Season of the Witch Read online

  “Harry. Come on. How much?”

  “Well, five large . . . five thousand.”

  I sat brooding over Harry’s little mess, listening to the wailing wind and the early evening rain. I liked Harry, and wanted to trust him. That was part of his magic. You always wanted to trust him. But then again, I knew him, and in the past my longing that he straighten out and fly right had always come up empty. I put out a cautious feeler.

  “I might be able to help you, Harry. But if this money’s dirty—”

  “I would ask you to do that? Please. With you, I’ll be square. I just want what’s owed to me, what belongs to me. And what belongs to Eve.”

  “Eve?” The way that he’d said the name had carried a peculiar weight, as if he were a priest reciting a mantra. I paused.

  “Eve is the young woman I was telling you about, the one that I’m going to marry. Some of the money is hers, and she’s always been a really straight person. She’s not like all the other girls I used to hang out with. She’s from a good family. So naturally, feeling the way I do about her, I tried to keep it under wraps, so to speak, that I’d lent Itchy Danny the money because I thought that he’d be paying me back pretty quick. You see—”

  “—Eve doesn’t even know you lent your savings to a two-bit criminal? And this is the woman you plan to marry?”

  Again, I received the all-dismissing shrug, the disarming smile.

  “Now she does. I mean, I had to tell her after a while. I felt bad about what had happened. It’s not like I wanted to keep it from her. She was pretty damn mad, I can tell you that. Now, that’s a side of her you don’t want to see. But, I’d told her about you before, how we went way back, and so she thought that since you were a private eye now, maybe if I came to you we could work something out. Maybe I could get you to go after Itchy Danny.”

  “For old time’s sake?”

  Harry held his hands up, palms out.

  “Oh, no, Roland. You should know better. It isn’t like that. This would be legitimate business.” He appeared to be deliberating; then he slid forward in the chair and leaned closer.

  “We’ll pay you a thousand to find him. Of course, it goes without saying that you have to collect the rest of the dough.”

  Outside, the empty moan of the wind became a little louder. I waited for it to die away.

  You should know better, a little voice in my head was telling me.

  “Well, the truth is, I’m already working a case and that’s taking up a lot of my time. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that I take your case. This thousand . . . when would I receive it?”

  “After you find Itchy. You can take it out of whatever he’s got left. Even if he’s spent it all, I guarantee your fee. I mean, I’m sure you’ll find him. You’re the best.”

  I ignored the patronizing remark, and took my time in responding. Inwardly, I was mightily displeased with myself, because I knew what I was going to say already. I suppose that Harry did too. Which was also displeasing. Soft-hearted Roland Longville, Private Eye. That’s me. I should have my own TV show. Maybe Harry could be my sidekick.

  “Okay, Harry, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Harry extended his hand once again, as he stood. “Thanks a million, Roland. Oh! But I almost forgot, and if I forget, Eve will kill me.”

  “And what, pray tell me, would get such a severe reaction from the Perfect Woman?”

  “If I forget to invite you over to our home for dinner Friday night.”

  I started to protest, but something about the mad twinkle in Harry’s dark eyes forbade it. I let my shoulders fall in mock defeat.

  “Okay, Harry, that sounds good. It’ll be good to catch up on things after so long.”

  “And also to meet Eve, don’t forget.” The strange emphasis on the name was there again.

  “Ah. Yes, Eve. Looking forward to meeting the woman who has salvaged you from a life of petty crime.”

  Harry gave me his address, and told me to show up around seven thirty. We shook hands a third time, and he was gone, an unreal figure from the vanished past which I had only moments before sat pondering. He had disappeared back out into the moaning sleet and the growling thunder. I stood there for a moment, and shook my head in silent disbelief. The wind howled like a lost soul.

