again at the photograph of his children. Go home, Raymond. His eyes shifted to the rearview. Nothing suspicious. He backed out of his spot, repressing a shudder as he lost himself in the traffic.
Raymond parked his Datsun in the driveway and exhaled. He’d made it home alive, intact, with four minutes to spare. He wanted to run inside and lock the doors. He needed the safety of his home, the two-bedroom apartment they’d been renting for a few years, in the back of an old gingerbread house. Yet he found he could barely move.
He peeled his fingers off the wheel and stared at them, willing the tremors away. His entire body seemed to be vibrating with a mild seizure, and he smelled the sweat festering in his armpits. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the headrest. He couldn’t extract himself from the car. Not yet. He needed his legs to stop shaking. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d confronted death this way, come so close to it. In some ways, he thought, it was surprising. Everyone in Port-au-Prince lived in death’s shadow.
Finally, he got out, wobbling. He considered the small white Datsun he’d been driving for years. It was now his accomplice in a crime, regardless of good intentions. He had acted purely out of instinct. And now, heart racing, he faced the likely facts of his situation: they must have his license plate number. A description of his vehicle. He cursed under his breath. The little Datsun was now as incriminating as a murder weapon.
He looked around anxiously to make sure no one was watching. A streetlight cast a white glow over the driveway. Just above the rear bumper, his eye caught a bullet hole in the body of his Datsun. He inserted his finger in it and fought off another chill. He would have to do something about this. His friend Faton knew someone at the vehicle registration office who could get him a new license plate, but bodywork, like everything else, was costly. Raymond scratched the anxiety crawling under his sideburns like a colony of ants.
He glanced at the big gingerbread house. An old rocking chair trembled on the veranda, back and forth. But there was no breeze. The doors and window shutters were lacquered in a glossy, peeling gray that revealed termite bites in the mahogany. The windows opened onto a brightly lit interior with a wooden staircase and a wall of sepia-toned family portraits. Raymond suddenly smelled a familiar waft of tobacco burning in the warm evening air. Now a woman appeared in the rocking chair, her shape becoming more distinct in the dark as she nodded, the embers of her cigarette glittering red like a lonesome koukouy, or firefly, suspended in midair.
He steeled himself. Perhaps he could get away with pretending he didn’t see her. Perhaps he could walk past the veranda with his head held high, and she would let him go home without saying a word. He scurried up the driveway toward the back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement and heard a depressing scratch of the throat. Then a voice cut through the night.
“I see you, L’Eveillé!”
He froze, his eyes cutting through the evening light.
“I’ll call the police.”
TWO
Nicolas L’Eveillé stood between his friends Georges Phenicié and Jean Faustin. They were peering over a stack of typewritten pages Nicolas had just freed from the confines of a rubber band.
He could smell the cigarettes and coffee on his friends’ breath and could feel the tension as the setting sun threw shadows across the walls of his study. Next to the manuscript was a small black notebook stuffed with newspaper clippings, Nicolas’s black Smith-Corona, and a photograph of his wife, Eve, her black hair perfectly curled, holding their newborn.
Jean Faustin, whom Nicolas and his close friends affectionately called Jean-Jean, gingerly slid a newspaper clipping from the notebook. He held it away from the window. In the newsprint photograph, a man disfigured by a scar from his eye down to his chin grinned in the sunlight. Standing next to the man on a balcony was Papa Doc, his smirk and glasses unmistakable. Jean-Jean’s age-spotted, bald head tilted back as he let out his habitual, pensive grunt. He was in his seventies and had lived through enough to move away from the window lest anyone see what they’d found. He retreated to an empty space between the bookshelves that lined the walls.
“I don’t understand,” Georges said. His large belly rolled forward as he leaned over to extinguish his cigarette in an empty espresso cup. He was a handsome, heavyset man who always wore white or beige linen clothing that set off his inky skin. He had large eyes and purple gums that flashed nebulous teeth when he spoke. His rich baritone filled the room.
“I know you said you wanted to write a book, but—when did you have the time to do all this?”
“Took me a few months,” Nicolas said. “But never mind that. I called you here because I need your help.”
Georges’s fearful eyes belied his calm voice. “Help?”
“As you know, I’ve been collecting notes on Duvalier and Jules Oscar,” Nicolas said. “I have the evidence. It’s all in the book, but now—”
“Slow down, son. Please.” Jean-Jean fell in a chair. He was still holding the photo. He shook his head and lowered his voice as though someone might be listening at the door. “This is very dangerous, Nicolas. Are you prepared for what could happen?”
Nicolas picked up the notebook and approached Jean-Jean. He held it open for the older gentleman to see. He had hoped for help from Jean-Jean, his mentor. Georges was an old friend, yes, but Jean-Jean’s sour history with Duvalier had put him in a position of kamoken anba chal, a rebel in disguise, someone who actively spoke against Duvalier, if only in whispers, behind closed doors.
The man was like a father to Nicolas. After being accepted to law school in Port-au-Prince, Nicolas had sought an internship at the prestigious Cabinet d’Avocats with Jean Faustin, a judge who himself had started out as an attorney. That first day, Jean-Jean had carefully appraised Nicolas’s curriculum vitae, then studied his cheap, worn-out dress shoes and the glimmer of ambition in his eyes, before deciding to take the young man under his wing. And now here they were, in the successful protege’s beautiful library, surrounded by hundreds of books. Jean-Jean leafed through a few pages of the manuscript.
“What exactly do you plan on doing with this?” he asked Nicolas. “You’re thirty-five, with a beautiful family. You’re far too young to risk losing everything. You must not have thought this through…”
Nicolas’s shoulders were broad, and he towered over Jean-Jean, who stared at him with a combination of love and suspicion, like a man waiting for his son to confess to a serious transgression.
“I was hoping you could find a way to smuggle it to that friend of yours in France,” Nicolas said. “The editor? I have a mountain of research and evidence, things I can’t keep locked in my drawer forever. It’s only a matter of time before…”
He handed the notebook over to the old man, but Jean-Jean motioned for him to put it away. Nicolas froze. He’d expected shock, yes, but also that Jean Faustin would understand. What he hadn’t expected was dismissal. His mentor looked pale.
Nicolas took a deep breath. He was not giving up so easily.
“More sugar?” He reached for the cubes on the tray.
Jean-Jean shook his head, waving them away. “You know I can’t have that,” he grumbled.
In his distraction, Nicolas had forgotten Jean-Jean’s diabetes, which required his old friend to give himself insulin injections several times a day. Nicolas backed away and took a seat at his desk facing the two men in their wicker chairs. Their faces drooped—they hadn’t been prepared for this when they’d strolled in earlier. The shelf next to them held leather-bound books on civil and penal codes and a black-and-white portrait of the L’Eveillé brothers. Nicolas, dressed all in white, knelt at a pew holding a rosary next to his older brother. Somehow this image gave him strength for what he was going to say next.
“I have proof he ordered the arrest and execution of Dr. Jacques Stephen Alexis. No one will doubt it now. It’s just—”
“That’s