Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  “Nope. But then I haven’t had time to go looking for them, either.”

  “Then don’t worry about making the time,” he snapped. “Worry about getting that equipment running and let Messinger and the new chief worry about St. Almain and his sleaze balls.”

  She ignored that quip and changed the subject. “Will it be troublesome getting parts shipped in?” she asked, having allowed herself to imagine that the backhoe and the trucks would need to be entirely reconstructed.

  “Not if the parts are available. But if that stuff is a hundred years old, then yeah, getting parts will be a bitch, though still easier and cheaper than sending in new equipment. Which reminds me, all your cop stuff is leaving here by boat tomorrow morning and should reach you by the middle of next week, at the latest. And I heard you change the subject on me a minute ago, so let me say this: I like that security minister and his new police chief, so be nice to ‘em, C.A., please. Don’t piss ‘em off in the first hour they’re on the bloody island.”

  She allowed herself a few uncharitable thoughts about her partner while she prepared and ate her dinner— not Viviene LeRoi’s sautéed seafood, but a very passable pasta primavera. A nice Italian touch, she thought, in the midst of so many things French. “And a lot less work,” she muttered to herself, pouring another glass of Chardonnay.

  She finished her meal, cleaned the kitchen, brought the wine into the living room and settled herself into the couch. She’d have preferred working in the library, but the she found the rows of empty bookshelves strangely unnerving. She also found the sofa in the office weirdly uncomfortable; it clearly was intended for brief business meetings and she knew she’d be several hours poring over the background reports on the island’s ministers of government, and sorting out the growing list of questions she needed to find answers to, Jake’s pissy admonitions not withstanding. Just because she didn’t believe that Philippe Collette was a double-dealing dirt bag didn’t mean that she thought he wore a halo. On the contrary, she thought the new president greatly flawed: Something enormously ugly was afoot in his domain and he was completely unaware. Add to that an apparent inability to judge talent (if Roland Charles was any indication) and Jackie LaBelle’s prediction of Collette as a one-termer was a horse worth betting on. But just maybe Roland was the exception, she thought, as she re-read the file on the Minister of Internal Security.

  David Messenger was an American-born white man, a Chicago cop who’d become a lawyer who had worked both sides of the table, as a prosecutor and as a defense attorney. He was a hard-liner—he didn’t like crime or criminals— but he was without the Us-vs.-Them view so many cops possessed regarding citizens. Messinger actually believed that police officers were, and should view themselves, as public servants. He abhorred the increasing violence bestowed on citizens by its law enforcement personnel, and when he quit his job with the police force, it was because, as the deputy chief in charge of the training academy, he had refused to issue the “two to the head, one to the chest” order to new recruits as their first response to being threatened. Like every resident of a big city, he was alarmed by the number of homeless people who were psychotic, neurotic, and generally deranged, but he didn’t believe that they should be killed because they exhibited “threatening” behavior. He also didn’t believe they should be allowed to sleep in the parks and the public libraries, take a piss whenever and wherever the need presented itself, and hustle money on every corner.

  “No wonder Jake likes you,” she muttered as she reached the section of the report that detailed how Messinger, after he quit the police force, attended law school, entered private practice, and quickly grew disenchanted and disgusted with the revolving door that literally could return criminals to the street before arresting officers completed their paperwork. So he became a prosecutor, a ruthless one who worked tirelessly to rid society of some of its most vicious and violent and incorrigible criminals. And then Messinger learned that words of the law weren’t necessarily the reality of the law; that innocent until proven guilty was a lofty goal and little more; that a poor person, particularly a poor person of color, was as good as convicted if charged with a felony; that the system didn’t make mistakes, and if it did, it never admitted it. Nobody charged with a crime was ever innocent. And at the age of fifty-three, with his youngest child in college, David Messinger had allowed his Caribbean-born wife to convince him that retirement would be sweeter in her homeland. Then he allowed her to convince him to go to work for the new president of Isle de Paix.