  The weather had turned cold as a landlord’s heart, and even the petty thieves and prostitutes that populated the streets of Westmoreland Heights had sought cover indoors. No one interfered with me as I slouched toward my decrepit Buick, which I always park next to the abandoned Magic City Bakery across the street. I jangled the keys in the lock and slid inside. I started the engine and let it warm up a little before pulling out onto the slick, empty street. I pointed my car to the Northeast and drove through the pelting sleet to my humble home.

  Chapter 2

  I still had that other case that I was trying to bring to a close, and I had yet to confront the principal figure in that drama. This was the cause for much of my brooding. It was a wandering daughter case, and I had found the daughter. Her name was Lena and she was living in a once middle class part of the city that was filled with crumbling brownstone buildings older than even my own venerable Brooks Building.

  It was the kind of case that I usually don’t take—disgruntled college kids ditch their parents’ ideas of domestic bliss all of the time. Usually they turn up, older and wiser, with a child or three. Sometimes they never come back, disappearing into the vast and intricate wilderness of America without leaving a trace. In either case—no, in most cases—there is a force at work quite beyond my own humble powers to interdict.

  I had been sitting in my office one day in the fall, congratulating myself over having just dug up a particularly well hidden dead-beat dad for Human Services, when the telephone rang and a somber voice on the other end requested to meet with me over a matter of the utmost importance. The person on the other end refused to discuss the matter over the phone. You get that sometimes.

  That was how the Waters family had entered my life. They had appeared early the following morning with their tears, their outrage, and a sad story about their missing daughter. They were nice looking people; in other circumstances, I’m sure they were very charming. Mr. Waters was a prematurely graying, but otherwise youthful-looking man; his wife was growing solid and matronly but still attractive. Nevertheless, something about them was too mild. I gathered that they lived very sheltered lives. My office is not the most squalid place on earth, but even there they looked out of place, like ballerinas in a whorehouse.

  They were obviously extremely disturbed. When they walked into my office, they looked around as if in a daze, as though wondering where they were. I had seen that look before. A catastrophe had taken place in their quiet suburban lives, a shipwreck that they had somehow miraculously survived only to find themselves washed up on this alien shore, bereft of hope, and stunned and vulnerable.

  I hadn’t wanted to take the case, but I had made the mistake of listening. I brooded over the details, gazing out at the sliding rain and inky clouds that so well reflected my mood. Both parents had convinced me—the eternal softhearted sap—that their daughter was different. Lena had been corrupted, they claimed, by a worldly young man, a would-be artist, like herself. He had captivated her and run away with her to the city. They were sure he had, by this time, abandoned her, leaving her destitute and living on some street corner with no means of support. Lena had been in regular contact with her parents, but that had abruptly ceased over four months ago. They were fairly out of their minds with worry. And I was obviously out of mine, too, as I had reluctantly agreed to take the case.

  Lena Waters was not technically a runaway, since she was a legal adult. More accurately, she was a college dropout. She had come to the city just like so many others who came looking for that elusive break that would set them free forever from the boring and the humdrum—humdrum meaning an ordinary life, like those of their parents.

  Like most of them, she’d go
tten mixed up with the wrong people, for the wrong reasons.

  This was hardly shocking to me. There were countless young people like her here, and in other cities around the nation. I doubted I would ever find her, but her grieving parents had implored me to keep looking, forever if need be. Fortunately, within a month I had found her. After I notified her relieved parents, I had discreetly watched Lena for a couple of days and reported my findings back to them, along with a few words of advice: “Finding” a legal adult rarely does any good, since they very often don’t want to hear from the people they ran away from in the first place. I have heard ‘Go to hell and leave me alone!’ plenty of times.

  All of this I told Lena’s parents, and more.

  “Our Lena isn’t like those other kids you’ve been after, Mr. Longville.” Mr. Waters assured me, his eyebrow arched to show how convinced he was of what he was saying. He had a soft, lyrical Southern accent. I’m a down-to-earth country boy it seemed to say. “True, she’s fallen in with the wrong element, but Lena’s a good girl. If she weren’t being pressured, she never would have done this.”

  I’d heard that one before, too.

