Dust Up: A Thriller (17 page)

“
Bonswa,
” she said, then she rattled off something fast in Kreyol. All I understood of Baudet’s reply was the last word—“American.”

Elena nodded then turned back to me and slowly said, “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” I said. “
Bonswa,
” I added.

She and Baudet exchanged a few more words, and then she hustled back inside.

Moments later, the bearlike man in the white T-shirt came out, exclaiming, “
Bonswa,
Regi!
Kouman ou ye?
”

Baudet stood and said, “Marcel!” They smiled broadly, and then Baudet held out his arm to me. “
Sa se mesye
Doyle Carrick.”

Marcel and I shook hands and bid each other, “
Bonswa
.”

“Doyle
se yon Ameriken,
” Baudet told him.

Marcel smiled and said, “Good, good. Welcome to Cap-Haïtien.”

They bantered back and forth for a few seconds in Kreyol. I heard Baudet say “Ducroix,” and Marcel rolled his eyes. He turned to me and waved his hand in the direction Ducroix’s car had gone. “My number-one customer, that guy,” he said. “He is a dirty dog and probably a Duvalierist but…” He shrugged. Business is business.

Baudet asked him a question in Kreyol.

Marcel shook his head, saying, “No, no, no,” and patted him on the shoulder reassuringly. Then he turned to me. “Chicken and fried plantain?”

Baudet said, “
Trè
bon,
” so I did, too.

When Marcel went back inside, I said, “What’s up with that Ducroix guy? Is there a problem?”

“No, not really. He’s annoying is all. He loves this place, which is understandable, because the food is so good. But I don’t like seeing him here.”

Elena brought out two bottles of Prestige beer, dripping with condensation. We thanked her, and she disappeared. Baudet watched her go with a twinkle in his eye, but when he turned back, it faded, like he didn’t have the energy to maintain it. He raised his beer and said, “
Santé
.”

We both drank deeply. It was crisp and light, but I knew I had to be careful until I got some food in my stomach.

“So what about Miriam?” I asked. “Where else can we look for her?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. She’s not here. The plane didn’t land in Haiti. There’s no reports of crashes in the area. You said this man Sable was shot?”

“It looked like it, yeah.”

He shrugged. “They might have landed somewhere in Florida.” He sighed. “Or ditched in the ocean, I guess. I hope not.”

I pointed at his phone. “Can you do a search? Google the last twenty-four hours. Plane, crash, and Florida, or plane, wreckage, Florida?”

He picked up his phone and tapped away at it for a moment, then scrolled through the results and shook his head. He repeated the process a few times, then looked up and said, “Nothing. I tried it with ‘Caribbean,’ ‘Bahamas,’ and ‘Cuba,’ as well.”

We drank quietly for a few moments. I looked at my watch. It was after six. “Could you try them again? Your friend with the police and your friend at the airport?”

He smiled. “Mr. Carrick, I have done what I can in that regard. These are not close friends of mine. They are acquaintances. Annoying them will be counterproductive. Miriam means very much to me. Her welfare is important to me, too. Perhaps you have a friend you could call at the FAA?”

I shook my head, thinking I’d have to add FAA to the list of relevant agencies where I didn’t have any friends. Then I realized I did have one friend with the feds who I had forgotten about.

45

Danny answered on the third ring with a suspicious, “Hello?”

“Hey, partner. How’s life with the Federales?” I had gotten up from my chair and was pacing the sidewalk ten feet from where Baudet was sitting.

“Doyle? Where are you calling from? You sound like shit, and your number has like thirty digits.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I’m out of town. I need a favor.”

“Well, I figured, since it’s you.”

“A couple favors, actually.”

“Goes without saying. Wait, where are you?”

I laughed again. It was kind of ridiculous. “I’m actually in Haiti right now.”

“
Haiti?!
What are you talking about?”

“Long story, actually. You probably don’t want to know about it.”

“Is this about the Hartwell thing? Oh, wait a second—did I hear that you blew off a shift today?”

“
Shit!
I forgot to call out.”

“You forgot?” He started laughing. “I leave town for a few days, and you piss off to Haiti and forget to call in?”

