The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover

by Bob Shacochis

  But here they were, Tom nodding with less and less composure, Dolan opening his mouth to speak again but closing it prudently when Tom expelled the egg into his hand and sat there wild-eyed and breathing like a runner, massaging the egg until it began to fissure and ooze orange yolk, saying nothing but feeling that there seemed to be no limit to his capacity for aggression because it had become clear to him that the only possible thing to do with the egg was smash it into Dolan’s face. Yes, he was listening despite himself; yes, he had heard. Dolan had made a crack about fucking the girl. Dolan had just explained that Parmentier had killed Jackie Scott—didn’t he say that he was protecting a client whom he knew beyond reasonable doubt to be a murderer? Hadn’t he heard Dolan confess he knew his client would murder the girl and had spent no effort to stop it. They were frozen, baleful eyes staring into each other’s regret, until Dolan said, Hey, are you all right? Drink some water or something, and carefully removed the egg from his hand and replaced it with a napkin and Gerard took Tom’s arm to get his attention and said the last time he had taken the woman to visit Bòkò St. Jean, the man came from the north to meet her and when Tom heard this he slammed back into himself.

  Her husband?

  No, said Gerard. This man was the army man.

  A soldier? An American?

  The same one, confirmed Gerard. The one who took the woman to you in the north.

  Special Agent Woodrow Singer arrived for an appointment that Tom Harrington could not remember making, appearing like a seraphic messenger at the top of the staircase to proclaim Jack Parmentier’s innocence, a tall but heavyset sandy-haired American whose arid western voice clucked with feigned disappointment. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, he said, extending his hand to his erstwhile supervisor, lowering it and the chummy grin on his face a moment later when Dolan said, Kiss my ass.

  Connie doesn’t understand that I’m on his side, said Singer, pulling an extra chair next to Tom.

  What side is that? said Tom.

  Singer removed his sunglasses and looked across the table at Gerard with penetrating, unfriendly gray eyes. Who is this man?

  What brings you around, Woodrow? asked Dolan. I thought you didn’t like to be seen with me. To Tom he said, I embarrass him.

  He’s my driver, said Tom. What’s the problem?

  Ask him to leave.

  He’s eating his breakfast, said Connie. He’s not going anywhere.

  I’d like to speak with Mr. Harrington in private.

  That’s up to Tom, said Dolan. I’m eating my breakfast too.

  What side? Tom asked again and Singer nudged his chair closer to Tom’s and said Parmentier was an innocent man.

  Tom glared at Dolan, who was intent on eating, and said, Innocent? You arrested him.

  Point of fact, said Woodrow Singer, speaking under his breath to explain that Justice took Parmentier into custody, not the Bureau. You can describe this as an interagency misunderstanding. A young and ambitious prosecutor who has not paid attention to how things work. There is some zealotry involved. These misunderstandings will straighten themselves out, and it’s my opinion, Mr. Harrington, that you have a role to play in that process.

  No. Not me.

  You’re bringing fresh eyes to the game.

  Connie thinks Parmentier’s guilty, said Tom.

  I never said that, said Dolan without looking up from his plate.

  You fucking well did, said Tom loudly.

  I’m confident that Jack’s in the clear on this one, said Woodrow Singer, rapping his knuckles on the table, his eyes requiring consensus.

  Dolan raised his head to beam contempt. Let’s all get down on our knees and pray for Jack’s deliverance.

  Jack loved his wife, said Singer. He would never harm her.

  Gerard sat poised, clutching his fork and knife in opposite hands, keeping his eyes down to protect his dignity as he muttered in Kreyol. Tom, this man just told you a lie. When Gerard continued muttering about the time he drove the newly married couple to Jacmel, Singer became perturbed and demanded to know what was being said.

  He says you’re a liar, said Tom, watching the agent’s face blanch.

  Son of a bitch.

  Okay, Tom persisted, Parmentier’s innocent. Who are we talking about then? Drug lords? Arabs? He paused to think for a moment. What’s the deal with the Arabs?

