Haiti Noir - Edwidge Danticat [21]
“The hotel’s guests are very special. Most of them are people who’ve come here to rest, men who want to get away from the craziness of city life. Among them there are a few policemen, like you. Once they’ve come here, they send their cars back so they can enjoy their isolation more fully. They rarely leave their rooms. As for the market, every Tuesday a few trucks do come to pick up the bags of charcoal that people in the country around here carry in by donkey. And that’s all the traffic there is.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. How could the high command send me to a place like this? Why me, an elite police officer? Little by little, I was beginning to realize that I had been exiled, abandoned. I thought over my last conversation with Froset just before I jumped into my car to come to this wretched town. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seemed particularly surprised by the news of my transfer. I was too happy about the hotel recommendation to pay attention to his lack of interest in my situation. And yet I regarded him as a brother. Once I had risked my own life to save his, during a clash with a bunch of gangsters. He used to tell everybody he was eternally grateful to me. With him in the high command, I felt I had some protection.
What was it he’d asked me on the phone? Oh, yes! He wanted to know what cases I was working on. Why had he asked me this question at that exact moment? And without thinking, I spontaneously told him I was working all alone on a big drug trafficking case involving someone close to the high command and that, after weeks of hard work, I was on the point of discovering this person’s identity. My investigation wasn’t taking place on the ground, but on the administrative level. I was trying to trace a network of fake customs documents to the top. Froset hadn’t said anything, but now I recalled that he’d seemed embarrassed as he peered at me for a few seconds. Then he suggested that I shouldn’t tell anyone about the results of my investigation. I could take it up again when my stay in Gokal was over. After that, he reassured me somewhat by telling me my posting there surely wouldn’t last long—three months at most. Then he’d back my investigation with everything he had. Now the connection between the investigation and my transfer stared me in the face. I’d let myself be fooled, like a beginner. Instead of coming out here, I should have headed for the border at a hundred miles an hour. You always think things like this only happen to other people. I was like a rat caught in an invisible net.
These ideas were whirling through my head. I had to lean on the desk for a moment to continue the conversation.
“Uhhh … can I use a phone, madame? My cell hasn’t worked since I got here last night.”
“Sorry, commissaire. The hotel phone hasn’t worked for ages.”
“Oh! So I’ll go phone from the police station.”
“There is no police station here.”
“You’re telling me there’s no police station here?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I said, Commissaire Vanel. Ever since President Belony’s administration, at the time when the town of Gokal was part of the Villefranche district, there has never been a representative of the law here.”
A question came to mind immediately: “But how do you know that, madame? President Belony’s administration goes back more than a century.”
This time she lost some of her composure. Her eyes clouded over and she stumbled on her words as she answered. “My parents told me. I am from here, you know, Commissaire Vanel.”
Her way of punctuating every sentence with a “Commissaire Vanel” was getting on my nerves. But I decided to keep calm. This woman was the only one who could help me. Josiane was floating between intermediate worlds in an amnesiac room. I kept asking questions.
“Where else can I find a phone?”
“The closest telephone switchboard is in the city of Papay, about an hour away by car,” she answered sharply. My despair must have been evident on my face, because she softened up and said, “Come on, Commissaire Vanel, don’t get all worried. Things will be okay.