19c The Investigation
The foursome arrives at the top of the hill called, Morne de la Gloire, in the prisoner transport vehicle of the municipal jail, driven by Albin. The magnificence of the villa is a terrible insult to the poor. Its garden are inspired by Versailles and its fountains by Rome. The central alley that leads to the main entrance is lined with stone monuments and wood sculptures. The massive front door looks like a medieval cathedral gate. Church bells weighing hundreds of tons are scattered randomly on the front lawn. They are covered with lichen and eaten away by rust. These bronze idiophones give guests the impression of walking into an open sky sophisticated museum.
The residence is surrounded by the UNPOL. The orders are clear and specific: no one or nothing can enter or exit the senator's mansion without Captain Pintado's authorization. The junior officer in charge of guarding and protecting the imposing house refuses to bargain with the pleading auditor general. When Prospérine de Grâce tells him about the underground gallery, the young man immediately warns his superiors in Port-au-Prince.
A short time after, Rogatien Gingras and Prospérine are given permission to enter the place and proceed with their investigation. But they must go in alone, meaning without Picot and Albin, but be escorted at all time by two french speaking soldiers.
Just like they anticipated, Senator Fleurant and Judge Campbell are gone with the wind, but the staff of the manor gladly offers their help and assistance. All the employees have been deprived of salary since Friday, so everyone is eager to collaborate with the investigators. They all expect some sort of compensation and surely hope that justice will be applied without discrimination.
The newly appointed financial controller sets up a temporary interrogation room in the librairy of the villa. The list of witnesses he intends to question includes the housemaid of the senator, his butler, the villa's chef and the driver. The names of Fleurant's gardener, washerwoman and interior decorator are scratched off; a cross, a smiley face and the letters R.I.P. are added to their signature. The available employees sit quietly in the study next door, a vast antechamber filled with portraits and paintings of the Fathers of The Haitian Independence.
The first witness is a graybeard with melancholic eyes named, Noé Saint-Germain. He has nothing helpful to say and claims that a very aggressive neurodegenerative disease will soon kill him if he gets too upset. Rogatien Gingras tells the old butler the reign of terror instituted by Senator Fleurant is over. Once he is arrested, the fake political strongman will be extradited to the United States for him to be judged. The same destiny awaits Judge Zilérion Campbell. The destitution and condamnation of the magistrate are inevitable. The auditor general wishes to compile some incriminating information on the operating methods of the swindlers trio formed by Fleurant, Berri and Campbell. Rogatien Gingras would like to get his hands on the accounts of their reunions, know their duration and be able to establish a list of the senator's regular visitors. He would also like to understand the extent of certain foreign governments implication in the embezzlement scheme put up by those thieves.
Rogatien Gingras hits a wall of silence. Noé Saint-Germain doesn't want to talk by fear of reprisal. In his forty years at the service of Louis Edmond Fleurant, the old butler has done a lot of reprehensible actions he would like to keep under a thick rug. "I would not survive a cross-examination," he shamefully admits, eyes closed, filled with guilt. The chief audit executive explains the judicial immunity concept to Saint-Germain. When the latter finally seize the principle, the old man suddenly becomes prompt and voluble.
Thus, according to Noé Saint-Germain, Senator Fleurant was controlling the local media, the police department and the municipal council of Mizérikod with an iron fist. Commissioner Malvoisin, Mayor Amédée Fleurinor and his councilors were puppets and pawns under his payroll. Up until Friday, Victor Gourdet had to get the senator's approval before editing his newspaper. Judge Campbell and Moïse Berri were answering directly to him. The modus operandi they used to pump the money out of the Zanmi d'Haïti Foundation was very simple, but stunningly efficient. Moïse Berri went hunting for unscrupulous carreerists, ambitious investors and generous donors with low self-esteem issues within the local and international socio-political elite. Berri would then identify the corruptible ones amongst them and quickly make them an accomplice of a financial offence with the help of a third associate working abroad. Moïse Berri would finally threaten his victims, menacing to denounce them to a team of dubious prosecutors hired by Judge Campbell, with irrefutable proofs of their participation in the crime and pre-signed counterfeited extradition forms in his possesion. Facing prison and dishonor if they refused to cooperate, the offenders would generally chose to shut up and accept to cash in their cut of the dirty money. Moïse Berri made use of three look-alikes for three strategic purposes: firstly, to terrorize his scapegoats by making them believe he mastered ubiquity; secondly, to have a permanent and solid alibi, because he always asked from his double to adopt a flashy an noisy attitude wherever they went to attract maximum attention; finally, to dispose of a real corpse when the time would come to organize his own funeral and have the opportunity to vanish into nature. For some very strange reason, Noé Saint-Germain continued to explain, instead of grabbing one of the impersonators, the incompetent soldiers of Chuck Quebec apparently kidnapped the original Moïse Berri, the one who played chess and spoke Hebrew.
"Now, just wait a minute. If the Diabbakas are detaining the real Moïse Berri," Rogatien Gingras cuts, "who is the bozo conspiring with Senator Fleurant and Judge Campbell, the man who supposedly fled the country with them?"
