Conquer: Fear Of A Black Cat: The John Conquer Series, #2

By Edward M Erdelac

Who's The Black Private Dick That's A Hex Machine With All The Tricks?

CONQUER!

It's 1977 and gods and demons stroll the red-hot streets of the N-Y-C. The Summer of Sam is in full swing when the fortune teller who raised John turns up dead and mutilated in her kitchen. Conquer vows to turn the Five Boroughs upside down in order to find the doer. Is it the elusive .44 Caliber Killer? Is it the Devil of Harlem, King Solomon? What do block parties in the Bronx gotta do with the price of bread? Is John finally in over his afro?

Betta read the book, sucka, and find out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward M. Erdelac
• Release date: Aug 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223984498

Edward M Erdelac

Edward M. Erdelac is the author of ten novels including Andersonville, Monstrumfuhrer, and The Merkabah Rider series. His short fiction has appeared in over twenty anthologies and periodicals. He's also written everything you need to know about boxing in the Star Wars Galaxy. Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he lives in the Los Angeles area with his family.  

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

John Conquer was reading a story in the Daily News about a dude who had married his lady atop the Empire State Building in a gorilla suit, his bride dressed as Fay Wray, when the strawberry egg cream he was sucking down gurgled dry and a shiny black Brougham squealed to a fast stop in front of the Gem Spa.

Two overlarge brothers with their hands in their coat pockets popped out of the back like gangsters in a Jimmy Cagney movie and made a beeline for him. He didn’t need to drop a nickel in the Zoltar machine to predict they weren’t here for the havala. In their pressed maroon and peacock blue suits, they were as incongruous in this neighborhood as the wraith-thin, mohawked white boys of St. Marks Place would have been in their ripped jeans and safety pins hollering on stage at The Apollo.

When they gained the curb, Conquer arched his empty cup into an overflowing trashcan. The two suits stopped in their tracks and jumped back down in the street as it sailed across their path.

He grinned at their what-the-fuck faces. Not so tough they’d risk a stain on their swanky threads.

The Man wants to see you, said the one in the maroon suit, scowling around a toothpick of all things.

Conquer knew these dudes by sight if not by name. He knew who they meant when they said The Man.

The Man was King Solomon Keyes.

Smack, prostitution, numbers, everything you could think of that shot like a load of Mexican horse through the veins of Harlem was controlled by The Council, the seven high rollers who kept the Luccheses swimming in fettuccine and Cadillacs with black dollars and black misery.

Every hustler and lowdown junkie on the street knew that. They knew the names Nicky Barnes, Gaps Foreman, Jazz Hayden. They knew Spanish Harry Martinez, Fisher, Rice, and Muhammed. They knew them as the players who had stepped in to fill Bumpy Johnson’s Barlettas when his gangster’s heart had seized up over a plate of chicken and grits one night at the Wells Restaurant on Lenox Avenue.

What only a handful of folks knew was that Bumpy’s death had been anything but natural; that the real power in Harlem belonged to the man who had bumped Bumpy, and that his killer had done it without even lifting a finger.

King Solomon Keyes had called down the old power of the spirits and laid a trick on Bumpy Johnson. Some said it had been goofer dust in his slipper or sprinkled on the scruff of his favorite fighting dog; others, that King Solomon had captured his foot track and buried it in a little pasteboard coffin in the Trinity Cemetery with Bumpy’s name on it. However he’d done it, it had been a hit that none of Bumpy’s hired muscle could have even seen coming.

Ever since then, King Solomon had been the hidden hand guiding The Council, the shadow casting a pall over all of Harlem, lording it over not only the numbers and the guns, but the powders and the doctors, the witches and the loa, the angels and the fiends; not just the master of the body of Harlem, but the jailer of its soul.  

John Conquer knew, and though they had never met, he had butted up against the Devil of Harlem for years in little ways, ever since his return from Vietnam. Before he’d straightened out, gotten his P.I. license, he’d led a street gang called The Black Enchanters that had kept King Solomon’s pushers from expanding into The Bronx, fought them trick for trick.

Since getting his office on St. Marks Place, he’d stumbled across more than a few of King Solomon’s magic plots, and he’d kicked over every last one he’d come up against.

Conquer was the cat they called when something more than the double dealings of man or the infidelity of a wayward spouse went down (although he wasn’t above collecting his fee for those either). Hoodoo, Vodoun, a bit of western and even eastern magic....if Conquer didn’t know it, he had a book on it. There was even a homicide lieutenant on the NYPD who kept his red and gold card in his wallet.

Unfortunately, like most times you needed a cop, Lt. Lou Lazzeroni was nowhere around.

