He led me up the stairs. The John Barrymore room was spacious and comfortable, if shopworn. The windows looked down on the entrance and driveway. I dropped my pack on the dresser. He assured me my room would be searched, so we found a secure hidey-hole for my two pistols. And then located a different one to stash my pack. I surely didn’t want the Tontons getting into that. He led me back downstairs to the lobby. “Through that portal is the bar and the restaurant,” he explained. “The swimming pool’s out the rear entrance. Right now we’re refilling it, but you should be able to use it tomorrow morning.”
“Refilling it?”
“We had to drain it. The Secretary of Social Welfare committed suicide in it last night, slashed his wrists and his throat. The other guests wouldn’t swim in the water after that, so we thought it best to drain it. It’s an American young couple. They like to swim naked in the pool at night. It isn’t lit. Hate to bother you, but I need to ask. How do you intend to handle the bill? Hotel Trianon isn’t expensive, but we do like to be paid for our hospitality.”
“Would an American Express card do?”
“Regrettably, no. We aren’t set up for American credit cards yet.”
Money was an encroaching problem. I thought about it. “Could I make a telephone call to the U.S. from here?”
“In theory, yes. The telephone service is spotty, so it may take some time.”
“Let’s give it a try.” I wrote down the office and home numbers of Evanston, my lawyer, ex-spook stepfather. It would be mid-afternoon in Pacific Palisades. No telling where he’d be at this hour. Overseas calls had to be placed through a central exchange. Mr. Brown dialed it and placed both calls. “They’ll let us know when they connect.”
“Is your phone secure?” I asked.
“Of course not. The government eavesdrops here.”
“Then maybe I’d better tell you a little more about my situation.” He took me into the bar, sat us down under a ceiling fan and stood for a round. For which at that moment I was deeply grateful. I related an edited version of the past couple days’ adventures.
“Sticky wicket,” he said. “No passport, no money and pursued by assassins. We have an American Consulate here. How about giving them a try?”
“I could, but it’s possible the U.S. government is after me too. The list of BCCI clientele is pretty cosmopolitan and could include our own Central Intelligence Agency. I couldn’t wait around in Kingston to see what the Consulate had in mind, but if they checked my case with any care, they’d have had questions whose answers would raise more questions. With the Consulate here, my odds are even worse. At least in Jamaica, I had a cruise ship for an alibi.”
We sipped our drinks. We mulled over possible resolutions. He brought another round to the table. The telephone rang. He went to the desk and answered it. “It’s a Mr. Wheeler. Your call?” he told me.
I went over and put the phone to my ear. “This is Jake. Hello?”
“Evanston here. What’s up? You’re calling from Haiti?”
“Yes. I have to be brief and cryptic. Number one, could you get a thousand dollars into the hands of Mr. Brown at the Hotel Trianon here? I’m good for it. I’ll put him on the line for the details. Number two. Can you think of a way for me to get back into the U.S. without a passport?”
“It’s tricky getting money into Haiti, but I can do that. You can enter the U.S. from Puerto Rico without a passport. Can you get to Puerto Rico from there?”
I turned to Mr. Brown. “Can I get to Puerto Rico from here?”
“From here it would be difficult. From Santo Domingo over the mountains, they have boat service.”
Back to Evanston. “Can do. Do you know anyone in Santo Domingo I could contact?”
“Probably. I’ll come up with something and get it to you. Anything else?”
“That’s it for now. Here’s Mr. Brown.” I handed the phone over, leaving it to them to square away routing and account numbers.
They settled things up, and Mr. Brown ushered me out to a table on the verandah with a third round of drinks. “Might as well relax and take in the tropical ambiance while we wait for the Tontons Macoute to show up,” he said. He told me something of the Haitian people. Poor. Desperate. Terrified. Superstitious. Warm-hearted. Suspicious to the point of paranoia. Unreliable. Undisciplined. Some good individuals, but collectively a miserable lot. A white Mercedes sedan turned into the driveway and crunched to a stop at the stoop. “You wait here,” Brown said, and he rose and went down the step to meet them. Two large, sun-glassed black men in well-tailored, well-pressed tropical weight civilian clothes got out to confer with him. They chatted amicably, then mounted the worn wood steps together, Brown in the lead by a pace.
