?d thought I could tiptoe past his web and take away one of his bugs. He’d let me know that wasn’t possible.
Of course, there might be no one there. Maybe they were all down in the hold, playing the drums and drinking rum and this was all my imagination working overtime.
But I didn’t think so. I was mortally sure that I would open the door and come face to face with Patrice du Sinueux. That’s what he wanted. He had driven me down here to this meeting as surely as if he’d taken me by the hand and led me.
I was going to open that door and come face to face with a truly evil man, and I was going to kill him. That was the only way now.
I took another deep breath, held the gun ready, and kicked open the door.
The drums stopped.
A man sat behind the desk in a circle of light. Just one man. There was no one else in the room, just him and me and he was sitting, unarmed. He was either stupid or so confident in his magic he didn’t think he’d need any help.
He was a light-skinned black man, with a slender build and close-cropped hair. His hands were resting in front of him on the desk. They were clean, strong-looking, manicured, and the fingers were much too long.
A deck of oversized cards stood on the desk at his elbow and as I entered he was stroking it with the fingertips of one hand.
Behind him was a steel coat rack. A black silk top hat was perched on top. A pair of white gloves was thrown over one branch and an elegant black cane hung from another.
And wound around the rack was the biggest snake I have ever seen.
It was twenty feet long and it was thicker around the middle than my leg. It had a pale yellow color with soft grey markings and a huge, wedge-shaped head that it lifted at me, its tongue flicking in and out.
The man at the desk moved. He opened a drawer of the desk. My eyes and my gun snapped over to cover him. He looked up at me and smiled. His eyes were a startling light green and they locked onto mine.
“Bon soir, Billy,” he said in a voice like the silk of the hat. He waved one of those long elegant hands. “Come in. Sit.”
“Let me see your hands,” I said.
He took his hand out of the desk, with mocking slowness. He was holding a small saucer and a razor blade. “This will not harm you,” he said, sounding like somebody I couldn’t see was tickling him.
I couldn’t think of much to say to that. I watched him as he placed the saucer on the desk and, as he began to speak, calmly slashed his arm and begin to drip blood into the saucer.
“I have raised Bebe from the egg,” he said, nodding at the snake. “I have given him a special taste.” He looked up. His blood was dripping into the saucer and the snake was starting to uncoil towards him. He smiled, a pleasant smile. “For blood. He likes human blood.” He shook his head happily. “Very unnatural. His kind, they do not normally like the human blood. It was very hard to teach him, but well worth it. He has been a great help in my work.”
He pursed his lips and whistled, a soft trill of a whistle that was strangely intimate.
The snake wound down from the coat rack and onto Cappy’s shoulder. He whistled again. The snake moved its huge flat head down to the saucer and began to drink.
“To him, he knows it means he will soon be fed, you see? And I have trained him to take the blood and then—” He gave me a beautiful smile. “—then he wrap himself where I say and squeeze. Very helpful with the sacrifices. For Papa Legba.” He laughed, then shrugged. “A parlor trick, yes. But it is very impressive, to the peasants in particular.”
“Your snake killed the old man. And the sailor, Oto,” I said, trying to keep my eyes on him. But it was almost impossible not to watch the snake.
“Two in one night,” he said with great satisfaction. “I was not sure he could do it. But he did,” he crooned to the snake. “Ey, Bebe?”
“Put the snake away,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “He will not hurt you,” he said. “He is not hungry, not for two, three more days.” The last s trailed off into a long, soft hiss.
“Put him back,” I said again.
He shrugged. It was a dark version of Honore’s shrug, saying of course, what’s the point, only because I want to, you’re a coward and a fool, I’ll get you anyway. And with one slow hand he guided the big snake back onto the coat rack and then slapped a bandage onto the razor cut.
“And so?” he said. “Now I am helpless, without my Bebe. So now what will you have me do?”
It’s not possible to get across the insult and menace he managed to put into those words. But as he spoke, smiling and leaning back in his chair, the hairs stood up on my neck and without thinking I took a step towards him, leveling the gun at a spot between his eyes.
He made no move to defend himself, pretending not to notice my gun, as if he believed that I would never dare to shoot him, or that bullets wouldn’t hurt him.