The New Hero Volume 2 Read online

  Kameela was just leaving as I pulled up but she was with a couple of girlfriends and didn’t stop to chat, just waved and hoofed it down the sidewalk. Going was about as nice as coming with Kameela Simons, and watching her melt down Lenox I thought of my buddy Pat over at the Gazette, does Cheese Cakes…he could do her justice, but no way I could…even if I had my Speed Graphic with me instead of that damn piece weighing down my pocket like a bottle of cheap hooch, kind of weight to your jacket that lets you know life ain’t going the right direction at present.

  The house was dark but I let myself in, locking up behind me. When the lock clicked Claire’s door opened in the back, giving me some light. I picked my way through Kameela’s office with all its Conjure Woman props…the candles out, the cards stowed, the table with my namesake board on it pushed to the side so I don’t bang my shin on it like usual…nice of her to clean up for me.

  “Shut the door, Arthur,” Mrs. Simons told me. I just stared at her like some bumpkin getting his first look at the city. It weren’t what she wore so much as who was going to be wearing her, something I could tell at a glance…it wasn’t the suit she got on, that could be for any one of them, it was the stovepipe hat on the table, and the tinted glasses like the lifeguards wear down at Coney.

  “That’s, uh, he, uh,” I stammered…she had warned me if I ever seen her in specs like that to book it away from her, and if the hat was on to book it double-time…bitter as he likely is on her, he’s got even more cause to do me some mischief.

  “It’s got to be him,” she said, and didn’t look any happier than I was about the prospect. “I’ve had a busy day, Arthur.”

  Her desk was moved against the wall so it was only me and her and Frankie on the wall, and as I set my radio on the table she took a mixing bowl and started laying the powder on the floor. I’d seen her use cornmeal and ash before, sawdust, gunpowder, you name it, but this was something else entirely…this was dirt, and from what she’d told me before about this joker I can imagine what kind. Between the gear on the table and now her getting started before we’d even overheard anything on the ban I was getting real nervous and said, “Don’t you want to wait? We don’t know if another one’s going down tonight.”

  “We know it’s not, because we’re gonna stop it,” she said, and I got the shakes something fierce to see that I was right and the damn thing she was drawing up on the floor matched what was half-finished on her back. “I had a busy day, Arthur, and there’s no question what we need. Who we need.”

  “Right,” I said. “Sure, Claire, no question. I’ll just be out in my heap you need me. Why the heck you didn’t just have Kameela stick around and—”

  “She does not need to get mixed up with him,” she looked up at me and I wish she hadn’t, the fierce on that pretty face like nothing you’d ever want mixed up, like a good cup of creamed coffee got old sausage grease poured all in it. “You get the babash out of the top drawer and pour us out some while I explain, alright?”

  I did as she told me, the rum smelling just as hot and mean as I remembered. Pouring out two fingers into the glasses she kept in the drawer, I tried to keep my stomach from getting angrier about what I was about to dump into it…I couldn’t blame it for being cross, considering.

  “So what’s the story, then?” I said, seeing she’d stopped over the almost finished symbol drawn in gravedirt on the floor. Considering she hadn’t called him down in the ten-plus since we’d met at Coney, I couldn’t blame her…this whole night was bad news as my belly… normally we’d be halfway to a scene, and with any luck we’d beat the cops and she’d scope it, get her info, and then we’d be back here so she could get rode and get the answers. Next I’d drop the anonymous tip off at the station…so-and-so’s been bumping hobos for kicks, or that nogoodnick’s been shaking down old ladies for their pennies is holed up at this address…and then we’d be done until the next time she let me know she’d need my police ban or I let her know the island might benefit from a spot of her charity.

  “Seventh sons,” she said, shaking her head and finishing the diagram. Coming on over, she took her glass and had a little sip, crossing herself and scowling as she put it back down. “Six of them in as many nights. I only got to the three families up here, but I gather the rest came from the Kitchen.”

  “Yeah, well, leave it to the Irish to have seven sons,” I said, but seeing her expression I took a sip of that evil drink by way of penance.

