"Good morning," she said. "I am Racine Laveau. I’m honored to meet the daughter of my long-lost cousin." She was looking hard at Dani as she spoke. "You look much like your mother did when she was your age. Please, sit down."
As Dani and Liz settled on the couch, Racine turned to the maid. "Bring us tea, Rachel."
"Yes, Madame Laveau," the woman said, gliding from the room.
"Thank you for visiting me, Danielle. I have wondered if I would ever meet you. I’ve heard that you’re living in the islands, now, running a charter yacht. No doubt your father dreams that he could be with you."
"Thank you for seeing me, Madame Laveau. I would have called sooner if I had known you were so nearby. It’s gracious of you to see me…I, um…"
"Please, you must call me Racine, child. We are cousins, after all, and you must not be nervous because of what passed between your father and me so many years ago. We were all young and hot-headed, then. I have long ago come to terms with all that, and I have wished that I knew how to get in touch with him. Now providence brings you here. Is he well?"
"Oh, yes. Well and vigorous."
"Where does he live, now?"
"He has been living in Paris since he left the islands."
"And how is your mother?"
"She is well, but they’re divorced. Both of them have married other people."
"Unfortunate, but not surprising. I never thought they were suited to each other," the older woman said. "Liesbet, I’m sorry to leave you out of the conversation. How do you know Danielle?"
"We’re partners in the yacht, Dani and I," Liz said, mesmerized by the notion that she was looking into Dani’s piercing blue eyes in Racine’s smooth, chocolate-colored face. "And we’ve become close friends very quickly."
"I see. Dani, they call you?"
"Yes. Only my mother ever called me Danielle."
"And you, Liesbet, do you have a familiar name?"
"I’m Liz to everyone."
"Welcome, again, Dani and Liz," Racine picked up the teapot from the tray that the maid had unobtrusively placed on the coffee table and poured three cups. "Please help yourselves to sugar and milk, as you wish," she said.
As Dani and Liz each picked up a cup and saucer from the tray, Racine gazed at them quietly for a moment.
"I believe that you must have something on your mind, Dani, besides visiting an elderly relative. I think that you want to ask me something."
Dani’s cup rattled in its saucer as her hand twitched in surprise. Racine laughed. "Don’t be alarmed. I have almost 70 years of experience at reading people’s faces. Ask what you will – I’m too old to care what anyone thinks, so I’ll answer almost any question you can ask." She sat back, took a sip of tea, and smiled.
"You don’t look that old!" Liz said, her natural reserve overcome by her surprise.
Racine smiled. "I’m blessed by a smooth skin, Liz. I’ll soon be 80 years old."
"Papa told me that you are a mambo asogwe," Dani said, in a tentative tone.
Racine nodded, smiling, waiting for Dani to go ahead.
"Our current charter guests are academics, studying the evolution of Voodoo in the islands since the days of slavery," Dani said. Encouraged by Racine’s attention, she went on to describe the professor’s meeting with the houngan and the houngan’s disappearance at the hands of the soldiers, leaving out the part of the story about the zombie.
Racine absorbed Dani’s story and sat quietly, obviously thinking about it. "And what is it you wish from me?" she finally asked, after a lengthy pause.
"I’m not sure," Dani said. "I’m impressed by Lilly’s sincere interest, and I would like to help her. The professor, well, he’s not as engaging, personally, but I think he has a genuine interest, too. Before the houngan was kidnapped, I told Papa about them, and that’s when he mentioned you. I guess it became sort of personal for me when I learned that I was related to a famous mambo. So, I wanted to meet you and talk about this whole situation." Dani went on to tell her about the attempt by the Venezuelan marines to kidnap the professor the night before the houngan was taken. "So, I have to believe that the two things are related," she concluded.
Racine took a final sip of tea and put her cup and saucer back on the tray. "It would be surprising if they weren’t, wouldn’t it?"
"That’s what Liz and I thought, so I wanted your advice."
