Okay, said Connie Dolan. My supposition is our man here was too busy with his manifest disloyalties to waste time whacking the girl. And from what I gather from the addendum on that report, the palace took him down.
Tom asked Gerard if he knew of any business Parmentier and the girl had conducted up north and Gerard said he didn’t know but it was possible. Something else is going on here but I don’t know how it connects with Jackie, said Tom.
You mean the Arabs? asked Dolan.
No, said Tom. I mean the US military.
Tom, said Gerard. The people say the Americans train Ti Phillipe how to make coup d’état.
All of the wisdom he could muster about the relationship between the United States and Haiti, and countries destroyed enough to be anything like Haiti, told him this rumor would prove out, this information was true. And indispensable to the truth of it, inseparable from the truth of it, in Harrington’s mind anyway, would be one man, the elite and unanticipated common denominator, the connective tissue, Master Sergeant Eville Burnette, the Special Forces commando who didn’t go away when he was supposed to go away. Why didn’t you get on the C-130 back to Bragg, Ev? Why aren’t you sitting in some titty bar in Fayetteville drinking off the unnecessary failures and calculated shortfalls of the mission? What are you doing here with us in Le Cap? This is deeply, badly fucked and I don’t need a babysitter and you need to disappear. But Burnette had told Harrington to get used to the idea of his company because he wasn’t going anywhere, his command had pulled him off the plane at the last second and ordered him into civvies and took him across the airfield to the UN HQ and hooked him up with the girl. You’re doing something that people seem to think is very interesting, he told Tom, who wanted to know what people, and Eville said, Above my pay grade, man. The UN requested the temporary loan of his sad ass from JSOC, and here he was. Bullshit, said Tom, this is a fucking vanity mission. You SF hotshots have spent a year and a half trying to track down Lecoeur and all you’ve come up with are the banana leaves he used to wipe his ass. I don’t want you along, but Burnette suggested that Harrington had little choice in the matter.
Of course I have the choice. What I’m doing is not in any way your concern.
The only choice you have is to not go into the mountains. Is that your choice?
They’re going to know who you are. It’ll take Lecoeur five seconds to figure you out.
I’m a reporter from AMI, he said, flashing UN-issued press credentials. It isn’t your decision and it isn’t mine. You either take me, or you don’t take me and I follow you in another vehicle, or you stay here and we get drunk and tell stories and you don’t go.
Why is this such a big deal? Jackie had asked Tom and he told her, Just shut up, and she left the table in the Christophe’s dining area and went to her room and Eville Burnette walked off into the night but he was back in the morning for breakfast, leaning against the SUV in the car park at sunrise in his lightweight boots and acid-wash jeans and beige journo’s vest and Oakley sunglasses and he didn’t quite look like a soldier and he didn’t much look like a correspondent but he surely did resemble some ranch-hand version of muscle-bound sneaky-Pete spook and there was nothing Tom could do about it and he had already forgotten why he had agreed to such a worthless and foolish affair, a waste of time and, finally, a waste of life.
He watched Gerard eat up the miles to Saint-Marc and rolled Eville Burnette’s name around in his mind, the slide and tick of the syllables like an incomplete access code to a vast encryption, guessing that Eville was probably up there in the mountains now, counting jumping jacks with Ti Phillipe and his rogue police force, and maybe he had been in-country when Jackie was killed, and maybe that would be no coincidence, and maybe this, and maybe that, and maybe nothing, but Eville Burnette had been with Jackie at Bòkò St. Jean’s for some ceremony of no little importance the day before she died. Eville Burnette, Eville Burnette. Eville and Jackie . . . sitting in a tree? Was that the code? Doing what, for Christ’s sake? Sacrificing bulls? Bobbing for wayward souls? Come on, man.
They were deep in the muddle of the center of the city now and Dolan had rolled up his window to shield himself from the marchands running up to the vehicle and Gerard began to turn right to connect with the street that would, in a few blocks, lead them to the station but Tom told him in Kreyol to keep straight and take them to the hounfour on the outskirts of town.
We’ll come back, Tom explained to Connie.
From where? asked Dolan.
Why do you think Woodrow Singer wanted to speak to me in private?
Unless he wanted you to kneel and pray with him, I don’t have a clue.
Mr. Singer knows more than you give him credit for. For instance, he seems to know that I brought Jackie up here to Saint-Marc. For instance, he told me who he thinks killed the girl. What I want to know is why he didn’t check it out himself.
Everybody but Parmentier killed the girl—that would be Woody’s point of view. Who does he think killed the girl?
The devil.
That’s fucking great. The devil.
He was serious.
If he’s serious, then you know why he didn’t check it out. In the House of Hoover, he is what we call not field-oriented. Woodrow Singer wouldn’t be caught dead sitting next to a bar whore in Okinawa or taking a statement from a Hindu. Woodrow Singer loves his desk and his computer and loves Jesus and hates dirty people and dirty foreign countries and hates sinners and loves the unborn and the twice born. He puts on latex gloves just to take out the trash. Singer is a sidestepper and a buck-passer. Now why don’t you tell me what you’re talking about? Who’s the Devil of the Month? Why are you in this car instead of on a plane back to the States?
