Текст книги "Cross Current"

Автор книги: Christine Kling

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

XXX

Racine drove north until she found a driveway large enough for her to be able to make a U-turn in her big station wagon. She paused before pulling back out onto A1A and sat looking at me in the dark car.

“I lost her,” I said, my voice breaking with emotion.

Racine reached over and placed her hand on my arm. “Yes, I know.”

“She’s in terrible trouble.”

“Tell me what happened.”

I swallowed hard to try to get the tears under control. The place where Racine’s hand rested on my arm grew warm, and when I placed my hand on top of hers, I felt a sense of relief flow through me, knowledge that I was not alone in this. “We had moved her to this condo on Hollywood Beach, thought she would be safe there, but when Rusty and I went out to dinner, she must have hidden in the cabin of his boat. She followed me.” I went on to explain all of it—the boat trip on the Bimini Express, the camp on South Bimini, Malheur, the encounter with Joe, and getting rescued by the Haitians.

Though we were still in the shadow of the tall building, I noticed the tops of the coconut palms were lit with the first bright rays of the sun. I said, “I didn’t think I was going to see this morning. I really believed I was going to die out there, Racine.”

She squeezed my arm. “La Sirene would not allow it.”

Staring out the car window at the silver blue sky, I touched the still-damp pouch hanging around my neck. “I’m not sure who to thank, but I am thankful.” I twisted around on the car seat and faced her. “But now, I’d be so much more thankful if I could find Solange. Her father is going to make her a restavek again, here, as soon as he’s used her to get what he wants. But there’s something even worse. I don’t know what, but she needs our help, now.” I could not explain how I knew, not even to Racine.

She stretched her hands out toward me, palms up. I placed my hands in hers, and she said, “We will find the child, and the lwa will take care of this man. You are not the only one who has suffered a loss to him. Many have died on his boats. I told you I came that night looking for the Miss Agnes, hoping to find my sister?”

“I remember.”

“Her name was Erzulie.”

If my pounding on his hull didn’t wake Mike up, I had decided I was going to climb aboard his boat and roll him out of his bunk. The companionway hatch slid back just then and Mike’s tousled hair was the first thing out.

“Jesus H. Christ, what the blazes is going on out here?”

“Mike, get dressed. I need your help.”

During the drive south on the coastal highway, Racine and I had discussed how best to get Solange back. My first thought had been to go to the police, but Racine pointed out to me that I had absolutely no evidence to prove any of my story. And to make matters worse, she said, Joe was a retired law enforcement officer. Yes, I had witnessed him kill a man, but where was the body? It was my word against his, and whom were they more likely to believe? And, as for Solange, what could I accuse him of? Kidnapping his own daughter? I wondered if this was Racine’s natural Haitian fear of the police, or if she was right. She kept telling me not to worry, we would get her back and that the lwa would protect us.

I finally explained that I’d feel a lot more protected by a guy with a gun.

Mike rubbed his eyes. “Seychelle? I heard you were missing.”

“You heard wrong. Now come on. Put your pants on and let’s go.”

Mike emerged a few minutes later wearing a wrinkled T-shirt that read “Arms Are for Hugging” and had a circle and slash over a rifle. He sat on the cabin top and began strapping on his leg.

Racine looked at me with raised eyebrows, as though asking “This is the fellow who is going to protect us?” I knelt down and began to untie the dinghy painter and pointed for Racine to get into the boat.

“Geez, it’s hot out here already,” Mike whined. “What time of the god-awful morning is it, anyway?”

“It’s six forty-five, Mike. We’re taking your dinghy. Like your shirt. You’ve got your gun?”

He finished with his leg and smoothed his pant leg down over the prosthesis, but he made no move to get up. He said, “Sey, you asking about my gun makes me think I need to know just a bit more about where we’re going.”

This was the moment I had been dreading. Just because Mike was now retired didn’t mean that he no longer thought like a cop.

“Okay, Mike, here it is. Your buddy Joe D’Angelo is the brains behind this whole immigrant smuggling outfit. I’ve been to their place in the Bahamas. Mike, he shot and killed Gil Lynch right in front of me, then left me to die, dog-paddling in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Yeah, Malheur was the instrument that Joe usually used, but Joe’s a killer, too. And now he has Solange, and I’ve got to get her back.” I paused, knowing that what I was saying to him would sound so outrageous, he was probably thinking about hauling me off to a psych ward. “I know this is a lot to take on faith, and I’ve got nothing to prove any of it is true, but please, Mike, I need you to trust me here.”

Mike shook his head, then he looked up at me, squinting his eyes. “Joe D’Angelo?”

I nodded.

