Lisa Allen-Agostini - Trinidad Noir

“Can’t you ask something else?”

“We should go.” He took her arm and began striding to the exit.

“Okay. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I was just doing my job. Didn’t think you’d be so interested.”

He jerked her to a halt. “And what do I have to do to show I’m interested, really interested, Fiona, tell me.”

“Are you jealous?”

Roy didn’t reply. A heavyset man in hiking boots, new jeans, and belt, his brand name jersey a dark navy-blue, appeared. His right hand worked a toothpick protruding from his mouth; the left was half-inserted into a front pocket. He nodded the typical island greeting, one stranger to another on a pleasant afternoon: “All right.”

“Okay,” Roy replied.

Fiona glanced at the man as Roy pulled her along, increasing his pace and not looking back. They passed the waterfowl pond. At the exit, they hurried through the turnstile, Fiona whispering to Roy, asking if he’d brought his gun, Roy ignoring her. He hit his knee on one of the lower bars and cursed. As they got in the car, under the massive spreading branches of a samaan, Fiona was visibly nervous, glancing back at the exit. Roy drove, thinking of somewhere peaceful, close by.

“Roy, what’s wrong? Are we being paranoid?”

“Tell me.”

She was silent.

The parked car ticked with heat from the winding ascent. Roy and Fiona leaned against a low rock wall. They were alone. A burned-out building, roofless, its peeling concrete pillars intertwined with vines, stood to their left. He could see several valleys of the northern range descending to the gulf. Hovels, set on the valleys’ slopes, faded in and out of the hazy air. Those that didn’t fade were closer, below them in the fold of this valley. The scent of kerosene fires, garbage, and dust drifted up the hillsides. Subdued reggae and Baptist bells mingled, made a steady throb, like that of a distant party, one he’d been hearing since childhood. As though once begun at the foot of the hills, the party could never cease, must overwhelm the hills and valleys, beating on and on, its hovels eating into the earth of the island.

Before them the land sloped down to the city far below, and to the harbor, where the bulks of several shipwrecks lay side-up. Long feathery grass, green and brown-tinted and like young sugarcane in texture, rippled in a light breeze. It moved in great spreading greens down the hillside, dry-brown tints reflecting gold, a child’s version of a sea. They both watched it. Some of the last mountains of the Northern Range, the highest on the island, rose dark and silent behind them, the beginning of another world. Beyond the mountains lay the sea and the deep blue air of the Atlantic.

“Are you involved with De Souza?” Fiona asked quietly, staring at the gulf.

“I’m acquainted with him. We see each other at meetings, conferences, like the one where we met. You know that.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.”

Roy shrugged. “The rumors are there. Trinidad is loaded with them. How can people not make assumptions? It’s how the island amuses itself, Fiona.” Roy hesitated. “There’s no evidence on De Souza. You couldn’t have seen anything in his house. And even if you had, you wouldn’t have taken it.”

“Damn right, I took nothing. But I saw something.”

He waited.

“An address book with names of members of the judiciary, the business elite — your father among them — and contacts in Antigua, Curaçao, St. Maarten. There were also Russian names, fax numbers, cell phone numbers — many crossed out, some not — and odd names, like nicknames or codes.”

Roy scratched the side of his neck, gripped the skin between his thumb and forefinger, and pinched. “So De Souza, who once did business with my father, and does on occasion with me, who’s presently buying paint for condos he’s sprucing up in South — and don’t ask me where he got the money — De Souza, who was at the signing of the drug treaty with the Americans three years ago, this De Souza, you think, is a criminal? And as for the Russians, they’re everywhere these days. Look at what they’ve been through. I mean, so what if De Souza has those contacts. He should. He’s in government and he’s a businessman.”

She was quiet before asking, “Roy, do you love me?”

Vultures, their wings fixed like black machetes, glided southward over the ruined restaurant. For the last five hundred years, Roy thought, this image was the most consistent for the Caribbean and South and Central America.

The tall grass rustled near Fiona. She shrank back against Roy. Out of the bush, separating it with a walking stick, and head held high, walked Dr. Edric Traboulay, his wristwatches reflecting the last of the afternoon sunlight.

“Ah! We meet again! I am presently experiencing a period of reasonable clarity,” he announced. “Those hummingbirds I mentioned earlier, these were the mountains Dr. William Smith and I climbed in search of them, but more to the east.” He waved the stick in the general direction. “Funny, but I still can’t recall the story I wanted to tell you at the zoo. My mind, these days, makes its own random selections. Anyway, during the dry seasons of the 1950s, we did not experience such arid conditions as occur today after every Christmas season. Hence, we were able to travel comfortably as there were few fires during that time.” He stood the stick in front of him, resting his hands on its gnarled end, his watches glinting in the light like the arm-sheaths of a knight. Roy wondered if the watches worked. Dr. Traboulay looked up at the mountains, his eyes soft, as if lost in some fond memory. Thin cuts from the tall grass crisscrossed his upper arms and ribs.

Fiona said, “You’re back, sir.” She glanced at Roy, unsure of everything around her.

“Please, Miss Lady and Mr. Gentleman, I mean no harm. I don’t often get to talk to such nice people. How, may I ask, did Lollipop seem?”

Roy said, “Who?”

“Oh! Forgive me. The jaguar, his name is Lollipop — at least that’s what some people think. Someone removed my sign last month. I made another then, but the new manager was reluctant to put it up. He said it did not cater to the public’s tastes. What, I ask, is wrong with a little poetry by Blake?”

“‘Tiger tiger, burning bright’?” Fiona asked, relaxing.

Dr. Traboulay’s face lit up. “Precisely, my dear! Just because Blake was writing about the Indian tiger does not mean the poem cannot be applied to Lollipop, a name I strongly recommend they change. But, alas, the manager will not hear of it. I haven’t given up, though. Imagine calling a jaguar Lollipop . You might as well name him Popsicle , or Kit Kat , names not worthy of the status of the jaguar. Surely this is obvious.” Dr. Traboulay, chin up, awaited response.

Fiona said, “I agree.”

“It’s a very beautiful animal,” Roy added.

“Exactly. You both are educated,” Dr. Traboulay continued, “unlike these foolish politicians, little boys they are. I’d send them back to school if I could. Nothing but a bureaucratic herd determined to master mediocrity — and worse .”

“And I’d help you,” Roy said, thinking of De Souza while edging to the passenger side of the car where Fiona had left the window down. “Perhaps you can tell us another story,” he suggested. Roy’s cell and a revolver were locked in the glove compartment. He slipped his hand into his pocket, and when Dr. Traboulay turned, he quickly removed the keys and unlocked the glove compartment. He stayed leaning on the car door.

“Everywhere I go these days, I recall another story, though details, some quite significant, often elude me,” Dr. Traboulay said. “My walk here was filled with memories, many I’d not recalled for ages. Chapters of my life sailed through my mind, around every corner, under every tree... They came to me out of the blue, literally.” He laughed. “I am rather partial to the odd cliché, now and then, if you’ll excuse me.” He walked toward the ruined restaurant. “For instance, this relic. I mean—” He broke off, became flustered, mumbled to himself in Latin, then reverted to the local dialect. “Jew man get he place burn down. Investigation say is arson. Police commissioner tell the Jew man to leave. Just so . And the insurance get seize.” Now he said, “The ways of the business community on this island have never ceased to amaze me.”