which Hawes and Carella and every other cop in the precinct (and every other being in the world) already knew, but so what? Nobo was counting, and nobody was sending anyone to just yet--provided the information was good.
It was.
Symbiosis, Hawes thought.
A nice word and a cozy arrangement.
Hawes sometimes felt the entire world ran on arrangements.
'Ai, mari cones Palacios said, 'quO pasa?' He knew the cops could send him up anytime they felt like it. Meanwhile, he could be friendly with them, no? Besides, mar icon meant 'homosexual,' mari cones was the plural of that, which he didn't think they knew. They did know, but they also knew it was a friendly form of greeting among Hispanic men, knew why, and God protect any non-Hispanic if they used it in greeting.
They got straight to the point.
'Voodoo.'
'Mm, voodoo,' Palacios said, nodding. 'Anything go down this past Friday night?' 'Like what?'
'Any Papa Legbas sitting on the gate?' 'Any Maitresse Ezilis tossing their hips?' 'Any Damballahs?' 'Any Baron Samedis?'
'Any chickens getting their throats slit?' 'You know some voodoo, huh?' 'Un poquito,' Hawes said.
'No, no, muchisimo,' Palacios said, praising him as extravagantly as if he'd just translated Cervantes.
'So,' Carella said, cutting through the bullshit, 'anything at all this past Friday?'
'Talk to Clotilde Prouteau,' Palacios said. 'She's a mamaloi .. .'
'A what?'
'A priestess. Well, sometimes. She also conjures. I sell her War Water and Four Thieves Vinegar, Guinea Paradise and Guinea Pepper, Three Jacks and a King, Lucky Dog, jasmine and narcisse, white rose and essence of van van whatever she needs to conjure. Tell her Francois sent you. Le Cowboy Espagnol, tell her.'
The three of them were sitting at a table somewhat removed from the piano and the bar, Priscilla trying to control her anger while simultaneously venting it, Georgie and Tony trying to catch her whispered words. This was Sunday night well, Monday morning already and Priscilla's night off, but the bar was open and the drinks were free and this was a good quiet place to talk on a Sunday, especially when it was snowing like mad outside and the place was almost empty.
Priscilla was steamed, no doubt about it.
She had been steamed since eight P.M. when the boys finally got back to the hotel with an envelope they'd retrieved from the pay locker at the Rendell
Road Terminal. The envelope had contained a letter that read:
My dearest Priscilla:
In the event of my death, you will have been this locker where you will find a great deal
I have been saving this money for you all these years never touching it, living only on my welfare eh, and whatever small amounts still come in on company royalties.
It is my wish that the cash will enable you to your career as a concert pianist.
I have always loved you
Your grandmother,
Svetlana
In the envelope, there was five thousand dollars hundred-dollar bills.
'Five thousand?.' Priscilla had yelled. 'This is great deal of cash?'
'It ain't peanuts,' Georgie suggested.
'This is supposed to take care of me?'
'Five grand is actually a lot of money,' Georgie said.
Which it was.
Though not as much as the ninety-five they'd stolen from the locker.
'Five thousand is supposed to buy a career as a fucking concert pianist?'
She still couldn't get over it.
Sitting here at ten minutes to one in the morning, drinking the twenty-year-old Scotch the bartender had brought to her table, courtesy of the house, Priscilla kept shaking her head over and over again. The boys sympathized with her. Priscilla looked at her watch. 'You know what I think?' she asked.
Georgie was afraid to hear what she was thinking. He didn't want her to be thinking that they'd opened that envelope and stolen ninety-five thousand dollars from it. Priscilla didn't notice, but his knuckles went white around his whiskey glass.
He waited breathlessly.
'I think whoever delivered that key went to the locker first,' she said.
'I'll bet,' Georgie said at once.
'And cleaned it out,' she said.
'Left just enough to make it look good,' Tony said, nodding.
'Exactly,' Georgie said.
'Made it look like the old lady was senile or something,' Tony said. 'Leaving you five grand as if it's a fortune.'
'Just what she did,' Priscilla said.
'Well, it is sort of a for{tfune,' Georgie said. Priscilla was getting angrier by the minute. The very thought of some blond thief who couldn't even speak English cleaning out the locker before delivering the
key to her! Tony kept fueling the anger. Georgie listening to him in stunned amazement.
'Who knows how much cash could've been in the locker?' he said.
'Well, after all, five grand is quite a lot,' Georgie said, and shot Tony a look.
'Could've been twenty thousand in that envelope Tony suggested.
'More,' Priscilla said. 'She told me I'd be taken care of when she died.'
'Could've been even fifty thousand in that
Tony amended.
'There was five, don't forget,' Georgie said. 'Even a hundred, there could've been,' Tony said which Georgie thought was getting a little too close for comfort.
Priscilla looked at her watch again.
'Let's go find the son of a bitch,' she said, and graciously. Flashing a dazzling smile at the seven eight people sitting in the room, she strode ele into the lobby, the boys following her.
They found Clotilde Prouteau at one A.M. Monday, sitting at the bar of a little French smoking. Nobody understood the city's
Code prohibiting smoking in public places, but it generally agreed that you could smoke in a restaurant with fewer than thirty-five patrons. Le Canard met this criterion. Moreover, even in restaurants larger than this, smoking was permitted at any bar serviced by a bartender. There was no bartender on duty at the moment, but Clotilde was covered by the
size limitation, and so she was smoking her brains out. Besides, they weren't here to bust her for smoking in public. Nor for practicing voodoo, either.
A fifty-two-year-old Haitian woman with a marked French accent and a complexion the color of oak, she sat with a red cigarette holder in her right hand, courteously blowing smoke away from the detectives. Her eyes were a pale greenish-grey, accentuated with blue liner and thick mascara. Her truly voluptuous mouth was painted an outrageously bright red. She wore a patterned silk caftan that flowed liquidly over ample hips, buttocks and breasts. Enameled red earrings dangled from her ears. An enameled red pendant necklace hung at her throat. Outside a snowstorm was raging and the temperature was eight degrees Fahrenheit. But here in this small smoky bistro a CD player oozed plaintive Piaf, and Clotilde Prouteatt looked exotically tropical and flagrantly French.
'Voodoo is not illegal, you know that, eh?' she asked.
'We know it.'
'It is a religion,' she said.
'We know. ,
'And here in America, we can still practice whatever religion we choose, eh?'
