Falling Angel (8 page)

I went inside. A smell of burning incense stung the air. Bells tinkled above my head as I shut the door. I took a quick look around. On a revolving metal stand near the entrance a collection of “dream books” and pamphlets addressing the various problems of love competed for the customer’s attention in gaudy multilith jackets. There was a pyramid display of lucky powders packaged in tall cardboard cylinders. Sprinkle some of this stuff on your suit in the morning and the number you pick from your dream book will sure pay off big.

I was examining the perfumed, colored candles guaranteed to bring good fortune with continued use when a lovely mocha-skinned girl came in from the back room and stood behind the counter. She wore a white smock over her dress and looked about nineteen or twenty. Her wavy, shoulder-length hair was the color of polished mahogany. A number of thin, silver hoops jingled on her fine-boned wrist. “May I help you?” she asked. Just beneath her carefully modulated diction lingered the melodic calypso lilt of the Caribbean.

I answered off the top of my head: “Have you got any High John the Conqueror root?”

“Powdered or entire?”

“I want the whole thing. Isn’t the shape what makes the charm work?”

“We don’t sell charms, sir. This is an herbal pharmacy.”

“What do you call the stuff up front?” I asked. “Patent medicine?”

“We carry a few novelty items. Rexall’s sells greeting cards.”

“I was joking. Didn’t mean to offend you.”

“No offense. You tell me how much John the Conqueror you want, and I’ll weigh it out.”

“Is Miss Proudfoot on the premises?”

“I’m Miss Proudfoot,” she said.

“Miss Evangeline Proudfoot?”

“I’m Epiphany. Evangeline was my mother.”

“You say was?”

“Mama died last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She’d been sick for a long time, flat on her back for years. It was best.”

“She left you a lovely name, Epiphany,” I said. “It fits you.”

Beneath her coffee-and-milk complexion she flushed slightly. “She left me a good deal more than that. This store’s been making a profit for forty years. Did you do business with mama?”

“No, we never met. I was hoping she might answer some questions for me.”

Epiphany Proudfoot’s topaz eyes darkened. “What’re you, some kind of cop?”

I smiled, the
Look
alibi engraved on my silver tongue, but I figured she was too smart to buy it, so I said: “Private license. I can show you a photostat.”

“Never mind your dime-store photostat. Why did you want to talk to mama?”

“I’m looking for a man named Johnny Favorite.”

She stiffened. It was as if someone touched the back of her neck with an ice cube. “He’s dead,” she said.

“No, he’s not, although most people seem to think so.”

“Far as I’m concerned he’s dead.”

“Did you know him?”

“We never met.”

“Edison Sweet said he was a friend of your mother’s.”

“That was before I was born,” she said.

“Did your mother ever talk to you about him?”

“Surely, Mr… . whoever-you-are, you don’t expect me to betray my mama’s confidences. I clearly see you are not a gentleman.”

I let that one pass. “Perhaps you can tell me if you or your mother ever saw Johnny Favorite in, say, the last fifteen years or so.”

“I told you we never met, and I was always introduced to
all
mama’s friends.”

I got out my wallet, the one I carry cash in, and gave her my Crossroads card. “Okay,” I said, “it was a long shot anyway. That’s my office number on the bottom. I wish you’d call me if you think of anything or hear of anybody having seen Johnny Favorite.”

She smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “What’re you after him for?”

“I’m not ‘after’ him; I just want to know where he is.”

She stuck my card in the glass of the ornate brass cash register. “And what if he’s dead?”

“I get paid either way.”

It was almost a real laugh this time. “I hope you find him six feet under,” she said.

“That would be okay with me. Please hang on to my card. You never know what might turn up.”

“That’s true.”

“Thanks for your time.”

“You’re not leaving without your John the Conqueror, are you?”

I straightened my shoulders. “Do I look like I need it?”

“Mr. Crossroads,” she said, and her laughter was rich and full, “you look like you need all the help you can get.”

FIFTEEN

By the time I got back to the Red Rooster I’d missed an entire set and Toots was sitting on the same stool at the bar. A glass of champagne fizzed at his elbow. I lit a cigarette as I edged through the crowd. “Find out what you were after?” Toots asked without interest.

“Evangeline Proudfoot is dead.”

