Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

She smiled slightly. “I think he’s The Man.” She waited for Jake to grasp her meaning, and when she saw that he did, she continued. “That’s why his bail is set so high—the government wants to see who makes it, see if there’s a trail to follow. It is, of course, illegal to set high bail for that purpose, but I don’t think that Denis St. Almain works for or answers to any higher authority. I think he’s his own network. Consider that he’s never been charged with murder or assault or rape or possession or any of the other drug-related felonies. He hasn’t and none of his people have.”

  “So what? You wanna give him the Mother Teresa medal for service to his people?” Jake snapped at her.

  “OK, OK, OK,” she said, hands raised in good-natured defeat and acknowledgment that despite the almost two years they’d been partners in the security and investigative firm that bore their names, he’d always be a homicide detective and she’d always be a criminal defense attorney, and they’d never share the same view of crime and the accused. “I just thought it was interesting, that’s all. I’m finished and done with it,” she said, slapping her palms together in an up and down motion, signifying the truth of her words.

  “Glad to hear it,” her partner intoned dryly. “Now, if you don’t mind, could we discuss some of those matters a little more relevant and pertinent to our lives? Like our contract with Isle de Paix? Since you’re so interested in things of the French persuasion.”

  “If you’re going to hassle me about the employment agreements for the government ministers, save your breath. I plan to get to them this afternoon.”

  He looked at her wide-eyed and innocent-faced. “I never hassle you, C.A. Wouldn’t dream of it. But Philippe Collette would and has. He’s already offered the jobs and he wants those agreements. He wants them by the beginning of next week.”

  “And I’m sure you told him they’d be there, no problem, right Jake? After all, we can’t disappoint the president,” she said dryly.”

  The newly-elected president of that newly-liberated Caribbean island had hired Gibson, Graham International to help it recover from twenty years of a benevolent dictatorship during which time the tourist trade had practically evaporated due to the Communist leanings of the dictator; the telephone system had been blown away by a hurricane and not replaced; the hospital had been flattened by the same hurricane leaving only a clinic to provide health care; and the global marketplace had rendered the island’s tiny industry obsolete. Carole Ann and Jake initially could not imagine why President Philippe Collette had called on them; they were security specialists and Isle de Paix didn’t have anything to secure. They gradually changed their minds after visiting the island four times in as many months. They came to view Isle de Paix as a blank canvas. The government would be a new creation; the island would be re-born. And GGI would be the mid-wife.

  As exciting a prospect as it was, it was equally daunting. There were no real role models in the Caribbean. The largest, most populated, most well-known of the islands—Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad-Tobago—were experiencing dire social and political upheaval, exacerbated by, or perhaps caused by, drug trafficking spilling out of South America. Philippe and Marie-Ange Collette had spent their exile years in Paris, Isle de Paix having been, for more than a century, a French possession, and knew better than to return home behaving like transplanted Francophiles. They also knew better than to attempt to create a mini-USA or to emulate any other Western nation. Whatever Isle de Paix became, it would be unique. Carole Ann and Jake had alternated between riding a wave of excitement at the prospect of being part of such a phenomenon, and being overwhelmed by the peculiarity—and the absurdity—of the situation.

  Philippe Collette, privately financed by wealthy French business people with extensive holdings in the islands, had staged a coup de etat and overthrown the dictator, Henri LeRoi, who had, like Philippe Collette before him, fled to Paris. Then Collette had held an election in which he was the sole candidate. Now the new president and his justice minister and the island’s only lawyer and judge were drafting a constitution. In the meantime, Philippe had hired GGI to create a governmental infrastructure. “This is the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jake muttered. “Suppose they throw his ass out after the constitution gets written? We would have done all this work for nothing!” But he continued planning with Philippe: For a new government center to be constructed deep in the island’s interior and safe from hurricane winds; for a modern law enforcement operation; for a modern security system. And, at the insistence of Marie-Ange Collette, for a social service delivery system.