  “You don’t sound like the kind of boss who wouldn’t know where all the keys were,” she said musingly, dropping the Messinger file to the floor and opening the Casson file. She sat up straight. Yvette Casson was the new police chief. A woman police chief! OK, so perhaps Monsieur le President wasn’t a great judge of talent, but he was an equal opportunity employer. She quickly paged through the other folders, learning nothing new.

  She yawned and propped the yellow legal pad on to her knees, wishing she had something to write, some notes or thoughts or observations, but she received not a single hint that anyone on the island had a clue about who had killed the two constables. No one would discuss the matter beyond a display of horror that the attack had occurred, and not a soul believed that Philippe could be in danger. And yet Carole Ann believed that he was. She closed her eyes and envisioned the dead-end road leading to the presidential yacht: An isolated, secluded location in the dark, a perfect location for an assassination. She didn’t believe for a second that Philippe’s boat was boarded by accident or that the attack was random, nor did she have any way to prove her suspicions.

  She stood and stretched and yawned again. She would get up early in the morning and go for a run, then, perhaps do a few laps in the pool. Then, she decided, she would confront Roland Charles. She would make it impossible for him not to do his job. She would hound him until they got that machinery operable, in front of Philippe Collette if necessary. She gathered her papers and lugged them down the hallway and into the office and dropped the load on the desk. She stood there for a moment, shuffling through the mound of paperwork, wanting to be certain there was nothing she’d left undone that day. Then she turned off the light and went to bed.

  She sat straight up, her heart pounding so hard her chest hurt. What the hell was that noise? The alarm! The damn motion detectors that Harold Collins had installed! Somebody was in the house. She snatched the pistol from beneath the mattress and crept silently to the doorway, though it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d stomped; the damn alarm sounded like a World War II air raid siren. She peeked around the corner, saw a shadow move, and bolted down the hallway toward it. She was barefoot and soundless and the shadowy figure trying to force open the French doors in the living was unaware of her presence.

  “Don’t move, I have a gun,” she called out, simultaneously pressing the light switch, illuminating the room.

  Dennis St. Almain turned to face her, his hands raised. “I am unarmed, Madame,” he said in his low voice.

  “I am relieved,” she replied drily, lowering her gun. “And I’d appreciate your remaining where you are until I can shut off this horrendous noise.” She went in search of the control panel, marveling at the absurdity of the entire scenario. Who could she tell it to who’d have the proper response, which would be to laugh? For, despite the howling of the alarm, the system wasn’t monitored by any external entity and there were no police to respond even if it were. And the intruder, who may or may not be a drug-dealing murderer, was standing by politely, as requested, while she disarmed the only security system that was at her disposal.

  They both sighed when the house suddenly was returned to silence. Denis St. Almain broke the silence. “I suppose I should have thought that you would have alarms,” he said quietly and calmly, “though Henri never cared for security systems. I wouldn’t have entered through the window had I known such a sound would result.”

  “The door would have worked just as well,” sh
e replied, and waited for him to explain why he’d broken in. “So?” she demanded sharply when no explanation was forthcoming.

  “So what?” he questioned.

  “Why did you break in here, Denis? Why not ring the damn bell and come in the front door, instead of breaking in like a criminal?”

  He shrugged cavalierly though she read the hint of embarrassment in his face. “I wanted to find out exactly how much you know.”

  “So in addition to breaking and entering, you planned to rifle my office?”

  He raised his hands, palms forward, to ward off her anger. “You’re correct, of course, to be angry, and I apologize. For my rudeness, and for frightening you.”

  And she most certainly had been frightened. Carole Ann shuddered, and looked down at herself. “Since we’re being so polite, Monsieur St. Almain,” she said drily, “please have a seat. I’ll dress more appropriately and return. There’s food and drink in the refrigerator if you’re hungry. You obviously know your way around.” And she heard him mutter something as she whipped around and hurried down the hallway to her bedroom, trying not to think how she must have appeared, standing there in panties and a tank top, pointing an unloaded pistol. Of course, he hadn’t known that it was unloaded and Jake would kill her if he knew.

