Edwidge Danticat - Haiti Noir

Dread Lanfè, his Uzi in hand, entered a dilapidated room with walls blackened by smoke. The scents of oil, spices, and spoiled food floated in the air. Pots and plates were piled in a jumble on shelves. A faucet was letting out a thin flow of water that was running in the darkness with a sinister hiss. He gestured to Grizon to close the door, then gave him the order to remain in the room and cover him. He liked to talk like the military, copy the way they acted and put on their look of mean dogs, to show that he was no petty thug but a political activist about to be integrated into the police force by the dictator-in exile at the moment-with the rank of inspector. If he had become a full-time thief it was because the bourgeoisie and the expat intellectuals had ganged up with the Americans and the French to kidnap the leader. He fully intended to come out of this rich house loaded with major loot. Eight kids to put through school, one wife, and three mistresses, among them the luscious Italian who loved his enormous member so much. He really had to move his ass now. Gone were the checks and suitcases stuffed with money coming from public agencies, the afternoons spent with all the activists who met to smoke grass, snort coke, and talk politics.

While brooding over these dark thoughts, Dread Lanfè walked gingerly up the stairs leading to the bedroom where Fanfayon, the owner of the place, and his wife were sleeping. Dread Lanfè always picked his victims with care, gathering all necessary information about them ahead of time. Certain mistakes had to be avoided at all cost. After you had taken enormous risks, you could either return with an empty trunk or go after a big shot who’d been a supporter of the former dictator. Fanfayon was one of those. He owned several gambling houses, two supermarkets, a money laundering enterprise, and a dozen or so pawnshops in Port-au-Prince. The money made in the gambling houses was transferred to his bedroom safe at night. Dread Lanfè trusted his informer. Sure of himself, he burst into the bedroom, followed by Fat Alfred, his other accomplice. In the wink of an eye they had Fanfayon, still sluggish from sleep, under control. The businessman’s wife screamed. Fat Alfred made her stop by hitting her on the head with an iron bar. The woman collapsed, unconscious, her face all bloody.

“The money!” Dread Lanfè bellowed, the tip of his.38 pressed against Fanfayon’s temple. “Give me the money or I’ll scatter your brain all over this room!”

Fanfayon rolled his frightened eyes. He stammered something and let out a cry of pain when an impatient Dread Lanfè kicked him in the groin. He doubled over, gasping. Dread Lanfè quickly brought up his knee. The noise made by the impact, the blood gushing out-he enjoyed it all. Fanfayon remained slumped on the floor. He was holding his belly and moaning.

“Give me the money!” barked Dread Lanfè again.

Fat Alfred forced Fanfayon to stand up and dragged him violently to the safe located between a dressing table and a bulky mahogany wardrobe.

“Open it!” screamed Dread Lanfè. “I’ve got no time to waste.”

“There’s no money here,” Fanfayon managed to say between sobs. “I swear it on my mother’s head.”

“Liar!” hissed Dread Lanfè, kicking him hard. “If you don’t open the safe, I’ll kill you.”

Whimpering, Fanfayon put his hand forward to dial the combination. Dread Lanfè was following the businessman’s movements with distrust, his finger on the trigger of the.38. When Fanfayon opened the safe, Dread Lanfè went back at his victim with renewed ferocity, hitting him with a kind of blind rage. Fat Alfred, meanwhile, was frantically looking through the safe. “Dread Lanfè, there’s no money!” he yelled.

“What do you mean there’s no money?” Dread Lanfè cried, turning away from Fanfayon, who lay unconscious on the floor.

