It was a cold day, but calm, snow falling in soft drifts rather than in the howling gales it had during the blizzard earlier in the week, so plenty of the local Harlemites were buzzing around. I don't know if you've ever been to Harlem, stranger, but it's a real buzzing cultural center - poor, but almost like it was undergoing its own renaissance. A Jazzman busked with his saxophone on the corner, taking tips from whomever would give one for his playing. Others there looked to be pretty tough customers, possibly shady sorts.
We figured better them than nobody, and set ourselves first to questioning some of the drunks and locals around the area - a difficult enough task when you're a bunch of mainly white men plus one white woman, and even more difficult when one of you chooses to flash a badge at them. Great job there, Ralph. Now nobody in Harlem will trust any of us. Least of all when Ralph was the one flashing his badge at a drunk, barely English-speaking Kenyan immigrant who was sloshing down a bottle of cheap bathtub gin.
At least, everyone except for Ralph thought it was bathtub gin. He may not have confided it in most people, but being good friends with myself he did confide it in me - he was a former alcoholic, hence his dry ways whenever the group went out drinking. He'd been sober and clean for the past several years now, but the smell of booze still triggered him like a fox smelling a hen house. He knew the smell of liquor and the scent of alcohol on a man's breath better than any of us - and he didn't smell either. Not from the Kenyan, not from his bottle, and not from anywhere near the vicinity.
"Listen, bud," he told the fake drunk, tired of playing games. "I know that's water, and you best come clean. You trying to fool a Federal Marshall? You do know what we're looking into around here, right?"
"Ah, you na go and fuck ya motha, mugu," the immigrant spat, and that was enough for Ralph who pressed even further, as far as almost drawing his gun on the false drunk. Unfortunately, the other folks in the square didn't take too kindly to a bunch of slumming white boys and a lawman pestering the locals, and around five of them, led by a burly-looking black man with a switch blade, approached us.
"Hey, man, you leave that old drunk alone, you hear me?"
Ralph, realizing the situation and not wanting a fight, turned to the guy to speak, but it was Ted who tried to calm the situation. Not that his Southern accent made the muscular African-American much more comfortable - he probably assumed Ted was a Klansman or something. However, upon realizing the group was looking into the murders done by the cult, he acquiesced slightly, giving us a little information. He told us he thought Silas N'Kwame, the shop owner of Ju-Ju House in the square, might know more than he seemed - "I never go in there myself, it ain't Christian," he said, "But Old Silas is a good guy. He might've seen a thing or two. But if you white folk pester him the way you all apparently pester them drunks..."
He left us on that note, and resumed leaning against the wall, flicking his switchblade open and shut. We figured at this point bothering the local Harlemites wasn't the best idea - especially when we were unarmed and we'd already made a nuisance of ourselves. Ted found the Jazzman a bit more amiable, but he only said that he hadn't seen anything too sinister going on near this area and suggested asking the shopkeepers around here. You ask me, he knew something further, or was almost a little too happy about our arrival. The man had a weird glint to his eye, entirely too relaxed and amused... Maybe it was just my paranoia.
Entering Ju-Ju House, we first saw the artifacts in the window. I say "artifacts" because as Clayton looked them over, we all saw his eyes grow wide and excitement beam across his features like a high beam light as he declared they were all the genuine article. Carved masks of baobab wood, hand-painted with earthen pigments. Real ivory sculptures of Yoruban gods and monsters, onyx-bladed weapons of such sharpness they could surely cut through flesh instantly, and real zebra pelts mounted on wooden shields. Clayton of course could not stop talking excitedly, and almost pulled us into the store immediately, only to find more fabulous and intriguing treasures from the Darkest Heart of Africa.
"This is real!" He exclaimed, looking at an earthen piece of pottery, unglazed and sun-baked so perfectly you could see fingerprints in the clay. "This pot was a water vessel... look at the mark inside..."
As Clayton continued to act like a kid in a candy store, the old shopkeeper, Silas N'Kwame, looked up and chuckled, smiling. He'd apparently never seen a white man show that much appreciation for Kenyan culture before, and was amiable and grateful for our patronage to his shop. He seemed a nice enough man, harmless... and perhaps, we thought, very helpful to our chase.
Unfortunately, he was not as helpful as we hoped. He explained that no, he hadn't seen anyone shady come in, nor had he noticed any problems in the area. He did know about the killings, yes, and that many of them had been of Harlemites, but he did not have any clue of who might be responsible. He also knew nothing about possible meetings in the building that might connect to it, but did say he often had groups come in to talk and buy objects from his store. There was one person he thought might be a shady sort - a man who would act drunk, come into his shop, and leave without buying anything, just like the one we met earlier. Immediately, our suspicions were roused, and Ralph murmured a quiet "I knew it" in irritation.
It was while talking to him that Ralph happened to notice two things - first, Silas bore a key around his neck. Second, there was a very poorly hidden trap door under a rug behind his counter, something Ralph at first assumed to be storage space for a lock box. Meanwhile, Clayton's excitement was starting to scare the other customers, and Silas was about to ask us to leave when that drunk from before entered again, now clearly very much not under the influence. He took one look at us, and took off running like a jackrabbit being chased by a hound.
Of course, we weren't about to let him escape, least of all Ted. His experience bounty hunting had made him speedy, strong, and fast, and without too much trouble he was one of the first out the door in a frantic race, diving into a nearby snowy bush to tackle the escaping Kenyan. Have you ever seen a big burly man in a trench coat sprint over snow and literally dive into a shrub to capture a skinny Kenyan man? Neither had I until Ted did it; no wonder he was so good at his job.
"What I do? What I do?" The immigrant stammered as Ralph hand-cuffed him.
"Gonna tell us what the hell you know about those killings is what you're gonna do," Ted sneered, taking him and leading him off to the police cruiser we'd borrowed from Lt. Poole. "Gonna start talkin'?"
Well, the immigrant clammed up, his eyes growing hard, and started swearing aggressively in Swahili. From there, we pretty well knew we had our man, and took him to the police station for questioning.
We were half right. It took several minutes of Poole's men beating the shit out of the captive to make him confess, and as it turns out the immigrant was a cultist and a rather cowardly one at that. He even had a knife scar on his shoulder, in the shape of the Bloody Tongue sigil, which one officer found after strip-searching the guy for weapons. He said the Ju-Ju House was definitely the place where the ritual killings happened, and that there was a basement in the shop where the rituals were held. A man named Mukunga was their leader, a Kenyan immigrant himself who was said to have "the ju-ju", magical powers that could kill or drive men mad. Supposedly he could even summon great black demon-serpents from the shadows, and send them to kill or kidnap. Just like the kind that snatched Brad.
That was enough for us. It was personal - the Bloody Tongue had not only killed Elias, now they had Donovan, and we all knew that Pretty Boy wouldn't survive very long if we didn't act soon. Lord only knew what sort of horrific things would be done to him if we weren't fast enough. We had to act - and tonight.