  “It’s that boy. Oh, I wish she had listened to me about that boy,” Mrs. Waters wailed, dissolving completely into tears.

  “Finding your daughter won’t be easy, and even if I can, I can offer no guarantees,” I threw in, while Mr. Waters comforted his wife.

  They both nodded, but I wasn’t sure they were really listening.

  “I want you to know that I have the utmost sympathy for what you must be feeling right now, but you must accept that Lena may have made this decision on her own. So even if I find her, she may not want to come home.”

  Of course, all of my lecturing did little good. It seldom did. I suppose I repeated the lecture more out of a sense of obligation to the truth. They were like others I’d seen, incredulous at this disaster that had befallen them, their little girl gone mad and run away to the city and untold dangers. Mrs. Waters had cried from then on whenever Lena’s name was mentioned, and I was forced to think of other similar cases that I had taken, years before, of young people who had disappeared under strange circumstances, only to resurface following aging rock and roll bands across the country, pretending to live “Alternative” lifestyles.

  Most were just waiting on their trust funds to mature. I had sworn to myself after recovering the last permanently stoned banker’s son from Southern California, that I would take no more runaway cases. However, against my better judgement I had taken this one. In the end what had convinced me was her picture. The parents had shown it to me and there was an air about the young woman that was apparent even in the photograph. She had happy but curious dark eyes, with an eagerness and an innocence bordering on emptiness, like they wanted more, to drink in the world and find what was right for her.

  “I’m not the richest man, Mr. Longville, but I am well off. I want you to find my daughter and tell her how we feel. We didn’t get a chance to tell her how we felt, Mr. Longville; no goodbyes. We were loving parents; we gave her everything. Children don’t run away from parents like that.”

  Actually, they do. Moreover, I’ve heard that one before, too.

  I thought this, but said nothing. I had already decided, and there was really nothing more to say, so I took the case. I’d find her or I wouldn’t.

  I had begun the search the next day, planning to find Lena quickly. I figured maybe it was a case of a spoiled kid testing her parents. It happens a lot. It hadn’t turned out to be so simple. For one thing, she wasn’t where she should be.

  Being the world’s greatest detective, I wasted only a couple of months stumbling around in the wrong sections of town. When cruising the flophouses and the jails brought me nothing, I had checked the hospitals and the morgues. That brought me no luck. But there are only so many options for a person on the skids. By a process of elimination, I had found her.

  I hadn’t broken the news to her parents just yet. What I had found I knew they wouldn’t want to hear. She was living with some delinquent in a ramshackle building in Sumiton, the most run-down part of town. The outside of the building looked like Picasso’s Guernica. The delinquent in question was presumably the would-be artist boyfriend. It didn’t look like they were too deeply in love. Neither of them seemed to be employed, at least not in a traditional sense. I had, however, seen Lena give the boyfriend money several times. He would usually immediately depart with friends for a night’s reveling. Lena had her own visitors; they came at odd hours to the small apartment, always male visitors, and nearly always alone. At least her occupation was obvious.

  I had rarely seen the same man enter twice, or stay more than a couple of hours. That pretty much told the story. The fact that there was a boyfriend in the picture didn’t really surprise me. I’d seen plenty of boyfriends who would turn their girlfriends out for money. It isn’t pretty but that’s the way it is. When Lena was entertaining, the boyfriend would always make himself absent. Even from a distance, I could see that there were lines under Lena’s eyes, eyes that looked deep and tired, those same eyes that had been so dark and sparkling.

  I had been standing under the awning of a broken down flophouse to get out of the rain. It wasn’t working. I blended in seamlessly with the wet derelicts. You’re a real master of disguise, Longville, I thought to myself.

  Finally, I spotted her across the street. She was walking slowly, warily down the sidewalk. I watched as she walked up to her run-down apartment building, hugging herself against the drizzle. Short and thin, dressed in a shabby blue coat, she wore nothing on her head, despite the cold. Her long brown hair whipped in the wind. She fumbled as she took out her key. She looked small, vulnerable, abandoned. She went inside, but I didn’t venture across just yet.