Conquer dropped his newspaper and put his hands in the pockets of his oxblood leather coat. The two gangsters tensed. Maroon flashed a bit of the handle of a .38 in his waistband.

Easy, slick, he warned.

The other one in the peacock blue suit wrenched open the back door of the Caddy and gestured that it was time to go to the ball.

Conquer stepped up. Maroon put a hand flat on his chest. That hand scurried over him like a spider till it found a lump in his inner pocket, unzipped it, and drew out a green flannel bag. That was alright. It was just a Cash-Money mojo, full of devil’s shoestring, pyrite, and gravel root, dressed with oil.

Hard times, Conquer? said Maroon, leering at the green bag as he tucked it into his coat pocket. Maybe this’ll bring me some luck, eh?

It wouldn’t. Touching it had killed its power, causing the working spirit within to depart. Good riddance, thought Conquer. It hadn’t been doing its job in a couple weeks anyway. Business had slowed to a trickle ever since he’d done that job for the graffiti kids down in that station yard off of 145th and Broadway.  Councilman Grierson’s crazy son had let loose a ritual-born monster in the subway tunnels a couple months ago. It had gobbled up a lot of bums and a Krylon kid. Conquer had devised a special hybrid sigil to keep it at bay before destroying it.

He was constantly reminded of the case since the kids had taken to throwing that sigil up all over the city. He saw it on trains, bus stops, walls....always next to his scrawled tag, Conquer, a tiny crown over the ‘o.’ It was a good thing no normal person could read the wild, illegible lettering, or the mayor’s anti-graffiti goons would be knocking on his door.

Maroon’s hand didn’t find what it was looking for; the big nickel-plated Colt Python Conquer sometimes wore. He had left it in his desk drawer when he’d gone out this morning. Maroon found a couple of his good luck trinkets, his copy of Pow-wows, or The Lost Friend, but not the red flannel protective mojo hand he kept pinned inside his pants, or the Bullet Turning mojo of his own invention sewn up in his jacket seam, or the silver dime tied around his ankle to alert him of tricks. Those hadn’t failed him yet. They, along with the Isis Knot belt buckle, were all the protection he had on him now. It wasn’t the Colt, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at either.

He sighed and got into the back of the Cadillac, the stooge in the blue suit sandwiching him on the other side.

The driver, a skinny sucker in canary yellow, pulled away from the curb and steered the car uptown on the FDR, giving Conquer the scenic tour of the river on the right.

Nobody said a word during the trip, which was fine by Conquer. He would rather listen to Baby Huey on the stereo anyway.

They slipped into Harlem proper, along 125th street, all the glory and tragedy of the people on parade. Roop the garbage man was on strike with the rest and those cans still aright on the sidewalks were overflowing like badly poured beers on a bar. House Méchant burst bright and outlandish out of a liquor store on the corner of East 25th, raising a shrill ruckus and trading flashy, razor jibes with the statuesque drag queens of House Labeija, both of them joining forces against a gauntlet of finger-wagging street preachers as they stumbled home from some all-night ball. An old lady dragged two wailing kids down the sidewalk. A correctional bus let out a gaggle of big men from Riker’s, clutching bulky paper bags that contained all they had in the world. Some of them scowled so hard at their surroundings they might as well have gotten right back on the bus. Three big-legged whores leaned like carhops in the window of a shining two-tone red and white El Dorado, the chrome blinding in the sun, the ermine cuff and bejeweled hand of the unseen driver hanging out the window, dangling a cigarette in a long black Penguin-style holder. A man pissed copiously against a wall. Two junkies lay across a subway grate trying madly to get at something, arguing. A nervously smiling straight laced dude in a shabby brown suit pushed Percy Sutton flyers at every one of them, and a loud group of teenagers in cut-sleeves swarmed him like locusts and left his papers scattered all over the broken sidewalk like the remnants of a flock of birds sucked through a 747 intake.

Sometimes Conquer missed living in Harlem.

Sometimes.

They passed Baba Hamilton’s dojo and Mustafa’s bookstore. They turned at Thomas Jefferson Park where he used to play as a kid. By the time Maroon had begun to sweat and rub his eyes behind his shades, Conquer realized where they were heading.

What’re we doing here? he demanded.

‘Here’ was 343 E 115th Street, the four story apartment jammed between a Spanish nail salon and a bodega where he’d grown up after his mother had died. Mamalawo Consolation Underwood had been the closest thing he’d had to a mother since his own had been run down by a taxi cab on the way home from work when he was nine years old, and this was her place.

Maroon and Peacock got out of the car. Canary threw it in park and looked at him expectantly in the rearview.

