Cooper thought about this for a moment and decided to give one more shot at seeing whether the scenario he wasn’t too comfortable acknowledging could be eliminated.
“Listen,” he said. “Do you understand where Tortola is?”
“No. It is not possible you saw him somewhere else. He has never been anywhere else. He was born here, he lived here, he died here. He never went to this place, this Tortola.”
Cooper stood there, out in the middle of main street in the Valley of the Dead, taking a moment to think about this. Alphonse had begun fidgeting again. Cooper reached out and wrapped his fingers gently around the girl’s arm, just below the shoulder.
He said, “Kouman ou rele?”
She gave him half a smile and said, “Simone.”
“You were there when they buried him?”
“Wi,” Giving him those brown-green eyes.
“Could you take us there?” he said. “Can you show me his grave?”
Painted on a stake, driven into the earth, was a name: MARCEL S.
Just the s.-no last name. Cooper wondered if these people even used last names. If not, perhaps there had been another Marcel in town, or, as in Asia, the citizens of La Vallée des Morts might put the surname first, S. being short for his given name.
Simone was pointing at the stake.
It was one grave among a few dozen. They were in a clearing located about a quarter mile into the petrified forest, here in the graveyard that told him nothing about the body from Roy’s beach other than this: if the corpse beneath the stake was actually the kid named Marcel S., then the girl was wrong-it hadn’t been Marcel on the rocks in Road Town.
He found the concept that occurred to him next disturbing.
Leaning down, he thanked Simone and told her he was sorry about her loss. He told her he’d be leaving town now. Simone looked at him, her brown-green eyes as confused as when she had first seen the picture.
“Mési,” she said, turned, and padded back to town.
Cooper watched until she vanished behind a grouping of trees. Then he counted the rest of the cash in his wallet-just under eight hundred bucks-pulled out ten fifties, and handed the five hundred dollars to Alphonse.
“Your fee,” he said.
Alphonse eyed the cash, but remained still. “Poukisa?” he said. “Two-fifty when I bring you this place, yes? The rest-not yet, non?”
“Time for you to go home.” Cooper found the key to the pickup and shoved it and the money into Alphonse’s rail-thin abdomen. “Take the truck. It’ll make the trip a little easier on the way down. Drive back and forth, all right? Zigzag.”
Alphonse stood his ground.
Cooper said, “You understand?”
Alphonse did not say anything.
“I know you’re a religious man, and a religious man should never have to participate in what I’m about to do.”
Cooper shoved the money against the kid’s concave belly. Alphonse took the money and the key, then counted out two hundred and fifty dollars, handed Cooper the remainder-including the key-and straightened his long spine.
“I am your guide,” he said.
Cooper took the money and key from Alphonse’s palm, thinking that now, not only would he have to do what he’d already planned on doing, but he would also need to keep an eye on Alphonse while he was at it. He would need to pay close attention, considering the witch doctor’s gang was following them around-make sure Lew Alcindor here didn’t guide his own way into the afterlife before they made their way back up the hill.
“If that’s the way it has to be,” Cooper said, “then follow me, big guy.”
Cooper didn’t like the moon being out, but he and Alphonse were almost done, Cooper finishing the last of it. It was a shallow grave, about three feet deep, and they’d had to scrape their way down with whatever sticks and stones they could find. With the moon out, anybody watching could see them doing it, digging up the grave of Marcel S. in the middle of the night, but to Cooper there was no other way, not once Simone had told him her man was buried here.
He scooped some dirt from the edge of the coffin. They’d cleared the soil from above the thing, a rudimentary box held together by rusted nails, and with four hands pulling at it he figured they could probably pry the top off now. He was trying to ignore the nausea welling up into his throat, nausea or fear, he wasn’t sure which, Cooper out here past midnight in a voodoo cemetery in the badlands of Haiti.
“Get in here, Kareem,” he said. “Looks like we can pop it off if both of us do it.”
Alphonse murmured something before he came over, Cooper not caring what he said. The kid reached for one of the planks and they tugged at the top of the coffin together, grunting and jerking, the nails screeching as they pulled. Cooper’s fingers slipped on the board and he sliced his hand open, but when he got back at it the lid popped off, flying back and tossing them into the mound of dirt they had dug. With Alphonse hanging back, Cooper crouched forward, holding his breath against the coming stench, and moved the last loose board out of the way. In the moonlight, he could see inside the coffin as though it were part of a track-lit museum display.
There was nothing in the box.
A couple rocks, sure, some dirt, but nothing else: no body, no bones, no tattered old clothes. Cooper was starting to sort through this unfortunate confirmation of what he’d already feared to be the case when he heard a voice.
It was Alphonse. He was topside, out of the grave now.
“Monsieur!” he said again. “Il faut you come look!”
When Cooper poked his head above ground he saw a sight that gave him chills.
A bunch of figures were coming at them out of the darkness-predatory shadows, approaching from every angle in the moonlight.
He counted eight of them. Spaced five or ten yards apart, they had managed to form a circle around the open grave about forty yards across. Cooper couldn’t see any definition to their dark faces even in the pale desert moonlight; they were shadows, ghostly figures standing there at the edge of the graveyard. Wraiths.
Barry must have had one or two of them following when Cooper had taken Alphonse out of town and up the slope of the mountain. He gave Barry and his band of wraiths some credit, not believing the show he’d put on, either seeing or guessing that they’d come back down once it got dark.
Cooper came out of the grave and stood beside Alphonse, planting his feet three feet apart in the soft earth, knees just bent. Relaxed.
Alphonse wasn’t so relaxed. He started to edge away from the hole.
“Sit tight,” Cooper said.
“They comin’ get us,” Alphonse said, his beanpole of a body coiled like a spring. “Il faut partir.”
“Just stay by my side,” Cooper said, “right there where you are.”
Cooper was trying to determine what it was they were packing and how they planned on killing him when Alphonse bolted. He called after the kid, but it was no use, Alphonse running for the wrong place, straight for one of the gaps between men, Cooper thinking he should have picked out one of them and bowled the man over, but that wasn’t what he did.
Two of the figures jumped him, Cooper seeing what they had now-looked like machetes, though the weapons could have been old lawn mower blades for all he could tell.
“Shit,” he said, and, having to do it earlier than he’d wanted, he drew his pistol and cracked off two quick shots, thinking he was probably too late, seeing the arc of a machete swinging down on Alphonse before the slugs broke up the party. Kareem’s attackers fell, but the kid dropped to his knees, probably cut bad, he thought, but there wasn’t time to check. The other six closed in at speed, brandishing the blades, Cooper seeing a couple of shivs, one of them holding what looked to be a spear.
He didn’t hesitate, working his pistol like Player One in a voodoo video game, shooting, stepping back and to his right, shooting again, repeating, so that he moved himself in a circle and got at least one bullet moving toward each of the approaching men before they could close the gap on him. The gun was loud in his ears as he completed the circuit: shoot-step, shoot-step; the closer they got, the easier it became, the specters falling like cardboard cutouts at a shooting gallery. Cooper registering while he fired away that this had to be one of the last places a handgun still gave you an advantage, these guys actually out here fighting with knives the way people used to.