The first thing I became aware of was the motion—that feeling that the deck beneath you is suddenly falling and you are falling, only your stomach has decided not to fall, and then you are rising, and your stomach is trying to relocate somewhere down in your bowels.
I moaned aloud when I tried to move. I was all twisted up and my neck was cramped and hurt like hell. As soon as I tried to move, however, I forgot all about my neck as my head started throbbing from the inside out. It felt like a cartoon character’s thumb after he’s banged it and it’s ballooned to three times its normal size. I wondered if my head was three times its normal size.
I felt a lump the size of a walnut just back from my hairline above my left temple. My hair was encrusted with dried blood.
A small hand brushed across my forehead and pushed the stray hairs out of my face. Although the room was pitch dark, I didn’t need to see her to feel her fear.
“Solange?”
“
Oui
," she said, pronouncing it as an inhaled gulp of air.
“They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“No.” I felt her hand on my head again. “You hurt.” It wasn’t a question. She knew.
“I’m okay. How long have I been sleeping?” Through the ship’s deck I could feel the vibration of the engine and the sudden surge of the RPMs as a wave lifted the stem of the ship, causing the prop to spin faster. Waves would have to be at least ten feet high to do that. We were out in the Gulf Stream already.
“Long time,” she said.
It was a stupid question for me to have asked her. She had no way of measuring the time. Ten minutes alone in the dark, not knowing if I was dead or alive, would seem like an eternity. She didn’t even sound like she’d been crying. But I guess it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d ended up on a boat with a dead woman.
I felt around my surroundings and realized that I was sitting on the floor of a crewman’s cabin, my back against the bunk—probably the same bunk I had hit my head on when I fell. When I got to my feet, my legs almost gave way again from the wave of dizziness that grabbed hold of me. I reached out and placed my palms on the wall, bent my knees to the corkscrew motion of the ship, and waited to get control of my body again. When I opened my eyes and turned around to face the bunk, I wasn’t expecting to see anything. I was surprised to make out a dim light from what looked like a porthole in the hull just above the bunk. In the faint glow, I felt around the cabin to familiarize myself with the space.
The door was locked; no surprise there. There were a couple of built-in drawers under the bunk, and they were filled with men’s clothes, neatly folded. I felt under and around everywhere, but there were no shaving articles with razor blades, no pocketknives—nothing we could use as a weapon. I crawled onto the bunk, feeling for Solange, and put my face to the porthole.
The cabin we were in was on the starboard side of the ship, and in the distance, a bit off our aft quarter, I could make out the horizon with a bright glow above it. There were only a couple of places where actual building lights were visible; the lights of the city had just dipped below the horizon. The ceiling of clouds hung very low, and it looked like it might be raining out there. If we were headed for Bimini, that would put us on a southeast heading and that would be the North Miami skyline I was looking at. Judging from the brightness of the skyglow, we were probably ten miles offshore, about fifteen miles out of Lauderdale.
“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—”