Why the hell are we here? he demanded again, when he got onto the sidewalk.

Maroon and Peacock led him upstairs to apartment 3C, Canary bringing up the rear. Conquer pushed past them when he saw the egg white of bare timber like open wounds in the splintered front door half-hanging from one twisted hinge.

The apartment looked smaller. The last time he’d been inside had been the day he’d left for jail. It had all the familiar decorations and furniture in all the familiar places. The depictions of black Obatala and white Jesus and the old photo of Mama playing Tonk with Madame St. Clair still hung from the walls. The pigeons cooed in their corner cage, and the banana rasp snails clung placidly to the glass of their terrarium on the stand by the television. A new addition he didn’t recognize, a Fela Kutti poster, hung crooked on one wall. Conquer noticed Mama Underwood’s ceremonial iron staff lying half under the easy chair. That was bad news. A Yoruba Mother of Mysteries would never let her opa lay. To do so was to invite misfortune, as it was tied to the bearer’s wellbeing.

The couch was overturned. Behind it, a girl of about twenty sprawled, her right arm and half her face and shoulder protruding through the broken glass of the window overlooking the alley where she’d apparently fallen.  She had on a yellow satin jacket with something embroidered in black lettering on the back; something that was punctured by multiple gunshot wounds. Big ones. .45’s or .44’s. Her back looked like the aftermath of a mortar barrage. The wall in front of her was splattered red from the exit wounds that must have erupted like a chain of volcanoes.  Her hands had been hacked off messily at the wrists. He noticed one broken fingernail on the carpet painted red.

There was a large lake of congealing blood in the middle of the floor and what looked like the mark of arterial spray across the snowy, hissing television set. A bottle of red nail polish, a brush, and a file lazed in the pool like drifting boaters on a lazy summer Sunday. The lake of blood spilled into a broad river that flowed into the kitchen. Conquer hastily followed it, the bottom sliding out of his stomach as he went.

King Solomon’s color guard didn’t stop him.

He found Mama Underwood lying spread out on her back in the kitchen among the ruins of the broken card table where she’d spent many an evening in her Japanese housecoat, working her policy books or reading palms.

He hadn’t seen a body so bad since Đắk Sơn. She looked like a mess of hogs had been at her, her magnolia-patterned caftan ripped to shreds, her big stomach laid open so that he had to put the back of his hand to his face against the smell of her exposed organs. Her head had been torn, not cut away. The flesh of her rolling neck was ragged. There was red everywhere, making a scarlet grid out of the black and white kitchen tiles, spattering the stove.

The smiling Gelede headdress on the counter seemed to weep blood. Her decapitated head rested on her chest, pressed at the temples between two knobs of bloody bone jutting from wounds at the ends of her flabby arms.  There was a deep set of slashes down her face, and the skin was partly dislodged from her skull so that her teeth showed through her nostrils and one bulging hazel eye looked out over the ruins of her forehead, like someone had pulled a ski mask out of kilter. Kola nuts lay scattered in the sticky dark blood. Her hula girl ashtray was smashed.

Goddamn, he murmured, leaning against the frame of the kitchen doorway as his legs went to sand with the weight of her loss.

This was the woman who had raised him.

He had always thought he’d come home to her someday; always thought they’d reconcile. Somebody had taken that away, torn it right from the calendar. He had experienced a lot of loss in his life. His mother, his Stieng-Montagnard wife, his best friends; it had made his heart a fallow place for grief. Anger was easier to cultivate, less of a waste of time. But the sadness came nonetheless, squeezing his heart in his chest. He stamped it down.

"Couldn’t you cover her up?" he hollered at the men in suits behind him.

I wanted you to see her as I found her, said a smooth voice from behind him. Before the cops come and fuck up the joint.

Conquer turned and saw a slight, high yellow man in his late twenties standing in the living room, flanked by the gangsters in their ridiculous multicolored suits. He was decked out in a stylish pinstriped Terra Cotta Pierre Cardin three-piece, a camel hair coat too warm for April draped over his shoulders. He regarded Conquer from behind a pair of expensive gold rimmed yellow tea shades. He wore his hair neat, but natural, and was immaculately shaved. There was a glittering stone big enough to kick off a Yemenite step at the Diamond Dealers Club riding his finger and five hundred dollar Gators on his feet.

Conquer hadn’t even seen the man when he’d entered the apartment. He’d been too preoccupied with Mama Underwood. That made him angrier somehow.

Who in the hell are you?

Reho Keyes.

So. ‘The Man’ in this case wasn’t the King of Harlem, but the heir apparent. King Solomon’s little-seen son, Reho. The last he’d heard, the boy had gone out of state to rub his head against some college wall. Well, he was back now.

