Blackwood said, in a low, even voice, “A girl of two years, Mauro. Gone to her final rest. Until you disturbed her.”

Mauro shot one final look back at the bin of linens, and in a trembling voice told them everything they wanted to know.

Outside, Odessa stopped Blackwood away from the doormen at the hotel entrance.

“What was that?” she said, unable to hold her tongue any longer. “What happened in there?”

“Would you please use your mobile telephone again to summon our conveyance?” Blackwood said.

Odessa stood her ground. “Just tell me how you made that noise in the laundry bin. Is it a trick, like ventriloquism or something? Throwing your voice? You did something back there…”

Blackwood said, “Mr. Esquivel thought I did.”

“He thought the ghost corpse of a two-year-old girl was going to rise out of the dirty laundry.”

Blackwood looked at her with one eyebrow slightly raised. “Would you activate your telephone now? We must be in Newark before the hour grows too late.”

Chapter

The botanica was a few blocks east of Newark Penn Station, a small storefront sandwiched between a shuttered, formerly twenty-four-hour mattress chain store and a takeout-only taqueria with a prominently displayed NO BAÑO sign.

Odessa stopped Blackwood outside near a burnt-out public phone before he could walk in.

“We need a plan,” she said. “A story.”

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Walking in here,” said Odessa. “We are obviously outsiders. This is a store of Latin religious items. We look like tourists from Fort Lee. We need a story. We have to blend in—”

“No,” Blackwood said. “We don’t.”

He grasped the door handle and opened it with a total lack of concern. An old woman with a deeply weathered face and gray hair tied in a bun sat in a folding chair just inside the doorway. She looked up from the prayer she was mouthing, her large brown eyes watching them pass. Odessa smiled, but her smile was not returned.

The store was narrow, deep. Behind a counter to the left, a woman greeted them genially.

“Hello, hello! Welcome. How are you?”

She was a tall black woman, wearing an apron over a dress, which was odd, and a soft white cotton headwrap. She had a big smile, looking up from some beadwork she was doing.

“Fine, thank you,” said Odessa when Blackwood said nothing.

“Please take a look around, I can answer any questions.”

“Thank you,” said Odessa, noticing small, pearl-like piercings over each knuckle on the woman’s hands. Apparently, the woman behind the counter was used to taking money from spiritually curious tourists. Odessa had never been inside one of these botanicas, and she drifted away from Blackwood to examine the wares.