.”
    “Jack, damnit.”
    “I have a hunch, Rebecca.”
    “Hell.”
    “I have a hunch that… somehow… the voodoo subculture-maybe not any real supernatural stuff-but at least the subculture itself is inextricably entwined with this. I have a strong hunch that’s the way to approach the case.”
    “Christ.”
    “A smart cop plays his hunches.”
    “And if you don’t get back when you promise, if I’m stuck all afternoon, handling everything myself, and then if I have to go in and face Gresham with-”
    “I’ll be back by two-fifteen, two-thirty at the latest.”
    “I’m not going to forgive you for this, Jack.”
    He met her eyes, hesitated, then said, “Maybe I could postpone seeing Carver Hampton until tomorrow if…”
    “If what?”
    “If I knew you’d take just half an hour, just fifteen minutes, to sit down with me and talk about everything that happened between us last night. Where are we going from here?”
    Her eyes slid away from his. “We don’t have time for that now.”
    “Rebecca-”
    “There’s a lot of work to do, Jack!”
    He nodded. “You’re right. You’ve got to get started on the task force details, and I’ve got to see Carver Hampton.”
    He walked away from her, toward the uniforms who were standing by the patrol cars.
    She said, “No later than two o’clock!”
    “I’ll make it as fast as I can,” he said.
    The wind suddenly picked up again. It howled.
    IV
    The new snow had brightened and softened the street. The neighborhood was still seedy, grimy, litter-strewn, and mean, but it didn’t look half as bad as it had yesterday, without snow.
    Carver Hampton’s shop was near the corner. It was flanked by a liquor store with iron bars permanently fixed over the display windows and by a shabby furniture store also huddled behind bars. Hampton’s place was the only business on the block that looked prosperous, and there were no bars over its windows, either.
    The sign above the door contained only a single word: Rada . Yesterday,