Dark paradise, p.24
Dark Paradise, page 24
Mr. Hariri spun on Noa and marched to her, holding the gun in her face. “You, you woman, shut up! All of you,” he turned in a circle, jabbing the gun at each of us in turn. “All of you disgust me. Inter-breeding with filth like him and him.” He pointed the gun at Elias and me.
He returned his attention to Becca while pointing at Elias. “And now I have this half-breed negro in my family. Trying to carry my family name. And you,” he turned to Noa. “Talking to this Boise in our store day after day. Don’t think I don’t know what you want.”
He really did mean to kill all of us. Mr. Hariri looked at his grandson with barely disguised contempt. “Get up. Go get rope. Drawer right next to sink.”
Elias hesitated, then hurried off.
Mr. Hariri glared at me, then his look softened and he contemplated his older daughter.
“Becca, you see, they will come for you. You must stop this nonsense and come with me.”
“Lebanon?” I asked.
Mr. Hariri pointed the weapon at me. “You see, he knows too much.”
Elias returned carrying clothesline.
Without looking away from Becca, Mr. Hariri said, “Do something useful, boy. Tie him up.”
Elias bound my ankles together, then my hands.
Mr. Hariri stood over me and growled, “You threaten my family for this Roger who ruin my daughter’s life? This man bad. He not care about people. I protect my family.”
He spat at Elias’ feet.
“This man take my daughter’s virginity, then when he find out about this half-breeded boy he want to be part of our life!”
“I can’t leave with you, Papa,” Becca said.
Mr. Hariri whirred on her.
“What you say?”
“I won’t go to back to that stinking country with you. I don’t want to be covered with black cloth. I’d rather take my chances here, even if you give them the knife.”
He blurted something in what I assumed was Lebanese.
She responded, “So what! I’m a westerner. I like cars and money. I like speaking English.” She turned and said to Elias, “Your father cut me off. Like I was a dog. I struggled but couldn’t get out of debt. I was going to lose everything! So I went to talk to him. I didn’t mean for this to happen. You must believe me.”
Elias looked up from his hands, the hands he’d used to tie me up. “Mother, you should go with grandpa. If you stay, you’ll go to jail.”
Becca said, “No, I didn’t do it. Right, Noa?”
Noa’s face was a mask of pain. “Papa, you made her do it. You made her, you know you did. Like you made Elias tie up Boise. You made her stab Roger.” She looked at me and said, “When I heard the gunshot, I snuck into the house and watched as my father held my sister at gunpoint and made her stab Roger over and over. He kept the knife and threatened to turn her in as the killer if she ever breathed a word or interacted with Elias. That’s why she moved away. It was the only way she could stay away from her boy. Then, we took Roger’s body from the kitchen and dumped it on the beach.” Noa turned and looked at me. “You knew because of the piece of his red shirt on the railing, right? That’s how you knew Roger’d been killed at Glor’s house?”
A shot rang out. Noa collapsed to the ground, her hand over her stomach. Blood seeped through her fingers.
Mr. Hariri lowered the smoking gun and yanked Becca by the hair, pulling her face close to his. “You will do as I say. You will come with me. This disgusting mongrel’s not worth your freedom.”
Elias hadn’t tightened the knots well. My hands were free. The ropes on my legs weren’t tied at all really and in less than thirty seconds, all my bindings lay on the ground.
Seeing Mr. Hariri’s attention was completely focused on Becca, I grabbed a stone from the rock-boundary around the flower bed. I ran, planning to bash him over the back of his head, but the small man spun around as if sensing my presence. At the last second, I hurled the rock at him as he leveled the gun at my chest. It hit him in the forehead. The bullet whizzed over me, and he dropped to the ground unmoving. Blood gushed from his balding scalp, staining the dirt black.
Seconds later, a police car raced up the road, an ambulance in tow, followed by Dana’s Nissan. I ran over to Noa, removed my shirt and staunched the wound. Her pulse was weak, but steady.
She strained to speak. I held my ear close. “Audrey. I did it for Audrey.”
Chapter 58
I dropped some pastries on Dana’s desk. A couple other reporters ambled over, mumbling t’anks as they took a napkin and cradled a doughnut in their hands.
“So, you figured out it wasn’t a drug dealer,” she said. “You’re the real deal, Boise Montague. Not many people would have thought of leaving the phone line open so I’d hear everything. You saved Noa’s life.”
“Ha!” I threw my head back imitating her. “I got lucky. You were the one who saved the day by bringing the cavalry. The ambulance driver said if Noa had gotten to the hospital five minutes later, she’d be dead. Also, I never had it figured till the bitter end. I really thought maybe Becca had done it to protect Elias or something noble like that. I mean, Roger was a drug dealer.”
