Cross Current

by Christine Kling

  “How’d it go?” he said.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you. How come I didn’t see you till you were right next to me?”

  He winked. “Trade secrets.” He pointed at an electronics booth jammed with stereo gear. “See that store? It’s owned by a buddy of mine. He let me stand behind the counter. You weren’t looking at the people behind the counters.”

  “You’re good,” I said.

  He shrugged. “My buddy and me, we’ve been catching up a little about the old days. Things were really good back then.”

  “Hey, Joe. You didn’t happen to see Gilbert Lynch go by while you were standing behind that counter?”

  “Gil? No, why?”

  “I could have sworn I saw him in the crowd. But, you know, it was just a glance and he was gone.”

  “Even if it was him, Seychelle, I wouldn’t make too much of it. Gil’s pretty harmless. From what I hear, he’s not exactly firing on all pistons these days, but he’s never hurt anybody.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “So, we done here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Is it okay with you if I stay? My buddy over here”—he pointed toward the booth—“offered to buy me lunch at a little Cuban place he knows about. That is, if you don’t need me anymore.”

  “It’s okay with me,” I said. Actually, I felt relieved. I’d been wondering how I was going to get rid of him now that I had accepted his offer of help.

  I tossed my bag in the back of the Jeep and headed out of the parking lot I had no doubt about where to go next. After talking to both Juliette and Margot, I figured Martine Gohin had some explaining to do. Abusing children may be an acceptable practice in her own country, but not here.

  XXI

  The traffic on Sunrise was miserable, and it was nearly thirty minutes later that I pulled into Martine’s drive. Her minivan was there, so I assumed she was home. Juliette answered the door, and she drew in a sharp breath when she saw it was me.

  “I need to speak to Martine.” The child backed away, opened the door wide, and lowered her eyes. I could just about smell her fear. I would have to be careful that Martine never learned that Juliette had spoken to me.

  “Seychelle,” Martine crooned, “what a nice surprise. Come join me out on the patio.”

  “Martine, this isn’t really a social visit.” I stopped in the foyer and refused to follow her any farther into the house.

  “Ah, you want to know if we have received any information at the radio station. I am sorry, but no one has called.”

  “Thank you. But no, that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Oh?”

  “I want to talk to you about Juliette.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Martine, you know I’ve been running around trying to figure out how to get in touch with Solange’s father. Well, it’s become obvious to me that the Miss Agnes was in the business of bringing young girls to Florida who weren’t coming to see fathers or join relatives here. They were coming to be sold, to work as restaveks, like Juliette here.”

  Martine’s mouth opened in a round O as she inhaled. “That is ridiculous,” she said. “What do you mean coming in here and making those accusations? Juliette is my niece.”

  “Oh, please. Martine, don’t lie to me.”

  “Miss Sullivan, you don’t understand a thing about Haitian culture.” As she talked, Martine’s hands flew through the air, making wide gestures. “We have traditions in my country that you will never be able to understand, but at least you could respect them. But no, not you Americans. You think all the world should be like you. You are so arrogant. You would like to see a McDonald’s in every city, your music on the radio, and all the world just like your country.”

  “Martine, child slavery is not some quaint Haitian custom that needs preservation.”

  She made that sound again with her mouth, expelling a puff of air through her pouty lips, and she rolled her eyes. “You come into my home. You make these ridiculous lies, these accusations—”

  “And what about the captain of the Miss Agnes, this Joslin Malheur. You know him, don’t you?”

  “Of course not.” She turned away and busied herself going through a stack of papers on a console table in the hallway. She had not turned away soon enough, however, and her eyes had widened almost imperceptibly at the mention of his name. She knew Malheur.

  A phone started to ring in the kitchen. “Excuse me,” she said, still not meeting my eyes with hers. She hurried off into the other room. I could hear her muffled voice as she spoke, but mostly she seemed to be listening while the other party did all the talking. From the entry to her house, the living room opened up off the hall to the right, and I took a few steps forward to explore while I waited. The room was decorated with paintings and artifacts from Haiti. There was a carved gourd and a beaded flag on display on the bookshelf. On the top shelf of the unit lay a machete in an intricately designed leather scabbard. I was just reaching for the machete when Martine appeared in the hall. She had her pocketbook slung over her shoulder.

  “Miss Sullivan, we are going to have to cut our visit short, I am afraid. That was the police dispatcher, and they need my translation services. I must go.”

  “What happened?”

  “There’s been a homicide,” she said, and waved me in the direction of the front door. “They need me to interview some of the possible witnesses. I really must be going.”

  Martine opened the door, and we both walked out onto her driveway, squinting into the glaring sunlight. As she put the key in the driver’s-side door of the minivan, she turned to watch me leave. “We are finished, Miss Sullivan, non?"

  I wondered if she was referring to our friendship or just this afternoon’s meeting, but I supposed she was right in either case. “I’m not giving up, Martine. I’m not going to let them send Solange back, and I’m going to report this restavek business to the authorities.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully, then opened her door. Just before she climbed in, she paused. “Miss Sullivan, I am a civilian contractor for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. I have worked with them for almost five years. You think they are going to believe a word of this nonsense of yours?” She made that dismissive spitting sound again, then looked at her watch. “This is going to take most of the day. The Swap Shop,” she said, shaking her head. “They couldn’t have picked a place with more Haitians.”

