Dust Up: A Thriller

by Jon McGoran

  “Why? Did you forget to make a copy before you sent them?”

  We both laughed. It was an in-joke about a story I’d told her about my mom one time panicking that she had a lost an important document because I hadn’t made a copy before faxing it for her.

  “Something like that.”

  “Seriously, though. What happened to the ones you had? The originals?”

  I laughed wearily. “The police took them when they took my phone.”

  “The police?!” She wasn’t laughing now.

  “It was a minor misunderstanding when I first got here. Because of the passport thing. But it’s all straightened out.”

  “Except they kept the files and your phone.”

  “Yes, well, we’re working on that. Plus, hopefully, Miriam is okay and on her way and bringing them or sending them to Baudet.” We fell quiet for a moment after that, because it was very possible Miriam was not okay and not on her way.

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, let me know where to send them and I will. But then you need to come home. I miss you, and I worry. This isn’t your job. It isn’t your fight.”

  I missed her too. More than I would have thought after just one day. And maybe I was scared, too. But I thought about Miriam. About how much she probably missed Ron, about the way someone was setting her up for murder, ruining her life, trying to end it. Maybe they already had.

  “But then whose fight is it?” I must have been tired, because I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. I expected Nola to get even angrier, but she stayed quiet.

  “You’ll be okay,” I said.

  “I’m worried about you,” she whispered. “You’re in danger. You’re not the only one who has seen what these people are capable of. I’ve been there, too, Doyle. I’ve seen what can happen.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. I lay there on the bed, listening to her breathing, letting her listen to me.

  After a few minutes, she let out a little snort of a laugh. “How much does it cost to call from Haiti?”

  “Ugh,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about that.” I looked at the phone, but the display didn’t tell me anything about that. “I guess I should go.”

  “I guess so. Bring yourself home to me, Doyle. Okay?”

  “I will. I love you, Nola.”

  “I love you, too.”

  49

  I awoke at seven to a sharp knock at the door and a flashback to the night Ron Hartwell was murdered. I felt conspicuously gunless as I pulled on my pants. Then the knock came again and I realized it wasn’t the front door, it was the door to my room.

  I opened it expecting Elena, but instead it was Portia, carrying a tray with a glass of mango juice and a cup of coffee. She looked even more dazzling than she had the night before, in a crisp blue dress and her canary-yellow sneakers.

  I was wearing what I’d been wearing the night before, rumpled and slept in.

  “Bonjou,” she said, offering the tray and biting back a smile as her eyes took in my bed head.

  “Bonjou,” I replied, reaching up to pat down my hair before accepting the tray.

  “Regi asked me to make sure you were up. He’s been trying to call you.”

  I looked at the phone. I’d slept through three calls from Regi and a text from ten minutes ago saying he’d be there in fifteen minutes.

  “I’ll wait for you downstairs,” she said.

  I dashed into the bathroom, relieved to find a flimsy travel toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste.

  When I was done, I drank half the coffee and cooled my mouth with the juice.

  Downstairs, Portia was sitting at the table in the tiny front room. Elena was topping off her coffee as I came down the stairs. She filled mine, as well, without asking.

  “Merci,” I said, earning me a smile as she bustled back toward the kitchen.

  “Toma called,” Portia said. “Regi is taking you to meet him outside the city.”

  Elena stopped in mid-step and spun around. “Toma?”

  Portia nodded and pointed at me as she gave some sort of explanation.

  Elena turned toward me with a stern look and let loose with a stream of Kreyol, turning to Portia and waving her hand toward me.

  “She says her nephew Toma is bad news,” Portia said, translating. “She says he was a good boy until his mother took him to Miami. She died on the way, and when he came back eight years later, he had learned some bad ways. She says we don’t want anything to do with him.”

  I nodded and said, “Okay,” unsure how else to respond.

  Elena scowled and continued into the kitchen.

