Blood and Belonging

by Vicki Delany

  “It takes a thief—”

  “To catch a thief. I see police work is the same in your country as in mine.” He chuckled. Yesterday he’d been unarmed. Today he had a Glock strapped to his hip. “You’re to stay out of the way, do you understand?”

  “Yup.”

  “If you see the boy you’re after, let me know.”

  We turned onto a track pitted and scarred by heavy equipment. We crested a small hill, and the ocean came into view. Waves were high inside the reef. Black clouds churned overhead. The construction site looked the same as every site I’ve ever seen. Lots of rubble, big trucks, scarred earth. A hive of activity as men bustled around. First thing I noticed was that most of the workers weren’t wearing standard safety equipment. No regulation boots or orange vests. Some didn’t even have hard hats.

  Summerton spoke into his radio. He was answered by a roar of motors. A couple of police SUVs came up behind us. ATVs bounced over the line of hills. A helicopter swooped out of the clouds. A boat that had been bobbing peacefully offshore turned and sped toward the beach. Summerton threw the vehicle into gear, and we raced down the road.

  Men scattered in all directions. A couple of guys in hard hats and construction boots watched with some amusement. It was darn easy to pick out the illegals.

  Summerton told me to wait in the SUV. I itched to be involved in the chase. But it was obvious they didn’t need me. The coordination of the effort was impressive. By land, sea and sky, the twenty or so running men were soon corralled and brought back to the work site. Some came submissively. Some put up a hopeless fight. They were lined up in a long row. Summerton barked for ID. Scraps of tattered paper were pulled out of pockets. The men who hadn’t run, the ones in proper work clothes, and one guy in a cheap, shiny suit, were also kept under guard.

  I got out of the SUV at a shout and a wave from Summerton. “The Haitians don’t speak much English, if any,” he said. “Makes it easy to pick them out of the crowd. I have some high-school French, but it’s no good in a conversation. You can translate for me. Most of them have fake ID. It’s not very good. I can hold them while we check. What I’d like to know is where they’ve been kept. And by who.”

  The men kept their eyes fixed on the ground, their papers in hand. I studied each face one at a time. Then I saw him. There, at the far end of the line. A young guy, tall, scrawny, hair in dirty dreads. “I think I see Jean-Claude,” I said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. Can I talk to him?”

  “Go ahead.”

  I walked slowly across the dusty yard. Every one of the men, police, workers, illegals, watched me. Everyone except the boy in dreads.

  I stopped in front of him. This wasn’t Jean-Claude. But it was the other boy who’d been at Robert’s graduation. The cousin.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked.

  Startled, he looked up. His eyes darted from side to side. Afraid at being singled out. He shook his head. “Non.”

  Now that I was facing him, I couldn’t be sure. I’d only met him once. That day he’d been clean and healthy and well-dressed. This boy needed to put on some weight. His face, hands and clothes were filthy. His right eye was swollen, and the cheekbone badly bruised. A half-healed cut streaked across his upper lip. But I could see a trace of his cousin in him. The sharp cheekbones, the wide eyes, the slight hook in the nose.

  “I’m Ray Robertson. From Haiti. I—” I almost said I knew but caught myself in time. “I know Robert Savin, your cousin.”

  His eyes widened. The fear and hostility fled. “Robert’s here?”

  “No. He sent me to get you. You and Jean-Claude. What’s your name?”

  “Henri. Henri Savin.” His eyes filled with tears.

  Everyone, even the cops, was watching us. It was strangely quiet.

  The man standing next to Henri saw his chance. He took it. He shoved Henri, knocking him out of the way. Then he ran. Instinctively I stepped forward to block him. Out of nowhere, he pulled a small knife. He swung the weapon at me, nicking my bare arm. Then he was running through a gap in the police circle. Without thinking, I took off after him. I run six miles three times a week. But he was at least twenty years younger than me, and fear makes a man fast. He headed for the beach. I kept running. I heard shouts and footsteps behind me. I had no idea how trigger-happy these cops might be. I was thinking I should get out of the way when the man tripped. He pitched forward, arms windmilling. By the time he staggered upright, I’d caught up to him. I’d played football in my youth. Some things you never forget. I tackled him and brought him down. Hard.

