There. That was him, the one in the bright Hawaiian shirt. He really was with the police.
The Watcher reached a careful tendril out toward the other, and as it touched he watched the other stop cold in his tracks and close his eyes, as if asking a silent question—yes. It all made sense now.
The other had felt the subtle reach of senses; he was powerful, that was certain.
But what was his purpose?
He watched as the other straightened up, looked around, and then seemingly shrugged it off and crossed the police line.
We are stronger, he thought. Stronger than all of them. And they will discover this, to their very great sorrow.
He could feel the hunger growing—but he needed to know more, and he would wait until the right time. Wait and watch.
For now.
S I X
Ahomicide scene with no blood splattered should have been a real holiday outing for me, but somehow I couldn’t get into the lighthearted frame of mind to enjoy it.
I lurked around for a while, going in and out of the taped-off area, but there was very little for me to do. And Deborah seemed to have said all she had to say to me, which left me somewhat alone and unoccupied.
A reasonable being might very well be pardoned for sulking just a tiny bit, but I had never claimed to be reasonable, and that left me with very few options. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to get on with life and think about the many important things that demanded my attention—the kids, the caterer, Paris, lunch . . . Considering my laundry list of things to worry about, it was no wonder the Passenger was proving a wee bit shy.
I looked at the two overcooked bodies again. They were not doing anything sinister. They were still dead. But the Dark Passenger was still silent.
I wandered back over to where Deborah stood, talking to Angel-no-relation. They both looked at me expectantly, but I had no readily available wit to offer, which was very much out of charac-
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43
ter. Happily for my world-famous reputation for permanently cheerful stoicism, before I could really turn gloomy, Deborah looked over my shoulder and snorted. “About fucking time.”
I followed her gaze to a patrol car that had just pulled up and watched a man dressed all in white climb out.
The official City of Miami babalao had arrived.
Our fair city exists in a permanent blinding haze of cronyism and corruption that would make Boss Tweed jealous, and every year millions of dollars are thrown away on imaginary consulting jobs, cost overruns on projects that haven’t begun because they were awarded to someone’s mother-in-law, and other special items of great civic importance, like new luxury cars for political support-ers. So it should be no surprise at all that the city pays a Santeria priest a salary and benefits.
The surprise is that he earns his money.
Every morning at sunrise, the babalao arrives at the courthouse, where he usually finds one or two small animal sacrifices left by people with important legal cases pending. No Miami citizen in his right mind would touch these things, but of course it would be very bad form to leave dead animals littered about Miami’s great temple of justice. So the babalao removes the sacrifices, cowrie shells, feath-ers, beads, charms, and pictures in a way that wi
ll not offend the orishas, the guiding spirits of Santeria.
He is also called upon from time to time to cast spells for other important civic items, like blessing a new overpass built by a low-bid contractor or putting a curse on the New York Jets. And he had apparently been called upon this time by my sister, Deborah.
The official city babalao was a black man of about fifty, six feet tall with very long fingernails and a considerable paunch. He was dressed in white pants, a white guayabera, and sandals. He came plodding over from the patrol car that had brought him, with the cranky expression of a minor bureaucrat whose important filing work had been interrupted. As he walked he polished a pair of black horn-rimmed glasses on the tail of his shirt. He put them on as he approached the bodies and, when he did, what he saw stopped him dead.
For a long moment he just stared. Then, with his eyes still glued 44
JEFF LINDSAY
to the bodies, he backed away. At about thirty feet away, he turned around and walked back to the patrol car and climbed in.
“What the fuck,” Deborah said, and I agreed that she had summed things up nicely. The babalao slammed the car door and sat there in the front seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield without moving. After a moment Deborah muttered, “Shit,”
and went over to the car. And because like all inquiring minds I want to know, I followed.