“A paarolawats is what you would call a zombie. A person who is essentially dead, but the witch can give him certain simple tasks to do and can ride in him if he wants.”
I see pity appear in his eyes. The poor nutcase is what he’s thinking. This infuriates me. I shut my own eyes and take two deep breaths, centering. “Oh, Christ in heaven!” I cry. “Look, you think I’m some sort of pathetic cultist with a bundle of weird ideas, and you’re not listening, really, you’re not writing it down in your little book. Focus on this, Detective Paz: This is real! It’s as real as guns and cars. It’s a fifty-thousand-year-old technology that you don’t understand, and unless you do understand it enough to work with me, you have about as much chance of stopping Witt Moore as a bunch of savages have of stopping a locomotive by stretching a grass rope across the tracks.”
“Cute,” he says, smugly. “What we’re going to find here is that your guy’s got some powder in a jar that he’s immune to himself, and he’s got some way of shaking it out so it affects people in a certain area, and he’s got a gang of fellow fruitcakes who like to cut up pregnant ladies, which explains how he can be in two places at once. Occam’s razor, Jane. You’re a scientist, you know about Occam and the simplest explanation. So we don’t have to worry about zombies or the goddamn pineal gland.”
He pulls out a cell phone. “If you want to tell me about that version, Jane, I’m all ears. Otherwise, off we go.”
I had not thought it would be so exhausting, and I feel a pang of sorrow and regret about me and Marcel in Chenka, what it must have been for him trying to convince me. I say, “You are a moron, Detective Paz.”
He nods agreeably, makes a call and asks for a search team, and for someone from Family Services to take Luz to one of those friendly foster homes you read about in the papers all the time. I start to cry, and I say, “Please, couldn’t she stay here? My neighbor would be happy to take care of her. She’s had a terribly rough time and she’s very frightened of strangers.” I haven’t cried in a while, so that I am a little overwhelmed by the gush, especially since I am amphetamine bone-dry. Detective Paz is unmoved, however. He says, “Hey, listen, Jane, I’m really not a hard-ass. We can work any deal you want if you start talking sense.”
And more in this vein, which dries me up better than speed could; fury, the best antihistamine. I say, “If you are using a little girl as a bargaining chip to get me to tell you acceptable lies, which you must know are lies, then you’re not only a moron, but a sadistic moron. But have it your way?okay, you got me. My husband is the leader of a highly trained band of skilled assassins using African juju powder to cloud the minds of his victims and their guards.”
“Good,” he says, smugly. “And you’re a part of all this? The band?”
I say, “Oh, Christ! Don’t be stupid! Sorry, that’s not an option. Think, will you! I am a rich woman who’s been hiding in pauperage, doing menial work, for two and a half years. Who was I hiding from, and why?”
“The cops,” he says with assurance.
“Because I killed my sister?”
“Or helped him do it, and took the rap for it by faking that suicide.”
I see how this is so much simpler for him to believe, that criminal mastermind with hosts of minions and exotic drugs, simpler than what is really happening. I sink back into silence. There is no point in thinking further now.
Cars arrive. Cops emerge, one of them a female. I am read my rights, cuffed, and placed in the back of a patrol car. I see Paz talking to the lynch-mob man. The man looks at me with those eyes, which I am surprised to see are kindly and sad. Another car pulls up, with a Children’s Services badge on the side. Out of it comes a large black woman in a violet pantsuit, who could be Mrs. Waley’s long-lost sister. She talks to Paz for a while, and then, to my surprise and relief, gets back in her car and drives away. I see Paz walk across the street and speak with Dawn. I may have misjudged him, or perhaps he is a more subtle manipulator than he first appeared to be.
The policewoman drives me to police headquarters, where I’m placed in a cell by myself. After about forty minutes, Paz comes by and takes me to an interview room, windowless, tiled, with the usual one-way glass mirror/window, and asks me if I am ready to make a statement. I say I’m not, and I wish to contact my attorney. He seems disappointed, but tries to hide it behind the usual bland cop mask. I thank him, however, for not giving Luz to Mrs. Waley’s sister, and he shrugs it off. “No problem,” he says. I suspect that it will be a problem if his superiors ever find out. I’m pretty sure he knows who Luz really is, and he hasn’t blown the whistle as far as I know, which will be an even bigger problem for him, covering up on a homicide. Why is he doing it? Deep waters here. After he leaves, I wait ten or so minutes and then a female officer enters and takes me to a phone.
I dial one of the few numbers I hold in memory. A woman answers, “Mr. Mount’s office.” I ask to speak to him and she asks who’s calling and I say, “Jane Doe, his sister.” A considerable pause here. “Jane Doe is deceased,” she says. I say, “Yes, but I’m alive again. Get him for me, would you? And tell him I could smell the flowers of Bermuda when I died on the North Rock Shore.” I have to repeat this and chivvy her a little, but she does something and there is some light classical hold music, Boccherini, I believe. My brother comes on the line. “Jane?” His voice is hesitant and breaking, and I start to leak again.
I say, “Yeah, it’s me, Josey.” I listen to the hiss of the line. My hand on the phone is trembling and sweaty. I am not ready for this, for the terror of love.
“How could you!”in a yell that must have brought his secretary running. “How could you do that to me? And Dad? Jesus Christ, Janey! What the fuck!”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? No, sorry is when you’re late for a dinner date, not when you fucking pretend to commit suicide. Ah, shit, Janey …”
Sobs come across the continent, minutes of them, in which I join. Then he asks me why. I say that I was afraid. I tell him that Witt has done it, that Witt is the Mad Abortionist of Miami, too. I tell him the whole story, as much of it as I could recall.
He listens in silence, and then?and here is why I love Josiah Mount?he doesn’t suggest a stay in a mental institution, he doesn’t ask a lot of questions about why I did this, or failed to do that. He just says, “What do you need?”
I tell him what.
TWENTY-SIX
11/27 Mdina, Mali
The trader Togola easily found, has a compound down by the river, stinks of dead things, curing animal skins abound, his two wives and uncounted children all at work scraping, skinning, salting, drying. Showed him the Olo artifact?observed him closely. Saw fear first, then feigned ignorance. Told him I wanted to be taken to where he found it. I flashed big money, not hard to overawe people who see $500 in a good year, should be ashamed of myself but am not. I have the fever. I kept laying twenties on the mat as I talked, Togola staring at stack like a hypnotized hen. When I reached fifty bills I stopped, and took up half the stack. This when we start, and this (the other half) when we arrive. And as much again when we return here. Fucker rolled. W. looked at me with contempt, neocolonialist me, prob. remembers me and Colonel Musa, and how my overbearing worked out in that case. Don’t give a shit anymore.
11/28 Mdina
W. and Malik our driver off to Nossombougou to get supplies, while I stay here and keep Togola company, so he won’t scram with my advance. And he is frightened, too. No luck getting him to cop to source of the fear, language problem, I think, 80 % of what I say = i ko mun, roughly “come again?” or “what did you say?” According to T., Olo are all witches, if they don’t want you to find them, you won’t find them, that the river is full of jina, or diables, that the Olo are eaters of human flesh. I am dying to go meet them.