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room.
     “Did you think that was strange, Clarita?”
     “No problem, Miss Alex. Is mostly blind, the old guy.”
     I nodded my understanding, remembering how many times I had urged cops and colleagues not to be judgmental of rape victims.
     He put her in some kind of trance, she explained, and while she was meditating, he kneeled beside her and began to touch her.
     “Where, exactly, did he do that, Clarita?”
     “In my bagina.”
     “I see. Go on.”
     After a little while, she asked Angel to stop and he did.
     “Wasn’t it unusual for asantero to do that?”
     “I ask him why he do it. He tell me the spirits told him to do it to me.”
     “Did you believe that, Clarita?”
     She laughed. “Not no spirit of Nestor Salerios, I tell you that myself. I know that for sure. He used to beat me if another guy even looked at me, Miss Alex. He’s a jealous man, even if he dead now.”
     I glanced down at the arrest report in the case, which the police officer had prepared when Cassano was apprehended. It noted that he had a strong odor of alcohol on his breath.
     “Tell me, Clarita, what was Angel drinking that day, at the apartment?” Margie had made no mention of that fact, but that was probably because Clarita had neglected to bring it up.
     “Let me think,” she said, looking up at the ceiling as though trying to decide what to tell me. “Rum. I pretty sure it was rum.”
     “And did he make you drink it, too?”
     “Yeah, he did. He tell me the spirits like it. But I just sip it a little bit. No much.”
     Love Potion Number Nine. The only thing missing was the gypsy with the gold-capped tooth, but she’d probably be in it by Clarita’s next visit.
     Clarita paid him for the session—I bit my tongue and didn’t ask if she tipped him for the extra ritual he’d thrown in at the end—and left.
     The more surprising part of the story is that she called him again to go back two days later. Yes, she admitted, it had crossed her mind that perhaps what he wanted most was some kind of sexual relationship with her and perhaps he wasn’t such a holy man as she had thought. That’s the point in many of these stories at which I am reminded of those children’s puzzles that present a drawing of a neatly ordered room in which one object is inverted or out of place and the caption underneath reads, “What’s wrong with this picture?” In this instance, Clarita had already been sexually abused by Cassano, knew that what he had done was improper and inappropriate, and had been fortunate enough to extricate herself from his advances and walk away a few dollars poorer but without further molestation. Go back for more? Her loneliness, confusion, and vulnerability screamed out at me as they must have also signaled themselves to the blindsantero.
     On her next visit, after some rum and a few invocations of the spirit, Clarita again fell into a trance, undressed, and lay on the floor. This time the spell was broken when Angel got on top of her body and tried to penetrate her vagina with his penis.
     “I’ve got to stop you here and go back over a few things,” I interrupted. Things that aren’t in Margie’s notes.
     “This ‘trance’ you describe, were you conscious? Were you awake and aware of what was going on?” I needed to make sure she had not passed out or been drugged or intoxicated.
     “Oh, sure, Miss Alex. This time I keep all my eyes opened.”
     “And this time, Clarita, did Angel begin by touching you with his fingers?”
     “No, ma’am. I’m no stupid. I woulda got up and slapped him, he did that.”
     “So the first thing that happened, he just laid himself down on top of you, to have sex?”
     Again, Clarita sought the answer in the ceiling of my office. She looked back at me as she spoke. “Is right.”
     Angel either had to have removed his pants, lowered them, or opened his zipper and exposed his penis before actually mounting her—but any of those actions