Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  “David, what is the matter?”

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked, still whispering.

  “What what is?”

  He waved his arm at the forest in a left-to-right motion that encompassed everything before them. “Marijuana,” he said almost reverently. “Acres of it. Maybe even miles of it. This is enough weed...do you know what this is worth? Son of a bitch! Do you know how many people, what kind of organizational structure would be required—?”

  “This is why Paul moved the equipment back down the road,” she said.

  “I’d say so. I’d also say it’s why he’s dead and why the equipment is dead. Whoever runs this operation can’t afford to have a road come through here.”

  She released a sigh of relief, a breath of worry she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “I suppose that means we can eliminate Philippe Collette as the responsible party. He was too anxious to have this road finished.”

  “Who owns this land? The government?”

  She nodded. “From just north of here, all the way south, to the coast. That’s partially why this site was chosen. Why? What are you thinking?”

  “This is not a virgin crop, Carole Ann, this field has been here a while. And this isn’t the few plants of an aging hippie or even the cash crop of a Rasta man. This is big business. This is agri-business. This is a farm, a commercial operation, and an operation like this takes money to keep it going and power to keep the world away from it. You got any thoughts on who could be behind this?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. But I’ve got some questions and concerns, too, David, not to mention contractual obligations to the government of Isle de Paix. So do you, for that matter.” She had spoken calmly and quietly, in a tone of voice devoid of emotion. In her best lawyer voice. David Messinger had been a cop too long to be swayed by the tone of voice or to be able to overlook a marijuana farm.

  He grabbed her shoulder, his voice and eyes hard with anger. “If you think I’m going to turn a blind eye—”

  She slapped his hand away then took a step toward him, causing him to blink and back peddle. “I’m an officer of the court and it’s not my habit to break the law, but it won’t help us to merely to blow the whistle on this crop. We need to know who’s behind this.”

  “And why the fuck do we need to know that?” His voice was low and controlled but he was so angry that spittle formed at the corners of his mouth.

  “Because,” she replied in the same calm, emotionless tone, “whoever is capable of something this large is a deadly threat to the government of this island. Destroying a marijuana field won’t put that person out of business, which, I’m sure you would agree, would only make your job a living hell. You may as well have stayed in Chicago. Destroying this crop without destroying its owner is the same as arresting a street dealer, David, and you know it.”

  They stared at each other for a moment until his anger ebbed. “You’re right.” He said. “So who do you think could be responsible—” He stopped and sniffed the air as a stiff breeze wafted through the tree tops, causing them to sway gently. “Do you smell that?” He tilted his head back, wrinkled his nose, and, animal-like, sought to determine the direction of whatever smell had caught his olfactory attention. “It’s fresh but it’s unmistakable. And it’s coming from over there,” he said, his voice lowered to something less than a whisper, pointing toward his left. He raised the pistol that he still held in his right hand and took a step toward whatever he smelled. Carole Ann moved to follow and he turned toward her. “You may want to wait for me. If I’m right, what I smell is dead body.”

  She grimaced, backed up a step, and waved him forward, though she remained tense and on guard. She kept him in sight even as her eyes scanned the forest around her, still focusing in wonderment on the marijuana. It seemed carved into the forest floor. David was right: A tremendous amount of work went into this enterprise, including, she imagined, the use of farm or other excavation equipment. That would have been practically the only way to clear this much forest for cultivation, and the marijuana plants seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance. For acres, if not for miles. And who on this island possessed sufficient money and power not only to imagine such an enterprise but to orchestrate it? Who on this island had access to a backhoe and a bulldozer? Two names came to mind: Hubert de Villages and Henri LeRoi.

  She started at the sound of rustling foliage and focused her attention— and her eyes— on the direction where she’d last seen Messinger. He had disappeared.

  “Damn,” she muttered to herself, inhaling deeply and stepping off on her left foot in the direction he’d gone in search of what had smelled to him like a corpse. “Double damn,” she muttered again, then swung back around right at the sound of rustling. It wasn’t coming from Messinger’s direction. She raised the gun just as Denis St.Almain stepped into view.

  “I’m still not armed,” he said quietly, raising his hands, “and I need to talk to you again. It’s important.”

  “Damn straight it is,” she snapped, aiming the gun at him, “but Yvette Casson is who you need to talk to.”

  He looked at her sadly and lowered his hands. “I didn’t know you were bringing police to the island,” he said with a shrug, “but it is you that I will speak with, not your chief.”

  They both jumped at the gun’s retort, a sound so loud in the quiet forest it could have been a jet breaking the sound barrier. Then Messinger’s voice was calling her name. Urgently. For only a moment she locked eyes with Denis St. Almain, then she turned and ran the other way, toward the sound of Messinger’s voice, calling his name as she ran, gun held out in front of her.