Mike sat there without moving for so long that I thought for certain he was going to say no. I had about given up and was beginning to formulate Plan B when he finally said, “Okay. I’m going to agree to go along on this one, Sey, against my better judgment. If this was anybody but you, I’d be saying you’re full of shit—and so would any cop. But the guys on the force don’t know you like I do. If it was a toss-up as to who to believe, they’d go with Joe. But I’ll go along with you—to a point. Let me talk to the man, alone. I don’t like what I see or hear, and” —he lifted the pant leg on his good leg and showed a small stainless revolver in a holster strapped to his ankle—“I’ll keep Mr. D’Angelo tied up while you ladies call the police. You realize, we’d better figure out a way to do this so he doesn’t know what’s up. Joe was a hell of a good cop.”

“From what I’ve seen, Joe was never a good cop. But he’s mighty good with a gun.”

On the ride up the river, we ignored all the speed limits, the manatee zones, and the no-wake areas. Even with the three of us in his dinghy, that twenty-five-horsepower Honda four-stroke of Mike’s pushed his dink up onto a plane, and we rounded the curves in the river sliding sideways, barely missing the yachts tied along the seawalls. Racine sat on the seat in front of the center console, her body rigid, her back straight, black dress flapping around her legs, eyes squinting into the wind. The closer we got, the higher the sun crawled up into the sky, the stronger I felt it. Solange needed help now.

After I told Mike the details of what had happened on Bimini, he brought me up-to-date on what had happened in Florida since I’d left. “You disappeared Saturday night along with the kid. Jeannie told me nobody realized Solange was gone until you all were off at Tugboat Annie’s. Then, when Elliot called in, and when they told him the kid was missing, it really hit the fan. Seems there was some girl on the pay phone at the restaurant, so he had gone to use the phone on the boat of a friend of his. He got back to the table at the restaurant, and you were missing, and so was his boat. He was pretty damn pissed, I reckon. By the time they figured out you musta been on that island freighter, the ship had been gone over an hour. Rusty found his boat and took off straightaway. Your brother Pit was on the first morning seaplane over there. Far as I know, they’re both still over in Bimini looking for you.”

We were passing the Larsens’ estate, my cottage, and Gorda. All looked deserted. I turned to Mike, but he had guessed my question. “Jeannie’s been taking care of your dog. She might have taken her over to her place last night.”

After a few more minutes, he said, “So what makes you so sure the kid’s in terrible trouble?”

“I can’t explain it exactly. What I do know for sure is that Joe told me he needed her to prove something to his other daughter. He evidently told her that he had a child in Haiti, and she wigged out. She wants him to take care of this half– sister of hers. She’s refused to let him see his grandson until he can prove that Solange is safely in the U.S. and being cared for. Joe doesn’t seem to give a damn about either one of his daughters, but this grandson is the male heir he’s always wanted. In fact, he intends to sell Solange as a restavek, but as far as the daughter knows, she’ll be living with this American family. I’m just hoping he’s still got the kid with him and that he hasn’t already sold her off to some family we’ll never find.”

When we were still around the bend from Joe’s house, Mike pulled over to a dock, and he had Racine and me lie down on the fiberglass bottom of the dinghy. He covered us with a couple of dirty, musty-smelling beach towels that he pulled out of the bow locker.

As he put the outboard back in gear and began the approach to Joe’s, he filled us in on what he saw. “There’s no sign of anyone on the pool deck. With the sun shining on the windows, I can’t see too much inside. It’s just going on eight o’clock. They might not even be up yet. I’m going to tie the dinghy up here, out of the sight line of those pool-deck windows. You two stay down till I get back.”

We never heard voices or knocking, but Mike didn’t return, so we assumed he was in.

Now, I will be one of the first to admit that patience is not one of my stronger character traits. That wasn’t the only thing that made me want to get up out of that dinghy and do something, though. We hadn’t been there five minutes before the heat began to suck all the energy out of us. It was already in the upper eighties outside, but under those towels, with the sun beating down, it must have been over a hundred. I couldn’t even remember how many days ago it had been since I had either bathed or changed clothes, and my shorts and shirt, which had been stiff with salt, were now drenched with sweat. Breathing was becoming impossible. I don’t know how Racine stood it as long as she did. Droplets of sweat rolled across my forehead and into my eyes, across my belly, and out of the creases behind my knees. I had to move.

“Racine?” I said, looking at the back of her head in the filtered sunlight. “How long do you think Mike’s been gone?”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“What if something’s happened to him?”

She didn’t say a word.

“Racine, we could suffocate under here, or die of heat stroke. What do you say we go look around? Think we can do that without anybody seeing us?”

“Whatever you choose. The lwa will protect us,” she said.