  The two decades-long dictatorship that had earned Philippe Collette his Parisian hiatus had been benign, if not necessarily benevolent, and the country’s people, never wealthy, now were poorer than ever with the drying up of tourism. But the island itself, the occasional hurricane not withstanding, had remained relatively intact. What few buildings and roads there were, and the farms and forests and beaches, existed just as before—shabbier and more eroded and windswept, but not plundered and not destroyed. “We are not, after all, Haiti,” Marie-Ange Collette had announced. “And Henri LeRoi was not Duvalier.”

  That was another head-scratcher for C.A. and Jake. Whenever either of the Collettes mentioned the former dictator, now himself a resident-in-exile of Paris, it was without the slightest rancor; it was almost as if they felt sorry for him. Henri LeRoi had ridden to power on the backs of the poor and disenfranchised, people like himself who were not related to the “aristocracy,” the descendants of the original French conquerors and colonizers of the island—to which group the Collettes belonged. “It was a detestable situation,” Philippe Collette readily admitted. He also acknowledged that the ruling class never would have relinquished its strangle-hold on the island economy without the coup. “The problem, however, lay in the fact that LeRoi and his associates knew nothing of governing or of managing, so Isle de Paix has suffered from those years of neglect.”

  “Ah, but it could have been so much worse,” Marie-Ange had whispered almost to herself. “It could have been Haiti and Henri could have been like the Duvaliers.”

  As Carole Ann and Jake altered their perception of the island’s needs, they came to share Philippe Collette’s belief that Isle de Paix should be rushed into the twenty-first century as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, with a focus on technology, practically making an enemy of his wife, who continued to advocate for construction of a new hospital first and foremost. Jake originally had agreed with Marie-Ange Collette, while Carole Ann had believed that whatever money was available would be better spent on farm machinery and construction tools and supplies. She was surprised to realize that her position was rooted in the memory of her years in the Peace Corps and the work she and her colleagues had done building the infrastructure of tiny villages in West Africa. Isle de Paix reminded her of that time and place in her life, and she’d made the mistake of saying as much to Philippe Collette.

  “That was then and there and this is here and now,” he had admonished, and challenged her to explain how he and his government could be viewed in a favorable light if he, as president, couldn’t guarantee the privacy of any communication he would have with the heads of other governments. “We have virtually no technology and no security. We barely have telephones!” he had exclaimed in anger. “You make a serious mistake to ask Isle de Paix, or anyplace like it, to accept your ‘third world’ designation, and therefore relegation to last century status.” A serious mistake—not to mention a patronizing one—Carole Ann and Jake realized.

  “The man’s a paying customer,” Jake said, innocence still etched across his face. “Of course we can’t disappoint him.”

  “No matter that you make rash promises that I have to keep, whether or not I get any sleep.”

  Before he could respond, there was a rapid knock at the door and it opened to admit Patty Baker, the chief of the GGI technical unit affectionately known as the Subterraneans, because the computer room was in the basement of the building, and
because the two dozen technicians who were the heart and soul of GGI generally conformed to every stereotypical notion of those whose favorite form of social interaction involved a computer. Patty Baker was only a superficial exception to the rule, looking not at all like a geek and very much like Bonnie Raitt. As she breezed into Jake’s office, she resembled Bonnie Raitt after raiding Janis Joplin’s closet. She wore lavender pedal pushers and matching high-top sneakers and a purple-and-white striped tee shirt. To say that the colors clashed with her wild, silver-streaked red hair and green eyes was to understate dramatically.

  “Hey, Y’all,” she drawled, West Virginia still heavy in her speech despite more than thirty years in Washington.

  Carole Ann and Jake offered warm greetings. They both genuinely liked Patty and harbored enormous respect for her technical abilities, but they eyed her warily, even as they crossed the room to greet her; Patty wasn’t one for small talk, and she didn’t leave her subterranean lair without reason.

