“I guess I really was out a long time, wasn’t I?” I said as I reached for Solange and pulled her over onto my lap. I remembered the rough way Malheur had been treating her, and I was terrified to think of what he could have done to her while I was unconscious. “You’re sure no one hurt you?” Although I couldn’t see her in the dark, I felt her nod. “Boy, have I ever gotten us into a mess.” I pushed her away for a minute, tried to see her in the dark. “How’d you get here, anyway? I suppose you hid on Rusty’s boat when I went out to the Jeep?”
Again I felt her nod.
There was something else I wanted to ask her, but I wasn’t sure her English would be good enough, or even if I was ready to hear the answer. “Did you understand what Capitaine and that other man were saying in Creole?”
Her head bobbed up and down.
“Can you tell me?”
She didn’t answer right away. “He say Bwon Samedi going to take you over.”
I’d heard the phrase before, I just couldn’t remember what it meant. “What is Bwon Samedi?”
“He is a lwa. Capitaine say when we get to the island, Bwon Samedi, he going to take you over.”
After she said this, she began to cry softly. I had no idea what it meant to her, the phrase “take you over,” but it was obvious she thought it was pretty bad.
“Okay, kiddo, listen. I’m not going to let the Capitaine or this Samedi guy or anybody else hurt us. I’m going to figure out a way to get us out of this mess. Okay?” I gave her a quick tight hug, and she squeezed back so hard I thought my pounding head would explode. “I reckon this little ship does about ten knots.” It didn’t matter that she didn’t understand ninety percent of what I was saying, I had to talk out loud to convince myself, since it was wildly improbable that I was going to come up with any sort of workable plan. “It’s roughly fifty miles across to Bimini, not taking the Gulf Stream into consideration.” I reached for my wrist to illuminate my watch, but it wasn’t there. I’d forgotten that I’d given it to Pit. “So let’s figure this out. We got to the restaurant around seven. The Bimini Express probably left after eight, and it’s about ten now. I’d say, given this weather, we should get there in about four hours, maybe a little more. That will be two a.m. There’s really nothing we can do now. The best thing for us is to try to get some sleep.”
There were bedclothes on the bunk, and though the room was hot and stuffy, I pulled back the sheet and tucked Solange in, kissing her lightly on the forehead as my mother used to do to me. I lay down next to her on top of the covers, though I didn’t intend to sleep. I thought I might have a concussion, and I couldn’t remember whether it was good or bad to sleep. The fact that I couldn’t remember didn’t make me feel so great about the health of my head.
“Solange ...” I spoke softly in the darkness, not sure she was even still awake. “What happened on the big boat with Erzulie?”
She didn’t speak right away. I’d about given up when she whispered, “Le Capitaine and Erzulie fight.”
“Why?”
“Erzulie mambo, le Capitaine bokor."
“Oh, she was a mambo. Okay, I see. She didn’t like what was happening on board the boat. She challenged him.”
I heard the covers rustle as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. I could barely make her out in the thick darkness. “Le Capitaine make—” I felt her hand give me a soft judo chop to the side of the head. It didn’t help the pounding inside, but I knew what she was trying to say.
“The captain hit her in the head with a machete.”
“Oui.”
“So how did you both get in that boat?”
“Le Capitaine go inside. People put Erzulie in boat.”
“The other people on board the Miss Agnes put her into the boat’s tender to save her from the captain?”
"Oui.”
“And she was still alive?”
"Oui."
“And you, how did you get into the boat?”
“Erzulie say come. People make me go.”
She lay back down and rolled onto her side, and her breathing started to deepen its rhythm.
“Miss?”
I thought she had fallen asleep, and her whispered voice surprised me. “Yes?”
“Don’t cross over.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t cross over,” she repeated.
“Solange, it’s not like we have a whole lot of choice. If you mean the Gulf Stream, this boat is crossing the current, and we’ve got to go where the boat goes.”
“No. Cross over. Like Erzulie.”
