“Moncoeur and his cronies.”
“Right first time, pal.”
“Couldn’t Assist Haiti have supported the peasant farmers until the hogs adapted?”
“They claimed, with some justification, that their budget had been stretched to breaking point by the demand for young hogs that year. The United Nations took an interest, but too late as usual. Doesn’t it make you want to puke seeing Moncoeur at a fund-raiser? He’ll spend a couple hundred thousand dollars tonight and have his picture splashed all over the papers as a generous benefactor, but it will be only a minute fraction of what he made off the hog fiasco.”
“Could Lausaux have been in on it?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him; the man’s a slimeball. But if he was out to make a financial killing, then it’s my guess he would have gone for a more straightforward scam. Diverting a percentage of the charity’s income into a Cayman banking account would be more his style. He might not like it, but Lausaux knows that Moncoeur’s butt has to be kissed if Assist Haiti is to achieve anything. He doesn’t do anything without a good reason, but that’s the way it is on Haiti.”
As Bickford recounted the hog debacle, a great many guests stopped at Moncoeur’s table to pay their respects. It seemed that his influence extended a great deal farther than his native island.
The close-circuit television screens flickered into life with a message that the auction would commence in ten minutes. Gradually the guests rose from their tables to drift upstairs to the salon. Moncoeur’s party was one of the last to leave.
“What about it, Val?” Bickford said. “Shall we stick it out here or follow the money.”
“Here will do just fine.”
An hour later, as Bickford was extolling the joy of hanging from a rock, a thousand feet up by your fingertips, to an overweight oil company executive, Val excused himself and went in search of Duval. He met her on the stairs, on her way to find him.
“My painting went for five thousand dollars,” she announced proudly, her eyes shining with excitement.
“Can you believe it? Five thousand dollars.”
“Congratulations. Who bought it?”
“A Baton Rouge art dealer. The bidding started at a thousand and climbed.”
Val hated to be the one to deflate her. “I wanted a word with you.”
“What’s wrong?”
They found a spot at the rear of the lower deck, directly above the flashing blades of the paddle wheel. A fine mist of water vapor settled on them. It was dark now as the Natchez lowered her twin funnels to pass under the Huey P. Long bridge. The wake was a luminescent green ribbon trailing after them, and beyond the levees the city sparkled with promise. It was too beautiful a scene to defile with talk of death, but it had to be done. The slapping of the paddle wheel ensured that they would not be overheard.
He told her about asking Trochan to run down his former partner and how, twenty-four hours later, someone had stuck a knife in the man’s neck. He wasn’t going to risk anything happening to her, he said, and explained the precautions he had taken. She took the news much as Val had expected. Her good mood evaporated, replaced by one of trepidation. He tried to play down any threat of physical danger, but clumsily succeeded in making it sound worse.
“You can help by being circumspect. Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know. It doesn’t matter if Marcus and Angie are there — it only takes a second. Do you have a car?”
“No, though Angie has offered me the loan of hers.”
“Take her up on it. If it’s not available, use a reputable cab company and make sure you’re given a description of the driver. I don’t want you walking the streets, day or night. And forget about dating for the moment.”
“What about orientation week? I can’t remain cooped up during that.”
“You should be safe enough on campus. All my officers have been given a copy of the sketch you made of Jackson and told to keep their eyes open. Remember that there will always be an officer close by. Use the blue phones if you have to. Just don’t do anything silly, and you’ll be fine. More than likely I’m over-reacting.”
“Shouldn’t I let Marcus and Angie know about Jackson? They have been so considerate, and my presence may be putting them in danger.”
“No, I’ll speak to them. They already know that you’ll be the focus of a hate-campaign from extremist groups and that they will be expected to take precautions.”
“There’s one other thing.”
“What?”
“Would it hurt you to start calling me Marie?”
They joined Bickford in the lounge, watching the culmination of the auction on the close-circuit TV. The Bentley had just gone under the hammer. Inevitably, Jean Moncoeur had made the successful bid. Half-a-million dollars.
They could hear the thunderous applause coming from the salon above. It took a long time to die down.
The fund-raiser had turned into quite a party by the time the Natchez docked again at Poydras Street Wharf. A quick tally of accepted bids and pledges had placed the total raised that night to just under two million dollars. Good enough reason to carry on partying. Although the river cruise part of the evening was over, the guests would continue to be entertained on board for several hours.
Val told Marcus that it would be as well if he left then, hinting that the day had taken a lot out of Duval. Angie pouted a bit, saying she was having a wonderful evening and wanted to stay and dance, but Marcus was having none of it. The three of them drove away from the wharf in Marcus’s car. Val watched as the campus officer in his own unmarked vehicle tailed them.
Bickford and Val shared a cab. They were heading back to Val’s place for a final drink.
Val gave Bickford his shoulder to lean on as together they stumbled up the front steps of his historic house. Bickford had consumed a lot more booze than Val, but both men were far from sober. The light above the door was out and somewhere in Val’s befuddled brain was the recollection of having switched it on before leaving. He reached above his head to locate the bulb. A half turn did the trick.
