clothing he could find, and rushed to his car, an old second-hand Toyota that started every other time.
The police department car stayed at the precinct: a stupid requirement from the minister of the interior to put an end to the improper use of vehicles outside office hours. Some had even been seen in bad neighborhoods when the driver wasn’t supposed to be on duty. As if police cars had to be parked in front of embassies and rich homes only! Besides, those cars broke down very often, victims of the terrible state of the roads; or of the mechanics in charge of repairing them: they’d slip in used parts in place of the new ones they were selling. In any event, the inspector preferred his old unmarked Toyota to the official police car. It allowed him to go unnoticed and have no time constraints. And his car had no fear of a tough fight with the streets of Port-au-Prince.
Luckily, the old Toyota started up right away. The inspector then realized he hadn’t opened the fence of the yard. He was wasting precious time. Slipping his hand into his pants pocket to extract his keys, he stepped back out of the car. After he had unlocked the padlock, he needed to remove the heavy chain which, in addition to the walls capped with glass shards, completed the security system. Then he had to open the fence to drive the car out before closing it behind him. The fact that he was a police inspector didn’t matter: he lived barricaded, like everyone else. Like those who could afford it, at least. Fortunately, Cite Soleil was not far away. Coming from Delmas 3, he had to turn left and drive along the former runway of the army airport. At that hour, the city of Port-au-Prince wasn’t yet the huge bottleneck it would become until ten a.m., and then again between two and six p.m.
A small crowd told him he had reached the crime scene. A swarm of chattering people was gathered around the corpse planted in the middle of the intersection. A TV camera and three journalists from a few of the many radio stations of the capital were already there. Who had informed them? He heard a witness answer the question of a journalist with another question that was more a statement than a question. “When you see something like this, human beings turned into animals, wouldn’t you say that the reign of Christ is near?” And the guy added: “It is indeed an individual who was being transformed into an ox, but the criminal’s dirty work must have been interrupted by someone showing up unexpectedly.” He pointed. “Look here, you can see that the feet haven’t been completely transformed into hoofs. Same for the toes there…”
Actually, since the discovery of these strange corpses, the rumor that a boko had lost a bunch of zombies he had started to turn into cattle and was chasing them through the streets of the capital to dispose of them had spread very quickly. And then people started praying, reciting psalms and singing hymns even more fervently than in the Protestant churches that were proliferating in the country, almost as fast as the NGOs.
Meanwhile, he asked the two policemen on duty to clear out the chicken coop. So far, the two cops had confined themselves to the role of amused onlookers, but they were happy to carry out the orders. The journalists grumbled that this was a democracy and they had the right to do their job.
“To hell with your democracy,” said the youngest cop. “Go on, scat!”
The small crowd finally dispersed and the inspector started to examine the corpse. The body, as expected, was crushed as if a steamroller or a truck weighing several tons had rumbled over it. Impossible to identify its gender. No trace of blood: the dead person had been carbonized. The inspector made a discovery nonetheless: no gas stain on the ground. Yet the body reeked of gas. He had obviously been brought from somewhere else. No shred of carbonized flesh around either. No matches, no lighter, not even a cigarette butt left on the premises. Absolutely nothing. For what kind of audience were they putting on this kind of show? wondered Zagribay. If he could answer this question, he was certain he would get closer to the murderers or to those behind the murders.
The inspector lingered there for another hour. Just to be on the safe side, he questioned some residents of the slum in the vain hope that someone might provide information that would put him on the right track. But all he got was a jumble of contradictory statements. The blazing sun put an end to the investigation. He asked the policemen to take the necessary steps to dispose of the dead body, climbed back in his old Toyota which acted out a little before starting, and drove off, his mind tormented by a number of questions. He had hardly gone three hundred yards when he made a U-turn right in the middle of the street, enraging some other drivers. He had the distinct feeling of having seen the “witness” questioned by the journalist somewhere before. But when he was back on the scene, the man had already vanished and no one knew where he lived or where he could be reached.