He shoved his accomplice back and stuck his head inside the safe. He had to face the facts and it didn’t take long. The safe held uninteresting, worthless papers, a passport with an American visa stamped in it, and small change. Eyes bloodshot, Dread Lanfè grabbed Fanfayon, who was no longer moving. Dread Lanfè didn’t know how to perform artificial resuscitation so he turned to Madame Fanfayon. But Fat Alfred had killed her on the spot with that iron bar to the head. Dread Lanfè and his accomplice combed the place desperately, one room after the other, in search of some nook where a sizeable sum of money might have been stashed. Finally, he realized that this was not going to bring in much and came back to the bedroom. Fanfayon was still breathing. Dread Lanfè finished him off with a quick bullet to the temple. He had to get out of there quickly, he thought, but then noticed the ring his victim was wearing on his left forefinger. It was a solid gold piece of jewelry that glowed in the dim light as if it were phosphorescent. Dread Lanfè examined it with interest. He was mesmerized by the two snakes elaborately carved on the precious metal. Fanfayon was certainly a servant of a lwa who favored him with wealth and protection. As he couldn’t manage to get the ring off the finger, Dread Lanfè angrily cut off the appendage with the knife that had already cut so many. He put the finger in his shirt pocket before signaling to Fat Alfred that it was time to leave the premises. The neighbors might have been alerted by the shot. They vanished into the night as furtively as they had come.

Depressed, Dread Lanfè didn’t go home. He had another plan in mind. He decided that this was a bad-luck night, and he shouldn’t do another job. He went to Paola’s, his Italian mistress. She worked for an NGO and was always proud to show him off-him, Dread Lanfè, like a trophy you fought hard to win. He was fond of Paola even though he knew she didn’t care too much about the dire poverty of the people in the city where she’d come to work. Her apparent commitment was hiding something else. Some deeper discontent. A loneliness her culture had planted in her. Poverty, death ever-present, black bodies gleaming with sweat. All those niggers wanted was to gobble up white women and that made her panties wet-she, who had been frigid before. When she met Dread Lanfè, it was love at first sight, an explosion. The man had the reputation of being a criminal. He was tall, ugly, wild, and most of all, blessed with a member (a publicly known fact) that made all the other niggers in town envious. When Dread Lanfè put his hand on her, she could visualize mud and blood, and that propelled her right down the track to orgasm. And Dread Lanfè told himself that Paola was his safety net in this fucked-up country. Perhaps some day she would take off with him and they’d go live under other skies. That’s why he felt he had to concentrate on her, always keep himself in condition to satisfy her well.

So he knocked on Paola’s door. As soon as she knew it was him, she yanked the door open. She didn’t even give him time to undress. She wanted him to take her right there and then, in the living room. Dread Lanfè lifted her up with all his strength, propped her against a shelf, crushing china, pictures, statuettes in the process, like the brute he was. The anger he felt about the botched job at Fanfayon’s increased his energy tenfold. Paola nearly fainted after her orgasm. Dread Lanfè, following the ritual they had worked out together, made her come back to reality with a pair of slaps.

“Let’s go to bed,” she stammered.

“Give me a little powder first,” ordered Dread Lanfè.

She complied. After they had both snorted their dose of coke, they felt like the world was at their feet. Paola quickly fell into a deep sleep. Dread Lanfè then remembered that he had Fanfayon’s finger in his shirt pocket. He couldn’t fall asleep with a dead man’s finger on him. He got up, took the finger, tried once more to take the ring off it, but didn’t succeed. That ring could very well bring him a nice bundle of dollars. Dread Lanfè knew how to recognize gold. He put the finger on the dressing table, in a china glass. Paola would see the finger when she woke up. Lanfè didn’t care. It would only add to his charm. He tossed his shirt over on a chair and came back to lie down next to her. He tumbled into a heavy sleep, disturbed by the impression that a foreign body was crawling over his chest. He knew it was the finger when he felt the ring rubbing against his skin. He screamed and sat up on the bed, gasping, his body drenched in sweat. Thinking that maybe some horrible creature had slipped in next to him, he jumped out of bed. But he couldn’t find anything suspicious. The finger was still on the dressing table. He managed to convince himself that it was just cocaine playing tricks with his mind.