"Play dumb if you want," she said.

Although certain that I was aware of it, she also told me that the Serpent (with a capital S) lives forever because he eats twice daily of the fruit of the banana tree. And every serpent (with a small s) will live for a thousand years by following this simple dietary requirement.

"But you're not a serpent," I said.

"When I was nineteen," she revealed, "I made a wanga to charm the spirit of a snake from its body into mine. As I'm sure you can see, it's twined among my ribs, where it'll live forever."

"Well, for a thousand years, anyway."

Her patchwork theology-obviously stitched together in part from voodoo, but God alone knew from what else-made the ravings of Jim Jones in Guyana, David Koresh in Waco, and the leader of the comet cult that committed mass suicide near San Diego sound like rational men of faith.

Although I expected Datura to make the eating of the banana an erotic performance, she consumed the fruit with a kind of dogged determination. She chewed without apparent pleasure, and more than once grimaced when she swallowed.

I guessed that she was twenty-five or twenty-six years old. She might have been on this two-bananas-per-day regimen for as long as seven years.

Having by now eaten in excess of five thousand bananas, she might understandably have lost her taste for them-particularly if she had done the math relating to her remaining obligation. With 974 years to live (as a serpent, small 5), she had approximately 710,000 more bananas in her future.

I find it so much easier being a Catholic. Especially one who doesn't get to church every week.

So much about Datura was foolish, even pitiable, but her fatuity and ignorance made her no less dangerous. Throughout history, fools and their followers, willfully ignorant but in love with themselves and with power, have murdered millions.

When she had consumed the banana and calmed the spirit of the snake entwined through her ribs, we were ready to visit the casino.

A squirming against my groin startled me, and I thrust my hand into my pocket before realizing that I felt only Terri Stambaugh's satellite phone.

Having seen, Datura said, "What have you got there?"

I had no choice but to reveal it. "Just my phone. I had it set to vibrate instead of ring. It surprised me."

"Is it vibrating still?"

"Yes." I held it in the palm of my hand, and we stared at it for a moment, until the caller hung up. "It stopped."

"I'd forgotten your phone," she said. "I don't think we should leave it with you."

I had no choice but to give it to her.

She took it into the bathroom and slammed it into a hard countertop. Slammed it again.

When she returned, she smiled and said, "We were at the movies once, and this dork took two phone calls during the film. Later we followed him, and Andre broke both his legs with a baseball bat."

This proved that even the most evil people could occasionally have a socially responsible impulse.

"Let's go," she said.

I had entered Room 1203 with a flashlight. I left with it, too- switched off, clipped to my belt-and no one objected.

Carrying a Coleman lantern, Robert led the way to the nearest stairs and descended at the front of our procession. Andre came last with the second lantern.

Between those big somber men, Datura and I followed the wide stairs, not one behind the other, single file, but side by side at her insistence.

Down the first flight to the landing at the eleventh floor, I heard a steady menacing hiss. I half convinced myself that this must be the voice of the serpent spirit that she claimed to carry within her. Then I realized it was the sound of the burning gas in the saclike wicks of the lamps.

On the second flight, she took my hand. I might have pulled free of her grip in revulsion if I hadn't thought her capable of ordering Andre to lop my hand off at the wrist as punishment for the insult.

More than fear, however, encouraged me to accept her touch. She did not seize my hand boldly, but took it hesitantly, almost shyly, and then held it firmly as a child might in anticipation of a spooky adventure.

I would not have bet on the proposition that this demented and corrupted woman harbored within her any wisp of the innocent child that she once must have been. Yet the quality of submissive trust with which she inserted her hand in mine and the shiver that passed through her at the prospect of what lay ahead suggested childlike vulnerability.

In the eldritch light, which cast about her an aura that seemed almost supernatural, she looked at me, her eyes adance with wonder. This was not the usual Medusa stare; it lacked her characteristic cold hunger and calculation.

Likewise, her grin was without mockery or menace, but expressed a natural and wholesome delight in conspiratorial feats of daring.

I warned myself against the danger of compassion in this case. How easy it would be to imagine the traumas of childhood that might have deformed her into the moral monster she had become, and then to convince myself that those traumas could be balanced-and their effects reversed-by sufficient acts of kindness.

She might not have been formed by trauma. She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.

Besides, even if trauma shaped her, that didn't excuse what had been done to Dr. Jessup.

I remembered a naturalist who, having come to despise humanity and to despair of it, set out to make a documentary about the moral superiority of animals, particularly of bears. He saw in them not only a harmonious relationship with nature that humankind could not achieve, but also a playfulness beyond human capacity, a dignity, a compassion for other animals, and even a mystical quality that he found moving, humbling. A bear ate him.

Long before I could precipitate a fog of self-delusion equal to that of the devoured naturalist, in fact by the time we had descended only three flights of stairs, Datura herself brought me sharply to my senses by launching into another of her charming anecdotes. She liked the sound of her own voice so much that she could not allow the good impression, made by her smile and silence, to stand for long.

"In Port-au-Prince, if you are invited under the protection of a respected juju adept, it's possible to attend a ceremony of one of the forbidden secret societies shunned by most voodooists. In my case, it was the Couchon Gris, the "Gray Pigs." Everyone on the island lives in terror of them, and in the more rural areas, they rule the night."

I suspected that the Gray Pigs would prove to have little in common with, say, the Salvation Army.

"From time to time, the Couchon Gris perform a human sacrifice-and sample the flesh. Visitors may only observe. The sacrifice is made on a massive black stone hanging on two thick chains suspended from a great iron bar embedded in the walls near the ceiling."

Her hand tightened in mine as she recalled this horror.

"The person being sacrificed is killed with a knife through the heart, and in that instant, the chains begin to sing. The gros bon ange flies at once from this world, but the ti bon ange, restrained by the ceremony, can only travel up and down the chains."

My hand grew damp and chill.

I knew she must feel the change.

The faint, disturbing scent that I had smelled earlier, when I'd considered climbing these stairs, arose again. Musky, mushroomy, and strangely suggestive of raw meat.

As before, I flashed back to the dead face of the man whom I had hauled out of the water in the storm drain.

"When you listen closely to the singing chains," Datura continued, "you realize it isn't just the sound of twisting links grinding against one another. There's a voice expressing in the chains, a wail of fear and despair, a wordless urgent pleading."