Painkiller Read online

  While he found this stash of goodies mildly interesting, Cooper figured it wouldn’t do any good to ask any more questions of the semimute Bizango medicine man. Anyway, he’d stirred up all the trouble he needed to-all he had to do now was hang around and wait for the reaction.

  He tapped the desk, said, “All right, Barry. Live slow and easy now,” turned, and walked to the front door, where he made sure to brush his shoulder against the wiry escort who had brought them here.

  “Guide me out of here, Kareem,” he said on his way out the door.

  15

  Cooper showed the mug shot to every visible man, woman, and child in town. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, what people saw in that picture, but Cooper didn’t much care. All the better: if somebody knew who the man had been in life, chances were Cooper could catch the look of horror on the face of even the most secretive citizen of the Valley of the Dead, confirming his suspicions while he figured out what to do about Barry the witch doctor with his lightbulbs, cell phone, and generator. Alphonse did whatever translating Cooper needed, Cooper watching the kid grow more uncomfortable with every encounter. If any of the locals they were meeting recognized the person in the picture, they did a good job of hiding it; maybe, Cooper thought, they were just disgusted with him showing the picture around and didn’t want him to know whatever it was they knew-if they knew anything at all.

  He began to notice the handful of local men following them around, keeping their distance but watching them just the same. Cooper wasn’t sure whether they were following for surveillance, intimidation, or robbery purposes, but he assumed it was a little of each. Sure, he’d flashed those big, fat ten-dollar bills around, but Barry the witch doctor was probably practiced at scaring people out of their wits with his evil eye and collection of zombie-branded trinkets. Maybe, Cooper thought, Barry’s M.O. included dispatching a team of shadow-men, the very presence of whom implied that zombification couldn’t be far off.

  They could watch him all they wanted, but if the toughs came too close he’d consider redrawing the radius of personal space they were being granted by way of the FN Browning.

  It was late in the day, nearing dusk, when a young woman approached. Cooper put her around sixteen; she was emaciated like most of the town’s other citizens, rough and sinewy, but there was something about her-watching her shuffle across the dusty trail in bare feet and a dress that looked like something medieval farmworkers might have worn, Cooper felt a surge of sexual excitement. He experienced the odd sense of suspecting he knew what she tasted like, could imagine with no effort the scent of the body oils in her hair; as his mind was picturing her worn fingernails scratching at his back, he decided to rein it in and veer off the path the pervert in him appeared to want to take.

  She was next to him now, head down as though in shame.

  “Bonswa,” she said.

  Cooper skipped Alphonse. “Bonswa.”

  She asked if it were true-that they were the men showing the picture around. Alphonse started to translate, but Cooper waved him off and handed the girl the picture.

  “Wi,” he said. “Sekonsa. C’est ça, là.”

  Alphonse had a look on his face that made it pretty clear the journey he’d envisioned was more akin to the trek over the mountain. Not this.

  The girl stared at the photograph for a long while. She seemed to be examining the picture the way most everyone had, lost in a kind of mild confusion. There was the possibility that many of them had never seen a photograph, but after his glimpse of the cellular phone in the witch doctor’s house, Cooper found some difficulty buying that explanation.

  “Wi, c’est li,” she said, and handed the picture back. Still looking confused.

  “Hold on,” Cooper said. “That’s him? Who?”

  Alphonse watched.

  “Li rele Marcel,” she said.

  Cooper became more aware that they were standing out in the open. “Who-who was Marcel?”

  “Mwen fiancé,” she said.

  “You’re sure? It must be difficult to tell,” he said, Cooper trying to adjust to the local version of Creole, “looking at that picture.”

  “Hard, yes,” she said. “I don’t understand. How can you have that picture?”

  “It’s a photograph,” Cooper said, “a picture, taken with a camera-”

  “Yes, I understand a picture,” she said, shaking her head, frustrated, “I mean where did you make it? It is not possible.”

  Cooper looked at Alphonse for a moment. The kid was shifting his weight from foot to foot. He stopped when he saw Cooper looking at him.

  “Why not?”

  “Where,” she said. “Where did that picture happen?”

