"My undying gratitude, of course."
"How about your undying gratitude and two hundred bucks?"
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Decker took out his billfold and peeled off a hundred dollars. "I'll give you the rest when you do your stuff."
Jonah made the bill disappear as if he were performing a conjuring trick. Then he said, "Most of the santeros are tied up with Queen Aché. You don't want to go talking to those dudes, because the next thing you know they'll be putting the hex on you and your dick'll drop off or something. But there's one who might help you, if you ask him real respectful. His name's Moses Adebolu. He used to be a close friend of Junior Abraham, and I know he's pretty sore that Junior got offed."
"Can you take me to him?"
"Okay, but we have to go by way of the Afro market." "What the hell for?"
"You have to bring Moses a live rooster and some cigars and maybe a bottle of rum. Also some rompe zaraguey root if you can find it, or some okra."
Decker said, "I'm conducting a homicide investigation here, not a shopping trip."
"You have to bring those things, Deck-ah. They're part of the ebbó, the sacrifice. Otherwise Moses won't help you a-tall."
A little before noon, Decker parked outside a scabby, narrow-shouldered house under the shadow of Route 95. He and Jonah climbed out, and they had to shout to each other because the noise of the overhead traffic was deafening. The morning was hot, with 85 percent humidity, and the air was blurred with exhaust fumes.
Decker opened the trunk and took out a wicker basket with a querulous, brassy-plumed rooster inside it. Jonah lifted out a brown paper sack containing two bottles of Mount Gay rum, a box of King Edward cigars, and an as‑
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sortment of sugarcane, palm oil, cinnamon sticks, and toasted corn.
"This had better be worth it!" Decker yelled in Jonah's ear.
"I don't know, man! I can't guarantee nothing! These santeros, they can be highly uppity if they don't like the smell of you!"
They climbed the steps in front of the house where three young boys were playing a game of pick-up-sticks with what looked like rats' bones.
"Moses at home?" Jonah asked.
The rooster flapped and clucked inside its basket. The oldest boy frowned and said, "What's that you bringing him?"
Decker opened up the lid so that he could see. "Takeout. Kentucky Unfried Chicken."
They pushed open the peeling, brown-painted door and stepped into the hallway. The floor was covered with cracked, curled-up linoleum and the stair carpet was so worn out that it was impossible to tell what color it might have been. The whole house was pervaded by an eye-watering smell of frying garlic and cinnamon, and somebody was listlessly playing the bongo drums. At the top of the stairs was a stained-glass window showing a man in white robes standing next to a river, John the Baptist maybe, but the top part of the window had been broken so that he had no head, only plain glass.
"Second story," Jonah said, and up they trudged. They crossed the creaking landing, and Jonah knocked at a door that was decorated in lurid reds and blues and maroons, with a staring yellow eye painted on each of its panels. "Let's hope Moses is feeling amenable. Not stoned or got a sudden attack of unreasonable racial prejudice or nothing."
He knocked again, and a hoarse voice said, "Don't be so
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impatient, my friend, I hear you, I hear you." The door was opened by a big-bellied, gray-haired man with enormous spectacles that looked like the screens of two 1960s TVs. He was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt and black pants and sandals, and around his neck hung necklaces of colored beads and silver chains and brightly dyed guinea-hen feathers.
"Jonah, ain't seen you in a while, what you want, man?" "I brung you some stuff, man."
Moses squinted suspiciously at Decker. "Looks like you brung me some trouble, too."
Decker lifted up his basket. "One live rooster. I just wanted to talk to you, that's all."
"Talk about what? I'm a busy man, friend. Got to do this, got to do that."
"Decker's the man, man," Jonah explained. "He's trying to find out who offed Junior Abraham."
"How should I know who offed him? And even if I did I wouldn't tell the man. What you say your name was?" "Decker—Decker Martin."
"That's kind of a slave-owning name, ain't it?"
"I wish. I don't even have a cleaner."
The rooster skittered impatiently, and Moses said, "All right then, guess you'd better come along in. What you got there, Jonah? Cigars, is that? And rum?"
"One hundred twenty proof, just the way you like it."
Moses shuffled ahead of them into a gloomy, airless living room. The room was permeated with an extraordinary smell, bitter and yet fragrant, which somehow gave Decker the feeling that he had stepped out of the real world and into another. It was crowded with heavy 1950s-style furniture—two immense armchairs and a couch, all upholstered in brown brocade, with antimacassars draped over the back.
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The drapes were thick and brown and dusty and looked as if they hadn't been taken down and cleaned since the first run of I Love Lucy. A huge television dominated one corner of the room, while the other was taken up by a Santeria shrine—less glittery than Queen Aché's, but crowded with coconuts, red and green beads, candles, flowers, pictures of saints, and a scowling head made of cement, with cowrie shells for eyes.
Moses eased himself down into one of the armchairs and said, "Don't know what I can do to help you, my friend. The rumor was going around that Junior Abraham was doing some sly business on the side when he was supposed to be working for Queen Ache, but that was only a rumor. He had some fancy new threads and a fancy new SUV, but that don't prove nothing."
Decker sat opposite him and set down the rooster's basket on the matted brown rug. "I need to know some more about Santeria," he said. "In particular I need to know how a man can make himself unseen."
"Unseen? You're talking a seriously serious spell here. Only a very prestigious santero can work a spell like that, maybe even a babalawo. A babalawo is a high priest, in case you wasn't aware of it . . . somebody who conducts the sacrifices whenever santeros get theirselves initiated."
Decker said, "The guy who killed Junior Abraham made himself unseen . . . at least for long enough to walk right up to him and blow his head off at point-blank range. And I'm dealing with three other cases, too, where the perpetrator has somehow managed to remain invisible."
Moses nodded. "Well, this is interesting, friend. I haven't heard of magic as strong as this for many years. These days, very few priests have the total faith that you would need to walk amongst other folks unseen. You want tea?"
Behind Moses' back, Jonah nodded a frantic yes, to indi‑
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cate that this was a matter of essential courtesy. Decker said, "Tea? Sure, I'd like that."
Moses reached over to a side table and rang a small brass bell. Almost immediately, a young woman in a red and green turban and a red and green sari came into the room. She was twenty-three or twenty-four, with high cheekbones and a long, almost Masai face. She was wearing a sweet musky perfume that Decker didn't recognize.
"My daughter, Aluya," Moses said. "Aluya takes care of me, don't you, Aluya? Bring us some tea, yes, Aluya? And some of them honey-nut cookies."
Decker looked up at Aluya, grinned, and said, "Hi," but Aluya bashfully turned her face away. Moses said, with undisguised satisfaction, "Aluya will have plenty of time for socializing with men when I'm gone off to associate with my ancestors. Right now she has enough on her plate, cooking my dinners and washing my drawers."