  Singer pointed at Gerard with his sunglasses. Get this bastard out of here.

  Can you tell? Tom said to Gerard. Guy loves Haitians.

  Dolan fished in his pocket for keys and asked Gerard to fuel up the rental for the drive to Saint-Marc. Singer’s unforgiving eyes followed him across the veranda and down the stairs and then he angrily scraped his chair away from Tom’s and said, I think this would go much better if we could speak in private.

  What’s Parmentier have on Connie? Tom asked Woodrow Singer.

  Nothing, snarled Dolan. Himself. His existence. Nothing but the fact of himself, that I was protecting him. Now I guess that would be Woody’s job.

  I want to say something to you both, said Tom. Here’s the picture I’m getting. Let’s imagine it’s better for both of you if Jack Parmentier never comes within a mile of a plea bargaining situation.

  I think you have a very clear idea about that, Mr. Harrington, said Woodrow Singer. And I also think you have a clear idea about who murdered Jack’s wife, and why.

  He looked from one man to the other, their identical blank expressions, unable to see them as anything but fabulists and conspirators. Am I supposed to guess?

  Let’s all guess, Dolan said derisively. I guess the cocaleros.

  Connie, Singer warned, stay in the box.

  Who am I supposed to guess? said Tom. Lecoeur’s people?

  Not them, said Woodrow Singer. Not possible.

  Why not them? asked Tom.

  Those people were gone. Disappeared. Vanished. Singer had told the team sent down from Miami the same thing but they were fixed on a motive of revenge.

  How can that be? Gone where?

  Bad things happen to bad people, said Woodrow Singer. Connie didn’t tell you? It was all in the report. I thought you knew.

  I’m fairly sick of hearing about this report. Somebody tell me who wrote this report?

  It was a standard military sit-rep, said Singer. Author’s name redacted.

  Wait, said Harrington, this wasn’t a Bureau report? and Singer told him there was one of those too.

  That leaves us with the Arabs, said Dolan. What kind of a mess have you got yourself into with the Arabs, Woody?

  That is not a Bureau project, said Special Agent Woodrow Singer.

  Horseshit.

  We are facilitating. That’s all I can say.

  What about this gallery owner? wondered Tom. Did you speak to him yesterday, Connie? but Dolan stared past Woodrow Singer with undisguised loathing and wouldn’t answer yes or no.

  Tom shrugged and assented when Singer asked one more time for the opportunity to talk in private. His head tipped, Singer spoke under his breath even though they were alone on the far side of the veranda, saying to Tom that Jack Parmentier was not so fallen a sinner that he was not deeply disturbed by what he saw here in Haiti. If you’re a Christian, said Singer, you understand what I’m saying.

  I haven’t a fucking clue what you’re saying.

  And I told Jack that this was no place to bring a woman in Renee’s condition.

  What condition? asked Tom.

  Look, Singer whispered, Connie’s a good man but without the faith that would allow him to recognize root causes. He sees bad apples. He never thinks: bad tree.

  What condition?

  She was in crisis, whispered Singer as if in prayer. Spiritua
l crisis. Jack adored Renee, and only wished she would bring the Lord into her heart.

  Tom looked at Singer, the agent’s hands clasped below his jowly chin and his lids quivering over closed eyes, the unpleasant tip of his tongue sliding at intervals across the purple swell of his upper lip, and he felt a perverse expansion of sanity, hearing Jackie’s own insanity confirmed by this modern Shakespearean madman assigned to speak the truth.

  She told me she had lost her soul, Tom said to Singer. You’re a man who would believe that, aren’t you?

  Singer’s voice strengthened as he proclaimed that was indeed her undoing, that any righteous man could not fail to see she had been possessed by demons.

  Demons? said Tom, and Singer nodded grimly. Why do I have this bad feeling you know who killed her.

  The devil.

  Exorcists, proselytizers, crusaders wearing suits and shoulder holsters, lobbyists for the blood of Christ, data analysts of the apocalypse—who else was the government hiring these days? thought Tom, unable to respond with anything but an expression of mockery, but Special Agent Woodrow Singer was not to be deterred from his revelation.

