Haiti Noir

  After a lunch of fried plantains and taso on a corner of his desk, watered down with a glass of papaya milk, Zagribay set out to meet his friend at the TV station. He got permission to watch the DVDs there and to make copies of them. He had made sure to bring a blank DVD for the recording. After he’d watched the films, the inspector clenched his fist: bingo! He had guessed right. The “witness,” a guy in his thirties, neatly dressed but nothing fancy, appeared in three out of the six stories; the first corpse hadn’t been noticed, and a new “witness” could be seen on two others. Interesting, Zagribay thought. In both instances, the “witnesses” insisted, each in his own words, on the corpses’ transformation into cattle, almost as if they wanted to make absolute sure the public embraced this scenario. Knowing how superstitious Haitians are, it was rather clever, the inspector reflected. But why? Who was behind this? He stood up and thanked the journalist, but did not share his analysis with him. He’d better leave early if he wanted to be on time for the ass-pinching party at the embassy.

  Zagribay couldn’t stand social functions but there was no way he could skip this one: he partly owed his job to the Canadian diplomatic services, which had financed a training program in their country. After fifteen years spent in Montreal doing police work, he had decided to come home. Fed up with the cold. Month after month of schlepping tons of clothing on his back. Whole days sometimes without a ray of sun. He had gotten out of bed one morning and just handed his boss his letter of resignation. Knowing that he was reliable, serious, and efficient, his boss had tried to talk him out of it, but Zagribay had made up his mind. One month later, he was on a plane headed to Port-au-Prince. Once there, the situation turned out to be rather complicated. The middle-class people he rubbed elbows with always managed to ask him, at some point in the conversation, when he was planning to return to Canada. Hence the nickname “Dyaspora.” Even his boss used it. And yet he had made the announcement loud and clear: he was back to stay.

  When he was already thinking of sneaking out of the cocktail party, a high-ranking Haitian civil servant introduced him to a woman who said she was Dominican. She was a tall, beautiful brunette named Maria Luz and was barely out of her thirties. Her auburn hair contrasted with her gray-green eyes. There was a sense of mystery about her that made her even more attractive. She was wearing a crimson dress deeply cut in the back. Very quickly, her accent made the inspector suspicious. He detected a fraud. Why did the lady want to pass herself off as a Dominican? He knew how fond Haitian men were of Dominican women. She knew it too, obviously. She assumed that identity so she could sell herself better, Zagribay thought. She was probably the mistress of some politician or rich man. But she introduced herself as an important executive of an NGO whose activities spanned all five continents. Like Doctors Without Borders, it provided primary health care for the most impoverished populations. Her story was plausible. In recent years Haiti had become a paradise for all sorts of NGOs. There were an awful lot of them. But Zagribay wasn’t quite convinced. A professional reflex. It took him some time to get rid of the lady—who was rather clingy. But in exchange for getting her to leave, he had to give up his cell number.

  Three days later, at the Toussaint Louverture airport where he had come to pick up a deportee expelled from Miami, he saw her sneaking out of a diplomatic lounge and rushing into the plane heading back to Florida in the company of Fanfan, his childhood buddy. Fanfan, whom he considered a close friend, had never mentioned Maria Luz, although he had been very open with him about his many other extramarital affairs. What kind of relationship could he possibly have with that scheming high-society woman?

  Unlike his fellow citizens of some social standing, Fanfan had welcomed him back to Haiti with real joy. It was as if they’d only parted the day before. Fanfan, who was better connected in the capital’s social circles, had been instrumental in speeding up Zagribay’s hiring in the police department. Fanfan knew the chief well.

  “We exchanged a few favors,” Fanfan had said by way of explanation. He had never emigrated and didn’t feel particularly proud about it. “Life has turned out differently for me, that’s all,” he’d say. “And unless you’re totally down on your luck or forced to, you don’t leave your country once you’re past forty.”

