But was it enough? As he watched the ketch’s brilliant white sails strain forward and fill his vision, Dolan thought no, it was not enough, yet as he prepared himself for the inevitable impact, it was just enough. The two boats, crisscrossing, slid past each other with no room to spare, the Payday’s bowsprit scoring a jagged line through the paint of the ketch’s transom, the two captains hurling insults at each other, Renee full of contempt for her rival, a coward and cheater. You fucking pussy, she hollered across the widening gap between the boats. Parmentier threw his martini glass and it shattered at the feet of the ketch’s skipper. Then the drama was over, the sailboats bucking away from one another into the sparkling dance of light across the bay.
Real cute, said Dolan, glaring at Renee. He understood he had made a mistake, agreeing to anything outside the boundaries he had established over the years with Parmentier, but against his better judgment he was fascinated by the girl.
You don’t approve of the way I sail? she asked, and even her sunglasses couldn’t mask her amusement at his displeasure.
I don’t approve of losing, he said. If you do whatever it takes to win, you better fucking win.
Whatever was driving the aggression of her mood that morning broke with laughter and the fight lifted from her shoulders and she told Dolan she couldn’t agree with him more. Next time, she said, you’re going to want to bet on me.
Parmentier wanted advice and the two men left Renee at the helm and went below to sit at the small fold-down table in the galley and talk. This Haiti thing, said Parmentier, you know about it? I don’t know about any Haiti thing, said Dolan. What Haiti thing are you talking about? Two things, really, said Parmentier. His people had asked him to go down there and analyze the business climate, opportunities created by the political situation, find out who was quietly advertising for partners, who needed to be capitalized. After the American military pulled out, Haiti was an attractive prospect for Parmentier’s associates, all action, no risk, because who’s going to fuck with you, and everybody, I mean top to bottom, crying to jump in your pocket for pennies on the dollar. So, said Parmentier, I help my people get going down there.
And that would be doing what? said Dolan. Fixing the sewers?
Well, you know, Connie. Business. Finance. Trade. Men making the world go ’round. So my thing’s up and running and it’s sweet. I’m not making enemies, I’m making friends. We’re shipping high-quality product in and out with zero interference and the team is happy and then one of your guys finds me and he wants to step on me, but guess what, he doesn’t want to shut me down, he wants to add on, he wants to expand the action, bump the value, join the party.
Hold up, said Dolan. What guy are we talking about here?
One of your guys from Miami. He knew all about me, all about you. Fed named Rice, Reece. One of yours.
Dolan grunted ambiguously with no intention of telling Parmentier he had never heard of an agent from the Miami bureau named Rice or Reece, and Dolan was certain no one would ever think of looping Parmentier into another federal operation—offshore, no less—without consulting him first.
Okay, said Parmentier, so maybe I’m a misty-eyed idealist, but I wasn’t expecting this, Connie. My understanding was, the day you closed the Tampa shop was the day I walked back into my own thing, no strings attached, no recalls; shred the files and burn the house down and keep your buddies off my ass because I have served my country and I’m a motherfucking patriot. I’m not saying I make the world a better place, but we balanced the books, right? We zeroed out.
Dolan said, What’s Reece asking you to do?
Nothing I can’t do but that’s not the point. If the Feds can gin up an illegal casino in Tampa, I guess they can do whatever the fuck they want, right?
Dolan said, What are you asking me to do?
Fuck, Connie, I don’t know. Tell me I don’t have to do this.
You don’t have to do this.
What I wanted to hear.
But if you were smart, Dolan said, you’d think about it. You know what I’m saying.
I know what you’re saying.
One more thing, said Dolan, and he nodded his head aft, Renee above them at the wheel framed from the waist up by the open hatch.
She’s straight, man, said Parmentier. She’ll blow a line of coke every once in a while but that’s it. Beginning, middle, end of story.
Tell me a girl that smart doesn’t have your number.
I’m a businessman, I do some work for the government here and there—what’s to know? She knows I make a lot of money and when she asks a question I tell her something and she doesn’t ask again. She does her thing, I do mine. And hey, bro, she loves me.
Why?
Don’t go hurting my feelings, Connie.
Conrad Dolan spent the following week on the phone, trying to pin down the operation but could only establish that agent Reece’s bona fides were in order, that the operation wasn’t Miami-based but had originated up the food chain in Washington, and that the field officer assigned to Parmentier in Port-au-Prince was none other than an erstwhile colleague, Woodrow Singer, in Dolan’s opinion the embodiment of a worthless breed of special agent infesting the ranks throughout the decade like termites chewing into the Bureau’s wood—midwestern evangelicals and razor-cut Mormons and born-again millenarians dedicated to spreading the word of Christ from behind their desks, more inclined to ask a source to pray with them than pass on information important to a case. In the convolutions of their moral universe, hell on earth was being ordered by a supervisor to stake out a brothel, consume an alcoholic beverage with satanic rock and roll pounding in their ears, look at tits, and talk to a bad guy who had no regard for Jesus. The Prissies, Dolan called them, this new half-breed of hygienic agents. In Dolan’s experience, too much religion, like too much bureaucracy, watered down a nation’s ability to remain strong; he could feel it happening in the Bureau, he could feel it happening in America, and when he learned that Woodrow Singer had been assigned to Parmentier to develop an operation in Haiti, the nature of which no one in Dolan’s network of contacts seemed to know, his heart sank because he understood Singer would never be able to exert control over a con man like Parmentier, that, sensing Woodrow Singer’s weakness, eventually Parmentier would work the setup to his own advantage, a prospect that unsettled Dolan because the benefits and immunities accorded Parmentier for his participation in the Tampa sting were already beyond the pale.