  Then the police were on us. I rolled off the man. An officer jerked him to his feet and snapped on handcuffs. I lay on my back, panting. The sky above me was a brilliant blue.

  Summerton held out a hand. I grabbed it, and he pulled me to my feet. “You need that seen to?” he said.

  I glanced down at my arm. The trickle of blood was already slowing. “No.”

  We went back to the group. The officers were standing a bit straighter now and holding their weapons a bit tighter. Some of the other men had tried to make a run for it in the confusion, but they didn’t get far.

  Henri hadn’t moved. He watched me approach. I gave him a nod, but his expression was unreadable. The officers did a more thorough search for weapons than they had the first time. The man in the suit started shouting once everyone had settled down. Something about knowing nothing…nothing. He hired through a contractor who provided unskilled labor. He was shocked…shocked to find out that they might be illegals.

  Summerton took me aside. “Is that the boy you’re searching for?”

  “No, but I know him. He’s Robert Savin’s cousin. I want to talk to him, see if he can tell me where Jean-Claude got to. It’s likely they came together.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What happens now?”

  “These men are very small potatoes. We’ll never be able to prove that guy knew he was using trafficked workers. He’ll give us the number of the man who provided them, and it’ll turn out to be false. Fines will be laid. The workers will be sent back to Haiti. And the whole circle will begin again.”

  “They won’t tell you who was holding them?”

  “Oh, I’ll ask. But they won’t say anything. Threats would have been made to their families back in Haiti. They’ve been warned that these guys have a long reach. True or not, they’re terrified. Besides, some of them are going to try again.”

  “Even after finding out this is all they get for their money?”

  “I’m never surprised at what the smallest amount of hope can make a man do, Ray. Will you ask the boy? Maybe he’ll trust you. None of them will trust me. There’s no reason they should.”

  “I’ll see what he has to say.”

  “I can’t hand him over to your custody.” I didn’t tell Summerton that came as a relief. I could imagine what Jenny’d say if I brought a sullen refugee boy along for the rest of our vacation. “But I can see that he’s kept separated from the others until he’s back in Haiti.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

  “Wait by the car.”

  Summerton went back to the group. The workers were being loaded into police vans. The man in the suit was still protesting loudly. He insisted on calling his lawyer. The men in proper construction gear, who’d produced valid ID, watched without much interest. As Summerton had said, they’d seen it all go down before.

  The last of the vans had pulled away when Summerton brought Henri over to the SUV. The boy was furious. “They’ll accuse me of helping you,” he shouted. “I am not a police informant!”

  “You don’t think you’re going to be allowed to stay in this country, do you?” I said. “Henri, you’re going back to Haiti.”

  “I do not want to go to Haiti. I am going to America.”

  “What you want doesn’t matter much.”

  He crossed his arms and pouted. He looked like the teenage boy he was. “I have nothing
to say to you.” He spat on the ground.

  “How long have you been here?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “About a week. Soon I’ll earn enough money to continue on to America.”

  “That never would have happened.”

  “When Jean-Claude gets here, we’ll go together.”

  “Jean-Claude,” I said. “Where is he?”

  “Coming.”

  “What does that mean? Look, Henri, I want to help you. You and Jean-Claude. Is he with anther work crew?”

  Henri rubbed at his face. “We paid for places on a boat leaving Haiti. It cost much money. I’ve been saving for a long time.” He glanced away.

  I doubted that very much but didn’t say so. The boy I’d met at the police graduation had been middle-class. He spoke a French that indicated some education. I couldn’t imagine his family paying his way onto a refugee boat. He’d probably stolen the money. But that wasn’t the issue here.