I don’t know who killed Jackie or why, but I think now I know who does.
Good. Let’s have it.
We’re going to pay a visit to a voodoo priest, said Tom.
Oh, brother, said Connie Dolan. This ought to be good.
Clambering up the chalky bankside from the road, Harrington began to think of Conrad Dolan as neither colleague nor rival nor the man in charge but as a nuisance, in the way and out of tune, his role reversed and reduced to that of a spectator in this encore performance of the Tom and Jackie show, his vision of the truth bent cross-eyed by an excess of motives and dubious intentions.
Then they were atop the plateau wiping the sweat trickling down their brows and staring back into the frightened eyes of the Haitian peasant who had popped up from his seat, a rusty metal folding chair in the shade of an avocado tree to the side of the hounfour, the rifle at his waist trained on them, not an effective way to aim a gun unless it was a shotgun, which it was, and double-barreled; there’s yours, here’s mine. Dolan instinctively stepped sideways so they could not both be taken down with one blast and the Kreyol rushed forth in a stumble out of Tom’s mouth and the tilt of the guard’s head seemed to imply no matter what he was hearing he could not understand it and when he didn’t respond and didn’t lower the gun Tom called back down to the road for Gerard to come quick, and Gerard came right up and went unsmiling to the peasant with his arm extended and made the man shake his hand, saying What is the problem, these men are friends of Bòkò St. Jean and wish to say hello.
Big problems, said the peasant with the shotgun. His voice was soft and high and sweet, like a girl’s, and despite the gun he seemed otherwise docile and unintimidating.
Gerard, said Dolan, tell this gentleman to stop pointing his weapon at me or I’m going to take it from him and insert it backward up his ass.
Big, big problems, said the peasant. Please, go away.
Let’s move back and let Gerard talk to him, said Tom. Gerard, what does this man have to tell us?
The __________is not welcome here, he heard the peasant tell Gerard.
The what?
said Tom. Who’s not welcome? I couldn’t understand the word.
The bishop, said Gerard. The bishop is not welcome.
Tell him we don’t have any association with the bishop and just want to give the houngan some money and make an offering to the lwas.
What is the nature of the problem here? said Dolan. What’s he saying?
He wants to know if you are Baptists, said Gerard.
Tell him I said fuck the Baptists.
Gerard and the peasant spoke and Gerard turned around and told the two white men, He says okay. The houngan is inside the temple. You can speak with him and then we must go. Tom, this man is very nervous about blans. I’m trying to understand why.
They walked across the packed earth of the courtyard toward the center of the compound, Connie Dolan giving the murals on the whitewashed mud walls his imperious scrutiny. Look at this shit, he said and Tom ignored him, tugging open the heavy door, and they dipped their heads under the timbered lintel and went in and paused, letting their eyes adjust to the dimness, the honeyed light splintering down through the roof thatch and the crude ribbing of hand-hewn beams. There on the ground between two wooden pillars on a slatted pallet spread with burlap sacking was a boy, a young man, his nappy head pillowed with rags, asleep or dozing or perhaps only lying there with his eyes closed and his mouth open, grubby hands spidered on his bare chest as if he were keying an accordion, his slender torso sprinkled with the cracked shells of pumpkin seeds he had eaten, big pink-soled feet poking from grimy trousers with legs too short to reach his shanks. Who’s this? asked Dolan and Tom said not who we’re looking for and they withdrew out the door.
A gaggle of shirtless children had appeared outside the compound, toeing the dirt with an air of expectancy, as if some wonderful form of entertainment would soon be forthcoming. Gerard had found a bucket to sit on and he and the peasant had retreated to the shade of the avocado tree. The guard sat with the shotgun across his knees and tracked the two white men with watchful suspicion as they approached. Tom, there is a problem, said Gerard, this man is still very worried you have come from the bishop because he thinks blans only come to the hounfours when the bishop sends them to make dechoukaj.
Ah, said Tom, so that’s what this is about. Dolan asked for a translation and Tom said this word he used means uproot. Dechouke—to tear out by the roots.