I understood. The crossroads. I searched for the words to comfort her, but in the end, I said nothing. I didn’t want to lie to her anymore.
By the time I could tell Solange was truly asleep, when her breathing had evened out and the tension in her body had fled, I was thinking about what Rusty had said back at Tugboat Annie’s. He agreed with me that there was something special about Solange, that she was not just another restavek. What took place on the Miss Agnes seemed to bear that out. Why had the other passengers felt it was important to get her off the boat? What was the reason Malheur wouldn’t or couldn’t just kill her? Why hadn’t we been deep-sixed as soon as the boat got offshore? Unless, of course, they were just waiting until we got a little farther out into the Gulf Stream.
XXVI
I woke when the RPMs on the engine dropped down, and I noticed immediately that the rocking and rolling motion had steadied out. We had to be in the lee of the islands. The inside of my mouth tasted like stale beer and rancid grease, and when I tried to sit up I got another monster case of the dizzies. I felt like I was going to puke. I forced myself to swallow the acid taste; whatever it was, it seemed to get stuck halfway. Finally, the nausea began to subside.
Through the porthole I could see the dark outline of a low island off our starboard beam. The dense cloud cover hid the stars, but I knew that on this night, clouds or no, there would be no moon. Just as city people always know when it’s legal to park on the street, knowing the phase of the moon comes with my job. Had Malheur planned this trip for a night with no moon?
The little ship was starting to make her turn in the inner harbor when I heard voices outside in the companionway. Solange was sleeping, so I shook her shoulder and sat her up. I’d taken off my sweatshirt so she could use it as a pillow, and it was too hot in the cabin to bother putting it back on. Solange was still rubbing at her eyes when the door to our cabin swung open and someone shined a flashlight into our faces. I threw up my hand to try to shield my eyes, but the light seared my eyeballs and intensified the pulsing pain in my head. The light clicked off just as abruptly, and all I could see were bright red and white dots swimming in the darkness. The footsteps I heard enter our cabin sounded like they came from leather-soled shoes, and while I flinched just a little, expecting brutality, the arm that grabbed hold of mine did so almost gently.
“Come. Please, make no noise or I will have to hurt the little one.” As my eyes began to readjust to the darkness, I saw that the voice belonged to a slender Haitian man. His voice reminded me of Racine’s husband, Max, when he said “leetle wun.” They both had that same touch of Maurice Chevalier.
My eyes had cleared by the time we passed through the companionway door and out onto the cargo deck, and though I looked, I saw no sign of Gil or Joslin Malheur. The Haitian man who was leading us had me on one side and Solange on his other. He paused in the shadow of the ship’s superstructure, waiting for the deckhands to secure the ship to the dock.
I had never been to Bimini before, but I had been to Nassau and Eleuthera on a former boyfriend’s sailboat. Most Bahamian towns had a government dock for cargo ships and a place for yachts to get their customs clearance. I figured that Alice Town, the only real town here on Bimini, would be the same. The floodlights that lit up the ship’s cargo deck illuminated the dock as well. It was a concrete dock now slick with rain; though it was not raining at the moment, the humidity had
to be in the upper nineties.
The captain of the Bimini Express had dropped a bow anchor out in the middle of the harbor, and he was backing into the dock so he would be able to roll off his cargo. Other than a sleepy-looking dockworker who was securing the ship’s lines and a pack of five or six wet and bedraggled stray dogs who stood scratching themselves, Alice Town looked to be fast asleep. My estimate of a 2:00 a.m. arrival time might have been a little on the short side. Judging from Bimini’s reputation, I would have thought there would still be some music and bar traffic if it was only 2:00. Instead the town seemed eerily quiet.
As soon as the cargo ramp had clanged down onto the cement dock, our escort hurried us back through the pallets of building materials and shipping containers and led us off the ship’s stern. We turned to our left on the government dock, and there, tied alongside, at the south end, was a twenty-foot open fishing boat, outboard idling, the single man aboard holding on to the concrete dock with his hands: It was Gil.
