Darkfall

Lavelle laughed again. Then: “I've called to give you some advice.”

“Yeah?”

“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 witchcraft and sorcery. He shunned them. He wouldn't have anything to do with the old religions of Africa. He had no time for voodoo, no interest in it. His was a very modern soul, a machine-age sensibility. He believed in science, not magic; he put his faith in progress and technology, not in the power of ancient gods. He didn't approve of my vocation, but he didn't believe I could really do harm to anyone — or do good, either, for that matter. He thought of me as a harmless eccentric. Yet, for all this misunderstanding, I loved him, and he loved me. We were brothers. Brothers. I would have done anything for him.”

“Gregory Pontrain…” Jack said thoughtfully. “There's something familiar about the name.”

“Years ago, Gregory came here as a legal immigrant.

He worked very hard, worked his way through college received a scholarship. He always had writing talent even as a boy, and he thought he knew what he ought to do with it. Here, he earned a degree in journalism from Columbia. He was first in his class. Went to work for the New York Times. For a year or so he didn't even do any writing, just verified research in other reporters' pieces. Gradually, he promoted several writing assignments for himself. Small things. Of no consequence. What you would call 'human interest' stories. And then—”

“Gregory Pontrain,” Jack said. “Of course. The crime reporter.”

“In time, my brother was assigned a few crime stories. Robberies. Dope busts. He did a good job of covering them. Indeed, he started going after stories that hadn't been handed to him, bigger stories that he'd dug up all by himself. And eventually he became the Times' resident expert on narcotics trafficking in the city. No one knew more about the subject, the involvement of the Carramazzas, the way the Carramazza organization had subverted so many vice squad detectives and city politicians; no one knew more than Gregory; no one. He published those articles—”

“I read them. Good work. Four pieces, I believe.”

“Yes. He intended to do more, at least half a dozen more articles. There was talk of a Pulitzer, just based on what he'd written so far. Already, he had dug up enough evidence to interest the police and to generate three indictments by the grand jury. He had the sources, you see: insiders in the police and in the Carramazza family, insiders who trusted him. He was convinced he could bring down Dominick Carramazza self before it was all over. Poor, noble, foolish, brave little Gregory. He thought it was his duty to fight evil wherever he found it. The crusading reporter. He thought he could make a difference, all by himself. He didn't understand that the only way to deal with the powers of darkness is to make peace with them, accommodate yourself to them, as I have done. One night last March, he and his wife, Ona, were on their way to dinner…”

“The car bomb,” Jack said.

“They were both blown to bits. Ona was pregnant. It would have been their first child. So I owe Gennaro Carramazza for three lives — Gregory, Ona, and the baby.”

“The case was never solved,” Jack reminded him. “There was no proof that Carramazza was behind it.”

“He was.”

“You can't be sure.”