  “The boat was full,” he said. “Too full. Jean-Claude didn’t get on. He’d paid his money. He’ll be put on the next boat. He’ll be here soon. And then we’ll go together to America.” Despite all, hope still shone in his eyes. Beneath the bruises and the dirt, he was still just a kid.

  “Listen to me, Henri. I am not lying to you. I have some very bad news to give you.”

  He tried not to show any interest in what I had to say. But his eyes flicked.

  “Robert tried to follow you. They killed him for it.”

  “You lie.”

  “I do not. I found his body on the beach at Grace Bay. He’d been knifed and dumped overboard.”

  Henri glanced at Summerton’s face. The cop showed no expression. He didn’t know what we were saying in any event.

  Henri kicked the dirt at his feet. His shoulders moved. He took a deep, shuddering breath. When he looked at me again, his eyes were wet.

  “The police have your cousin’s body,” I said. “I’ll ask Detective Inspector Summerton here to take you to see him. You can take Robert home to Haiti. He would want that, don’t you think?”

  Henri nodded. He bit his lip, trying to keep the tears from spilling over.

  “Give up this foolish dream. You are not going to get to America, and you’re not going to be a rap star. All there is for you here or in the States are jobs like this one, or worse. I don’t know where Jean-Claude is. I’m sorry, but it is very likely you’ll never see him again.”

  “Ask him where he was kept,” Summerton interrupted. “Who was in charge.”

  “Do you understand me, Henri?” I asked.

  He bit his lip and nodded. I didn’t know if I’d gotten through to him. Maybe not, but I had to try. As for Jean-Claude…if he was lucky, he never did get onto a boat. If he had, he could be just about anywhere.

  I asked Henri what Summerton wanted to know, but the boy couldn’t say much. He couldn’t read the English words on the street signs. He didn’t know where they were or where they were going. When the boat landed in the dark, the men had immediately been separated from the women and children. Henri, along with some of the younger men, had been loaded into a van and driven away. The men who took them off the boat never spoke to the refugees except to give orders. They were housed ten to a room in a makeshift house in a shantytown. The next day they were put to work. He told me he could see the sea from the door of the house. That was no clue. You’d be hard-pressed in Providenciales to find a place that didn’t have a view of the ocean.

  It was always the same story. The traffickers told Henri what he paid for the trip was not enough. He owed them more. He owed them for the food and housing they gave him. He had to work off his debt. If the police found him, they said, he’d be put in jail for a long time. Once he’d worked off what he owed, then he’d be taken to America, as promised.

  I didn’t say, And you were stupid enough to believe that? As Summerton said, men have to have hope. And kids need hope most of all.

  “We’re getting nothing,” Summerton snapped. “Let’s go.” He hadn’t been able to follow the conversation. But the tone of our voices and the constant shaking of Henri’s head told him enough.

  “One day a man came,” Henri said. “In a big car.”

  “Came where?”

  “Here. He spoke to the small man.” Meaning the man in the cheap suit. “He yelled. He gave orders.”

  “Did you understand what they said?”

  “No. They spoke English. But he was very angry. The small man was frightened. When he left, the man who brought us here told us we had to work harder.”

  “Can you describe this man?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Big man. Black man. His car was a Mercedes-Benz. Very clean.” Henri rattled off a license-plate number.

  I told Summerton, who whistled. “We might just have something here.”

  “Are you sure?” I said to the boy.

  Henri pointed to his swollen eye. “I like cars. I went close, so I could see it. The driver hit me and said I was to go back to work. I remember the number. I am,” he said proudly, like the kid he was, “good with numbers.”

  EIGHT

  And that was that. Summerton drove me back to the hotel and took Henri to the detention center. He’d make sure the boy was protected until he was flown home with the next bunch out.

  “Are you going to be able to pin something on this big guy in the Mercedes?” I asked Summerton.

  “Unlikely. The boy doesn’t know what was said. The man’ll tell us he was lost and asking for directions. But it’s a start. A small start. I’ll find out who owns the car. We’ll have someone we can keep an eye on. Maybe he’ll make a mistake, and we’ll be watching.”