  “Seventh sons of seventh sons,” she said, and I caught the nervousness in her voice. “I knew, Arthur, soon as Mr. Himes came by, I just knew. Saturday’s boys, each and every one. It’s got to be him. He’ll know, and know what to do. If he doesn’t, nothing will.”

  “Right,” I said, “so he comes, I ask him who’s been doing it, where they are, yadda yadda yadda.”

  “That’s it.” She nodded. “But I expect he’ll have other business with us. If he comes at you, or tries to make me leave, to finish what he started, you’ve got to push him off me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, taking another sip and almost yakking on it. “Yeah, easy, I’ll push him off you.”

  “You can do this, Arthur,” she told me, laying her steady hand on my shaking one. “He comes at you, you just do what you did last time. Say my name three times, and if that doesn’t work—”

  “Doesn’t work!”

  “If that doesn’t work, you shoot me with that iron I told you to—”

  “Jesus, I’m not gonna do that! Jesus!” I pulled my hand away from hers…never thought I’d do that.

  “Not in the face, dummy” she said, frustrated. “Just my foot or something, it’ll knock him loose like nothing. But just saying my name ought to work.”

  “Jesus!” It felt good, so I said it again. “Jesus!”

  “Not tonight, Arthur,” she smiled at me. “Not even close.”

  *

  “Usher!” he said, smiling with her pretty teeth, snapping her pretty fingers at me. “You meddling motherfucker!”

  “Hey,” I said, suddenly wanting another sip of that babash but not willing to take my eyes off him. I had the gun out. “How, uh, how, uh…”

  “How I been?” Baron Saturday took his top hat from the table and put it on, the glasses and now the hat covering up whatever bits of Mrs. Simons remained after he got on her…or in her, I guess was how it really was, but she always talked about it like he was riding her, and I guess it was less disturbing to think of him being on instead of in. A little less, anyway. “Just fucking fine, Usher, just fucking dandy, sitting fucking pretty while some piece of whoreshit motherfucker kills my boys, and all on account of you, motherfucker!”

  He was madder than I’d thought, and I pointed the .38 at him. “I got iron here, Saturday, and I’ll say her name before you—”

  The gun was flying across the room, the hand that had held it numb, and her fingers were tight around my neck, the floor slapping me on the back like a doctor whopping a newborn, and he was all kinds of on top of me. He was still smiling, which only made it worse…I’d screwed the pooch, bad, and then, as sudden as he had me, he hopped up and grabbed the rum.

  “That’s a lesson taught, Usher,” he said, guzzling from the bottle as I tried to catch the breath he’d knocked out. By the time I could even think about saying her name three times or going for the gun he had drained half the bottle. Then he reached down into my suit and plucked out one of my cigars, and as I staggered up to my knees he snapped her fingers again and the end of the cigar lit up like a headlight. “Iron my ass, you bullshitting meddler. I could’ve killed you there, and be wearing Claire forever-like by cockcrow. That’s one you owe me, plus the one from before makes two.”

  “Two?” I was gasping for air, and had a lump rising on my scalp. “What I—”

  “One for knockin’ me off her back in the day, and one for not killing you tonight, you stupidass motherfucker,” said Baron Saturday, blowing a plume of smoke in my face. “You’re gonna get right with me, boy, sta
rtin’ now. Get to drawing a circle over there in the corner, but fuck with my veve and see what happens.”

  I thought about kicking the gravedirt symbol anyway, maybe making a break for the gun, but instead I just stepped around the cross-and-floating-coffins design on the floor while he dug in the desk drawers. Before I could start asking about circles he’d pulled out a piece of chalk and threw the white nub my way, pegging me in the forehead with it…I’d met some of the others before and always gotten along okay with them, I guess, but this guy…no class. I did what he said anyway, though it took a while to get the diagram he wanted drawn just right. Looking down at it, I seen it was one of them star shaped things but he just laughed when I tried to explain I didn’t go in for the hoodoo stuff myself.