People say you have skills, John Conquer, said Reho. Seems like my men picked you up pretty easy.

Conquer reached in his pocket.

Instinctively, the three bodyguards pulled their guns, even though Maroon had searched him.

Conquer smiled, seeing that only Reho hadn’t flinched. He had guts, for a college boy.

Conquer looked over at Maroon, whose dark face was shining with sweat now, the Essence of Bow-Down Conquer had dressed the inside of his jacket pockets with to lay a trick on trespassing hands now in full effect. He’d used it to stop a pickpocket dead in his tracks, and once, sent an overzealous cop packing when he’d tried to plant a nickel bag on him.

Conquer snapped his fingers at Maroon.

Maroon tossed his pistol across the room instantly, blinking stupidly at his empty hand when Conquer caught it.

The other two guards, scowling at their compatriot, thumbed back their hammers.

Cool it! Reho admonished.

Maroon stood blinking back sweat in confusion.

She teach you that? Reho asked, nodding to the dead woman in the kitchen.

Actually Conquer’s own mama had shown him how to make Essence of Bow-Down with Calamus root when he was seven. She used to take a packet of the stuff to work with her and wash the floors of the white folks with it, to insure she got the days off she wanted, and a nice bonus come Christmas time. His mama had in turn learned it from his grandfather, a two-headed doctor down in New Orleans. Along with his grandmother, a Vodoun mambo, he’d gotten a rich informal education in magic as a boy.

Mama Underwood had continued that education after his mother’s accident, initiating him into Ifá with the teaching and memorization of the Ese Ifá, the sacred Yoruba texts consulted in divination. She’d made her living as a bookie for King Solomon, but was also a respected reader and root worker. She’d built on Conquer’s foundations one brick at a time, and mortared them with an old bookie’s knowledge of the Harlem streets.

A helluva woman. Somebody had done her dirty; done all of Harlem dirty.

When Conquer said nothing, Reho took off his sunglasses. His eyes were shot with red.

We both lost a mother today, Conquer.

Mama Underwood had worked for King Solomon. After what he’d seen of the man’s operation, his smuggling of heroin and rare magical ingredients in the coffins of dead soldiers, Conquer had severed contact with her. Had her motherly love, deprived of Conquer, gone over to the King Solomon’s boy? He felt a twinge of jealousy at this surrogate, dismissed it as irrational, and moved on. Mama Underwood had been a mother to every kid that had ever crossed her path, down and out or otherwise. Foster children had come and gone from this apartment like socks all during his childhood. It had been stupid of him to pass judgment on her for doing what she had to do to scrape by. He’d let his hatred of King Solomon bleed over. Now he’d never have the chance to tell her.

Conquer put Maroon’s gun down on an end table in the living room, next to the carved wood àgéré ifá dish containing the sixteen sacred palm nuts.

What happened? he asked quietly.

That’s what I want you to tell me, Reho said. I came here to pay her rent like I do every last Monday of the month, found her and Phaedra like this.

Phaedra? Conquer gasped. He went across the room to the girl in the yellow satin jacket. That’s Phaedra?

He hadn’t seen Mama Underwood’s niece in ten years. He remembered her clinging to Mama’s hip, crying when the police put him in handcuffs and took him away for stabbing a pimp in the park. The last piece of the cake Mama had baked for his eighteenth birthday had still been in the icebox.

He hunkered down and peered closely at her corpse now. Phaedra had made a dash for the fire escape and the shooter had lit into her as she’d run. There were at least twelve magnum rounds in or through her, so the killer had fired six times from the doorway or the middle of the room, then reloaded, stood over her, and put six more in her. If he’d used a revolver, he hadn’t left the empty shells lying when he’d reloaded. Two guns? A speed-loader? He counted the wounds again and looked around for stray shots in the walls. No, the first set was an expert grouping as far as he could tell; no misses. Mama Underwood didn’t have the mark of a bullet on her.

Nobody heard all that shooting? Conquer remarked. Twelve high caliber rounds going off in an apartment would have sounded like the 1812 Overture. But this was Harlem. No too many Tchaikovsky fans.

Reho watched as Conquer got down to stare at Phaedra again, working things out.

Conquer bit his lip. He had taught this little girl how to read and count on street signs on their way to the park. A dirty local pimp, a bastard Conquer had seen turn out a number of his classmates, had slung a half-assed comment Phaedra’s way. Something about her having ‘bedroom eyes.’ It had made him mad enough to kill; landed him in jail and Vietnam. Who had done this? He could make out the black iron-on lettering of the blood-soaked jacket now.