“Oh shut up! Did you really doubt your best friend?”
I scratched my chin. “No, I guess not really. I mean, like I said, Roger wasn’t a saint, but he never seemed evil. And this was plain evil.” I got up to get a cup of coffee from the machine in the corner. “This one’s going to be all over the paper I hear.”
“I have an exclusive with the guy who cracked the case, so look out Pickering, Dana’s back! Getting a lot of calls on this one. The police aren’t happy about you exposing their incompetence,” she said with a large grin.
“Yup, trial’s gonna be ugly,” I agreed.
“That’s the least of your problems. Living here isn’t gonna be easy with the cops looking to string you up,” she said. “You certainly have a way with people.”
“Guess I better stick with my own kind,” I said. “What have we got coming down the pike?”
“We? Look Boise, I know you can’t go on forever without earning a living and this newspaper thing’s not great on that front.”
I put my hand to my chest like Scarlet O’Hara. “Are you firing me?”
Dana gave me a sober look. “You really are good. Why don’t you hang a shingle?”
“You mean get an office with a sign?”
“Exactly. Do you have money for first, last, and a deposit?” she asked.
I thought about my bank account and concluded she was probably right, I’d better do it before my funds got too low. I had over a year’s worth of cash stashed, but shit happens.
“All right, you got any buildings you recommend?” I said, a grin spreading as I realized a new venture might even be fun.
“We might have a spare office in this building. Let me talk to Pickering. Meanwhile, what about finding out what happened to Earl DeVere? That kidnapping case just keeps spreading like an oil spill,” she said, moving her hands around her desk to illustrate.
“Not sure he’s a worthy candidate for an investigation. Isn’t he just a bad guy who was taken by other bad guys?”
“Yeah, you’re right, we shouldn’t waste our time on them,” she said, biting into a doughnut and taking a sip of coffee.
Chapter 59
From the grandiose brick steps leading up through the wrought iron gates that framed The West Indian Manner, I could see straight down Kongens Gade to the base of Government Hill a half-mile away. Government House towered up there, gleaming and white.
To my right, Lucas’s home, painted green and looking decrepit, sat lower on our smaller hill. Roger’s house stood to my left, a little ways down the road that dead-ended at the Manner’s southern entrance. A house like The Manner had numerous paths to reach its front door.
In fact, The Manner towered above the rest, only giving ground to Bluebeard’s Castle which stood behind me to the east. Castles tended to have to the top spot on most hills.
I glanced back at The Manner. Although it needed a paint job, landscaping, new shutters, brickwork, and was over two-hundred years old, the structure had presence. It had housed kings and corpses in its illustrious history. It was solid, after all it had been through at least forty hurricanes. Now it housed a beat-down private detective who was considering staying on permanently.
I felt some peace about Roger. Living without him all those years, I supposed I could go on living without him, even in St. Thomas.
Turning back to look once more at Roger’s former home, something nagged at me, something unfinished, but I couldn’t think at that moment what it was. The red rag was gone, taken as evidence for the trial. The railing looked naked without it.
My eyes settled on the office buildings next door. The wooden Payne & Wedgefield sign bolted to the white concrete wall on both sides of the building loomed large.
My phone startled me by actually ringing. I hated the sound of a ringing phone, so I always kept it on vibrate. Somehow, the ringer had gotten turned on.
The screen pulsed “unknown caller” and I considered pressing the red button. Curiosity got the better of me.
“Hello,” I said.
A soft giggle. “Hello, Mr. Montague, this is your damsel in distress.”
I straightened up. “Celia! I tried to call, but the other number stopped working.”
“Daddy made me get rid of it. No worries. I want you to know I’m okay, but a little sad.” She giggled again, more nervously.
“Did you ever speak to...” I swallowed before continuing, as I pictured DeVere being dragged out of the car and the penetrating eyes of the man behind the mask, “...Uncle Earl?”
There was a long silence.
I almost said something, then Celia squeaked, “Uncle Earl came by, yes. He ate dinner with us a couple days ago. He and Daddy went fishing after that. They like nighttime fishing. They’ve been doing it forever.”
She cried. Another call was beeping in on my phone. Ignoring it, I waited for what I already suspected. Her sniffles and sobs made my heart hurt. So much pain for a young girl to endure.
“Anyway, Uncle Earl, he...he had an accident on the boat. They like deep-sea fishing. He fell over and, well you know, like, he drowned.”
Gripping the phone with both hands, I said, “Oh Celia, I’m so sorry.”
She sniffled some more. I pictured her wiping the tears away from below her long, fine eyelashes.
“Anyway, I’m good. Daddy and I are going to the Maldives for a vacay with his new girlfriend. She’s like twenty-five,” she said.
