Haiti Noir

In the course of the very pleasant dinner, Maria Luz insisted on speaking Creole, the language she knew best after Spanish, she said. “And Creole is better here if you want to communicate with everyone, don’t you think?”

She was right. To the inspector’s ear, her mastery of Creole was equal to that of his Spanish. Just a slight inflection here and there that revealed she had trouble not rolling the “r.” Otherwise, she spoke Creole much too well for Zagribay’s taste. She probably works for the CIA, he thought. And the NGO, if she really had an office there, was a cover.

At the end of the meal, under the pretext that the capital was unsafe at night, she had him accompany her to her home in the Pacot neighborhood. Once there, the inspector, inventing an urgent report he had to hand in the next day, tactfully turned down her offer of a last drink.

“Next time then,” she simpered.

“Why not?” Zagribay answered, saying to himself in Creole: Wi pa monte mòn. Not every yes can climb a hill.

The investigation into the corpses changed into cattle was going nowhere. So the inspector decided to tail Maria Luz and asked a young colleague he trusted to cover for him. His old unmarked Toyota was a great help. He followed her for several days, enough to ascertain that the lady knew fancy people, from the chief of police to the minister of the interior and other influential individuals. He could never get over how easy it was for foreigners-especially if they were white-to have access to the highest authorities of the state. He also found out that Fanfan and Maria Luz were seeing each other pretty regularly. That said, she appeared to have no official relationship but was juggling several at once. She was living it up but not necessarily at her lovers’ expense, although she didn’t turn down their presents: a pearl necklace from this one or an emerald bracelet from that one. And among her regulars was his own boss.

Zagribay couldn’t resist the urge to ask his boss, one morning when he seemed in a good mood, if he knew a certain Maria Luz. The man smiled and answered with a wink. The inspector wanted to know more.

“I’m serious, chief!”

“Really?”

“I’m not kidding, chief.”

“Do you want a piece of friendly advice? Don’t get too involved with her.”

With these words, the police chief walked to his car where his chauffeur was already behind the wheel with the engine running. Zagribay bit his lower lip to contain his rage. Three days before, he had discovered that Maria Luz’s NGO was in charge of a clinic in Cité Soleil behind which stood a building with blackout windows, guarded by three armed men. He couldn’t see anyone coming in or out, as you normally would in a public building. He introduced himself and pulled out his badge, trying to get some information. One of the grim doorkeepers with shades on his nose sent him to a top executive: a rich-looking Haitian, well into his fifties, speaking like someone used to giving orders. He got on his high horse and made it clear that, given the absence of his own superior, he couldn’t allow Zagribay to visit that part of the clinic.

“We care here for terminally ill cancer and AIDS patients,” the man concluded.

A flat sentence, delivered as if he’d practiced saying it. The inspector then asked to see Maria Luz. The man winced before telling him that Doctor Luz was traveling. But the inspector had been trailing her the day before. It was possible, he supposed, that she could have left that very morning.

“How long ago did she leave?” he asked.

“Two or three days, no more.”

Zagribay left, smiling. He was on to something. Now he had to find out why the man had lied. This gave him the idea of tightening the vise around the NGO, even if there was no apparent tie between it and the mysterious corpses. He also got the idea of nosing around the Internet and ended up stumbling on a blog that mentioned Maria’s NGO in connection with a lab that did pharmaceutical and medical research. Several countries had condemned it for practicing illegal experiments on humans. The blog sent him to other sources that were blocked each time he tried to link to them. The information was pretty thin.

That night, lying on his back, the inspector couldn’t fall asleep. Was the NGO here hiding the activities of a clandestine pharmaceutical research lab? Ibrahim Ferrer’s voice trailed languorously in the night. Suddenly, Zagribay jumped out of bed as if a gigantic bedbug had bitten him. Why hadn’t he thought of it earlier?

He grabbed his phone and called a former colleague in Montreal. His friend wasn’t too happy about being awakened in the dead of night but indulged him nonetheless. They used to work together as a team in the north part of Montreal. The inspector explained the case and asked for his help in identifying the NGO and finding out what interests were concealed behind it.