"Frankly, Sir, I don't have a clue. I was not even allowed to speak to the man. I was told by the senator to ignore his existence for my own safety. Senator Fleurant would sometimes give some slack to the poor guy. He would let him go in town once in a while for the sake of the documentary, but he was mostly kept in a cage like a laboratory animal. That man was also older than the real Moïse Berri; short-sighted, with a pot belly, and his skin was pale and lifeless like a freshly arrived tourist from the North."
"Was he paler than me?"
"Definitely, Sir, that man was a walking cadaver."
The man in charge of the villa's kitchen seems more open to denunciation and ratting on his colleagues. In fact, the dude has the attitude and the stance of an experienced prison snitch; arms opened, the nose up high, the mouth half closed, constantly shaking his head in approval to remind his interlocutor that he's changed side and is now ready to send everybody to the gallows in order to save his ass. "Either this guy hates Senator Fleurant, either he believes we're going to give him a bonus or a medal for vilifying his boss," the auditor general thinks. Before being invited to say anything, the nervous guy enumerates a list of offences done by Senator Fleurant to Rogatien Gingras, a bunch of unsignificant petty crimes. Notably, diverting the high tension electrical line from the power plant to his residence, and also pumping the underground water table of the region for commercial ambitions without an exploitation permit. According to the man in charge of the kitchen, hard drugs an animal abuse were common and part of daily life inside this house of debauchery and madness. Rogatien Gingras learns about things he could have live without on the hygiene and personal habits of the senator. The newly named chief audit executive feels obliged to stop the young man, when he begins to mix fantasy and reality while describing an occult ceremony lead by Louis Edmond Fleurant and a masked medicine man from the town of Gressier.
"Whoa! hey! You stop it right there, young man! Wait a second. The judge and the senator got butt naked and did what with the pig?"
"Exactly what I've told you, Mr. Controller of Financial Stuff and Things, but it was a sow, a female pig. If you know what I mean?"
"Did you really witness such an abomination?"
"Indirectly, yes, because I heard it all. The walls are on the thin side between the kitchen and the living room."
"We are investigating a major and extremely serious crime. I am not calling you a liar, but I ask you to be careful with what you are insinuating. Everything you say might end up in a court of justice. What is your official position in the house, anyway, Mister... Godefroy? Your name does not appear on my list. It says here that the chef's name is Pamphile Dutervil."
"I am an experimental and applied physicist, valedictorian from the M.I.T., class of 2005. I work here so I can afford a car and a girlfriend. I am waiting for a big subvention from the government so we can rebuild the launch base of the Haitan Space Agency."
"The what of the what?"
"The earthquake destroyed everything, throwing our nation down back to square one. The Mumbai Posse and the Guangdong Secret Society both believe they'll get to Mars before us. We won't let that happen. The Haitian Space Program is more than a dream. It is our reality."
"I see. And... I guess you must go through a medical... I mean... physical and of course mental check up before you do all these astronaut floating and researching and all?"
"The doctor comes for a quick visit on a monthly base. We also get pills. On my hiring contract, it reads errand boy, but since the precipitous departure of Doudou, I've climbed the ladder at my own pace. I'm the one who decides what comes in and what comes out of that kitchen now. I even cook sometimes, when Ma'am Consuelo's restaurant is closed or the delivery man unavailable or acting out. He has two girlfriends."
"Wait… don't go to fast. Who is that Doudou you've just mentioned, another amateur of pig fornication or another spaceman?"
"Doudou is the former cook of the house, the Pamphile Dutervil on your list. A nice guy, but stubborn like a mule, you have no idea. The senator had been clear. No one was supposed to socialize with Moïse Berri while he stayed here, specially not during his meditation seance. But because Berri had been good to his community, Pamphile felt obliged to go on and thank him in person in the name of the poor and the sick of Mizérikod. The boss heard about it. Doudou vanished the next day. A good friend of mine, a trained colleague who works in the housekeeping department at the Foundation; his name is Vidal Gascon, but we call him Tartufe. Well, he told me Fleurant made his goons cut Doudou in thirteen equal pieces, put twelve in a coffin and then spread some white powder and affixed a mirror and a plastic crucifix on top of it all. The senator then sent the box up north to a village near Quartier-Morin to be buried without a prayer in a public dumping ground."
"Those are extremely grave accusations. Do you have the slightest piece of evidence to corroborate what you are claiming, Mister... Godefroy?"
"The old Fleurant and the Devil? Same person, Mr. Auditor in Chief. Have you ever flipped the pages of the Holy Bible? The old man fits the description. When you gaze him long enough, you can even see the roots of the horns on his cranium, impatient to come out before Judment Day. If you work for Lucifer, disobey th Serpent and then disappear, it is the logical and normal course of things. It's like in quantum physics: you don't see the particle, you have never even seen the particle, but you know damn well that it exists. You know when it is operating and you can pin point the exact moment where it chooses to get out of the equation. In mathematics, we call this simple deduction. You're looking for Moïse Berri at the wrong place and at the wrong time, just like the people who wants to capture quarks and neutrinos with a magnet. That charlatan left us a while ago, disintegrated like a beta decay, probably in Zongo or in Bangui on the Ubangi as we speak."