“These gentlemen would like to have a word with you,” Brown said. “Just a formality. They like to greet all our American guests. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Jake Fonko.”
The larger of the two, apparently in command, stepped forward. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fonko. How are you finding our humble island?” He didn’t offer a hand to shake.
“Mmmm, colorful. Lively. A place in which a native son can take pride.”
“Quite so. So you arrived this morning on a banana boat, I understand? And where did your trip originate?”
“Jamaica.”
“Yes, Jamaica sends us many fine bananas. So it slipped your mind to register your entry with the immigration department in the Customs Building?”
“I intended to, but I was assailed by a mob of beggars, and getting free of them distracted me from doing that. I plan to take care of it once I get settled here.”
“Yes, that would be wise. Could I see your passport, please?”
“I don’t have it with me.”
“Of course. Why would you have it with you? It is in your luggage? I will wait for you while you get it.” For a guy who with impunity could have me beaten to a pulp and tossed in solitary, he was exceedingly polite.
“What I meant to say is, I do not have my passport here in Haiti.”
“Oh, I misunderstood. How did you arrive in these islands with no passport?”
“I had it when I arrived, but then I lost it on Jamaica, maybe stolen. So I had to come here with no passport. I was going to the American Consulate tomorrow to have it replaced.”
“I see. Yes, that is the correct path to follow. But, tell me, why did you not take up your case with the Consulate in Kingston?”
I’ve never walked into a quicksand bog, but it must feel something like this. “The passport desk was closed when I went in. I had to leave the island before they opened the next day. Excuse me, is this an official inquiry?”
“Oh, no, no. Just an informal ushering you in, you know. Perhaps you could come into our office tomorrow, and we will see to the formalities. Mr. Brown can provide you with a driver who knows the way. After you visit your American Consulate, of course. With new passport in hand, I am sure there will be no difficulties. Pleased to have met you, Mr. Fonko.” With that and no further words, the two men went back to their car, got in and eased around the parking area and back out to the street.
“Well, he seemed like a nice enough guy,” I remarked as they drove away.
“He’d slit your throat for nothing because it’s his job,” Brown replied. “Not to mention his pleasure. I’ll have Joseph run you down to the American Consulate first thing in the morning. If they can come up with paperwork, that may get you by. Or maybe you could take refuge in the Embassy. Otherwise, you’ve got a rough day ahead of you. If a local had that conversation with that man, he’d be defecating in his drawers right now.”
I found something to read until the dinner hour, ate in the hotel restaurant with the other guests and some walk-ins (the place may have been rundown, but the chef was first rate), and after that hung around Hotel Trianon for the rest of the evening. What else? Go out on the town l
ooking for excitement? I took the opportunity to wash my underpants and two of my three shirts, hoping I’d have a chance to do a little shopping tomorrow after I finished business.
The tropic sun rose next morning, casting palm shadows over the filled swimming pool. It had enough length for brisk laps, which, wearing Jockey shorts, I found refreshing and relaxing. After toweling down, I checked my washing. Shirts still a little damp, but dry enough to wear. I hung my underpants in the bright morning sun and went without for the time being. Mr. Brown joined me for breakfast. “Your Mr. Wheeler said he’d transmit the money to the American Express office, in the form of travelers cheques. The banks here are loath to hand out hard currency, but you’d need a bushel basket to carry a thousand U.S. dollars’ worth of gourdes.”
“What’s?”
“Gourdes—that is, gourds—loom large here. They yield a staple food, and then the natives use the shells for drinking vessels, so they named the currency after them too. The office opens at ten. I’ll see to our business there while Joseph swings you by the American Consulate.”
“Could you change some Jamaican dollars to gourdes? A little pocket money just in case…”
“Certainly.” He went behind the reception desk and unlocked the cash drawer.
I showed him the remainder of my Jamaican money. “Would this get me through the day?”
“The day? More like a week.” He counted out an array of Haitian bills and lay them on the counter. “Here’s an assortment of ones, twos, fives and tens and a bunch twenty-fives. Fifty gourdes is a large amount, to the natives.”