I thought about screaming for help, trying to escape, running into town, throwing myself on the mercy of some of the local Bahamians, but then I remembered how strong Gil’s grip was. I remembered, too, the Haitian man’s comment that he would hurt Solange if I did anything foolish.
As I slid into the boat, Gil turned around and directed me to the stern.
“I’ve got to help her,” I said, pointing to Solange. I reached up to the girl, got my hands under her arms, and started to lift her into the boat. Gil came up alongside me and took the child out of my arms. He startled me, and when I turned to look at him, I saw that his eyes were clear. Once you got past the scars, big mustache, and misaligned features, there was an intelligence there. Was the craziness an act he could turn on and off at will?
He settled Solange gently on the stern.
“What are you doing with these guys, Gil?”
He whirled around, his arm upraised as if to strike me. “Shut up.”
I turned my head aside, waiting for the blow, but none came. When I opened my eyes, he had his back turned to us, and he was watching the bridge on the Bimini Express.
“You knew my father, didn’t you?” I said.
He remained standing facing the ship, but I could see his profile. “Your father?”
“I saw pictures of you,” I said, “with Red in Cartagena almost twenty-five years ago. You and Joe D’Angelo were—”
Once more Gil surprised me with how fast he could move. In an instant, he was at my side, squeezing my arm in that grip. “I said, shut up,” he hissed, and shoved me hard toward the back of the boat with Solange.
Then I heard another voice behind us, speaking Creole. Malheur had arrived, and he was castigating the slim Haitian man for not doing something to his liking.
Gil had done his best to hide any reaction, but I had seen his eyes widen slightly at the mention of Red and Cartagena. He had been surprised.
Once we were all in the boat, Gil shoved off and headed the boat back toward the harbor entrance. Our leather-shoed friend pushed Solange and me down in the back of the boat, making us sit on the wet deck so that our heads were not visible above the boat’s gunwales. The boat would look like it carried three men going fishing. When they were all deep in conversation, I raised myself up on my knees and took a look over the rail. We were idling along, passing a marina, and I nearly did a double take when I saw a familiar boat tied up to the seaplane dock. It was an Anacapri with two big outboards, just like Rusty’s.
I sat down quickly when Gil turned around to check on us. He glanced over at the seaplane dock, and even in the darkness, I could see the recognition on his face. That boat meant something to him, too, and he turned around and shoved the throttles forward. We surged up into a plane and sped across the channel toward South Bimini. Like the Anacapri, this boat could do maybe twenty knots—more than twice the speed of the Bimini Express. Now, with our bow raised and the stern lowered, I didn’t need to get up on my knees to see over the top of the outboards. Under the bright dock lights, I could just make out the name of the boat tied to the seaplane dock: INS AGENT.
We had not yet left the harbor basin when we abruptly slowed and turned into a canal on our left. What we call Bimini is really two islands—North and South Bimini—and the harbor entrance is through a slot where the two islands overlap. The canal entrance on South Bimini was next to a dock. I’d heard there was a ferry between the two islands, and I presumed we were passing the ferry dock as we idled into the canal. Although the night was very dark, I could see that there were a few homes lining the canal as we motored back in. The farther we traveled, the more numerous the homes, though all looked dark, perhaps deserted. At one point we took a hard left turn, then passed what looked like an abandoned hotel. Soon after, there were no more concrete seawalls, and then, finally, we were traveling through something that looked like a scene out of the old Bogart movie The African Queen—a narrow creek with low-hanging branches forming a canopy over the waterway.
Swamps have never been on my list of favorite nightspots. There was no breeze whatsoever, and as the outboard slowed, and we inched our way up the creek, I felt the mosquitoes on my back and arms and legs. I couldn’t swat them off one patch of bare skin before another bug landed somewhere else. These weren’t really the kind of mosquitoes you swat, either; these were the kind that smeared into your sweat, leaving a black sooty smudge mixed with blood across your skin. The odors of ammonia and rotting vegetation combined with the gas fumes from the outboard engine that was right next to Solange and me, and it made me start to feel sick. I was grateful when I heard Gil shift the engine into neutral, and we glided up to a rickety wood dock where the waterway dead-ended.