He was laughing so hard now that Baudet was smiling at me, thinking something hilarious was going on. I turned to face away from him.

“I need you to keep an eye on Nola, okay?”

That brought him down to Earth. “Sure, of course. Wait, isn’t she staying—”

“Yes,” I cut him off. I knew they weren’t tapping his phone or my burner, but I didn’t want to take any chances. “She is.”

“What’s going on?” Totally serious now. “Is this part of the Hartwell thing, too?”

“Yes, it is. There’s guys with guns, and they’re not shy about using them.” I told him about the Liberty Motel, about Everglades City. “They might be the same guys that shot Ron Hartwell. Look, I’m probably overreacting, but that’s why I need you to keep an eye on things.” I paused. “How are the kids?”

He paused, too. “They’re great,” he said quietly. “I guess they can stay with their friends for another day or two.”

“That would probably be best. Just a day or two, to be sure.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll be home in a couple hours.”

“Great. I need something else, too.” I told him briefly and obliquely some of the details of Miriam and Sable’s escape in the Helio Courier. “Anyway, since you’re in good with the feds, and since you’re not involved in this case, really, I’m wondering if you can use your FBI connections and see if FAA has any reports of planes like that coming down, unauthorized landings, anything suspicious like that, in or around Florida.”

“You know I’ve only been here a couple days. I’m basically on a glorified training assignment.”

“I know it’s more than that, but I also know I’m asking a lot of you.”

“It’s not that, it’s just … Sure, whatever. Yeah, I’ll call. I’ll just call FAA. Text you back at this number?”

“That’d be great.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Look, Doyle, I don’t know what you’re doing down there, but you know you’re not getting away with too many more of these spectacular fuckups in your career, right?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“You want me to talk to Suarez? Tell him where you are? Tell him you’re sick or whatever?”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll deal with it when I get back.”

As I got off the phone and returned to the table, Elena came out with two plates of food. Daylight was quickly fading, and she plugged in a set of Christmas lights strung along the awning before she went back inside.

We ate quietly at first. The plantains were okay, but the chicken was amazing—tender and juicy, mild but accompanied by a slaw of spicy pickled hot peppers. There was also a tasty corn porridge, like polenta, with tomatoes and vegetables and spices.

After a few minutes, Baudet put down his beer. “How do you like it?”

“It’s delicious.”

He nodded in agreement and pointed his fork at the porridge. “My sister is famous for her
mayi moulin
.”

“It’s very tasty.”

After a few more minutes of eating, Baudet put down his fork. “Tell me about this man Sable.”

“I barely know him.”

“Who does he work for?”

I paused, and we looked at each other, negotiating how much we trusted each other, how much faith we had in Miriam’s judgment of each other.

“He said he works for a group called Beta Librae.”

He nodded.

“You’ve heard of them?”

“Vague mentions. Environmental activists, of a sort. Very quiet, eh? Beta Librae is a star in the constellation Libra. It’s also called the Northern Claw. That’s all I know.”

The Northern Claw. That sounded ominous. I ate the last of my food and wiped my hands and mouth on a paper napkin. “So you know Miriam from college?”

“University of Pennsylvania,” he said. “I got a scholarship. Premed, before I went into public health. We were quite good friends. She was my first, best, and only remaining college friend.” He laughed. “When I returned to Haiti, no one else kept in touch.”

“You know her pretty well?”

He gave me a look I couldn’t read, then nodded.

I leaned forward, lowering my voice. “Miriam said her next move after coming here was to find someplace without extradition and try to clear her name from there. Do you think it’s possible she just fled?”

He picked at the label of his beer bottle, thinking. “It must be a desperate time for her, so yes, anything is possible. But if so, she’ll get in touch somehow. She’ll let me know. You said she was bringing files, no?”

I nodded.

“If she thinks they’re important, she’ll make sure I get them.”

46

I opened my mouth to tell him about the copy I’d faxed to Nola, that maybe she could fax it back to Baudet. But I didn’t. I trusted Baudet a lot, but not with Nola. Not yet. I’d already put her at risk just by sending her that fax. Besides, there was already a copy of those files right here in Cap-Haïtien.