The shirt I’d worn when this fiasco began in the George Town hotel barroom was lightweight, with long sleeves. Thinking it suitable for official business with the passport people, I put it on that morning, and a good thing I did. Joseph, Mr. Brown’s driver/porter/handyman, drove me through town and parked in front of the American Consulate. He turned off the motor, opened the car’s windows wide and sat back to wait in the car while I went in. I introduced myself to the clerk as needing help concerning a passport. “Certainly, Mr. Fonko. I’ll get someone from the passport desk for you. Right this way.” He led me to a small conference room, seated me at a table and offered me coffee. Sure, why not? After what seemed a long gap he returned with a cup of coffee on a saucer, set it before me and said, “It’ll be just a few minutes.” He then went out, shutting the door behind him. And locked it.
Shit! The word must be out. Oh, I’d get refuge in the Embassy, right. And maybe a free ride back to the States. In shackles. They’d even provide an armed guard at no extra charge. I made a quick survey of the room. The walls were cement or cinderblock, under plaster—nothing serious was made of wood in this climate. The room’s single window had been designed to resist a rampaging mob. From the outside. How about the inside? I considered trying to throw a chair through it until it dawned on me that it opened out from the inside. All standing between me and freedom was a bug screen. I swung the windows wide, punched the screen loose from its frame, ripped the hole wider and climbed through. It let out on a garden of sorts, from the first floor level. I dropped into a flower bed and made a bent-over dash through trees, palms and bushes to a fence at the rear of the grounds. I vaulted that sucker in a flash, landing in an alleyway. I had a rough idea where we were in town, one of the better districts, too far from Hotel Trianon to get there on foot. I needed cover. I needed mobility. No way could I get back to the car and Joseph without being spotted, and security would have been alerted by now.
I trotted to the end of the alleyway and looked up and down the street. It was wide and open, busy with traffic, no pedestrian crowd to melt into. Some sort of wildly-decorated vehicle pulled up to a clutch of people standing at the curb. It may once have been a truck or van but now resembled a jitney-bus that had survived an explosion in a Day-Glo paint factory. Any old port. I joined the passenger queue. As each climbed aboard he gave the driver money. I offered him five gourdes, which he accepted with a smile. Every seat was taken, so I grabbed a handhold. No one seemed much interested in my presence. The bus wound through the city discharging and taking on riders. Finally it pulled up in a parking lot next to a huge, busy market. Here was the crowd I needed, except everyone in sight was black. How to blend in? I sure didn’t want another mob chanting “blan blan” at me.
I found the answer at my feet, literally. A shoeshine man had set up shop by the bus stop. I squatted down and examined his array of polish—brown, cordovan, black, tan, neutral. The dark brown looked about right. I held out ten gourdes and pointed to it. He looked at the bill, and then the dark brown shoe polish, then at my khaki suede desert boots, and then he looked at me quizzically. He shrugged and motioned me to put a foot on his shoeshine stand. I shook my head “no,” pointed again at the brown polish, and motioned him to give it to me. He took my money, handed me the polish and watched me with interest. I picked up his brown polish rag, dabbed some polish on it and started applying it to my face. With that, he broke into a big smile. When I thought I’d finished, he took the rag and touched up a few spots I’d missed. I tipped him another tenner, stood up, put my baseball cap on backwards, shoved my still-Caucasian hands in my pockets and wandered in among the market throng.
My disguise wouldn’t pass close examination, but all I needed was enough camo as I hunted up a taxi that no one would remember seeing a white man that morning. The bus had brought me to Marche de Fer, the Iron Market, the main one in town. Like every other third-world native market, it was cramped and aromatic, but this one was impoverished compared to others I’d seen around the world. It resounded with the haggling of women in bright cotton dresses. Everything a Haitian family might need or want, from fresh vegetables and live chickens to hardware and voodoo accessories, was for sale. Stacks of canned goods—some rusting, some with peeling labels, some unlabeled entirely—covered tables, cupboards, shelves and plots of baked earth. Sagging baskets of corn, millet, rice, and spices spilled out onto the ground. Food stalls didn’t draw me in. The most popular dish, as well as the most appetizing fare on offer, was some sort of corn porridge mixed with milk and sugar, cooked in a big tin can over a wood fire, served in a tin cup, eaten with a spoon.