  “Tell me another one, Usher boy, tell me a-fuckin-nother one. Now here,” he said, passing me a piece of paper with some crazy nonsense words scribbled on it that he’d banged out while I was drawing up his circle. Wagging the bottle at me, he said, “Lemme finish this jankro batty and we’ll catch up with the motherfucker what’s been killing my boys.”

  “Killing?” What he’d said before finally sank in. “The kids—”

  “Dead, motherfucker,” Saturday leered at me but there was no humor in the smoke-leaking smile he pointed at me like an ivory knife. “Every one of them boys is dead, thanks to you and fuckin’ Claire. Why you think I was tryin’ to get a decent saddle on her? What kind of asshole you take me for? I was tryin’ to stop all this, so I could come in when my boys needed me, but you fucking kids cut me out, didn’t you? Didn’t you!”

  I allowed that maybe we did, which is the only way you can deal with folks like Saturday.

  “You meddling motherfucker,” Saturday shook his head, and under the wrath in those eyes I actually felt bad for waking Mrs. Simons up when she was getting tattooed. “So much goddamn blood on your hands. We’ll get square fore it’s all done, Usher motherfucking Fellig, yes we will, but first you stop this bullshit never should’ve started in the first place. Now get to summonin’ the demon, dumbass!”

  “Demon?” Whatever was going wrong in my guts took another twist in the opposite direction of right. “But you’re already here.”

  Baron Saturday laughed like I’d told him the funniest line in history, like I’d told a joke that would’ve made God himself slap his knee, and then he became serious as a grieving father facing the man who killed his only child. “Not yet you haven’t, motherfucker. Read the words.”

  *

  I never summoned a demon before, but it weren’t as hard as you’d think. I read the words, and next thing I knew there it was, crawling around in the circle looking like that damn Feejee Mermaid that scared the piss out of me when I seen it at Barnum’s, a kid fresh off the boat…but that weren’t half as scared as I was then, with the real deal giving me the hairy eyeball. Nah, the summoning was easy…what got me about the whole demon thing was when the ugly mug started talking to me, and damned if it didn’t have a Teutonic accent to match the one I’d tried so hard to smother as I grew up in the naked city.

  “How dare you summon me, Usher Fellig,” the demon said, its claws clicking together as it reared up on its snake body. “How dare you interfere—”

  “Motherfucker doesn’t dare shit,” said Baron Saturday, pushing past me and stepping into the circle.

  The demon fell back, its big old monkey eyes widening with shock, and it scratched at the air at the back of the circle…but it was like there was some wall I couldn’t see, and then Baron Saturday snatched it around the skinny neck and started shaking. Its claws came around and scratched his face, Mrs. Simons’s blood splashing my wingtips, but before I could run in there to help…and probably mess everything up, looking back on it…Saturday was gone, and the demon with it. All that was left was Claire Simons, looking like something the cat dragged in, if the cat was one mean sunuvabitch. I caught her before she fell over, and before I could try to explain what had happened she upchucked all that rum he’d drank…which kind of summed up the whole experience, if you ask me.

  *

  It was a couple of hours later when we called the Baron back. Mrs. Simons made me tie her to her chair before she let him return, on account of the stuff he’d said about getting even with us. Talking it over we figured he wanted to fix whatever demon was killing the kids more than he wanted to fix us, but once he settled that score there wasn’t much stopping him coming after us.

  “At least we know we’ve done some good already,” she said with a weak smile. “Saturday’s got a funny way of looking at death. He wouldn’t get involved like this if the kids were just being killed. Something worse must’ve been happening.”

  “Worse?” The idea got me all queasy, so I asked, “What does he mean about them being his sons?”

  “He’s their met tet,” she said, like that explained everything…she was still out of sorts. We’d got the cuts on her face iodined and all but she still weren’t quite back to looking the belle of the ball. “We’ve all got one, and he was theirs. Mine too. He’s smart, Arthur, they’re all smart, in ways we’ll never know. Why he thought he’d need to, what’d you say, saddle me, probably means he knows something about me I don’t. Or maybe his crazy ass just saw that I’d try to keep him off me when I was older and never thought that might have something to do with him getting me all tattooed like some sideshow attraction, who knows. Important thing is, we’ll have our answers when we call him back about who’s been doing them kids.”