  Cooper said, “On a beach. On Tortola. In the British Virgin Islands. A few hours from here by boat.”

  She started shaking her head.

  “Non?” Cooper said. “Poukisa?”

  She looked at him, had to look way up, and Cooper saw a glint of green in her otherwise brown eyes. “Because he is dead,” she said.

  Cooper said, “Well, yes,” relieved, having felt some trepidation at the prospect of breaking this news to her. But if she were right, and the body from Roy’s beach had been her late fiancé, it all got rapidly very complicated.

  “Look,” he said. “You sure about this? You’re sure that’s Marcel.”

  He held out the snapshot, but she didn’t take it again, only shook her head in the affirmative and said, “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Cooper blinked, appreciating the sophistication of the response.

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “How? Because I watched his funeral.”

  Cooper thought about this for a moment and decided to give one more shot at seeing whether the scenario he wasn’t too comfortable acknowledging could be eliminated.

  “Listen,” he said. “Do you understand where Tortola is?”

  “No. It is not possible you saw him somewhere else. He has never been anywhere else. He was born here, he lived here, he died here. He never went to this place, this Tortola.”

  Cooper stood there, out in the middle of main street in the Valley of the Dead, taking a moment to think about this. Alphonse had begun fidgeting again. Cooper reached out and wrapped his fingers gently around the girl’s arm, just below the shoulder.

  He said, “Kouman ou rele?”

  She gave him half a smile and said, “Simone.”

  “You were there when they buried him?”

  “Wi,” Giving him those brown-green eyes.

  “Could you take us there?” he said. “Can you show me his grave?”

  Painted on a stake, driven into the earth, was a name: MARCEL S.

  Just the s.-no last name. Cooper wondered if these people even used last names. If not, perhaps there had been another Marcel in town, or, as in Asia, the citizens of La Vallée des Morts might put the surname first, S. being short for his given name.

  Simone was pointing at the stake.

  It was one grave among a few dozen. They were in a clearing located about a quarter mile into the petrified forest, here in the graveyard that told him nothing about the body from Roy’s beach other than this: if the corpse beneath the stake was actually the kid named Marcel S., then the girl was wrong-it hadn’t been Marcel on the rocks in Road Town.

  He found the concept that occurred to him next disturbing.

  Leaning down, he thanked Simone and told her he was sorry about her loss. He told her he’d be leaving town now. Simone looked at him, her brown-green eyes as confused as when she had first seen the picture.

  “Mési,” she said, turned, and padded back to town.

  Cooper watched until she vanished behind a grouping of trees. Then he counted the rest of the cash in his wallet-just under eight hundred bucks-pulled out ten fifties, and handed the five hundred dollars to Alphonse.

  “Your fee,” he said.

  Alphonse eyed the cash, but remained still. “Poukisa?” he said. “Two-fifty when I brin
g you this place, yes? The rest-not yet, non?”

  “Time for you to go home.” Cooper found the key to the pickup and shoved it and the money into Alphonse’s rail-thin abdomen. “Take the truck. It’ll make the trip a little easier on the way down. Drive back and forth, all right? Zigzag.”

  Alphonse stood his ground.

  Cooper said, “You understand?”

  Alphonse did not say anything.

  “I know you’re a religious man, and a religious man should never have to participate in what I’m about to do.”

  Cooper shoved the money against the kid’s concave belly. Alphonse took the money and the key, then counted out two hundred and fifty dollars, handed Cooper the remainder-including the key-and straightened his long spine.

  “I am your guide,” he said.

  Cooper took the money and key from Alphonse’s palm, thinking that now, not only would he have to do what he’d already planned on doing, but he would also need to keep an eye on Alphonse while he was at it. He would need to pay close attention, considering the witch doctor’s gang was following them around-make sure Lew Alcindor here didn’t guide his own way into the afterlife before they made their way back up the hill.

  “If that’s the way it has to be,” Cooper said, “then follow me, big guy.”

