Jack pretended not to get the hint. "Listen, if you'll just keep asking around-"

"No. I can't help you any more, Lieutenant. Can't you get that through your head?"

A frigid, bl.u.s.tery wind huffed and moaned and hissed and puffed at the open door, spraying snowflakes like flecks of spittle.

"Listen," Jack said. "Lavelle never has to know that you're asking about him. He-"

"He would find out!" Hampton said angrily, his eyes wide open as the door he was holding. "He knows everything-or can find it out. Everything."

"But-"

"Please go," Hampton said.

"Hear me out. I-"

"Go."

"But-"

"Go, get out, leave, now, d.a.m.nit, now!" Hampton said in a tone of voice composed of one part anger, one part terror, and one part panic.

The big man's almost hysterical fear of Lavelle had begun to affect Jack. A chill rippled through him, and he found that his hands were suddenly clammy.

He sighed, nodded. "All right, all right, Mr. Hampton. But I sure wish-"

"Now, d.a.m.nit, now!" now!" Hampton shouted. Hampton shouted.

Jack got out of there.

V.

The door to Rada Rada slammed behind him. slammed behind him.

In the snow-quieted street, the sound was like a rifle blast.

Jack turned and looked back, saw Carver Hampton drawing down the shade that covered the gla.s.s panel in the center of the door. In bold white letters on the dark canvas, one word was printed: CLOSED.

A moment later the lights went out in the shop.

The snow on the sidewalk was now half an inch deep, twice what it had been when he had gone into Hampton's store. It was still coming down fast, too, out of a sky that was even more somber and more claustrophobically close than it had been twenty minutes ago.

Cautiously negotiating the slippery pavement, Jack started toward the patrol car that was waiting for him at the curb, white exhaust trail pluming up from it. He had taken only three steps when he was stopped by a sound that struck him as being out of place here on the wintry street: a ringing telephone. He looked right, left, and saw a pay phone near the corner, twenty feet behind the waiting black-and- white. In the uncitylike stillness that the m.u.f.fling snow brought to the street, the ringing was so loud that it seemed to be issuing from the air immediately in front of him.

He stared at the phone. It wasn't in a booth. There weren't many real booths around these days, the kind with the folding door, like a small closet, that offered privacy; too expensive, Ma Bell said. This was a phone on a pole, with a scoop- shaped sound baffle bending around three sides of it. Over the years, he had pa.s.sed a few other public telephones that had been ringing when there was no one waiting nearby to answer them; on those occasions, he had never given them a second glance, had never been the least bit tempted to lift the receiver and find out who was there; it had been none of his business. Just as this this was none of his business. And yet* this time was somehow* different. The ringing snaked out like a lariat of sound, roping him, snaring him, holding him. was none of his business. And yet* this time was somehow* different. The ringing snaked out like a lariat of sound, roping him, snaring him, holding him.

Ringing*

Ringing*

Insistent.

Beckoning.

Hypnotic.

Ringing*

A strange and disturbing transformation occurred in the Harlem neighborhood around him. Only three things remained solid and real: the telephone, a narrow stretch of snow-covered pavement leading to the telephone, and Jack himself. The rest of the world seemed to recede into a mist that rose out of nowhere. The buildings appeared to fade away, dissolving as if this were a film in which one scene was fading out to be replaced by another. The few cars progressing hesitantly along the snowy street began to* evaporate; they were replaced by the creeping mist, a white-white mist that was like a movie theater screen splashed with brilliant light but with no images. The pedestrians, heads bent, shoulders hunched, struggled against the wind and stinging snow; and gradually they receded and faded, as well. Only Jack was real. And the narrow pathway to the phone. And the telephone itself.

Ringing*

He was drawn.

Ringing*

Drawn toward the phone.

He tried to resist.

Ringing*

He suddenly realized he'd taken a step. Toward the phone.

And another.

A third.

He felt as if he were floating.

Ringing*

He was moving as if in a dream or a fever.

He took another step.

He tried to stop. Couldn't.

He tried to turn toward the patrol car. Couldn't.

His heart was hammering.

He was dizzy, disoriented.

In spite of the frigid air, he was sweating along the back of his neck.