  The devil and his worshippers, Mr. Harrington. Now you understand what I’m saying. If it were in my power I would destroy in the name of God the entire blasphemous cesspool of this island.

  Without another word, Tom Harrington walked off the veranda and went back to his room knowing he could not ignore the marvel of this convergence, Woodrow Singer and Gerard, unknown to each other, dialing in the same coordinates. He stretched out on the single bed with his hands behind his head, watching the ceiling fan and its lethargic rotation, surprised that he was not surprised to learn Jackie had threatened her husband, because there was something vicious in her, a terrifying unstoppable wildness, and he had seen it, and he had suffered from its consequence. But the distance between vodou—Singer’s devil worshippers—and whatever went wrong—Arabs. Arabs?—in the misbegotten relationship between Jackie and Parmentier was inhabited by a fog bank of government skullduggery and infighting and cynical misdirection that made his brain twitch when he stared into its mists, looking for the connections.

  I’m not going back down, he told himself, a right and reasonable decision that lasted all of ten minutes.

  Someone knocked on his door and he barked back, Go away, go to hell, but it was Gerard, not Dolan, asking to be let in. Tom assumed Connie had sent him but Gerard denied it, the white men didn’t know he had returned to the hotel, and they sat on the bed together in the stifling musk of the room while Tom pulled on his socks and leather boots, obliged once more to listen but for once to someone he knew to trust, a Haitian and a friend and an honest man.

  The day Gerard took the woman to Bòkò St. Jean’s hounfour on the outskirts of Saint-Marc it was understood that he would drop her off and come back in the morning but Jackie—she had a new name, said Gerard. Renee—was unusually happy and excited this day, said Gerard, and she encouraged him to stay to observe the ceremony, already in progress from the day before. They’re killing bulls, she told him with a broad smile.

  Tom, this ceremony was very big, very grand, said Gerard. Many people came from far away, hundreds of people.

  What was this ceremony for? What was going on?

  I think it was for the woman, said Gerard. Who is rich enough to afford two bulls?

  Gerard, she didn’t even want to pay the houngan five dollars for . . . what? I don’t even know what to call it. A consultation.

  This day Bòkò St. Jean was a big man with two bulls to sacrifice to the lwas. Two, Tom. Not one, two. Only the whites have this money to waste. One bull would be enough for the Haitian bourgeoisie.

  Gerard did not see the bulls sacrificed later that day. He drank a little clairin and ate some food and watched people dance to the drums and left by midafternoon to visit friends in Saint-Marc. But when he returned after dark to drive the woman back to Port-au-Prince, Eville Burnette was there, and Gerard heard people talking about something happening, something that he would remember when he heard that the woman had been killed. One of the guests at the ceremony was another bokor, a powerful macoute during the time of the dictators, named Honore Vincent, from the northeastern mountains, who ruled as the emperor of one of the secret vodou societies in Haiti. Honore Vincent was very drunk with clairin and jealous of Bòkò St. Jean’s good fortune. When he saw the two whites among the people, he went to them, said Gerard, and acted stupid.

  Tom groaned, afraid to hear what had happened next. What kind of stupid? Aggressive?

  Yes, that.

  Did he lay his hands on her?

  Yes.

  Did she go after him?

  The people tell me yes.

  And the soldier was there? asked Tom. Was he wearing his uniform?

  No. The same as we.