  “But he got it,” I said. “I seen it, the ugly bastard. He got the demon and—”

  “Not that simple,” she said, kind of sad about it. “You had to call it up, right? Means someone else did the same, and put it on those kids. We got the knife, now we need the knifeman. Put that hat on me now, Arthur.”

  *

  It took me a couple of minutes to work up to untying her after he’d left. I guess part of it was my being unsure how it all worked, if he could be tricking me even though she seemed to be talking with her own voice again…but part of it was also me being nervous to talk about what Saturday told me, cause it weren’t no good news. When I did untie her I just said the name Saturday had told me, and let that sink in. Instead of getting all gaga like I did, she just cocked her head and said, “Who?”

  “Society fatcat,” I said, amazed anybody wasn’t familiar with him. “Forget fatcat, fat-tiger, fat-lion. He’s in all the papers on account of being a horse’s ass—I got a picture of him in a carriage with one and the same in the foreground, come to think of it. Anti-Semite, anti-Colored, anti-American piece of shit. Nazi-lover.”

  “Mind your language,” she said idly. “And he’s some kind of warlock or something on top of all that?”

  “Don’t you know? Like, what that, uh, veve and words Saturday had me use to summon it is all about?”

  “That,” she said, pointing at the chalk circle, “is not a veve, that’s something else—I don’t know what, and I don’t want to. I think it’s how they do it over in Europe, whole different kind of thing. What else did he say about it?”

  “He said, the Baron, I mean, he said this bastard was using the kids for some kind of…ritual…killing one of them a night for seven nights, and if we hadn’t nabbed the demon what was stealing them boys when we did something real bad would’ve happened. Not here, but somewhere over in Germany, he wasn’t real specific…this Society sorcerer was doing it to help his Nazi buddies, but I didn’t really get all of what Saturday was saying. He was spitting mad about being tied up, and on account of the kids that already died—us saving the last, and whatever other good we did by busting up that ritual, apparently don’t cool him off much.” I shrugged. “No pleasing some people.”

  “But what’s to stop this warlock from just trying again,” Mrs. Simons said, sounding about how I felt. “From starting over tomorrow night, or the next?”

  “I’m telling you, Claire, we did good,” I said. “Seems the way this stuff works, he wouldn’t be
able to try the ritual again even if he had his pet demon back, which he don’t, and he won’t, the Baron told me that much. I asked.”

  “But what you’re telling me is the one who did all this, the one who killed those kids, we can’t touch him, not with the police and likely not with my ways, neither. What you’re saying is those six little boys died, and the one that did it walks. Is that what you’re saying?”

  I didn’t say nothing, like that would help…it didn’t. I was mad enough about it I thought about driving over to Long Island that very night and popping him with my .38, but I was too damn tired…and besides, anyone capable of summoning demons and impacting world events with his wicked ways and all was plenty match for some mook who’d never fired a gun in his life.

  “Poor little thing,” Mrs. Simons looked like she was about to cry. “Poor, poor little thing.”

  “Them kids? Yeah, I know, it cuts me up, too.”

  “I was talking about the demon,” she said. “But yeah, it isn’t the only one. Maybe we should have let Saturday mark me up with that tattoo, maybe he could have stopped this before—”

  “Hold your horses, lady!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You calling that ugly demon poor little thing? That goddamn monster I seen—”

  “Was enslaved by some rich motherfucker and forced to steal children, Arthur! I don’t know much about that…that method, but I do know the loas, demons, or whatever else we call up aren’t the kinds of things that are all evil or all good, they’re just…they just are. And yeah, this poor thing got itself bound by someone who is pure evil, and got forced to do pure evil, and now on top of it all Baron Saturday’s caught it and it’ll know nothing but agony until the end of time. Those kids it took, you told me Saturday said they’ll be at rest now, with the ritual broken, but that…that poor thing won’t ever know rest, not even when the last star burns out and everything’s dark as the goddamn deep.”