  He was seated on a stool at the island in kitchen eating the remains of her dinner salad with a baguette and a hunk of camembert when she returned, wearing jeans and a tee shirt. She took a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and two glasses from the rack overhead. She opened the wine and poured it and he nodded his thanks, all the while chewing with an intensity that she found interesting. She couldn’t tell whether it was a result of hunger or merely a manifestation of his personality. The surreal nature of the scene increased when she opened the drawer and removed and paring knife and he flinched. She slowly reached for the bowl of apples and pears at her elbow and he relaxed. She sliced the fruit, placed some on a napkin, and shoved it toward him and he, in turn, broke off a piece of cheese and shoved it toward her. And for several moments they ate fruit and cheese and drank wine as if they were friends and he an invited guest.

  She watched him while he ate and he seemed not to mind; at least, he didn’t seem to feel self-conscious. But then, she wasn’t staring, she was observing, and what she saw confirmed her earlier assessment of him, based on the fleeting court appearance: He was a polite and well-bred man, soft-spoken, shy, almost. If she had to guess, she’d guess that both Hazel and Simone had been correct in their assertions that Denis St.Almain was no criminal. But who was he?

  “Odile Laurance told me what you said and I find it very difficult to believe, though I do believe it. Would you please, Miss Gibson, tell me everything? How did my mother come to ask for your assistance?”

  And she told him everything, beginning with Hazel Copeland’s Sunday morning visit and ending with her conversation with Odile Laurance the previous night. He listened intently if impassively, registering emotion only once, when she told of Simone’s showing her and Jake the envelope with the DEA pay stubs inside. All the color drained from his face and he bit his bottom lip. Too hard, Carole Ann thought; he was struggling too hard to maintain control, and he bit his lip too hard.

  “I am not a drug dealer, Miss Gibson. I did not kill Judge Campos. I was an undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration until...I don’t really know exactly when they cut me loose; they didn’t bother to tell me. I didn’t know that I was out in the cold until I was left to rot in that damn D.C. jail cell. No arrangements were made, as usual, for my release. Judge Campos had no idea that he was expected to reduce my bail; I know that now.” He stopped talking and his breathing became shallow and audible. Carole Ann poured more wine in his glass and he gulped it like it was water.

  “Who killed Judge Campos?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Can you make an educated guess?” she pressed him and he shrugged and his eyes narrowed, as if he were looking into the distance.

  “Perhaps, if I knew some things...no, I’m sorry, I can’t. I don’t know,” he finally said, sounding helpless and exasperated. “What I do know is that I was cut loose and left to dangle in the wind. I did find out that the network of dealers that I had infiltrated—the real drug dealers— managed to get word of a major bust and not one of them was around when the raid went down. But I was around, and the drugs were in a storage locker rented in my name, and my prints were the only ones on the locker. Two million dollars worth of cocaine and marijuana and I’ve got the key to the locker in my pocket and the house where I said the dealers would be with another million dollars in cash empty and so clean the cops doubted that anybody had lived there in the last year.” He rubbed his eyes, then his head, and he looked a little surprised to find so little hair there. She wondered how long he’d worn the dredlocks.

  “Who were the real dealers?” she asked, “people you’d known and associated with for a while?”

  He shook head. “I’d been in contact with them for about three weeks, and the only thing I knew about them is that they were Trinidadian, and I knew that because I know island people, not because my boss told me.”

  “So, if the DEA hung you out to dry, what would make them have a change of heart and arrange you release from jail?”

  “There was no change of heart,” he spat in his first display of real anger. “My mother begged and begged my father and he somehow raised the money. And then what do I do? Run away! His entire life savings and everything he could borrow thrown away! But once the judge was killed, I knew I had no choice but to leave.”

  “Of course you had a choice!” she retorted.

