Nicolas heard boots stomping down the hallway. The guards were in motion.
“Who is it?”
Nicolas shivered at the presence of death so close by. It could have been any one of them.
“Cell two! Death! Death!”
“Step away from the door!”
Everyone in Nicolas’s cell listened. Dread worked its way through his stomach and crawled up his spine. He heard the familiar clicking of a padlock, keys chiming, and a cell door swinging open down the hall. The inmates’ voices rose instantly, loud and clear, as if they were right there.
“This one, Faustin! The old man! He’s dead!”
Nicolas gasped. No. He must have misheard.
He eyed the rectangular window above the door. Could he make it? He spread his legs and hands and tried climbing. His palms pressed against the wall, and he applied weight on his legs for support, hoisting himself up toward the opening, only to slide back down. He was too weak today. Still, he tried again.
“Jean Faustin! Jean Faustin is dead!”
Once more, Nicolas’s hands and feet slid down against the surface of the filthy wall. He couldn’t latch on. He looked up at the small window, powerless.
“Let me out!” he cried, banging on the door. The other prisoners behind him stirred in the dark. Some of them cursed him.
“Stop it!” Boss hissed.
“That’s my friend!” Nicolas shouted, oblivious to his cellmates.
A familiar murmur rose up in the hallway. The “Hymn to Death.”
“Au revoir,” they sang. “It’s only a brief good-bye, we’ll see each other again on the other side.”
Nicolas slammed his hands against the door. It was hopeless. He pictured his mentor in the prison yard, frail, struggling to keep his eyes open. This wasn’t how he wanted to remember Jean Faustin. Horror shot through him. It had to be the diabetes. Jean-Jean had died for lack of insulin—a pointless death. He could hear Jean-Jean’s voice as if he were there next to him, talking about his sugar, his sugar that was never any good.
“Jean-Jean,” Nicolas cried.
“Shut the fuck up, L’Eveillé!” Major said, sitting up on his mat. Nicolas heard a commotion out in the hallway. He pressed his ear against the cold metal door, his eyes full of tears.
“What happened?” a guard asked.
Nicolas couldn’t hear what the prisoners were saying, and it didn’t matter anymore. Nicolas tried to climb the wall again. This time, a hand yanked at his ankle and he fell to the ground, his knees crashing into the barren concrete. The hallways resounded with voices saluting Jean Faustin’s departure, and now the men in cell six, the men around Nicolas, were singing too. Boss leaned in and shoved his finger in Nicolas’s face.
“Stay down and shut your mouth!” Boss said. “I’ve told you: if they catch you up there, all of us get beaten.” His eyes grew bigger, wider, filled with a sort of rage Nicolas hadn’t seen in him before. “I’m warning you!”
Nicolas paused and tried to swallow the despair tunneling through the back of his throat. “He was a good man. He deserves better.”
Boss’s lip quivered. Nicolas saw a little foam in the corner of his mouth.
“Shut up and sing then!” someone yelled at him. “Sing the hymn for your friend, if he was such a good one.”
Nicolas kept his back pressed against the door. Accept Jean-Jean’s death? Impossible. He didn’t have it in him.
“You think you’re the only one to lose friends here? Or family? You think you’re special?” Boss’s hand wrapped around Nicolas’s throat and squeezed firmly enough to constrict his airways.
Nicolas, panicked, coughed and tried to catch his breath.
“You’re not!” Boss grumbled. “I can tell you about loss. I lost my son. I lost my flesh and blood here, in this hole, this rotten hole God has forgotten.”
Nicolas couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, his vision grew blurry. He thought he heard the other prisoners shout for Boss to stop. He saw a hand swatting at the air over his face, or maybe he imagined it.
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. All I did was answer questions, but they twist your words…” Boss’s grip eased a little and Nicolas gasped. “I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just trying to cooperate. I told them where he went, who he was friends with. It’s all my fault.”
The old man released his grip and Nicolas fell to his knees. The old man stood there, rocking back and forth, his lips silently mouthing the words: I didn’t mean to.
