Headhunter

Except for the RCMP itself, nobody knew they were there.

The Queen

New Orleans, Louisiana

Saturday, November 6th, 3:45 p.m.

'Ever been to New Orleans?' Katherine Spann asked.

'Just once, with my dad,' Scarlett replied. 'But that was long ago.'

They had caught a flight on Air Canada to Seattle, connecting there with an Eastern Airlines run down the Mississippi by way of Atlanta, Georgia. Looking out the window now as the aircraft began its final descent on to Moisant Field, Scarlett saw a landscape not unlike a huge lily pond. Almost half the land area of this city was located under water, and what kept the river from claiming the rest was a series of levees and pumping stations that diverted the seepage first into canals and then into Lake Pontchartrain.

The two men who met them inside the International Airport were different in the extreme. The Caucasian was named Luke Went worth and he was from the FBI. Wentworth was wearing a light blue pinstripe suit that probably cost in excess of a thousand dollars. His face was made up of sharp acute angles with a long thin jaw; his hair was short and brown and he was wearing those silver reflecting glasses that prevent others from seeing your eyes. For some reason Spann connected him with Paul Newman or Steve McQueen.

The black man, on the other hand, reminded her vaguely of a young Martin Luther King. His name was John Jefferson, Jr., and he was with the NOPD. 'Welcome to N' Orleans,' he said. His voice was like warm iron and he held out his hand.

The two Canadians nodded, and they shook hands with both men.

'I hear it rains a lot back where you come from,' Luke Wentworth said.

'It does,' Spann agreed.

'Too bad.' the FBI man said. 'I hate rain.'

The moment they left the airport Scarlett and Spann broke into a sweat. The day was clear and bright, the air hot and humid with a heavy oppressiveness. Scarlett noticed a sheen of sweat on Wentworth's upper lip and that his throat had turned slightly pink. Jefferson, however, remained as cool as cool could be.

As they drove into the city Scarlett observed: 'The heat must really get to people. You seem to have a lot of cemeteries.'

'This is nothing,' Jefferson said. 'There are more than thirty of them up ahead in town. You'll find that N' Orleans cemeteries are more akin to cities of the dead than they are to graveyards. Most of all, the tombs are above ground because of the river seepage. In this town, believe me, it's hard to dig a dry hole. In the old days the colonials used to have architects design their graves. Many of the tombs look like narrow residences with rounded roofs and eaves. That's particularly true of St. Louis Number 1. It dates from the 1740s.'

'Is that where Marie Laveau is buried?' Katherine Spann asked.

'Probably,' Jefferson replied, 'but there are those who say she's in an unmarked oven in St. Louis Number 2. You'll find red brick-dust cross marks in both places. The real site of her grave is certainly open to question.'

'Who's Marie Laveau?' Rick Scarlett asked.

'Hey,' Jefferson said, turning from the steering wheel and casting him a friendly frown. 'I thought you two were interested in voodoo. That's what the telex said.'

'We are.' Spann replied with a tone of exasperation. 'Don't mind my friend. He's just along to carry the bags.'

Scarlett's face went red as he glared at the woman.

'Marie Laveau,' Jefferson said, 'is the name of New Orleans' great mulatto Voodoo Queen.'

'Voodoo!' Wentworth said with a snort. 'What a crock of shit.” This was his first comment since they left the airport. During the trip he had busied himself by staring out tin window at the Louisiana countryside. He obviously found babysitting visitors a bore.

'Well,' John Jefferson, Jr., said, ignoring the man from the FBI, 'if voodoo is the subject, then I'm your man. What do you want to know?'

'What's the practice like today?' Spann asked.

'Pretty watered down and far removed from its roots. Some say, however, that a few pure cults still exist. And of course Haiti's still going strong.'

'Is there anything to it, John? You know what I mean?' This question by the woman surprised Rick Scarlett. Even Luke Wentworth turned his attention into the car.

'Let's put it this way,' John Jefferson said. 'I was raised in Philadelphia, okay? But I had this cousin who grew up in a small Mississippi town. I went to visit him one summer when I was eight or nine. It didn't take me too long to learn that within that community there were several hoodoo doctors and root workers on call. They looked like everyone else, but they sure had a lot of visitors. Especially on weekends there would be this steady stream of cars with out-of-state license plates pulling up to their doors.

'My grandmother lived in that town and some days a root doctor would sit with her up on the porch. My cousin and I'd be playing on the wooden steps below. You could tell when they were discussing a topic we weren't supposed to hear — 'cause mammy would lean over and spit on both of us.

'Even my old man, who was well-educated by standards set for blacks back then, respected those Southern beliefs.'

Just ahead and to the right Spann could see the colossal Louisiana Superdome, a flying saucer come to earth.

'Haiti is real weird,' John Jefferson continued. 'At a crossroads late one night I actually saw two men, back-to-back like Siamese twins, one dressed in white, the other in black, just going round and round. Voodoo permeates the place like some religion of fear. The sorcerers — zobops, they're called — are organized in groups a bit like masons. They go out late in the evening, supposedly summoned by a drum that beats louder the further away it is. At crossroads they hold their ceremonies and that's where they make the zombi.The Haitians say if you see an empty car drive by then you know zobops are in it.'

Wentworth took out a handkerchief and proceeded to blow his nose.

'On one of the Hardy wiretaps someone makes the statement '…the zombi walks.' Can you hazard a guess what it means?'

'Sure, but it's a long shot,' Jefferson replied.

'Go on and shoot, my friend.'

'Along comes one of these groups at night and it stops at a crossroads. In a ritual where blood is shed one of the members of the group calls out to the zombi,then digs him out of the ground.

'I don't suppose that you believe in the Undead any more than I do, so — '

'I don't,' Katherine Spann said, casting a mock glance of paranoia over each of her shoulders, then grinning at Jefferson.

' — here is how they do it. Before the man who will become a zombi 'dies' he is fed a poison. It is usually curare. I he poisoned man is then buried on the same day. It's a hot country, remember? A pipe to provide oxygen is run from the buried coffin to the air above. The next night the zobops drive out to the graveyard crossroads in order to bring him 'alive.' Once he is summoned out of the ground, the zombi is given a drug to counteract the poison. When under the effect of curare,a man looks like he is dead. Under the antidote he becomes a catatonic, sort of like Frankenstein's monster. The zombi is then put in handcuffs and leg irons to stop him limning away — and lo and behold, the zobop has himself a slave.

'What better slave can there be than a dead man who follows your orders?'

'Is this what you Mounties do when you're tired of getting your man?' Luke Wentworth asked. 'Go out and hunt zombis? Great police work that.'

Spann thought: This guy's a first-class pain in the ass.

'In Haiti,' she asked, 'did you ever hear of a zombi actually killing anyone?'