18 BRONZEMEN.

What’s Eighteen Bronzemen?

I don’t know, said Reho. Some kinda gang?

The name was familiar to him somehow, but he couldn’t place it.

18th Street? Conquer wondered aloud. What would Phaedra be doing running around down in Chelsea?

He turned back to the lake of blood in the living room, the upset couch. Mama Underwood had been sitting here doing Phaedra’s nails. She had been slashed here, maybe in the neck with a machete or something after the door was kicked in. Blood had sprayed the TV. Phaedra had probably flipped the couch trying to get away. Had Mama Underwood lain here gasping and bleeding while the killer had unloaded on her niece? No time to hack at her and shoot. Mama Underwood had crawled or limped into the kitchen, where she’d either been pushed onto the table or collapsed trying to get at the phone. There the killer had gone to town on her, hacking, tearing.

But not without purpose. Why remove Mama Underwood’s head?

He thought a while.

To the Yoruba the Ori was the divine determiner of the totality of one’s spiritual power and destiny. It was the Head, connected to the mortal form on earth by a silver etheric chain to the Ori-Inu, the Inner Head, or mind, housed in the Ori-Akoko, the Exterior Head. Decapitation could be some kind of message, that like her staff, Mama Underwood’s spiritual power had been cast down.

And what about their hands? Why take them? There was an old trick to finding a murderer; bury the victim with a black cock’s egg in the right hand. Did the killer know about that? Conquer couldn’t help thinking the other mutilations were a distraction from the significant removal of the head and hands.

The killer had knowledge. Magical knowledge.

Were the shooter and the cutter the same person?

Two could have done this, for sure.

I want you to use all your skills, John Conquer, Reho said with a quiver in his voice. I want you to tell me who did this. I’ll pay.

You should call a Babalawo, said Conquer. A goat would have to be sacrificed, and the apartment cleansed with ritual snail and shea butter water from a palm branch.

I intend to, said Reho. But first, you.

Why him? Why hadn’t Reho gone to his daddy with this?

He had an idea why not.

It wouldn’t be the first time King Solomon had punished his own people severely, and with magic. Once, the man had left one of his own bookies shrunken and floating dead in a lava lamp.

You pay me to find out the who, that’s all, said Conquer, nodding to his guards. I ain’t one of these. My gun ain’t for rent, dig?

The color guard took this personal, by the sour looks they gave him.

Reho snapped his fingers and Canary stepped forward, reached in his jacket, and pulled out a wad of cash in a money clip, hundreds showing. He held it up, and tossed it to Conquer.

Conquer pocketed it without counting. He had a feeling the kid wouldn’t lowball him. He was too upset.

A fly buzzed past his ear and he turned his head instinctively to dismiss it. The old wooden cabinet in the hall situated beneath the shrine to Orunmila caught his eye.

At the sight of that cabinet a thousand and one feelings rushed all through him, and the memory of his once daily visits to it. He felt something more than nostalgia; something like compulsion.

Conquer went over to the cabinet, wondering if Mama Underwood had kept it all these years.

When he opened it, he felt another pang of regret. There in the back was his own opon Ifá, the circular wooden divination tray Mama Underwood had gifted him after he’d completed his initiation. It had seemed big as a punch bowl in his hands when he was a kid, but now he saw that it was only about a hand and a half by a foot or so big.

It had been the last creation of one of the real Yoruba carvers, descended from an artisan who had embellished the palace at Oyo-lle, the capitol of the Oyo Empire, when Shango, the deified Orisha of lightning and thunder, had been king. The etchings on the outer rim, lovingly detailed, depicted the palace and the royal person’s transition into an Orisha, as well as the face of Eshu and his monkey and the nine diviners. Leaning against it, he found his old carved ivory iroke Ifá tusk, his opele divination chain, and a bottle of iyerosun powder. They’d all been kept neatly arranged, as if waiting for him.

Maybe they had been.

John Conquer was not a man to believe in coincidences, and he felt something immeasurable stir within and around him. Maybe primordial Orunmila, the bearer of the wisdom of Oludomare, was calling him back; back to Ifá.

Give me an hour up on the roof, Conquer said. Alone.

You got it, said Reho.

On the roof of Mama Underwood’s building, where the smells of the cars and the chimneys mingled to a faint, industrial mélange, Conquer lifted the divination tray to the warm noon sun and arranged it with the head of Eshu facing east on a prayer mat. He sprinkled the termite dust of the Irosun tree from the bottle on the face, and knelt, tracing a circle in the dust with his fingers, invoking Orunmila and Eshu in the words Mama Underwood had drilled into him as a kid. He scattered a pinch on the tamped-down tar and gravel.