Nicolas backed away, dissolving into the mix of naked bodies, disappearing among the ghosts. He felt tears burning his eyes. What was he now? Was he like Boss? Was he going to be? He was losing his mind, becoming the old man in prison plucking lice out of his beard, trying to remember whether Jean-Jean was right. Maybe he did say something during his interrogation. How could he not remember?
The self-doubt crippled him. He stayed on the ground while the men kept singing until a voice in the hallway, louder than the others, rose with a prayer. Psalm 23. Someone across the hall shouted for them to turn the body so they’d take him out the door headfirst, to keep Jean Faustin’s spirit from lingering in the cell. It was useless, to ask for things from a God who was not listening, a God who let Jean Faustin die alone in a cold cell. He’d been dead since breakfast, a few doors down, and Nicolas hadn’t been able to help. Who was this God, really, and why hadn’t He intervened?
Nicolas stared straight ahead, listening as Jean’s cellmates carried the body down the hall. Then he buried his face in his knees. It was dark there, and safe, and in that space he could grip his hair and pull it away from the scalp where madness had begun to crawl. He allowed himself to fall apart and listened for the cackle running under the prayers, the laughter of a trickster god lurking in the corners of Fort Dimanche: Death, adjusting his hat, blowing smoke from a cigar, gyrating his hips, dancing around their cells, arms thrown wide in welcome. Death was laughing at him.
FOURTEEN
Eight stories of imposing white concrete, Hotel Castel Haiti loomed at the top of a hill, lights blazing from every balcony and window. As Raymond’s Datsun ascended the narrow road lined with banyan trees, he could hear the music from the hotel. His hands tightened around the wheel. He exhaled deeply, but he couldn’t shake the fear inside him. He had to maintain his composure, even in the face of what he was about to do. He had a chance to turn around, a chance to flee back to Marigot. But he focused on the thought of seeing his brother again, no matter where that was.
A guard in a gray uniform conducted inspections at the hotel gates, and Raymond’s car idled as he waited to be let through. The guard carried a pistol in an oversized holster. He leaned forward to look through the window of the cab. A cool breeze filtered into the car, carrying the scent of pine trees and jasmine from the hotel grounds. The guard eyed Raymond without much interest and glanced at the red ribbon dangling from the rear-view mirror.
“Taxi?”
Raymond nodded and the guard shrugged.
“Good luck with business tonight,” he said. “Everyone’s busy dancing at the Awards Ball. I can’t imagine why they’d need you. Not with all the chauffeurs here.”
Raymond thanked God for his taxi ribbon. Cabbies didn’t make much these days, but they still had access. It had been Milot Sauveur’s very first question: What access do you have as a taxi driver? After that, Sauveur did the research, made phone calls, and worked out a plan.
“This is your chance. On June twenty-second, at the Awards Ball.”
It was a special night for army and government officials. The president, accompanied by the First Lady, passed out honorary medals to top men in the regime. Raymond’s lips turned up a little at the thought of the corruption concentrated inside. But the word was Jules Sylvain Oscar, warden of Fort Dimanche, liked to sip on rum punches at the hotel’s game tables and on the pool deck with his mistresses, and tonight, he would most certainly be in attendance.
“He wouldn’t miss it,” Sauveur had
said. “It’s one of his opportunities to be chummy with the Baron.”
And Oscar was Raymond’s link to Nicolas. There was no turning back.
Raymond guided the Datsun down the arced driveway. It was possible, highly probable, that he was driving to his death. Vines of banyan trees brushed against the hood of the car as if clinging to him, whispering prayers to usher him into the underworld.
Hang on, Nicolas, he thought. I’m coming for you.
Raymond and Sauveur had gone over the plan many times at the journalist’s kitchen table, reviewing the diagrams of Fort Dimanche, poking holes in their timelines, and brainstorming contingencies, and each time, they concluded this was the best chance. Raymond noted everything, nodding, even as the plan grew riskier and Sauveur lit a fresh cigarette off the butt of his last, twitching in his chair before throwing his pencil down.
“I’m sending you to your death,” he murmured. “If you survive, it is no thanks to me.”
