Longarm and the Voodoo Queen (19 page)

Longarm glanced at the open area, which looked innocuous enough in the early morning light, and still felt a chill as he thought about some of the things that might have happened there over all the lost decades.

"Move on," the leader of the gunmen ordered curtly. "No need for you to talk about such things."

They were touchy about their religion, thought Longarm, although according to what Claudette had told him, voodoo was really more of a bastard child of the original beliefs brought over to the West Indies by captured African slaves. He took Claudette's arm and led her up a narrow walk to the front door of the house. The two men followed them closely.

The door opened before Longarm and Claudette reached it. A pretty mulatto girl stood there, and she stepped back silently to let the visitors into the house. As Longarm entered the shadowy dwelling, a pungent, spicy smell came to him, not really unpleasant but quite distinctive. The girl who had let them in shut the door behind the two gunmen, who put their weapons away. Their attitude conveyed clearly the sense that guns were no longer needed.

They were in the presence of a power much greater than gunpowder and lead.

Moving noiselessly on bare feet, the girl led them down a corridor and into a room at the rear of the house. A fireplace with a large mantle stood on one side of the room, and despite the warmth of the morning, a fire was crackling merrily. The room was almost stifling with heat.

But the woman who sat in a large, straight-backed wooden chair near the fireplace was so old that she probably needed the flames to ward off the chill of the years. Longarm stopped, knowing that he was looking at Marie Laveau.

She was small, almost tiny, and made to look even more so by the size of the chair in which she sat. She wore a long gray dress and had a white lace shawl gathered around her bony shoulders. Long white hair fell around her delicate head. Her skin was so pale she could have easily passed for white, and her bloodless pallor made her eyes seem that much darker. She had an air of frailty about her, but those eyes made all the difference in the world, thought Longarm. They shone with power and intelligence.

The girl who had brought them here went to stand just behind Marie Laveau's chair. Now that he could see both of them at the same time, Longarm noted a faint resemblance. The girl was probably Marie Laveau's great-granddaughter, he thought. Then, remembering what Claudette had told him about how far back the memory of the Voodoo Queen went, he revised that estimate and threw in a few more generations.

Marie Laveau spoke, her voice as thin and reedy as the wind. "You are the man called Custis Parker."

It wasn't a question, but Longarm nodded anyway. "Yes, ma'am, I reckon I am."

"But that is a lie," said Marie Laveau. "You are not the man you are pretending to be."

Longarm tried to conceal his surprise. How could this old woman know who he really was?

Unless she had read the truth in a pile of chicken entrails or something like that, a part of his brain yammered at him. He pushed those thoughts far back in his head and asked coolly, "Who do you think I am, ma'am?"

Marie Laveau shook her head. "I do not know... but I will. This one ..." She raised her arm and pointed a claw-like finger at Claudette. "This one came to me on your behalf. I knew her gran'pere, and his gran'mama before him. I know the truth about her. And when she spoke to me of you, I knew that you had not told her the truth."

Claudette looked at Longarm in confusion. He was a mite mixed up himself. Maybe the best way to cut through all this would be to ask some direct questions.

"Did you send some men after me, ma'am? Men who some folks might call zombies?"

Longarm heard a hiss of indrawn breath from the men behind him. Obviously, he was daring a lot by being so blunt with the Voodoo Queen.

Marie Laveau did not seem angered by the question. Instead, she nodded slowly and said, "I sent a man to find you. He had a restless spirit and asked this favor of me. His brother had been killed, and he wished revenge on the men he held responsible."

"Luther..." murmured Longarm, remembering the doorman at the Brass Pelican. His guess that the first zombie might have been Luther's brother had just been confirmed. But he was still puzzled. "Why would anybody blame me for Luther's death? I had just gotten to New Orleans when it happened."

"You went to work for him... for the evil one!"

"You mean Jasper Millard?"

Marie Laveau made a sharp gesture with a hand that was nothing but bone and skin like crepe paper. "Do not speak his name in this house. He has brought much pain and suffering to my people." She looked over Longarm's shoulder at the men who had brought him and Claudette here.

The one who had spoken before stepped forward and said in a low voice, "There are many West Indians here in New Orleans. Some are the descendants of slaves, while others came here since the end of the war. But all know the power of Marie Laveau, and it is to her they have come to tell of men and women who vanish mysteriously in the night."

Longarm looked over at the man. "Vanish?" he repeated. "You mean from some sort of magic spell?"

"I mean they are kidnapped and forced into slavery by evil men!"

Longarm drew a deep breath. "Well, if that don't beat all," he said slowly. "So that's what this is all about."

Claudette still looked confused. Hoping to clear up a few things for her--and get them straight in his own mind at the same time--he turned back to Marie Laveau and went on. "The fella you call the evil one, he's kidnapping folks here in New Orleans and shipping 'em back to the Caribbean where their ancestors came from in the first place, isn't he? Slavery's still legal in some of those little island nations--like Saint Laurent." Marie Laveau nodded solemnly.

"That's why Millard's men loaded that cargo on those ships of his in the middle of the night and didn't let the regular dockworkers near them," continued Longarm. "It was human cargo."

"Human cargo bound for the sugar plantation of the man who works with the evil one," said Marie Laveau.

"Paul Clement," Longarm said through gritted teeth. Clement was just as crooked as Millard, was in fact his business partner.

Longarm hoped that Annie wasn't in the scheme up to her pretty neck as well.

"Why come after me?" he asked. "Just because I work for... well, you know who I work for."

"You were to be brought here to me," explained the Voodoo Queen. "You would have been placed under my control and sent back to the evil one, so that we would know his plans."