“Dead? Now that is a for-certain shame. She was one fine lady.”

“I talked with her daughter. She wasn’t much help.”

“Maybe you better pick somebody else to write about, son.”

“I don’t think so. I’m just getting interested.” The ash from my cigarette dropped onto my tie and left a smudge next to the soup stain when I brushed it off. “You seem to have known Evangeline Proudfoot pretty well. What more can you tell me about her affair with Johnny Favorite?”

Toots Sweet lumbered to his tiny feet. “I can’t tell you nothin’, son. I’m too big to go around hiding under beds. ‘Sides, it’s time fo’ me to go back to work.”

He flashed his star-studded grin and started for the bandstand. I tagged along like an eager newshound. “Perhaps you remember some of their other friends? People who knew them when they were together.”

Toots settled on the piano bench and surveyed the room for his tardy sidemen. He spoke to me while his eyes darted from table to table. “S’pose I pacify my mind with some music. Maybe something will come back to me.”

“I’m in no hurry. I can listen to you play all night.”

“Just sit out the set, son.” Toots lifted the curved lid of the baby grand. A chicken foot lay on the keyboard. He slammed the lid shut. “Stop hangin’ over my shoulder!” he growled. “I got to play now.”

“What was that?”

“That was nothin’. Never you mind that.”

But it was not nothing. It was the foot of a chicken, spanning an octave from the sharp yellow claw on the lizardlike toe to where it was cut off above the joint and bleeding. Below a remaining tuft of white feathers a length of black ribbon was tied in a bow. It was considerably more than nothing.

“What’s going on, Toots?”

The guitar player took his seat and switched on his amplifier. He glanced at Toots and fiddled with the volume. He was having feedback problems.

Toots hissed. “Nothin’s going on you got to know about. Now I ain’t talking to you no mo’. Not after the set. Not never!”

“Who’s after you, Toots?”

“You git outta here.”

“What does Johnny Favorite have to do with it?”

Toots spoke very slowly, ignoring the bass player who appeared at his shoulder. “If you don’t get the hell out of here, an’ I mean clean out onto the sidewalk, yo’ gonna wish yo’ lily-white ass never was born.”

I met the bass player’s implacable gaze and glanced around. There was a full house. I knew how Custer must have felt up on the hilltop at Little Big Horn.

“All I got to do,” Toots said, “is say the word.”

“You don’t need to send a telegram, Toots.” I dropped my butt onto the dance floor, ground it under my heel, and left.

My car was parked in the same spot across Seventh, and I headed for it when the light changed. The loiterers on the corner had moved on, their place taken by a thin, dark woman wearing a bedraggled fox fur. She swayed back and forth on her spike-heeled shoes, sniffing air rapidly through her nostrils like a coke fiend on a three-day blow. “Spo’tin’, mister?” she asked as I passed. “Spo’tin’?”

“Not tonight,” I said.

I got in behind the wheel and lit another cigarette. The thin woman watched me for a while before weaving off down the avenue. It was not quite eleven.

Around midnight, I ran out of smokes. I figured Toots wasn’t going to bolt until after work. There was all the time in the world. I walked a block and a half up Seventh to an allnight liquor store and bought two packs of Luckies and a pint of Early Times. On the way back, I crossed the avenue and lingered a moment by the entrance to the Red Rooster. Toots’ blend of barrelhouse and Beethoven boomed inside.

It was a cold night, and every so often I ran the engine until the chill was off. I didn’t want it warm. Too easy to fall asleep. By the time the last set ended at quarter to four, the dashboard ashtray was full and the Early Times empty. I felt fine.

Toots came out of the club about five minutes before closing time. He buttoned his heavy overcoat and joked with the guitar player. A passing cab squealed to a stop at his shrill, two-fingered whistle. I switched on the ignition and started the Chevy.

Traffic was sparse, and I wanted to give them a couple blocks, so I left the lights off and watched in the rearview as the cab made a U-turn on 138th Street and started back up Seventh in my direction. I let them get as far as the allnight liquor store before I switched on my lights and pulled away from the curb.

I tailed the cab to 152nd Street, where it turned left. Midway down the block it stopped in front of one of the Harlem River Houses. I continued on over to Macomb’s Place, swung uptown, and circled back to Seventh at the upper end of the housing development.