  “It’s at the Swap Shop?”

  “Oui, probably some kind of gang activity. Kids these days, eh?” She slammed her door and the van started up.

  I jumped into Lightnin’ and backed out of her way. After she had turned out of sight, I followed. I hadn’t been willing to ask her if it was a boy or a girl, but in my gut I knew.

  When I pulled back into the Swap Shop parking lot, there were more than half a dozen police cruisers, several unmarked county vehicles, and a white van with the words Fort Lauderdale Police Crime Scene Unit emblazoned across the side. The sad part was how little attention the crowd of police vehicles warranted among the weekend shoppers; they passed by as though this level of police activity was something they saw every day.

  Inside the building, it was different. A crowd had gathered around to peer in under the circus bleachers at the shrouded body lying on the cement floor next to a dusty carousel horse. Mothers stood on tiptoes, holding their children’s hands, the children’s eyes wide in their painted faces, their helium balloons bobbing overhead. An older black gentleman wearing red suspenders to hold up his sagging black trousers was mumbling a prayer, though it was barely audible over the calliope music being broadcast over the PA system.

  On the far side of the building, families sat eating their McDonald’s burgers, people were buying Lotto tickets at the Tic Tac Dough window, and ladies were bargaining with a turbaned shopkeeper for imitation eelskin handbags.

  She was just a kid who was trying to help me, trying to get back at
the man she suspected of killing her brother. What part had I played in her death?

  A woman started wailing somewhere in the crowd. I pushed my way to the front where bodies pressed up against the crime scene tape. The woman stood between two uniformed officers, her face covered with both hands, her fingernails brightly detailed little jewels sparkling in the flash of a camera. She lowered her hands suddenly and turned her back to me. She began to speak to someone on the far side of the crowd, but I couldn’t see who was there because the two patrolmen, who supported her on either side, blocked my view. I tried to get the attention of the female cop who was handling the crowd, to ask permission to speak to the saleswoman, as if I didn’t know who was there under that black plastic sheet.

  I was concentrating so hard on getting her attention that I didn’t even notice who had walked up on the other side of me.

  “It’s happening again, Miss Sullivan,” Collazo said.

  Even with all the noise in that place, hearing his voice startled me. I jumped back and collided with him.

  “Geez, Collazo, give me a heart attack, why don’t you.”

  “I go to a scene, and somehow you are involved.” He had removed his jacket, and when I bumped into him, his freshly ironed shirt felt damp. He mopped the back of his neck with a handkerchief.

  I pointed to the covered body and said, “I didn’t have anything to do with this.” But even as I said it, I knew I was protesting more to convince myself than the detective. She was dead because she had talked to me.

  “Madame Renard, the store owner,” he said while flipping through the pages of his note pad. “She just identified you as a customer who was here this afternoon. You talked to the victim and bought a dress.”

  He didn’t have to finish the thought. I’d been accusing myself the entire drive here.

  I could not stop staring at the tarp. “She just wanted to go to school, Collazo.”

  He pulled at the neck of his shirt, and the movement drew my eyes away. He ran a hand around the back of his neck where the tufts of black body hair curled over the top of his collar. The air-conditioning in the building was practically nonexistent, and the humidity was off the chart. “You came here to the Swap Shop to see her, and you were one of the last to see her alive.”

  I nodded. “Someone set up the meeting. I wanted information about anyone who had been on that boat that sank up in Hillsboro, and this girl”—I pointed to the draped body— “her name was Margot. She had come over on the Miss Agnes, but several months ago.” I looked around at the crowds and the lights. “Collazo, are you telling me that this girl was murdered here in this crowded place, and no one saw anything?”

  He nodded. “Either saw nothing or will say nothing.”

  “What about the store owner. What does she say happened?”

  He shrugged. “The girl was there. The owner went into the back room, came out, the girl was gone.”

  “What about that snitch, that guy, Gil Lynch. I saw him in the crowd while I was talking to the girl.”

  “Interesting.”

  “And I came with Joe D’Angelo. After I talked to the girl here, Joe took off to have lunch with some buddy of his.”

  “Miss Sullivan, start over. Tell me how you got here, what you talked about.” He had his gold pen out, and he flipped to a new page in that little notebook of his. I found it reassuring somehow: As long as Collazo made those little notes in his neat writing, he might help me make sense of this.

  After telling him the whole story, I added, “The Haitian term for them is restaveks, but they are really child slaves. It’s not unusual for them to be molested by family members— they are seen as the property of the family. Apparently this restavek business has been going on for decades in Haiti, but Joslin Malheur, the captain of the Miss Agnes, and all his crew, they’ve imported the concept here to the U.S. They are in the business of bringing girls here and selling them into slavery. Margot said Malheur is a former Tonton Macoute. He likes to hurt people. Gets off on it.” As I was telling him the story, it began to sound more and more far-fetched. “I think he’s responsible for all these DART killings. Including this one.

