Our boat pulled up alongside one of many piers that ran beside the river. From where the piers ended, the great river flowed into a body of water so massive that there appeared no land on the opposite side.
There were boats and ships from tiny to grand tied to the docks. I could have spent the day staring at things I could never dream, but I had a more pressing priority.
I scanned every vessel for the length of the piers until I saw it. That demon ark was tied to the pier a blow dart’s flight from where we docked. I was off the boat as soon as it was made fast. I stayed in the shadows of the buildings until I came to a good watching place.
There was no movement aboard that ark. I settled down to watch. Through that evening and night I saw nothing. In the morning, men with skin like mine and faces that could have belonged to our village walked by my watching place on the pier. Their looks in my direction told me that I needed to be less obvious.
There was a ship that could hold my entire village at the dock next in line to that demon boat. The men who passed by me gathered around a plank that led from the pier to the deck of the ship. When the sun was well up, a man came down the plank from the ship. Everyone gathered around him. He barked some kind of order I didn’t understand, and everyone clustered closer.
There was some pushing and jostling among the men. I thought a fight might break out, but before it could happen, the man on the plank threw two fistfuls of small round coins of white metal into the midst of the crowd. The scrambling and diving of the men after the coins made me believe they had great value.
When each of the coins was snatched off the ground, those who had managed to grab one gathered around the man. The others drifted away. As I watched, I realized that the coins were the offer of a day’s work loading things on the ship.
I watched while the men listened to the orders barked by the man. They turned and went into a building behind the dock. When they came out, each was carrying a massive branch of bananas or a net filled with coconuts. I saw them struggle under the weight as they carried their burden up the plank and down a hole in the deck of the ship.
I was still getting curious looks from any men who passed me. I was the only one not engaged in some heavy labor. I needed a reason to stay where I could watch for my grandfather on the boat.
I walked to the door of the big building that housed the bananas. When one of the men, sweating and panting from the exertion, passed me on the way to the plank, I walked beside him. When he looked at me, I spoke in the language of my village. He seemed confused. I spoke in Portuguese, and he understood.
“I’ll make you a deal. Give me your coin. I’ll do all the work for the rest of the day. I’ll give you the pay at the end for doing nothing more.”
With good reason, he didn’t believe me. Before he could walk on, I caught his arm.
“I mean it. I won’t leave till I give you what they give me. You can watch me from here.”
Either because of the exhaustion he was feeling in the heat or some desperation in my voice, he dropped the heavy burden of bananas at my feet. He handed me the coin with a threat about keeping my word. I hoisted the bananas on my shoulder and mixed in with those climbing the plank.
The higher I climbed, the better view I got of the deck of the demon boat. There was still no movement on the deck and not a person in sight. I knew I had to continue the watch since it was the only place in the city I knew to look for my grandfather.
I lost count of the treks I made in the heat and humidity. I know that neither the weight of bananas and coconuts, nor the perspiration that stung my eyes deflected my attention from the deck of the demon boat.
When the sun was shedding its last rays, I finally saw movement. The leader and four of the men of his crew came out on the deck of the boat. They seemed to be arguing loudly as if the afternoon’s rum was taking its grip. The heavy plank groaned and creaked under their stumbling steps to the dock.
They left one man on the deck as a watch. Once they were clear of the boat and the dock, he spread himself flat on a rolled canvas. Within minutes, his deep breathing signaled sleep.
It was my chance. The exhaustion of my fellow banana loaders would keep them from noticing that I fell out of line. I found my blowpipe and quiver of darts where I had hidden them. I used the water of the river to dilute the poison on one dart.
When I had climbed the plank with the last stem of bananas from the pier to be loaded, I slipped away from the group. The other laborers began clustering around a table on the deck to be paid. From the height of the ship’s deck, I had a clear shot with the blowpipe at the demon boat’s watchman. The sting of the dart barely interrupted his slumber with a flinch.
I came back and fell in line with the men to hand in the coin and collect the day’s pay. By the time I delivered it to the man on the pier who gave me the coin, I was sure I could march a herd of armadillos up the plank to the boat without waking the watchman.
My heart was pounding out of my chest when I ran up to the deck of the boat. The watchman never stirred. I pushed through the door of the house on the deck and stopped for an instant at the hatch that led to the room below where they kept the animals. I prayed to God that it was not in vain.
When I pulled open the hatch, my first sensation was the wave of stench that poured out of the confinement and stung my eyes. But enough light poured into chamber to light the image I’ll never forget. For a few seconds, my grandfather was standing there below, shielding his eyes. When his blinking eyes could look up, there was a burst of joy that lit his face like the sun itself.
That was his first reaction. His second was a look of pain. “Ancarit, why did you come? Run! Before they come back!”
I ran, but it was down the steps and into the arms of my grandfather. He kept telling me to run to safety, but his arms clung to me as if I were his very life. It was no matter. I would not have left him there if the universe depended on it.
“Come with me, Grandfather. There’s no one to keep us.”