Something about Gil’s docking was not to Malheur’s liking. As the other Haitian man tied up the boat, Malheur yelled at Gil, his nose almost touching Gil’s, and then Malheur spat in his face. The two men stood with their faces inches apart as a large wad of spittle slid down Gil’s cheek. When the Haitian captain turned his back, Gil’s lip under that huge mustache curled back in a soundless snarl.
Malheur then jumped onto the dock and disappeared into the brush without a glance back. I helped Solange out of the boat and held her hand as they led us into a dark passage someone had cut through the mangroves. Gil was in the lead with the flashlight that, this time, thankfully, was not pointed into our eyes. Someone had attempted to build a dirt path above the tide line, but the earth underfoot gave with each step, and when I walked through a puddle, the water that seeped into my boat shoe felt more like mud. My feet were soon slipping around in the grit inside my shoe. The Haitian crewman brought up the rear, apparently guarding us, and I wondered how he was doing in his leather shoes.
The smell was the first thing I noticed. The stink of the rotting vegetation in that mangrove swamp was nothing compared to the stench coming from somewhere up ahead. I pulled my shirt up over my nose. The deeper into the mangroves we walked, the more putrid the air grew.
Then I noticed the quiet. It seemed as though even the insects and the slithery mangrove critters had decided to take a night off. The stillness was giving me goose bumps in spite of the sweat that had now completely soaked my shirt.
We came to a piece of high ground in a clearing; there the cause of the stench became clear. A cinder-block house stood in the center of the clearing. It had been built on big concrete columns so the tidal surge of a hurricane could pass beneath. But tonight, it wasn’t water moving under the house and spilling out across the cleared land. Gil swung his light across the silent ground, and I saw eyes. As the flashlight beam played across their faces—black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Indian—they all turned their heads away, as though ashamed to be found living in such conditions. Hundreds were trying to sleep on the ground, on top of one another, with no shelter from rain or bugs or whatever might come crawling up out of those dark mangroves.
Above us, I heard a door slam, and from the middle of the sea of people came a cough—a chest-rattling, wet, phle
gmy cough. Then another. From the other side of the clearing, I heard a young child start to cry and then a mother’s voice speaking softly to him in Creole, trying to calm him. The moaning began from several directions at once and in a variety of pitches, all of them resonating with a hopelessness that was painful to hear. From beyond the tree line, somewhere out in the mangroves, came sputtering noises from somebody suffering from a case of explosive diarrhea.
They’d somehow kept quiet as Malheur had passed.
“My God, who are all these people?”
“None o’ yer business,” Gil said as he stopped at the bottom of the stairs, clicked off the flashlight, and drew a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket.
As my eyes grew more accustomed to the dark, I saw next to the house several rusted drums attached to a water catchment system on the roof and a two-burner propane stove resting on a plywood sheet on sawhorses. I wondered if this was the place Solange had worked with Erzulie. No wonder she’d been so thin.
“But they’re human beings. The smell, these conditions— so many kids, too—and they’re sick, Gil.”
He sucked on the end of his cigarette, making the ember glow bright, then nodded his head toward the top of the stairs. “You think he gives a fuck?” His voice sounded different from that of the man who had been yelling at me to shut up in the boat.
I thought about the immigrants who had been killed in Florida and about Margot at the Swap Shop. “But if he is going to sell the restaveks, he must want to keep them healthy.”
“They don’t normally stay here this long,” he said, then he took another long drag on his cigarette. He blew smoke toward the upstairs. “He hasn’t been making runs across since he’s been trying to track down the kid there. He don’t usually stay in Florida.”
“What is it about her? What do they want with her?”
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