The door was slightly ajar, its rim lock busted. Val sobered in an instant. Signaling to Bickford to remain outside, he pushed the door open with his toe and slowly crept in.
The house was still.
He switched on a light. Devastation was the sole surprise lying in wait for him. His living room had been trashed. Bookcases had been knocked over, the books’ covers and pages ripped asunder. Drawers had been pulled out and their contents strewn about. Stuffing protruded from slashes in the upholstery of his couch and armchair. His supply of bourbon had been emptied onto the floor the bottles smashed. Pictures had been pulled off the walls and their frames broken. The television screen was shattered the CD player in pieces. There was a damp patch on a rug and the acrid ammonia stink of urine was evident beneath the spilled bourbon. As far as Val could see, nothing had been taken, but a lot of senseless destruction had taken place.
Chicken blood had been used to daub the rough sketch of a cross and a skull with a top hat. The veve of Baron Samdi, head of the Gede family of spirits. The lwa of death.
Val picked up the plastic bag, still half-full of blood, and flushed it down the cloakroom toilet.
Bickford wandered in. “If I was you,” he said, his speech slurring slightly. “I’d hire myself a new housekeeper.”
Val checked out the rest of the house room by room. Whoever was responsible was long gone. Thankfully the bedrooms hadn’t been touched, nor the bathroom or the kitchen. He picked up a fractured picture frame that had held a photograph of his wedding. The photograph had been ripped into pieces.
The phone started to ring. The one in the living room was in fragments but the bedroom extension was still working.
“Val Bosanquet?”
He didn’t recognize the voice. It was a white man’s, high pitched, natural, not put on.
“Yeah.”
“I hear you’re looking for Donny Jackson.”
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“What’s your name?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Did you kill Trochan?”
“No. Shut up and listen. I have a message for you. If you’re half as smart as I take you for, then you’ll forget you ever heard the name Jackson. The Duval girl has nothing to fear from him.”
“Did Jackson kill her mother?”
“Cut out the quizzing and pay heed. I’m trying to save your life.”
“Wasn’t Baron Samdi adequate warning?”
“What are you on about? Forget about the girl, forget about Jackson — he’s someplace where he won’t ever be found. Watch your back. The bastards who killed Trochan don’t mess around.”
“Which bastards?”
Val’s caller had hung up.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In the morning, Val drove Richard to his Lafitte Village apartment house. He had caught a couple of hours sleep at Val’s place after insisting on staying to help straighten up. As bombed as Richard was, Val was still grateful for his help, and it wasn’t as if it mattered if he dropped something. The former contents of the living room were piled up on the sidewalk waiting for the trash pick-up. His wedding photograph scotch-taped together and inserted in a replacement frame. Baron Samdi hidden under two coats of fresh paint.
Val paid a speedy call to the UNOPD station house to confirm that they still had Duval under surveillance. Then he drove across Canal Street and took the Airline Highway.
The radio station he was headed for operated out of a single-level building situated between a roadhouse and a hot-pillow motel. Every morning for the past five years they had been broadcasting a short-wave radio show in Haitian Creole to the Tenth Department, the name given to the Haitian diaspora. The station had been firebombed twice and six months previously, the show’s presenter had had his car run off the road and both his legs broken. A right-wing group called the Front pour l’Avancement et le Progres Haitian, or FRAPH, was behind the attacks. Amongst FRAPH’s ranks was a bunch of Duvalier’s former henchmen, the Tonton Macoute, whom he had modeled closely on Hitler’s SS, except that in Haiti Duvalier had added a theatrical touch. He had them wear white suits and dark glasses, to fuel the rumor that they were Zombies.
That morning’s show was just winding up when Val walked into the station’s reception; he could see the man he had come to talk to still at work through a glass wall behind the front desk. Val told the teenager answering the phones what he wanted and was told to take a seat until the presenter emerged from his sound studio.
His name was Harry Nolan. He was close to sixty years old and had been a legend in the civil rights movement for two-thirds of that. He had been at the forefront of protest movements against segregation, Vietnam, Nixon, Reagan, abortion clinics, and the Gulf War. His contempt for law enforcement agencies was well known.
Initially, Nolan was reluctant to talk with him, but changed his mind immediately Val mentioned his interest in FRAPH. He led Val through to a small staff canteen at the rear of the building and organized two paper cups of coffee from a machine. They sat at a Formica-topped refectory table branded with cigarette burns. The presenter crossed his legs and started to poke at a tear in his jeans.
The walls of the canteen were decorated with protest posters connected to the various campaigns the station had endorsed. One of them was of particular interest to Val.
“I did a short piece about Duval on the show this morning,” Nolan said, and took a sip of coffee. He grimaced. “It would have been longer, but we didn’t receive our invitation to the press conference. Must have been lost in the mail.”
Val shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
“How can I help you?”
“I want the lowdown on FRAPH. No rumors or hearsay. Just cold facts.”
Nolan’s fingers stopped probing the rip in his denims. “For what reason?”