Soon after that day on the sailboat Parmentier and his wife disappeared south, back to Haiti, Dolan had his own business to attend to in Latin America and it was another month before they were all back in Florida and Parmentier finally answered his cell phone and Dolan said, Como sa va, fuckhead, and Parmentier said the reception on his phone was lousy and how did tomorrow morning at nine sound. Dolan said fine, bring a gun to shoot yourself with.
They met, as was their habit, on the boat. Dolan said let’s ring some bells and then said the name of Woodrow Singer. He wanted to know why Parmentier had solicited his advice on a decision that had already been made, an operation that was already up and running and assigned a handler. Parmentier swore he hadn’t been misleading Dolan when he asked for advice, although he admitted he hadn’t explained himself well or completely. He had only spoken to Reece in Miami and had only promised Reece he would think about it, take the project under consideration, then, on his next trip to Haiti, there was Woodrow Singer—the Deacon, Renee called him, God this and the Bible that, Haiti is Beezlebub’s workshop, you too are a sinner boy and I can help you come back to Jesus—and Parmentier knew he had to close the door on this jackass but, Connie, said Parmentier, things got complicated like they always do. I got word from one of my associates that the big dogs wanted me inside the operation.
One of your guys? asked Dolan, astounded. How come you’re not dead y
et, letting it be known you work with the Feds? You’re out of your everfucking mind, my friend.
Hey, no, it’s cool, Connie, I’m covered, said Parmentier. He said he had a board of directors, and one of them took him aside and said in confidence he had someone on the payroll inside the Miami bureau and this guy told him about the Haiti project the Feds were starting up and mentioned Parmentier’s name and the big dog fell in love with the project and thought it would fit in well with some other things they were wanting to do and he said, hey, just between you and me, let’s do it. So I’ve been doing it but honest to God, Connie, this guy Singer is like a god-robot, he doesn’t understand how to work with a businessman, he’s got no sense of humor, he thinks all Haitians are maggots—which, you know, causes its own set of problems—and I wasn’t shitting you when I asked back then if I had to do this.
Let me assure you, said Dolan, your organization has no one on its payroll inside the Miami bureau.
Don’t be too sure about that, Connie.
Your associate found out about this project from some other source.
Whatever, said Parmentier. Water under the bridge, all right?
Dolan thought he had heard Parmentier say he was withdrawing from his role in the operation but that wasn’t the case. Parmentier’s enthusiasm for the project had only grown, as had his belief that Singer, however irritating, would become less of a problem over time.
What’s so great about this project anyway, said Dolan. What are we talking about here?
It’s one of those things, said Parmentier. I can’t say. This has been made very clear to me.
What? That you can’t tell me? They said my name?
No, that I can’t tell anybody. Even, like, my wife, although she knows some of the pieces because she’s useful, right. There’s only four guys in the loop. Actually five. Me, the dog, Reece, Singer, a local guy in Port-au-Prince.
Make it six, said Dolan.
Aw, Connie, come on, you know how this stuff works.
You bet I do, you little prick, said Dolan, his voice spilling out the wrath. Whatever you’re doing, when it goes wrong, I better not see any blowback headed in my direction. Anybody comes after you, you ask that motherfucking Holy Roller Woodrow Singer to take care of it.
Aw, Connie, come on, don’t be that way. It’s just a little backroom paperwork. Passports, visas. You know what I’m saying.
Dolan, though, hadn’t expected this, the government slipping clients across the border with forged documents. Who are they bringing in? he asked.
I don’t know, said Parmentier. Some guys they said who helped them in the Gulf War and other places who couldn’t stay where they were and when they tried to come here I guess got fucked by the system. Sand niggers, towel heads. You know the kind of people I’m talking about.
Helped who? asked Dolan, mystified. I’m trying to understand this. Are we friends with these people anymore?
They don’t sketch it out for me, Connie. I just assumed the military. Like those mountain people helped our guys in Vietnam against the communists. We put them in Kansas or Minnesota or some shit hole, right?
I don’t get it, said Dolan.
Sure you do, Connie, said Parmentier. It’s like me and you, right? You make me a promise and you keep your promise. Hey, when the trooper pulled me over on the turnpike, right? He didn’t know he was wasting his time? Same thing, right? This guy over there makes you a promise, this guy over here doesn’t know or care about the promise, the guy who made the promise has to fix the problem. It’s his duty, right?