  Fanfan lived in a superb villa in Belvil, a gated community modeled after those in Florida. Belvil was a small island of cleanliness and urbanization, in complete contrast to the huge, chaotic cesspool of Port-au-Prince. A city within the city, built in part, according to rumors, with drug money, as the country had become a hub for exporting narcotics to the United States.

  You couldn’t access the house of Zagribay’s childhood friend without being seen by the two cameras—one in front, the other in back—connected to the main entrance. And one of the three guards, armed with a shotgun, showed up at the entrance before you arrived. The house was also surrounded by a wall three and a half yards high and spiked with steel nails, so that in order to get inside without permission, you’d need a grappling hook. A real bunker, that place. Zagribay had never known what his friend did to enjoy such protection. Fanfan had just reluctantly confided to him that he was in some kind of business. Import-export, he had said vaguely, like many people in this country who had a fortune with dubious origins. But that couldn’t be true for Fanfan, who had introduced him to Marxism when they were teenagers. Perhaps all that security was there to protect his wife and two children.

  The accidental encounter at the airport led Zagribay to take a closer look at Maria Luz. First, as she’d been relentlessly pursuing him—practically harassing him—he let her get close. Their first meeting took place in Pétionville, at a restaurant called La Cascade. He would have preferred lunch but Maria Luz had insisted they meet for dinner.

  “The place is so romantic at night,” she had whispered.

  Zagribay had agreed, out of fear of looking like a bore. He showed up thirty minutes early. He liked to take a look at a meeting place ahead of time, a pure professional reflex. Maria Luz arrived on time. In a city where the fear of being kidnapped produced a great deal of paranoia, he was surprised to see her turn up alone, without a chauffeur or bodyguard, at the wheel of her gleaming SUV. The inspector didn’t know how to interpret this. Was she reckless? Was it a calculated risk? If this was the case, to what end? Maybe she was being followed from afar by another car? While hurrying to open the door for her, he looked around, but no one else showed up.

  In the course of the very pleasant dinner, Maria Luz insisted on speaking Creole, the language she knew best after Spanish, she said. “And Creole is better here if you want to communicate with everyone, don’t you think?”

  She was right. To the inspector’s ear, her mastery of Creole was equal to that of his Spanish. Just a slight inflection here and there that revealed she had trouble not rolling the “r.” Otherwise, she spoke Creole much too well for Zagribay’s taste. She probably works for the CIA, he thought. And the NGO, if she really had an office there, was a cover.

  At the end of the meal, under the pretext that the capital was unsafe at night, she had him accompany her to her home in the Pacot neighborhood. Once there, the inspector, inventing an urgent report he had to hand in the next day, tactfully turned down her offer of a last drink.

  “Next time then,” she simpered.

  “Why not?” Zagribay answered, saying to himself in Creole: Wi pa monte mòn. Not every yes can climb a hill.

  The investigation into the corpses changed into cattle was going nowhere. So the inspector decided to tail Maria Luz and asked a young colleague he trusted to cover for him. His old unmarked Toyota was a great help. He followed her for several days, enough to ascertain that the lady knew fancy people, from the chief of police to the minister of the interior and other influential individuals. He could never get over how easy it was for foreigners—especially if they were white—to have access to the highest authorities of the state. He also found out that Fanfan and Maria Luz were seeing each other pretty regularl
y. That said, she appeared to have no official relationship but was juggling several at once. She was living it up but not necessarily at her lovers’ expense, although she didn’t turn down their presents: a pearl necklace from this one or an emerald bracelet from that one. And among her regulars was his own boss.

  Zagribay couldn’t resist the urge to ask his boss, one morning when he seemed in a good mood, if he knew a certain Maria Luz. The man smiled and answered with a wink. The inspector wanted to know more.

  “I’m serious, chief!”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not kidding, chief.”

  “Do you want a piece of friendly advice? Don’t get too involved with her.”