  Cooper didn’t like the moon being out, but he and Alphonse were almost done, Cooper finishing the last of it. It was a shallow grave, about three feet deep, and they’d had to scrape their way down with whatever sticks and stones they could find. With the moon out, anybody watching could see them doing it, digging up the grave of Marcel S. in the middle of the night, but to Cooper there was no other way, not once Simone had told him her man was buried here.

  He scooped some dirt from the edge of the coffin. They’d cleared the soil from above the thing, a rudimentary box held together by rusted nails, and with four hands pulling at it he figured they could probably pry the top off now. He was trying to ignore the nausea welling up into his throat, nausea or fear, he wasn’t sure which, Cooper out here past midnight in a voodoo cemetery in the badlands of Haiti.

  “Get in here, Kareem,” he said. “Looks like we can pop it off if both of us do it.”

  Alphonse murmured something before he came over, Cooper not caring what he said. The kid reached for one of the planks and they tugged at the top of the coffin together, grunting and jerking, the nails screeching as they pulled. Cooper’s fingers slipped on the board and he sliced his hand open, but when he got back at it the lid popped off, flying back and tossing them into the mound of dirt they had dug. With Alphonse hanging back, Cooper crouched forward, holding his breath against the coming stench, and moved the last loose board out of the way. In the moonlight, he could see inside the coffin as though it were part of a track-lit museum display.

  There was nothing in the box.

  A couple rocks, sure, some dirt, but nothing else: no body, no bones, no tattered old clothes. Cooper was starting to sort through this unfortunate confirmation of what he’d already feared to be the case when he heard a voice.

  It was Alphonse. He was topside, out of the grave now.

  “Monsieur!” he said again. “Il faut you come look!”

  When Cooper poked his head above ground he saw a sight that gave him chills.

  A bunch of figures were coming at them out of the darkness-predatory shadows, approaching from every angle in the moonlight.

  He counted eight of them. Spaced five or ten yards apart, they had managed to form a circle around the open grave about forty yards across. Cooper couldn’t see any definition to their dark faces even in the pale desert moonlight; they were shadows, ghostly figures standing there at the edge of the graveyard. Wraiths.

  Barry must have had one or two of them following when Cooper had taken Alphonse out of town and up the slope of the mountain. He gave Barry and his band of wraiths some credit, not believing the show he’d put on, either seeing or guessing that they’d come back down once it got dark.

  Cooper came out of the grave and stood beside Alphonse, planting his feet three feet apart in the soft earth, knees just bent. Relaxed.

  Alphonse wasn’t so relaxed. He started to edge away from the hole.

  “Sit tight,” Cooper said.

  “They comin’ get us,” Alphonse said, his beanpole of a body coiled like a spring. “Il faut partir.”

  “Just stay by my side,” Cooper said, “right there where you are.”

  Cooper was trying to determine what it was they were packing and how they planned on killing him when Alphonse bolted. He called after the kid, but it was no use, Alphonse running for the wrong place, straight for one of the gaps between men, Cooper thinking he should have picked out one of them and bowled the man over, but that wasn’t what he did.

  Two of the figures jumped him, Cooper seeing what they had now-looked like machetes, though the weapons could have been old lawn mower blades for all he could tell.

  “Shit,” he said, and, having to do it earlier than he’d wanted, he drew his pistol and cracked off two quick shots, thinking he was probably too late, seeing the arc of a machete swinging down on Alphonse before the slugs broke up the party. Kareem’s attackers fell, but the kid dropped to his knees, probably cut bad, he thought, but there wasn’t time to check. The other six closed in at speed, brandishing the blades, Cooper seeing a couple of shivs, one of them holding what looked to be a spear.

  He didn’t hesitate, working his pistol like Player One in a voodoo video game, shooting, stepping back and to his right, shooting again, repeating, so that he moved himself in a circle and got at least one bullet moving toward each of the approaching men before they could close the gap on him. The gun was loud in his ears as he completed the circuit: shoot-step, shoot-step; the closer they got, the easier it became, the specters falling like cardboard cutouts at a shooting gallery. Cooper registering while he fired away that this had to be one of the last places a handgun still gave you an advantage, these guys actually out here fighting with knives the way people used to.