“Earlier, you mentioned a trade summit,” I said. “Is that why Energene and Stoma are here?”

He nodded and shrugged at the same time. “As I said, they’d be here anyway, but yes, they’re lobbying hard. President Cardon is opposed to allowing the biotech companies to do as they please. His predecessor, Martine, wanted to let them bring in whatever new hybrids and genetically modified seeds they wanted. He wanted to give them long leases for broad swaths of farmland up north so they could grow corn for export, for biofuels instead of food, at a time when we are importing most of our food from the Dominican Republic. Cardon is against all that. He thinks the genetically modified foods need more research to prove their long-term safety, not just health and the environment but also to the economy. President Abelard felt the same way, but when Martine took office last year, he opened our markets to GMOs. The biotech corn has displaced much of the domestic corn. Cardon is against them, and I agree. They need more research, and we need to strengthen our native agricultural sector, so Haiti can be more self-sufficient.”

He paused and took a deep breath. “But yes, on Monday, CASCATA will consider a proposal to tighten regulations on biotech imports throughout the entire region. President Cardon will likely cast the deciding vote. Stoma, Energene, and the others are in a tizzy. And the American government, they consider any kind of regulation an affront to democracy.”

“Speaking of democracy, it sounds like this is your third president in three years. Is that right?”

He nodded with a sound between a sigh and a laugh. “Cardon was prime minister under President Abelard. In last year’s election, Abelard lost to Charles Martine. Martine received massive amounts of outside money to win that election from Energene, Stoma, and the like. It was not something we were used to dealing with.”

“And then Martine died?”

“Yes, Martine came in and threw open the gates like they wanted. He invited Stoma to bring in their corn. That
mayi moulin
we just ate was almost certainly Stoma-Grow corn. Then he invited the rest, Energene and the others. Two months later, he died of a heart attack. Dropped dead on the spot.” He smiled ruefully. “Some people had conspiracy theories about that, but the way the man ate, I’m surprised his heart lasted as long as it did. Anyway, there was a special election. Martine’s backers had spent a fortune to defeat Abelard, sowing misinformation and confusion that peaked right before election. A lot of that came to light after the election, so there was already a backlash against Martine’s people. With the special election, the American companies didn’t have time to do it again. They barely had time to field a candidate—a man named Dupuis no one had ever heard of. Abelard was too old and tired to run again, so Cardon stepped in and won.”

“Is Cardon popular?”

He shrugged. “Cardon is a good man. I don’t see him much now that he’s such a big shot, but when we were kids, we were like cousins. Many people like him, others don’t. Martine was pro-corporate, pro-biotech, pro-GMO, and that was controversial. Cardon is against it, and that is controversial, too. Either way, people are upset. And some feel Haiti shouldn’t even be in CASCATA, that it violates our sovereignty. People on both sides get hot about it, which is part of the reason the police are so tense.”

“The protests seem pretty peaceful.”

“Yes, well, the protests are only part of the reason. The bigger part is Ducroix, the interior minister. He oversees the police. The more he convinces Cardon there is trouble, the more indispensable and powerful he becomes.”

As he said it, his face lit up like the clouds had parted to reveal the sun. I thought it was a strange reaction to his last statement.

Then I realized he was looking over my shoulder.

47

“Portia!” he exclaimed as he scrambled to his feet. I turned to see the woman from the jail, his assistant. Her yellow sneakers were glowing in the darkness as she approached the pool of light that surrounded us.

Her smile was only slightly more restrained than his, but whereas Baudet’s was a little bit goofy, hers was all-out dazzling. At least, it was until I got to my feet, as well, and she turned to look at me.

I don’t know if my presence put her off her stride, but she and Baudet came together awkwardly, clasping each other’s hands between them, their bodies maintaining a twelve-inch buffer.

They murmured what sounded like a restrained but intimate greeting. Then Baudet pulled his eyes off her with an effort, like there was Velcro involved.

“I believe you met Doyle Carrick,” he said, turning to me. “Doyle, this is Portia Larose, my assistant deputy health minister.”