  While I waited, I saw a man come up to the door with a small brown bag. It wasn’t the boyfriend, who was skinny, unwashed and young. Instead, he was stocky, and from a distance, he appeared well dressed, shirt collar open to show a thick gold chain. He wasn’t there for a ‘visit’— at least not the kind I’d usually observed. He went in without preamble, and emerged less than a minute later without the package. All business. He had a look of absolute disgust on his face, the disgust of the master for the slave. Suddenly I knew Lena’s problem all to well.

  I waited until this charming fellow departed, then surreptitiously went across the street and up to her door. I leaned on the buzzer several times, but there was no answer. Inside, Lena was probably too high to be bothered just then. I decided to come back after I met with Harry and Eve. She’d be down by then. Smack is a heavy hitter, but its pleasure is fleeting.

  My little date would require me to drive all the way across town. The traffic situation was always dismal. For some reason, it seems people like to drive even crazier than usual when it rains. A brief glance in the rearview mirror revealed a river of red tail lights stretching off into infinity in the opposite direction. There were a number of hold ups from accidents along the way.

  Ah, Birmingham. I have a love-hate relationship with the city of my birth, jewel of the South. She is a lot of things. She is green and gray, smiling and scowling, bitter and sweet, rural and urban. She is a burgeoning metropolis set in the middle of a wasteland. She is a million strong, almost the exact same size as her British sister that had given her a name. She is the pride of Alabama and her curse, having been the focus of the civil rights riots of the sixties, while remaining her largest city and a center of commerce.

  The Magic City is divided into three big pieces. Roughly speaking, they go from Best to worst, like so. The farther south one travels, the better the quality of living. The farther north, the more abysmal. In the middle, there lays Park Place, pleasantly secluded from the rest of the city by its topography. There, most of the city’s rich have managed to seclude and insulate themselves from the troubles other city dwellers face day to day.

  Also, in the middle lies Westmoreland Heights and Elyton to the east. Bet
ween the two of them, the long sliver of the city that is downtown lies between Airport Highway and University Boulevard. Within it you will find the Morris Station, The Magic City’s central hub of transportation; and The Hart Tower, the tallest building in the city. Most of the smaller business owners, the jewelers and pawnbrokers who dominate there, live in a nearby enclave known simply as The District.

  Stretching away far above it all—the poorest section of the city—is the North Side. Here are the ruins of the former great steel empire. The North Side is crumbling. It is home to row upon long brown row of the city’s projects. In the seventies, plans were loudly announced for urban renewal, but those promises were forgotten when the men who made them were elected. The denizens are poor, but make no mistake, there are thriving businesses there and many rich men. But most of the businesses are questionable, at best, if not outright illegal. And the richest men of the North Side are the criminals who run those businesses.

  There is also the Mob. The most powerful faction is the Ganato crime family headed by Don Armand Ganato, the Caesar and overlord of the huge mafia family that operates from their own part of the North End, referred to by them as The Zone. In the old days, The Zone was once called The Mafia Zone, but the name has become contracted with the passage of time. Don Ganato lives in The Zone, a part of the city in which there is virtually no law but his, and of which he is ruler absolute. The Zone lies directly across the Cahaba River from the North Side and Ganato’s enemies, the O’Hearn mob.

  The O’Hearn mob was traditionally an Irish organization, but over the years it has adopted Southerners of Scottish, Welsh and German pedigree, though it is still referred to by many as the Irish mob. Principally, it still is. Its founder, Big Thom O’Hearn, was born and reared in Ireland, as was his young protégé, “Longshot” Lonnie O’Malley. Now Big Thom is gone, and Lonnie runs the rackets.

  Harry’s apartment was in the lower part of Fountain Heights, toward the Cahaba River. Though by no means ritzy, Fountain Heights boasted some of the nicer places to live on that side of the city. They were areas that the police would still go into at night, places where you could still raise children if you were of a mind.