Val tasted the coffee. It was foul. “Somebody paid me a visit last night. I wasn’t home at the time, but they made certain I got the message. I need to know how active FRAPH are in the US and what they are capable of.”
“Why don’t you ask your friend Marie Duval? Her father was a big shot with the Tonton Macoute. They look after their own.”
“He’s been dead a long time. She remembers almost nothing about Haiti.”
Nolan appraised Val’s face for a few moments before saying, “FRAPH, an acronym for the Front pour l’Avancement et le Progres Haitian, but also a play on the French verb, frapper, to hit. To get a handle on FRAPH, you need to appreciate that refugee Haitians here are from two opposing camps, and they don’t get on. When ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier’s dictatorship collapsed in eighty-six, a lot of his supporters — mainly the military and the Tonton Macoute — were forced to flee the dechoukaj, a prolonged period of bloody reprisals and civil unrest. President Aristide’s attempts to introduce democracy helped to cool things down for a while. He even told former Duvalierists that they would be made welcome if they returned, though he passed a law forbidding any Tonton Macoute from holding political office. Many took up the invitation and on their return helped to form FRAPH. Covertly funded by the CIA and headed by Emmauel Constant, they are ostensibly the respectable face of the right wing and the military. In reality it was payback time. A second wave of refugees was forced to flee for their lives, only this time it was the poor and the uneducated, so naturally the US closed the door in their faces. A sizeable number still manage to make it each year, with FRAPH death-squads close on their heels. To answer your questions, yes, FRAPH is extremely active and is importing terror onto US soil.”
“An ex-policeman was killed yesterday. He was working for me.”
Nolan nodded. “I heard about it. His spinal cord was severed between the base of the skull and the first vertebrae. I can show you press cuttings of five identical killings — a method much favored by the Tonton Macoute. They also go big on rape, torture and kidnapping.”
“The murdered man was trying to trace the whereabouts of another ex-policeman. Why would that cause FRAPH a problem?”
“Who can say? They have their fingers in a great number of pies. Did the murdered man have any family?”
“No. He never married.”
“Good. The Tonton Macoute likes to spread fear by targeting the family of anyone who opposes them and they won’t hesitate to kill women and children just for the fun of it. Watch your back it you’re planning to go up against them.”
“That’s the second time I’ve been told that.”
“It’s sound advice.”
“Ever heard of a Haitian businessman called Jean Moncoeur?’
“Sure. He’s a very wealthy man. He owns a large chunk of lakefront real estate here in New Orleans. He’s a leech and a scumbag. It’s my ambition to live long enough to dance on his grave.”
“Has he any connection with FRAPH?”
“Politically speaking, no, though he almost certainly helps fund them. The Mulatto oligarchy has no great love for the Duvalierists, who want to maintain the purity of the black race. But there is an uneasy alliance between the two — when it suits them.”
Val pointed towards the poster that had caught his attention.
“You instigated a campaign last year calling for a boycott of Arena Victory’s products. What was that about?”
Nolan screwed his face up in disgust. “Fat lot of good it did. The majority of American teenagers are too pampered to give a damn that the consumer goods they crave are manufactured under sweatshop conditions. Arena Victory pays the workers in its Port-au-Prince plant on average, eighteen cents an hour. Less than two dollars for a ten-hour shift.”
“Slavery for the twenty-first century.”
“No, you’re missing the point. What AV is doing to these people is way worse than slavery. At least slaves were fed, given a roof over their heads, medical attention — however basic — when they required it. The Haitians working for Arena Victory have to pay for all that out of their eighteen cents an hour. Ha
iti was the setting for the world’s only successful slave revolt. And what has it benefited them?”
“Could Arena Victory have engineered the collapse of the hog livestock program to guarantee a surfeit of workers for their new plant?”
Nolan’s eyes hooded over. “You’re very well informed.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“I’m positive they did. By the time Arena Victory was ready to start production, fifty other American corporations had already set up on the island, greatly reducing the available labor pool. Did you know that most at the baseballs sold in this country are manufactured in Haiti?”
“I didn’t.”
“The biggest overhead in footwear manufacture is labor. Even with today’s technology, it’s still a labor-intensive industry. That’s why a kid’s shoe can cost close to an adult’s, although it contains much less in the way of materials. The cheaper the labor the greater the profit. Arena Victory had a choice: pay higher wages to poach workers from other. assembly plants or find a fresh source of abundant cheap labor.”
“Why has nothing been done about it?”
“Knowing it and proving it are two very different things, and Arena Victory have some of the sleaziest lawyers money can buy.”
Val took on the role of devil’s advocate. “You have to give them some credit though. One way or another, they invested capital and brought thousands of jobs to the island.”
Nolan jumped up, sending his chair toppling over. He looked at Val as though he was a piece of dog shit.
“I should have known to expect a callous crack like that from a cop. For a while I thought you were different. Go on, get the hell out of my sight.”
Val started to walk away, weighing up the perspective of a man who considers slavery an improvement on sweatshops, yet loses his cool over a remark like his.
An Evil Shadow - A Val Bosanquet Mystery Page 8