  “Take a load off,” Jake said, waving his hand at the work table in front of the windows where Carole Ann already had seated herself and was watching Patty strolling toward them as breezily as if on a nature hike.

  Carole Ann’s lips lifted in a gesture that was more grimace than grin, and she mentally reminded herself that it was bad form to shoot the messenger, for she knew instinctively that Patty Baker, chief of the Gibson, Graham International technical division, had come to say something that she and Jake probably would rather not hear.

  “I thought y’all would like to know that AID is makin’ some noise about our involvement down in the Caribbean,” Patty said without preamble, taking a seat and crossing her arms on the table and leaning forward to look directly at her employers.

  Jake’s blank look and Carole Ann’s puzzled one prompted Patty to explain that as she was making an assessment of Isle de Paix’s needs and comparing them with the island’s existing technology, she had placed a routine call to a friend within the Agency for International Development. “I’ve known Mike Wong for years, since we worked together at DOD. And even though we were on the phone, I could see him freeze up when I mentioned Isle de Paix. He wanted to know how and why we were involved, so I told him.” She shrugged, and explained that she’d told him what anybody who really wanted to know could find out, since there was no secrecy involved. “He said we might want to ‘reassess’ our involvement. I asked him why and he said there were some ‘contradictory indications’—”

  “What the hell does that mean!” Jake growled, jumping to his feet and almost tipping over his chair with the suddenness of his motion. “I don’t need the damn government telling me what to ‘reassess!’” He spit the word out and glowered at Patty. Then he turned his gaze to Carole Ann. “Do you know what the hell this means?”

  Carole Ann’s expression still was puzzled, but worry was beginning to creep in. She shook her head. She couldn’t imagine. Since they’d taken on Isle de Paix as a client she had boned up on her international law, but she’d been a criminal defense attorney for more than fifteen years; she knew intimately the workings of the FBI, the DEA, ATF, the court system, and all the other agencies of government that dealt with crime and criminals. All she knew of the Agency for International Development was that it existed and that it was one source of assistance for Isle de Paix that GGI had contacted. Beyond that, she had no idea what it did and even less of an idea what might constitute a reason for that Agency to involve itself in the business dealings of a private corporation. Or what it really meant when such an entity as the Agency for International Development recommended a “reassessment” of something.

  “Will your friend, Mike, talk to me, Patty?” she asked.

  “You say where and when,” Patty replied, standing and heading for the door, “and he’ll be there. I’ve already made the arrangements.”

  “Patty—?”

  “Don’t ask me, C.A.” Patty said, opening the office door, “‘cause I don’t know. As soon as I heard the tone of his voice I knew this was a conversation for you and Jake. I do know that you can talk to him like he’s a regular guy. Which, by the way, he is.” And she was gone and breezily as she had arrived, with the door closed gently but firmly behind her.

  Patty Baker had spent thirty years as a Federal government secretary, beginning right out of high school. That, at least, is what she was called. In reality, she was one of the early government computer programmers and analysts and worked for several agencies, including the Army and the Department of Defense. Carole Ann had come to believe that Patty had been some kind of “spook,” but she steadfastly refused to discuss her past life except to say, never bothering to conceal the pain, that she’d never been called anything other than “secretary,” and she’d never earned more than a secretary’s pay. At Jake’s request, she had happily come out of retirement to establish and manage GGI’s computer unit, gratified to be recognized for the first time in her life for her technical skills and abilities. At Patty’s request, there were no “secretaries” employed at GGI.

  “You’re thinking that this Mike is some kind of spook or spy?” Jake asked.

  Carole Ann shrugged and exhaled breath. “I don’t know what to think, Jake. This comes out of nowhere.” She smacked the table top with the palm of her hand. “Dammit! For once, can we have a simple, straight-forward case!”

