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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe kicked him in the groin. He doubled over, gasping. Dread Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe. “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 Lanfe, 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 Lanfe was following the businessman’s movements with distrust, his finger on the trigger of the.38. When Fanfayon opened the safe, Dread Lanfe 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 Lanfe, there’s no money!” he yelled.
“What do you mean there’s no money?” Dread Lanfe 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 Lanfe grabbed Fanfayon, who was no longer moving. Dread Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe, 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 Lanfe, 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 Lanfe put his hand on her, she could visualize mud and blood, and that propelled her right down the track to orgasm. And Dread Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe, 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 Lanfe.
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 Lanfe 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 Lanfe 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. Lanfe 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.
“What’s the matter?” asked Paola somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “A bad dream.”
“Come back to bed. Come closer to me.”
Dread Lanfe went back to bed. He held her tight, seeking comfort and safety in the warmth of her body, safety that only his mother, a peasant woman from Artibonite, could give him when he was a child. He was unable to go back to sleep. The nightmare just caught him like that, while he was still awake. He felt the finger on his thigh, climbing up, lingering over his navel. Dread Lanfe got rid of the intruder with an abrupt swing of his hand. He heard the finger falling on the floor and immediately trying to climb back onto the bed. Terrified, he jumped up and rushed to the dressing table. The finger had disappeared. Terror took hold of him like a gust of wind carrying a dry leaf away. He grabbed the machine gun he had placed underneath the dressing table. In the semidarkness of the bedroom, Dread Lanfe heard the finger climbing on a chair. Like a madman, he opened fire, unleashing an infernal racket. Paola woke up screaming, just as the finger jumped on Dread Lanfe and clung to his chest like a devilish bloodsucker. Without meaning to, Dread Lanfe pulled the trigger of the machine gun again. A hail of bullets brought Paola down. He dropped the gun in an attempt to snatch the finger from his chest. A demonic laughter rang in his ears. The finger was growing, transforming into a hideous, slimy creature with a cold and scaly body, a body that was coiling around his. Dread Lanfe tried to shout. He died without even realizing it.
When the police, alerted by the neighbors, burst into the bedroom, Dread Lanfe was lying on the floor, his body all dislocated. Paola was naked on the bed, her corpse riddled with bullets. The magistrate had not yet arrived for the report. The inspector who was leading the police squad gave the order to cover the foreign woman with a sheet. The officer crossed himself in front of Dread Lanfe’s body. He knew him well, for he had met him many times at the dictator’s place. While searching the room for possible booty, he discovered the finger on the dressing table, hidden behind a bottle of perfume. The ring immediately caught his eye. Surreptitiously, he grabbed it and slipped it quietly into his uniform pocket. The inspector knew a fence who always gave him a good deal. He didn’t pay attention to the finger, which was already on the move.