Glad I’d had a hearty breakfast at the hotel before I’d left with Joseph, I squirmed and slithered through the stalls and pandemonium, giving any Tontons I spotted a wide berth until I located a cab. By the time the driver deposited me at Hotel Trianon my expedition had used up the morning. The driver laughed when my white-man hand passed him a generous helping of gourdes. I hurried up the stoop and into the lobby. Mr. Brown sat behind the reception counter, bent over some business. He at first didn’t recognize me. When he did, he chortled, “Well, Mr. Fonko, might there be an interesting story behind this?”
Joseph hadn’t yet returned. I recounted my adventure at the American Consulate, giving Brown a chuckle. “My cover’s blown here,” I said. “I’d better head for Santo Domingo without delay. How did it go at the American Express office?”
“The clerk at American Express told me the Los Angeles office hadn’t opened for business yet, but that the transfer of funds should go through soon. Your Mr. Wheeler a little while ago telexed a name and contact information in Santo Domingo. Can you wait another hour or two for the money?”
“The Americans aren’t going to come after me here—they don’t even know where I am—but the Tontons might. Let me run up to my room and take this shoe polish off. Do you have any cold cream or skin lotion? While I’m taking care of that, think about the best way for me to get to Santo Domingo.”
Removing the shoe polish required a lot of lotion and the sacrifice of one of the hotel’s bath towels. Midway through the task, I noticed a Mercedes pull up in the driveway three floors below, two sun-glassed heavies piling out and disappearing under the verandah roof. I scooped up lotion and towel and quietly went out into the hallway, trying doors for a place to hole up. A maid’s closet le
ft just enough room for me to squeeze in. As I pulled the door closed, footsteps clambered up the stairs.
They took their time tossing my room. No big deal. I’d spent longer periods in worse closets facing worse dangers (see Book One). They found nothing incriminating, of course: Brown had stashed my gear well. After the sounds of the Tontons faded down the stairwell, I gave them ten more minutes, then cracked the door open. Saw and heard nothing amiss. Crept back to my room. Peeped out the window through the sheer curtain. The Mercedes had left. I finished scouring my face of shoe polish, shuffled my clothes into presentability and went down to talk to Brown.
“I told them you’d gone to the American Embassy, hadn’t returned yet,” he said. “Fortunately, Joseph isn’t on hand to give my tale the lie. You’re not on the Tonton Macoute Ten Most-Wanted list yet, but they did say you have some items with you that would be of interest to the Haitian government. Definitely, you ought to clear out of here without further delay.”
“Any good ideas about doing that?”
“Your best bet is to go over the mountains. There are two main border crossings, one north and one south. I’d advise Jimani, the southern crossing, the most-direct route to Santo Domingo. There’s a bus, but they’ll be watching those, and your blackface get-up won’t fool anybody who’s looking for you. A contractor I know in town has a project ongoing in a village, La Source, and he is always trucking building materials up there. If he could smuggle you to La Source, a missionary friend of mine could guide you across the border.”
Joseph showed up with the car, and Brown dispatched him to the contractor. His place of business was a distance away, but sounding him out by phone would alert the Tontons. Then Brown called American Express. The money had been wired, so Brown called a taxi and left to take care of that, leaving a black assistant in charge of the desk. I holed up in my room, keeping a watch on the driveway. It wasn’t long before a grey, late model Honda pulled up at the entrance and a thuggish man got out. Inquiries at the desk rapidly escalated to loud threats and then slaps and cries, then a thud and silence. Heavy footsteps clumped up to the second floor, and then the third. I hadn’t time to get my pistol, so I grabbed a heavy glass ashtray, stepped behind the locked door and waited. A knock. Another. Some hard bangs. And then a kick blasted the door open, and a man charged into the room, revolver at the ready. I stepped up from behind and clouted him on the temple with the ashtray, and he went down. First things first, I pulled the cord from the bed lamp and hog-tied him. I stuffed a hand towel in his mouth and secured it by wrapping a pillow case tightly around his head. Put his gun in a dresser door. And then I searched him—a page from the hotel register book in his hand, but no ID. No car keys. Also, no sunglasses. At least he wasn’t a Tonton.
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 8