  “Oh, give me a break! All you people who sit on the sidelines with your stupid ‘just say no’ mentality. I tell you, I had no choice!”

  “Why did you come back here?” she asked, foiling his attempt to put her on the defensive, and failing in hers to put him there.

  “Because the answers are here,” he said simply, and her heart skipped a beat.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly, “and I need some time to figure out some things. I need to go talk to my father, and I need your help, Miss Gibson.”

  She emptied her glass and stood up, shaking her head. “I don’t know what you think I can do, and, in any case, I may not be able to help you, if your interests would be in direct conflict with the interests of my client.”

  “Of course. I’m sure the contract with Philippe Collette’s government is much more lucrative that the one with Mom’s hotel to find me,” he replied bitterly.

  “Damn right it is,” Carole Ann snapped unapologetically and walked to the door, intending to open it and show him out. But something about his expression stopped her. “Look, Denis, I promised your mother and Mrs. Copeland that I would talk to you and, to the extent that I could do so without creating a conflict of interest with my other client, that I would help you prove your innocence. But if you’re telling me that the answer is on this island, there’s no way that whatever it is can’t impact and endanger my contract, especially if illegal drugs are involved. I’m sorry, Denis. I really am,” she said, and was surprised to find that she meant it.

  “If you could just wait until I can meet with my father, Miss Gibson! Please don’t make a decision until then. I need a few days, maybe even a week. Can you allow me that much time?”

  “The time isn’t mine to give you, Denis.”

  “But you have influence, Miss Gibson. You can buy the extra week that I need.”

  She shifted impatiently. “By now you’ve no doubt heard about the murders of the two constables.” She made it a statement and not a question and waited for his reaction. He surprised her by smiling.

  “And you want to know whether I’m responsible.” He also made a statement, not a question.

  “I want to know who is responsible, yes. Do you know?”

  He kept his smile in place but shook his head. “I don’t kn
ow and I don’t know anyone who knows. Unless, of course, you think les tantes would have knowledge such a thing.” Then his smile faded and he locked eyes with her, the defiance returned.

  “Who is your father, Denis, that a conversation with him could prove so enlightening?” She intended the sarcasm to be as pronounced as it was, and she therefore was caught in a rare and unfamiliar position resembling embarrassment when Denis St.Almain responded quietly, gently almost:

  “Henri LeRoi.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Carole Ann was so wired the following morning, despite a four-mile run and a twenty-minute session in the lap pool, that she literally could not contain herself. That intensity manifested itself in behavior that, if pressed to put a name to it, she would have had to admit to being bitchy. But Roland Charles was too refined to call her a bitch even though she had hounded him to the point that, by noon, she not only had the keys to all the vehicles in the Little Haiti warehouse, she knew the location of the storage shed where, Monsieur Charles assured her, she should expect to find a supply of engine oil and brake and transmission fluids, in addition to an underground gasoline storage tank. And, he’d added with a flourish and a chest puffed out with self-satisfaction, the former head of island maintenance, one Toussaint L’Overture Remy, would meet her at le gare— that’s what he called the warehouse— at one o’clock that afternoon.

  Toussaint Remy looked as ancient as the Haitian hero for whom he was named. He was gnarled and withered, his sparse hair snow white and hugging his head like a cap, his eyes watery and cloudy. And he spoke no English, only island patois that was so difficult for Carole Ann to understand that she first thought she’d need to send for a translator. In fact, she wished fervently that Warren Forchette were present. The Louisiana native who was part Creole and part Cajun spoke a version of French that she could understand only by listening very carefully, and demanding that he speak very slowly. What she discovered during her conversation with Toussaint Remy was that he could, if he chose, speak perfectly understandable French. He merely chose not to, in defiance of the upper class, upper crust snobs who looked down on people like himself. So, they reached an agreement of sorts: Carole Ann spoke to him in the French that she knew and which he understood, and he responded in the French that he chose to speak, sprinkling it with enough of Carole Ann’s French that they could effectively converse.