  When I looked at Portia, she wore a similar scowl. “She has a point. Toma is a gangster, and Regi is an important man, a busy man with much to do. You should not be distracting him with crazy adventures involving his nephew.”

  “You don’t agree with his concerns about Stoma and the other corporations?”

  “Quite the opposite. I think they should be thrown out of the country. After the earthquake, I helped burn the hybrid seeds the biotech corporations tried to donate.”

  I was surprised. “That seems a little extreme, doesn’t it?”

  Portia leaned forward. “No, it is not. This isn’t just about quaint notions of protecting old ways of doing things. Our farmers can’t afford to buy expensive seed each year. They save some of their harvest and plant that. That’s the way they’ve always done it, and they should be free to do so. We’ve seen it in other places, once the biotech companies get in with their GMOs and expensive hybrids, they push and push until at some point that’s all that is available. Then the farmers have no choice.” She snapped her fingers. “From that moment on, they can no longer save their seeds. With the hybrids it doesn’t work, and with the GMOs it’s illegal, even if they try. So each year, they have to borrow money to pay for the seed. It’s like an addiction; they can’t get off it. Some years the yields are higher and they make a little more money, some years less. But all it takes is one bad year—a year like this year—and they lose everything. There are some who think that’s what it’s really about, anyway. A big land grab.”

  “A land grab?” I said. “How do you mean?”

  She leaned even closer, warming up. “There’s a saying, ‘Land is the one thing they’re not making any more of,’ right? Around the world, people are buying up land. A lot of it. In Africa and South America, investors from the Northern Hemisphere, big corporations, countries like China, they are buying up millions of hectares of farmland, to grow food for export or to convert the land from food crops to biofuels. One company almost succeeded in buying half of all the agricultural land in Madagascar. Half! In Haiti, it’s different, but not completely so. Our revolution was a slave revolt, but it was also a fight to get our land back, first from the French, then from the Americans. So we’re very sensitive to the idea of rich people buying up land and assembling huge plantations.”

  She sat back and let out a shy smile despite herself, as if she didn’t mean to let herself get so worked up. “Of course, buying land isn’t easy in Haiti, even for the rich people, and it’s highly restricted for foreigners. But I guess that’s why they have ninety-nine-year leases and agricultural free-trade zones, where only crops for export can be grown.”

  “But still you don’t want Regi getting involved?”

  “Regi is already involved. He has a big job fighting cholera and chikungunya, HIV, and yes, Ebola, too. Minister Dissette is useless, so Regi practically runs that ministry. He can’t be distracted getting into trouble with his nephew Toma.”

  “I don’t mean to keep him from his work,” I said, sitting across from her. “To be fair, though, he was involved in this before I was. He’s Miriam Hartwell’s friend. I barely know her.”

  Her eyes narrowed at the name.

  “Do you know her?” I asked.

  “We met briefly. At Saint Benezet.” She shrugged, unimpressed. I think she was about to say more, but her phone buzzed,
and she looked at it. “Regi got stuck behind some protests. He’s running late, but he’ll be here in a moment.”

  As she said it, the door opened, and Regi Baudet appeared. “Bonjou, bonjou,” he said as he entered, his warm smile fading as he looked back and forth between us and maybe detected some tension. Before he could say anything more, Elena appeared from the kitchen, drying her hands on an old dish towel.

  “Regi!” she said sharply, raising a finger at him and following it up with a barrage of Kreyol sprinkled with mentions of Toma.

  Regi stepped back and raised his hands defensively, replying in kind. They went back and forth a few times before Elena turned on her heel and stormed back to the kitchen.

  “Come on,” he said to me with an embarrassed smile. “Let’s go before she comes back. We’re running late as it is.”

  He turned to Portia, but once again his smile faltered. “You. Be. Careful,” she said to him. Then she gave me a look that made it clear she didn’t care if I was careful, but I’d have hell to pay if anything happened to Regi.

