“ Don't ask me.”
“ Oughta be a law…”
“ Probably is…some where…”
Alex thought back to the day they'd stepped into the Root Mon's world, to confront a lanky, huge-handed black man with a Jamaican accent and polished white teeth, two of them gold, each with an initial on it: R and M for Root Mon. Inside his shop hung every imaginable item from pegs and ceiling, half on and off shelves filled with vials, boxes, jars and baskets.
“ What yooooou gentlemens need for? Whatever it is, you come to de right mon.”
“ Hearts,” Alex had said.
“ I got plenty of demon, but what kind you need?”
“ What kind you got?”
“ Come on back to de back, Officers, and we see what we can find, mon.” He looked nervously around as if expecting someone to come rushing in. At that moment, someone did. It was a well-dressed TV newscaster whom Alex had seen many times before both on the tube and at crime scenes. She was generally a pain in the ass.
“ How the hell did you people find out about this call?” asked Ben, glaring at Edna Lowery of It Takes 2 News.
“ It's our business to find out,” she curtly replied as her camera team began to set up in the shop, one with a large but portable camcorder panning the amazing array of items found in the collection of herbs, spices, cures, medicinal potions and magic lotions.
Alex knew at once that the entire call was a publicity ploy for the Root Mon's store. “You better have some recently hocked, hot hearts,” he warned the tall, smiling proprietor of the shop, who flicked on his CD player, rushed the camera and began a spiel like nothing Alex had ever heard before. He broke into a reggae singsong of poetry and commerce, further underscoring the bogus nature of the complaint that the store dealt in human hearts. The owner's “rap” went on and on, and he did a little dance for the cameras as he spoke of his Root Heaven, saying:
“ You carryin' a curse? Got urgent pain? / Can't make water? / Jus' you come down to Root Heaven, / the famous Root Mon's store!”
“ That's enough of that,” Alex began in his most serious detective's tone.
But Big put up a hand and said, “No, Alex, I want to hear this.”
The Root Mon smiled wide and continued, playing to the cameras. “Here's a broth, / here's a stew. / You want both, mon, / for what you gotta do. / You got needs? / Plannin' big sac-ro-fice? / We got seeds / and chickens on ice. / We got bugs, scrubs, herbs, / all kinna spice. / Need dem magic words? / Hav' a dose-a-crawlin' lice. / Eat a canna magic rice, / a pinch of snuff for dat oF wart, / jus”nough for de heart.”
He was on a roll now, unstoppable.
“ Toad sweat'll get you up'n fit / with no shivers, shingles or sneeze. / Get whatever you please / wid heavenly ease.”
As he droned on, Alex stepped through the curtained rear and began digging amid an amazing assortment of ancient and filthy artifacts stacked on shelves and boxes here too. From the other side of the curtain he could hear deYampert's amused laughter. Meanwhile, the camera panned from the proprietor to a huge wall sign which was a poetic listing of all the services and
items provided his customers. Later that night, when Alex would see himself on the late newscast, they also flashed the big sign, which read: ROOT HEAVEN CREDO
We got fat slugs and tobacco plugs.
Got fuzzy cut worms for cuts, scrapes 'n burns.
For fever it's de poltice and de crucifix Christ
Got many things for stings: herbs, toots, roots 'n strings.
Go-head, make your day wid dat fat bottle of turtle-nip spray.
Toss the snake rattle over your left shoulder onto a big boulder beside a flowing river at the midnight hour.
Get whatever you need.
No talk, guilt or greed.
Join de Root Club!
Special on de belly rub.
Special on de herb'n'potion.
Jus' whisper who gets dis notion, dat lotion, hex on/off jus's you wish.
Got stalks and stones minerals and bones, cat tails in pails wid good'n'plenty snails.
Got a clip of royal bangs, eyelashes from Queens, nose hair from de King,
Bob Marley's gol' ring…
Take dat magic tobacco, wrap it in fine calico, tie it wid de cat gut.
Finna fine ol' cemetery, dig dare a big rut, an' quick bury it up.
Wid dat per-scription filled, you got your enemy killed…
Fix you up wid a hex sign!
Tack to the nearest pine.
Throw a magic lotion into the closest ocean.
Come back for more when you're cravin' de additional cure from your Root Heaven…
COME TO ROOT
HEAVEN
“ Guard your fleas. Curses comes in threes, missy! Get even how eva you can, and Glory be, see me, mon. /So, if you wants to regain de health, life an' prosperity, den listens to me! forget dat 7-Eleven, mon, get yow-self to my Root Heaven!”
He finished with a flurry and a full, rich laugh. Ben deYampert and the camera crew joined in the laughter, several of them poking about the curious shop as Alex announced, “Are these the hearts you got us down here for? You got anything fresher?”
This only cracked everyone in the place up. After the laughter, the Root Mon, Anton Eugene “Mystick Ruler” Dupree, said, “You want fresh, you got to go to de butcher, mon.”
Everyone laughed heartily again.
Anton Eugene approached Alex, grabbed up two of the larger hearts and said, “Mostly dese are use for grinding into powder.”
“ Powder?”
“ Big hearts like dese help the fine ol' wife dat's gone slack wid the rheumatoy back. Also for ill odors and to end de ol' man's snores.” Ben, tonight on his bar stool, remembered every line and every laugh from the time in Root Heaven as it all came back to him now. Alex had to catch him when he fell off the bar stool while they both helplessly laughed together.
“ Newspapers and TV guys had a lot of fun with that one too,” Alex added. “Come on. Take yourself home. I've got to get some sleep myself.”
“ You're okay then, Alex?”
“ What's not to be okay about, Ben?”
“ Nothing… everything… hell, life.”
“ Life's a bitch.”
“ Got that right.”
They said their good nights back at Tully's place, which by now was dark and empty, closed at past midnight. Alex located his car and drove home, the voice of the Root Mon playing in his head. They'd played out the voodoo angle on the Hearts case, and if anyone had his ear to the voodoo grapevine, it was Anton Eugene. “Try de KKK, maybe,” was Anton Eugene's last suggestion on the day they'd returned his buffalo hearts to him.
The music at the Blue Heron was ear-wrenchingly loud, wonderful for private conversation. It was also a terrific place to meet old friends and make new friends in more ways than one. It wasn't unusual for Thommie Whiley, a.k.a. Mademoiselle Marie Dumond, to be approached by a stranger, but seldom one as good-looking as the one across the table from him now. He thought it a little quirky, the way their conversation had gone from the drinks the guy had bought him and the band to a dead guy he'd known only briefly a year ago, a guy named Victor Surette. He wondered if the pickup was a ruse, if this guy was an undercover cop or something, looking for dirt among the gay and transvestite world of the French Quarter; the guy knew immediately, even though Thommie was in full regalia as Marie, that he was hitting on a cross-dresser, as if he had some sixth sense about such matters.
But suddenly all such suspicion was put at bay when the guy said, “I'm Vicki Surette's brother, EmanueL”
“ His what?”
“ You didn't know he had a brother?”
“ No, I swear, I had no idea…”
“ I'm surprised; you might've guessed. Look closely, the high cheekbones.”
Their conversation was fimneled through the cacophony of noise coming from the band, the wailing sounds of Janis Joplin and Judy Garland wannabes and female impersonators, live on stage, the house packed so full that to communicate you had to shout, yet no one could possibly overhear any single conversation, unless the table were perhaps bugged-and even then it would take a sound expert to clarify the words from the cascade of gibberish all around them. But somehow Thommie Whiley could hear every word spoken by the guy who'd asked to buy him a drink, the guy now claiming to be Victor Surette's brother, Emanuel.