The Darkest Day

NINETEEN

After leaving Sylvester, Victor kept moving. He didn’t like to stay still, especially in a new town. He was a stranger here, ignorant of the rhythm of street life and melody of the inhabitants. Exploring meant acquiring knowledge that could prove useful, even essential, to both the task at hand and the more difficult job of staying alive.

He liked the city, despite the locals hassling him to buy snacks or worthless souvenirs. Everyone seemed to smile, as if even the most mundane of daily activities brought genuine joy.

With half an hour left before he was due to meet Sylvester, he walked down a pedestrianised street lined with cafés, bars and shops. He followed the street to the seafront and spend a while gazing at the bay. He turned into a tree-lined street where grand colonial buildings towered above him.

A trio of musicians played merengue music as they strolled along the boulevard. Dominicans sprang into impromptu dance as they passed by. He smiled and clapped in the same way he had seen tourists do. A local girl tried to take his hand so he would dance with her, but he shook his head and moved on. A roadside stall sold coconuts. For an extra dollar the seller let Victor use the machete to chop the top off one and he sipped the juice from a straw as he continued on his way to the grounds of the sixteenth-century Fortaleza Ozama.

Victor waited on the fort’s battlements, next to a deactivated cannon that faced the river and pirates and invaders from the previous millennium.

Sylvester arrived alone, and late.

‘He won’t come here,’ Sylvester was quick to explain. ‘You must go to him.’

‘That’s not what we agreed.’

‘I could not persuade him.’

Victor said, ‘You called yourself the great Sylvester.’

The man shrugged. ‘He won’t come to you.’

‘You mean you were not willing to share the money I gave you.’

Sylvester shrugged and repeated, ‘I could not persuade him.’

‘Let’s go,’ Victor said.

Sylvester led Victor to where a sun-bleached old VW Beetle was parked under the shade of a palm tree. Sylvester unlocked it with a key while Victor waited on the kerb to look out for watchers. No one seemed to be paying them any attention.

Metal squealed as Sylvester wrenched open the driver’s door. ‘Get in.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘My friend lives out of town. Like all the other cartel people.’

‘Where out of town?’

‘A village near the plantations,’ Sylvester replied. ‘Fifty or so kilometres north. Only half an hour if we are lucky.’

Victor regarded the Dominican. Being led away into the unknown was not his style, but he had little choice. He wasn’t going to find Marte without some help. He pulled open the passenger door, which made even more noise than the driver’s had a moment before.

‘Don’t worry,’ Sylvester said with a grin. ‘The car is as safe as the houses.’

‘If you’ve set me up in any way,’ Victor said, gaze locked on Sylvester, ‘I’m the worst enemy you’ll ever have.’

Sylvester said nothing, but the grin slipped away from his face.

‘You do know that I’m telling you the truth, right?’ Victor said.

The Dominican didn’t answer and climbed into the Beetle. Victor climbed in too. He was surprised when the car started on the first turn of the ignition.

They set off northeast, leaving Santo Domingo behind and heading into savannah. They passed gua-gua buses of tourists on excursions to the Cordillera Central mountains. After twenty minutes on the highway they headed off on to narrow roads winding through villages and sugar and tobacco plantations. Here people used mules as much as cars for transportation. Sugar plantations seemed to be everywhere.

They drove past market stalls set up along the side of the road selling fruit and sugar cane to passers-by, slowing down as the road became narrow with parked vehicles and mules. One stall sold leering carnival masks. It was noisy with locals and tourists alike bartering for better deals.

A traffic cop in mirrored sunglasses waved them over.

‘What’s wrong?’ Victor asked.

‘Do not sweat,’ Sylvester said. ‘He’s just seen your foreign face.’

‘Bribe?’

Victor’s guide only smiled and dropped out of the vehicle to hand over money to the smiling cop, who patted him on the back as if they were friends, before leaving.

‘All fine. Only ten dollars.’

‘A bargain,’ Victor said.