  “Here!” He hadn’t gone very far, but the underbrush that grew on the northern edge of the marijuana field was thick and the trees were ancient and massive. He was leaning against the base of one of them, holding his right arm with his left hand, the gun in his right hand dangling uselessly at his side. Blood oozed between the fingers of his left hand and there was a body at his feet. Carole Ann looked at him, at the body, and back at him. He shook his head. “I didn’t do him. He’s what I smelled. I didn’t even see who shot me.”

  She gave him a disgusted look and shook her head. “What kind of shit magnet are you, Messinger? Not in town a week and you stick me with two murders, an arson, and major league drug dealing. Any chance Chicago would take you back?”

  “Jesus,” he said with a grimace. “And Jake Graham told me to be nice to you?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Carole Ann was exhausted. She’d been arguing non-stop with David Messinger for three days and she was tired of the continual confrontations and tired of him. She and Jake argued— sometimes for days on end— but their arguments served to refine their individual points of view and to bring them, eventually, to a consensus. The arguments with Messinger seemed to serve no purpose. They simply disagreed on most matters and they neither liked nor trusted each other enough for either to feel comfortable yielding to the other. She had initially thought that since they both had the best interests of the government at heart that would serve as a bridge to common ground. When that failed, she held out hope that since he’d once been a criminal defense attorney, having a shared profession would instigate some desire for harmony. She no longer believed harmony possible. So, control of the situation was her only option. It was power play time.

  She paced back and forth before Philippe’s Collette’s massive desk, the attorney performing for judge and jury. David Messinger sprawled in a fragile-looking side chair, his long legs splayed out before him, and C.A. knew that if this were elementary school and they were adolescents, he’d trip her in a heartbeat. But they were in the office of the head of state that they both served and decorum, if nothing else, would prevail. Messinger wanted to stage a series of raids, with help from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Coast Guard, looking for evidence of marijuana cultivation, harvesting, packaging, and shipping. It would have to be a sizeable operation, he�
��d argued, more than a couple of boxes of baggies and a scale. And, simultaneously, while the raids were taking place, the marijuana field would be torched. Two birds with one stone, he said, effectively shutting down a major drug cultivation and distribution ring.

  Carole Ann’s first point on rebuttal— that even on a Caribbean island, cops didn’t conduct raids on bicycles— drew blood, and she forged ahead, relentless. She reminded Philippe how close to impossible putting out the fire in the excavation equipment had been, and asked him to imagine the potential for disaster brought on by setting fire to a square mile of forest. And employing the alternative— chemical deforestation— posed danger of a different kind, she warned, pointing out that many islanders relied on the land and on the sea for food and that poisonous runoff could threaten plant, animal and marine life for years. She warned that bringing in the DEA signaled that the island had trouble of the unmanageable kind, and that such a signal would most likely frighten off foreign aid— especially U.S. aid. And, further, any sign of such instability certainly would threaten tourism, not to mention the restoration of diplomatic relations with certain nations.

  “What would you have us do, then? Allow the marijuana to grow unchecked? Allow it to be harvested and sent on to wherever it goes? That just is not acceptable, Carole Ann! Doing nothing is not an option!” The president pounded his desk with his fist and several small items jumped.

  “Of course it’s not,” C.A. replied reasonably. “But in its own perverse way, in this instance, doing nothing, for the moment, will be perceived to be an impressive action.” Messinger snorted in disgust and she strode over to him. “Haven’t you ever deliberately and intentionally not responded in the conventional or expected way as a ruse, as a tactic, as a means of throwing your opponent off guard?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yeah. So?”

  “They— whoever they are— expect us to do something predictable: To attempt to destroy the plants, to thrash around in the woods looking for clues of some kind, maybe even to stage random raids. But two things they certainly do not expect: For us to make no mention of the marijuana and for us to keep digging our road.”

  The silence was deep and eerie, the kind that very often fostered self-conscious— and inappropriate— giggles. Carole Ann was fighting to keep control of the one that was lurking in her throat. Repeated swallowing wasn’t working and she was on the verge of losing it when Messinger let go a wild bark of laughter.

  “Just like cops don’t stage raids on bicycles, nobody digs roads with picks and shovels any more. And even if you could wave some magic wand and materialize a bulldozer, are you really thinking you can just plow ahead, like nothing happened?”

  She nodded. “What happened, exactly, David? There was a tragic accident that caused the destruction of some equipment, and the foreman, who shouldn’t have been operating the equipment without authorization anyway, lost his life. Who said anything about marijuana or a dead body or the minister of internal security being shot?”

  “Mon dieu! I’d forgotten about the body!” Philippe jumped to his feet and rushed around the desk. “But surely you don’t think they forgot it?”

  “That’s not what she’s saying.” Messinger now stood, too, cradling his bandaged right arm in the palm of his left hand. “And you’re not really saying that we should do nothing, are you? You’re saying nothing happened. That is, whatever happened is what everybody saw happen, right? But since nobody but us saw the plants, nobody but us knows about the body, nobody but us knows how I got hurt.”

  “Nobdy but those responsible,” Carole Ann replied.

  “Yvette Casson knows,” Philippe interjected.