I hesitated, then said, “Celia, are you happy? Do you realize those men who kidnapped you work for your father? Do you know why you were in that warehouse with an operating table?”
“Yes, I know. My baby. I’m too young for motherhood. That’s what Daddy said,” she sobbed.
“Well, yes, that’s right. How do you feel about that?”
Rattling noises erupted as she adjusted the phone. I imagined her laying back in her teenager bed, frilly sheets and posters of pop idols adorning lavender walls. Her biggest worry should have been what concert she’d see that night or the best nail polish color for summertime.
She blew her nose loudly without a hint of embarrassment. “I loved Earl. He didn’t hurt me. I suppose what we did was wrong, but he really was kind to me. Now, he’s gone. I guess that’s my world. My Daddy’s world.”
My brow knitted together as I shared her pain. The pain of the reality Celia lived with.
“What do I have to be upset about? I’m rich, I can have whatever I want.” She paused, then said, “My Daddy loves me very much. But can I tell you a secret?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I don’t know if I can keep loving him.”
“Celia...” I started, but she cut me off.
“Can I give you my new number? I’m gonna have to go now. You really are my hero. Maybe we can stay in touch?”
She sounded so sincere. I didn’t have children, but if I did, I hoped they’d be like Celia. I couldn’t fathom how Cecil had raised such a mature young woman.
“Of course, I insist on you giving me your number,” I joked. “I’ve been worried sick about you for days.”
She read the numbers to me and I saved them in my phone. She made small talk about her upcoming trip, then reiterated she had to go.
“One last thing, Mr. Montague, if it ever got unbearable here, would you come get me?”
I smiled, thinking that would be a job I’d have to enlist Sire Goode for help with. “You can count on it.”
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” Celia said.
“I mean it.”
Chapter 60
“Wait here,” I said as I got out of Dana’s car. “Once we’re in the house, come in. It’ll be a nice surprise.”
Auntie Glor waited for me on her front lawn in full gardening attire. Her eyes glazed over as I explained the events of the night before.
She plucked a weed and threw it aside. “Somehow I knew. Something felt different in that kitchen from that Christmas on. It’s the real reason I moved out.”
“Becca’s father killed your grandson.”
“No, my grandson died years before that knife and that gun ended his body. The lord wanted him back before he went too far down Satan’s path. Maybe that bigot saved him.” She picked out another weed and pointed to her right. “Please hand me that trowel.”
I gave it to her. “So you really think it’s for the best? Maybe you should make an effort to get to know Elias. You might learn something about Roger.”
She got up and put the trowel in her apron pocket. We went into the house. She sat on a stool next to the kitchen counter, the same one I’d sat on to drink milk on my last visit.
“I think eventually Roger was going to kill his own son by bringing him into that world,” she said.
I shook my head soberly, then told her that she’d been duped by her own lack of faith. She’d shown so much faith in Jesus, but none in her own blood.
The PDF files Miguela Salas had sent me, showed Roger had put funds into a 529 Account for Elias’ education. It proved Roger was plotting his escape from that life and wanted a better one for his child.
Glor stared, the white pages with numbers on them reflecting in her reading glasses.
“Sometimes people surprise you,” I whispered when she looked up.
She placed her elbows on the counter. Her head dropped into her hands. She kneaded her scalp and she emitted a low whine.
A knock on the door.
“He’s here,” I said.
“Who?” Glor asked.
I opened the door and Elias walked in. She stood and looked at the boy a long time. Elias’ mouth curled as he struggled with his emotions. Glor waved him over and enveloped him in her arms. I slipped out the door and stole away, hope in my heart for the last of this special family.
Chapter 61
According to Dana, a small, dingy office was available in The Daily News building. I could afford it, but I’d have to come up to the newsroom to use the john. She’d given me the business card for a sign-maker who I’d already called. I ordered a simple white sign with black lettering: “Boise Montague, Private Investigator.”
That afternoon, I snuck back into Roger’s house. After ducking under the police tape in the kitchen, I laid down on the cheap yellow and white linoleum. I scooted back, giving my legs room to stretch out in front of me, then pushed back a little further, accounting for Roger being taller. Above the sink, I saw what I’d hoped to see: the large portrait of Elias staring down at me.
After pulling the likeness off the wall, I lugged it back to my room. Lucy provided a hammer and some nails and with her permission, I hung Elias above my bed. It felt like home.
about the author
Photo © 2018 Miriam Sachs
GENE DESROCHERS LIVES and works in Los Angeles County. He is originally from St. Thomas. Dark Paradise is his first novel after a lifetime of writing short stories. He has a Juris Doctorate from Tulane Law School. His favorite activity is tennis. Gene believes the people you choose in this life are your family.
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Gene Desrochers, Dark Paradise