  “Miss Sullivan, you are telling me that these killings are about child slavery, here in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Yes, Collazo, that is exactly what I’m saying. Okay, so the restaveks aren’t the only part of their cargo—they do make money from bringing in your standard, old-style, illegal immigrants, too. In fact, this girl, Margot,” I said, “told me that her brother paid eight hundred bucks to come here to the States in order to take her away from these people.”

  “These people. You mean the slavers.”

  The tone of his voice told me what he thought about my theory.

  “You’re telling me,” he continued, “that the police translator who is here somewhere right now taking witness statements is really a child slaver.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true, Collazo.”

  “And this young Haitian girl was telling you all about this when most Haitians won’t say anything to an American.”

  “The only reason she was helping me out was because she wanted to bring this Malheur guy down. He killed her brother. She said he was going back to the Bahamas on the Bimini Express—a little freighter that usually sails out of Port Laudania. Please, check that out, even if you don’t believe me.”

  He didn’t say a word for almost a minute.

  “Come,” Collazo said. He walked over to the body, now abandoned and covered and waiting for transport. I followed him, thinking he wanted to speak to me out of earshot of the crowd. He bent down and, with a flourish, pulled back the sheet. It was the last thing I expected him to do, and I didn’t have time to avert my eyes.

  “What the ...” I turned aside and felt the bile rising in the back of my throat. A porous blackness began to creep in around the periphery of my vision. I put my hands on my knees and dropped my head, breathing deeply. I had seen her, and already I wished I could erase those few seconds from my memory. The left side of her head looked like someone had cut a deep groove from the top of her scalp all the way down to her eye, and dark blood mixed with grayish brains spilled out across the concrete and across her face. Her eyes and mouth were open, as though she were still screaming.

  “They have determined that he does it with a very sharp machete. He must be an immensely strong man. The MO’s the same as the other four victims.”

  “You could have just told me, Collazo. My God. I think I might be sick.” I was having trouble breathing, and my eyes filled with tears. “You bastard. I was just talking to her a couple of hours ago.”

  “And that’s exactly why I showed her to you. Child slavery.” He cleared his throat and stepped in close, invading my space, making me feel sicker still. “I’m going to tell you a little secret about people.” He paused for effect, then said, “They lie.” He stopped and smiled, showing the wide gap between his front teeth. “All the time. People lie to us to try to get us to do things. Things they want us to do for them. Go home to your little tugboat, Miss Sullivan. Amateurs like you, you go out and try to play detective, and people wind up hurt or . . .” He gestured at the body. “I don’t want to be scraping your brains off the pavement next time.”

  XXII

  I thought about Collazo’s words all the way home, thought about what I’d seen beneath that tarp. How could someone do that to another human being? Even that scowl of hers, the anger she’d wrapped herself in, none of that had obscured the fact that she was a beautiful child. Could Margot have been lying to me? I didn’t think so. The hate for Malheur I had seen on that girl’s face was real. She had taken a risk by talking to me. And I had put her in terrible danger by talking to her. If only I hadn’t gone to speak to her, if only I had taken her with me, put her in the same house with Solange. If only the world weren’t a place where children were abused and killed. And then there was Juliette. I had seen it in her eyes, too. Someone was hurting her. On the one hand, I w
as terrified that my blundering around would result in someone else getting hurt or killed. Yet, on the other hand, no one else was doing anything to stop this restavek business. Whether or not Collazo and D’Ugard believed me, this was real.

  When I came around the hedge on the side of the Larsens’ house, I saw Pit sitting at the picnic table in the backyard, charts and papers and books spread out on every surface of the table and wood benches.

  He looked up. “Hey, I got something to show you. Come here.”

  After scratching Abaco’s ears, I joined my brother in the shade of the live oak.

  “What have you got?”

  “I think I can see what might have happened that night. From what you told me earlier, and from looking at the charts, I’d say their base camp is probably out in the bush somewhere on Bimini.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. A girl I met who came on an earlier trip on the Miss Agnes” —and a girl who is now dead because she talked to me, I thought but didn’t say—“told me that Malheur, the captain, is heading back to Bimini on one of those interisland freighters.”

  “Here’s the way I see it.” He pointed to the chart of the Straits of Florida, and we both stared while he gathered his thoughts. The coast of South Florida and the Keys ran down the left side. The Great Bahama Bank bordered by the Biminis, Gun Cay, Cat Cay, and, to the north, Great Isaac’s Light, were on the right side of the straits. Flowing north through the middle of all this was the Gulf Stream, pouring through this narrow slot at speeds of three knots or better. “So they house the people over here” —Pit pointed to Bimini—“until the weather is calm, and then they try to make a quick run across the Gulf Stream to dump their load and run back to the Bahamas. Their boats are primitive, and they don’t have fancy navigation gear because it’s only a forty- to fifty-mile run. They count on conditions being the same for each run. I suspect the night Solange was set loose out there the current wasn’t exactly cooperating.”