  With these words, the police chief walked to his car where his chauffeur was already behind the wheel with the engine running. Zagribay bit his lower lip to contain his rage. Three days before, he had discovered that Maria Luz’s NGO was in charge of a clinic in Cité Soleil behind which stood a building with blackout windows, guarded by three armed men. He couldn’t see anyone coming in or out, as you normally would in a public building. He introduced himself and pulled out his badge, trying to get some information. One of the grim doorkeepers with shades on his nose sent him to a top executive: a rich-looking Haitian, well into his fifties, speaking like someone used to giving orders. He got on his high horse and made it clear that, given the absence of his own superior, he couldn’t allow Zagribay to visit that part of the clinic.

  “We care here for terminally ill cancer and AIDS patients,” the man concluded.

  A flat sentence, delivered as if he’d practiced saying it. The inspector then asked to see Maria Luz. The man winced before telling him that Doctor Luz was traveling. But the inspector had been trailing her the day before. It was possible, he supposed, that she could have left that very morning.

  “How long ago did she leave?” he asked.

  “Two or three days, no more.”

  Zagribay left, smiling. He was on to something. Now he had to find out why the man had lied. This gave him the idea of tightening the vise around the NGO, even if there was no apparent tie between it and the mysterious corpses. He also got the idea of nosing around the Internet and ended up stumbling on a blog that mentioned Maria’s NGO in connection with a lab that did pharmaceutical and medical research. Several countries had condemned it for practicing illegal experiments on humans. The blog sent him to other sources that were blocked each time he tried to link to them. The information was pretty thin.

  That night, lying on his back, the inspector couldn’t fall asleep. Was the NGO here hiding the activities of a clandestine pharmaceutical research lab? Ibrahim Ferrer’s voice trailed languorously in the night. Suddenly, Zagribay jumped out of bed as if a gigantic bedbug had bitten him. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

  He grabbed his phone and called a former colleague in Montreal. His friend wasn’t too happy about being awakened in the dead of night but indulged him nonetheless. They used to work together as a team in the north part of Montreal. The inspector explained the case and asked for his help in identifying the NGO and finding out what interests were concealed behind it.

  Three days later, Zagribay found the information in his e-mail. The Luz NGO had been expelled from India and the Philippines for illegal activities and lab research potentially harmful to human beings. After having been subjected to various experiments and force-fed drugs of all sorts, the guinea pigs would become physically deformed. A few years before, the CEO of those labs had promised discoveries that would soon turn the world of genetics upside down. Hard to find a better place than Haiti to hide criminal activities like that, thought the inspector. They believe in all kinds of nonsense here; plus, there is intense poverty and the elite will do anything for money. All you had to do was set up a clinic, grease a few palms here and there, and that would do the trick. But if their research didn’t seem to give the results they were hoping for, they might have trouble getting rid of the guinea pigs without raising suspicion. On the other hand, relying on old local beliefs to eliminate the victims was a piece of cake.

  Everything seemed clear. All he had to do now was speak to his informer and then get a search warrant. For this, Zagribay had to first talk to his boss, and, provided he agreed, find the judge willing to give the order to carry out the search. No country has more respect for the law than Haiti when corrupt civil servants want to make things tough for you. The fewer people who knew about it the better, as far as he was concerned. But he had no choice, especially since he felt this was a big case.

  He was close to having collected rock-solid evidence. He was going to lay it out on the desks of his boss, the chief of police, and the press at the same time. The bomb would explode in their faces. He was determined to expose what everyone else refused to do, drag the culprits to court. The profound corruption of this country’s elite! With the politicians in their pocket, they were at the root of the endless misery of this island; the “most repugnant elite,” as a Yankee president had called them. The proof that he was getting close to his goal was his boss’s repeated advice to take it easy (“You’re not the messiah, Dyaspora”), Fanfan’s warnings—and he hadn’t even told him anything—and the remarks of Luz, who had somehow learned of his visit to the clinic. If he waited for the whole procedure to get rolling, the birds could fly away. He had to take action.

