“Handle this as the police in my native Haiti would handle it.”
“How’s that?”
“They wouldn’t interfere with a Bocor who possessed powers like mine.”
“Is that right?”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
“This is New York, not Haiti. Superstitious fear isn’t something they
teach at the police academy.”
Jack kept his voice calm, unruffled. But his heart continued to bang
against his rib cage.
Lavelle said, “Besides, in Haiti, the police would not want to interfere
if the Bocor’s targets were such worthless filth as the Carramazza
family. Don’t think of me as a murderer, Lieutenant. Think of me as an
exterminator, performing a valuable service for society.
That’s how they’d look at this in Haiti.”
“Our philosophy is different here.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“We think murder is wrong regardless of who the victim is.”
“How unsophisticated.”
“We believe in the sanctity of human life.”
“How foolish. If the Carramazzas die, what will the world lose? Only
thieves, murderers, pimps. Other thieves, murderers, and pimps will
move in to take their place. Not me, you understand. You may think of
me as their equal, as only a murderer, but I am not of their kind. I am
a priest. I don’t want to rule the drug trade in New York. I only want
to take it away from Gennaro Carramazza as part of his punishment. I
want to ruin him financially, leave him with no respect among his kind,
and take his family and friends away from him, slaughter them, teach him
how to grieve. When that is done, when he’s isolated, lonely, afraid,
when he has suffered for a while, when he’s filled with blackest
despair, I will at last dispose of him, too, but slowly and with much
torture. Then I’ll go away, back to the islands, and you won’t ever be
bothered with me again.
I am merely an instrument of justice, Lieutenant Dawson.”
“Does justice really necessitate the murder of Carramazza’s
grandchildren?”
“Yes.”
“Innocent little children?”
“They aren’t innocent. They carry his blood, his genes. That makes
them as guilty as he is.”
Carver Hampton was right: Lavelle was insane.
“Now,” Lavelle said, “I understand that you will be in trouble with your
superiors if you fail to bring someone to trial for at least a few of
these killings. The entire police department will take a beating at the
hands of the press if something isn’t done. I quite understand. So, if
you wish, I will arrange to plant a wide variety of evidence
incriminating members of one of the city’s other mafia families. You
can pin the murders of the Carramazzas on some other undesirables, you
see, put them in prison, and be rid of yet another troublesome group of
hoodlums. I’d be quite happy to let you off the hook that way.”
It wasn’t only the circumstances of this conversation-the dreamlike
quality of the street around the pay phone, the feeling of floating, the
fever haze-that made it all seem so unreal; the conversation itself was
so bizarre that it would have defied belief regardless of the
circumstances in which it had taken place. Jack shook himself, but the
world wasn’t jarred to life like a stubborn wristwatch; reality didn’t
begin to tick again.
He said, “You actually think I could take such an offer seriously?”
“The evidence I plant will be irrefutable. It will stand up in any
court. You needn’t fear you’d lose the case.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Jack said. “Do you really believe I’d
conspire with you to frame innocent men?”
“They wouldn’t be innocent. Hardly. I’m talking about framing other
murderers, thieves, and pimps.”
“But they’d be innocent of these crimes.”
“A technicality.”
“Not in my book.”
Lavelle was silent for a moment. Then: “You’re an interesting man,
Lieutenant. Naive. Foolish. But nevertheless interesting.”
“Gennaro Carramazza tells us that you’re motivated by revenge.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“He didn’t tell you that?”
“No. What’s the story?”
Silence.
Jack waited, almost asked the question again.
Then Lavelle spoke, at last, and there was a new edge to his voice, a
hardness, a ferocity. “I had a younger brother. His name was Gregory.
Half brother, really.
Last name was Pontrain. He didn’t embrace the ancient arts of