They found Clotilde Prouteau at one A.M. Monday, sitting at the bar of a little French smoking. Nobody understood the city's Code prohibiting smoking in public places, but it generally agreed that you could smoke in a restaurant with fewer than thirty-five patrons. Le Canard met this criterion. Moreover, even in restaurants larger than this, smoking was permitted at any bar serviced by a bartender. There was no bartender on duty at the moment, but Clotilde was covered by the size limitation, and so she was smoking her brains out. Besides, they weren't here to bust her for smoking in public. Nor for practicing voodoo, either.
A fifty-two-year-old Haitian woman with a marked French accent and a complexion the color of oak, she sat with a red cigarette holder in her right hand, courteously blowing smoke away from the detectives. Her eyes were a pale greenish-grey, accentuated with blue liner and thick mascara. Her truly voluptuous mouth was painted an outrageously bright red. She wore a patterned silk caftan that flowed liquidly over ample hips, buttocks and breasts. Enameled red earrings dangled from her ears. An enameled red pendant necklace hung at her throat. Outside a snowstorm was raging and the temperature was eight degrees Fahrenheit.
But here in this small smoky bistro a CD player oozed plaintive Piaf, and Clotilde Prouteatt looked exotically tropical and flagrantly French.
"Voodoo is not illegal, you know that, eh?" she asked.
"We know it."
"It is a religion," she said.
"We know.,
"And here in America, we can still practice whatever religion we choose, eh?"
The Four Freedoms speech, Carella thought, and wondered if she had a green card.
"Francisco Palacios tells us you sometimes do the ceremony."
"Pardon? Do the ceremony?"
"Conduct the ceremony. Whatever."
"What ceremony do you mean?"
"Come on, Miss Prouteau. We're talking here, and we're talking the lady who implores Legba to open the gate, and who sacrifices…"
"Sacrifices? Vraiment, messieurs…"
"We know you sacrifice chickens, goats…"
"No, no, this is against the law."
"But nobody cares," Carella said. She looked at them.
The specific law Clotilde had referred to was Article 26, Section 353 of the Agriculture and Markets which specifically prohibited overdriving, overloading torturing, cruelly beating, unjustifiably injuring maiming, mutilating, or killing any animal, wild or tame. The offence was punishable by imprisonment for not more than a or a fine of a thousand dollars, or both.
Like most laws in this city, this one was designed to protect a civilization evolved over centuries. rarely ever invoked the law to prevent animal in religious ceremonies, lest all the civil rights advocates demanded their shields and their Clotilde was now weighing up whether these two were about to get tough with her for doing something was done routinely all over the city, especially Haitian neighborhoods. Why bother with me? she was wondering. You have nothing better to do, messieurs' You have no trafiquants to arrest? No terroristes? how had they learned about Friday night, anyway?
"What is it you are looking for precisely?" she asked.
"We're trying to locate a person who may have driven a live chicken to a voodoo ceremony," Hawes said, and felt suddenly foolish.
"I am sorry, but I did not drive a chicken anywhere," Clotilde said.
"Live or otherwise. A chicken, did you say?"
Hawes felt even more foolish.
"We're trying to find a person who may have stolen a gun from a borrowed Cadillac," Carella said.
This didn't sound any better.
"I did not steal a gun, either," Clotilde said.
"But did you conduct a voodoo ceremony this past Friday night?"
"Voodoo is not against the law."
"Then you have nothing to worry about. Do you?"
"I did."
"Tell us about it."
"What is there to tell?"
"What time did it start?"
"Nine o'clock?"
An indifferent shrug. Another drag on the cigarette in its red holder that matched the earrings, the necklace and the pouty painted lips. A cloud of smoke blown away from the two detectives.
"Who was there?"
"Worshipers. Supplicants. Believers. Call them whatever you choose.
As I have told you, it is a religion."
"Yes, we've got that, thanks," Hawes said. "Pardon?"
"Can you tell us what happened?"
"Happened? Nothing unusual happened. What do you think happened?"
We think someone delivered a chicken for sacrifice and stole a gun from the car while he was at it. Is what we think happened, Hawes thought, but did not say. "Did anyone arrive with a chicken?" Carella asked. "For what?"
"For sacrifice."
"We do not sacrifice."
"What do you do?" Hawes insisted.
Clotilde sighed heavily.
"We meet in an old stone building that was once a Catholic church," she said. "But, as you know, are many elements of Catholicism in voodoo, al though our divinities constitute a pantheon larger than holy trinity.
It is my role as mamaloi to call upon Legba…"
"Guardian of the gates," Carella said.
"God of the crossroads," Hawes said.
"Yes," Clotilde whispered reverently. "As mentioned earlier, I implore him to open the gate…"