  It wasn’t much. But sometimes that’s all policing is. Waiting for the right mistake at the right time.

  It was almost two o’clock when I got back to the hotel. I opened the door to our room with some hesitation.

  She wasn’t there. The bed was covered in a jumble of shopping bags.

  Jenny doesn’t think of shopping as a fun activity. She only goes to the store when she needs things. I took the mound of bags as a sign of her disapproval. A long tube lay among the clothes, sandals and jewelry. A sticker on it said Making Waves Gallery. I pulled a rolled-up canvas out of the tube and spread it out. A painting of Grace Bay Beach. Perfect in its simplicity, it was just three bands of color. Pale beige for the sand, brilliant turquoise for the ocean, soft blue for the sky. I rolled it back up. I’d planned to get Jenny a piece of art from the islands as a birthday gift. She’d beat me to it. That also, I was sure, was a sign of her disapproval.

  I found her at the pool. “Hi,” I said.

  She did not reply.

  “Good book?” I said.

  She did not look up.

  I sat on the edge of her lounger. She moved over so we were not touching.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But it was important.”

  “I’m sure it was.” Her voice was as cold as the ice floating in the tropical drink beside her.

  “Would you like to go to Chalk Sound now? Plenty of time. If the rain holds off.” The dark clouds that had lingered on the horizon all day were moving closer.

  “Do me a favor, Ray. Go away.”

  I did.

  She thawed slightly as we got ready for dinner. “What happened to your arm?”

  The knife cut was so minor, I’d forgotten it. I must have scratched at it after my shower. A small amount of blood had leaked out. “Ran into a thorn tree.”

  “You should put a bandage on it. You don’t want it to get infected.” I took that to mean I was forgiven.

  I had to admit, Jenny looked spectacular in her new dress. “As you didn’t seem to be getting around to it, I made the reservations for tomorrow.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “The ferry to North Caicos at ten. A rental car will be waiting when we get there. I don’t want to go by myself, Ray.”

  “You won’t have to,” I said. We were talking about a lot m
ore than a day trip to an undeveloped Caribbean island. We were talking about my career. My time in Haiti was almost up. I could go back to Canada, back to patrolling neat, clean streets. Making minor drug busts. Telling underage kids to pour out the cans of beer. Traffic accidents and road rage. Taking confused little old ladies back to the retirement home.

  Or I could put in for another assignment. I could try to do some good in a bad world.

  And lose my marriage.

  I glanced out the window. “Starting to rain.” The palm trees swayed in the wind. People ran for cover.

  At dinner, Jenny picked at her food. She didn’t have much to say. As she’d had the use of a rental car and no place to go, she’d spent the day in the shops in the Saltmills Plaza.

  Over coffee and dessert, I told her the bare bones of the story. A Haitian cop’s young cousin had been trafficked onto the island. I’d had the chance to go on the raid that freed him.

  “They needed me there, Jenny. He never would have opened up to the local police.”

  Her eyes softened. If only by a fraction. “I’m glad you could help, Ray.” She stretched her hand across the table. I took it. We smiled at each other. I didn’t bother to tell her that I’d failed to locate the boy I was really after.

  My phone rang.

  She threw up her hands.

  “I’ll tell him I’m busy,” I said.

  “You do that,” she said.

  It was Summerton. “An overloaded refugee boat has been spotted near Bristol Hill Road. That’s on the south side of the island. Boats are heading out to intercept it. The storm’s moving north fast. The sea’s rough. It’s going to be bad. I’m heading out. I’m five minutes from your hotel. Want to come along?”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  All I could say to my wife was, “Sorry.” I ran out of the restaurant.

  It was as though a bucket of water hit me in the face when I dashed out of the lobby. I wrested open the door of Summerton’s car against the force of the wind. “Bad one.”

  “Not a night to be at sea in a leaky boat.”