“I said if we had time for lunch.”
“We’ll have time.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’ll have time.”
“There’s a lot to be done here.”
“We can do it after lunch.”
“People to interrogate.”
“We can grill them after lunch.”
“You’re impossible, Jack.”
“Indefatigable.”
“Stubborn.”
“Determined.”
“Damnit.”
“Charming, too,” he said.
She apparently didn’t agree. She walked away from him. She seemed to
prefer looking at one of the mutilated corpses.
Beyond the window, snow was falling heavily now.
The sky was bleak. Although it wasn’t noon yet, it looked like twilight
out there.
Lavelle stepped out of the back door of the house. He went to the end
of the porch, down three steps. He stood at the edge of the dead brown
grass and looked up into the whirling chaos of snowflakes.
He had never seen snow before. Pictures, of course. But not the real
thing. Until last spring, he had spent his entire life-thirty years-in
Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and on several other Caribbean
islands.
He had expected winter in New York to be uncomfortable, even arduous,
for someone as unaccustomed to it as he was. However, much to his
surprise, the experience had been exciting and positive, thus far. If
it was only the novelty of winter that appealed to him, then he might
feel differently when that novelty eventually wore off, but for the time
being, he found the brisk winds and cold air invigorating.
Besides, in this great city he had discovered an enormous reservoir of
the power on which he depended in order to do his work the infinitely
useful power of evil.
Evil flourished everywhere, of course, in the countryside and in the
suburbs, too, not merely within the boundaries of New York City. There
was no shortage of evil in the Caribbean, where he had been a practicing
Bocor-a voodoo priest skilled in the uses of black magic-ever since he
was twenty-two. But here, where so many people were crammed into such a
relatively small piece of land, here where a score or two of murders
were committed every week, here where assaults and rapes and robberies
and burglaries numbered in the tens of thousands-even hundreds of
thousands-every year, here where there were an army of hustlers looking
for an advantage, legions of con men searching for marks, psychos of
every twisted sort, perverts, punks, wife-beaters, and thugs almost
beyond counting-this was where the air was flooded with raw currents of
evil that you could see and smell and feel-if, like Lavelle, you were
sensitized to them. With each wicked deed, an effluvium of evil rose
from the corrupted soul, contributing to the crackling currents in the
air, making them stronger, potentially more destructive. Above and
through the metropolis, vast tenebrous rivers of evil energy surged and
churned. Ethereal rivers, yes. Of no substance. Yet the energy of
which they were composed was real, lethal, the very stuff with which
Lavelle could achieve virtually any result he wished. He could tap into
those midnight tides and twilight pools of malevolent power; he could
use them to cast even the most difficult and ambitious spells, curses,
and charms.
The city was also crisscrossed by other, different currents of a benign
nature, composed of the effluvium arising from good souls engaged in the
performance of admirable deeds. These were rivers of hope, love,
courage, charity, innocence, kindness, friendship, honesty, and dignity.
This, too, was an extremely powerful energy, but it was of absolutely no
use to Lavelle. A Houngon, a priest skilled at white magic, would be
able to tap that benign energy for the purpose of healing, casting
beneficial spells, and creating miracles. But Lavelle was a Bocor, not
a Houngon. He had dedicated himself to the black arts, to the rites of
Congo and Petro, rather than to the various rites of Rada, white magic.
And dedication to that dark sphere of sorcery also meant confinement to
it.
Yet his long association with evil had not given him a bleak, mournful,
or even sour aspect; he was a happy man. He smiled broadly as he stood
there behind the house, at the edge of the dead brown grass, looking up
into the whirling snow. He felt strong, relaxed, content, almost