  50

  “We’re meeting Toma at the end of Rue Saint Claire,” Regi said over the sound of our tires rumbling against the road. “His gang has a place up in the hills overlooking the city.”

  He seemed nervous about where we were going but relieved to be away from the tense scene at Elena’s.

  We weaved across the city in Regi’s Suzuki, the hills looming higher the closer we got, until we were climbing them.

  “I’m surprised they’re up so early,” I said, looking out the window. I was surprised I was up so early. There were already plenty of people on the street, though, most of them coming down the hill with empty water containers to fill. “Toma must be a lot more conscientious than the gangsters in my neighborhood.”

  Regi gave me a dubious look, and I realized my mistake.

  “Still out from last night?”

  He nodded.

  The yellowed vegetation on the top of the hill looked orange in the rosy glow of the rising sun. As we left the city, the streets switched back and forth up the hill, past houses made of cinder block and corrugated metal. Halfway up, the crumbled asphalt gave way to a leveled but unpaved road, bumpy with rocks and crowded on either side with shacks made of rough-cut wood and scraps of metal. Here and there, small but sturdy cactus plants formed dense hedges between the houses or lining the road, all of it coated with the billowing dust.

  It coated the people too. Several of the shacks had laundry hanging out to dry on the cactus fencing. The dust covered that, as well.

  The higher we went, the fewer houses we saw, and the fewer people. The spaces between them were wandered by chickens, and here and there a goat was tied by the side of the road.

  The Suzuki ground its way uphill, kicking gravel back down the slope behind us and adding to the dust in the air. Finally, what was left of the road curved around and ended. We got out of the car and looked back at the city below us, watching the shadows at the bottom of the hill slowly shrinking as the sun rose over the ocean. We turned back around just as a guy in his late teens emerged from the trees beyond the end of the road.

  He was wearing low-slung pants and no shirt, carrying a Steyr machine pistol. The extended magazine sticking out the front gave it an ungainly, lopsided appearance. He was pointing it vaguely in our direction with his finger curled carelessly around the trigger. If it was set to automatic, one hearty sneeze would cut us both in half.

  “Sa ou vlè?” he said, looking at Regi, his slurring voice and glassy eyes combining to convey a sort of bored, intoxicated menace. His mouth was open, his tongue absentmindedly running back and forth across his bottom teeth.

  Regi cleared his throat. “Mwen se Regi Baudet. Mwen ta renmen wè Toma.”

  This was not Regi’s nephew. He turned to look at me with a sneer. “Ki moun nèg blan sa ye?”

  Regi looked at me, fear unmistakable in his eyes, then back at the gunman. “Li se zanmi mwen. He is my friend.”

  The kid held the Steyr off to the side, pointed into the air as he stepped up so close to me I could smell the sweat and alcohol coming off him. He stared into my eyes for a moment and said, “Not my friend.”

  He was licking his bottom teeth again, and as he started to bring the gun down over my head, I couldn’t help thinking if he hit me like that, he’d totally jam the magazine. I leaned away from him and jabbed my hand up under his chin, chopping his throat and also snapping his teeth shut on his tongue.

  His eyes went wide, and blood sputtered from his mouth. By the time the shock in his eyes had turned to pain, his gun was in my hands. I stepped back so that even with the gun pointed at the ground and my finger safely off the trigger, I’d have time to bring it up if he came at me.

  He didn’t, concentrating instead on cupping his hand under his mouth and extending his neck away from his body so he didn’t bleed on himself. He glared up at me, looking younger now, an angry little boy. He spat out a stream of blood-flecked sibilance. I couldn’t tell if it was English or Kreyol.

  Regi looked on in horror, and I felt momentarily guilty. “He was going to hit me,” I said. Then I realized Regi’s gaze of horror was directed over my shoulder.

  I turned slowly around.

  There were three of them. Bigger and older than the kid with the new lisp.

  The biggest of them stared at me through narrowed eyes, then looked past me to Regi, who suddenly looked less scared.