The sun sank down towards the horizon. Dust clouded and swirled in the breeze against a backdrop of blazing orange. Flamingos so bright they seemed to glow pink stood in the glassy waters of a shallow lake.

Sylvester stopped the Beetle on the outskirts of a ramshackle collection of buildings that formed a village in the centre of endless fields of tobacco.

Sylvester climbed out and Victor followed him into the village. Here the buildings were made of wood and painted in faded and cracked pastel colours. The streets were narrow and winding. Cars were rare. Two women hung out laundry on a line over a small balcony. One waved as he passed. Teenagers danced merengue to music emanating from their mobile phones.

He passed an area of grassland where spray paint had been used to make crude baseball markings. The grass had been worn away to bare dirt where every base was marked. A yellow house surrounded by a wall stood on a small hill overlooking the rest of the village. Generators rumbled and coughed fumes into the air. The power supply on the island was inconsistent at best and many relied on their own electricity instead. He passed young women who rolled cigars on their thighs from tobacco leaves while they laughed and joked with one another under a string of twinkling fairy lights.

They ducked under the low archway to enter the bar. Victor nodded to the patrons who looked his way and they nodded back, appreciating his manners. He knew a little of Dominican etiquette. The few dozen men and handful of women drank rum and coconut milk from dappled glasses. The chairs and tables were all made from dark-stained mahogany. Dominican rap music thumped out of speakers. Colourful paintings of famous national boxers hung from the walls. In one corner a blue Hispaniolan parrot cleaned itself inside a gilded brass cage. He could smell seafood cooking: shrimps grilling and kingfish frying.

Sylvester said, ‘Wait here,’ and went to speak to the bartender.

A bowl of mangoes, oranges and passion fruit sat on a nearby table. Victor selected an orange and used a thumbnail to pierce the skin in a line that followed all the way around its circumference. He peeled that half away and took a bite from the flesh beneath. With his free hand he stroked the chin of an iguana that lay on the same table.

A man said something in Haitian Creole as he passed towards the exit. Victor had no idea how the words translated but a drunken slur was the same in any language.

After a minute had passed, Sylvester waved Victor over and he approached the bar, where he used a napkin to wipe his fingers and deposit the orange skin. The man tending the bar had braided hair, brightened by colourful beads. He wore a necklace of blue and black amber stones.

‘You want passport?’ the man asked.

Victor nodded.

‘You have money?’

Victor nodded again.

The man with the braided hair nodded too and said, ‘Come with me.’

‘Go with him,’ Sylvester added. ‘But pay me first. One hundred dollars, please.’

‘Fifty,’ Victor said. ‘Because you didn’t bring him to me as agreed.’

Sylvester scowled but didn’t argue. He took the fifty dollars and settled on a stool. He waved a young woman over from where she sat at the end of the bar and ordered himself a drink.

The man with the braided hair and amber necklace guided Victor into the back of the bar and through the kitchen, which was so hot and humid Victor had trouble catching his breath. His face was damp with sweat by the time they had exited the back of the bar into a dusty courtyard behind the building.

Several dirt bikes and quads were parked in the courtyard. Near to them five Dominican and Haitian men sat at a bench, finishing a meal of white rice, red beans and fish, and drinking mango juice. None of the Haitians looked the right age or build for Marte.

One stood, a large Haitian in a white vest darkened with sweat and grime, and went up to the man with braids. They exchanged whispered words.

‘You want the passport?’ the Haitian asked Victor.

‘Yes.’

‘Show me your money.’

Victor said, ‘Where’s the forger?’

‘I’m the forger.’

Victor looked at the man’s hands. They were large and strong.

‘No, you’re not.’

The man with braids headed back to the bar. Victor would have followed his movements but he kept his gaze on the Haitian, because behind him the other four men stood and approached.

Victor heard the bar’s back door shut. He didn’t hear, but he sensed the lock engaging from the inside.

‘Show me your money,’ the Haitian said again as he took a machete from the tabletop.