  “Stop that!” He snapped at her as if she were an unruly and misbehaving child. “Don’t you go manufacturing some problem that we don’t have yet. You should know better by now than to pay attention to anything anybody working for the Federal government says. Damn bureaucrats. Sit around all day with nothing to do but shuffle paper back and forth and invent reasons and ways to make people’s lives miserable. All of ‘em got their heads up their asses and they think that’s what the real world looks like.”

  She actually was able to coax a real grin out of her face. Jake Graham, she told herself for the millionth time, was one hilarious human being. And a consistent one. In addition to never having had a sympathetic feeling for a criminal in his entire life, he had a similar response to the Federal government and its agencies. “If you don’t mind,” she said, her grin widening, “I’ll accept the first part of that advice and shelve the worry. And I’ll leave you with your feelings about Big Brother.”

  He snorted as she headed toward the door, and mumbled something that she knew was cussing. Then he reminded her that it was Patty herself who had come up with the solution to the technology problem confronting Isle de Paix. She replayed that conversation in her mind as she returned to her own office, a brief few steps down the hall from Jake’s.

  They’d been in her office that day, following their first visit to the island, and were allowing their excitement for the project to spill over unchecked. Patty, too, initially was excited at the prospect of creating, from the ground up, a modern-day information and communication system for the new client. As Carole Ann and Jake continued to talk, however, the absurdity of the situation dawned on Patty: At the time of the coup that had brought Henri LeRoi to power in the early 1980's, Isle de Paix, tiny as it was, didn’t even have telephone service throughout the island, and generators had supplied electricity to its most remote locations. And C.A. and Jake were talking about computers?

  “Now all we need is a few thousand phone lines,” Patty had drawled, and immediately regretted her comment when she observed the effects of the remark. Jake and Carole Ann first froze, then collapsed, deflated like balloons, their spirits flat and withered. She was formulating an apology when her face changed and her eyes widened and she expelled a hoot of laughter. “Well damn!” she exclaimed.

  “Well damn what!” Jake had exclaimed in return and with undisguised exasperation.

  “Satellites are cheaper anyway,” she said simply, and the silence in the room was deafening.

  “‘Well damn’ is right,” Jake had said with reverence. And by the time one of the subterraneans had explained it all to Carole Ann, who was far and
away the least technically inclined or computer literate of the GGI staffers, Jake was arranging to take everyone to dinner at their favorite Chinatown restaurant.

  “Well damn,” Carole Ann muttered to herself as she dropped into her desk chair and recalled that the Isle de Paix official responsible for matters technological had approached AID for help procuring the satellites that would provide the uplinks that would bring the twenty-first century to the tiny paradise. “Well damn,” she muttered again as she checked the calendar on her computer to find a time that she could meet with Mike Wong.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Carole Ann groaned, grumbled, and reached for the phone even as, through the one eye that was open, she noted the time on the bedside clock’s digital display and wondered why the alarm hadn’t sounded. Then, as she found her ear with the phone, she had two simultaneous and

  conflicting thoughts: She had overslept and would be late for work, and it was Sunday! Nobody who knew her would call her a few minutes after seven o’clock on a Sunday morning unless there was a problem. She sat straight up. “Hello! Who is this?”

  “Wake up, C.A. All the way up,” Jake ordered in an unusually quiet tone of voice, one devoid of emotion. There definitely was a problem

  “What is it, Jake?” She was fully awake and alert and she swung her feet over the side of the bed and on to the floor.

  “Steve Campos was murdered last night—early this morning—outside his beach house on the Eastern Shore. At about the same time Campos was getting his brains blown out, Pierre Chalfont and Eric LeGrande were being turned into mince meat by a couple of dozen rounds from AK47s.”

  “Who are Pierre Chalfont and Eric LeGrande?”

  “One hundred percent of the Isle de Paix police force,” Jake replied. “Constables, they still call ‘em, and the poor, stupid bastards weren’t even armed. Didn’t think they needed to be since there hasn’t been a homicide on Isle de Paix in nine years.”