Five minutes later, he remembered. He’d seen that “witness” in one of the news stories he had watched when he started working on the case. He was ready to bet a month’s pay on this. From behind the steering wheel of his car-he was stuck in a huge traffic jam with a broken air conditioner and no siren to weave his way out-he made a call to a journalist friend. The journalist had several stories about the case of the corpses changed into cattle but happened to be working on an assignment just outside the city and couldn’t free himself at that moment. Zagribay explained that it was extremely urgent. The journalist promised to have the stories to him on DVD by the middle of the afternoon. Which turned out to be convenient, as the inspector also had to attend a reception at the Canadian embassy for the national holiday of the neighboring country. He finally had something that looked like the beginning of a lead. He slipped the Ibrahim Ferrer CD in the stereo and turned up the volume to cover the incessant honking.
Zagribay made a detour by the precinct and ran into his boss, who seemed in a better mood than in the morning. He was greeted with a “Hi, Messiah,” a nickname that emphasized his muckraking tendencies. He answered right back that it wasn’t his fault if corruption made him furious.
“Me too,” answered the boss. “But no matter how hard you try, you won’t change this country. The art of accommodation. It’s called intelligence, Dyaspora.”
“Why do you do this job, then?”
“To make a living, pal. To make a living.”
At least that was clear. The inspector couldn’t say why but he had an instinctive distrust of his boss. The way he lived was way over his salary. How did he pay for his villa on the capital heights? With what money did he take his family to spend weekends in Miami so often? One of his sons, who was no genius and thus couldn’t possibly have won a scholarship, was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. It’s a wellknown fact that Yankee universities frigging cost an arm and a leg. It was easy for both of them to get rich at their jobs. All they had to do was look away, ignore certain dirty deals. Nobody here will raise questions about spontaneous fortunes. You can start in the gutter, go to bed poor as a church mouse, and wake up the next day rich as Croesus. Nobody will bat an eyelid. On the contrary: most people just dream of being able to do exactly the same thing. And those who have the biggest mouths, who rail against politicians and the corruption of the elite, are quick to swallow the word “ethical” once they’re in power. Also, the chief had been in this job-for which he had no particular training-for such a long time. In a country where people in official positions are sent packing each time a new minister is appointed, this was rather suspicious. The man seemed to be part of the furniture, unmovable. Not one minister had succeeded in firing him. And for some, not for lack of trying. What did he know, and about whom?
After a lunch of fried plantains and taso on a corner of his desk, watered down with a glass of papaya milk, Zagribay set out to meet his friend at the TV station. He got permission to watch the DVDs there and to make copies of them. He had made sure to bring a blank DVD for the recording. After he’d watched the films, the inspector clenched his fist: bingo! He had guessed right. The “witness,” a guy in his thirties, neatly dressed but nothing fancy, appeared in three out of the six stories; the first corpse hadn’t been noticed, and a new “witness” could be seen on two others. Interesting, Zagribay thought. In both instances, the “witnesses” insisted, each in his own words, on the corpses’ transformation into cattle, almost as if they wanted to make absolute sure the public embraced this scenario. Knowing how superstitious Haitians are, it was rather clever, the inspector reflected. But why? Who was behind this? He stood up and thanked the journalist, but did not share his analysis with him. He’d better leave early if he wanted to be on time for the ass-pinching party at the embassy.
Zagribay couldn’t stand social functions but there was no way he could skip this one: he partly owed his job to the Canadian diplomatic services, which had financed a training program in their country. After fifteen years spent in Montreal doing police work, he had decided to come home. Fed up with the cold. Month after month of schlepping tons of clothing on his back. Whole days sometimes without a ray of sun. He had gotten out of bed one morning and just handed his boss his letter of resignation. Knowing that he was reliable, serious, and efficient, his boss had tried to talk him out of it, but Zagribay had made up his mind. One month later, he was on a plane headed to Port-au- Prince. Once there, the situation turned out to be rather complicated. The middle-class people he rubbed elbows with always managed to ask him, at some point in the conversation, when he was planning to return to Canada. Hence the nickname “Dyaspora.” Even his boss used it. And yet he had made the announcement loud and clear: he was back to stay.
