Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  “I will read this, David, and very carefully, I assure you. But I do think talk of hanging is premature.”

  “Even after what happened to you?” He was incredulous. “You’re held at gunpoint on a boat in the middle of the ocean and I’m being premature?”

  “For crying out loud, David, I don’t want them hung!”

  “Then what should we do with them, Carole Ann? Send them to their rooms without dinner? In case it didn’t occur to you, that was about more than trespassing. You don’t use AK-47s to discourage trespassers,” he snapped at her.

  “The damn thing shouldn’t be used for anything except war,” she snapped right back, not caring that she was on the verge of being angry enough to say something to him that Jake might wish she hadn’t said.

  “You’re entitled to your opinion,” he responded stiffly, “but I’m responsible for the safety and security of everyone on this island, you included. And in case this thought hadn’t occurred to you, imagine the uproar it would cause for you, of all people, to be assassinated here. I won’t stand for it! A Coast Guard drug interdiction craft will, at our invitation, pay a surprise visit to the north coast one day during the next week or so—”

  Now Carole Ann was more than annoyed, she was alarmed. “David, we had an agreement—”

  “I knew you’d say that.” e shook his head sadly, his worst fears come true. “Our agreement, Carole Ann, covered only activities and events involving construction of New Government Road. I never agreed to ignore hostage taking, especially with a minister of this government being one of the victims. And if it happens...” and he raised a hand to forestall her interruption. “...if it happens that rousting that bunch of hoodlums affects the pot field investigation, then so be it.” And he turned away from her and headed toward his desk. She headed out the door.

  Fortunately, her meeting with Roland Charles was brief. Neither had any new or pertinent information for the other. She left him and went in search of Jackie LaBelle. She wanted to know more about that Inter-Island Memorandum that had left David Messinger feeling so smug. Whatever it was, it would have, Carole Ann reasoned, involved or required some elements of diplomacy and protocol. After all, governments never just decided or agreed to do something and then did it. The rules and the language of protocol and diplomacy prevailed: Who sits where during the discussion, who enters the room first, who leaves the room first, who takes the first drink of wine. Jackie was Isle de Paix’s only diplomatic officer and Carole Ann fervently hoped that she had been involved in any discussion with other islands regarding the death penalty. She shuddered to think of David Messinger being the only voice heard on the subject.

  She walked down the wide marble stairway to the first floor of Government House, then turned down the corridor that led to Jackie’s cubbyhole of an office. The title of Diplomatic Liaison may have sounded impressive, but it carried with it no trappings of grandeur. “If you’re looking for Jacqueline, Madame Gibson, she is not here.” Carole Ann turned to face a young woman she’d never seen before. She had emerged from a door upon which was stenciled, in black lettering, MINISTRY OF FINANCE.

  “Yes, I am looking for Jackie LeBelle,” Carole Ann replied, wondering how someone she’d never seen before not only knew who she was, but knew what she wanted. What else did she know? “Would you happen to know where I might find her, or when she might return?”

  The woman was very young, not much more than twenty, Carole Ann guessed, and her clothes were not those of a secretary or other administrative personnel one would expect to find in a government building; nor was her speech that of the civil servant. This girl would be more at home at the country club if she didn’t seem so sad and unhappy. She looked at Carole Ann with dull, expressionless eyes. “She went off-island for the weekend and is expected to return by noon.” And she closed the door behind her and slouched off down the hallway, her posture a screaming testament to her unhappiness, her brushed silk ensemble proclaiming just as loudly her misplacement in a government office building. Carole Ann watched her, a slight frown bothering her face. How and why would that young woman know how Jackie LaBelle spent her weekend? She added that question to the list she had for Jackie and hurried off down the hallway in the opposite direction.

  She disarmed the alarm control panel when she entered the kitchen door. The fact that it still was on and armed meant that Denis St.Almain had not tried to leave. Clean pots, pans, and dishes in the sink drain indicated that he had eaten. She trod quietly down the hall. The first door on the right was three-quarters closed. She stood listening for a moment, detecting a light snoring, then she continued down the hall to the office. She wrinkled her brow at the pile of paper on the floor in front of the table. “What in the world!” She scooped up a handful and began reading and realized that it was the information she’d asked Jake to send, then quickly gathered up all the pages, anxious to begin reading. “Bless you, Patty!” she whispered, noting that the pages were numbered.

  She plopped down in the desk chair, dropped her purse and briefcase on the floor, and began ordering the pages. There were thirty-seven of them. She began reading. It was fascinating and useful, the gist of it being that the Le Rois and the Collettes had been trading positions at the helm of the Isle de Paix government for half a century, and that the Collettes and the de Villages had been wielding economic power for longer than that. She took a clean yellow legal pad from the desk and began making quick notes to synthesize the material.