He tapped the ivory iroke Ifá too, and felt a light brush of wind as the Orisha, attracted by his obeisance, moved invisibly around him.

Like a lazy Catholic, he had not kept up with Ifá. Probably, in the intervening years, he had become more and more unworthy to consult Orunmila as he consorted with other magical traditions. He felt humble, as he had not felt in years, as though he stood before his mother again, admitting to some juvenile evildoing; ashamed to turn to Orunmila after years of silence only now, under these heinous circumstances.

He could have employed any number of divination techniques from a bushel full of other practices he’d learned. Yet, he had felt drawn to the old cabinet, felt Ifá calling.

Ifá divination was the Yoruba method of accessing what some called the Akashic record; all the deeds, emotions, and teachings of humanity throughout the past, present, and future, all presided over by the god Orunmila and Eshu the intermediary. Yet it was more than just fortune telling or browsing some cosmic card catalog. It was communion with the ancestral spirits of Mother Africa; it was an exchange of wisdom and guidance paid for with loving reverence and devotion.

Conquer lowly sang the required songs of praise to the Orisha, and took up the woven opele chain with its eight nut halves, raising it to the four directions. The convex sides of the nuts affixed to the chain represented silence, whereas the open ends were the mouths through which the Orisha spoke to the diviner. The pattern and number in which they fell on the open ends, like the flipped coins used with the Chinese I-ching, would determine which sacred Odu verses would be transcribed into the dust on the tray, consulted, and interpreted as the Orisha’s response.

He had been remiss in his memorizations of the Odu, which were an oral corpus of Yoruba proverbs and songs that once interpreted, could point his way to the killer of Mama Underwood, but he felt confident that they would return to him if the Orisha willed it.

He put the question of the murderer’s identity in his mind, dwelling on it, pulling from the formless ether until he had molded a humanoid shape devoid of any characteristic in his mind’s eye.  Orunmila would provide the face.

He cast the chain.

All eight nuts landed on the silent, convex side.

Fighting down a shiver of supernatural dread, he frowned. Such an overwhelmingly negative result was highly unlikely. He looked surreptitiously around, picked up the chain, and repeated the process.

All eight landed silent again.

Bullshit, he muttered to himself.

Either Orunmila was outright refusing to talk to him or else something was interfering with the reading. But what? He’d surely neglected Ifá in the past. A true adherent was supposed to pay daily sacrifice and honor the Orisha, practice the sacred divinations regularly to guide the soul of the seeker and others in the community. Conquer, in the wake of Vietnam and his time on the streets, had drifted away from that habit a long time ago.

Had he been wrong? Had the sensation of the Orisha guiding him back to the opon Ifá been his imagination? He didn’t think so, somehow. Despite what the professional babalawos who made a living off Ifá would have you believe, all the trappings of ritual and regimen went out the window if an Orisha really wanted to commune with you.  For any priest or holy man to espouse the power of his god and then preach strictures upon a person’s ability to even perceive them, well, it put the ‘sham’ in shaman.

But then, if Orunmila called to him, what had the power to intervene in the conversation?

He reset the tray and picked up the opele again. This time the chain broke. The seeds spilled onto the tray. Conquer looked down at them in surprise, but before he could discern the pattern, a big, warm wind kicked up on the roof, blowing the dust into his eyes and scattering the seeds and the fragments of the opele from the tray.

He stood up, blinking through streaming tears. There was no doubt about it now. There was some kind of powerful outside force actively walling him off from speaking to the gods.

He picked up the opon Ifá, the jar of dust, and the mat, and went back downstairs.

Reho Keyes’s men were waiting in the hall.

Maroon gave him a particularly hard stare as he passed. Conquer winked at him and went back into the apartment. He pulled the door shut behind him as best as he could.

Reho stood in the kitchen. 

A linen tablecloth lay covering Mama Underwood’s body. A Pangea of blood spread across it.

Police are gonna know somebody covered her up, Conquer said to announce himself.

Reho turned around and looked at him expectantly.

You trust them Banana Splits out in the hall? Conquer asked.

They’re loyal, said Reho.

They work for your daddy?

Once upon a time. Now they work for me. Why?

I can try something else back at my office tonight. Something’s blocking me here, said Conquer. Something powerful. There’s probably only three people in Harlem with the knowledge to do that. One of ‘em is lyin’ in the kitchen.

He took the wad of cash out of his pocket and held it out to Reho.

Reho just shook his head.

Who’re the other two?

Your daddy is one, Conquer said.

I suggest you go check out the third.

Conquer shrugged and pocketed the money.

