Hampton paused. He was hyperventilating. There was a faint sheen of
perspiration on his forehead. He wiped his big hands over his face and
took several slow deep breaths. He went on, then, trying to keep his
voice calm and reasonable, but only half succeeding.
“Lavelle is a dangerous man, Lieutenant, infinitely more dangerous than
you can ever comprehend. I also think he is very probably mad, insane;
there was definitely a quality of insanity about him. That is a most
formidable combination: evil beyond measure, madness, and the power of a
masterfully skilled Bocor.”
“But you say you’re a Houngon, a priest of white magic. Can’t you use
your power against him?”
“I’m a capable Houngon, better than many. But I’m not in this man’s
league. For instance, with great effort, I might be able to put a curse
on his own supply of herbs and powders. I might be able to reach out
and cause a few bottles to fall off the shelves in his study or wherever
he keeps them-if I had seen the place first, of course. However, I
wouldn’t be able to cause so much destruction as he did. And I wouldn’t
be able to conjure up a serpent, as he did. I haven’t that much power,
that much finesse.”
“You could try.”
“No. Absolutely not. In any contest of powers, he would crush me. Like
a bug.”
Hampton went to the door, opened it. The bell above it rang. Hampton
stepped aside, holding the door wide open.
Jack pretended not to get the hint. “Listen, if you’ll just keep asking
around-”
“No. I can’t help you any more, Lieutenant. Can’t you get that through
your head?”
A frigid, blustery wind huffed and moaned and hissed and puffed at the
open door, spraying snowflakes like flecks of spittle.
“Listen,” Jack said. “Lavelle never has to know that you’re asking
about him. He-”
“He would find out!” Hampton said angrily, his eyes wide open as the
door he was holding. “He knows everything-or can find it out.
Everything.”
“But-”
“Please go,” Hampton said.
“Hear me out. I-”
“Go.”
“But-”
“Go, get out, leave, now, damnit, now!” Hampton said in a tone of voice
composed of one part anger, one part terror, and one part panic.
The big man’s almost hysterical fear of Lavelle had begun to affect
Jack. A chill rippled through him, and he found that his hands were
suddenly clammy.
He sighed, nodded. “All right, all right, Mr. Hampton. But I sure
wish-”
“Now, damnit, now!” Hampton shouted.
Jack got out of there.
s The door to Rada slammed behind him.
In the snow-quieted street, the sound was like a rifle blast.
Jack turned and looked back, saw Carver Hampton drawing down the shade
that covered the glass panel in the center of the door. In bold white
letters on the dark canvas, one word was printed: CLOSED.
A moment later the lights went out in the shop.
The snow on the sidewalk was now half an inch deep, twice what it had
been when he had gone into Hampton’s store. It was still coming down
fast, too, out of a sky that was even more somber and more
claustrophobically close than it had been twenty minutes ago.
Cautiously negotiating the slippery pavement, Jack started toward the
patrol car that was waiting for him at the curb, white exhaust trail
pluming up from it. He had taken only three steps when he was stopped
by a sound that struck him as being out of place here on the wintry
street: a ringing telephone. He looked right, left, and saw a pay phone
near the corner, twenty feet behind the waiting black-and-white. In the
uncitylike stillness that the muffling snow brought to the street, the
ringing was so loud that it seemed to be issuing from the air
immediately in front of him.
He stared at the phone. It wasn’t in a booth. There weren’t many real
booths around these days, the kind with the folding door, like a small
closet, that offered privacy; too expensive, Ma Bell said. This was a
phone on a pole, with a scoop-shaped sound battle bending around three
sides of it. Over the years, he had passed a few other public