"Let me think on this and ask a few questions around the community," Racine said. "If you think of anything else, give me a call. My cell phone number is the second one on the card." She passed Dani a business card from a case on the coffee table.
"Thank you so much, Racine. I feel better just for having met you and talked with you," Dani said, handing her a card with a photograph of Vengeance.
Racine examined the card for a moment. "That’s a Puerto Rican area code. Is it a satellite phone?"
"Yes. We need to be reachable all the time. The charter guests expect it, and we can’t afford to miss a booking."
"Good. I assume the email address works at sea as well?"
"It does," Dani agreed.
"I’ll be in touch in a day or two, then. It’s so nice to meet you, Dani. I hope that we can see each other often, now that we’ve met. I have fond memories of your father as a child. Please give him my best wishes."
"I’ll do that," Dani said, looking away as she saw a single tear form at the corner of Racine’s eye.
****
The houngan was awakened from a deep sleep by a loud sound, almost like a dying man’s last breath, but much louder, more prolonged, and repeated rhythmically. He sat up and looked around at the dimly lighted space, realizing quickly that the other bunk was empty. The zombie lay face-up on the deck beside the bed, his spine arching backward to an impossible degree as his head and heels drummed on the deck. The houngan crouched beside him, cradling his head to keep him from hurting himself. After a minute or two, the convulsions subsided and the zombie was rigid in his arms, his lips a cyanotic blue. The houngan held him until he felt the muscles relax, and the zombie took a deep breath. The houngan settled him on the deck, covering him with the blanket from the zombie’s bunk.
Picking up the metal pot that had held their dinner of nondescript stew, the houngan moved to the door and began to bang the pot against the steel door as loudly as he could. After several minutes, he heard his captor yelling on the other side of the door, and the latches began to squeak as the watertight door was released from the outside. He stepped back as the door swung open to reveal an angry Martinez.
"What is the meaning of this, Giscard?"
"The zombie may die soon."
"What? Why? You said as long as he was fed, he would live like the rest of us."
"But I have none of the potion to keep him quiet. He has had a seizure. He will have more seizures without the potion, and he will become weaker each time. He has lost consciousness now. He may recover before another seizure, or not. I have nothing to give him."
"Where do you get the potion, normally?"
"I brew it from herbs which I keep in my house. I gather them and dry them, all along, so that they are ready when I must brew his daily potion."
"And he will die without it?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps after some days of seizures, he will begin to recover, but if he does, he will be like an animal. He will no longer do as he is told, if he lives."
"So why do you call me, Giscard? I have no herbs."
"Do you have some medical supplies on the ship?"
"Possibly. I will find out. What do you need, specifically?"
"Sedatives, strong narcotics, perhaps some anticonvulsant medication could be found in a ship’s medical supplies," the houngan said.
"Should we tie him up, or something?"
"No. I will keep him from injury. Restraining him will accomplish nothing; maybe it would even harm him."
"Okay. I will be back."
"Thank you, señor," the houngan said, as the door was closing.
&nb
sp; ****
"Paul Russo came up with nothing on Martinez," Phillip said. Dani and Liz had stopped by his villa after their visit with Racine Laveau. He had called Paul, a mutual friend who had retired from the Miami Police Department, to see if he could find out anything about Martinez.
"So he’s clean?" Dani asked.
"I wouldn’t draw any rash conclusions. All Paul had to work with was the last name and an assumed Venezuelan nationality. He couldn’t narrow things down enough with what we had to give him. He did find out that there is no record of a Martinez entering the U.S. with a Venezuelan diplomatic passport, but the surname is way too common for him to do any meaningful search beyond that. He’s got his ear to the ground, though."
"Maybe the Voodoo connection will turn up something," Liz said.
"Maybe. There’s a good-sized Haitian community in Miami. Bound to be a lot of Voodoo practitioners. Without more to go on, I don’t see how he’s going to find anything, though," Dani said.
"You think Racine might have some contacts there?" Liz asked.