I can do that, he nodded. How do I get a hold of you?

"I’ll get a hold of you," Reho said.

Conquer nodded and his gaze lingered on Mama Underwood’s covered corpse.

Will you give me a minute?

Reho nodded and retired to the living room.

Conquer went into the kitchen, avoiding the blood, and hunkered down, holding his palms over the body of Mama Underwood as if warming them over a fire.

May the road be open to you, he intoned quietly. May nothing evil meet you on the way. May you find the road good when you go in peace.

He went to Phaedra and repeated the prayer, then straightened and found Reho watching him. Reho nodded and went back to the kitchen, while Conquer went out into the hall.

Maroon blocked his way. He took the cursed green mojo hand out of his pocket and dropped it at Conquer’s feet.

I’ma see you again, motherfucker, he said lowly. And won’t no jive ass hoodoo tricks save you when I do.

Conquer squared off with Maroon, breaking his baleful look to glance down at the mojo hand.

You better pick that up.

Maroon’s lip curled, and he bared his teeth like a snarling dog, but he shuddered in the end, broke Conquer’s gaze, stooped down, and retrieved the bag, cussing under his breath.

When he straightened, Conquer was gone, but his laugh could be heard all through the stairwell.

CHAPTER TWO

Y ankees kicked the tar outta the Indians, said Frank, the paunchy meathead who wiped down the bar, flipped burgers, and knocked junkie heads together at the St. Marks Bar and Grill. He had the sports section of the Daily News spread on the sticky bar top.

Day the Yankees don’t kick the tar out the Indians, they can take a wrecking ball to the Bronx Zoo, said Conquer, sipping his Black Label.

Zev, the flabby Jewish guy in the rumpled postal worker’s shirt who took a circuitous route down from one of the suburbs every other week or so to visit his sister in the city, looked up from his second egg and onion sandwich and the Werewolf By Night comic he was studying and blinked stupidly. Black, wiry tufts of hair poked out of the sleeves and collar of his shirt, front and back, like a hint of something unspeakable creeping beneath the general air of dimwitted inoffensiveness.

Where would all the monkeys go? Zev wondered aloud.

Conquer smirked and Frank laughed around his toothpick and shook his head. Guys like this, it was a wonder anybody got their mail.

Maybe back to Baltimore, said Frank, cackling.

Conquer stopped smiling.

St. Marks Bar and Grill. Come for the watered down shit, stay for the racist cracker wit, Conquer said.

Aw come on, Conquer, said Frank. That was a dig at that uppity Jackson, he said, slapping the paper with the back of his hand, in effect slapping the smiling photo of the Yankee’s controversial star shortstop Reggie Jackson in his face.

Just in case I got the wrong idea? Conquer asked. Thanks for clarifying.

White New York hated Reggie. They hated his fur coats and his millions and his mouth. They hated his blackness most of all. A white ballplayer with all those traits would have been ‘colorful.’ A black one was ‘uppity.’

What? You know I like you, Frank said.

Conquer held up his empty glass.

Sure. Not to sound uppity, but how about you lay off the water and put a little booze in this one?

He set the glass down and let Frank sweep it behind the bar, watched him to make sure he didn’t spit in it as he refilled it.

Why Baltimore? Zev asked after a bit, blinking.

Bless your heart, Zev, said Conquer.

The door creaked open and Lt. Lou Lazzeroni came in, fed the cigarette machine, then threw his raincoat but not his trilby on the bar.

Evening Lieutenant, said Frank as he poured. S’matta? Your head cold?

Yeah, since I was thirty, said the detective, rubbing his hand over his balding pate before replacing his hat. What gives, Conquer? I agree to a 10-63 with you and you pick this dump? Why didn’t we go to Leshko’s for pierogis?

’Cause all the narcs at Leshko’s ruin the damn ambience. Give him a cheeseburger, Frank, Conquer said, throwing back his drink. You won’t believe these burgers, Lou. Let’s take that table.

Hold the filth, hah? Lazzeroni told Frank as they adjourned to one of the paper covered tables pushed against the wall.

Extra for you, Lieutenant, said Frank, throwing the bar towel over his shoulder and going into the kitchen.

At least if I puke on the floor nobody’ll notice, said Lazzeroni grimacing down at the gaudy green and white tiling, better suited to a mosque or a Turkish bathhouse than a bar.

Sorry, Lou, said Conquer. Didn’t know this was a date. I’d have worn my other pants.

Lazzeroni waved him off.

Got something to show you, he said lowly, and took a folded paper from his pocket. He slid it across the table to Conquer.

Conquer made a face at the scrawled writing.

What in the hell is this?