When we peeked out from under our cover, we saw that our dinghy was tied up at the far end of Joe’s dock where the fence divided his property from his neighbor’s. The bow of the Donzi ocean racer was just off the dinghy’s stem, and it helped to screen us from the side windows on the house. The stainless-steel bow rail was still coated in salt from the trip across from Bimini, and judging from the condensation on the port light windows in the hull, whenever Joe had returned, he’d just tied up the boat, locked it, and left. He seemed to have a penchant for asking others to clean up after him.

I climbed out of the dinghy and turned around to give Racine a hand. I needn’t have. She hopped onto the dock without help, and we both slipped into the bushes that ran along the fence line.

The blinds were drawn in the guest bedroom window. From inside the house came the sound of unintelligible shouting. Someone, it sounded like a man, was barking orders. I inched my way back toward the river side of the house to see into the den. Holding my breath, I took a quick peek past the edge of the sliding glass door. In that one second, the tableau inside told me the story. Mike was sitting on a dining room chair in the middle of the room. Joe had his back to the window, but I could see the small silver gun he was waving around—probably Mike’s—and Joe was hollering at Celeste to get something for him.

I jerked my head toward the street. “Come on, Mike’s in trouble. We need to get some help.”

The dinghy was too exposed, but I figured we could run to a neighbor’s house and ask to use the phone. A narrow concrete walkway led around the side of the house to the front circular driveway. I could see, before I reached the end of the house, that a black iron electric gate blocked our exit out the driveway. The fence closest to our side of the house was shielded by a tangled thicket of bougainvillea, but ahead, on the far side of the drive, was a stretch that was free of the prickly shrub.

I turned back to Racine. “Think you can climb over that iron fence?”

The look she gave me told me not to underestimate her. “Okay, then, let’s go,” I said, but when I reached the corner of the house and made my turn, I ran straight into Celeste.

“Bon dieu! ” she exclaimed, her hand rubbing the spot on her chin where our heads had collided. She was wearing a tiny, strapless, tropical-print minidress, a matching headwrap, and high wedge sandals. She looked like she should be posing for Vogue.

I held my finger to my lips. “Shhh, please,” I whispered.

“You must go. Get away from here.”

“Yeah, I know. But we need your help. Please.”

“He won’t be happy if he finds you here.”

Racine stepped forward and placed her hand on the young woman’s neck, just under the curve of her elegant jaw. She whispered something in Creole. Celeste closed her eyes for a moment and bowed her head.

“Celeste,” I said, “I know that Joe doesn’t want to see me here. But listen, we’re looking for a little girl. Did he bring her here? She’s Joe’s daughter. Her name’s Solange.” Celeste just stood there, frozen. She cocked her head as though she had just heard something from the house. Obviously, she didn’t want him to find her out there talking to us. “Celeste, when did he get back from Bimini?”

Celeste looked at me with vacant eyes, as if she were looking through me instead of at me. “Yesterday afternoon, four o’clock.”

“Shit,” I said, jerking my head down and turning aside in frustration. “It wouldn’t have taken him more than a couple of hours if he’d come straight back here. Means he went somewhere else. Probably to dump her off with someone.”

Abruptly, Celeste turned and walked toward the front door.

From inside the house, Joe hollered, “What’s going on out there, Celeste?”

She glanced back at us with a raised eyebrow. I shook my head at her and mouthed the word Please. Her gaze jumped from me to Racine, and suddenly Celeste stood up straighter and nodded her head curtly in the older woman’s direction.

“It is nothing, Joseph,” she called back into the house. “Just some kids.” She reached inside the door and touched something on the wall. The gate began to slide open.

She held out her hand, indicating the gate, and mouthed the word Go.

Racine took my hand in hers, and we started running across the drive toward the gate.

We’d taken no more than a half dozen steps when Joe called from the doorway, “Well, if it isn’t Sullivan. Back from the dead. Keep going, ladies, and you can say good-bye to Mike here.”

“Sey, go, keep running,” Mike yelled.

I slowed and glanced over my shoulder, just in time to see Mike’s head bounce in recoil from the blow Joe had delivered with the fist that gripped the small stainless gun. Blood trickled from a cut under Mike’s eye. Racine and I both stopped and turned. Celeste had twisted her face away from the violence.

“Smart decision, Sullivan. Come on inside and join us.” Joe stood by the door, dressed in white shorts and polo as if he were ready for a morning tennis match. He was holding Mike’s arm with one hand, pointing the gun at his ribs with the other. Racine and I approached them, and Joe said, “What’s with the old woman, Sullivan? You haven’t got enough people killed?”

“You’re the killer, Joe.”