The ringing of the telephone was a.n.a.logous to the rhythmic, glittering, pendulum movement of a hypnotist's pocket.w.a.tch. The sound drew him relentlessly forward as surely as, in ancient times, the sirens' songs had pulled unwary sailors to their death upon the reefs.

He knew the call was for him. Knew it without understanding how how he knew it. he knew it.

He picked up the receiver. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Detective Dawson! I'm delighted to have this opportunity to speak with you. My good man, we are most definitely overdue for a chat."

The voice was deep, although not a ba.s.s voice, and smooth and elegant, characterized by an educated British accent filtered through the lilting patterns of speech common to tropical zones, so that words like "man" came out as "mon." Clearly a Caribbean accent.

Jack said, "Lavelle?"

"Why, of course! Who else?"

"But how did you know-"

"That you were there? My dear fellow, in an offhanded sort of way, I am keeping tabs on you."

"You're here, aren't you? Somewhere along the street, in one of the apartment buildings here."

"Far from it. Harlem is not to my taste."

"I'd like to talk to you," Jack said.

"We are talking."

"I mean, face-to-face."

"Oh, I hardly think that's necessary."

"I wouldn't arrest you."

"You couldn't. No evidence."

"Well, then-"

"But you'd detain me for a day or two on one excuse or another."

"No."

"And I don't wish to be detained. I've work to do."

"I give you my word we'd only hold you a couple of hours, just for questioning."

"Is that so?"

"You can trust my word when I give it. I don't give it lightly."

"Oddly enough, I'm quite sure that's true."

"Then why not come in, answer some questions, and clear the air, remove the suspicion from yourself?"

"Well, of course, I can't remove the suspicion because, in fact, I'm guilty," Lavelle said. He laughed.

"You're telling me you're behind the murders?"

"Certainly. Isn't that what everyone's been telling you?"

"You've called me to confess?"

Lavelle laughed again. Then: "I've called to give you some advice."

"Yeah?"

"Handle this as the police in my native Haiti would handle it."

"How's that?"

"They wouldn't interfere with a Boco Bocor who possessed powers like mine."

"Is that right?"

"They wouldn't dare."

"This is New York, not Haiti. Superst.i.tious fear isn't something they teach at the police academy."

Jack kept his voice calm, unruffled. But his heart continued to bang against his rib cage.

Lavelle said, "Besides, in Haiti, the police would not want want to interfere if the to interfere if the Bocor Bocor's targets were such worthless filth as the Carramazza family. Don't think of me as a murderer, Lieutenant. Think of me as an exterminator, performing a valuable service for society. That's how they'd look at this in Haiti."

"Our philosophy is different here."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"We think murder is wrong regardless of who the victim is."

"How unsophisticated."

"We believe in the sanct.i.ty of human life."

"How foolish. If the Carramazzas die, what will the world lose? Only thieves, murderers, pimps. Other thieves, murderers, and pimps will move in to take their place. Not me, you understand. You may think of me as their equal, as only a murderer, but I am not of their kind. I am a priest. I don't want to rule the drug trade in New York. I only want to take it away from Gennaro Carramazza as part of his punishment. I want to ruin him financially, leave him with no respect among his kind, and take his family and friends away from him, slaughter them, teach him how to grieve. When that is done, when he's isolated, lonely, afraid, when he has suffered for a while, when he's filled with blackest despair, I will at last dispose of him, too, but slowly and with much torture. Then I'll go away, back to the islands, and you won't ever be bothered with me again. I am merely an instrument of justice, Lieutenant Dawson."

"Does justice really necessitate the murder of Carramazza's grandchildren?"

"Yes."

"Innocent little children?"

"They aren't innocent. They carry his blood, his genes. That makes them as guilty as he is."

Carver Hampton was right: Lavelle was insane.

"Now," Lavelle said, "I understand that you will be in trouble with your superiors if you fail to bring someone to trial for at least a few of these killings. The entire police department will take a beating at the hands of the press if something isn't done. I quite understand. So, if you wish, I will arrange to plant a wide variety of evidence incriminating members of one of the city's other mafia families. You can pin the murders of the Carramazzas on some other undesirables, you see, put them in prison, and be rid of yet another troublesome group of hoodlums. I'd be quite happy to let you off the hook that way."