  “He was going to hit me,” I said again, laying the gun on the ground and straightening with my hands up.

  The kid with the bloody mouth went to retrieve his gun but froze when the big guy barked, “Cyrus!”

  I almost smiled, thinking if that kid’s name was Cyrus, that injured tongue was going to cause him some problems. The big guy gave me a look that helped me not smile.

  He turned to Regi. “Sak pase la a?”

  Regi smiled patiently. “Toma, this is my friend, Doyle. An American.”

  Toma acknowledged me with a slight nod, then glared at Cyrus and muttered something I didn’t catch. Cyrus slunk forward, keeping his eyes away from mine, then grabbed the gun by the muzzle and scurried back toward the trees.

  Toma swung a booted foot, connecting with the top of the Cyrus’s thigh as he hurried past him. Toma turned and tipped his head, beckoning Regi and me with a nod before he and the other two turned and walked back the way they had come.

  We followed them around a stand of trees. The path faded to nothing but reappeared once we rounded the curve.

  Regi quickened his pace to walk alongside Toma, leaving me to exchange awkward nods with his two lieutenants.

  “He would have totally jammed that magazine,” I said, for some reason unable to just stay quiet.

  “He’s an idiot,” said the guy to my right, the bigger guy, in heavily accented English.

  The guy to my left nodded and said, “Depi koulye a sou, li rele ‘Thyruth.’”

  They all started laughing, even Toma, who turned around to do it. Before he turned back, though, he said, “Janjak. Westè. Silans.”

  We walked for another ten minutes, Regi and Toma talking quietly in Kreyol, the rest of us quiet. It seemed an almost intimate conversation, but awkward, as well. The sense I got was that they were updating each other on relatives and friends, but that it had been a little too long since they had done so. Of course, they could have been talking about something totally different.

  The path widened out into a rutted dirt road, curving around a small hillock. Just past it was a large shack, wood-slat walls under a tar-paper roof. A porch ran along the front, a couple of white plastic chairs at one end.

  Behind it was a second building, a barn or a garage.

  Between them was a gas-powered generator. One of the two guys who had been walking with me—I think it was Westè, the smaller one—went over and got it started.

  A couple of lightbulbs came to life, filling the place with a dim glow.

  We followed Tom
a onto the porch and through the front door. Inside, the hard-packed dirt floor was covered with a filthy rug. The furniture was in better shape, a couple of armchairs and a sectional sofa. The electronics were gleaming—a massive plasma-screen television, a cluster of video and gaming components scattered on the rug in front of it.

  Toma tossed his pistol onto the sofa and collapsed next to it. He picked up a game controller, and the television came to life.

  “So where is Toussaint?” Regi asked in English.

  I could feel Janjak and Westè stiffen. Toma looked at one, then the other and jutted his chin at the door. They went outside, seeming relieved to be excluded from the conversation.

  “Why you looking for Toussaint?” Toma asked, idly fiddling with the controller. He sounded like an American.

  Regi looked at me and then back at his nephew. “Do you know anything about Saint Benezet?”

  He shrugged. “I know the police are all around it, keeping people away from it.”

  “The people there got sick.”

  He laughed. “The old ladies say it was Ebola.”

  Regi shot me an almost imperceptible glance. “Some food shipments were stolen not far from there.”

  “So what’s that have to do with Toussaint?”

  “We’re trying to figure out if the stolen food made the people sick. I figure nothing like that would go on without Toussaint knowing about it.”

  He looked at me. “Are you police?”

  “Not here,” I said.

  He laughed.

  “We don’t care about the theft,” Regi said. “We just want to know why people are getting sick. So where’s Toussaint?”

  Toma tossed the controller aside. “Toussaint’s dead. I’m in charge now.” He said it casually, but the strain of it was suddenly evident on his face, as if telling us, not having his men around, made him feel he could drop part of his act. “So what do you want to know?”

  “How did he die?” I asked.