That was the last Dolan saw or heard from Parmentier until he phoned from the Miami courthouse where he was being arraigned for murder. But he ran into Renee one more time.
By now Tom Harrington had felt his anger devolve to a familiar lethargy—the same sense that he disappeared into during every narrative told to him in Haiti, like a theatergoer dragged onstage and swallowed into the ensemble, and he broke his silence with the well-rehearsed lines of his frustration, the refrain that he couldn’t make go away.
Are you a good guy or a bad guy? he asked Dolan.
All Dolan said was that he thought lawyers weren’t supposed to ask questions to which they didn’t want to know the answers. Harrington’s rage seemed to jerk him up by the collar of his shirt and send him out of the bar and up the Oloffson’s creaky wooden staircase to his shabby dormitory room in a wing of the hotel that had once been a hospital ward earlier in the century. In the stifling darkness of the room a scythe of panic cut him at the knees and he tumbled into the lumpy heat of his bed, choking back sobs of self-pity. He had seen all the dead but had never seen the dying. There was a dog once, his dog, when he was fourteen years old. Rubbernecking accidents on Interstate 95. Breathing fast and hard he made himself light-headed, staring blindly at the slow rotation of the ceiling fan. Sometime in the middle of the night gunfire erupted down the hill toward the palace, the echo of the unseen violence carrying him safely past the dread and grief and torment to a terrible calm.
What Dolan said. He had killed a man, hadn’t he?
Maybe. Probably. Yes, most likely he had. Add it to the list. Most likely he was damned, a condition remarkable only for the lack of difficulty or regret with which he accepted it before he fell asleep.
CHAPTER TEN
In the serving line the three soldiers heaped their plates with stewed beef and grilled fish and varieties of salad but barely touched the food back at the table, their appetites lost or perhaps they just didn’t trust the cooking or had become so accustomed to eating pouches of ready-made rations they were unable to stomach anything better. Tom saw the melancholic weight of this, their final night in Haiti, upon them, their shoulders hunched forward and spirits sagging and Jackie cocked her head to show concern and asked what was going on, guys, why so gloomy? They were going home and leaving the job hanging in the air and there were no follow-ons and no Plan Bs and no satisfaction and they were without glory. The arc of their narrative in Haiti had begun with the roads lined ten deep with teary-eyed wretches screaming thank you and had climaxed with the curtain closing on a loud chorus of fuck yous, a coda of resentment. They were going home to pick up the pieces of their lives or going home to an empty house or irate wives and children they hardly knew and after forty-five days they would ship out to Bosnia or Chad or Colombia or some other land of the eternally cursed and forsaken where everyone was at each other’s throats and you had every reason to expect your neighbors were coming after you during the night.
Eville Burnette apologized to Tom and Jackie. We’re here but we’re not here.
We’re gone but we’re not gone, Tet Rouge agreed, a weak smile in the corner of his mouth.
Inside the hotel’s lobby the house band began to tune their instruments and Warrant Officer Brooks looked at his wristwatch and pushed back his chair and said, No, we’re just gone, but Eville Burnette said if it was all right with them and all right with Tom and Jackie, he would stay and listen to the music for a while and get a taxi back to the LIC or maybe Tom would give him a ride. The soldiers had a two-man rule and Tom could see that the warrant officer did not like this idea of splitting up and was surprised when he heard the officers defer to the noncom and Brooks say, Plane’s at oh-six-hundred. See you there. They stood up together like boys accused of trespassing, Brooks and Captain Butler, fixed the berets on their heads and said sorry for being bad company and left.
Burnette and Jackie let Tom buy a round of rum sours and when Joseph returned with the drinks the waiter told Tom there was a man who had asked to see him and then the voodoo drummers sent a thunderclap of rhythm into the night. Jackie looked at him knowingly, her eyes suggesting their common secret, and the drums were like a call to arms to Harrington’s obsession.
In the story Tom told his wife, Jacqueline Scott had been di
splaced from his lap to sit properly at his side, a realignment necessary to create an official version of the story. Because what was he going to say otherwise, even though for Harrington the truest part of what happened in the houngan’s private chapel, the part that would always cause him to lie, was Jackie there atop him, pressing herself into Tom’s lap every day for the rest of his life, his mind sown with the indelible desire that seemed to invade him so suddenly when the space between the two of them widened, as if these small distances—she below him on the beach or crossing a room toward him or Tom watching her now above him in the veranda’s aquarium of happy light, drinking with Master Sergeant Eville Burnette—were somehow aphrodisiacal, the atmosphere between them swirling with the fumes of attraction that seemed easy to ignore only if he were at her side, close enough to measure her afflictions, reacting to the imperfect details of a person and not a white-hot, fever-dream blaze of yearning.
Sitting poolside on the lower terrace with François Colon, the Haitian lawyer who had left messages throughout the day and had now begged Harrington away from his dinner guests for a few minutes, Tom couldn’t take his eyes from her. He decided he didn’t like it very much when Jackie leaned in to Burnette to confide her thoughts, or touched his arm when she laughed, and Colon, increasingly perturbed, received only the residue of Tom’s attention.
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