  He had to duck under the swipe of the last man’s blade, but he came up under the swinging arm with a point-blank shot to his assailant’s rib cage and, wraith, evil spirit, or otherwise, the shot felled him, and Cooper was done with the targets in his video game.

  He went to Alphonse. Some of the would-be killers were making noise, moaning on the ground, but Alphonse wasn’t. He lay flat on his back, silent, his face expressionless but alert, Cooper thinking he looked as though he’d expected this precise turn of events to happen. It wasn’t pretty: Alphonse’s right arm had been sliced clean through, his blood, black in the moonlight, spreading out all over everything, the soil, his clothes, his legs, his feet. The two dead men Cooper had shot lay beside him.

  Cooper looked for and found the kid’s long arm. The machete had severed it above the elbow; a length of nearly three feet of it was twitching on the ground a foot or two from the body it belonged to.

  He found his backpack, grabbed the inventory of T-shirts from its main pouch, tore off two of the backpack’s straps, and did his best to tie off Alphonse’s upper arm with the makeshift tourniquets. By the time he finished, the shirts he’d wrapped around the stump were soaked through with blood, but there was at least a chance he’d managed to curtail the blood loss. He tore off another strap from the backpack, took off his shirt, did a scaled-down version of the same tie-off on the severed arm itself, set the arm across Alphonse’s waist, and leaned down near the kid’s face.

  “Hang tight, Kareem,” Cooper said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He came through the middle of town, passing the driftwood bar and the old woman’s lean-to along the way. The lights were burning inside the witch doctor’s house when Cooper came up the porch stairs. He tried the knob, which turned, but the door was latched somehow and wouldn’t open, so he kicked it in.

  Barry the witch doctor and Cooper’s escort from the morning were seated on the floor, cross-legged and facing each other
about four feet apart. The place was thick with smoke. They shared a pipe-smoking a little herb, eh, Cooper thought. Get ready to smoke this pipe, poppy.

  The escort had whipped his head around in surprise upon Cooper’s entry; the witch doctor had not.

  “Allez-y!” Cooper said to the escort. “Vas!”

  The guy got up and headed for the door, spouting off at the mouth as he did it. Cooper ignored him, knowing he was the kind who would leave. The witch doctor remained on the floor in the lotus position, eyes closed, Cooper thinking he probably still has a lungful of that weed in there.

  “You been warned,” the witch doctor said, eyes still closed. “Now you going to die.”

  “Your death squad already struck out, big boy.”

  The guy opened his eyes and looked up at him. Given the circumstances, Cooper didn’t like how leisurely the look was.

  “You be dead soon enough,” the witch doctor said.

  “Here’s a message from Marcel S.,” Cooper said, and plugged the witch doctor with the first four shells of the fresh clip he’d popped into the Browning on the walk over.

  Barry toppled over backward onto the floor. Cooper came over and checked his robes, but there was nothing on him. It made Cooper think a little more about the bastard’s last words, the bokor sounding all too confident as he’d said them.

  You be dead soon enough.

  He came around behind the desk and rifled through everything he could find-the cell phone, the charger, some trinkets, papers, a short stack of money in the metal box under the desk. He took out the money and threw it on the floor. Under the money, there were some other things. Coins, what looked like a car key, a couple of blank business cards with phone numbers written on them. Cooper recognized the main area code for Puerto Rico on one of the cards. The other he didn’t know for sure but figured it for Jamaica. He snatched the business cards and kicked the money, scattering it across the floor, and left.

  Graveside, he took the loose end of the strap he’d used to tie off Alphonse’s arm and knotted it around a pair of belt loops on his shorts. He let go of the severed arm, and it dangled from his waist-the flexed fingers of the kid’s lost hand reaching almost to his shoelaces, but not quite. He retrieved the last of his candy supply, feeding Alphonse a few bites before polishing off the rest himself. He gulped a bottle of water and, deciding to do without the rest, left the backpack beside the empty grave. He positioned himself alongside Alphonse’s long, limp body, the kid looking like a snake in the dirt, and then, bending at the knees, he reached backward and stretched his arms out behind his legs to loop them underneath Alphonse.