  For the first time since the beginning of the case, Zagribay felt good. He had the distinct impression of being useful, of giving back a little bit of what this country had given him in his childhood and adolescence. Fresh air was blowing into the car through the open windows. Zagribay started to sing along with Ibrahim Ferrer:

  … mi alma, muy triste y pesarosa

  a las flores quiere ocultar su amargo dolor.

  He had just passed the cemetery when he was flanked by motorbikes coming out of two perpendicular side streets. Floating along on the music, he didn’t realize what was happening. On his left, the silver flash of the gun at the end of an outstretched arm brought him back to reality. But by the time he could draw his own weapon, the men on the bikes behind the drivers had already fired.

  BLUES FOR IRèNE

  BY MARVIN VICTOR

  Carrefour-Feuilles

  Translated by Nicole Ball

  My daughter told the police that she’d witnessed the murder of Jimmy Labissière, and that the murderer was her friend, Irène Gouin. Irène, she said, stabbed him seven times in the stomach and then went down to the hotel bar, sat on a stool, and ordered a drink that she sipped for a long time before requesting “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” from the maestro of the quartet playing at the other end of the deck.

  A week later, Inspector Joseph showed up with his questions. Inspector Joseph knew I’d had an affair with Jimmy, but Jimmy wasn’t just my dead man. He was the dead man of all the people who lived on rue Tirremasse in Bel-Air and who had loved and hated him. He was a public dead man, I told Inspector Joseph right away, hissing it between my teeth. He was a dead man people never stopped talking about, trying to find with an abundance of proverbs and metaphors which part of him belonged to the devil and which part to an angel, obliterating our story as well as the ancient stories of all the other women he had been with, knowing that all we had left of him was the vague memory of crumpled sheets, moist with sweat, and the breath of old, whispered words. That’s how stories are made, I concluded, telling myself that Jimmy, clutching the murderer’s bottom and bawling as he was about to come, may have had a beautiful death. But nobody had talked about that. I personally had no desire to talk about Jimmy, but Inspector Joseph had forced me to cooperate. And in my reluctance to speak about Jimmy, I was hearing my voice pronounce his name. There was no logic possible when you started talking about him, no reason either when you knew that in people’s mouths he wasn’t dead, only an absentee. That’s what they thought, since they couldn’t hear him on the radio or see him on TV, leading demonstrations on the street, anymore. I didn’t w
ant doom to come out of my mouth. I wanted the idea of it to be banished. In my opinion, his life was beyond commonplace thought—any thought, actually— for it had always been a mistake, a mistake related to the immense poem of childhood, maybe. I knew it right from the first moment I saw him. Imagine a vast, dark room; no glimmer of light ever slips into it. He told me I was that glimmer, and I’d forgotten to hear his words sliding over my skin, like his fingers when we made love. I let it happen. When the young president had started to build his underground army, Jimmy was at the heart of the movement, with the enthusiasm of a mad child. He’d spent six months, a year, maybe more, in a training camp. He himself couldn’t remember when he told me about that part of his previous life. A whole eternity spent waiting for a sign from the president. Many were waiting like that. Meanwhile, the president was making speeches, stirring up the people. Jimmy was inside that crowd too.

  One morning he got the call. He was shaking on the other end of the line, as if he hadn’t been floundering in the smelly mud around the Saline. A load of weapons to transport to Camp-Perrin, along with money, lots of money. No. He did not understand, could not understand. He’d hit the road in a van, in the company of a comrade. In the middle of nowhere, the van started to smoke and backfire before stopping smack in the middle of the highway. There was sand and cane syrup in the gas tank. At some point, a man with his face eaten by a salt-and-pepper beard popped up; he offered to help, then pointed his gun at Jimmy’s temple and took the money and ammunition. A setup?