Raymond shook his head. “I asked you for help, didn’t I? I trust your plan: I sacrifice myself to the lion, and then I climb back out of his mouth.”
Shiny black vehicles were parked along the curb by the dozens. Men in crisp khaki uniforms strutted around, their shoulders decorated with gold boards and tassels. Men and women glided out of foreign town cars with spit-shined shoes gleaming like mirrors. Raymond had never seen this many members of high society together in one place before. The local officials wore black tuxedos and held their female companions by the waist, or offered them an arm to lead them up the stone steps. Foreign dignitaries slid out of chauffeured cars in fine suits, se-quined gowns, and silk turbans—their finery undercut by the bewildered looks on their faces. They were the reason Raymond was here, the only reason he and Sauveur had designed this plan as such. Rumors abounded that Duvalier, desperate for international investments in Haiti, was on a mission to reform his image. They would not shoot Raymond in front of foreign delegates and tourists. Raymond spotted armed guards posted every few feet, holding shotguns up in the air, their eyes blank and cold.
There are too many cars, he thought.
Music from a brass ensemble and maracas tumbled out through the windows while valets huddled around, holding doors open and bowing. He sat in his car, overwhelmed. He could still leave. The whole idea was madness, certainly, and panic was setting in. Yet if he left, where would he go? He couldn’t leave Nicolas behind and simply move on. His heart thudded in his chest.
There it was. He’d been looking for the car since he drove in: a navy-blue Cadillac with the license plate number Sauveur had given him. Oscar’s car.
He clenched the wheel until the web of skin between his fingers ached. There was time to pray or to think, but Raymond wasted none. The more he debated, the more he felt fear’s screws bite into his bones. Raymond checked his rearview mirror, carefully put the car in reverse, and backed up, getting a bit more distance between himself and the Cadillac. He could see it clearly as he fastened his seat belt. It was one of the most beautiful vehicles he’d seen in Port-au-Prince. A shame, really. Raymond stomped the gas pedal and the Datsun gave a little jolt before lunging forward. He clenched his teeth and plowed directly into the side of the Cadillac. The beautiful blue door buckled instantly and Raymond’s ears began to ring. The crash was so loud that, for a brief moment, Raymond thought he’d gone deaf. When the startled valets realized what had happened, they all ran to assess the damage, gasping, “Kolangèt! What the hell! Is he drunk?”
Raymond unfastened his seat belt and took a deep breath. Reaching up, he pulled the picture of Yvonne, Enos, and Adeline—smiling brilliantly, as always—out of the visor and stuffed it into his breast pocket. Then, with trembling knees and sweaty hands, he staggered out of his Datsun. His head was spinning, ears still ringing, but he could see clearly as he stepped gingerly over the shattered glass of taillights. The Cadillac was totaled. The Datsun’s front bumper was still lodged into its door, its hood folded like an accordion, its fuming engine exposed.
“Are you all right, brother?” asked a valet, touching his shoulder.
Raymond heard himself saying what he and Sauveur had rehearsed: “I don’t know what happened. The gas pedal jammed somehow. There was nothing I could do.”
As the hotel guests stared in awe at the wreckage, two armed guards approached quickly. Another valet walked around the two cars, whistling in dismay.
“Do you know what you’ve done? That car belongs to the warden of Fort Dimanche, Jules Sylvain Oscar. It was brand new. You are truly fucked, my friend.”
“Sit on the curb over there,” one of the soldiers said, taking Raymond by the arm. It wasn’t an aggressive gesture, though. Everyone, even the soldiers, seemed so shocked that the only emotion they could muster was pity.
But Raymond did not budge. His body felt heavy, and his heart was pounding. He tried to take a step back, to go to his car, to sit there and wait, but the soldier held on. The Cadillac’s bumper croaked, slowly detached, and fell off in the driveway. An audible gasp rose over the hotel steps.
“Did your brakes fail?” one of the valets asked.
Raymond just shook his head. “Something jammed.”
The other valet muttered under his breath, “Dead man walking.”
Raymond heard heavy footsteps behind him and turned to discover five guns pointed at him. The men were not in Macoute uniform, but it was clear what they were.
