Darkfall
Jack had asked Hampton what the shop’s name signified, and he had learned that there were three great rites or spiritual divisions governing voodoo. Two of those were composed of evil gods and were called Congo and Pétro . The pantheon of benevolent gods was called the Rada . Since Hampton dealt only in substances, implements, and ceremonial clothing necessary for the practice of white (good) magic, that one word above the door was all he needed to attract exactly the clientele he was looking for- those people of the Caribbean and their descendants who, having been transplanted to New York City, had brought their religion with them.
Jack opened the door, a bell announcing his entrance, and he went inside, closing out the bitter December wind.
The shop was small, twenty feet wide and thirty deep. In the center were tables displaying knives, staffs, bells, bowls, other implements, and articles of clothing used in various rituals. To the right, low cabinets stood along the entire wall; Jack had no idea what was in them. On the other wall, to the left of the door, there were shelves nearly all the way to the ceiling, and these were crammed full of bottles of every imaginable size and shape, blue and yellow and green and red and orange and brown and clear bottles, each carefully labeled, each filled with a particular herb or exotic root or powdered flower or other substance used in the casting of spells and charms, the brewing of magical potions.
At the rear of the shop, in answer to the bell, Carver Hampton came out of the back room, through a green bead curtain. He looked surprised. “Detective Dawson! How nice to see you again. But I didn’t expect you’d come all the way back here, especially not in this foul weather. I thought you’d just call, see if I’d come up with anything for you.”
Jack went to the back of the shop, and they shook hands across the sales counter.
Carver Hampton was tall, with wide shoulders and a huge chest, about forty pounds overweight but very formidable; he looked like a pro football lineman who had been out of training for six months. He wasn’t a handsome man. There was too much bone in his slablike forehead, and his face was too round for him ever to appear in the pages of Gentleman’s Quarterly ; besides, his nose, broken more than once, now had a distinctly squashlike appearance. But if he wasn’t particularly good looking, he was very friendly looking, a gentle giant, a perfect black Santa Claus.
He said, “I’m so sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
“Then you haven’t turned up anything since yesterday?” Jack asked.
“Nothing much. I put the word out. I’m still asking here and there, poking around. So far, all I’ve been able to find out is that there actually is someone around who calls himself Baba Lavelle and says he’s a Bocor .”
“ Bocor? That’s a priest who practices witchcraft-right?”
“Right. Evil magic. That’s all I’ve learned: that he’s real, which you weren’t sure of yesterday, so I suppose this is at least of some value to you. But if you’d telephoned-”
“Well, actually, I came to show you something that might be of help. A photograph of Baba Lavelle himself.”
“Truly?”
“Yes.”
“So you already know he’s real. Let me see it, though. It ought to help if I can describe the man I’m asking around about.”
Jack withdrew the eight-by-ten glossy from inside his coat and handed it over.
Hampton’s face changed the instant he saw Lavelle. If a black man could go pale, that was what Hampton did. It wasn’t that the shade of his skin changed so much as that the gloss and vitality went out of it; suddenly it didn’t seem like skin at all but like dark brown paper, dry and lifeless. His lips tightened. And his eyes were not the same as they had been a moment ago: haunted, now.
He said, “This man!”
“What?” Jack asked.
The photograph quivered as Hampton quickly handed it back. He thrust it at Jack, as if desperate to be rid of it, as if he might somehow be contaminated merely by touching the photographic image of Lavelle. His big hands were shaking.
Jack said, “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“I know him,” Hampton said. “I’ve
seen him. I just didn’t know his name.”
“Where have you see him?”
“Here.”
“Right in the shop?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last September.”
“Not since then?”
“No.”
“What was he doing here?”
“He came to purchase
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