“I can’t. Something big is happening.” He nodded to the caged animals and birds. “These all depend on me. I can’t leave.”
I sat beside him. “Then we stay together.”
He started to speak, but I cut in. “Those men up there, do they ever come down here?”
“No. They can’t stand the smell.”
“Then we wait here together.”
* * *
A little after dawn, I heard faint voices above. I crept up the stairs and saw no one on deck. I opened the door a crack to see that the banana ship was no longer there. Another massive ship had taken its place. I saw the leader from the demon boat talking with a heavy man with a beard on the deck of the newly arrived ship. They were grinning about something. Then I saw the heavy man hand what looked like a large wad of paper to the leader.
The heavy man shouted orders, and four men from the ship came to the boat. My grandfather and I crouched behind the cages of animals. Each of the four men came down the stairs and picked up a cage. They carried them up to the deck, across the pier, and up the new ship’s plank before they disappeared from sight.
My grandfather whispered, “We have to see where they take them.”
When the men came back for a second load, I told my grandfather to wait there. I hoisted a cage and followed the men with my head down. As I hoped, the men from the ship thought I was a helper from the boat. The men from the demon boat were on the dock. When I passed them in the dark, they must have thought I was from the ship, because they never looked at me.
I followed the men carrying cages down a passageway on the ship’s deck and downstairs into a chamber below. I waited for them to leave their loads and go back for more. I carried the cage following the faint light down the steps. What I saw below is so burned into my memory that I’m sure I’ll carry it into the next world.
Several dull lights lit a room that seemed nearly half the size of my whole village. It was stacked with cages crammed to capacity with nearl
y every bird and animal I had ever seen in our forest. Every species of monkey was packed so tightly in the cages that they could scarcely move. Anteaters and armadillos were crated together. Giant sea turtles were strapped and boxed tightly one on top of the other.
I was reeling in horror. I looked beyond the boxes of animals and saw cages stuffed with birds from ibises and macaws to delicate flamingoes, and even the rarely seen toucans, all packed so tightly they couldn’t move.
The air was stifling. I had all I could do to keep my consciousness. It was clear that most of the animals and birds had been confined there for some time.
When I came back onto the pier, I saw the leader gathered with his men on the deck of the boat. He took out some bills from the wad of paper he got from the bearded man on the ship. He handed some to each of his men. When they each got their share, they came down the plank to the pier and wandered off into the city.
One of the men remained on the boat with the leader. By now the sun was down. The lights on the pier cast just enough light on the deck of the boat to make out the figures. I heard the leader give an order.
The man went into the shed on the deck. When he came back out, he was holding my grandfather by the neck and pushing him onto the deck. My grandfather’s hands were tied behind him.
I heard another order given, though I still couldn’t make out the words. The man pushed my grandfather across the deck to the rail of the boat toward the open water. He stood him up against the rail.
The leader gave one more order, and the man left the boat to join the others. When the man was out of sight, I saw the leader raise the gun in his hands. I could see by the glint of light on the barrel that he was pointing it directly at the head of my grandfather.
I had never in my life acted to injure another human being until that moment. But without a single thought or hesitation, I pulled a fully poisoned dart out of my quiver, loaded it in the blowpipe, and sent it straight to the neck of the man who would kill my grandfather. I put such force behind it that it opened a gushing spurt of blood.
The leader dropped the gun. The powerful poison in his bloodstream took effect quickly. He stumbled backwards toward the rail by the open water. His momentum carried him over the rail in a spiral of arms and legs. The outpouring of blood tainted the water just before he hit it. There was no power on earth that could have saved him at that point. I could hear the splashing of hundreds of piranhas. I knew to a certainty that he would cause no more pain to men or animals on this earth.
I ran to my grandfather. I untied the cord that bound his hands behind him. Whether we had the time or not, he grabbed me in his arms and we hung onto each other.
I made use of the next minute to tell him what I had seen in the hold of the large ship. We knew that this thing was too vast for us to stop it. We also knew that we had to do whatever we could—however little that might be.
I could hear the drunken voices of the members of the crew coming back down the pier. We each grabbed one of the empty cages left in the hold. I figured that we could carry the cages to the ship’s hold where they kept the animals without attracting attention. It was too dark for anyone to see that they were empty.
At the last instant, I told my grandfather to go down the plank to the pier and wait for me. There was one last bit of evil that needed to be scoured from the face of the earth.
I picked up a heavy hammer used to drive stakes for anchoring. I tied a cloth around it to prevent sparks and ran to the engine room. With every ounce of energy I had left, I smashed a gaping hole in the bottom of the engine’s gas tank.
I gave it ten seconds to let the gas flow freely while I uncapped cans of extra gas. I doused the cloth-covered head of the hammer in gasoline and climbed the stairs. I found the matches the leader used to light his cigars and set the cloth ablaze. With one last yell, I threw the flaming hammer into the engine room and ran down the plank to join my grandfather.
