Hicks and Decker stood at the foot of the third-story stairs and helped the residents to jump over the gap. The woman with the dreadlocks; an elderly woman in a holey bathrobe, carrying a cat; a young man with a shaven head
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and muscles; a middle-aged woman with a head scarf and dangly earrings.
When the last of them was clambering down the stairs to safety, Hicks turned to Decker and nodded toward Moses' door. "What about him?"
"Don't even think about it. Whatever happened in there, he's toast. We try to get in there, we're toast, too. Let's go."
They followed the residents down to the hallway. Decker was only halfway down, however, when Moses' door burst open. A huge fireball roared out of it, and flames rolled across the ceiling, setting fire to the hanging lampshade and the banister. Decker felt the heat blasting against his face and he clamped his hand on top of his head to prevent his hair from being singed.
Moses Adebolu appeared at the top of the stairs, staggering like a zombie, and he was blazing from head to foot. His clothes had been burned off him and his skin was shriveling. The heat from the blast had been so intense that his glasses were welded to his face, and the TV-like lenses had turned milky white.
"Changó!" he screamed. "Changó!" His voice sounded as if it had been wrenched out of his lungs with red-hot pincers.
"Fire extinguisher!" Decker told Hicks, and Hicks jumped down the front steps and crossed the road to the car. Decker took off his coat and climbed the stairs again, holding the coat up in front of him to shield himself from the heat.
Moses swayed, and then he toppled down the stairs, still blazing. Decker had to jump out of the way as his burning body cartwheeled past him, all fiery arms and legs. He fell all the way down to the hallway where he lay with flames flickering down his back, more like a black, crunched-up insect than a man. Hicks came back with the fire extinguisher
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and squirted foam all over him, but it was obvious that he was dead.
Decker went back upstairs to see if there was any chance of saving Aluya, but Moses' apartment was so fiercely ablaze that he couldn't even make it up to the landing. The fire was actually bellowing, as if it were furiously angry. Decker went back outside and made sure that everybody was standing well back. A crowd was gathering and every time another window shattered they let out a strange, long-drawn-out moan.
"My DVDs," wailed the woman with the dreadlocks.
"Any sign of the girl?" Hicks asked.
Decker wiped the sweat and smudges from his face. "Couldn't get close enough. If she is in there, she wouldn't have stood a chance."
They watched the flames waving from the second-story window. One of the drapes blew out and flew off into the morning sky, like a burning ghost.
"Think it was a natural gas explosion?" Hicks asked. "Who knows? Moses had all kinds of herbs and potions
and stuff. Maybe he had something inflammable."
The first fire truck arrived, its siren wailing and its horn
blasting. Then another, and another.
As the firefighters unrolled their hoses, Decker looked behind him, underneath the shadow of 1-95. Aluya was standing there, in an orange Indian-style silk pantsuit, with an orange silk scarf on her head. She was holding a woven shopping bag filled with celery and other vegetables.
Decker went over to her. "I'm sorry . . . there was some kind of explosion. Your father didn't make it."
She stared at him with her huge brown eyes as if she couldn't understand what he was talking about.
"Is there any place you can go?" he coaxed her. "Any relatives?"
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"My father is dead?"
"I'm really sorry. The whole place went up, just like that. Where have you been, shopping? You were lucky you weren't inside."
"It was Changó."
"What?"
"It was Changó. I told him not to defy Changó."
"I don't think that he was defying him. It was more like he was trying to appease him."
"Changó wants his revenge on you. If Changó wants his revenge, he will never rest until he has it. Owani irosun, the greatest vengeance. My father thought that he could be greater than Changó, and this was the price. Changó warned him, with the coconut shells, but he didn't listen."
"I'm sorry," Decker said. Behind him, he heard the fire pumps starting up. "What are you going to do now?"
"I will stay with my sister."
"Okay . . . but if there's anything I can do . . ."
She looked at him for a long time without saying anything. Then she turned and began to walk away.
"I'll need to get in touch with you!" Decker called after her. "I have to ask you some questions, and we'll probably need you to identify your father's body!"
"You will find me when you need me," Aluya called back. Decker caught up with her and took hold of her arm. "Listen," he said.
She shook her head. "You're not the man you once were, Lieutenant. Changó has put his mark on you, and there is no more time for you to do the things you once did. You will scarcely have time to panic."
"Well, that's honest, even if it's not exactly reassuring."
"My father also used to read the cowrie shells, Lieutenant, as well as the coconuts. He read his own shells last night, and no matter how they fell, the pattern always
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brought ossogbo, which is not good. The last pattern was oggunda oche, which means that the dead are angry."
"I still need to know how to get in touch with you."
"No, you don't. You need to find Changó and discover what it is that he wants from you. Otherwise you will not live longer than two goings-down of the sun."
With that, she walked away, with her shopping bag swinging. Hicks came up to Decker and said, "What was that all about?"
"You want it in words of one syllable? I'm in shitsville." "That's two syllables."
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Soon after they returned to headquarters, Sergeant Novick came up to Decker's office with a large yellow envelope. Novick was tall and hesitant, with a chestnut cowlick and spectacles that you could have used to start a campfire, but he was one of the best photographic experts on the force.
"I had a piece of luck with this one, Lieutenant," he said, taking out a glossy black-and-white print.
"Jesus, I could use some luck. Tell me."
Novick laid the print down in front of him. It was a blown-up detail of the photograph that Decker had taken from the Maitland home: a Confederate soldier in a slouch hat decorated with black rags and a long gray greatcoat. It was surprisingly sharp and clear, and Decker could see that the man had a long, stern face with angular cheekbones and deep-set eyes. His nose was hooked as if it had been broken, and he was heavily bearded.
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Novick said, "The image was not only out of focus, because this man was standing in the background, but it was blurred, too, because he'd moved during the exposure. But what I did was to make a digital image of the original photograph, and enlarge the pixels so that I could examine the picture in minute detail. Then I could filter out the blurred pixels and crisp up the image by making a computerized analysis of what the guy would have. looked like if he'd kept still."
"What's it like to be incomprehensible, Novick? Does it interfere with your social life or anything?"
"I'll tell you something, Lieutenant, I'm proud of this piece of work. And I'm even prouder because I've found out who he is."
"You're not serious?"
"Oh yes." Novick rummaged in his envelope again and produced another print. "I went to the library this morning and looked through The Confederate Army in Photographs. All I was looking for were more pictures by the same photographer, but look what I found."