Phillip and Dani both looked at her. "You might be onto something," Dani said. "I think I’ll wait to hear from her first, before I ask her any more questions. She seemed pretty reserved. I think she knows more than she let on about the houngan who got snatched. Let’s see if she decides to trust us."
"Why would she hold back, Dani?" Liz asked.
"I don’t know. I just had a feeling. She doesn’t give away what she’s thinking, and she paused before she answered when we were talking about the houngan. Not like she wasn’t telling the truth, just like she was deciding how much to tell us."
Their musing was interrupted by Dani’s cell phone. She looked at the caller i.d. screen before answering.
"Hello, Papa." She paused.
"Yes, I did go to see Racine." She listened intently for a few minutes, and then said her goodbyes and disconnected. She turned back to Liz and Phillip.
"Racine called Papa," she said. "They’ve reconciled, after all these years. She did an Internet search to find his phone number; she’s definitely a 21st-century Voodoo queen. No drum-talk for her." She smiled and shook her head.
"What’s she like, anyway?" Phillip asked. "I’ve only heard little bits and pieces of information about her over the years."
"It was so strange," Liz said. "When I was sitting there listening to the two of you, I was stunned by how much you look alike."
"She must be pretty old," Phillip said.
"Yes. She said she’d soon be 80. She’s very dark-skinned, but she’s got Dani’s blue eyes. When she looked at me and talked to me, I had to remind myself that she wasn’t Dani. She could pass for a young 50, or even younger. Put her with us, and nobody would think she was old at all. Sharp, too."
Dani’s phone rang again. This time, an unfamiliar number displayed rather than a caller’s name. "Hello," she said, raising the phone to her ear.
"Dani?" the caller asked.
"Yes. Racine?"
"Yes. I just talked to your father. It’s so wonderful to be back in touch with him."
"He told me. He must have given you this number."
"Yes, he did. I tried the satellite phone number from your card, but I didn’t get an answer, and I wanted to talk with you, so I tracked him down and called him. He suggested this number as the best way to reach you if you didn’t answer the satellite phone."
"We haven’t gotten back to the boat yet. We stopped in Ste. Anne, to visit a friend."
"Would your friend be named Phillip Davis?" Racine asked.
Dani, taken aback, didn’t respond for several seconds. She heard Racine chuckle.
"I’m sorry, child. I don’t mean to sound like a nosy old woman, nor am I psychic. Your father told me that Phillip Davis lived in Ste. Anne now."
"You know who Phillip is?" Dani asked, recovering.
"Yes, of course. Listen, Dani, I held back some information when you and Liz were here. I’m sorry, but I had to think through some things before I decided how much to tell you. Now I’ve decided the houngan’s safety was more important than his privacy."
"I don’t follow that, Racine."
"Are you and Liz alone with Phillip?"
"Yes, we are."
"Good. Then turn on your speakerphone; you might as well all hear this."
Dani switched to speakerphone and set the instrument on the table. "Okay, Racine. We’re all here."
Racine told them as much as she knew, beginning with the houngan’s story of how he came to create a zombie, and ending with Richard DeMille’s report of the raid on the bateye. "The two soldiers who were left behind with the hostages speak Creole well, but they speak Spanish to each other. They don’t seem to realize that most of the Haitians speak Spanish. The man who took the houngan and the zombie is named Martinez, and he’s some kind of big shot. Maybe he is even connected to Hugo Chavez personally. One of the two soldiers speculates that he has taken the houngan to Florida."
"Thank you for your trust, Racine," Dani said. "I’m afraid that we weren’t completely open with you, either. The professor’s trip is being sponsored by a television producer who wants to do a ‘reality’ show about zombies."
"Hmm. Do you think the professor and his assistant would be willing to come to Trois-Îlets and discuss all this with me?"
"Probably. They’re stymied now that the houngan is missing. They don’t have any fallback plans that I know about, so why not? You want me to ask them?"
"Yes. I’d like the chance to meet with them."
Chapter 17
"Racine Laveau is your cousin?" the professor asked in a tone of disbelief.
"Yes. You know who she is?" Dani asked.