“Men li,” someone said. “There he is.”
A shiver ran up Raymond’s spine as he recognized Jules Oscar. He looked just like his photos in the newspaper: repulsive, with a long scar slicing down his face and bloodshot eyes.
“What happened here?” the warden said.
Next to Oscar stood a man with thin black hair and pink ears. He wore a beige suit and pink tie, with a little gold pin in his lapel that caught the light. The man’s blue eyes shifted curiously from Oscar to Raymond and back to Oscar again. He shook his head, dismayed.
“Oh dear! How unfortunate!” Raymond’s ear picked up the accent. He was a Frenchman, a dignitary. “C’est votre voiture? Is this your car, Oscar?”
Oscar did not respond to the question, his mouth hanging open at the sight of the damage. After a long, silent pause, he looked around at the crowd, scanning their faces, until his eyes found Raymond.
“You did this? You did this to my car?”
Jules Oscar was dressed in white from head to toe, an unlit cigarette waiting to be sparked. His shirt was buttoned to the neck, where he’d wrapped a red silk ascot in lieu of a tie. The smell of luxury—of rum, tobacco, and strong cologne—wafted toward Raymond. Raymond didn’t speak. His throat was clogged, his ears still ringing. He kept his eyes on the warden, who stared at the Cadillac in dismay. A woman in a blue dress came running up behind him, holding up the train of her gown. She stopped where the other armed men stood.
“My car! C’est pas possible, chéri!” Her scarlet lips scowled at the damage, and she gathered her gown to avoid shards of glass. “I can’t believe it. Look what he did to my new car!”
“Quelle veine!” muttered the Frenchman, a stern man whose sleek black hair reminded Raymond of carrion, of a vulture hovering over a bloodbath, surveying possibilities.
The warden walked over to Raymond and immediately everything else seemed to fade away.
“Do you have any idea how much this car costs?” he asked calmly. “I bought this car brand new just two months ago. I hope you’re prepared to pay for what you’ve done.”
Raymond swallowed and found his voice. “I’m just a taxi driver, sir. How could I possibly afford to repay you?”
“That’s not my problem!” The warden raised his voice, his eyes wide. “You’ll fix this mess if you know what’s good for you.”
“How?” Raymond replied. His tongue felt heavy. “I don’t have the money—I can barely eat these days. What are you going to do? Arrest me and throw me in jail like you do all the other poor malheureux in this country?”
Oscar cocked his head.
“There’s plenty of room in prison for you: in Penitencier National, Casernes Dessalines,” he said. “Somehow, you’ll have to pay for this.”
That didn’t fit Raymond’s plans. He had to get to Fort Dimanche somehow. He remembered what Sauveur had said, that making any political statement could cost him his life on the spot. But here, in front of all these dignitaries? In front of this Frenchman? Raymond couldn’t see it. Still, he felt as though the sweat pouring off his forehead would blind him entirely.
“Well, go on then,” Raymond uttered. “Finish us off. First you send my family to Fort Dimanche, and now you want my bones for dinner?”
It was like pushing a button: Oscar’s whole body twitched at the mention of Fort Dimanche. He rested his hand on the hood of the Cadillac and his spine straightened.
The Frenchman asked for another translation: “Il dit quoi, lâ? What is he saying about Fort Dimanche?”
Oscar glanced at the Frenchman, then at Raymond. This time, they locked eyes and Raymond wanted to jump out of his own skin. This time, no one translated.
“Are you sending him to Fort Dimanche?” the Frenchman asked Oscar. “Come now. It’s not that serious. It’s only a car. The poor man didn’t mean to—”
“Only a car?” The woman in the blue dress glared at the man. “It was my car, my gift. He totaled it.”
“He’s just a cabbie,” the Frenchman said. “Look, let’s get back to business before I give up and go home. We have much to discuss. Are we going to do this or not?”
Raymond stared hatefully at the visitor. He was not supposed to be part of this. He was going to ruin everything with good intentions. Only a car? This man had no idea what cars meant to people in this country, did he?
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