  Eville Burnette had stepped between the woman and Honore Vincent and pushed him away hard and he stumbled to the ground and Bòkò St. Jean and his followers cautioned Vincent and warned him to behave properly or be expelled from the ceremony and then somebody took him away. In the weeks ahead the incident was responsible for many rumors and Gerard heard what the people were saying, but of course they were not all saying the same thing. Some people believe she is one woman with two names. Here was the second gros neg who had been defeated by the white woman, who could not then be a mere woman but a mambo, a blan sorceress, and that she had been possessed by a lwa during her battle with Honore Vincent, that only Erzulie Mary could fight a bokor as powerful as Vincent, and that this was not a fight that took place on earth but in the spirit world. Others said no, she was an army woman, she knew military fighting, she knew how to kick and fly like a Chinaman in the movies. And other people said no, they were there, the woman was very drunk and falling down but they never saw her fight with the boko. And eventually Gerard heard second- and third-hand accounts of Honore Vincent’s fate, that Bòkò St. Jean had weakened him with a spell, and strengthened her with a potion, and that Bòkò St. Jean had done the same thing for her when she went after Jacques Lecoeur’s man up north because both men were nationalists and strong leaders who resisted the occupation. What is going on here is plain to see, Honore Vincent had been heard to say: She is an American spy, and Bòkò St. Jean is an American spy, and I will take care of them both. You know Haiti, said Gerard. You know how the people talk. You know how the stories grow from small to big.

  The last thing, Tom, said Gerard. The day after the woman is killed, the American soldier comes to me in Port-au-Prince.

  Why?

  To drive to the north. And in Le Cap I hear people say someone kill the boko.

  St. Jean? he asked and Gerard said no, the other one, Vincent.

  All right, said Tom Harrington. Let’s go to Saint-Marc.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  From the moment they had arrived at the clearing on the banks of an emerald-green river in a valley deep in the roadless mountains, everything had escalated at a rate that left the exact chain of events a hallucinatory smear in Tom’s mind. A dozen or so men—unarmed, as far as he knew, though several carried machetes—had materialized out of the jungle where the land steepened above the clearing. Jackie began taking pictures, a lot of pictures, the long lens of her camera sweeping from one glowering face to another. Dashing forward from the group, a man began yelling in Kreyol for Jackie to put the camera down yet she ignored both Tom’s translation of the command and his own emphatic effort to underscore it. The men came closer, Jackie continued shooting. Eville Burnette, to Tom’s relief, moved back and out of the way where he would not contribute to the growing tension. Tom recognized the yelling man, Lecoeur’s second in command, from a previous expedition in these mountains, many months before. He was not a large or tall man but strapped and banded with muscles, whom Tom remembered as being a hothead, speakin
g always in bursts of rage. Attention, tell her to put the camera down now, Lecoeur’s man said, focusing on Tom, declaring her as Tom’s responsibility, and Tom stepped in front of Jackie to block her view.

  What the fuck are you doing?

  What’s it look like I’m doing? she said. Come on, you’re in my way.

  An elbow banged against his right ear as the guerilla fighter reached across Tom’s shoulder to seize the camera and he was knocked aside, his attention lost for the fleeting span of seconds it took Lecoeur’s man and Jackie to become violently entangled, each with a hand on the camera, the man’s other hand grabbing for her hair but finding the neck of her shirt, which tore away, and his hand fell down her chest to place a twisting grip on the middle strap of her bra. In the struggle the white globe of a breast emerged and Jackie’s other hand whipped out of her vest pocket with a can of spray. She aimed for his eyes and when he howled in pain she lunged at him and they tumbled together to the ground, she on top of him, the nozzle of the can shoved into his mouth, blood flowing from where his teeth broke the skin on her fingers.

  Everyone rushed forward to intervene but in the same instant jumped back, choking from the sear of fumes. Jackie rolled onto the grass, coughing and spitting, her face afire and eyes a fountain of tears. Then Eville was kneeling beside the man, his own tears streaking down his cheeks, his open knapsack on the ground, a radio or transponder clearly visible within as he searched its contents, his hand stopping on an unseen object. A calm issue of instructions wheezed from Eville’s mouth and Tom obeyed—Explain to these men that this man will suffocate without an emergency operation, explain the procedure, explain not to be alarmed by the procedure, explain that the procedure will save the man’s life. When Tom finished these explanations, no one said anything, and out came the knife from Eville’s knapsack and then came a pistol from the waistband of one of the guerillas, pointed at the American but uncocked.