  Isle de Paix won independence from France in 1960. At the time, Reginald Collette was the last French-appointed territorial governor. At independence, he appointed Marcel LeRoi interim prime minister, pending the island’s first elections, which LeRoi won, only to die in office a year into his term, plunging the island into chaos. There was widespread speculation of foul play in Marcel LeRoi’s death, though no supporting evidence ever was produced. Hubert de Villages was appointed to serve out Marcel LeRoi’s term and he held the office, without ever scheduling an election, for ten years, when he decided that he no longer wanted to be president. Andre Philippe Collette, the father of the current president, won the next election, in 1970, and remained in power until unseated in a coup by Henri LeRoi, the son of Marcel, the following year.

  There they were— two of the four names that Odile and Viviene said controlled the economic destiny of Isle de Paix— de Villages and Collette. She thumbed through the papers, looking for du Mas and Chartres, stopping to read when she found them, finding herself strangely disappointed to learn that the original du Mas and Chartres colonists had arrived in the Caribbean with land grants from the French king in the early 1880s, and little more: A Chartres had held a position of power in the government when de Villages was president, and a du Mas had served the first Collette government as finance minister. Both families left Isle de Paix en masse when Henri LeRoi overthrew Andre Collette and suspended what was passing for a democracy.

  Carole Ann sighed and tossed the papers aside. All of it was interesting, none of it was enlightening. What she was in search of was a secret, or at least some bit of information that could be construed to be damaging, if not damning. But there seemed to be nothing secret about the fact that the French aristocracy had, for years, openly and publically kept island women as mistresses and had, as a result, parallel families. It seemed, she mused, that it was only the Americans and the British who managed to be surprised by the discovery of Black family members carrying the same name and genes. So what that Marie-Ange was the granddaughter of Hubert de Villages? It seemed not to bother either of them; in fact, if island lore could be counted upon, the president’s wife embraced her connection to the island’s richest man. It mattered not that he was white and she was Black; they were family. And again Carole Ann was reminded of the Louisiana family that had become like family to her, people of Creole and Cajun and African descent who traversed the bayous and swamps with one major difference: They knew about but never openly acknowledged their ties to each other.
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br />   Carole Ann shuffled through the final pages, learning that Henri LeRoi’s father, Marcel, had been the first Black lawyer on the island, and that his mother, Antoinette, whom she had met just the day before, the first Black college-educated school teacher. She also was surprised to discover that Philippe and Marie-Ange were the parents of four children— two sons and two daughters. Maurice Collette, the physician, she knew, and she knew that one daughter was married and living in San Francisco and that the other daughter was a student at a Florida university. She had heard no mention of a second son who, according to the information before her, would be the youngest child, at twenty-two, and named Andre.

  Carole Ann sat up straight. Was this the Andre whose presence at their party had so startled Marie-Ange? And if so, why wouldn’t he have been as welcome a guest as Maurice? She leaned back in the chair, musing on the nature of family. Everybody on Isle de Paix knew that the wife of the president had a white grandfather. Nobody in New Orleans knew that Warren and Lillian Forchette had a white grandmother, and they’d never have wanted Carole Ann to know; and she wouldn’t have known, had that information not been crucial to the unraveling of a murder investigation. A missing sibling had been crucial to solving the murder in that case. And here, she thought with a sigh, was another unaccounted for sibling, and one unknown about sibling.

  The fax machine beeped. She hurried over to it and stuck out her hand impatiently. She grabbed the first sheet and began reading, growing more concerned with every sentence. Christian Leonard indeed had impressive credentials in French banking. He also belonged to an extreme right-wing political party and had paid for the defense of a band of hooligans who had attacked a family of Iranians for moving into “their” neighborhood. And he publically had espoused the belief that all persons of color should leave France. What the hell was a man like Leonard doing in a place like Isle de Paix?

  “I hope that what you’re thinking so hard about isn’t turning me in to the gendarmes.”

  She raised her eyes and looked directly into those of the ‘unknown about’ sibling. He’d found clean clothes— a denim shirt and jeans, both of which hung loosely on his slight frame, but at least he wasn’t wearing military camouflage— and she noticed that he’d shaved and given himself a manicure. But he needed a haircut and about twelve hours more sleep. She put thoughts of Christian Leonard aside and returned to the desk.

  “You certainly look better. Come in and have a seat.” She gestured to the facing love seats but he looked toward the conference table and chairs. “Wherever you’re comfortable,” she said.

  “You are one cool customer, Miss Gibson, I’ll give you that,” he said, his voice well-modulated, his tone cool, his English completely unaccented. He pulled one of the straight- backed chairs away from conference table, turned it to face her, and straddled it. “Thank you for...for not screaming bloody murder and calling the cops.” He paused. “You didn’t call them, did you?”

  She shook her head, then told him what she’d learned from Yvette Casson and David Messinger, then sat silently and watched him process the information. Then, surprising her, he said, “I hope Collette isn’t chicken-shit enough to enact a death penalty law here. Isle de Paix isn’t that kind of place.”

  “Isn’t what kind of place?”

  “A haven for drugs and dealers and murderers.”

  “Oh, please, Denis. What are you?”

  “Obviously not a drug dealer or a murderer, or I wouldn’t have been eating your porridge and sleeping in your bed, now would I?”

  “You’re amused?”