"You were going to make a spy out of me. I'd've wound up a zombie."

What passed for a smile tugged briefly at the old woman's mouth. "It is a different spell, requiring different charms. But your ultimate fate would have been the same, once we were through with you. When our efforts did not go as planned, it was decided that you could best serve our purposes by dying, thereby robbing the evil one of a strong right hand."

"So you sent those fellas to put a giant snake in my room."

"Many creatures obey my commands," said Marie Laveau, "not merely those that are human."

"What made you change your mind?"

"This one," said Marie Laveau, pointing once again at Claudette. "As I told you, once I had spoken with her, I knew there was more to you than there appeared to be, M'sieu Parker. Now that you are here, I am more convinced than ever. You are not an evil man. Why have you allied yourself with one?"

Longarm took another deep breath. So much of the puzzle that he had found in New Orleans had been cleared up here in this unassuming little house by an old woman who looked like she would fall over if somebody breathed hard on her. Under the circumstances, he supposed it was time to tell the truth.

"I'm a United States deputy marshal," he said bluntly. "My real name is Custis Long. I came to New Orleans to find out who was responsible for murdering another federal lawman who was trying to break up some smuggling rings."

Claudette stared at him, wide-eyed with surprise. Marie Laveau merely nodded, as if his words came as no shock to her at all.

"The man in the bayou," she said. "I heard of the fetish made to look like him which was placed outside the door of the chief marshal's office. It angered me greatly to think that someone would bring voudun into their petty criminal activities."

"You and your folks didn't have anything to do with that?" asked Longarm.

"Your law has nothing to do with us, we have nothing to do with it," said Marie Laveau. "We wish only that the evil one be stopped."

"Do you know someone named Royale?"

Once again that faint semblance of a smile appeared on Marie Laveau's gaunt face. "I know the name," she said.

"Is Royale smuggling slaves back to the West Indies too?"

"The one you call Royale does nothing to harm my people. That is all I care about."

Longarm wasn't sure why he believed the old woman, but he did. The friction between Royale and Millard was an added complication for him, but it had nothing to do with the voodoo angle. Which meant, he supposed, that the finger of guilt was pointing straight back at Millard again--and Paul Clement. Even though Millard professed to hate voodoo and want nothing to do with it, that didn't mean Clement felt the same way. Clement could have been the one responsible for placing the voodoo doll outside the chief marshal's office, in an attempt to muddy the waters and throw a false trail into any investigation of Douglas Ramsey's murder. The theory made sense, Longarm realized as he turned it over in his mind. The whole voodoo business had certainly had him guessing and coming up with some wild ideas, when once again, as usual, the motive all came down to money. He wondered how many other sugar plantations in the West Indies were being supplied with slave labor by Millard and Clement, and how high the price was.

But no matter how much those other plantation owners were paying, the price in human misery was even higher.

Marie Laveau steepled her bony fingers in front of her and asked, "What are you going to do about this matter?"

"I'm going to bust up that slavery ring good and proper," declared Longarm. "I'm convinced now that Mill-that the evil one and his partner are responsible for the murder of that other lawman. I'm going to call in some reinforcements and throw the whole lot of 'em behind bars."

"You can do this?" asked Marie Laveau.

Longarm thought about how that special prosecutor would react when he heard the password "Pikes Peak" and then Longarm laid this whole mess on his desk. He had a hunch Captain Denton and the other honest policemen in New Orleans would soon be paying a visit to the Brass Pelican and also to the Clement mansion on Chartres Street. Once again, he hoped that Annie's involvement in the affair had been slight or even nonexistent.

"I can do it," he promised Marie Laveau.

The Voodoo Queen nodded, evidently satisfied with his answer. "Then go. Put a stop to the evil one's crimes. But if you do not... then I will deal with him."

Jasper Millard didn't know it, thought Longarm, but he ought to be hoping right about now that the law caught up with him first.

Longarm clasped Claudette's hand as they were ushered out of the house and back into the carriage. "We will take you back to the hotel," said the leader of the gunmen, none of whom drew guns again now that they and Longarm seemed to be on the same side.

"Much obliged," said Longarm. He glanced over his shoulder one last time at the cottage. "That's a mighty scary old woman in there. No offense."

The man smiled thinly. "Only a fool would make an enemy of Marie Laveau."

"I reckon you've got that right, old son," Longarm said as he helped Claudette into the carriage.

Once Longarm and Claudette were rolling back through the streets toward the St. Charles Hotel--alone this time since the other men rode atop the carriage--Longarm lifted Claudette's hand and pressed his lips to the back of it. "Thank you," he murmured. "If the Voodoo Queen hadn't been so impressed with you, I'd still be in the dark about what was behind everything."

"I was so frightened, me," she said. "But I knew I would be all right as long as you were with me, Custis. If I had known you are a lawman!"

"Sorry. I was keeping that under my hat until I got everything sorted out."

"You were nearly killed, you bet, because folks think that you were really workin' for Mr. Millard. Guess it's good I didn't stay at the Brass Pelican after all, me."

Longarm nodded. "Yeah, I'd say so. You can stay in my hotel room if you like, until I get everything cleared up. Then I'll take you back down to the bayou country, if that's what you want."

Claudette leaned back against the seat of the carriage and gave Longarm a wanton smile. "That would be most nice, but I'm thinkin'." She grew more serious as she went on. "You be careful, you. Don't forget those men who try to kill you at the Mardi Gras parade last night."

"Those were Royale's men," said Longarm. "They won't be a threat to me once I've arrested Millard and Clement and it's obvious I don't work for Millard anymore."

"You know that? You sure that this Royale send them after you?"