‘I’m still not quite clear why you want to build this precise veve,’ she said.
‘It’s an intuition on my part,’ he said. ‘Jocundra thinks it may be an analogue to some feature of my brain, but all I can say is that I’ll know after it’s built. Why do you have it on your card?’
‘Tradition,’ she said. ‘Do you know what a veve is, what its function in voodoo is?’
‘Yes, generally.’
‘I’m quite impressed with what I’ve heard about you,’ she said. ‘If anyone else had called me and suggested I build the veve of Ogoun Badagris out of three tons of copper, I would have hung up. But before I commit… excuse me.’
The hound dog had wandered into the parking lot of the bar and stood gazing mournfully at Mr Brisbeau’s tailgate; it snooted at something under the rear tire and walked around to the other side. Donnell heard Otille speaking angrily to someone, and she was still angry when she addressed him once again.
‘Come to Maravillosa, Mr Harrison. We’ll talk. I’ll decide whether or not to be your sponsor. But you had better come soon. The people who’re watching you won’t allow your freedom much longer.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m very well connected,’ she said tartly.
‘What guarantee do I have they won’t be watching me there?’
‘Maravillosa is my private preserve. No one enters without my permission.’ Otille made an impatient noise. ‘If you decide to come, just call this number and talk to Papa. He’ll be picking you up. Have that old fool you’re staying with take you through the swamp to Caitlett’s Store.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Donnell. Gray rain driven by a gust of wind opaqued the booth; the lights of the bar looked faraway, the lights of a fogbound coast.
‘Not for too long,’ said Otille; her voice shifted gears and became husky, enticing. ‘May I call you Donnell?’
‘Let’s keep things businesslike between us,’ he said, irked by her heavy-handedness.
‘Oh, Donnell,’ she said, laughing. ‘The question was just a formality. I’ll call you anything I like.’
She hung up.
Someone had drawn a cross in blue ink above the phone, and someone else, a more skilful artist, had added a woman sitting naked atop the vertical piece, wavy lines to indicate that she was moving up and down, and the words ‘Thank you, Jesus’ in a word balloon popping from her lips. As he thought what to to next, he inspected all the graffiti, using them as background to thought; their uniform obscenity seemed to be seconding an inescapable conclusion. He walked back to the truck, cold rain matting his hair.
After Donnell described the conversation, proposing they see what Maravillosa had to offer, Mr Brisbeau grunted in dismay. ‘Me, I’d sooner trust a hawk wit my pet mouse,’ he said, digging for the car keys in his pocket.
‘She sounds awful,’ said Jocundra. ‘Shadows can’t be any worse. At least we’re familiar with the pitfalls.’
‘She’s direct,’ said Donnell. ‘You have to give her that. I never knew what was going on at Shadows.’
Jocundra picked at an imperfection of bubbled plastic on the dash.
‘Besides,’ said Donnell, ‘I’m convinced there’s more to learn about the veve, and Maravillosa’s the place to learn it.’
Rain drummed on the roof, the windows fogged, and the three of them sat without speaking.
‘What’s today?’ asked Donnell.
‘Thursday,’ said Mr Brisbeau; ‘Friday,’ said Jocundra at the same time. ‘Friday,’ she repeated. Mr Brisbeau shrugged.
Donnell tapped the dash with his fingers. ‘Is there a back road out of here, one the truck can handle?’
‘There’s a track down by the saw mill,’ said Mr Brisbeau. ‘She’s goin’ to be damn wet, but we can do it. Maybe.’
‘If Edman still spends his weekends at home,’ said Donnell, ‘we’ll give him a chance to make a counterproposal. We’ll leave now. That way we’ll catch whoever’s watching by surprise, and they won’t expect me to show up at Edman’s.’
‘What if he’s not home?’ Jocundra looked appalled by the prospect, and he realized she had been counting on him to reject Otille’s offer.
‘Then I’ll call Papa, and we’ll head for Caitlett’s Store. Truthfully, I can’t think of anything Edman could say to make me re-enter the project, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.’
She nodded, downcast. ‘Maybe we should just call Papa. It might be a risk at Edman’s.’
‘It’s all a risk,’ he said, as Mr Brisbeau switched on the engine. ‘But this way we’ll know we did what we had to.’
As Mr Brisbeau backed up, the right front tire jolted over something, then bumped down, and Donnell heard a squeal from beneath. He swung the door open and climbed down and saw the old hound dog. The truck had passed over its neck and shoulders, killing it instantly. It must have given up looking for food and bellied under the wheel for shelter and the warmth of the motor. One of its eyes had been popped halfway out of the socket, exposing the thready structures behind, and the rain laid a glistening film upon the brown iris, spattering, leaking back inside the skull. Bright blood gushed from its mouth, paling to pink and wending off in rivulets across the puddled ground.
Mr Brisbeau came around the front of the truck, furious. ‘Goddamn, boy! Don’t that tell you somethin’?’ he shouted, as if it had been Donnell’s fault he had struck the dog. ‘You keep up wit this Rigaud foolishness, and you goin’ against a clear sign!’
But if it was a sign, then what interpretation should be placed upon it? Pink-muzzled, legs splayed, mouth frozen open in a rictus snarl; the grotesque stamp of death had transformed this dull, garbage-eating animal into something far more memorable that it had been in life. Donnell would not have thought such a miserable creature could contain so brilliant a colour.
Chapter 13
From Conjure Men: My Work with Ezawa Tulane by Anthony Edman, MD, PhD.
… Though Ezawa’s funding was private, he had been required by regulation to notify the government of his work with recombinant DNA. Government involvement in the project was minimal, however, until the death of Jack Richmond. The morning after his death - I had not yet learned of it - Douglas Stellings, our liaison with the CIA, visited me without appointment. I was not happy to see him. We had managed to keep news of the escape from the other patients, but Staff was in shock and the general reaction was one of utter despondency, of resignation to failure. Not even Dr Brauer could bestir himself to muster a sally against me. We had all been expecting a breakthrough, but with the exit of Magnusson, Richmond and Harrison our little stage had been robbed of its leading players, and we of our central focus. And so, when Stellings appeared, I greeted him as the bereaved might greet a member of the wake, with gloomy disinterest, and when he notified me of the deaths, I could only stare at him.
Stellings, a thin, fit man given to punctuating his phrases with sniffs, was wholly contemptuous of me, of Staff, in fact of anyone with less that CIA status. ‘We’ve told the locals to back off,’ he said. Sniff. ‘The Bureau’s taking care of it… under our supervision, thank God!’ As he glanced at the display of aboriginal crania behind my head, a tic of a smile disordered his features, which were, to my mind, pathologically inexpressive. ‘Get your people up here,’ he commanded. ‘I want to see videos of Harrison.’