"She’s the most famous living Voodoo practitioner," Lilly said. "Everyone who knows anything about Voodoo knows who she is."
"Then I take it that you’re willing to meet with her?" Dani asked, looking at the professor, taking note that the look of surprise still marked his features.
"I’d love to meet with her," he said. "I wrote to her years ago, hoping to open a dialog with her, but I got a form-letter response saying that she was too busy looking after the faithful and referring me to some school for houngans and mambos in Haiti. How are you related to her?"
"I’m not sure anybody can answer that. I gather our family history is somewhat complicated, but her son and my father grew up together. I didn’t even know that until last week. She may know more, if it’s important."
"Oh, it doesn’t matter, but I’ll bet you have an interesting history. You said before that your father grew up in Martinique, I think."
"Yes, he did. From what he told me recently, our ancestors were in Haiti before the revolution at the end of the 18th century, and some of them stayed there when our branch of the family moved here."
"But I understood that the whites were expelled or killed," Lilly said, looking perplexed.
"Apparently not all my ancestors were so white. You’ll see when you meet Racine."
Dani excused herself and went up into the cockpit to call Racine and arrange a convenient time for them to meet.
****
Martinez watched as the houngan examined the contents of the ship’s medical chest. They were in the captain’s cabin, a small, filthy space behind the bridge. The captain, a slovenly man with one eye, stood in the doorway to the bridge deck, watching. He wore a grimy, once-white T-shirt stretched over a massive chest that sloped into an even larger belly. One hand in the pocket of his cut-off blue jeans, he worked the stub of an unlit cigar across his mouth. The writhing of his facial muscles gave life to a long, jagged pink scar that ran from the empty eye socket to his chin. The livid scar was a dramatic contrast to his coal-black skin.
"You want some good shit?" he asked, finally, as the houngan looked up at Martinez and shook his head.
"What kind of ‘good shit’ are you talking about, Gomez?" Martinez asked.
"Stuff for some people in Miami. Cargo."
"I though
t the manifest showed bolts of dyed cotton cloth and appliances."
The houngan kept his eyes down, not daring to look at either of the others.
"Yeah. Cloth. Everything not on the manifest. Some cargo b’long to some people don’ wan’ it on no paper."
"What is it exactly?" Martinez asked. "Drugs?"
"Yeah. Some kinda pills, like medicine."
"Let me see it," Martinez said.
"Worth lotta money," the man said, grinning, rubbing his right thumb and forefinger together.
"I said, ’Let me see it.’ You think it’s worth more than your filthy skin?" Martinez asked in a soft voice that sent a chill down the houngan’s spine. "Bring some of it here, now, Gomez," he said, taking a step toward the man.
The captain scurried away, returning in a few minutes with a small sealed box labeled ‘Ativan (Lorazepam) 1mg – 1000 tablets.’ He handed it to Martinez and quickly stepped back.
Martinez examined the box for a moment. He looked up at the captain. "How many boxes are aboard?"
The captain shrugged. "Many big box, señor. One hundred big box, have 12 like this in one."
Martinez handed it to the houngan. "Will this work?"
"Please, señor, I must read the paper inside to know. May I open the package?"
Martinez nodded, and the houngan broke the seal on the box. He removed and unfolded the insert from the package and studied it for a few moments. He looked up and nodded. "I think this will stop the convulsions and keep him quiet. May I have some bottled water and a cup, please, señor, and a spoon? I must crush these and get them down his throat when he is conscious."
"Yes. Gomez, get him what he needs. Meet us back below."
Gomez gave a surly nod and left, clearly resenting being relegated to the role of servant.
"Come, houngan. Let us see to your patient." Martinez led the way back to the dank hold that had become the houngan’s prison. As he opened the door, he said, "We are many miles from land. If you will agree to be responsible for the zombie’s good behavior, I will leave the door unlocked so that you may come and go – there is no way for you to escape, in any case."
Bluewater Voodoo: Mystery and Adventure in the Caribbean (Bluewater Thrillers Book 3) Page 11