  “She’s the chief of police, Mr. President. She’s on our side,” David shot back, carelessly unaware that he’d offended his boss. “But this doctor, the one who has both the bodies and who removed the bullet from my arm—”

  “He’s my son,” Philippe replied drily. “He’s on our side, too.” He rubbed his hands together rapidly as if to warm them, then he shoved them into his pockets. Deep furrows creased his forehead and he chewed his bottom lip. “Surely it cannot be so simple, Carole Ann, to avoid such a large problem. Tell me what dangers we face if we proceed as you have proposed.”

  “The preeminent danger is that whoever owns that field will attack again— attack equipment and people operating the equipment and the police sent there to protect them and, therefore, that more people will die. There is the danger that somebody working on the road crew will recognize the marijuana for what it is, tell his friends, and spark a harvesting frenzy in the woods that will make Woodstock look like a Sunday school picnic. There is the danger that word of this field will find its way outside the island, attracting competing elements and setting the stage for something too ugly to contemplate. There is the danger that what I propose is wrong and wrong-headed.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “No, Mr. President, I don’t think so. I think that it is our best, if not, under the circumstances, our only option. We don’t know what we’re up against, or who. Our best hope is to throw them off guard by not being predictable and hope to force some action or some behavior that will expose them.”

  “And that’s all you want the police to do? To sit around waiting for whoever “they” are to make a mistake?” Messinger was icy in his anger. “I’m not that kind of cop, Carole Ann.” And he turned toward Collette. “And I thought you hired me, Sir, because of my expertise in law enforcement and because of my connections to law enforcement agencies. The DEA—”

  Philippe cut him off with an iciness of his own that shocked and surprised Carole Ann. “I will not have the DEA involved in the affairs of this government.”

  She stepped quickly into the space where David Messinger’s anger was about to collide with Philippe Collette’s. “I don’t like sitting around very much myself, David, but there are times when sitting and waiting—and watching—can prove useful.”

  He jumped on that with both feet. “Watching? What do you have in mind?” He was exhibiting classic cop behavior, twitching and practically salivating, already having forgotten or dismissed his pique and not getting his way.

  “I’d guess that “they” will be anxious to protect any product that’s ready to ship, especially if they’re anticipating aggressive action on our part. So, watching the coast, especially on the north end of the island...”

  Messinger grinned and it didn’t require too active an imagination to see the feathers in his mouth. “I had planned to get acquainted with the Coast Guard commandant for this region.”

  Yvette Casson was easier to convince to play possum than her boss, but perhaps that was because she’d spent more time chasing street-level drug dealers than Messinger. The only part of the plan she didn’t like was staking out the construction site at night. Although all the cops— herself included— had roots and ties in the Caribbean, she was the only one who actually had lived on an island. The others were city cops, from Miami and New York and Atlanta and D.C., one generation removed from Jamaica and Haiti and Trinidad. They could stake out an urban ghetto with no problem. But a tropical jungle, at night, in the dark? She shook her head. “They’d rather eyeball an AK-47 than a tree snake. And they’re not the only ones.”

  Carol Ann shared the feeling. “Don’t panic yet, Yvette. First I’ve got to get something for them to guard.”

  Roland Charles was full of ideas on that score. He’d already contacted former colleagues at the Georgia Department of Transportation and had identified several pieces of surplus road excavating equipment slated for the junk heap. The next step was to get the stuff donated to Isle de Paix. “The city and state governments donate surplus and used computers to third world countries as a matter of policy, so why not surplus backhoes and bulldozers?” She found that she didn’t have to worry that he had noticed the miscue between herself and Yvette on the day of the fire, or if he had noticed, he hadn’t attached significance to it. He was completely convinced th
at the destruction of the equipment and the death of Paul Francois were tragic accidents, and accidents not to be repeated. To that end he had organized training sessions for the road crew, and the Toussaint Remy-led mechanics-in-training classes resumed, though the old man was resistant: Because he’d burned his hands trying to save Francois and salvage his equipment, he now needed to rely on photocopied engine schematics and verbal lectures instead of his preferred hands-on approach.

  Though her enthusiastic support for the interior minister’s plans and programs was genuine, Carole Ann’s relief was fueled by the knowledge that not having to keep an eye on him meant that she could freely pursue other avenues, namely, those that would lead her to Hubert de Villages and Henri LeRoi. She was uncertain how to access the island’s oldest, richest, and most powerful inhabitant, but she knew exactly what path she would take to its former dictator, the fact that he was thousands of miles away notwithstanding.

  “What madness is this?” Odile Laurance, hands on silk draped, substantial hips, cocked her head and literally looked sideways at Carole Ann. “Where do you get such nonsense, you Americans?”

  Carole Ann was left momentarily speechless, which provided Odile time and space for an uninterrupted tirade against the presumptuous nature of colonists in general, and Americans in particular, which, under other circumstances, she might have found absurdly amusing. But Odile was genuinely disturbed and Carole Ann found herself genuinely annoyed. “It’s what he himself told me, Odile, not something I invented.”