Cross Current - Kling Christine - Страница 33
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“So what can I do for you, Miss Sullivan?”
“I assume you know that I am the one who found the little girl they’re calling the Earth Angel.”
“Yes, the little Solange. I read about it in the paper.”
“Let me explain what I’m trying to do, and then maybe the rest will make sense to you. See, when I found that girl two days ago, I told her—promised her, really—that I would do whatever I could to help her stay in this country.”
“I wish more people felt as welcoming to Haitian immigrants.”
“I know what you mean. But now the Immigration people tell me that the only way she can stay is if I find a relative. And since the girl told me her father is American, I’m determined to find him.”
“She spoke to you? In English?”
“Yes.”
“That is very strange. I saw her at the hospital. Twice, actually. I guess you know I work for the police sometimes as a translator, but when I saw her, she refused to speak. No Creole, no English, nothing. The police need to interview her if she is speaking now.”
“Well, there’s a problem.” I told her there had been an incident at the hospital. “I’m afraid she’s not talking to anybody right now. She’s clammed up again. But that doesn’t change anything about her status with Immigration. I need to find her father as soon as possible.”
“How do you think I can help?”
“I want to talk to someone who came over on the Miss Agnes, the boat that sank off Deerfield. We know that quite a few people made it ashore, and we think Solange may have started out on that boat. Maybe one of the people who was aboard knows something about her or her family. I was hoping you could get my message out to the Haitian community on your radio show. If someone is willing to give some information, they can stay anonymous, I don’t care, I just want to find her father—if he is, in fact, here.”
She took a long drink from her iced tea, then called out, “Juliette.” The child came scurrying out of the house with a platter of fish in one hand and a bowl of rice and beans in the other. Martine pointed to the food and said to me, “Please, help yourself.”
For the next few minutes, she explained to me how Juliette had cooked the fish according to Haitian custom, and while this meal had been cooked on her electric stove, back in Haiti they had grown up eating the same food cooked over an open charcoal fire. As she spoke, the girl moved silently in and out, serving the food, clearing dishes, bringing more bread, filling our iced tea glasses. Through the French doors, I could see framed photos on the wall unit in the dining room. All were of two parents and a young girl about three years old.
“Is Juliette a relative of yours?” I noticed the girl shot a quick glance at Martine.
Martine wiped at her mouth and swallowed. “Yes, she is my niece. Her mother is still in Haiti, but I brought her here a few years ago so she could learn English and get an American education. I have a young daughter, Camille, who is away at her playgroup right now. Juliette is a great help with her, as well.”
“Is that Camille in those photos?” I nodded toward the dining room.
“Yes,” she said, and smiled broadly, showing very white straight teeth. “She just turned four last week.”
“You are very lucky to have such a family. Two beautiful girls. Why doesn’t Juliette pull up a chair and join us?” The girl slipped through the French doors into the house.
“That is not our custom in Haiti,” Martine said, and then took an enormous mouthful of rice and beans that made further explanation impossible.
The fish was excellent, flavored with lime and some fiery spices. I waited to see Juliette again, to compliment her on her cooking, but she never reappeared.
By the time I left her house, Martine Gohin had agreed to broadcast a request for more information from anyone who was aboard or who knew anything about the Miss Agnes and her fate. She would ask her listeners to call the radio station, and she promised to pass on to me any tips that came her way.
XIV
When I walked out the finger pier next to Outta the Blue, I saw Mike down in his inflatable dinghy off the stem of his boat, staring up at his outboard where it rested on a flatbed dolly on the dock.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, smiling. “Looks like you could use a hand getting that beast on your dink.” The outboard was a twenty-five-horsepower four-stroke Honda, and it probably weighed over a hundred pounds.
“Whew, Seychelle, am I ever glad to see you. I could sure use an extra hand right now. An extra leg, too.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been considering trying to get that thing into your dinghy all by yourself?”
He grinned and shrugged. “Well, I guess I was. Joe helped me get it off the dink the other day and into his truck. We took it back to the dealer because it was running kind of rough. Anyway, I hated to have to call somebody and beg for help.”
“Listen,” I told him, “you’ve got to stop trying to think strong, tough guy on a boat. It doesn’t work. I’m nowhere near as strong as most men in this business, but I can do it because I think smarter, not stronger.”
In a few minutes, I had shown him how to use his sailboat’s main boom as a crane and his mainsail sheet as a come-along. We used sail ties made of nylon webbing to fashion a harness around the outboard and winched it into the air. I swung the boom across the cockpit, then lowered the outboard over the side of the big sailboat and into the waiting dinghy. Mike slid it onto the transom of the inflatable as I fed out the line. Twenty minutes later, the job was done and we were tidying up the cockpit.
“Thanks, Seychelle. Come on below. I owe you a cold one for that. Then you can tell me why you really came over here today.”
Dry, cool air tumbled out the passageway doors and chilled my ankles as I followed Mike down the companionway ladder. I slid the teak hatch closed and latched the clear Plexiglas doors. Down below, Outta the Blue resembled an air-conditioned condo more than a seagoing vessel. Back when he bought the used Irwin-54 with his generous retirement settlement, she had been neglected and needed a complete refit. Mike had refurbished her to suit his tastes. Since he had never owned any boat bigger than a trailerable flats skiff, he had no idea what he was doing and the result was a vessel interior that looked something like a man’s basement hideout. The TV sported video game controllers, and large speakers hung from the overhead in the four corners of the main salon. The chart table was weighted down with a full-size desktop computer with a seventeen-inch monitor. Where most boats use small portable electronic gear, Mike had installed household versions of everything from microwave to VCR. Then he’d allowed the old generator to seize up from lack of use, since he rarely if ever left the dock in those days.
He reached down into the top-loading refrigerator and offered me a frosty Corona. I waved it away.
“It’s still a bit early for me, Mike.” For a second beer, I thought, smiling at the memory of seeing Pit.
He poured himself some dark rum over ice. “So what’s on your mind?” he asked when he finally settled into the other side of the dining booth in the main salon.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“I assume this is about the kid. The Haitian girl.”
“Actually, no.” I watched him finish that rum and pour himself a second. “How well do you know Joe D’Angelo?”
“Joe? What do you want to know about him for?”
I lifted my shoulder bag off the floor and unzipped the side pocket. I slid the photo across the table. Mike reached over to a small cubby by the chart table and retrieved some reading glasses. After adjusting them on his face, he examined the photo.
“Hmmm,” he said as he held the photo far from his face and tried to focus. “Well, I’ll be damned.” He looked up over the top of the reading glasses. “What year was this taken?”
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