“I don’t think so. Gil and that kid at the Swap Shop– they’d both be fine if you hadn’t stuck your nose where it didn’t belong.”

“You killed Margot?”

He shrugged. “Couldn’t let her talk and get away with it. There were plenty of places there to buy blades, and I figured I’d make it look like another of Malheur’s temper tantrums. See, that was the beauty of his whole bokor bit. I was pissed the first time he killed one of the cargo, but then I realized it worked for us. Kept the Haitians too scared to talk.” He jerked his head toward the front door. “Inside now. Head left,” Joe said, “into the den.”

We entered the same room Joe and I had been in a couple of days earlier, with a bar along one side and windows that overlooked his pool deck. Joe pushed Mike into the room after us, and then he turned to Celeste and spoke in a voice I had not heard from the man, all soft and almost like baby talk. “You go stay in your room, sugar. This is business.” Racine then said something softly in Creole, and Joe swung around and yelled at her, “Shut up, old woman. Think I don’t understand Creole?” He pointed the gun at her head. “You say another word of that Voodoo shit to my woman, and you’re dead.”

I put my hand on Racine’s arm, trying to tell her not to upset him any more. When Joe crossed to the bar, she turned to me, her eyes sparkling with humor, and whispered, “He doesn’t know it, but he is dead already. Here.” With her fist tight she pounded her chest just over her heart.

Joe slid behind the bar and took a bottle of water out of the fridge back there. “So how’d you do it, Sullivan? Back from the dead, eh?”

My mind was spinning, looking for any excuse, any way out of this. Mike had a defeated look about him that made me think he wasn’t going to be much help. Whatever had transpired between him and Joe had taken away something more than his gun. “I guess I just got lucky, Joe. Who’da thought I’d get picked up out there? By a Haitian boat, no less.”

Joe laughed at that and pointed his finger at me. “That’s a good one.” Then he looked at his watch. “Well, I’d say you’ve about used up all your luck. No Haitians to rescue you this time. I do have an appointment later this morning, but it can wait. Mike tells me you all came in his dinghy, so we’ll just tow her along behind my Donzi and take a little trip up the river, over into Pond Apple Slough. Won’t be the first time folks went missing in that swamp. Let’s go.” He pointed Mike’s little gun toward the sliding glass doors.

We were walking ahead of Joe across the den, and I had almost made it to the glass doors when a voice called out in a commanding tone, “Monsieur Blan, where is my child?”

Mike and I turned around to see Celeste standing in the hallway, both hands holding the wood-handled gray gun Joe had taken from Gil. She had it aimed at Joe’s midsection.

“Listen, sugar, put that gun down. That’s a Sig. That’s got quite a kick. You know how you hate loud noises.” There was something sickening about the babyish voice he was using.

“Where is she, Joseph?”

“You don’t know what you’re doing, sweetie. This is your Big Poppy here. Now I told you, your baby girl is gone. She’s been dead, honey, a long time.” Joe was moving toward her slowly, his right hand reaching out to her.

Mike stepped between me and Racine and put his arms around the two of us. He began to steer us toward the side of the room. He’d faced a gun once before and knew enough to keep us clear of her line of fire.

“Don’t you lie to me, Joseph. That woman told me you just brought her here. She did not die in Haiti like you told me. Where is my child?”

“Celeste, baby, who you gonna believe? After all I’ve done for you?” He continued to take small steps, closing the gap between them. He was measuring her determination, judging whether or not she really could fire the gun. “Honey, I love you. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“You stay back, Joseph. You think I won’t shoot? You taught me to use a gun to protect myself, and I will use it. Where is Solange?”

“Babydoll, you don’t need to protect yourself from me. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Only five feet separated them when Joe made his move. Unlike Gil, Celeste didn’t hesitate. She fired the instant he began to lunge, three quick shots, and his legs buckled under him. Instinctively, I dropped to the floor in a squat and put my arms on top of my head. In the aftermath of the shots, the only noise was the high-pitched buzz inside my head. I didn’t want to stand up and look, but I couldn’t play ostrich forever.

I rose slowly from where I had crouched behind a white leather chair. Joe’s body lay sprawled on the floor, one leg bent awkwardly under him, his eyes open but dull as unpolished pebbles. His arms were flung wide on the floor, his right still loosely wrapped around Mike’s gun. A growing red stain colored his white shirt just above his left breast. Racine, still standing, had not flinched at the piercing noise or from the horror of what now lay on the floor. When our eyes met, she nodded, and with her clenched fist she hit her chest again, just over her heart. Celeste knelt and laid the gun on the floor next to the body. Without so much as a slight quaver in her voice, she said, “Let’s go find my child.”