The island was experiencing the revival of an internecine conflict that had most recently surfaced back in 1986, during the ensuing chaos Duvalier fils left in his wake when forced to flee the palace for a gilded exile in France. At that time there had erupted across the countryside what the international press reported as a voodoo war, the delirium of blood revenge, a spontaneous cleansing of the old Duvalierist houngans who had assisted first Papa and then Baby in their vile romance with darkness. Whether the spiritual inquisition had piggybacked on the political vendetta Tom could not quite remember and most probably both were too entwined to be anything but different sides of the same coin, the wallows of faith being identical in their superstitions if not their blasphemies. In any event the Catholic church found itself split as well, into separate camps, each faction equally troubling to Rome, the ti ilgis of the liberation theologists and the conservative patriarchs who served the dictatorship’s status quo. The liberation theologists had a score to settle with the houngans serving the Duvaliers, and the hierarchy saw the opportunity to obliterate their competition from the voodooists. Several notorious Duvalierist bishops found common cause with the grassroots priests of the ti iglis and stirred up their parishioners. In the spirit of ecumenical bloodlust, the Baptist and Protestant missions joined the fray and soon mobs of Christians armed with machetes and shovels had bludgeoned and hacked up and beheaded any voodooist in their sight, on one horrifically memorable occasion pitching a dozen mambos and houngans into a pit and burying them alive in concrete. Once the worst collaborators had been dechouked, and the passions dispensed, the conflict waned to an uneasy calm, and the surviving houngans formed an ethnographic society and established international alliances with universities and folklorists to protect themselves, but no one could realistically expect such a fundamental struggle for Haiti’s identity to ever be fully or permanently resolved, the Haitians battling in effect over control of the graveyard, the top-hatted Baron Samedi squared off against the robed and white-bearded Holy Ghost, both religions adept in their capacities to comfort and terrify and provide temporary refuge from the agonies of the fallen world, yet even in their combined force they redeemed little for the Haitian.
Their presence here was a cause for genuine concern—Tom could see the mistrust unabated in the peasant’s nervous eyes—and he became solicitous and took the man’s hand in both of his and held it sympathetically and asked him his name.
Marville.
Marville, my friend, is there fighting again between the Christians and the houngans?
Oui.
Marville, we are not part of this problem. We only want to speak with the houngan. He is my friend. Where is he?
Marville pulled his hand away and replaced it on the stock of the gun and pointed with the barrel toward the temple that formed the center of the U-shaped compound.
Inside.
There’s no one there but a boy, said Tom. Where is the houngan?
He is the houngan, said Marville.
Bòkò St. Jean is the houngan, said Tom.
He is not here.
Marville, like most peasants being questioned by a white man, was not generous with his answers and Tom persisted.
When did he go? he asked the peasant and was told After the harvest, and Tom said, My friend, when was that?
Two weeks ago, maybe.
Was that the time the white woman was killed near Tintayen?
I don’t know.
Did Marville know the white woman? Marville said he did not.
You don’t know the white woman who came with a white man and made a sacrifice of two bulls?
Yes, I remember her.
She was killed on the road two weeks ago.
Yes, I remember.
The night she was killed, was that the night Bòkò St. Jean went away?
Yes, said Marville, it’s possible.
Was Bòkò St. Jean dechouked?
It’s possible, monsieur.
Why else would he go away?
I don’t know.
Is he dead?
I don’t know.
Is he coming back?
I don’t know.
Do you know who killed the white woman?
No.
Why do you say the houngan is inside?
The boy, according to Marville, was the new houngan, a nephew of Bòkò St. Jean who had been trained by his uncle and now replaced him.
Bòkò St. Jean knew he was going away? asked Tom. Is that why he trained the boy?
I don’t know.
What is the new houngan’s name?
Toussaint.
We want to go back inside and make an offering to the lwas. Is this okay, my friend? Do you trust me?
Yes, said Marville, but Tom saw no trust in his eyes and did not expect it.
Fill me in, said Conrad Dolan.
It’s nothing, said Tom. Let’s go back and wake up that kid.
What for?
Did you ever see Jackie’s exhibit at the gallery in Tampa?
No, said Dolan, I never did, and Tom explained that in all likelihood the boy’s uncle had been one of Jackie’s favored subjects.
The relevance would be what? asked Dolan.
Tom swung open the door to the hounfour and paused before going in, turning back to Dolan. And when Woodrow Singer talks about the devil, he said, devil worshippers, evil, his implicati
on is clear.
Not to me it isn’t, said Dolan.
The point is this. The voodoo priest we came to see, this guy’s uncle, disappeared the night the girl was killed.
What about Parmentier? said Dolan. Was he hanging around here too with the boogeyman?
I don’t know, said Tom, stepping into the darkness. You probably want to ask him.
The youth had not moved from his sprawl on the pallet and Tom stooped and tapped his shoulder, calling his name, staring into his soft face until Toussaint’s crabbed fingers flattened on his chest and he awoke, bleared eyes swimming in and out of focus, puffed lips rolling across his teeth, and Harrington guessed the young man had spent the morning drinking although his breath did not smell of rum and when he swung his legs in front of him and sat up off balance and looked at them as if they were walruses, Tom began to feel there was something wrong with the boy more serious than a hangover. Narcotics? Perhaps the youth was mildly retarded. Whatever it was, Toussaint seemed glazed with slowness, and he intermittently jerked his head as if trying to shake it clear from a blow.
Tom asked him where is the houngan, and Toussaint said I am the houngan, with ludicrous self-importance. Tom said I mean your uncle, Bòkò St. Jean, and Toussaint said, C’est moi, it’s me. To every question Tom asked about his uncle or the girl, Toussaint insisted he must ask the lwas.
You can summon the lwas? asked Tom.
Mais oui. I am the houngan.
Ask him who owns a red motorcycle, said Dolan, restless with skepticism. Did you ask him that?
Will the lwas tell me about your uncle and the white woman?
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover Page 21