It’s a Xerox of the letter to Captain Borelli they found at the Esau and Suriani shooting last week.

The latest of the .44 Caliber Killer murders; some wacko shooting kids making out in parked cars in Queens. It had the whole borough in a panic; girls dyeing their hair blonde, a lot of horny dudes not getting action in their rides.

Conquer’s secretary was heavy into the case. She watched and read about it religiously. She had mentioned there had been a letter left for the police at the crime scene, and that they were calling the guy Son of Sam now.

Conquer spread out the Xerox and read;

I am deeply hurt by your calling me a wemon hater. I am not. But I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam. I am a little brat. When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats his family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood. Go out and kill commands father Sam. Behind our house some rest. Mostly young—raped and slaughtered—their blood drained—just bones now. Papa Sam keeps me locked in the attic, too. I can't get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wavelength then everybody else—programmed too kill. However, to stop me you must kill me. Attention all police: Shoot me first—shoot to kill or else. Keep out of my way or you will die!

"Hot socks," Conquer whispered.

Yeah, said Lazzeroni.

Frank plunked down a plate with a cheeseburger so greasy the stuff pooled in a pinkish halo around the grey, soggy bun.

Anything to drink, Officer?

Just the antidote, said Lazzeroni, peering at the burger dubiously.

Frank shrugged and went back behind the bar.

Conquer read;

Papa Sam is old now. He needs some blood to preserve his youth. He has had too many heart attacks. Too many heart attacks. Ugh, me hoot it urts sonny boy. I miss my pretty princess most of all. She's resting in our ladies house but I'll see her soon. I am the Monster—Beelzebub—the Chubby Behemouth. I love to hunt. Prowling the streets looking for fair game—tasty meat. The wemon of Queens are z prettyist of all. I must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt—my life. Blood for papa. Mr. Borrelli, sir, I dont want to kill anymore no sir, no more but I must, honour thy father. I want to make love to the world. I love people. I don't belong on Earth. Return me to yahoos. To the people of Queens, I love you. And I want to wish all of you a happy Easter. May God bless you in this life and in the next and for now I say goodbye and goodnight. Police—Let me haunt you with these words; I'll be back! I'll be back! To be interrpreted as—bang, bang, bang, bank, bang—ugh!! Yours in murder Mr. Monster.

What do you think? Lazzeroni asked when he’d finished.

Conquer handed the paper back to him.

Sounds like you got a real nutcase on your hands, said Conquer.

Yeah but what about that bit about Behemoth and Beelzebub? Lazzeroni said. That’s devil worshipper shit, right? Is Sam some kinda alias for Satan?

The Great Satan maybe.

Huh?

Dude so willing to shoot, Conquer mused. Might be he’s a vet. Every soldier’s a son of Uncle Sam.

Come on, man, said Lazzeroni. What about that stuff about needing blood to keep young? Anything there? Vampires, maybe?

Lazzeroni was trying hard. Everything for him was vampires after that time they’d taken down a couple bloodsuckers at the Harlem Hospital morgue.

I don’t know, said Conquer. I don’t get a lot out of that. Sounds like somebody desperate to sound important. All that Halloween shit, just window dressing, you dig? I mean, end of the day, he’s just shooting horny kids in the back and running away. How’d you get a hold of this anyway? Conquer said. This wasn’t in the papers.

I got assigned to the Omega Task Force, said Lazzeroni, trying to suppress a grin. We all got copies of it.

Zev got up from the bar and bid goodnight to Frank. As he passed their table, he raised his hand to Conquer.

OK, Conquer! See ya!

Awright, man, said Conquer, absently. The letter had got him thinking. He slid it back across the table to Lazzeroni.

This is a step up for me, man, said Lazzeroni, picking up the sopping burger and taking a tentative bite. Only a year out of vice and I get this. Somebody up there likes me. He grimaced, and grease dribbled down his chin. Jesus....I thought you said this was good.

I said you wouldn’t believe it, said Conquer.

Hey, can I get a napkin?

Frank came over with a stack of cocktail napkins and dropped them on the table. They had those Eggbert cartoons on them, little naked babies in the womb saying dubiously funny things, meant to get the ladies at a baby shower tittering. The one on top depicted a winking baby and the caption Who says EVERYTHING stops in a power blackout?

White folks were weird as shit, he thought.

Lazzeroni snatched it up and wiped his face.

Listen. The forty four this guy uses, Conquer said.  Any idea on what kind it is?

Ballistics matched his bullets to a Bulldog. Charter Arms. Double action snub nose, said Lazzeroni. Why?

I got a new case, said Conquer. "It’s personal. I knew them, Lou.