Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis Read Free Book Online Page B

roseate glow that some might have called beautiful. But Cecelia Mbwato knew nothing of beauty, and cared only for the falling of the black cloak of night.
    Once it was fully dark outside, she picked up the telephone and tapped in two numbers.
    A voice in her earpiece said, "Yeah."
    "It's time," she said, keeping most of the eagerness out of her voice. "Get the car."
    She hung up without waiting for a reply.
    * * * *
    Snake Perkins guided the big, beat-up Lincoln Continental expertly through the quiet suburban streets, tapping the fingers of one hand on the steering wheel to the beat of music only he could hear.
    His passenger didn't like the radio, but that was all right. Snake had a repertory of songs in his head that he could play whenever he wanted. It wasn't quite as good as listening to them from an outside source, like a stereo or something, but it wasn't half bad, either. Snake Perkins carried more tunes in his head than you'd find in the average teenager's iPod.
    He was currently listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama," a song Snake had always liked even though he was a Mississippi boy, himself. He'd just gotten to the part where Skynyrd was pissing on Neil Young when Cecelia Mbwato said, "Up here, next to the park. Pull up beneath that big tree."
    Snake did as she said. Part of him, the product of nine generations of dirt-poor, butt-ignorant, Klan-joining rednecks, bridled at taking orders from a woman who was just about the blackest nigger Snake had ever seen, and a damn foreigner besides. That part of him would have loved to punch the bossy nigger bitch in the face five or six times, get out, go around, and yank her out of the car. Then tie some rope around her ankles, the other end to his rear bumper, and take himself for a nice long ride, at eighty miles an hour.
    But the Mistress he served had been very clear: he was to do whatever the nigger woman wanted, take her anyplace she wanted to go, and help her out however he could. And Snake Perkins dreaded his Mistress's wrath even more than he used to fear his mother.
    He parked where he'd been told, killed the lights, and turned the engine off. When he saw that the woman wasn't getting out he asked, "Now what?"
    "We wait. Someone suitable will come along soon, I think."
    "How do you know that?" Snake was careful to sound only curious, not like he was giving her a hard time, or something.
    She gestured with her chin toward the park. "Over there is a place for children."
    "Yeah, a playground. So? It's dark, kids are all gone home."
    "For now, yes. But the children, they feel safe here. A child who is not safe at home, the parents fighting, a big brother who is mean—may come here to feel safe again, for a little while. So we wait."
    "Yeah, okay."
    Snake went back to the jukebox inside his head. He had just finished grooving to the Oak Ridge Boys doing "Elvira" when Cecelia Mbwato said, "Why is it you are called 'Snake?' Because you are so tall and skinny? Or because you are deadly, like the mamba?"
    Snake thought a mamba was some kind of dance that greasers did, but he said, "It ain't a nickname. It's my real name. They give it to me the day I was born."
    "A curious thing to name a child."
    "My folks seen this movie, Escape from New York. There's a character in it, guy called Snake Plisskin. They thought it was some kinda cool name, I guess."
    "It must have brought you much mockery when you were small, from other children." There was no trace of sympathy in Cecelia Mbwato's voice.
    "Yeah, I guess you could say that."
    "If my parents had done such to me, I think I would be tempted to kill them, when I was grown."
    There was something in Snake Perkins's voice that was almost enough to frighten even Cecelia Mbwato when he said softly, "How do you know I didn't?"
    * * * *
    Dexter Galvin loved the playground, even at night, when there were no other kids to hang out with. In fact, night was better, because it was quiet. Dex liked sitting on one of the swings at