We carried the empty cages quickly past the drunk and staggering crewmen. They were far too much into the rum to recognize us.
My grandfather and I were halfway up the big ship’s gangplank when an explosion rocked the pier. Splinters of flaming wood from that demon ark showered the water like a meteor storm. What was left of the boat was brilliantly ablaze before it sunk below the black surface of the water.
In the confusion that followed, no one saw me lead my grandfather down to the giant chamber that housed those pitiful animals. When he saw them, I saw the look in my grandfather’s eyes. I knew that in the midst of all of that misery, his heart was breaking.
He took me by the shoulders and whispered. “You have to leave right now. This ship could leave port any minute.”
“You’re right, Grandfather. Let’s go.”
“You go. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have work to do here. I’ve seen this before. They’ve bought these animals from poachers all along the coast from São Luís to here. They’ll take them to sell on the black market.”
“But what—”
“Listen to me. I can’t leave. These animals can live without food, but not without water. Many of them will be dead by the time they dock.”
I looked around at the hundreds of frightened faces. “Why do they do this? They can’t sell them if they’re dead.”
“It’s all greed. They figure that if they pack in this many animals, enough will live to make a bigger profit than if they showed compassion for the animals. They learned this numbers game from the old slave traders.”
I was sickened and infuriated. My grandfather could see it in my eyes. “If you have work to do, Grandfather, so do I.”
He saw my resolve and just nodded.
By two dim lights at either end of the room, we found two long hoses, probably used to flush out the room between shipments. My grandfather turned on the spigots. He tasted the water to be sure it was not salted from the sea.
We turned the spigots down to a trickle of water. I watched him carry one of the hoses to the first cage. He held the dripping nozzle to the mouth of one of the monkeys. The monkey nearly swallowed the nozzle to get to the water. My grandfather let him drink for ten or fifteen seconds before giving water to the next monkey.
“Don’t give them too much right away. They may be badly dehydrated. They need to get used to it.”
I started on the other side of the room with the other hose. I had never seen such desperate need in an animal.
We had each finished two cages of monkeys when we felt the ship take a sharp lurch. We looked at each other without words. We knew the ship was going to sea. For us, the die was cast.
It took us half the night to finish the first round. After bringing water to the last cage of birds, I fell back on the floor with my eyes closed. I couldn’t imagine how tired my grandfather must have been.
He shot a spurt of water out of the hose at me. When I jumped, he said, “No rest for us yet. They’re only half-saved.”
We started again at the beginning. This time we let them drink their fill. When I dropped down after completing the second round, I thought nothing on earth could rouse me to my feet. My grandfather came and sat beside me. He just patted my arm. No words were necessary.
After a minute of silence, I turned to him. “What now, Grandfather? We need rest or we’ll be no good to us or them.”
He nodded.
“Should we release them from the cages?”
“No. Under these conditions, this stress, they’d fight. They might hurt each other.”
It was the last word I heard before a black, dreamless unconsciousness took away all thought. We slept for what must have been half a day until I felt the nudge of my grandfather’s hand. It was time to start the watering again.
When we finished that round, I asked my grandfather what had been on my mind since we entered that chamber of death.
“It’s good that we ease their suffering and keep them alive. But what do we do when we reach port and they unl
oad them?”
He looked over the sea of small, terrified faces, for which we’d both taken on a kind of responsibility.
“I don’t know, Ancarit. I only know that by my God who made them, I’ll do something.”
I felt the resolution in his voice. It became mine, too.
PART THREE
SIXTEEN
THE PRESENT
Boston, Massachusetts.
JULIE’S CELL PHONE message confirmed a one-way plane ticket to Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. Wheels in the well that evening at nine thirty. That gave me nearly twelve hours. I’d have no trouble filling them. The question was the order of priorities.
Two thoughts coalesced into a decision. Thought one: the purpose of the trip was to convince our evanescent client, Victor, to come out of hiding so I could work on a court verdict that would give him back a life. Thought two: the pitch I’d make to Victor would depend on whether he was guilty or innocent of aiding in the fixing of the race that resulted in the death of his brother, Roberto. And as yet, that for me was a coin flip.
I realized that I’d been nibbling around the edges of that issue in terms of the people I’d talked to about the race. Impossible as the idea sounded, with just hours left before flying out, I decided to take a stab at getting it straight from the horse’s mouth, in a manner of speaking.
The one point of total agreement among Mr. Devlin, Deputy D.A. Billy Coyne, and me was that a race fix of that complexity called for a level of expertise in that black art far beyond that of the average mafia hood—Italian or Puerto Rican. There was only one name that jumped out of the box.
Fat Tony Cannucci had the reputation for orchestrating every major fix of a horse race between Miami and Maine over the past twenty years. The newspapers dressed it up in the word alleged because neither federal nor state prosecutors had ever laid a glove on him. But if you asked any twelve-year-old kid within the confines of the North End of Boston who was “the man” in race fixing, there would be no debate.
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