"I was just told by the butler Moïse Berri had been kidnapped Thursday night or Friday morning by the local gangsters."
"Hogwash! Noé is gaga. Between you and I, the dinausor wears a reusable diaper and cannot swallow his meat anymore if I don't take the time to cut it in little squares. The real Moïse Berri was transfered to a safer place on Tuesday because of the hurricane. The senator had him chained in a special cell at the municipal jail. He was under the constant surveillance of a maniac who hears voices and executes their sadistic suggestions on whoever has the bad luck to fall under his yoke. After the planified kidnapping of his double, Berri, the senator and Judge Campbell came right back here to pack their things up and leave for Mother Africa. They are many secret passages in this house. When the police arrived, the three of them were long gone."
Rogtien Gingras needs a pause after his peculiar exchange with Godefroy. The auditor general must take a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down and avoid the migraine he feels growing behind his left eye. "A secret space program and undisclosed Haitian Space Agency?"
The housemaid, who also holds the positions of gardener, laundrywoman, interior decorator and letter writer, is a close friend of Prospérine de Grâce's eldest daughter. The newly appointed comptroller entrust the reins of the investigation to the interim president of Zanmi d'Haïti and heads to the washroom to empty his bladder and snap out of it for a brief moment. The military men split up to keep an eye on both Prospérine and Rogatien. The two soldiers are visibly tired. Their puffy eyes indicate a lack of sleep.
The chambermaid is categorical, Moïse Berri did not set foot in the villa since december of last year. He was too busy drinking Champagne wine with Ambassadors, CEO's, Heads of States and Royal Families of this world. The Quebecker everyone called Brainiac, President or the Architect was just an actor hired for the sole purpose to play Moïse Berri in a documentary on the reconstruction and a film on his charity work and philanthropy activities. In fact, that French Canadian was replacing another actor, a true French from France, kicked out of the production because he was a bad comedian and gained too much weight between shots. The principal photography team, the cinematographic equipment, the producer and the director, all of that was quite real and documented on Reconstruct Haiti Dot Org's website. According to the housemaid, the Maghrebian nicknamed Billionaire and sometimes, Director, the man the Diabbakas came to drag out of his bathtub was a double, a mere extra working on the film. When Billionaire opened his mouth on set, it was mostly improvisation. Even though people say he was a genius actor, he never got out of character even when he was off the set.
"Come upstairs with me, Prospérine, I'm going to show you a picture of Moïse Berri. He is way more handsome than those three parasites who crashed here for months, all expenses paid."
Prospérine and the chambermaid are soon standing in front of an oil portrait of Joe Dassin, painted by a Polynesian dauber in 1977. Rogatien Gingras and his military escort rejoin them.
"Anything new, Prospérine?"
"Ursuline thinks the man on this canvas is Moïse Berri, the authentic, the one and only," the interim president of the Foundation answers with a grin.
"That's not funny, Prospérine."
"I am not joking, Mr. Rogatien. She doesn't know who this is."
"Champs-Élysées, l'Amérique, l'Été Indien?" the auditor general enumerates to the disconcerted housemaid.
"Et si tu n'existais pas," Prospérine hums, "dis-moi pourquoi j'existerais?"
"That's what I am beginning to believe about that elusive Moïse Berri character," the comptroller says with dismay. "The men who hired me got caught in the same game. Ursuline is too young and them too old to be Joe Dassin's fans. Now let's go, Prospérine. It's time to bring the inquiry to the streets. We need to question the construction workers, the business owners, the people on the terraces, passerby and taxi drivers. We will certainly find someone out there who can put us on the track of the real Moïse Berri."
"We haven't spoken to the chauffeur yet, Mr. Gingras."
"That won't be necessary, Prospérine. Let's get out of this place immediatly."
"That man was driving Moïse Berri's limousine seven days a week, Mr. Rogatien. The trips to the airport, the appointments in the capital, the long distance runs in the rural areas... That's a lot of time spent with one man. The chauffeur might be very helpful if he befriended or got comfortable with Mr. Berri."
"Look deep into my eyes, Prospérine," the auditor general mumbles, blinking and winking profusely. "Let's get out while we still can, Prospérine... right away, please."
Back in the prisoner transport vehicle, now driven by Picot, the chief audit executive tells Prospérine why he felt the urgency to leave the villa. When Rogatien Gingras was in the bathroom, he saw a moving shadow behind the mirror above the sink. He found that very strange, so he nosed around a little bit. It took him five minutes to locate three cameras and two clumsily concealed microphones. If someone took the time to put so much surveillance in a toilet, that same person probably wired the entire house, the auditor general thought. Before he went back up to warn Prospérine and meet with the housemaid named, Ursuline, Rogatien Gingras wrote the address of his former barber on a piece of paper and gave it to the chauffeur of the house, standing at the entrance of the library. The man quickly hid the note and went in a dark corner of the room, obviously to evade the cameras. He read the message and then, with sign language and mimics, he basically told the Rogatien Gingras he would leave the villa using a secret tunnel and meet him later at Fresnel Beltias barbershop on Céligny-Ardouin Boulevard.
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