Near the corner, I saw the cab waiting out front with the door open and the roof light off. No one was in the back seat. Toots was just running upstairs to get rid of his chicken foot. I turned my headlights off and double-parked where I could watch the cab. Toots was back down in minutes. He carried a red plaid canvas bowling-ball bag.

The cab took a left at Macomb’s Place and continued downtown on Eighth Avenue. I stayed three blocks back and kept it in sight all the way to Frederick Douglass Circle where it swung east on 110th and followed the northern wall of Central Park to the point where St. Nicholas and Lenox Avenues have their bifurcated beginnings. As I drove past I saw Toots holding his wallet and waiting for change.

I hung a sharp left and parked around the corner on St. Nicholas, sprinting back to 110th in time to see the cab driving off and the retreating form of Toots Sweet, a shadow sliding into the shadow world of the dark and silent park.

SIXTEEN

He kept to the path bordering the western rim of Harlem Meer, passing through the pooled light under a succession of lampposts like Jimmy Durante saying goodnight to Mrs. Calabash. I stayed off to one side in the shadows, but Toots never looked back. He hurried along the edge of the Meer and under the arch of Huddlestone Bridge. An occasional cab whizzed uptown on East Drive overhead.

Beyond the Drive was the Loch, the most remote section of Central Park. The path wound into a deep ravine crowded with trees and shrubs and completely cut off from the city. It was dark here and very still. For a moment I thought I lost Toots. Then I heard the drums.

Light glimmered like fireflies in the underbrush. I edged through the trees until I reached the cover of a large rock. Four white candles flickered on saucers set on the ground. I counted fifteen people standing in the dim light. There were three drummers, each playing an instrument of a different size. The largest looked like a conga. A lean, gray-haired man beat on it with one bare hand and a small wooden mallet.

A girl wearing a white dress and turban inscribed convoluted designs on the ground between the candles. She used handfuls of flour like a Hopi sandpainter, tracing the swirling figures around a circular hole dug into the packed earth. She turned and her face was illuminated by candle flame. It was Epiphany Proudfoot.

The onlookers swayed from side to side, chanting and dapping in time with the drumming. Several men shook gourd rattles, and one woman produced a frenzied staccato rhythm with a pair of iron clappers. I watched Toots Sweet wielding his maracas like Xavier Cugat fronting a rhumba band. The empty plaid bowling-ball bag sagged at his feet.

Epiphany was barefoot in spite of the cold and danced to the pulsing rhythm, twirling handfuls of Pillsbury’s Best onto the ground. When the design was finished, she jumped back, reaching her ghost-white hands above her head like a cheerleader of doom. Her spastic shimmy soon had the whole crowd dancing.

Shadows shifted grotesquely in the uneven candlelight. The demonic heartbeat of the drums caught the dancers in its throbbing spell. Their eyes rolled back in their heads; spittle frothed on the chanting lips. Men and women rubbed together and moaned, pelvises thrusting in an ecstatic approximation of sex. The whites of their eyes gleamed like opals in their sweating faces.

I edged forward through the trees for a closer look. Someone played a pennywhistle. Shrill, piping notes stabbed into the night above the dissonant clangor of iron clappers. The drums growled and grumbled, the rhythm as insistent as a fever, delirious, entrancing. One woman fell to the ground and writhed like a snake, her tongue darting in and out with reptilian rapidity.

Epiphany’s white dress clung to her wet, young body. She reached into a wicker basket, removing a leg-bound rooster. The bird held up his head proudly, his blood-red comb vivid in the candlelight. Epiphany rubbed the white plumage against her breasts as she danced. Weaving among the crowd, she caressed each of the others in turn. A piercing cockcrow silenced the drums.

Gliding gracefully, Epiphany bent to the circular pit and cut the rooster’s jugular with a deft turn of a razor. Blood spouted into the dark hole. The rooster’s defiant crow became a gargling scream. Its wings thrashed wildly as it died. The dancers moaned.

Epiphany placed the drained bird alongside the pit where it jerked and bucked, bound legs twitching in tandem, until the wings spread for a final shudder and slowly folded. One by one, the dancers swayed forward and dropped offerings into the pit. Scatterings of coins, handfuls of dried corn, assorted cookies, candies, and fruit. One woman poured a bottle of Coca-Cola over the dead chicken.