  “Not in the least,” he replied wearily. “What I am, in addition to being exhausted, is terrified that with the possible exception of you, my mother, and my father, the rest of the world does think the worst of me, and I don’t know how to prove I’m not a criminal.”

  “You can start by telling me what I need to know to help you prove it,” she said quickly.

  “Why would you help me? What’s in it for you?”

  “Successful execution of my contractual agreement with the government of this island.”

  “Bullshit!” he shot at her, standing up and striding across the room. “You could have come back here with the Minister of Internal Security and done wonders for your contract. You didn’t. Why?”

  She shrugged, holding his gaze in hers.

  “Why do you believe in my innocence, Miss Gibson?” He asked the question with child-like simplicity, and an almost child-like voice.

  “Because Hazel Copeland believes in your innocence.”

  His face opened in a wide, full smile, allowing her to see for the first time what a truly handsome man he was, and how very much like his father he looked. “And how did you come to have such trust in Tante Hazel?”

  And she smiled at his use of the term of endearment, but she wouldn’t answer his question. “It’s a long story, and of little interest to anyone but myself. It probably wouldn’t even interest Mrs. Copeland.” Which she knew was untrue the moment she said it. Then she shifted gears. “How long did you work for the DEA, Denis, and in what capacity?”

  He stuttered and sputtered for a moment before finding his center. “For seven years, as an agent.”

  “How did you end up in that courtroom in D.C., and who killed Judge Campos? I asked you that question once before and you said you didn’t know, but I find that hard to believe.”

  He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and his shoulders slumped and his face clouded and he bit his bottom lip, making him look like a little boy in trouble. “I honestly don’t know who killed the judge, but I ended up in his courtroom because The Agency screwed me because they think I screwed them.”

  “You’re saying the DEA set you up?” She couldn’t keep the incredulity from her voice. No matter how little regard Jake had for the DEA and the FBI and BATF and “all those other damn alphabets,” she could not believe that a law enforcement agency would intentionally set up one of its own.

  “I’m saying the DEA could have bailed me out of that mess and chose not to. I’m saying the DEA knows damn well that it wasn’t me who killed that judge. I’m saying the DEA could clear my name any day. If it wanted to.”

  “And it doesn’t want to?”

  He shook his head.

  “Proof?”

  He shook his head again. “My word— a fugitive from justice— against that of a DEA section chief.”

  “I’ll accept your word.”

  He pulled his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them together as if warming them, then ran them through his hair, standing it on end. “Short version, OK?” And when she nodded, he continued. “I was in jail as part of a sting. It was a con we’d run three times before.”

  “What ‘we’? You and the DEA?”

  He nodded. “The DEA set me up in D.C. as this bad-ass dude from the islands, bringing in coke and reefer like I had a license. And I’m talking major shipments, not street corner stuff. And the people I sell to are the people with money: We’re talking half million dollar deals. The plan was to work our way up the chain, tracing half a million dollars here, a million dollars there, all the way up to Mr. Deep Pockets, the real drug dealer. We weren’t interested in those jerks hanging out on street corners selling a bag or a rock.”

  Carole Ann nodded to indicate that she was following, but she did not interrupt. “We’d done this deal three times, with me getting busted each time, along with one of the major players, then getting sprung on some technicality, walking out of the jail extolling the talents of my high-priced lawyer.”

  She nodded again, recalling Fritz Barber’s cold imperiousness. “Was Fritz part of the set-up?”

  “Hell no!” Denis exploded. “That money-grubbing son of a bitch. He’s what’s wrong with the legal profession.”

  Carole Ann nodded and noted the hint of surprise that registered in Denis’ eyes when she didn’t disagree with him. The Fritz Barbers of the bar and the way the practiced law indeed were a large part of what
was wrong with the legal profession.

  “After that third bust, the boys in the ‘hood began to look at me strangely, questioning my continued good fortune, so it was decided to get me out of D.C. for a while. That’s when my section chief came up with the brilliant idea for me to get some real experience down here, since I’d been pretending to be an islander.” He laughed gently. “The stupid bastard first refused to believe me when I told him I was born in the Caribbean and that I didn’t have to pretend to be what I am.” The smile faded and his eyes grew dark and sad. “He didn’t believe me until he checked my file. Then he sends for me and he has this big, cheesy grin on his face. He’s sending me home, he says, on a special mission: The DEA is going to arrange for me to meet the ‘commie dictator’ on Isle de Paix— that’s what they called my father, a commie dictator— they’re going to arrange for me to meet him, and I’m supposed to convince him to allow them to use the island as a DEA staging area.”

  “You mean the DEA would bring drugs on to this island from other places? And do what with it?”

  “You catch on fast. Drugs, dealers, guns, you name it, they’d bring it, then decide where it would go from here. That’s how they put the sting in place. And in exchange for his cooperation, the CD— that’s what I called Henri, to take the sting out of hearing them call him a commie dictator— if he went along with their plan, he would incur the good will of the U.S. Government, thereby winning for himself some much needed U.S. aid.”

  “What went wrong?” Carole Ann asked, knowing that something had gone very wrong.